2000ad prog 347

Press cutting added by Ste Pickford on Wed, 16 May 2007
Subject: Pickford Bros.

Page © 1983 Rebellion A/S 2004. (probably)

Long before we had any video games published, both John and I had a plan to make money out of our interest in home computing - getting pictures published in our favourite comic 2000ad!

When I was a kid my big ambition was to be a comic artist, and I probably sent dozens of pictures and awfully amateurish comic pages in to the alien editor, Tharg, in the hope of being published. They were all ignored though, and I was beaten by John who had a print out of a picture of Ace Garp he'd drawn on his ZX-81 published in prog 274 on Tharg's Mighty Micro page.

I think he got a prize of £5.00 for this, and I wanted a piece of the action. It wasn't until over a year later that I got a print out of a picture I'd drawn on his new ZX Spectrum printed, in prog 347. I got a whopping £10.00 prize for this (due to fluctuations in the sterling to galactic groats exchange rate, no doubt), and I remember feeling incredibly rich at the time. I probably spent it on American comics and a Spectrum game.

Both pictures were drawn with pixel editing art packages programmed by John, which were great but didn't have undo, or zoom, or fancy features like that. The Spectrum image was a real eyesight killer, as I had to plot every pixel while squinting through the blurry dot-crawn on a 14inch black and white TV set.

I guess we can say we've appeared in 2000ad, but sadly I've still not realised my boyhood dream of having a comic strip published in the Galaxy's Greatest Comic (now owned by UK video game developers Rebellion, bizarrely).

Click the image to view the full Mighty Micro Page.

Tags: 2000ad, tools, comic, pixel art

Follow up post: 2000ad prog 361

Predecessor post: 2000ad prog 274

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