downthetubes: where are you from?

Steve English: I was born in the Isle of Man but most of my childhood was spent in Northern Ireland. I have been based in England since my university days and I now live in Norfolk with my wife and daughter and soon to be one other.

dtb: What comics did you read as a child?

Steve: I was an immense fan of Krazy comic until the sad day it merged with Whizzer and Chips. Krazy came out at much the same time as 2000AD but my mum told me I could only get one comic a week so I chose Krazy! If I’d gone the other way I probably would have had a small fortune on my hands now. Unfortunately I lost my first issue of 2000AD. (I've lost most of my Krazys, too). Then Speed came out and I was a big fan of that until it merged with Tiger which I didn’t like at all, but at least I now own the complete set of Speed!

A few years later the Eagle re-emerged and though I didn’t like the photo strips, and I was a bit old for it by then, I did stick with it for 200 issues. My brother and I also read Scream, which was another terrific comic, but like Speed and Krazy it too died an early death (boy could I pick them!).

dtb: What comics do you read now if any?

Steve: I don’t read anything now, though I keep meaning to subscribe to tribute magazines such as Spaceship Away. I've started buying the Beano for my daughter, as it is the last remaining true comic and I want her to experience the fun of reading a comic before it goes the way of all other children’s publications. One day she will be old enough to read my old Eagles and Speeds but they might not be her cup of tea.

dtb: Did your childhood comics inspire you to draw?

Steve: I was a big fan of Walt Disney and at the age of 6 I used to lie on the floor and copy pictures of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. I think this is where it must have all started for me. However reading comics inspired me to produce my own comics for my own amusement, which I did right up into my teens. Creating my own comics gave me a reason to keep drawing cartoons and at university I produced a low tech publication taking the mickey out of history long before the Horrible Histories came along.

dtb: Are you a trained artist?

Steve: No. As a kid I always thought I would like to go to art college, but in the end I studied history and archaeology at university. History still features in most of the humour that I write.

dtb: Where was your work first published?

Steve's first published work - a cartoon in the 1985 Eagle Annual. The accompanying text reads: The Green Head. Yes - the editor himself captured in a classic Mekon-like pose by Stephen English of Belfast. You've no idea how accurate a likeness this is, Stephen! Below: The Potted Guide to Theology, written by Tony Gray and illustrated by Steve

Steve: At the age of 16 I wrote to Eagle editor David Hunt asking him how to get a job in comics. I drew a cartoon of him sitting on the Mekon’s hovering stool. Looking up his name I realised he had also edited Speed in which there were some photos of him, so I was able to base the cartoon on a likeness. I didn’t get a reply regarding any jobs but they published the picture in the 1985 Eagle annual.

About ten years later an old university friend, Tony Gray, asked me to illustrate a book he was writing called The Potted Guide to Theology. He managed to interest a publisher in the idea and he set up a meeting with them. I brought along a cartoon strip called Peter’s Cat that I had been drawing and they liked the idea so much that they published a book of them too.

Neither of these books became a raging success as I thought they would, but they instilled in me again the idea of drawing cartoons for a living.

After Peter’s Cat and The Potted Guide to Theology I started to write away to loads of publishers of various kinds. I have a massive file of rejection letters -- and that's only from those who bothered to write back. But after a few years I did get a little interest from mostly Christian publishers, such as Authentic Media, Kevin Mayhew and the Salvation Army, illustrating Bible stories and other Sunday school material. Thanks to these guys, and the savings we had at the time, I was able to scrape a living.

Despite meagre earnings it was still immensely satisfying. For me, making a living as a cartoonist is still about writing away to as many publishers as possible, and nothing is as important as the work you have yet to find. However, the more contacts you make and the more your name becomes known the easier it is to find that work. As well as Peter’s Cat and The Potted Guide I have also published Two by Two, a series of cartoon strips about Noah’s Ark. I also have a number of Sunday School resource books with titles such as I Scream Sunday, Fright the Good Fright and Parables and Miracles.

dtb: What magazines have you appeared in?

Steve: After a few meagre years I was able to secure work with The Horrible Histories Collection and then on the strength of that The Horrible Science Collection. Scooby Doo World of Mystery is another part works publication that I worked on for a couple of years. These magazines have been able to offer regular work on a weekly or fortnightly basis to a number of cartoonists but you often have to draw in a certain style in order to fit with the magazine. Another down side is that they have a limited life span of so many issues, and guess what, they have all come to an end over the last couple of years!

