Pete's Pimple could be Yours! (UPDATE: NOW SOLD!)

UPDATE: ITEM NOW SOLD! Thanks for looking.

This is my ORIGINAL ART for the Pete and his Pimple strip that was published in an issue of OINK! comic in 1987. The artwork is drawn in black ink embellished with a grey wash and grey pencil. Drawn on Bristol board and then affixed to a sheet of cartridge paper underneath with Spray Mount, although the art can be easily removed from the backing sheet if required. (Personally I'd keep it fixed to the backing sheet as it's survived perfectly well for over 30 years like that.) 

I signed it in the last panel. See photos for more detail. 

Size 37cm wide by 32cm high. 

The art will be securely packaged between strong card for posting and wrapped in parcel paper. 

This item will only run until December 15th to try to avoid Christmas post delays so buy soon if you want it. Thanks. 

See listing here:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ORIGINAL-ART-PETE-AND-HIS-PIMPLE-from-OINK-comic-1987-Lew-Stringer-SIGNED/202849939157

Yes, that's Loose Brayne, Brickmam making an unannounced cameo!

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Original art for sale

I'm selling off one of my original Macho Man strips that I did for Marvel UK back in 1986. You can buy it from my eBay page here:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MACHO-MAN-MARVEL-UK-ORIGINAL-COMIC-ART-by-Lew-Stringer-1986/202811123630

Macho Man was a strip that appeared in Marvel UK's Secret Wars comic. You can read the full saga on my main blog here:
https://lewstringercomics.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-saga-of-macho-man.html

Tom Thug original art for sale

The "original art" category on eBay is a strange beast. For some unfathomable reason a lot of sellers don't understand what it means and they'll list comics and prints there. The clue is really in the description isn't it? Original. Art. NOT "comics I bought from a shop" or "limited print". 

Rest assured that when I put my pages up for auction they ARE my original artworks; the actual unique hand drawn pen and ink drawings that were used to do the printed version you see in the comics. 

I currently have one of my pieces on eBay. It's the original Tom Thug artwork, in ink and water colour, that was used to print a free postcard given with Oink! comic in 1987. The first (but not last) time my artwork was used for a free gift. It's hand lettered too, as it's from the days before computer fonts were created.

You can find out more about it, and see more photos of the piece, here:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TOM-THUG-ORIGINAL-ARTWORK-FROM-OINK-COMIC-by-Lew-Stringer/202702794669

My thanks in advance if you're going to bid on the piece, and good luck! The auction ends on Sunday 16th June. 

This week's art auction..

Just a quick reminder that there's another couple of pieces by me on eBay this week. Original artwork with a new Tom Thug drawing and a Pete and his Pimple page from 30 years ago. All bids welcome! 

More info on my eBay page here. Good luck if you're bidding!
https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/graphite47?_trksid=p2047675.l2559

Robo-Capers art for sale

As several people have been asking me if I have any of my original Robo-Capers strips for sale, I've put a couple on eBay this week. I don't have many left now so when they're gone, they're gone. (Unless the buyers resell them in the future of course.) Some of my earliest published work!

Robo-Capers was a humour strip I created for Marvel UK's The Transformers comic and ran there for about three years in the mid-1980s until it was replaced by Combat Colin when Action Force merged into Transformers. 

People have often asked me ion I'll be publishing a Robo-Capers collection. I'm afraid not, as the rights are still held by Marvel (and I can't see them publishing a humour book anytime soon).  

Anyway, as I said, there are a couple of my Robo-Capers strips on eBay. This is the original art, over 30 years old but still flat and clean. Take a look if you're interested. Bidding ends this Sunday, 24th February...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/graphite47 

Original art sale!

I'm selling off some of my original artwork from Oink! comic and this week there are two Tom Thug half-pagers up for auction on eBay. These are the original strips I drew back in 1987 and are still in very nice condition. Black ink on Bristol board. 

You can find out more about them, and see more photos of the pages, at my eBay store here:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/graphite47/m.html

All bids appreciated! Good luck! 

