Festive Cheer With The Fred Preview Comic

Season's greetings everyone, hope you all have a great Christmas and happy new year. If you're turkeyed out and feeling exhausted after the big day why not treat yourself to an extra present just for you?

Yes folks, the special preview issue of Fred Fortune is on sale now! A mix of black & white and color, it's 28 pages of futuristic laughs that'll be just right for the Xmas aftermath. It features two stories, character profiles and a couple of one-pagers all wrapped up behind color covers. You can get hold of your copy from  Indy Planet (will also be available from Comixpress very soon) for $4.50 here:

Fred Fortune #0

The first issue of the new Fred Fortune series will follow shortly, in the meantime, if you buy it please let me know what you think, either here, on my site here, on my Deviant Art page, or via email sillyarts@hotmail.co.uk

See you in 2013!

Tea Break Artworks

Here's some pencil artwork for a one of the upcoming stories in Fred's new comic. The entire strip was penciled over the course of a few months during half hour tea breaks at my day job and I'm very happy with the results. What do you think?

Just the inks (my favorite part of the process), tone and letters to get on with. The strip as a whole- scripted a while back and forming part of a larger story arc- works well, but I won't spoil it and run through the plot, in case you decide to buy the book when it's done. The arc starts in #1 and continues over several issues. 

This panel shows the city's distinctive architecture and dense sprawl quite well. This far down in the city life is tough and there's little or no sunlight, most of the population live on or below the breadline, crime and violence are rife, the state controls almost every aspect of everyone's lives, but there's also people striving to get on despite the odds, finding those small rays of light that enable them to get through another day... there's hope. That's Fred's world, he wouldn't have it any other way.

And here's the obligatory action shot from the same story...

It's was loads of fun to write and draw and I can't wait to get it finished and out there for everyone to read.

See you next time...

Then And Now

When I first embarked on bringing Fred Fortune's extraordinary misadventures to life in the form of one page gag strips some twenty something years ago, the UK was in a massive recession and we were under the icy grip of the Conservative Party... Life was tough, the day job was a dead end and poorly paid, there was little or no prospect of much of a future. So, I guess the strips were a good excuse to let off steam and poke fun at the establishment... with lots of chases with flying cars added on for good measure.

Here's some art... This was the first proper Fred strip from 1990. The character had been slowly evolving in my head and in lots of unfinished mega-epics (usually scribbled down in the back of school notebooks) since the mid eighties, until I finally realized that I could get it done if the story was only one page!

Now I'm about to unleash Fred upon the world again... we're in a massive recession and under the icy grip... hmmm... Everything really does just go round and round in circles...

All Fred's one pagers and old stuff will be published in a new title, 'Fred Fortune: Gold' which will run for six issues and includes previously unpublished stuff and lots more.

And just for the fun of it... Here's the cover of 'Mondo' #13, Fred's first appearance on it's cover, drawn by me back in 1993.

'Mondo's old site is still online for those who're interested:
Mondo