Fred Fortune popped into my head sometime in 1984 and has stayed there ever since. Raised on a steady diet of The Beano, proper Star Wars and classic era 2000AD, it was probably inevitable that he would develop into the beer swilling adventurer he is today.
Ahh, those were the days, I loved The Beano as a kid. I'm gonna dig that old box of them out of the loft at some point. Should have a near complete run from the spring of 1979 up to 1983 with some Annuals and Summer Specials too... Haven't seen them since I boxed them up in the early 90s...
Even though it was printed on the cheapest quality paper of the time there was something special about the old big format of the UKs weekly anthologies, it really allowed the art to breathe and jump off the page. I have quite a few of the reprint collections 2000AD have put out in recent years and they are great, but the smaller page size does take some of the impact away a bit. I'll have to dig out those boxes of progs as well ...
Another big inspiration that got thrown into the mix later was Deadline with it's anarchic in your face attitude and great strips like Philip Bond's low key Wired World which is often overshadowed by Hewlett and Martin's Tank Girl.
Back to the subject at hand... Fred began life as a tough sci-fi mercenary/bounty hunter starring in such mega epics as 'Wanted Dead or Alive!' and 'Fred Fortune Escapes!'. The thing was that most of those early ideas were no more than a few dramatic panels hastily doodled in the back of school exercise books during the really boring lessons. Though none were ever finished there did seem to be a few underlying themes that tended to repeat themselves and these ideas culminated in a big war story that I began around the time I left school. It was the usual war tale with an ensemble cast fighting on a distant planet in a galaxy wide war. Among the characters was one private Fred A. Fortune, a young raw recruit who didn't want to be there and he was going to become more grizzled and world weary as the story progressed. This is where Fred's character started to gel. If memory serves I managed to draw about 50 of it's 100+ pages which are now stored away in a top security vault deep in the dungeon at Castle Fred. It will never see the light of day as the story was a bit crap really and the art was terrible, though I'm sure it looked like a masterpiece to my addled teenage brain.
After that strip fizzled out I worked on a few other ideas for a while... mostly 2000AD , Watchmen, Dark Knight inspired stuff while also discovering the delights of alcohol and girls and working in my first few day jobs. Most of those fizzled out too, but Fred was still there in the back of my mind. I needed to find a way to draw some comics and actually finish them while still having a bit of a life.
The solution was to do some quick, single page gag strips, like an extended full page newspaper strip. If they were going to work they needed to be as barmy and spontaneous as I could make them. With such a dumb comic book name Fred was the perfect candidate to be the main character so he became the beer swilling fun loving reprobate he is today. I had to give him a cool future city sci-fi setting and so Shitty City was born.
The idea worked and over the next two or three years I managed to complete twenty plus one pagers. The strip needed to move at a fast pace and I tried to do something new and different in every strip so Fred appeared with ever changing haircuts and a different logo and fake publisher on each episode.
Here's an old one pager. It has been extensively tidied up and re-lettered.
Armed with a buffer of material I approached Lee Davis, head honcho at Mondo the UKs most fun small press 'zine and Fred found his home there. Back then most small press comics in Britain were mostly A5 black and white photocopied efforts sold through the classified ads in the back of Comics International and the short lived Comics World. Mondo was the larger A4 which did show the art off a lot better. Fred became one of the regular strips until Lee morphed Mondo into Equinox in 1995, the same year I went off to do Illustration at art college.
While the one pagers were being published in Mondo I was busy drawing the first few longer multi-page stories that would begin to develop the character and his world. Most were 3-6 page episodes that culminated in the 7 part Daze story. After Daze a new multi-episode story was begun and the first 3 chapters saw print in the last few issues of that era of Mondo. While I was quite pleased with the art I had lost faith in the plot and decided not to finish it and it remains on the Fred cutting room floor.
Above- A panel from 'The Sirius Job' where has-been hero fatty Bash Barnsley and Fred steel a space ship!! Pencils by Big JonniO Inks by John Woolley sometime around 2001ish.
By 1999 I had graduated, Fred and his world had a new look and Lee decided to bring back Mondo, so some new Fred started to appear. A few new one pagers and the first couple of episodes of the epic 'The Sirius Job' scripted by Lee, pencilled by me and inked by John Woolley. It sees Fred and his pals rob the richest planet in the Solar Empire. This story will now be reworked to appear after the new 'City of Tomorrow' graphic novel, but if you don't mind spoilers you can read it in Fred Fortune #s 2 and 3- link to the print on demand store below. Following episode 2 John Woolley drew the rest of the story and I edited the script, added grey tone and the lettering. I'll probably be drawing all the new version as John has since retired from comics... shame. I'll have to do a post about him and his work at some point in the future.
Here's a page of newer Fred from this era. This is from a 7 page story that is an a comic version of an animation I did at college. The animation has no dialogue and is a simple chase from the bright miles high top of the city to the dark dank bottom at ground level.
Next Time- Way Back When #2
Stay safe everyone.
Coming Soon- Fred Fortune : City of Tomorrow
If you like what you've seen of Funky Punk so far please follow, subscribe, comment and share. If not, thanks for reading this far and we'll be back with some more comics and other stuff real soon.
#comicsgate
#CG:UK
#comicsgate
#CG:UK
No comments:
Post a Comment
We would love to hear your feedback, please let us know what you think. Feel free to be as brutal or kind as you like. Thank you in advance.