Bid on a Combat Colin original!

Just a quick reminder that the eBay auction for this new piece of Combat Colin artwork ends on Saturday afternoon. All bids are very much appreciated. Thanks, and good luck!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/COMBAT-COLIN-original-artwork-by-Lew-Stringer/202513631742

This original COMBAT COLIN art could be yours!

I don't sell my original 1980s pages of Combat Colin but here's an opportunity to obtain a genuine piece of Combat Colin artwork. Yes, it's a brand new piece I've drawn, and it's currently on eBay for the next week:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/COMBAT-COLIN-original-artwork-by-Lew-Stringer/202513631742

It's drawn in black ink on sturdy, quality Bristol Board, and measures 19cm by 17cm. I've given it a winter theme to make it topical! I won't be selling any more pieces of art this year so this could be an ideal Christmas present for the Combat Colin fan in your life, or for yourselves!

I've signed it, and will be happy to add a dedication to the winning bidder, or to whoever they want it personalised to. (No extra cost, naturally.)

I will of course package it securely to send to the winning bidder. 

All bids are very much appreciated. Good luck!

Amazing artwork up for auction from top comics artists

Those of us who were guests at Nice Comic Con in Bedford this year were invited by the organiser to each contribute an A3 piece of artwork for an auction to raise funds for next year's event. That auction goes live tomorrow (Friday 21st September, UK time) and will end on Saturday 29th September. 

You can peruse the art in the auction at this link:

https://www.catawiki.com/a/187949

You'll have to register with Catawiki before you can bid, so that's important.

Art by DaNi.

Artwork includes pieces by Ryan Brown, Simon Bisley, Ian Churchill, Aneke, DaNi, Dylan Teague, Doug Braithwaite, Alan Davis and many more. My contribution is my original artwork for my convention banner, featuring Combat Colin, Pete and his Pimple, Brickman, and more characters...

Good luck to all of you who'll be bidding! 

Art by Esad Ribic.

Cartoons up for auction

A couple of years ago I drew a random cartoon a day for a few weeks. Unique and weird characters that were pretty much stream-of-consciousness material. Each one is on A5 size 200gsm weight paper, drawn in my own style, rather than following a house style directive. They were posted online, but never published in print, and I'm now selling 17 of them on eBay. Prices include postage.

If you're interested, visit my eBay page here:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/graphite47

All bids welcome. Thanks in advance!

Meanwhile, on my OTHER blog...

If you're new to the Blimey! blog you may not know that I have another blog I regularly update too. That's lewstringercomics, which is focused on my own comics work, covering all the news about my current strips as well as showing material I've done over the 34 years of my career (and sometimes even material older than that from my fanzine days). 

If you're interested, hop over there and have a rummage around to see the various stuff I've posted over the years! Thanks for your time.
http://lewstringercomics.blogspot.co.uk 

Roy Wilson: Original artwork

A few months ago I bought a few pieces of Roy Wilson artwork so I thought I'd show them here. In case you didn't know, Roy Wilson (1900 to 1965) was the most influential artist working in British humour comics from the 1930s to the early 1950s. His lively, fluid, friendly style became the house style for The Amalgamated Press, with many artists being told to emulate him. (And many did a fantastic job of it too!) Even years later, his style influenced that of Robert Nixon, and myself to a lesser extent. 

In those days of British comics, when narrative text was glued under each panel, pages were drawn in separate tiers. Sometimes each panel was supplied to the editor as individual pictures. (This is why veteran artists would refer to "a set of drawings" when talking about a comics page.) The remarkable thing about Roy Wilson is that he was such a perfectionist that he'd often discard drawings part way through, and it's those which have ended up on eBay. 

The three panel tier below is a section of Happy Andy and his Pets from Tip-Top comic in the 1940s. It's interesting to see Wilson's drawing technique had him ink certain parts first, rather than panel by panel. For some reason he must have been dissatisfied with panels two and three, even though I'm sure they look perfect to our eyes. (To give you an idea of the size these old strips were drawn, the width of the artwork of this row is 18 and a half inches, not including margins.) Click on the images to see them larger.

