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 . 

TV Annuals 2022

As was usual, I produced some absurd TV annual covers for the festive season. They were done over a period of months so I probably would've ended up posting them one at a time had I been updating the blog then.

This is all of them together in one place:

This is The Pact. A classy little BBC workplace drama from Doctor Who writer and doyen of the classic series Blu-rays, Pete McTighe. A group of workmates are apparently responsible for the death of their boss and attempt to cover it up leading to conflicts and secrets being revealed. Not exactly annual material but an ideal subject for one of my covers...

Line of Duty came to a thrilling climax at the start of the year. A tour de force cast with a brilliant Jed Mercurio script turned out not to be everyone's cup of tea. Perhaps the stand-out character from the series was little 13 year old Ryan Pilkington played with deadly acid by Gregory Piper in the first series. He created a bit of a storm when he returned as not only an adult... but a copper... and a VERY bent one at that. He really should have had a spin-off series but (quite rightly to be honest) got his come-uppance in the final series. Who could forget his series one catchphrase... "Bent bastard!" 

The annul itself is based on a design used by NetworkDVD for their release of the cosy late 60s police drama 'Parkin's Patch'. 

Russell T Davies' It's a Sin told the story of the AIDS crisis seen through the eyes of a group of young people. Despite the subject matter and many harrowing scenes, it was also a joyous celebration of life... and what it means to hold onto it even if the most harrowing of times. The annual design is a reflection of the positivity that comes from Davies' pin sharp script and is based on the design style of an 80s Look-in annual. 

Last year I created a Chris Witty annual. Maybe it was going a bit too far picking out an individual to represent the global pandemic. Having said that, it's one of the journals that has sold a few copies on RedBubble. Some shyster even pinch the design and put it on their RB store... This year I did something more generic and used the 1980 Blake's 7 annual as my inspiration. Quite pleased at my attempt on the logo! 

This is one I should've done ages ago - a period-style annual for Endeavour. Not specifically based on any published book or series although it does take elements from the World Distributors annuals. (I think I may have put a non-contemporary logo on it!) The police car is actually a publicity still from 60s Z Cars. Russell Lewis "liked" this when I tweeted it.

When season two of 'Star Trek Discovery' ended, I was one of those who quite rightly saw that a Captain Pike spin-off was the most logical outcome of his appearance in the series. I even did a few period book covers and designs showcasing the concept. It took Paramount and CBS a year or so but they got there and the series debut in a few short months. This is just a design using what few images were available of the main cast in their correct costumes (and haircuts). The image of the USS Enterprise is a bit of a cheat as it's actually a commercially available scale model... but they did that on the original Star Trek series didn't they?

The Covid 19 and It's a Sin annuals are available as journal and notebooks on RedBubble. Follow the link.

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Some Quatermass Annuals 4 Da Kids...

I'll admit that with these, I started off doing 50s period 'annual' style book covers. Spent a bit of time and couldn't get the look right to be honest. I'll return to them later...

Instead I took the colourised full length figures of each of the Quatermasses (Reginald Tate, John Robinson and Andre Morrel) and applied them to some of the modern Doctor Who annual templates I'd created a few months earlier... with mixed results. 

That set me thinking again... why not do some pages for these annuals? They'd look pretty cool and there'd be plenty of opportunities for obscure gags and period juxtaposition. 

A day or so later, I forgot about this splendid idea until now. This time I'll make a note and put it with the other "good ideas" for when I'm staring at a blank page again.

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Not Star Trek Annuals.

I recently acquired the first Star Trek annual. £2 from a charity shop since you ask.

 It's the typical lazy World Distributors fare - a couple of Gold Key reprints padded out to the 64 page limit with a handful of pages featuring 'space facts'. 

It reminded me again that I don't do much, if any, Star Trek stuff on here. Looking at the cover of that annual gave me the idea of doing some more spin-off Doctor Who annuals using the covers of these icons of the 70s as inspiration. 

That first one fitted Frontier in Space quite well. In fact, it's my favourite. (You will note that the futuristic city behind Jo Grant and her two Ogron chums is the Brazilian National Congress building in Brasilia - a photo of which portrayed the Earth President's residence in said episodes. Quite a clever inclusion that though I say so myself!) 

The others are a mixed bag. I've included the original annuals at the foot of this post as the Doctor Who fans who follow me might not be familiar with Star Trek. It was a US TV show in the 60s that ran for only three seasons and was a staple schedule filler for the BBC during most of the 70s. They tried remaking it a few times over the years with varying degrees of success. The latest versions can only be viewed if you pay extra.

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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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The Years and Years Annual 2020 and a couple of pages too!

It'll soon be that time of year when the 2020 annuals start to trickle into WHSmith to gather dust until the January sales. 

And it'll also soon be time for me to present my own selection of annuals that aren't available through the normal channels.

In the mean time, I've done one already and, as an added bonus, provided you with two pages that will no doubt provide minutes and minutes of fun for all the family provided you can find some counters and the spare dice you last saw at the back of that kitchen drawer a few months ago. 




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The Bodyguard annnual 2019 - Now unavailable!

Well, BBCtv's Bodyguard is now over and what better way to share the thrilling experience of it with your children than with the official Bodyguard annnual this Christmas.

Packed with stories, features and puzzles, this 64 page hardback is available from all good WHSmiths's - probably in a cardboard dump bin near the entrance in their 3 for 2 offer with the My Little Pony Adventures annuals. 

Here's a selection of pages to save you going into town...

 

As an afterthought, where did Julia really hide that tablet? 

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Alternative 60s 'Dalek' Books

Terry Nation and his mates produced three Dalek annual-style books back in the 60s. The Dalek Book, The Dalek World and The Dalek Outer Space Book. Needless to say, they are classics of their kind. Pure Nation and pure Dalek-ness. 

I did some sporadic abuse on the covers many moons ago to produce some alternate versions but it was early days and the work on them was a bit variable. So I've gone back to them and created something a bit more slicker. I'd even added a new Quarky varient...

These are they... 

Hardback notebooks based on these designs (along with some others that may be familiar to regular viewers of my tat) are now available from my RedBubble store here.

Jodie Whittaker on Old Doctor Who annuals

Well, the new trailer for the Doctor Who new series has debuted at SDCC and on line... and well, it looks good doesn't it? 

Fired by the freshness and enthusiasm of the thirty second clip show, I've gone back and re-purposed some of the old familiar Doctor Who annuals of old. (including the 1978 one which I've struggled with over the years, trying to find some way of doing it justice.) All this despite the fact there's still only around six or seven official pictures of Jodie Whittaker and the cast to play around with...

I hope you like them. 

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