My comic character Fred Fortune first started appearing in North London Comics' small press anthology comic Mondo (Britain's Best Comic!) in the January 1993 issue and stayed there until Mondo went into it's extended hiatus after 60+ issues at the end of 2004. Mondo was unique among the UK small press comics of the time being one of the few titles that stuck to a regular monthly schedule and it was for the most part filled with light hearted action adventure superhero stories rather than the more introspective darker norm of the Brit small press at the time. It's creator/editor and lead writer Lee Davis often refers to it as the party on the page! Fred being a fast paced cartoony sci-fi comedy filled with flying car chases and a lot of beer set against the backdrop of a decaying post industrial future city fitted in well with Mondo's approach and became one of the regular strips.
So by 1994 I had accumulated enough Fred material to fill a few issues of my own so that summer Fred was collected into his own three issue mini series. Here are the covers for those issues.
Each comic was 20 black and white A5 pages behind a b+w cover copied onto coloured paper- standard practice in the small press back then. The small A5 page size meant that some of the artwork's impact was lost because it was mostly drawn on A3.
By 1994 Fred had evolved from one page gag strips to multi page and multi episode stories and the last story in this phase was the seven episode 'Daze' which introduced Fred's girlfriend Daisy. This story was collected as a one shot issue shortly before I went off to art college in 1995.
Originally a second three issue mini series would have been published at some point in 1996, but circumstances meant that it was put on hold and stories that would have appeared there remain unfinished (though the best ideas in those stories have been integrated into the new stuff, coming soon...). This is the cover for the second issue of that series- the cover for the first issue was drawn too, but has been lost in the mists of time. It's from late 1995 and all the lettering was hand drawn on the artwork.
Also in late 1995 Mondo morphed and relaunched as Equinox which lasted until Lee changed it back to Mondo in 1999.
While at college I took the opportunity to rework the design of the city giving it it's own distinct look and character, so it was not just another Blade Runner, Mega City One knock off.
These are a couple of the earliest sketches of the new look city. Inspired by the look of the huge industrial chemical plant that was near Middlesborough in the north east of England where I was at college I wanted the new look city to be different to the futuristic New York tower block trope, but also a bit more grounded than Carlos Ezquerra or Mick McMahon's amazing Mega City One designs in 2000AD. So I made my city's towers cylindrical with lots of pipes and walkways curling round them with lots of signage and floating streetlights.
The sketch above was later reworked and painted in acrylics to become one of the backgrounds in a very short Fred Fortune animation which might be coming to YouTube at some point, if I can make the time to finish the digital version.
Mondo is still around in the form of a Facebook page where you will find a lot of art and jokes. Some comics from it's pages have been restored and presented in colour for the first time so please feel free to check it out. Hopefully at some point we will be able to do a new printed edition...
Next time- The Hungry Shopper!
Stay safe everyone.
Coming Soon- Fred Fortune : City of Tomorrow
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