A Touch of Colour

 

Brother Mike (Knowle Chapter) has taken a good few black and white images and blasted them into full colour. He even designed a few covers back "in the day". Going through old emails from 2011 I found these.  The idea of turning the old b&w Purple Hood comics into colouyr was never evon thought abot. These pages were simply done for fun.

Enjoy

Ah, Tis a day to be miserable on

 

It is not as though I have no ideas.  I get ideas -often full stories- day and night and often I have to do more technical work to stop the rush or I'd go insane. The problem is that the UK and comics in 2026 is so lacking interest in anything. Back pre 2000 we would buy zines, Indie comics, Undergrounds as well as mainstream comics.We gorged ourselves on everything that was appearing.

Today the "Small press" is all about little cliques that are very insular. You have to also tick all the right virtue signalling boxes. I'm white, male, 54% German and 16% French (that one crept up on me) and heterosexual. I am screwed. 😌

Posts on my blogs just -JUST- relating to my comics have views  totalling over 3 million. That is world wide and my online store makes it so simple to buy -view the books, buy in your local currency, use your local postal service and books are printed in your own country and the only thing missing is a free belly-rub for buying. Actaul sales? I could not afford to buy one of my own bopoks once the print on demand company has taken their cut and if I sold enough to have to I get US tax (but none of the benefits of that) taken.

I have the ideas and outlet but let's be honest I cannot draw everything and I don't have enough to pay artists. Face it even if creator-artist shared 50-50 from sales it ain't going to attracvt artists.

So it is now a case of let the ideas eat away at my brain and do what I can when I can.

Biggest mistake I made was not moving to Europe to work. I mean, you can buy my bopoks online all over Europe but for a creator Europe is far less isoplationist than the dried out UK comic scene.

Why Traditional Publishers Are Never Interested

 

I was asked why I stopped trying to find a more traditional publisher to handle the prose books since they would have all the extra marketing skills etc to sell titles?  

It isn't so much that I stopped looking it is the fact that publishers are simply not interested and have moved away from reading and publishing and gone more for publishing by committee -with members and their own prejudices and biases. 

This is what I got from one publisher regarding The Red Papers last year:

"Dear Terry,

"Thank you very much for your message and for sharing the background to your extensive work in wildlife study and conservation, as well as the details of your two publications.

"We appreciate your dedication and the long-term fieldwork and research that support these titles. To help us better understand the scope and potential fit of your work with our editorial line, we would kindly ask you to complete the attached proposal form. This document will allow us to gather key information about the content, intended audience, and objectives of the books. It also outlines how to send further material should the proposal move forward.

"Once we have the completed form and any additional documentation you wish to share, our editorial board will carefully review the proposal. If we feel there may be a possible fit, we will be in touch to discuss next steps.

Thank you again for considering Lynx Nature Books. "

Now, considering that the company had as best a synopsis as I could give of the work which covers decxades of study, research and field work as well as gathering very rare images how else can you make  the work of interest to a publisher?

Controversial and against dogma -fully referenced from official publications and works that back up the statements and not "Well I heard" as seems more common these days. We now KNOW what the original British Isles wild cat looked like as well as the fact that we know when Scottish zoologists declared (in 1897) that the Highland wild cat had become extinct. It can now be proven  (not that it ever needed to be) that there were indeed three variations in Old British foxes.

Original: since 1900 dogma set it that meant that generrations have been misled by people who like to call themselves experts but who preach dogma. It has taken decades of archive research as well as investigation to not just prove what is stated in the books as facts but even more to get physical evidence in the form of taxidermy specimens to prove the case.

The Red Paper: Canids (2010) was called by the late Sir David Bellamy "explosive for British natural history" -and that version of the book was "sparse" com,pared to the 2022 version.

Perhaps publishers want to save themselves embarrassment from decades of inaccurate books they have published?

And, no, I never heard back from Lynx Nature Books.  I did hear from another publisher that my manuscript had gone through the first committee to be looked at, then that the second committee had approved "the book being listed" to be looked at. A year on and nothing. 

Three years ago I was informed by one publisher that with modern societal changes they needed to look at books and consider gendere diversity and ethnic diversity and what my book could contribuite to that. I was writing about researchy on wild canids and felids and just what the hell anything else had to do with that I have no idea.

Unfortunately, I am not included in the long list of virtue signalling tick boxes.

The Red Papers were accepted three times by a publishing editor only, a month or so later, the same editor telling me that "At the moment the book does not fit into our upcoming schedule".  I later learnt that one publisher was very unhappy with one of the editors as they had been publishing the modern, false British natural history for decades.

