Robo-Cook Blog

[robocook]

Ha! Thanks, Pete!

I think yours is far more focused!
I'm going to take this one on a little journey, methinks...

Steve

[Emperor]

Incidentally, I still seem to get the verification malarkey on here. Does it go away at any point? I wouldn't mind if it was actually easy to decipher. I feel like I'm trying to outsmart an enigma machine!

Well, history tells us it can be done, if only we had one of Britain's leading collections of oddballs and misfits... Hmmmm.

Anyway, this shouldn't be happening, so I'd suggest logging out, deleting the 2000AD cookie and logging back in again (you can reboot before logging in too to doubly ensure the forum session has been killed off). It is the equivalent of turnitoffandonagain but works in most cases.

[robocook]

Okey Doke - will do.
Ta for the info.

[Heath C Ackley]

Excellent! Your love of comics and their design shines through. I loved the Kirby and Romita self portraits. Bisley and Joe P - a combination hard to beat.

It brought back a lot of memories for me; Fantastic Four digests (Kirby again) arriving through the post every Thursday, going to the local train station as it was the only place (then) that sold american comics, Rampage...

Wasn't the suscription dept at Marvel UK called Dangerous Visions? I found an old newsletter years later and discovered that Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys had written it.

(Sorry for the 'jumpers for goalposts' reminiscences guys)
 

[I, Cosh]

Cool stuff.

If anyone wants to see what Steve has been up to most recently then:

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/10/28/steve-cook-recreates-mary-jane-watson/

Blimey! He's quite different to how I'd imagined.

[Emperor]

Here you go (it was the posting with the best "hook"):

www.bleedingcool.com/2011/11/10/and-fianlly-when-dan-didio-was-a-friend-of-ol-marvel/

Pity Rich missed out the actual link to your blog...

[robocook]

Nearly missed that!

Thanks for the heads up! and for posting the link in the comments. Someone else mentioned how he doesn't add links to things. Oh, well, the modus operandi is probably to stop people navigating away from his site.

Cheers!
Steve

[robocook]

Billy Whisper - The Unseen Millar & Ewins page, here...

http://secret-oranges.blogspot.com/2011/11/never-before-seen.html

[Emperor]

Billy Whisper - The Unseen Millar & Ewins page, here...

http://secret-oranges.blogspot.com/2011/11/never-before-seen.html

What is you connection to Earthside 8? I ask as Grant Goggans gave Billy Whsper a quick mention and the name came up Alternity, something that is connected to you these days:

According to David Bishop's Thrill Power Overload, other strips planned for Earthside 8, which was briefly renamed Alternity, included work by creators such as Mark Eyles, Brett Ewins and Roger Langridge. The one I actually want to see, just because of the train-wreck factor, was Billy Whisper, a story about a teenage US president, as imagined by Mark Millar. The same concept had been used in an incredibly entertaining and goofy DC title called Prez in the early '70s. The Joe Simon comic has been a cult classic for years, and inspired my favorite episode of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Somehow, I cannot for the life of me imagine a comic worse than a Mark Millar take on Prez.

http://thrillpoweredthursday.blogspot.com/2008/06/21-i-cannot-imagine-comic-worse-than.html

[robocook]

Earthside 8 was a comic that Fleetway were to publish as a sort of younger 2000 AD. Steve MacManus hired me to design the look of the comic and Jamie Hewlett to design the characters that would helm it, in the way that Tharg helms 2000 AD. Steve and Glenn Rice were the editors. The comics were printed and handed out to kids for research feedback. They had to sign for them and return them when they'd read them. They were then pulped. Taking on board some of the research feedback, the comic was then reconfigured as Alternity.

I then redesigned the whole thing but kept Jamie's characters. This was then printed, signed for by kids and again, pulped on their return. These comics are extremely rare, especially Alternity. DJ Food has a copy of E8 in his archive here http://www.djfood.org/djfood/artifacts-3. Long after the whole project was shelved we used the Alternity name for a 2000 AD special while John Tomlinson was editing 2000 AD.

Latterly I decided to use it for my art project, but first consulted Steve MacManus who told me that the term "Alternity, aka "alternate reality" had originally been coined by a guy called John C.Lilly a widely known practicing neuroscientist, now deceased.

I found all my original designs and other paraphernalia for both comics last week and was considering putting them up on my blog. Maybe I will if you think there's enough interest?

[maryanddavid]

Id love to see more, the blog is great!

David

[robocook]

Thanks, David! I'll get scanning...

[Heath C Ackley]

Great Hewlett art as usual.

[john_s]

Hey - I remember "Alternity"!  I did a synopsis for that, called "Anno Domino", about this Frankensteinian techno-shaman in a totally bonkers future reality...

Mark's "Billy Whisper" came about when I told him about "Buckeroo Banzai" and he shamelessly stole the whole plot and character (only, y'know, making him a kid).  Even all that Orson Welles' stuff about his "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast is in the "Buckeroo Banzai" film...

All in all, probably best that it never got to see the light of day!

[robocook]

Hi John!

That must have been around the time we were all travelling on the tube together and looking at one of those RE/SEARCH books. Can't remember why, or where we were going though.

Incidentally, I've put you on here...
http://www.steven-cook.com/#1954192/Photography-Secret-Origins

Cheers,
Steve