perfect Christmas gift at the 99p store

[felneymike]

You could probably forge 60's money with a scanner and good laser printer, it's not like such things existed back then for the police to worry about! You only have to find one ten bob note at an old money collector's, then.

I really like your idea felneymike. I think Tim did originally find the bike in the town dump, though I have not seen that strip myself. However, if he was to come back (which I don't think he will, with Fred's Bed in the comic), finding a new artist could be a problem, because his original artist, Vic Neill, is now dead.

Well the idea was that i'd draw it! In a totally different and more "adventure-y" style like old strips such as The Shipwrecked Circus, only in colour. Aside from the fact i had no ideas beyond the intial gag it would probablt look way too anachronistic. Then again how would kids who were born in the 90's or 2000's and who have mostly never seen old comics realise it was "old style", to them it would just be "different style"!

[Jonny Whizz]

I don't know whether it would look too anachronistic. I think the colour would set it off quite well. If it looked something like some of the recent incarnations of Billy the Cat then I think it could look quite good. Actually, in the 2003 Beano Annual Tim's strip was drawn by Richard Elson, and it looked different from how he did when drawn by his regular artists (Keith Reynolds took over sometime in 2001 I think, Vic Neill's strips were stockpiled and were used for about a year after his death).

I did try doing a humour Tim Traveller strip once, purely for fun, but I felt that I couldn't get my idea to work. I was planning to use it as a bit of practise for drawing in Neill's style, as I wanted to change my Billy Whizz style to look more like his. Before that, I'd been drawing Billy in a cross between the styles of David Parkins, Trevor Metcalfe and Neill. The strip I did in that style looked alright at the time, but looking at it now it doesn't look so good. The paper I was using wasn't very great (although it was the first time I used A3), my standard of drawing was mixed and the frames seem big and empty. I then started another one, but simply wasn't happy with it so I scrapped it, and switched style.