PETER’S CAT The stories of the New Testament Gospels are re-told through the eyes of the cat belonging to the fisherman disciple Peter, with his ongoing problems trying to deal with Pharisee’s Cat and the fiercely anti-Roman Hebrew dog Zealot. The strips are currently being adapted for ROK Comics.

TWO BY TWO The Old Testament story of the flood is told via three frame strips, from the disbelief of Noah’s family to building the Ark, through choosing the animals to take on board, to the practicalities of having two of every animal in the world in one small space, and an explanation of why there are no unicorns left in the world.

dtb: Do you write all your own work?

Steve: All my cartoon strips, yes. Apart from The Wall, a strip about the last two Roman soldiers in Britain, which I wrote with a cartoonist friend, Paul Bode. He used to dress up as a Roman soldier for a living and the authentic detail in the strip comes from him.

dtb: Where does your inspiration come from?

Steve: I like to take a subject that people know something about and then to look at it from a different angle in order to surprise them and hopefully make them laugh. What inspires me are stories from the Bible, history, and science fiction. The danger comes when you know more about a subject than the reader and they don’t get the joke.

dtb: Your humour revolves around mainly religious subjects without making fun of religion itself. Have you had any problems where your religious humour has been taken the wrong way?

Steve: Nobody has yet contacted me to say they have been offended, though a number of publishers who have liked my cartoons have said that they couldn’t use them in case of an adverse response from their readers. I realise there is a fine line, and though I couldn’t exactly describe where it should be drawn I just have to go on my own instincts.

dtb: Your web site showcases some of your work in colour while most of your own published work has been in black and white. Do you prefer black and white to colour?

Steve: Absolutely. I wouldn’t know the first thing about colour! It must come from being brought up on black and white comics with only a colour centre spread. I only colour my cartoons because I know I have to and I have been learning from my commissioned work for Horrible Histories and Horrible Science. I realise I probably have to colour my ROK Comic cartoons sooner or later.

dtb: Was Madd Science created specifically for the mobile comic format?

Steve: I started writing and drawing Madd Science quite a few years ago now, but in that time I have redrawn it quite a few times to get the look I like. Previous to the ROK website I have not being able to do much with it and have received no interest or no response from publishers I have shown it to. At its core, it's a send-up of Victorian type Science fiction like that of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne or Conan Doyle and old black and white horror movies. I think there should be enough material in all that to keep me going for a while.

dtb: What attracted you to ROK Comics in the first place?

Steve: My writing and drawing lends itself most to the newspaper strip cartoon. However, not only is the competition fierce but less and less people are reading newspapers. A think a great deal of the future will lie in electronic media and ROK Comics seemed a good opportunity to be involved in that. Also, in a world where the market is dominated by large syndicates it offers a way of being in control of your own work.

dtb: ROK took a lot of early criticism from people who didn't quite understand the format, which is perhaps best suited to newspaper style comic strips. Your winning entry to the ROK humour competition (left) plays to the mobile format with its repetition. Was this a deliberate choice or simply the way that you saw the strip in the first place?

Steve: I like repetition in comic strips. It is boring to draw but I think it often carries the humour better. It also allows the reader to concentrate on the gag and introduces a sense of timing. i also think the subtle differences, or no differences between the frames increase the power of the punch line.

The winning strip was originally just four panels that I drew quite a while back as a usual comic strip, but the great thing about ROK Comics is that you can increase the sense of timing by repeating the pictures, which you have to do anyway because you can’t fit in all the words into one frame.

dtb: What projects are you currently working on?

Steve: As well as more Madd Science strips, I'm currently illustrating further Bible stories for Christian Comic’s PLUS+, and the Salvation Army’s comic Kids Alive!, and for a company called Tale2Tell who have a number of video projects at the moment.

I also contribute a cartoon strip to a magician's magazine called Abracadabra, which is great because magic was another childhood interest of mine and Abra was another magazine I read as a kid. But I'm guessing that soon I won't have much time for anything as my wife is expecting another child very soon!

Web Links

• Dead Sea Comics
Steve's official web site

• Madd Science on ROK Comics
You will need to pay to read some of these strips, which are delivered to mobile only


• Christian Comics PLUS+ Eagles Wings


• Kids Alive


• Tale2Tell


• Abra Magazine