I have a big collection of books on or referring to foxes in the UK. Each and every one of the authors has just done what we would call today "copied and pasted" from others. An incorrect fact published in 1950 is copied (almost verbatim) throughout the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and ad infinitum.  Lying about factual history is never good.

Then we come to the "World mystery" books. Heavily researched and referenced with some -truthfully- very rare or thought lost photographs and images (we know they are lost images because author after auther states this...they just never went to the source material). The photographic image of the City of Brtistol that appeared in the sky over Alaska. Gone forever.. well, no. I found it. 

Many "mystery creatures" (cryptids) took years to dig down to the actual facts in the sources to sometimes surprisingly identify and only through archive research did I find a newspaper report of what might have been the first gorilla from Africa in the early 1800s.

The truth may well not be "sexy" or "hip" but for each animal identified or each mystery looked at and solved there are those that are not. You follow the facts and the reference sources to the truth -or the mystery.

Sadly, unless you scream "cover up" or push sensationalist  but provable false claims publishers are not interested. Back in the 1980s -yes, the 1980s- one publisher "loved" my manuscript but, in writing, asked whether I could not just add in claims of government cover ups, threats and so on to "spice it up"?  I responded that I could only write about provable facts and my own experiences and would not lie to spice things up. My book suddenly became very uninteresting!

I am an archivist, researcher and historian  so what do I do -just gather all the material in files andf let it gather dust until I am no more and it all gets burnt or thrown into a skip and lost forever?  No, I do what most stupid people like me do: self publish in the belief that people would sooner have fact that sensationalist lies. 

There are a lot of us stupid people around.

Tales of Terror 6

 

 56pp

A4

Black and White

£10 UK (outside UK check store for cost)

https://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper/tales-of-terror-6-2026/paperback/product-gjzzjv7.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Contributors: Terry Ford, Darron Northall, Terry Hooper, Ben R Dilworth

The Annual Black Tower feast of Horror is here! The Reverend Merriowether ("God's Demon thumper") faces evil in two tales: Bastet and Varney the Vampyre! Will the Right Reverend succeed in his goal to wipe "the horrible things" from the Earth? Lady Silana, Tarot, Kotar and Sabuta combine forces in the now legendary mini epic: The Curse of the Lycanthrope" but fear not if one epic story was too little from his monastery retreat Ben R Dilworth brings us three tales of lycanthropy: Wolf. Werewolf and Wolf: Scream Life and what more could you ask for? Oh, a peek into The Black Files of Q Bureaux? An old case from 1898 maybe? Okay, babies you got it! All tales introduced by Black Tower's own stalwarts in the fight against vampires, werewolves, demons and...we'll not mention the psilocybin mushroom tea. Really.

Are You Ready for Tales of Terror 2026?

 

oooh,,,if only this came with money!

 Someone writing a book about the British Small Press apparently...

 Here's a quote worth laughing about since I cannot even get a table at Small Press events:

Here's one just been passed along to me:

"There was one person who was pushing British comics everywhere in the 1980s and when the Small Press started dying off he kept it alive promoting it across the US, Europe and beyond. Hal Hargett of Amazing Heroes described Terry Hooper as 'a human dynamo in comics'"

Yeah, and now I live a life of luxury and can't even get a table at events. Oh...and it is Hal Hargitt not Harget.

You Have To Laugh. You Have To Cry. You Have To Take Your Meds

 

I may really need artists but when people contact you and have not read the post as they state they have....

This kid will get on well.

"I draw whacky cartoon strips and until I can break into Marvel or DC I am looking for paying work."

Another one who does not read posts. My advice to him?

"Hello. I think you really ought top try Fantagraphics -home of the world's greatest (ripped off) cartoonists!"

Reply: "Thanks I'll give them a try! I still can't get my eyes to roll back down out of my head

oh, and:

"I read your post on CBO and I really want to get some experience drawing comics strips and adding to my portfolio which is very thin. I'll try any genre. How much are you paying?"

I do wonder whether he did read that post.....

Merriwether Not All Monsters Are Evil

 

Madame Foretell -The Early Years by BR Dilworth

 

A Question Cropped Up....

 ...and as usual it was in a chat because -Heaven forbid- someone would post a comment here on the blog!😁    

While I was chatting in Face Book Messenger with someone (and believe me I hate long chats) it was pointed out that after 40+ years and a world wide audience on this blog with 324,463 views that I must get a lot of feedback and had I ever thought of asking for suggestions of publishers outside the UK who might translate and publish Black Tower Comics?

