Rian Hughes Interview

By John Freeman on May 18, 2007

With the imminent arrival of Yesterday’s Tomorrows in bookshops, collecting, among other things, Dare by Grant Morrison – a chilling reinterpretation of the Dan Dare story – and The Science Service by John Freeman (who?), Kenny Penman has been working on a huge interview with comics creator and font designer Rian Hughes and the first part has now gone up on the Forbidden Planet International blog (with more to follow).

There’s some nice touches on Brit comics history throughout, and Rian supplied FPI with lots of very cool pics and art – more, blog head honcho Joe Gordon tells me than they could fit into the blog piece (he even had the receipt for selling his self-published Zit comics to Paul Gravett back in the 1980s). Those extra pieces of art have been uploaded to the FPI Flickr site

Yesterday’s Tomorrows is a real labour of love: i spoke with Knockabout publisher Tony Bennett in Bristol and he told me how he’d been comparing the cleaned up art Rian has delivered for the book with the original published pages, and there’s a huge difference to the quality of them. I know Rian’s spent over a year tracking down original art from collectors to scan from and although the final hardback costs and arm and a leg, I think it’s going to sell fast.

• Pre-Order it from Amazon.co.uk
• Pre-Order it from Amazon.com

About the Author
Latest Posts

John Freeman

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.