Back in the late 1980's I courted political controversy. Well, not really. You see I was putting together Black Tower Adventure and Previews Comic -both of which were anthologies. Fast Fiction Small Press service -or Ed Pinsent to be precise- once wrote: "You can see his DC comics collection opening up in front of you" re. my comics.
As I pointed out to dear Ed that was a bloody insult -"Ich bin ein Marvelite!" I roared and making his cheese sandwich shake across the table! :-) Honestly, one has to remember that these were the "elite" who declared time and again that Europe had never had super hero comics. Therefore, if I had a comic with such characters (costumed and uncostumed as was the British tradition) it had to have been inspired by American comics. Being a Marvelite in those days I did grab any Justice League of America comic I could see but that was my shameful secret revealed only now almost 40 years later :-)
But at one Westminster Comic Mart I was talking to Tom Elmes, John Erasmus and others when some idiot I did not know (he was one of those comics 'nice guys' it turns out) called me a communist. Considering the experiences of my mother's (German) family during the Second World War that was quite insulting and I did ask -politely- what they were talking about.
It turned out to be The Evil of the Salamander strip. Why? Well, obviously they could not give any cogent reason other than the fact that I had showed Soviet and Chinese super heroes -actually part of the military of the PRC and USSR therefore more soldiers than civilian vigilantes. Not just that but I had shown the Phoenix Team and Red Star Squadron -brace yourselves!- cooperating to fight a common foe.
No ugly faced, gnarly toothed evil sons of bitches out to subjugate the free world. That it seems is where the problem was. Dammit they were not even fighting each other but trying to prevent what could turn into -at best and least- a border war.
Some little twit did later write that I probably hated democracy and read Soviet Weekly between comic books. Actually, I did not reveal that I had read Soviet Weekly -back in the pre internet days we had to read things that were printed and if you wanted the latest Russian photos from the Moon or Venus don't think they were in all the news papers: you bought a copy of SW with the photos and report in.
Anyway, here is parts 1 and 2 of the strip (more text after this)
People might ask why, since I tried publishing in India and elswewhere , I never tried Russia -or as we knew it back then, the Soviet Union.
it is very complicated. Firstly, you could not trade in the Russian currency and so it was all down to bartering with a prospective publisher. I would produce the comics and send over the pages (this was pre-internet), they would translate and publish and I'd get 20 copies as well as items as part of the bartering.
Sounds like I tried it, right? I did. HM Customs paid a LOT of attention to packages I sent to the USSR even though I marked each envelope with the declaration: "This package does not contain any national secrets and I am not a Soviet agent" (there was a joke just then -did you spot it?). But packages got the the USSR and were apparently checked "very thoroughly" (I have no idea how) before the proposed publisher collected them. Here is where things get a little bit Russian.
After all these years I cannot remember where the publisher was based -I think it was the Georgian SSR. Anyway, I had a photo he had sent of this business set up which included two old printer machines -one for black and white and one for colour. No, I didn't see any problem there either. But what I did not know was the publisher was "in a dispute" with another family. The family he was in dispute with fired two RPG shells into the print works. Apparently the local police were not too bothered but you can guess that this was the event of Russian venture #1!
There was a second Russian venture but this ended after a couple of months with the arrest, release and then absconding of the proposed publisher. Never heard from again.
There are a lot of many two-faced, back-stabbing people in the UK comics 'scene' but so far none has taken to firing off RPGs (the bang might be a little too loud for them).
Did I try China? Yes. I was active on a lot of comic forums in Singapore, Hong Kong and so on and I got a bad reputation because, as one person put it (followed by a lot of "I agree" comments), "It's all work with you!" Let's not get into my toe-dipping into the pool of Singapore comic creators!
With China the problem was that publishers saw Manga as being the genre they were publishing. The ttraditional Manhua styles seemed in short supply and there were some very good artists -some I mentioned in the past on Comic Bits Online. Hong Kong had a totally different comic publishing scene.
Obviously, a lot of material went into Black Tower books as well as the characters.
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