PAGE-TURNING

I call this photo "Page-Turning".
It's a dramatic shot of Woodrow Phoenix with his one-off comic book "She Lives".
He's not visible in the photo, but he is there!
I took this at the latest Dundee Comics Day / Ex Libris Book Fair, which I will write more on soon.

COPY THIS! #8

The latest edition of D.Blake Werts' "Copy This!" is out. It’s a zine devoted to zines.

It contains loads of updates on what small press cartoonists are up to, including me this time around, making mention of my involvement with Treehouse Comic, Artificial Womb and continuing work on the third issue of Dump.

If you'd like more information, please contact Blake at bwerts@vnet.net

DOCTOR WHO IN COMICS: 50 YEARS IN 50 MINUTES!

Ex Doctor Who Magazine editor John Freeman did what looks like an excellent talk on Doctor Who comics at The Lakes Comic Art Festival. I'm very pleased that he used a quote from me. Thanks, John!

Have a look here for photos from the rest of the festival.

 John currently runs British comics website Down the Tubes.

BRITISH COMIC AWARDS LONGLIST

I'm very pleased that the British Comic Awards have longlisted my comic Dump #2 in the Best Comic category, and myself in the Emerging Talent category. Have a look at the lists here.

BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY...

(AKA SCOTLAND IN COMICS 14)

Instead of a comic based in Scotland, this time it’s a famous Scot. The world’s finest science fiction chief engineer is Montgomery Scott in Star Trek, also known as “Scotty”.

Gold Key started publishing Star Trek comics while the television show was still in its first run on-air. In early stories, Scotty was apparently drawn without any photo reference, and so it looks nothing like actor James Doohan. Later on the likeness is there, but it comes and goes. The series was collected into trade paperbacks, and these panels come from the first four…

Gold Key continued putting out Star Trek comics through the 1970s, presumably feeding fans starved of new episodes of the show.

In 1979, with Star Trek: the Motion Picture imminent, Marvel stepped in and picked up the licence. They started with an adaptation of that movie, written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Dave Cockrum and Klaus Janson…

By 1984, DC had the rights and were putting out stories based in the time after Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. No Mr. Spock in evidence then. Here is Scotty in his working environment, hurriedly working away on impossible tasks to ridiculous deadlines set by Captain Kirk. As in the show and movies, Scotty is often shown in this predicament…

Interestingly enough, this is the angle at which the panel was printed. Written by Mike W.Barr and drawn by Tom Sutton.

The same team adapted Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock…

In 1986, Barr and artist Dan Jurgens produced a flashback story detailing the final days of the Enterprise’s “five year mission” (never shown on screen due to the series’ cancellation). It utilised elements from the first movie, such as the revamped uniforms…

In 1989, fan favourite writer Peter David is writing, and James Fry is drawing. This page is from the adaptation of Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier…

1991 was Star Trek’s 25^th anniversary. DC put together a special issue with a 40 page story written by Howard Weinstein and drawn by Gordon Purcell…

That year also saw the release of the sixth Star Trek movie, the last to feature the series cast. The countdown to the end of new comics moving these characters' adventures along in real time had surely began.

Writer Chris Claremont, fresh from his expulsion from the X-Men series, and artist Adam Hughes, just off a well-liked run on Justice League worked together on Debt of Honor. It was a one-off story published with higher production values than standard comic books. It followed the Enterprise crew throughout their career, including Scotty…

And it finally came around in 1995. The final story treating the original crew as an ongoing concern. It was the end of an era.

Scotty and the Star Trek crew have continued to appear in comics since then. I’ve seen a couple of series in the shops – Star Trek: Year Four; stories from an imagined fourth season, and comics based on the cast of the 2009 movie.

The comics that hold my affections though are the ones that came out contemporaneous to the TV show and movies.