Steed & Mrs Peel

I've been accused of many things in my time. One of them being 'carrying a grudge for too long' - just because I mentioned that no one noticed the 30th Anniversary of the Avengers TV series, as all eyes were on the sands of Desert Storm. For Stormin' Norman chose that very date to launch the first of the 'Resource' Wars. And so the launch of the three part comic book of Steed & Mrs Peel went for the most part unnoticed.

Don't worry Norman. All is forgiven. You were probably lied to like the rest of us! ;)

One thing that does still wrankle with me is the fact that the editors of the series never returned the original pages. So I am totally without adequate reference to display for you all the splendid artwork you missed while glued to the TV news.

Never mind. Grant Morrison is busy killing off superheroes, or is he resurrecting them? I'm never too sure about what happens in the world of American comics, where it is fashionable to create another alternate 'Universe' to patch over story-line discrepancies. Like, who really cares??

One of the things I really did enjoy about the Avengers series ( oh, it was called Steed & Mrs Peel for copyright reasons. Somehow they couldn't use the Avengers title. ) was the extra story that began at the back of issue 2. It was written by a first-timer. And I enjoyed it because, being based around the disappearance of 'Mr Peel', Emma's husband, in the south American jungles, it allowed me to indulge in one of my early interests - Pre-Columbian culture.

I did rather take it to extremes with parts of the story looking less like comics than a Mayan Codex. But it had been Mayan Codex art that had first got me interested in 'narrative' pictures. ;)

And I really enjoyed making up new 'glyphs' to add to the decorative aspect, which were 'Gibsonian' interpretations of how the events may have been depicted, had they actually been original Codex material.

Yes, as usual with my work, there's a lot more going on than first appears. ;)