Here's the panels in larger detail. Like most artists of the time, Wilson did his own lettering. (Lettering directly onto the art is something I've always preferred, and enables the artist to have control of the panel composition instead of leaving dead areas only to find the balloons stuck elsewhere.)

These next two panels are from Marmaduke and His Ma from The Funny Wonder in the 1940s. This has the word "Urgent!" written on the reverse, and the editor's note for resizing the panel for publication so I'm guessing this was used and not rejected. Perhaps the "Urgent" note suggests it was to replace two other panels, and the editor had requested the redraw?

These final panels are from the strip The Adventures of Reg Varney as a Boy that began in TV Fun in 1955. Again, the first version looks perfect, but by the second version we can see several subtle improvements that add more personality to the characters. For whatever reason, Wilson must have also been unhappy with the second one too as it's also unfinished. (If anyone has the published version I'd like to see a scan to see what the final redraw was like.)

This last unfinished panel is also from the Reg Varney strip, although possibly a different week. Again, beautiful artwork, but Wilson must have felt he could improve on it. 

Remarkably, despite the importance of Roy Wilson's work, and the beauty of these unfinished pieces, the prices were very reasonable, at around £20 each! Sadly as the years have passed, artists such as these become forgotten or ignored by newer collectors. This blog won't be here forever, but while it is, I hope it helps keep the work of these greats alive for modern readers to discover. 

The Mystery of Lorna Doone

Anita O'Brien, the director/curator of London's Cartoon Museum, contacted me the other day for information about the original art pages shown above, an adaptation of the romance novel Lorna Doone. Does anyone know who illustrated them, and where they were published? There's a reference on the back of the pages for 'Nine Star Press, London' but it's not a publisher I've heard of. (I did Google it but it led to a publisher of gay literature currently using the name, which is not the same publisher.) 

I'm guessing the art is from the late 1940's/early 1950's, and that Nine Star Press were one of the many small independent British publishers around at that time, but I've no idea of the artist or where it appeared. The instruction to the printer at the foot of the pages, to print it at a width of 6 3/8" suggests it was published in American size format (which was common for UK indie comics of the 1940s/50s). Equally puzzling is why the captions were re-lettered in upper case for page one. 

Can anyone out there help? Please leave a comment below or contact me at lew.stringer@BTopenworld.com if you have any info.

Thanks!

Latest sale of original artwork

Here's an unusual item from my art archive. Back in 1991 one of the several strips I drew for The Viz Pathetic Sharks Bumper Special was the Albert O'Balsam and his Magic Hat strip above. The script was by Chris Donald, and I drew it based on layouts from an earlier unpublished version by Roger Langridge. 

I've put the complete two page strip on eBay this week, along with another item, a Vampire Brats page from Buster from around the same year. If you're interested you'll find them by clicking here: Buy my stuff please!   

Bidding ends on Sunday 12th April. All bids very much appreciated! 

All bids welcome

I'm selling a few items on eBay again this week. Something that may interest fans of Alan Moore is a copy of Fantasy Express No.5, a fanzine I published in 1983. This issue features one of the first (if not the first) interviews published with Alan, and runs to 12 pages. Plus Alan Davis drew an exclusive cover for the issue. The 'zine itself has 36 pages in total and is unread and in excellent condition.

I'm also selling a few pages of my original artwork from Viz and Oink! For more info see my eBay page here:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/graphite47/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

All bids are very much appreciated. The auction ends on Sunday 1st March. Good luck!

Viz and Buster pages on eBay

Now that Christmas is well and truly over, postal deliveries are back to normal and people have hopefully had time to put aside some disposable income I'm starting to list some original artwork on eBay again. This week I've listed a Tom Thug page from Buster and a Suicidal Syd page from Viz. 

Bidding ends on Sunday 8th Feb, so if you're interested in these pages all bids are very welcome. You'll find my eBay page by clicking here. Good luck!