The inevitable happened—my agent went bust—owing his artists a small fortune—anything from 20k to 50k and this was back in 1991—so we are talking a lot of money. We tried to set up our own agency but, in the meantime, there was the urgent need to generate income.
With my A3 samples stuffed in my A3 folio I took the train to London and paid a visit to King’s Reach Tower, where on the 14th floor dwelt the creative team responsible for 2000AD. When I arrived in their offices I was told that they were not commissioning work for 2000AD, one of the team directed my gaze towards a plan chest stuffed with artwork. Apparently the recently departed editor of 2000AD had farmed out enough work to friends and family to fill the pages of the UK’s greatest science fiction comic for the next five years. So, 2000AD was a closed shop—but, there was a new project that they wanted to discuss with me.
They were in the throes of launching a new comic based around SEGA’s little blue hedgehog. Sonic the Comic would carry the adventures of the adrenalised spiky little fella along with action-packed strips based on other popular computer games. My strip was to be based on a crime fighting team game called Streets of Rage.
I was given a script and told to go away and turn it into five pages of full-colour comic. More scripts would follow which would comprise a 30 page story full of fists, explosions, bullets and bombs.
My samples had been rendered in black and white—I needed to evolve a way of creating colour comics speedily. I tried various heavy duty water colour papers and eventually settled on Fabriano paper. It had the advantage of absorbing magic markers (I didn’t have the necessary skill set or time to work with water colours) without the colours spreading beyond the confines of the black ink key lines.
The work was not wildly generously rewarded but Boy was it fun. At a pinch I could manage five pages a week, although in some cases such as the sample with the crowd scene a week and a half was closer to the mark. I was still doing my more commercial work but Streets of Rage was hugely enjoyable.
