Peter Gray wrote:Bumped!
for anyone who is buying the Buster special Classic..
and what happened..
Lew how did you feel losing a page in 1992 and in 1995 losing Buster comic work all together?
Just as anyone would feel in losing income, pretty gutted, particularly as I didn't have much work on at the time. It would have been nice to have had more notice on the Tom Thug strip but it was a case of "Make the page you're working on the last. Budget has been cut again." No fault of the editor's by the way who would have been happy to fill the comic with new material.
I should have seen it coming though, as more and more reprint had been creeping into the comic for a few years by then. Did the increasing reprints save the comic from oblivion? No. Reprints never do. (See Whizzer & Chips, new Eagle, Sonic, etc). But the accountants keep doing it all the same. Then when the comic folds they claim kids aren't interested in comics anymore, which is clearly nonsense if they knew how well comics sell in Europe, Japan and Brazil.
Incidentally, regarding that
Specky Hector page, I did everything on that: script, art, lettering, even paste-up and colour overlays, then mailed the pages in to the editor "camera ready". Even the images from old comics were from scans I'd done myself. The budget on Buster was so low at the time that the comic was produced by the editor at home, so any help was appreciated. I understand Jack Oliver laid out the letters pages too himself, and any other such work required.
(The Specky Hector page there looks a bit odd in places because it was a reprint from the 30th or 35th anniversary issue and some text has been removed.)
Lew