Buster, January 1968 and Micky Marvel hit ink! Micky owned the Multi-Gun (based loosely, ahem, on the Johnny Seven One Man Army toy) which only he could turn into a real weapon.. How did Micky get such a thing? Well, this was the 1960s and we all had mad cap inventor fathers, right? It was designed by his scientist father and it could transform to do virtually anything Micky desired of it.
So what? Well, I found a copy of Comic Bits volume 1, no. 4 from August, 2004 earlier and there was this project announcement.
Then the artist told me "I have the last few pages to do and all 48 pages will be finished. I told the editor and he told his boss who said okay and we waited.....
and waited....
The artist would not respond to letters or emails and then his phone number blocked calls. After a month of trying I had to tell the editor that the artist had bailed out with -allegedly- all the pages. The editor got a roughed up ear from his boss.
It is why I never ever start publishing a series or push a book to publishers unless I have everything complete and in my hands.
There were rumours that the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by certain out of work British comic creators but another rumour was that those people put the artist under pressure to drop out and he was too ashamed to tell me why. Those same people still follow everything I do. Sad.
I was out of pocket but learnt my lesson and I had similar with at least two US based artists. Long stories but ancient history now. And, yes, I was given full permission to use the character.
