Look At Me I'm Wonderful

I never wanted to be a writer.  It just happened.

-

When you’re young, you realise there’s a lot of stuff out there.  And even if you realise the world is not exactly wonderful, it’s New.  Because you’ve not been around to see much of it.  And so it was with comics for me.

Stoke-on-Trent is much maligned, probably rightly, for many things.  But it did contain the first comic shop I ever went to.  Before this, I’d got the odd American comic, rather than a UK reprint.  You could occasionally find a few random issues at a newsagents.  I’ve no idea how they got them, but I knew there wasn’t a consistent supply.  So when I discovered Hanley’s real, actual Comic Shop (at the time called “Fantasy World”) in 1988, to me I may as well have discovered the Holy Grail, the Wreck of the Titanic, and those missing episodes of Doctor Who all at once.

I was 12 years old. I didn’t have much in the way of disposable income, but I spent it all on Marvel comics (which were 50p each back then, my recollection is they went up to 65p in Summer 1989).  The most popular was the Uncanny X-Men, which I found incomprehensible.  The Incredible Hulk was better written, but had almost unreadable art.  I bought plenty of back issues.  To this day, one of my proudest possessions is my copy of Hulk #103.  In fact, pretty much every comic I bought in my 10 year buying period is contained in this room in which I’m typing this.

-

You will not be surprised to learn that I was socially isolated as a teenager.  I know the reasons why now, but I didn’t then.  I had plenty of things to say, just no way to say them and nobody to say them to.  My parents were bored and irritated by me, and my siblings (aged 10 and 2 in 1989) were somewhat limited in conversational abilities.  There wasn’t anyone at school I had things in common with.  It’s good to be unique, apparently, but it’s very hard work.

One of the ways I was different from everyone else at school became apparent in Computing lessons.  My school had a whole pile of ancient 8-bit and slightly newer 16-bit machines on which to demonstrate what was laughably known as “the future of the world”.  Being kids, they all preferred the games.  I, on the other hand, was fascinated by the graphics programmes and Desktop publishing/Font software.  So much better to create stuff than just consume an experience.  But tell them that.  Both pupils and teachers included.

So, I got the bug to produce my own magazine.  I had the subject – comics being pretty much the only thing I knew anything about. I just lacked any way to do the stuff at home.  We got a halfway decent computer in 1991.  An Atari ST, a technology even then around 6 years old. My brother wanted a Commodore Amiga on the grounds that it had “better games”.  Being older, I won the argument.

I amassed my personal Publishing Empire on the cheap.  Something else I didn’t know at the time was the market for software for the ST was declining, and lots was being given away on the cover disks of magazines.  This was the way I got my DTP program, a 1987 version of Timeworks Publisher in 1992.  And on that I learned to do everything, as it was so limited I had to be creative.

By early 1993.  I had everything I needed for production.  Even the extremely noisy 24-pin  dot matrix printer.  I decided to test the market. 

-

But what to do for content?  Amazingly, I had not considered that to do a magazine, you had to have stuff to put in it.  Oh well, I decided, I’ll have to write some stuff myself.  So I did four articles and various things.  I remember one was about Guy Gardner, and another slagging off Rob Liefeld’s Youngblood (picking the difficult targets as always).  After a couple of weeks of bashing out this nonsense, I had enough for a sampler issue.  I placed a classified ad in the trade paper of the time, Comics International.  I didn’t let on I was only 17.  I think most people guessed eventually.

It was this way I got a free copy of Battleground, the premier comics fanzine of the time.  I read it.  Took a while, as it was produced the old fashioned way – on a typewriter, using the technique of shrinking down and physically pasting the columns up.  It was hard work.  But that was nothing compared to the actual text. Apparently, comics were a serious medium.  Worthy of comparison to films and real literature.

At this point, I had never read anything but Marvels and DCs.  I had no idea what the writers in Battleground were talking about.  But it was serious stuff.  By god, was it serious.  It quickly became clear to me I couldn’t compete on this level, being a teenager and having had no experience of art or life in general.  No, I had to do something else.  But what?

Other people were more encouraging.  Well known comics letter column correspondent Rol Hirst got sent a copy by me, too.  God alone knows what he thought of my amateur kiddy scribblings compared to his background in English Literature.  But at least he read (and admitted reading) superhero comics.  But he wrote back in suitably positive terms about my attempts at article writing.  And gave me a free copy of his comic, The Jock, too.  “Does anybody pay for stuff in comics fandom, or do they wait for the free stuff to be sent to them?” I wondered.  I’ve never met him, but we’re still in contact to this day (Hi Rolbert, if you’re reading this).

I liked the nice things people said about my efforts.  But that wouldn’t help me fill up the other twenty pages of fanzine I had to write.  So, what was I going to do?  The answer was more obvious than I expected.