Dredd wasn't the only one to have a fancy machine...
Back in the days when John Wagner and Pat Mills were busy plotting ways to get their 'concept' sci-fi magazine past the money men at IPC -
( I'm not sure enough of the 'chronology' of ownership. So I'm not certain that it was a Maxwell publication in those days. You may remember 'Il Gordo', who conveniently fell off his yacht somewhere near Tenerife. Now, the conspiracy theorists among us may suggest that it was possible for him to have sought refuge among the remnant Nazi enclaves infesting the hills above Puerto De La Cruz, as a way of 'disappearing. But I'm not one to sew such wild theories. ;) Honest!! )
- back to the plottting... well, I was very interested, as Science Fiction had always been my first love. And I'd been struggling along doing 'fill-in' work, waiting for the day when the world woke up to the legacy of Dan Dare et al. I'd worked with John on his magazine 'Valiant'; doing the occasional cover, and a war story series called Death Wish; about some crazed sergeant who was burdened with grief and guilt over losing his men. I actually hate war stories. But I was trying to scrape a living in the industry. So I did what was on offer. Sorry if that smacks of the old Nazi excuse! ;)
So I hastened back to my agent. Everything had to be done through agencies in those days. And suggested that he bustle over to the Kings Reach Tower and show them my original sample pages from back in1970, to show them what an excellent Sci-Fi artist I was. The pages in question were from an epic I'd written back in the late 60's, though I'd only drawn the first 20 or so pages. And the work in them was far nicer than anything I'd managed to produce in the intervening years of doing Horror, Love and War stories. ( All life is here!! ) Though the training I got from having to draw everything from Rupert the Bear to Captain Cronos Vampire Hunter did lay a good foundation for my abilities as an illustrator.
My agent, Luis, told me "Draw everything. It is good training!" - as he handed me a script for Motor Mouse!
And so, after I'd gone back to my little rented cottage in the Sussex countryside to draw another Bionic Woman Annual, they eventually relented and allowed me my first Judge Dredd script.
The rest is 'History', though not quite 'legend' as some would suggest! ;)
After all, would a legend stoop to illustrating a parody of a TV advertisement? Seriously!!
Oh, and the 'original' sample pages... there are a couple of clips way over on the right side of the page - for those who aren't using 'widescreen' ;)
And that's enough for now.
I think I need to do a page just for some of the Dredd black and white work too. ..?
