In our teenage years back during the mid 90s, my brother Steve and I would create our own comic strips. The last and best of these was a 26-page war story pastiche called Walking Wounded: The Resistance That Went Mad.
Fast forward about ten years to 2005 and our interest in comics was resurfacing. We saw that that was a thriving British small press comics scene and thought it might be cool to get involved. We had this strip lying around that had never been published and so decided now might be the time to put it out. So we did:
Well, we liked Resistance but obviously it was not a reflection of our abilities in 2005. Therefore, happy at how easy it had become to publish in decent quality we pressed on with plans for an all-new Walking Wounded story, Island of Terror.
Quite early in the creation of this issue we became aware of the Judge Dredd Megazine small press section, and specifically that they were open to submissions of completed strips. Although we hadn't been going long we decided this was an opportunity too good to miss and fairly quickly knocked up a 6-page detective-horror story featuring Holt Bros, Edwardian paranormal investigators and again originally a product of our teenage years.
Thankfully, Tharg liked it and accepted the story. (It finally appeared after 18 months in Judge Dredd Megazine #261. You can read the strip on our ComicSpace page.) Buoyed by this unexpected success, we proceeded with what was to become the first issue of Walking Wounded proper:
The reaction was quite good, if not spectacular. We launched at the 2007 UK Web and Mini Comix Thing, selling a couple of dozen copies or so. There was enough encouragement to continue and we were definitely getting better with each new page. This process of improvement was greatly enhanced when Futurequake Press luminary Bolt-01 came on board to letter the second issue. Steve had been doing some art for FQP, who are imho the leading publishers of the British scene, and we'd met Bolt at Bristol so it was great when he agreed to contribute.
The second issue of Walking Wounded was ready for Thing 2008, and we went back knowing we had a much stronger product this time:
Fortunately we weren't the only ones who felt Walking Wounded was now pretty decent. Rather amazingly, it got nominated for Favourite Black & White Comic - British at the 2007 Eagle Awards (which took place in May 2008). We didn't win, but did go to the ceremony and had a great time. For us just to get that amount of recognition was fantastic.
So hopefully now we're on an upward trajectory. Walking Wounded #3 is written and a new title, Massacre For Boys In Colour, is virtually finished. Bolt-01 and his compadre Richmond Clements have lent their considerable artistic talents to a superhero strip that will be headlining the MFBIC debut.
We'll probably stay quiet for a few months now, getting it all together, but our goals for 2009 are to play the big shows and make more of a splash then ever...
2 comments:
Nice new blog Chaps, and thanks for the kind words. Walking wounded is a blast to work on and a real break from my FQP duties.
We're lucky and delighted to have you!
Hope Birmingham went well and that FQP continues its march towards world domination...
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