Better buckle up for this ones folks, this is a big one, we've got nine pages of a future war comic to get through, hell yeah!!
As mentioned before North London Comics' zine Mondo, headed by it's creator Lee Davis, was a small press anthology comic that ran on and off from 1992 -2004. It was a fun positive mix of superhero, adventure and sci-fi comics and is oft referred as 'the party on the page'. It is still around as a Facebook page and plans are afoot to bring it back in print at some point.
A few years ago I had the idea of doing a series that would restore, colour and reprint some of Mondo's best stories as a fun Manga/digest sized print on demand series. We've got this great archive of stuff that hasn't been seen since it was first published and it deserves to be showcased at it's best. The series will be will be called 'Mondo Minis' and will feature all the best Mondo stuff we've still got presented in colour for the first time. Given that, aside from my own stuff, the only material I have to work with are the old photocopied issues and I don't have copies of all the issues. It would be an uphill struggle, but I relish a challenge so over the course of a year or so I scanned all the pages I had and set about the task.
This then is the first showing of one of these classic stories. It is from Mondo #25, the Audust 1994 issue, and was always one of my faves from the time. I love the gritty art and atmosphere. It's a Viet Nam style future war ghost story that was written, drawn and lettered by Tim Chapman. I'm not in touch with Tim and haven't been able to find him after searching social media etc- so if he sees this or you know him please let him know or get in touch. I hope he likes what I've done with his work.
Below is a random page from the story that is as it was when I scanned it. As you can see it's got all the usual photocopy grain and loss of quality.
First I opened it in Clip Studio, adjusted the tone balance and contrast, then added new neater panel borders to straighten the page as a whole (the pages are all a bit wonky from the photocopy). From there it was just a question of tidying up all the line work, filling in solid black areas, and being careful not to lose Tim's art style in the process. I then re-lettered the whole story with a suitable font to give it some more consistency. I kept some of the graininess because I felt it added an atmospheric texture to the look of the art and it's hard to tell with the photocopied pages, whether Tim might have added it to his art for just that reason.
Here's what the page looked like at that stage-
From there I just had to add the colour. I'm not the best colourist digitally, I love painting traditionally, but haven't got the hang of painting on the computer yet, so, for this I have kept a simple jungle/military colour scheme of mostly green tones. Most of it is flat colour with some gradients in the backgrounds, but I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. I think it sets the mood of the story quite well.
So here it is in all it's glory... Funky Punk Comics and Mondo present for you Revenant by Tim Chapman. Hope you like it...
Let me know what you think in the comments. Would you like to see a Mondo Minis series?
Also, this is like searching for lost Doctor Who episodes, if anyone out there has some copies of Mondo... I'm missing #s1-5, 8-10, 33, 37 and 45-the Xmas 2004 issue. I'll scan them without destroying them and get them back to you ASAP with a free comic of some kind. Double also... if anyone has any copies of the other North London Comics titles- Equinox that ran from 1995-1999 and Union Jack from 1993 ( I have #s5-8). Thank you in advance.
Kreekraw And Kris: Must Be Destroyed- They never start a fight but they always finish it.
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Next Time- Brrmm Brrmm
Stay safe everyone.
Coming Soon- Fred Fortune : City of Tomorrow
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