Mirabilis was one of the DFC strips that was supposed to appear in the Guardian's comic section. We were told that the Guardian pages would have to be original content, not pre-prints of the strip that would eventually and briefly appear in the DFC. So I wrote half a dozen one-off stories, each set at a different time of the "year of wonders".In the event, we realized that time and money wouldn't stretch to doing an extra 30-40 pages on top of the serialized story in the DFC, so the stories were abandoned. And in retrospect that was probably just as well, as the approach we were aiming for might have made sense to somebody familiar with the old Warren magazines but would probably have baffled the typical British reader sitting with their toast and marmalade.
But one of those stories, "A Wrong Turning", got as far as the tight pencils stage. A single page of it was even inked. And, as it has no overt connection with the Mirabilis universe, we're giving it away for Christmas. It's a spooky tale of bereavement and classic motor cars, and when Peter Richardson on the fablulous Cloud 109 blog pointed out that this is traditionally the season for ghost stories, I realized it was the perfect time to dig it up.
You can read the preamble here or go straight for the PDF here. Ho ho ho.
smashing -- can't beat a mix of vintage cars and demons in the woods... i actually rather like the mix of pencils and ink, too.
ReplyDeletei'm a bit confused though about you saying:*We were told that the Guardian pages would have to be original content, not pre-prints of the strip that would eventually and briefly appear in the DFC.*
-- i guess they changed their minds on that...?
Yeah, I was a bit surprised to see that the strips the Guardian actually used were ones that later appeared in the DFC. That was not what we were told.
ReplyDeleteBut... I think it was probably just as well we didn't do them in the end. Mirabilis would not have fit with what the Guardian were looking for. Today at a Sunday lunch party I was telling someone (a TV exec) about how I'd spent the year writing a comic strip and how it was odd that the British aren't much interested in the medium. And he said, "Yes, and yet I think comics really can encourage children who have difficulty with real books." Sigh - best to leave it there, I thought :-/