Museum Cover Story!

On a recent London visit, Scott visited the National Army Museum in Chelsea where he proudly reported that my 'comics installation display' was still there which I was delighted to hear. The project is a few years old now but the fact it has been retained following a re-modelling of the original gallery it was commissioned for was welcome news.

The original brief was to show how Society's portrayal of the military had evolved over the years in various forms of media and following a successful tender exercise, I was selected to write and illustrate this aspect for the comics medium from Victorian story papers through to the popular 1960's & 1970's boys comics, adapting my storytelling and art style accordingly. I worked with the museum curation team to identify relevant publications from each era to feature and the ever talented Matt Soffe coloured my approved artwork. The outcome was a multipaged 'flip book' on display in the museum gallery for visitors to read and learn from.

I've previously written about various parts of the process, including here and here so thought I'd briefly share my rough sketches for what would become the project's cover. I'd already conceived that the story content would be viewed through the eyes of a news vendor, so having a newspaper type masthead seemed a logical fit, 'thumbnailing'  a couple of options.

The central paperboy figure option was selected allowing soldiers from different eras to be featured 'bursting' out of the comic pages within and away we went. I also sneaked in a couple of my favourite Zulu War combatants in although they don't feature on the era spreads within! Matt's dramatic colours really add drama and a period feel to things to give everything a polish for the finished article.

Here's Scott in the re-modelled gallery a couple of weeks ago and I'm hoping to visit again myself before too long. 

You may be interested to know that after consultation with the museum, I recently adapted my artwork and content to form a new short booklet to provide an affectionate and nostalgic view of the war comics of yester year and take a brief look at recent modern graphic novels dealing with themes of conflict entitled, WAR COMICS 'A Memento'. Only a short number of this publication are available directly from me at my convention and festival appearances.