IAN WHEELER: ?John, which comics did you read as a boy and who were your favourite characters?

A sample Doctor Who page by John Ridgway featuring the Tenth Doctor and companion Rose Tyler

The opening page of Free to Fight from Commando #3482 by John Ridgway. Art © DC Thomson

John's cover for Commando #3530. Art © DC Thomson

JOHN RIDGWAY: I started out with Tiny Tots and Chicks' Own (anyone remember those?), moved on to Dandy and Beano and then Eagle and Lion.

I swapped the Lion for Tiger when that started up sometime later and then swapped Tiger for The Junior Express and Junior Mirror.
I can't remember the characters in Tiny Tots (Teddy Tail and the Bruin Boys?). In the Beano and Dandy I liked Jack Flash and Deep-Sea Danny's Iron Fish. In the Lion there was Karl the Viking by Don Lawrence. In the Eagle my favourites were Dan Dare and Jeff Arnold. Later there was Frazer of Africa and Heros the Spartan. In the Junior Express there was Wulf the Briton by Ron Embleton, and Journey into Space by Tacconi.There were a lot of comics around when I was a boy. I enjoyed Tom Corbett - Space Cadet drawn by Alden McWilliams, Tarzan (especially as drawn by Burne Hogarth), Captain Marvel Jnr. drawn by Mac Raboy, and Space Ace by Ron Turner.
Newspaper strips were Jeff Hawke, Tom Corbett, Fudge the Elf, Ace O'Hara and Twin Earths.

IAN: What was the appeal of Dan Dare and the original Eagle for you personally?

JOHN: The original Eagle, which came out when I was ten - just the right age for it! - was unlike any other comic at that time. It was big and bright, well printed in grey tone and full colour,aimed primarily at 8 to 12 year olds. The printing at first was nowhere near today's standards but rapidly improved. The artwork throughout was of a standard far ahead of anything in Britain at that time. I always feel that in size and quality of artwork the Eagle resembled the American Sunday comic supplements (Tarzan, Prince Valiant, Flash Gordon etc.) -- however, the colour was far superior. Much of this came, I believe, from the artists drawing only one page per week (much as the American artists on the supplements, and Continental artists producing the best European strips).
I liked all the features in the Eagle but with The Red Moon Mystery I think Dan Dare ceased to be a sort of British Flash Gordon and the complete background to the strip began to develop. I recently read Eater by Gregory Benfield and there are similarities in the storyline between that and The Red Moon Mystery.
I didn't collect Eagle when it came out but later a friend gave me his collection (from the first issue up to about halfway through Rogue Planet). I was of an age to appreciate the work that had gone into Dan Dare.

IAN: How did you become an artist?

JOHN: I always wanted to draw comics. My first stories were Westerns with pictures about an inch square drawn on a writing pad. The characters were matchstick figures -- their guns a little bent line with a dotted line marking the path of the bullets. The good guys all had rounded tops to their hat (like Hopalong Cassidy). The bad guys had a flat top to their hat.
While working as a design engineer I carried on drawing comics for fun and eventually got paid work on Commando books.
My career as a comics artist took off when I got work on Warrior Magazine, where I worked with Steve Parkhouse who was writing Doctor Who for Marvel UK. He got me the job as artist on Doctor Who when Mick Austin dropped out. I got work on a comic-book version of Enid Blyton's Famous Five for Guttenberghus, a Danish firm (now Egmont). Other work followed at Marvel UK (Transformers, Droids, Cyril the Editor Droid). Carl Potts -- a senior editor -- got me work at Marvel in the United States and then I got work with DC Comics, Eclipse and others.

IAN: Did you have any other career in mind?

JOHN: My parents and grandparents thought an artistic career was a bit risky so they persuaded me to go to technical college. I trained as an engineering draughtsman. My artistic ability helped me to visualise anything so draughting was easy. I became a design engineer working on ventilation and air conditioning schemes. I had a short spell designing submarine escape suits, inflatable life boats, and inshore inflatable lifeboats. Then I went on to designing heat exchanger units and later hospital incinerators.
I found that my engineering training complimented my artistic ability when I worked on comics with a technical content. I have an interest in astronomy and astrophysics and this, coupled with my engineering background means that I like to get the facts right in my science fiction work.

The cover for a collection of one of John's most popular Doctor Who strips, Voyager, written by Steve Parkhouse

?A panel from John’s pages for the 1991 Comic Relief Comic, in which Dan Dare meets Doctor Who. (By even looking at this image you are of course completely obliged to donate some money to Comic Relief!) Script by Dan Abnett.

