Mike Dorey

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colcool007
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Mike Dorey

Post by colcool007 »

I am now in contact with this prolific artist and hope to prepare an interview by email.

Does anyone have any questions that they would like me to consider adding to the interview?
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geoff42
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Re: Mike Dorey

Post by geoff42 »

Hi, Col: yes, I have a question: how much knowledge did Mike have as regards his art on Victor Drago for "Tornado"? Was he aware of the problems as regards the copyright over "Sexton Blake"? I only ask because Victor Drago, due mainly to its art, was a great feature of the much maligned and short life of "Tornado".

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Re: Mike Dorey

Post by geoff42 »

Perhaps this is off subject, but there was an artist who drew "Millionaire Villa" for Roy of the Rovers in early 1977 which had a gritty, dirty feel to it just like Mike Dorey implemented on his work as regards "Victor Drago", certain issues of "Invasion" for 2000 ad, and stories for "Battle". I would love to know the identity of this artist. Was he copying Dorey's style or vice versa? Roy of the Rovers' fans will know what I'm talking about... hopefully :|

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colcool007
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Re: Mike Dorey

Post by colcool007 »

geoff42 wrote:Perhaps this is off subject, but there was an artist who drew "Millionaire Villa" for Roy of the Rovers in early 1977 which had a gritty, dirty feel to it just like Mike Dorey implemented on his work as regards "Victor Drago", certain issues of "Invasion" for 2000 ad, and stories for "Battle". I would love to know the identity of this artist. Was he copying Dorey's style or vice versa? Roy of the Rovers' fans will know what I'm talking about... hopefully :|
Actually, Geoff, this is his first work for IPC! If you can post a picture, I would like to see it as it is always interesting to see how an artist's style evolves.
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Muffy
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Re: Mike Dorey

Post by Muffy »

Thanks Col Cool. Could you ask him about any comic art he was involved in that we're not aware of?
For example, did he work on any Hellman of Hammer Force or any other Battle / Valiant etc story's that were 1, 2 or 3 issues long only? If he remembers that far back.

Could you also ask him what he did as well as the comic strips – the life of a professional artist/illustrator is challenging.

Great artwork.

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Re: Mike Dorey

Post by colcool007 »

I am still formulating the questions, but yes he did some Hellman. Mike was kind enough to send me a compilation of his longer stints such as Cadman, Wolverine, Mantracker and Rayker.

Two questions I always ask are what was your favourite character to illustrate and what character would you have like to have been commissioned to illustrate?

I will try and delve into his work outside of comics as it is always interesting to see what other projects they have worked on.
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Re: Mike Dorey

Post by geoff42 »

Scan_20141201 (5).jpg
This is the largest pic I can upload of Millionaire Villa from Roy of the Rovers. I've seen others upload greater scans... i'm not that technologically minded, i'm afraid. But, hopefully, this gives you some idea of what I was talking about in my previous post, Col.

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Re: Mike Dorey

Post by geoff42 »

By the way, I've yet to see Dorey's take on Cadman. I will look forward to that as and when I procure later Victors.

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Re: Mike Dorey

Post by Phoenix »

Here is a page of Millionaire Villa from issue one of Roy Of The Rovers. It is from the 25 September 1976 issue, and just happened to be top of the pile when I opened the box. Hopefully this will help those in the know to determine who the artist was.
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MillVill1.jpg
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colcool007
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Re: Mike Dorey

Post by colcool007 »

Geoff, Phoenix,

Thanks for those two scans. You can see the differences in the artists' style quite clearly.

The scan that shows the original artist, as posted by Phoenix, is a very clean line style with everything very obviously distinct from each other part of the picture. I'm afraid that I cannot name the artist.

The scan that Geoff has posted, is a perfect example of Mike's art. He has a technique of making the background elements almost blend into each other. And the faces would have this careworn look about them.

Geoff, as to Cadman, you can get a sneaky peek by looking at Adrian Banfield's excellent Victor Hornet site. The link is to the Cadman page rather than the home page of his site.
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geoff42
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Re: Mike Dorey

Post by geoff42 »

Damn, I never thought of that, Phoenix. You broke the page into two separate images and uploaded them. Oh dear, sometimes I can't see the wood for the trees.

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Re: Mike Dorey

Post by geoff42 »

Just checked out those images on Victor/Hornet site, Col. Am I being too fastidious; they didn't seem to have that atmospheric feel that he gave to Victor Drago. The panels actually seemed more cleaner. I can't quite explain his art; it had a grubby feel to it but that's what made it so realistic and compelling. I've just obtained a few issues of Champ wherein his art is unmistakable on the "Sinister World of Mr. Pendragon" series... and lovely grubby, they were.

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Re: Mike Dorey

Post by colcool007 »

geoff42 wrote:Just checked out those images on Victor/Hornet site, Col. Am I being too fastidious; they didn't seem to have that atmospheric feel that he gave to Victor Drago. The panels actually seemed more cleaner. I can't quite explain his art; it had a grubby feel to it but that's what made it so realistic and compelling. I've just obtained a few issues of Champ wherein his art is unmistakable on the "Sinister World of Mr. Pendragon" series... and lovely grubby, they were.
I know what you are trying to say Geoff. Mike Dorey's art always appeared to have this dark, brooding feel to it. It certainly was different to the clean lines of many artists.

The only artist that I can think of that always had a similar dark appeal is Denis McLoughlin's art from Warlord, Commando and Wizard. But Denis still had a clean line that sharply defined each part of the picture, whereas Mike used to deliberately blur the lines between objects. And that I think was part of the appeal as most of us see backgrounds as a montage of bits, rather than defining each part clearly in our mind.

As to the scans, yes they seem to have been cleaned up to a certain extent, but that is part of the process of some people getting pictures ready to host online. After all, if you do a scan at a reasonable level, such as 200 dpi, then you make the image easily hostable, but you can pick up "interference" from the scanning process (not the right word, but when you scan, the scanner seems to pick up every little dent in the paper and presents it as additional parts of the image), so then you have to run post-scanning processes and that can lose some of the detail from the image.

Unless you scan at an exceedingly high dip like 600 dpi plus, then you will constantly have this battle between detail of scan and size of scan. For example, scanning at 200 dpi or lower, gives you a raw image of a 5 Mb or less, whereas 600 dpi or higher can lead to images of 40Mb or higher. And that is not good for website hosting!

Back to the main thrust of the topic, I have got most of my questions together and hopefully, I will send them through to Mike today for his consideration.
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colcool007
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Re: Mike Dorey

Post by colcool007 »

OK, I have got my answers back. I now need a little help from those who have easy access to the early 2000AD issues collection. If you can help, can you PM me?
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geoff42
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Re: Mike Dorey

Post by geoff42 »

Are we talking "Invasion" and "Mach Zero"? I have easy access to those titles.

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