There ain't enoughlaughing emojies to respond to that!  Rather like the people who thinki all the views here or on the FB page equate to high sales (seriously, it does not) so some assume that there is a lot of fan-to-publisher chat going on. Comic Bits Online hasw well over 8 million views but any comments are people I know exchanging pleasantries -2 people in fact!

The most interaction I had with people was during the pre-internet age and that was by letter. The internet has made antisociability a thing.

I would LOVE to hear from people but it seems that the audience is basically click, look over the posts and then go.  Oddly, the Black Tower page on Instagram gets far more reasctions than the blogs!

die gedanken sind frei

A Hero or A Villain? The Iron Warrior

 

I re-read this and decided to up-date the post. You see, I have read far more Iron Warrior stories since this was first written and I have a big collection of Swan comics and annuals now to refer to so apologies if I ramble a little!
_________________________________________________________________________

It occurs to me that, today, a lot of comickers who have no real knowledge of UK Golden Age characters will make things up or make bad guesses based on what they might have seen.

 
This can be said to be true when it comes to the Iron Warrior.

I can onloy find one source with any information on the character up to 1990 and that is the late Denis Gifford’s Encyclopedia of Comic Characters[Longman,London,1987].  In the entry for The Iron Warrior,Gifford writes:

“..the most violent and bloodiest strip ever seen in British comics to this time,and for several decades to come.  Rodney Dearth,seeking the Jewels of Junius,arrives at the site of the Temple of Sloth in Central Africa,accompanied by his robot,the Iron Warrior. Captured by a White Princess,he summons the Warrior (‘wavelength 60,impulse 400′).  Crying ‘I come Master!’ and also ‘Ahrrr!  Whoo-roo!  Roar!’,the Warrior’s built-in chopper slices up the Sloths,cuts up a giant crocodile,and pulls the head off an outsize eagle.”

And from this we get entries in the Internationalheroes site (which appears to be vanishing bit-by-bit these days):

“A robot controlled by Rodney Dearth, who used it to hunt treasure with him in Africa.
The Warrior isn’t really a hero, as it kills anyone who threatens its master, whose own goals are far from altruistic.”

Hmm.  But then we get,at the League for Extraordinary Gentlemen fan site:

“The Surrogate League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

When the government decided to form the Worral’s League they based it very closely on Mina’s first League, “When in 1946 it was apparent that Miss Murray and her colleagues had deserted our employ by going missing in America, MI5 elected to replace the group with surrogates in an attempt to recreate the impact of the 1898 ensemble…”

• The Invisible Man (Peter Brady) = The Invisible Man (Hawley Griffin)
• Prof James Gray = Nemo (both submarine builders, Nemo even inspired Gray in League V2)
• Worrals = Mina (female leads experienced in death)
• Wolf of Kabul = Quatermain (both in the great white hunter tradition, they even both wear pith helmets)
• The Iron Warrior = Hyde (both really killers pressed into service).

The Iron Warrior is a robot built by Rodney Dearth, Dearth was not a hero and had a more villainous overtone. He would command the Warrior to do various illegal things, including kill people, but mainly Dearth used him to hunt for treasure in Africa.”

 


YAAAR! RRRAHHH!  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
 
Oh. I do beg your pardon.  Had a bit of an “Iron Warrior” moment there.

Seriously, I hate this whole “we know nothing about the character but it seems it was a killer controlled by a killer so let’s write that” crap.

“…Dearth was not a hero and had a more villainous overtone. He would command the Warrior to do various illegal things, including kill people.”

Dearth was not a villain or scheming killer.  Anyone read any old boys adventure books or H. Ryder Haggard?  By applying what the League page and Internationalheroes entry has written then we have to re-classify Alan Quartermaine as a cold blooded villain.  In fact,up until more politically correct times,most heroes would need to be re-classed according to this methodology.  Biggles takes on arch villain proportions.  Even Indiana Jones would be classed as out-doing the Nazis considering how many deaths he’s caused directly or indirectly.  Think on that.

Let’s get a little bit of perspective here.  Sit down kiddies because if you’ve not watched any films made between 1920 to…well…now,and if you’ve not read any history on the British Empire or American Imperialism (“Hey,Japan:we’ve gun ships and troops harbored offshore now do business with us ‘voluntarily’ or we’ll make you!”) -in fact any empire or power!- you may be shocked.

