Bionic™ Spin-off Annuals

I was asked by John who runs the @Bionic_Tweets Twitter account. He'd seen my work and wanted me to produce some annuals featuring popular characters from the TV shows 'The Six Million Dollar Man' and 'The Bionic Woman' for the Christmas period. We settled on four titles featuring 'Oscar Goldman' (the non-bionic boss of lead characters Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers), 'Bigfoot' (a space android disguised as the legendary US crypto-beast Sasquatch), the 'Fembots' (android doppelgangers used to infiltrate whatever the script writers deemed interesting that week... and inspiration for the villains of the same name in the Austin Powers movies) and, last but by no means least, Max the Bionic Dog (the fence and shark jumping German Shepherd looked after by Jaime Sommers). 

The covers used some lovely hi-res photographs from the series and I was able to create some designs that had a colourful feel for the period.

The Max the Bionic Dog annual is based on the cover of the first Six Million Dollar Man annual. And yes, those are all genuine images of Max and not stock photos of any old German Shepherd. Note the loose wiring on his neck!.

The Oscar annual cover features the character's exploding briefcase - unseen in the series but a vital accessory for the Oscar Goldman action figure. 

I put Bigfoot and the Fembots together because I liked the sound of the title. It had a 60s/70s pop group vibe to it. Very pleased with the look of this one - particularly the colours.

John has very kindly let me put these on the blog. You can visit his Twitter feed for all your bionic needs at @Bionic_Tweets . 

Countdown for TVAction 2020

You'd never get a comic like Countdown or TVAction today - at least not with the same licenced comic strip content. Yes, TV's Dr Who was a children's/family programme but what about the other strips?  You can hardly say that Cannon, The Protectors and the often grim Hawaii-Five-0 were child friendly. That was the way things were back then. With so little targeted programming (at least compared to 21st century television) of a certain quality, the kids of yesteryear found their favourite programmes to be the adult fare offered to their parents. (The late Trevor Preston pointed this out in his 1969 pitch document for Ace of Wands.)

Flash forward to 2020... Children's television is now more targeted towards them with specific channels whilst family drama/adventure shows on the main channels are virtually non-existent (save for TV's Dr Who, of course!) In spite of this, let's have a look at modern schedules and see what choice TV shows would fit inside a Countdown or TVAction published today...

Elsewhere on this blog are some modernised versions of the comic which have given their pages over to the current TV scene. This is the link to them. 

Here are some additional variants based on the covers of the three Countdown and TVAction annuals published in the early seventies... along with an annual based around The Persuaders! they also released. (I really scraped the barrel coming up with a TV show that fitted into the design of that one!!!)

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Two Mandrel Annuals and a Giant Robot One...

I did a cover for a Mandrel annual some time ago. It was based on the 1979 Dalek annual but replacing the Daleks in the original artwork with Mandrels. When I retweeted it as a "Goodbye Twitter" tweet, I received a lot of positive comments about it including suggestions that I add it to the designs for journals that I have on RedBubble. (Here's the link)

I'll admit that the whole concept it amusing but I wasn't too happy with it as it used a lot of the artwork from the genuine cover. I'm never happy when I'm bastardising other artist's work - however old. Despite, I decided to follow the suggestions and add it to the RedBubble portfolio. 

Alas, I discovered that the original PS files for it had gone the way of several months worth of work when my PC died in late 2019. I should've left it at that but I decided to redo it anyway. I also did a version of the original annual's back cover too. Earlier RedBubble journal designs feature a textless version of the cover art on the back. In my silly head, I thought the extra effort would redeem my use of the original artwork on the cover. 

So taken with the design, I decided to do another couple of annual covers - another Mandrel one (based on the 1976 Dalek annual) and a K-1 - Giant Robot annual (based on the 1983 K-9 annual). Although copies of the original designs, these are original photo-montages and don't use any of the originals' artwork. I even did another back cover for the K-1 annual. 

K1 Annual 1983

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Target: Whittaker - Alternate Covers

As a supplement to the previous Target: Whittaker posts, here's a collection of Target covers I did for Doctor Who's series 12 either before decent visual material became available or after when I decided to do some variants. 

Hope you like them. Some of these weren't uploaded to Twitter. 

If you liked these covers maybe nip back a few posts and take a look at the others I've done for series 11 and 12. You can also show your appreciation for them buy buying me a coffee via my Ko-fi account. Click the link for more details and to also see a gallery of my best stuffs. 

Target: Whittaker (update)

This is a bit of housekeeping really. I did a handful of mid-70s Target book cover for Doctor Who series 11 early last year. I was so pleased with them, I turned them into a set of mugs available from the RedBubble shop. 

Just before Christmas, I returned back to the idea and did the rest of the episodes - another five or six, I think. The series is now complete and here they all are. Some of these have been posted before but here they are all in one place. 

If you like these a lot, then consider buying me a coffee via my Ko-fi account to show your appreciation. If you liked them a bit, then fair enough. I'll make my own coffee, Thanks. 

Target: Whittaker - part two

For some reason, I did a few Target book covers for the thirteenth Doctor that returned to the original 1974 design. I was reasonably pleased with the outcome of some of them. So much so, that I uploaded three of them to my RedBubble store . 

Later in the year, I returned to the idea and did the rest of Jodie Whittaker's premiere series. (I will upload those additional ones shortly for completeness.) 

So when it came to producing covers for series 12, it was a no-brainer that I'd return to this early style. 

Despite the lack of photographic material available both before and (surprisingly) after each episode was broadcast, I managed to complete each piece on time - some were even tweeted before the episodes aired. Spoiler-free of course. 

Here are the Target book covers in order. I'll some variants in a later post. 

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