Tuesday 26 November 2013

Black Tower and Comic Books For India…My Attempts!

Hmm. Someone pointed out that this old WordPress CBO posting was on the new CBO but not here. Okay.

Looking back at it all now I would never have passed any of these pages fit for print but they were okay as roughs.
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So, it was a cold August night and I got an email from an editor at Diamond Comics in India. He had read through a proposal I’d sent to bring Diamond up-to-date and into the super hero age.”Great!” I thought, but then he said: “We need new characters 48 pages in colour” then came the “we’ll need it in four weeks”!
I worked and worked, re-thought some old characters and then told the editor I would produce colour guide roughs for approval before doing final colours -I also lettered everything so Diamond’s translators could see what they would need to translate.
THREE weeks later I sent everything off. Nothing. Sent an email. Nothing. Then phoned…someone would call me. They never did. Gulshan Rai the top man at Diamond was supposed to have okayed this.
The special delivery package HAD been received…after two months I gave up and I never even got paid.
What follows are SOME of the rough colour pages plus, where strips are not complete, the black and white versions plus an assortment of specials for you!
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 Sabu the Mystic and his small assistant, Piku, was a bit of fun. I didn’t want everything to
be just dark.
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Insecto-Kid. Any resemblance to a certain Fly-man is totally coincidental. In the concept
pages sent to Diamond were the up-dating and costume change due for the character in
issue 2.
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Couple of pages of India’s own Fantastic Four…plus 1….India 5. Other pages are
somewhere.
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All I can remember about Power Shield is that it fitted in with Black Tower continuity -
characters, etc. Other than that I HATED it. I think it was because I drew and re-drew that
feckin MiG.
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I think these were Diamond or Raj(?) comic characters. More of the old project roughs.
Sharp eyed Indian friends will recognise most of the characters. What might have been!!!
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Black Fox which was meant for Muthu Comics in Southern India (Tamil). They took my
scans of Robot Archie versus The Spider (sent as a favour to the publisher) then nothing.
meh.
Big rule I’ve learnt: never EVER take anything for granted until the contract and a pay cheque is in your hand!