IAN: Turning to Doctor Who, I think I'm right in saying that when you started drawing Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, you had not seen them on TV. How did you go about capturing their characters?

JOHN: I certainly hadn't seen Colin when I started to draw the strip and I had only two rather poor newspaper pictures to work from. If you see the first two episodes I drew, I thought he was wearing a tartan coa! Once he appeared on TV more pictures became available.
I found that copying faces from photographs was difficult at first, but having drawn a face a few times it started to become easier.
The problem with trying to draw a comic around a known actor is that there are rarely photographs with the right expression, angle or lighting, so I had to learn to create Colin's face as I required it.
The real problem came when Peri came into the stories. When you draw a man's face there is a certain amount of leeway. An extra line on the forehead, a stronger line under the eyes or on either side of the mouth is acceptable. When you draw a woman's face you have to be far more precise or the drawing becomes less than flattering.
At that time I realized that if I was drawing two of the characters from photographs I should probably draw the other characters from photos too. I started to use Fairburn's reference books and now use them all the time.
I can't honestly remember if I was short of reference for Sylvester's face, but Sylvester has a face that is easily caricatured!

[John Freeman notes: "Sylvester McCoy actually posed for two photograph sessions for reference for the comics artists on Doctor Who Magazine -- clambering scaffolding during a break in shooting of the Greatest Show in the Galaxy, and a more dignified session during a recording break in the sweltering heat of shooting his final regular story, Survival"].

IAN: You did some superb Dan Dare work for the new Eagle. Were you determined to capture the spirit of the original strips and how did you go about achieving this?

JOHN: I had studied Frank Hampson's work on Dan Dare very closely over the years and, if I need to, I can do a reasonable representation of his style for a couple of pictures (it would be very difficult to maintain).
I also saw Keith Watson's work when Dan Dare was relaunched. Of all the other artists who worked on Dan Dare, Keith came the closest to the appearance and feel of the original. I talked to him about what he was doing and knew he was not able to keep up with three pages per week, so I asked him if he minded me applying as one of the fill-in artists. I knew if anyone could recreate the original Dan Dare, Keith he could. I wanted to carry over the work as I felt Keith would be doing it.
The best colour work on the original Dan Dare was in The Man from Nowhere, Rogue Planet, and Reign of the Robots. I tried to use the colours Frank had used. This didn't quite match Keith's work -- probably because Keith was completely colour-blind! My style is looser than Keith's, but I think this makes my work similar to the approach of Harold Johns.
I only drew two Dan Dare stories for the 1980s Eagle and was rather unhappy with the results. There had been efforts to change the details in the strip. Keith (being the acknowledged expert on Dan Dare) was able to resist these changes to a large extent, but I wasn't in the same position.
In the first story I was told to draw a space ship like a space shuttle and the characters had to sit upright (the pilot usually lay on his front on a couch). The second story (drawn for a special) was very poor. I rewrote all of the dialogue -- especially Digby's -- as it didn't resemble a Lancashire accent (I live five miles from Wigan where Digby is supposed to live). In the story, Lex O'Malley was suddenly transferred from Royal Navy to Space Fleet, a space ship was sucked up by an interstellar vacuum cleaner (how a vacuum cleaner works in a vacuum I don't know), and the writer seemed to think that a light year was a measure of time rather than distance.

Constantly updating his skills and embracing new technology with gusto, this image, Crypt, was created in CyberMotion using a background created in POVRay.

IAN: I was looking at some of your Commando work recently. How do you think that this title has lasted so long?

JOHN: Commando books established its readership a long time ago and has managed to retain it. The stories are of a high standard (irrespective of the quality of the artwork). They're well researched and as accurate as possible. I receive considerable reference material to work from -- I've never had a fraction of the amount of material from any other company. They are not over the top on violence and the heroes and villains are easily recognised. The heroes would usually make good role models (many of the heroes have the same sort of character as Dan Dare). The style of story-telling (pictures connected by a large amount of description in captions) allows a complex story to be told in a short space - they are a good read.

IAN: Can you tell us a little bit about your new project, Eureka?

