David Hine and the Marvel UK Migration
From Stan the Man, to Tharg the Mighty
Continuing with the New Statesmen thread, here's a terrific piece that David Hine did for the title in 1988. Dave seems to be known primarily for his writing skills these days with The Bulletproof Coffin, Spider-Man Noir, Spawn, District X, The Darkness, The Bad Bad Place, and Sonata under his belt, though he was originally known more for his illustration work. This was up until his universally celebrated graphic novel Strange Embrace, which he wrote and drew. This has been included as one of the 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die publication by Paul Gravett.
Back in 1988, with the advent of Fleetway's new title CRISIS, the editor Steve MacManus had hired Rian Hughes and myself to design the comic between us. Rian designed the Third World War half and I designed the New Statesmen half. It's interesting to note that it was originally going to be called 50/50, to tie in with the numerical nature of 2000 AD's title (I still have a logo rough for that somewhere). Rian designed the CRISIS front cover and logo of the title itself, which still stands up today as an outstanding piece of comic-book design.
Having gladly accepted my New Statesmen duties there were a few things that I suggested to Steve that he liked the sound of. One of them was to hire two renowned fashion designers to create costumes for some of the 'Optimen' in the strip, another was to ask David Hine to illustrate the fortnightly short story page.Â
At this time Dave was mostly working for Marvel UK and a few of their contributors had managed to migrate to 2000 AD, namely Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell, who Dave had collaborated with whilst inking the Zoids strip. Steve Dillon and Barry Kitson were other Marvel UK artists who'd crossed over and were both working on Judge Dredd, as was John Higgins, though he had always worked for both companies. In the years that followed it's quite interesting to see the pattern of migration from Marvel to Fleetway. Richard Burton, editor of 2000 AD, Alan McKenzie and I had all worked for Marvel UK, and then the migration continued; Kev Hopgood, Will Simpson, John Ridgway, Nick Abadzis, Doug Braithwaite and John Tomlinson. With John initially writing and then being invited to do editorial work on the 2000 AD annuals, yet more Marvelites followed. Geoff Senior, Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Anthony Williams, Gary Erskine and Henry Flint.
Sometimes things worked the other way round too. Ian Rimmer, Simon Furman and Richard Starkings had all originally joined Marvel from IPC/Fleetway.
Going off on a slight tangent here, but it’s worth noting that a weird twist of fate led me to a party in my home town of Carshalton one Saturday night, and an invitation back to someone’s house to see what she’d been proudly growing in her back garden. I’d never met this woman before, but after showing me how she flash-dried cannabis leaves in the microwave, she took me on a tour of her house. When I mentioned that I worked for Marvel Comics, she said, ‘Well, that’s a coincidence; my lodger works in comics, or rather, he did.’ The lodger, it turned out was Simon Furman, who’d six months earlier been made associate editor of the rather famous Scream comic at IPC, but the publication ceased rather abruptly, leaving Simon high and dry. He was away that weekend, so the woman opened the door to his room to show me the comics related posters on his wall.
Back to Marvel on the Monday, I mentioned to Ian Rimmer who was one of the editors, that Simon (who I was still yet to meet) was in need of another comics gig; so he got him in straight away, and that was that. This now meant that there were three Marvel UK employees, Jeanette Sweetland, Simon Furman and myself, all living in a tiny town called Carshalton and commuting every day to Bayswater, West London. Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up!
Above is a photo I took of Dave with Myra Hancock when they were collaborating on the series Sticky Fingers for CRISIS in 1989, the series was written by Myra and illustrated by Dave. For 2000 AD he drew Tao De Moto in 1991 (again written by Hancock) and wrote and drew the futuristic police series Mambo from 1994 to 1996 seen below.
Below left is another of my design pages from The Complete New Statesmen, 1990, which featured cover art and New Statesmen logo by Sean Phillips. Thanks to my colleague and senior art director, Curtis King Jr. for these two shots. After seeing my previous post, Curtis told me he’d actually bought a copy in 1992, and still had it on his bookshelf. It looks like he’s kept it in pretty good nick, too!
Excellent article...but then, I suppose I would like it ;)
Steve, give me a call on eightfiveeightthreefourninesixfourtwonine we need to talk about good things. I have a proposal for a regular gig. Badly paid, pain in the ass, tight deadlines but nonetheless well worth the effort! ;~)
Tuesday if poss.
Time doesn't matter; it never did.
Thanks,
Igor