In danger of sounding like a Don Mclean refrain : A long, long time ago.... more precisely back in 1969, I wrote a little story. With dimension spanning battles, as the gods fought among themselves for control of mankind and his destiny, it crept stealthily toward epic proportions. At the time I was working as systems programmer, in charge of the KDF9 machine at Birmingham University. Accross campus was my pal, Joshua, on exchange from Chicago, to work in the Maths Physics dept on their IBM machine. He'd stop by my office and roll up a little pinch of that Acapulco Gold that he'd 'inadvertantly' smuggled into the country, and encourage me in the flights of fancy my story was taking. Eventually, my conscience got the better of me. And I quit that cushy job, despite their protests of 'But, Ian..? We like you!!' I chickened out by saying - 'Get serious, Guys. I'm an artist!!' Which actually was code for: "I don't really know what I'm doing here. And I'm scared I'll blow up your machine!" So I went off to try my hand at getting work as an illustrator. That's how come I ended up building Spaghetti Junction. Yes. That's something else you can blame me for! ;)
But gradually, through the clouds of concrete dust, some pages emerged as illustrations of the epic tale I'd begun. Though, before I'd got more than the first twenty or so finished, I was whisked away to travel the length and breadth of this disunited Kingdom as a rock-n-roll roadie/publicity photographer.
But those few pages were enough to convince an agent that I had a future in illustration. He just had to find an editor who'd agree with him.
It took a while.
But, just as I was asked to go with the band on their first tour of the States, which was a very tempting offer (!!!), my agent, Louis, got me my first Star pocket Horror Library script.
And I've hardly stopped for a rest since then! So it isn't all that surprising that I haven't managed to make much more progress on the saga. It's another of those "One of these days.." affairs. But looking back at the pencils now, I see a lot of the influences who shaped my early work. Lots of Esteban Maroto and Neal Adams mixed together with some Jim Steranko. ;)