Comics UK

Twelve years ago after getting divorced I sold my house and put everything I had into storage where it has been sealed away since. On Wednesday I finally transferred it to a storage company that allowed access and today, Sunday, I went and looked at the stuff for the first time in twelve years. There is lots of furniture and heavy goods like fridge freezers at the front so I couldn't really get hold of much. I plan to have a household clearance firm take it all away leaving just my 30,000 odd comics and several thousand records (60s beat, 70s punk mainly) I will also sell the records. Anyway there is a goldmine of comics related stuff in there and I managed to get hold of one bin bag full of stuff which contained all the letters i received from DC Thomson editors, Albert Barnes, Ian Chisholm, Roy Paterson and Albert Crammond. I'll scan these at a later date. Also the first five issues of Nipper comic (2 copies of each apart from no. 1 where i have four copies-snigger). Found my school reports from the 60s too! Plus these Ball Boy strips I wrote and drew. I was encouraged to write scripts by the editors but most were rejected, you can see the reason at the top of each page written by the editor. I was about 18 when I did these:

Nice strips shame they wernt published

Very nice work. Very much between Malcolm Judge and Tom Lavery in style, and nothing wrong with that.

Even today, as i open the post in work, i always doodle on the back of envelopes and sometimes sketch out a rough for a cartoon, and my work still looks like Mal's. Guess that's the style for me, but then I always did like a clean style. Never did like scratchy artists like Frank McDairmid. And from MAL in UK to PAM in US, Pete Morisi had a style I really liked, each panel was like a stand alone picture ala Roy Lichtenstein.

BENNY HILL sketched out his rough ideas on the back of envelopes, STEVE, and he is the only UK comedian who truly conquered the US [without really trying....so, there you go.

Hmm, i was thinking the other day that the "out of character" one could have been made into Dennis playing with a football, and then at the end he would say "i'll leave the football to Ball Boy, he never has this sort of trouble!"

i love the one where ball boy gets in to trouble you should
uplopad more of your work

did you draw the box and then draw the characters inside or draw the character and then the box.

(by that i mean the frame box)

Excellent strips - looks quite a bit like Mal Judge's work. I thought the first one was the best, you were unlucky that one wasn't used. I'm sure there were plenty of other jokes that have been used far more often! The second one was out of character, but it could have been adapted for another character.

Yeah, felneymike already said that would've been better as a Dennis story, and you're both right.