Monday, March 30, 2009

Crazy Comics!


This April 1st, Fools' Day, see's kids humour mag, TOXIC#137 giving away a free 16-page comic supplement, with 8 brand spanking new strips/characters, and one from the 1970's dusty IPC vaults, cleaned up and reworked.
The idea is for readers to vote online for their favourite, and the winner returns , potentially, as an ongoing feature in the regular TOXIC. The revamp strip, is Werewilf, a character that made his debut in Whoopee!, March, 1976, and disappeared not long after.
Me and my old mate, sometimes comic strip-scribe, ex-viking-gone-to-seed and bass-thumping rock god, Paul Birch, decided the great pun-ish name should not go to waste. So we gave Wilf a modern polish, but soaked him in an unashamed rose-tinted bubble bath of nostalgia. Something that captures the feel and look of comics we grew up with, and a Britain that's terraced houses, allotments, garden sheds, bangers and mash, fat women-in-curlers and grandads in nice suits.
Along with co-scripting, I'd planned to draw the two pager, but my commitment to Channel Evil meant we had to find a replacement, and we chose the more-than-capable John Erasmus, an artist that had mostly left comics to pursue film making and storyboarding, but Werewilf shows he's definitely not lost his touch - all panels HAND-COLOURED with marker pens - take note photoshop fiends!
There's some other smart stuff in their, two by my Zombie Tales artist partner and good egg, Paul Harrison Davies. Read more about Crazy Comics full content at; http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2009/03/crazy-comics-is-coming.html
Below is my character sketches for Wilf and a coupla panels from the strip. Obviously, I'm biased, i want you to vote for Werewilf, if just so we can see more of John's gorgeous cartooning, and more can be found at; http://johnerasmus.com/







5 comments:

Gary Crutchley said...

Good to see John drawing some comics again even though it's only a couple of pages,

Brian Lue Sang said...

Awesome and fun stuff, Shane! Sorry if I missed it here but where do we go and vote?

shane oakley said...

dribbs - hopefully, he'll end up drawing many more.

brian - cheers! in theory, you go to the magazines site, which i just have, but for the life of me i can't find any mention of where to vote. but i'm thinking, since it only came out today they may give it a few days.

paulhd said...

Nice to see to your designs. It's a lovely strip.
The voting bit's online here http://www.toxicmag.co.uk/vote

shane oakley said...

paul - cheers!it is a lovely strip. HOAxERS is a fine un, too.

yeah, bin trying that address this morning, but they've only put up a voting page since late this afternoon. probably thinking that all kids are at school and wouldn't be online till after teatime and homework, how naive.