Two original pages of “Annie Droid” a strip created by Peter Richardson and the late Ian Gibson, go under the hammer at Lewes-based auction house Gorringe’s next week (Monday 7th April 2025).
Part of a larger Weekly House & Gardens auction, Ian drew the strips on DC Comics artboard, which seems to have confused the auction house into thinking it’s for a project from the American publisher. In fact, the strip was created by Peter and Ian for the children’s section of the Saturday edition of The Times, as 2000AD artist Ian (perhaps best known as co-creators of strips such as “The Ballad of Halo Jones”) recalled on his long exeunt official web site.
The art for sale are episodes drawn for the fourth and fifth stories of the newspaper strip, which launched with “The Millennium Bug” in 1998 in The Times and was subsequently reworked as a “mobile comic” by ROK Mobile as part of their first ROK Comics platform, curated by John Freeman, in 2007. Early episodes of “The Millennium Bug” were reworked in English and Chinese, but work adapting the whole strip was abandoned when the company changed direction.
The strip was originally created to celebrate the approach of the millennium, giving Ian a chance to have fun with the concept of the Millennium Bug. The story’s characters lived inside a computer, with many satirical references to the everyday life we share with our devices.
“Back in 1998 there was a great deal of nonsense talked and hyped up about a simple problem created by Microsoft and their lazy system coders, who had never considered that the date would ever need more than two digits to display,” Ian recalled of Annie Droid’s origins on his now long gone official web site. “Hence Windoze 95, 98 etc. So companies began to panic at the idea that their system clocks would be unworkable once the calendar turned the page to 2000. Hence the myth of the Millennium Bug was born.
“And when my friend Peter Richardson approached me with a request for help with a proposal he’d had nominally approved for The Times children’s section of their Saturday edition, I saw it as an opportunity to wash away the bad after-taste of my experience with the 3D TV series Reboot; and tell the real story of what happens inside your computer.
“So the best thing I can do here is show you a few of my favourite characters and scenes from the series. And maybe try to tell the story for those who missed it in The Times.
“Now I just have to figure what it was all about. 😉
“Peter hadn’t actually written a story of any kind,” Ian continued. “He hadn’t even designed the characters. All he had was the name ‘Annie Droid’. Which as I later discovered wasn’t even originally his. For when I did a search on Google for Annie Droid, I found some very odd tale that I couldn’t quite understand!!
“So I sat down and designed the characters for him and wrote a sample strip for presentation to The Times‘ editors.
“The next thing I knew was Peter calling me to say it was approved and we had to get into production immediately! So I found myself having to write, draw and letter the stories each week, without having had the time to develop a plot. I had to wing it each week, making it up as I went along. Which caused me some headaches when the editors demanded Episode Seven to be delivered before I’d written Five and Six!! All due to the Christmas holiday for the printers, who had to have things in advance for publication..
“Eventually, as the story evolved, I did manage to get some plot of sorts developed so that I knew where it was going.”
In a 2013 interview for Amazing Stories, Ian recounts that “The Times eventually realised that they didn’t have a clue as to what my story was about – so they cancelled it at a week’s notice! A short time to wrap up a saga – but I managed it.”
Launched in 1998, “Annie Droid” eventually comprised five stories, opening with “Millennium Bug“, which ran for 26 episodes, followed by “A Glitch in Time” (also 26 episodes), “Time Waits on Noman” (30 episodes), “Bablands” (24 episodes), in which the heroine is sent to find a new operating system in the Bablands, where she meets Cogmaster Babbage and other weird characters, like Marshall McLoonie and Data Baron Gill Bates; ending with the truncated “Disposable Hero” (6 episodes), the strip curtailed by the editor.
downthetubes reader Alan Marshall tells us Page 30 of Book 3, “Time Waits on Noman” was published on New Year’s Day 2000.
Gorringe’s Weekly House & Gardens 7th April 2025 | Online Catalogue Here | Also at The-Saleroom | Gorringe’s 15 North Street, Lewes, East Sussex BN7 2PE |
Update, Monday 7th April 2025: The art sold for £110
With thanks to Richard Sheaf | Annie Droid created by and © Peter Richardson and Ian Gibson
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as 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.
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