Where in the world is Street Cat Bob?

By John Freeman on September 17, 2013

Yes, yes, we know it’s only mid-September – but you can positvely smell the dreaded festive season coming when books like Where in the World is Bob? go on sale – inspired by the best-selling and oh, all right, quite touching tale of rescued street Street Cat Bob, revealed in A Street Cat Named Bob by James Bowen.

While it’s not quite comics, the illustrations by Steve Wiltshire, whose credist also include Where’s the Meerkat?, look great, so we’ll relent from our usual cynical world view and give this new title a quick plug (and because the cats will do horrid things to the computer if we don’t mention it).

Steve is both an illustrator an designer, working across all disciplines of the graphic arts. He says he has a huge passion for global cultures and architecture (evident from his page of superb travel reportage illustrations), which feed the inspiration for much of his work. As well as book illustration his client base includes Marks & Spoencer and the National Union of Students.

The book is written by James Bowen, the musician-turned-writer who found and rescued Bob in the first place, helping him recover from addiction (James, not the cat) and leading to the now global Street Cat Bob following on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (where his activities as a James’ companion first featured). Bob even has a Hollywood agent, so a film must be on its way at some point…

• James and Bob also engage in fundraising for the animal charity Blue Cross. To donate visit their Just Giving page: https://www.justgiving.com/streetcatbob

John Freeman

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.