Most sea-faring nations such as Spain,Italy,England,France etc.,sent out exploratory ships/fleets to seek out new lands and new treasures and subdue the local population by any means including genocide [keep some alive for slaves,of course]. The Ashante were great at being slavers and made a lot of money out of it.  It’s a two-way thing you see -are black african slavers villains? Hey,slavery still exists today (and in the West).

But these Europeans were brave hero-explorers.  Anyone hear of a little group called the Conquistadores?  Dutch East India Company? The British East India Company -all had their private armies to,uh,”smooth things through”.

Ever read King Solomon’s Mines?

In comparison,Dearth was a limp-wristed liberal!  Hmm. If you were a British soldier at Rourke’s Drift with Zulu warriors rushing toward you would you throw down your rifle and wave -”Hello! I’m really against all this imperialism stuff -care for tea and a chat?”  Mind you, in Zulu Dawn, Denholm Elliott’s character more or less did just that -and was killed straight away!


 
Whichever city you lived in -London, Berlin, Paris- you would hear stories of strange lands,lost treasures and much more.  The urge to follow those tales continue to this very day.  If a chap was on his uppers and the old estate was falling to bits and,to be frank,the family coffers had been emptied long ago it was disgrace and destitution -but if you could find the “lost treasure” or anything worth a few quid you were saved!

I know that it is wrong to just go marching in,putting down the “locals” and stealing things that belong to them,whether they want to exploit it themselves or not –hey, I’m still for the UK returning the Elgin Marbles and all those Egyptian artefacts we,uh,borrowed!

The context is that this was a totally different world.  Officers and troopers posing for photographs of themselves resting their feet on a heap of natives heads should have been totally unacceptable even in the 19th century but it happened -apparently “fun” hunts were organised with horse-riding officers carrying “pig-stickers” but I get a feeling the natives involved  weren’t having too much fun!

A white man would have his weapons because, even if a peaceful person, not all native persons were friendly in return (read some history).  I could write on the subject all day but it wouldn’t help.

The point is that we know,in the Iron Warrior strip,only that Dearth arrives in Africa with his creation.  If attacked he defended himself.  In volume 3 of the Black Tower Gold Collection,I published such a strip.  Dearth is exploring an area when a local priest stirs things up -Dearth is attacked and,though he could easily do so,he does not set about killing everyone.  In fact, he does fend off an attack by rushing straight at the warriors but then tries to use cunning to defeat the witch doctor.

Once the threat is sorted, Dearth goes on his way.  The one thing we see is that the Iron Warrior is far from some type of remote-controlled killer doing its master’s bidding.  It’s what would today be called a controlled vehicle or “power suit”.

Or we assumed that is all it was. However, I have a little collection of IW strips and, sadly, "The Iron Warrior" is the only title you'll see -no story title.  But at times Dearth talks to the IW -you think a little like a person alone will converse with a dog or cat -fair enough. No. There are points when IW seems to almost -almost- be 'sentient' in some way. And that vocaliser that I have only ever seen once after all this time -an interface of sorts?

And I've mentioned Dearth using the IW in his attempt to get rid of a wily evil witch-doctor. At that point Dearth could have called the tribal lands his and plundered them: who could have stopped him -The King's African Rifles??  A strip I titled "Native Problems...Again" sees Dearth help natives when a an unscrupulous white treasure hunter moves into lands of "The People of The Mist" -he's so downright benevolent I was almost ill. In another strip a cave has a carved out god's head at the entrance that is used by an evil white miner to rob the local tribe.  Dearth stops this and utters the words ....

Dearth could have had all the treasure and power any white supremacist/unscrupulous killer with a "super weapon" would want several times over.  He just continues on with his travels.  He's not telling natives to "remember the white man is superior" or claiming territory for Great Britain.

For all intents and purposes Dearth was an adventurer who was out to look into mysteries and travel "where no European had gone before".  He get’s inside the Iron Warrior and operates controls and fires his weapons from here.  He also operates the axe-wielding arm.  Guessing at Dearth’s height the Iron Warrior has to be around 3-4 metres tall [10-12 feet]. It is still nothing more than a kind of hostile environment suit -almost similar to later [better designed] deep water suits.   Here is something else that is very basic but it is how I vizualise the IW and it is colour.

You see, if Dearth built the Iron Warrior then he was an engineer.  He'd know about metal decay- rust, etc., from sea (salt) water, heat and all types of weather.  So, just leaving it as metallic grey seems logically daft (I'm writing about a man running about Africa in a giant iron power suit so let's jump to something logical!).  Now, one of my first jobs was at Swiftact Tools and I helped another fellow spray-paint crane cabs and lots of other things with red oxide/lead paint. It protected and allowed a coat of another colour to be sprayed over it by a customer.  But the Red Lead protected the metal and welding joints (it was a primer).  That was this colour:

You could get a lightly redder colouration and even Royal Mail post boxes used to be painted with Red Lead -but this was the stuff and, boy,  did you need a full face mask!!

