Comics UK

I've heard Lew drew a one-off Ivy story back in April 2008 for the Beano, I know Lew did contribute to the Beano rarely before Super School was introduced because I remember the Christmas Fred's Bed being by him. (was that in 2007?)

Anyway, could anyway upload a scan of the strip for me. I probably have the issue but it'd be much easier if someone could just upload it instead of me rummaging through my binders upon binders of Beano's!

Also, does anyone know why Lew only did one and why he did not carry on drawing her?

Wasn't this one of Lew's very earliest Beano contributions? Normally, if you are new to the comic you start off doing a fill-in one-off of an established character to test the waters.

That's true - he didn't need to for Dandy because he'll have probably got the Postman Prat/Kid Cops commission on the strength of Super School (they're hardly going to ask Egmont for a reference, lol).

I wonder if any of the strips in the Dandy Annual 2012 were similarly testing the waters, before those new artists started their new strips for the revamp last year.

Digifiend wrote:That's true - he didn't need to for Dandy because he'll have probably got the Postman Prat/Kid Cops commission on the strength of Super School (they're hardly going to ask Egmont for a reference, lol).

I don't think a reference was needed as I've been drawing strips every week since 1983. It's more to do with whether my work would suit The Beano, which has its own unique style.

I'd drawn several strips for DC Thomson before the Ivy page Digi, such as Beano and Dandy Fun-Size editions about 11 years ago and a few pages for the 1998 (I think) Beano Summer Special.

The Ivy page I did appeared in No.3426, dated April 5th 2008. Don't know why I was only asked to do one. I thought they wanted a traditional Bob Nixon look but perhaps they were looking for something more radical, which is why Diego got the gig later?

I personally thought you got the style about right on Ivy, Lew. It was clearly recognisable as your own style, but still retaining the look of Bob Nixon's characters, which I liked. This was a few months before Ivy merged with Bea, so I'm not certain whether there were any plans for Ivy to revert to new solo strips at the time.

I'm not quite sure why the Beano chose to do a one-off new strip for Ivy then though, as she was in reprints at the time, and apart from Ivy that issue wasn't particularly notable in itself, whereas the only new Billy Whizz strip to appear in the comic between June 2007 and October 2009 was in the 70th birthday issue.

Here's a scan: