Enjoying changing what I originally had in mind for dialogue -no script helps that!
So, between everything else today I have just lettered 8 pages and it was fun. I can add dialogue and any jokes as I go along and playing with page space and word balloon positioning helps wake up the mind. Now I need to see how this
Well, if I live long enough I have this British Golden Age character's story all set up. I really need artists willing to draw for the experience or not sleep for 5 years and just draw!
One bit of fun I had in between bouts of "I'm dying!" when it came to drawing The Bat Triumphant was the way that "old foes" popped up. Being a rather central European and ancient duch with mountains and forests and many old ruined castles it was almost inevitable that the Frankenstein Monster would turn up in the 1930s.
It was a bit of a shock for The Bat to find he had not destroyed it decades earlier!
I had Ben Dilworth's superb comic work and unfortunately, thanks to the process used by my printer, the cover that was sent could not be used. I was left with the option of not publishing, just adding the occasional strip to an existing anthology (The Clock did appear on the front cover of the final issue (vol. 2 no. 10) of Adventure which featured a Dilworth illo colourised by my brother, Mike.
I hate doing covers! But I suck it up and get to work. Apparently, I am told, the various book covers stand out and are "unique" in not just having fight scenes on them. So I tried one idea. Threw it out. Brilliant idea next and....threw it out. Another idea seemed to be perfect. Can you guess what happened? Yup, threw it out!
There I sat looking at a rough outline sketch (by "outline" I actually mean pencilled outline) and I thought keeping that clean white background would be nice. At that point my black and white artist brain kicked in and I left The Clock as a silhouette against a white background..with some bullet holes (we all knew it was heading that way).
(c)2025 BTCG
Completed I went away and made some coffee (NOT instant. NEVER instant!!!) came back to the image and threw it to one side. It wouldn't work. I tried another design. Nope. How about that silhouette in a darkened alleyway with trash cans over turned and bullets whizzing (giggle) by.
No.
I looked at that illo and again and said something rude and it became the final cover!
Still don't think it did justice to the interior art but if you have a book you need a cover -right?
all art (c)2025 Ben R. Dilworth (except the cover I did!)
Back in the 1960s kids TV was a lot better than what we get today -in fact TV was better all round. Saturday morning TV with cartoons and serials until the blight of Multi Coloured Swap Shop hit Saturdays.
I had thought my inspiration for the magicians -later sorcerers- Kotar and Sabuta was the Hanna Barbara Arabian Nights cartoon. But then I recalled that I had created and made them out of Plastacine (modelling clay as used to make Wallace and Gromit) as there were no action figures in those days. "The Lady" I believe was Lady Silana as she fitted in with the duo.
Back in those days we had the bedside cabinet which was where you put "The Porcelian", "the Jerry" or if you stored it under the bed the "Gazunder" ("goes under). Sorry, again, kids, not every house had an indoor toilet for night time use. In this case my gran would never put a chamber pot in a cabinet so other things were stored in itr and, when it went into defunct status it was mine: I got under carpet felt to make a carpet and added bits and pieces so that my magic folk had a sanctum sanctorum.
K & S were created in the late 1970s as were the trio that went on to become Crime Busters UK Salar The Combustable Man (John Clane), "Bell" (Maddy Bell) and The Human Ball (Willy Soames). Oh, they had a companion whilst "circus acts -the Misssing Link. Solar was based on a circus act on TV where a "fire breather" created balls of fire in his hands and tossed them into the air. Now that seemed cool enough to me. At the time I had not seen the DC Legion of Super Heroes or Bouncing Lad but when I did I changed The Human Ball's costume -he was inspired by a strip I vaguely recall seeing in an old British weekly comic. Bell, again before I saw the character Black Canary and her sonic voice, was based on a banshee screaming that I had seen on a kids TV show. The "Missing Link" was based on reading too many history books and theories on early man and the "missing link" between humans and apes.
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Above: Maddy Bell at the barbecue whole the Avenger and Jon Future wait(c)2025 BTCG
Pantomine on TV and story books gave me Peter Forrest and his often odd Geni. Making all of these out of Plastacine filled the hours and I also made characters from Marvel and DC who joined my characters in adventures along with some British favourites such as Billy the Cat, Billy Whizz and so on.
Mayfly (Elizabeth Flare) was another of the originals. Reading mythology and fairy tales as well as watching TV programmes and plays inspired the character. Her mother turned up during a winter storm at a convent. The mother died but her newborn baby was adopted and raised at the convent the mother's name was unknown but after her burial in the grounds of the nearby church a flare of light burst out of nowhere over her grave and so Elizabeth became Elizabeth Flare.
Pete Forrest was an idealist and when civilians were threatened in a South American war he went to help but even a Geni couldn't stop him being hit by shrapnel (hence the walking stick). (c)2025 BTCG
The Avenger was a slightly later arrival in about 1969/1970 and was just someone, at the time a school pupil, who was fed up of petty crime and bullying. Like D-Gruppe a lot of my characters go back to the 1960s and 1970s. A time before mobile phones, home computers and all the insanity of the internet -we just had parks, streets and our imagination to entertain us.
Benjamin R. Dilworth
Paperback,
A4
Black and white
32 Pages
Price: £5.00 (excl. VAT)
Although there are some classic cases in these books the majority involve cases that are very rare, have never appeared in English before and unlike most "clump everything together to fill a book" efforts these look at aspects of cases as well as some very common but not reported on before entity and scenario types.
Someone who has been involved in Ufology since the 1980s noted: "Over half these cases I have never heard of before!"
B&W
350 pp
Fully illustrated containing photographs and maps
£20.00
Beyond UFO Contact i the fourth book in the groundbreaking series looking at reports of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien-Entity reports from around the world and reassessing these. In addition there is a look at the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligences (SETI) and its relevance to the UFO phenomenon.
contents list:
Introduction: The Path of Counter-Actuality
1. Dionisio Llanca: Truck Driver, UFO Abductee and Human Guinea Pig
2. Aliens -What Can We Expect?
3. The Moreland Incident
4. It Is All Fake: Ufology Needs To Be Reassessed
5. Warminster UFOs and Entity Reports
6. Have Things Changed Since 1977?
7. The Beausoleil Cas -Even Aliens Like Theatre
8. The Pwca
9. Contact...with the Vegetable Alien
10. The Casitas Dam UFO Photograph and Entity
11. The Crystal Lake Encounter
12. The Humanoids at South Riverand the Luczkowich Encounter
13. Harrison Bailey
14. Sonny DesVerger
15. The UFO "Borderline"-The Imjarvi Skiers
16. Some Interesting Reports to Note
17. Dead Aliens in Photographs
18. Ufology, Government Cover Ups and Disclosure
19. The Reports That You Might Not Want To Look Into
20. Conil de la Frontera -a Credible Report?
21. Eighteenth Century Aliens?
22. Clearview Ranch
23. The Pat McGuire Case
24. Piero Fortunato Franzetta
25. The Silbury Hill Encounter
26. The Bridge Abduction
27. The Bagshot Heath UFO Incident
28. Lurkers and Alien Disinterest
29. What If YOU See Aliens Land?
30. So What Would YOU Do If You Encountered A Landed UFO?
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