Eureka is a children's magazine some people I have been working with have been trying to get off the ground for a considerable amount of time. Basically, it would have the same philosophy (but not necessarily the same appearance) as the Eagle. It is aimed at eight to 13 year olds although the stories would be of a standard that could be appreciated by adults.
The man behind the concept is named Derek Lord. I was amused to read in your fanzine that Barrie Tomlinson used his own name to personalise the editorship of his comics. Derek was the editor of the original Eagle although Marcus Morris's name was used as editor. Derek has been in children's publishing all his life. He is now retired but, like me, he sees that there is a gap in the market for a children's comic.
I do not subscribe to the notion that comics were driven out of business by video games. I think kids have the money to buy and read a decent comic costing £1 to £1.50. Once latched into it, they will continue to buy it. Video games cost anything up to £50 and don't come out every week. Comics and video games can exist side by side, just as comics and playing football, cricket, marbles and conkers existed side by side when I was a boy -- they are not mutually exclusive.
The reason British comics have failed is that this country was swamped by American comics at a time when British comics were black and white, and sloppily written and drawn. However, American comics are now only available in specialist shops where they are having difficulty attracting new readers. A decent British comic magazine, readily available in newsagents, could sell.
For myself, I want to produce a space story set at the end of this century, using computer generated images for spacecraft etc. The central characters are Frank Rivington and Julia Pike of the UN Interplanetary Survey Corps. The background is as factual as possible.
A second strip is Ocean Interpol - a strip that ran in the Daily Express for a short time. We also have Hadrian's Heroes, cutaway drawings by Graham Bleathman and John Batchelor, and text features. Peter Jackson would also be producing work.
We've tried to interest people in a weekly or a monthly to no avail. We are now looking at the possibility of a supplement in a weekly newspaper. Everything is being designed so that strips and articles can be repackaged as albums. Proost -- a Belgian publisher -- has expressed interest in publishing foreign editions. We are working with Imagineering, a company that produces prototypes for toys.
The whole thing could be a major publishing venture with a great number of spin-offs if only there were someone in this country who had the business acumen of the Americans and the money and vision to see it through.
Since the days of Warrior there have been a lot of fans who have become writers and have aimed their stories at people of their own age. This isn't what Eureka is about. I think it is important that the comic is produced for children.
This does not mean writing down to children -- the Harry Potter books show that children's books can appeal to adults.

John Ridgway with a page of his strip Alternate Earth at the 2006 Lancaster Comics Festival. Photo: Jeremy Briggs

IAN: Do you think Eagle could ever return?

JOHN: Anything is possible, I suppose, but the experience we have had with Eureka show that chances are rather remote. Existing publishers don't think a comic can succeed so they won't invest. DC Thomson and Egmont aren't interested in paying for top quality work. Thomsons won't produce a new comic for this country but they will do editorial packaging for comics in Germany (there is no financial risk involved).
I read once that [IPC Managing Editor] John Saunders is alleged to have believed that Frank Hampson was lazy because he could only produce one page of artwork a week. If this is true -- an attitude of quantity over quality -- it shows a horrific lack of appreciation of what goes into producing a page of artwork. Take an American comic, for instance. This has approximately 24 pages of artwork per month -- six pages per week. But the work is split between penciller, inker and colourist, so each man is producing the equivalent of two pages per week. These pages are less than half the area in size of one of Frank Hampson's pages and contain only a fraction of the detail - small wonder Frank had an assistant.
2000AD contains a lot of fine quality artwork but artists cannot maintain the pace of producing an episode of four to six pages of full-colour artwork per week, so there are several artists working on separate stories. In terms of time, this is the same as having the same artists all working together on each episode.
The only difference is that inconsistencies of style and interpretation creep in. The consistency of detail in Frank Hampson's Dan Dare was one of the features that helped to make the strip real for the readers. Space Fleet HQ and the controls of a spaceship were as real as the inside of the Vic and Rover's Return in the TV soaps.

IAN: Any thoughts on the future of British comics?

JOHN: As things stand, British comics are slowly dying. American comics are only on sale in specialist shops where they cannot attract new readership. DC Thomson doesn't think of bringing out new comics so if Commando ever becomes unprofitable it will be cancelled and won't be replaced. 2000 AD has grown older with its audience -- if this trend continues it will fail to attract new readership and eventually have to be cancelled as existing readers fall away. Other comic companies are producing kiddies' comics.
There is virtually nothing to bridge the gap between the kiddies' comics and 2000AD.
I don't want to see comics die. As a child, they gave me a tremendous amount of pleasure. This is one of the reasons I am prepared to invest my time on Eureka, which should bridge that gap.
If Eureka can be got off the ground and becomes a success others will follow. If it can't, I'll eventually finish a story and put it on CD, advertise it and sell individual copies. I should then also be in a position to sell it to Proost who, hopefully, can make a go of it. It will take a long time but I've nothing better I want to do!

IAN: John Ridgway, thank you very much.