Thursday 24 September 2009

José María Jorge

Sometime in the 80's, back in the day when I were't but a slip of a lad, I sent a letter to DC Thomson's Commando comic. I think I said something along the lines that I thought Commando was bostin' and one day I'd like to be an artist and have my work appear between those illustrious covers. The editor, Ian Forbes, kindly sent a reply and included this photostat of some José María Jorge art sans lettering. I can't remember the story the page is from. I think it's a prologue to a WW2 story. It has something to do with battle between the British army and Zulus. The guy leaning over the body is an Africaans who buries the soldier on his farm.
A bit more about JJ here and visit his own website here.

I was trying to track down the issue the art appeared in so asked over at the Comics UK Commando forum. There was a message from Commando HQ that also explained some of their working methods in the office:

Not sure what the story is, but it will have been one that was under construction when you wrote. In those days there was no "naked" artwork in the office for any length of time as it was ballooned (straight on to the artwork) pretty much as soon as it arrived from Argentina or wherever. This also means it's unlikely to be from a book reprinted at that time as that artwork would have balloons and panels on it from its earlier publication.

With our electronic ballooning, these days the artwork isn't touched at all; simply scanned and dropped into a Quark template to have the text overlaid.

If you wrote in the early 80s, the man in the hot seat was Ian Forbes, George didn't take over until the end of the decade when Ian retired.



2 comments:

  1. Hi, This page comes from Issue 1216 Family of Heroes, printed in 1978.

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  2. Ah, that's great. Thanks for the reply!

    Hm, I'm wondering where the stat came from? As mentioned earlier: the art was lettered soon after arriving in the offices. I can't remember when I received it, but it would have been the early 80s. So this (unlettered) stat comes from artwork that had gone to press 3-4 years earlier.

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