Remembering The Andromeda Bookshop

To my shame, on my first meeting with Rog Peyton, at the tender age of 16, I promised to buy comic books from his newly opened store and then promptly forgot to go back for over a year!

What a rat I was.  What is even more surprising and shows much about the man, when I eventually returned, he forgave me and allowed me to become a regular customer.

That all happened about 36 years ago, Andromeda had only just opened at the Summer Row location and I had just discovered Fandom.

I believe that it was a fanzine named"Thing", an adzine for fans selling comic books to one another, possibly published by Dez Skinn ( that I had sent away for, after seeing an advert for it in the old Exchange and Mart) which had introduced me to a couple of local collectors.  It has been a long time but I think they were named Derek and John and they had collections of the oldest Marvels I had ever seen.

The original six issue run of The Hulk stands out in my mind, among other heady delights.  They were responsible for introducing me to Peter Lennon, then dealing out of his car and pretty soon after, to Rog, as detailed above.  Within a year, these two likely lads had cashed in their collections and gone off chasing girls and here I am, half a world away now, still collecting, albeit not the same titles or in the same quantities.

Anyhow, by the time that I had returned to darken Andromeda's door once more, Rog had hired Dave Holmes to work in the comic dungeon that was Summer Row's basement.  Dave was a character and we got along and I became a regular, every saturday, for my comic book fix.

Andromeda became a hub for fans and I met several very talented people there over the years, I still have a couple of three inch high, painted figurines that I bought from the guy who had painted them.  Perhaps the one who affected me the most was the young Chris Baker, who came to sign his art work "Fangorn".  He was a prodigious talent and blasted my fragile belief in my own drawings all-to-hell!

Young Chris did very well in the end, I won't bore you here, look him up on Google and see for yourselves.

I bought a whole bunch of his early art, partly finished paintings and continuity strips, before I left England at the beginning of 1980.  I'll post some examples next time.

Eerie #69 Cover

For some reason the Blogger interface wouldn't let me add this image to the earlier post, so here it is as a separate posting.

Believe it or not, I bought ten copies when it came out and somewhere in the collection, most of them still remain!?

Ah, to be that young and stupid again.

Paul Neary and HUNTER

Is there anyone out there that remembers a talk, about the art of making comics, that Paul Neary gave in a small building in Birmingham's Cannon Hill Park?

If my memory is correct, the event was arranged by Phil Clarke in the Autumn of 1974 or the Spring of 1975.  The collected edition of Mr. Neary's "Hunter" in Eerie #69, cover dated October 1975, had not then been released in England, so I am fairly comfortable with the time and place being correct.

Any how, it was the first time that I got to see a living, breathing, comic book artist talk about the nuts and bolts of drawing and as such, it was a great thrill.  Truthfully, the only point he made at the time, that I can still remember, was about the very first page of the "Hunter" series that he drew.  He had made a cardinal error, being young and inexperienced, dividing that first page into two vertical panels and his editor told him so, in  no uncertain way!  Warren published the page as he had drawn it, I no longer remember why, but he had redrawn that page as a traditional Splash Page for the collected edition.  Magic stuff to me at that time.

It was fun, very innocent and naive by modern standards.  I'm pretty sure that Mr. Neary didn't make any money from being there and probably, neither did Mr. Clarke.  I haven't a clue what the tickets cost but knowing the times, probably 25 or 50 pence.