
The late, great Steve Whitaker drew this guide to creating comics back in the 1990s and it’s available online via Flickr if people want to use it for teaching purposes, published under a Creative Commons license.
Printed in the Society of Strip Illustrators newsletter for September 1992, it’s a terrific instructional page about how comics works that was presumably intended for use in the London Cartoon Centre classes which Steve ran.
Strangely, this is the second time Steve has cropped up in online happenings for me this week: this time it’s the result of an appeal by Bryan Talbot, who plans to use the art as part of a presentation on comic storytelling next week to a secondary school whose, pupils are doing a graphic novel on their local history inspired by his graphic novel, Alice in Sunderland.
The first time it was a social networking site suggesting I become his friend, which was really spooky given that he’s not been with us since 2008…
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The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: Creating Comics
Thanks for the post. It’s always lovely to see Steve’s work still floating around. Even better that it’ll be used to teach new generations about an art-form he loved so much.
As for Steve popping up in spooky coincidences, that’s also happened to me before. I’m sure he’s doing it on purpose with a big grin on his face. He was such a big hearted fella of immense talent but he also had a devilish sense of humor.
He’s still floating around as a potential friend on Facebook. This is doubly sad for me as Steve (whom I knew for more than 33 years and kept in regular communication with since my move stateside in 1975) is the one who got me into online social networking. At the time of his death, I’d been on LiveJournal (at Steve’s urging) just a few months.
By the way, I credit Steve with teaching me about cartooning (a hobby that’s paid off a little here and there). I’ll never be anywhere near the artist he was.
–Mike Mittelstadt
Watertown, NY