The other common lead paint colour was green. Local authorities used it on railings, urinals and even work sheds, etc because it was all-weather and hard as nails.  Colour:

In one strip I even have Dearth giving the Iron Warrior a paint over.  The axe I always see as plain steel. Yeah, big industrial boy, I am.  Loves a big, heavy chopper (:-/)

Here is where I can now give the definitive answer as to the true colour of the Iron Warrior..and more.
I just received a copy of the 1943 New Funnies Album with an Iron Warrior strip that was in colour -coloured by Ward himself since creators had to write, pencil and draw everything.  Iron -greyish.  We also learn that Dearth had a remote control that could summon the Warrior from where ever he left it.

This was as good as colour got during 1943.  There was a war on and ink was strictly rationed. This means that all the made up stuff by others (who have only seen the odd panel or page). This is why it is so important to look at the sources, no matter how rare they may be these days, and Swan was a real creative hub that has never been fully credited -supernatural anti-heroes being something many overlook.

What Denis Gifford wrote I have to take to be accurate -he did have a massive collection of comics, so I’m guessing that there was  a remote control device and, it seems, a vocaliser of sorts.  That writ, continuity was never a great strong point in comics back then.  Even the Iron Warrior seemed to vary in size at times.

Yes,the strip was violent to a degree but you have to recall that in early Tarzan films there were people being killed violently and arrows sticking out of heads. However, the idea that the Iron Warrior was constantly chopping people up seems to be based on that one panel from Denis's Encyclopedia.

Do not think that, based on what people who have a narrow view of a character write, and most of them have never (obviously) read any Iron Warrior strips, that Dearth and the Iron Warrior were just deadly killers.  They weren’t.  They were not "mercenaries for hire".  Dearth was not hoarding huge treasures but seemed rather, uh, "socialistic" -at Amalgamated Press or Thomson, Dearth would probably have had the natives swear loyalty to the Crown!

One day, the story will be told of Dearth's last great African adventure before he took off for South America (it's all planned).

And let's not forget that Ben Dilworth has returned the character of Dearth and the Iron Warrior to a time of fun adventuring without the need of a "modern reboot"!  Even I've had a go.

Now, back to Big Bong!

Ben R. Dilworth & Terry Hooper-Scharf
A4
Black and white
 Paperback,

49 Pages

Price: £8.00 ~limited special offer currently £5.00!

Ships in 3–5 business days
 http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/the-iron-warrior-collection/paperback/product-21157919.html 

In the 1940s, Rodney Dearth and his exploratory fighting machine known as the Iron Warrior left Africa to travel to South America in search of lost explorer Percy Fawcett. Crocodiles, giant snakes, hostile natives and..Big Bong -the terror of the Amazon!

This collection presents a 1940s William A. Ward strip, Ben R. Dilworth's Big Bong, Amazon Adventure and a couple special pages, and Terry Hooper-Scharf's Black Tower Adventure strip The Iron Warrior: Jungle Terror plus text features!

There Are Things I Miss

  Before I pop off (NO! I'm sticking around) and have my toast and beans I thought I would nswer a question someone asked a while back.

"What do you miss from the early days and Zine Zone International?"

Honestly? The seat of your pants editing for one. "Hey, I have 5 pages I need to fill in the next issue--" before the week was out I would get pages (this was pre internet and by post).

I also miss the contributions coming in from the USA, Germany, France, Finland and Australia to help promote new creators rather like I did with Previews Comic that got so many artists work in the industry. There was the sheer fun of seeing what people came up with (some I reposted last year on the Black Tower Blog) -sci fi, horror, humour, slice of life and so on. Just the fact that we were not all greedy feckers wanting to grab every pennyand the fact that a couple of issues the person's work appeared in was payment -they had something they could show around and, no, I never made any money!!

I recall talking to two comic artists at a UK Comic Art Convention and I described myself to someone nearby as "a comic hack". The response from the two creators? "Yeah, like ----. You just love art and comics!  Now if that quote came with money I'd be happy!

When people found fun and joy in drawing comics and had no major egos. I miss that.

Yep, Black Tower Started Small...

 And I still cut and paste (it's just my hair went)

Two VERY rare copies of Black Tower Adventure volume 1