Interview: Artist Alan Willow

Alan Willow Illustration: The cover of Front-line Combat No.1, published in 1959. Alan Willow comments, 'This was done for L.Miller & Co. and was the the very first job I ever had published. I did the front cover, all the inside illustrative work and wrote all the stories. Even though it only ran for three or four issues I was very proud of it... being around 18 at the time! I still have a printed copy of No. 1. I was paid the princely sum of £50 for each complete issue... crap money, even for those days!'

GACCH: Could you give a little background to Alan Willow the person, as opposed to the artist and illustrator?
Alan Willow: From being a kid, I always loved comics. In fact I've still got some I did when I was about eight years old! After I left school, I managed to get a job with Sydney Jordan Associates. I was really lucky - I worked up in their studio off Shoe Lane in Fleet Street. I made the tea, fetched Cokes, and did a bit of artwork while watching them drawing. I would practice, and they would help me out and guide me. They had some really good artists - George Stokes, who had a western strip in a newspaper, and Gary Keane, who did a strip called 'How Things Work' or something - information strips and sports stuff. That was my grounding, and when I was good enough to go freelance, I did work for Mick Anglo - who I knew - and illustrated the Green Hornet strip in TV Tornado for a short while, becoming famous for one of the worst bits of artwork that anyone has ever seen! I was quite young, and my drawing was really terrible. I worked for IPC Magazines on a freelance basis, and the picture libraries - I did Air Ace mostly, a lot of covers and sometimes the insides. I was never a very good figure artist, I was better at doing mechanical stuff, machines and aeroplanes and things like that. I also worked for D.C. Thomson as well, on Victor. Then I moved up to Leeds, and got a job in a studio doing licensed characters for t-shirts, chocolate boxes - Easter and Christmas ranges. I went freelance again, and worked for Bassetts the confectioners, for sixteen years, again I did a lot of their Easter and Christmas ranges - Dangermouse, Mr Men, Hanna Barbera characters, and Disney. I designed a lot of packaging for them and that was my main work during that period. I worked for another packaging company, Magna.

Illustration: Alan Willow's rough for the opening page of the Mission File 'Jet Stream' in issue 27 of the Redan Thunderbirds magazine, and how the artist interpreted it for the printed issue.

Then I started working for Redan. For them I did general ideas, concepts for puzzles and games for other artists to do the finished artwork. I did Arthur magazine for them, the complete magazine - the artwork and I wrote the main picture stories, but that didn't last very long... about six or seven issues. And then Thunderbirds started, and I think I actually gave them the concept of the mission pull-outs. They said they had five pages, and wanted puzzles for that. So I said, how about doing a storyline with puzzles interspersed, so you solved one puzzle then went on to the next. But the thing was, the people who did the finished artwork, I mean it was alright but it wasn't the way I visualised it at all. I've still got all my original sketches for those, and they were done very loose and free, with a lot of action in it - more like a picture strip story. But that was how they wanted it, they used my ideas, and I did that for six years.

GACCH: Did you not want to do any of the finished artwork yourself?
Alan Willow: The main reason for doing it that way was they wanted it digitally, and I'm absolute crap on computers (laughs). I've got Photoshop on my computer and I play around with it from time to time, but I much prefer actually drawing and painting. But the whole business has gone around, as you probably know, and they want everything on disc now. So I was happy just doing the concepts and ideas, and handing it on to someone else.

GACCH: Did you know who any of the artists were?
Alan Willow: I never met any of the other artists on Thunderbirds, but I particularly liked the first artist they had doing the main picture story. He was later replaced by others. The big cutaway diagramatic illustrations were particularly good. It was successful, it ran like that for six years and now they're on reprints and still running so it must have been okay.

Alan Willow Illustration: TV21 & Joe 90 issue 30, dated 18 April 1970

GACCH: Going back, the TV21 & Joe 90 covers were done for Martspress, weren't they?
Alan Willow: Yes, the people who started up Martspress were Leonard Matthews and Val Holding. Leonard used to be one of the directors at IPC Magazines, and he was quite a tough character. Martspress was a very small outfit, and I knew Leonard from IPC when I used to work there, which is why he contacted me to do the covers. In those days I don't think my artwork was all that good, I didn't rate myself very much, and the artists who did the inside work were brilliant, they had some superb artists. But for some reason, I don't know why, they seemed to like my covers, which is why I did them.

GACCH: Can you recall why they changed to artwork covers, as initially they had newspaper style covers like the original TV21?
Alan Willow: I didn't know why the format was changed, but I imagine the illustrative 'comic style' approach would have been more appealing to the readers. I was freelance at the time. I had a little room just off Farringdon Road, where IPC was. I rented a space with a couple of other artists, so they knew us as a little group. I suppose that's why he contacted me to do the covers - it's a long time ago and I can't quite remember exactly but it was something like that. He knew me anyway from when I was at IPC, and did the Air Ace picture library covers. I think that was how I got it. There was a group of people at that time, most of them originated from IPC or Fleetway. There were various breakaway companies starting, usually on the basis of being given one title, and they would form a little company. There would be an editor and a manager, and they would ring up a couple of artists and writers, and get something going. I mean, Martspress was just a couple of offices - it wasn't a big company or anything. I don't know how long they ran for. At that time, there were a lot of small offshoot companies starting up. There was one guy, an Italian, I forget his name now, but he did Hanna-Barbera's Fun Time, and I did that for him. But there were a lot of small operations going on.

Alan Willow
Illustration: Joe 90 ponders The Thin Red Wire in the Thunderbirds annual 1971.

GACCH: The other covers for TV21 & Joe 90 rotated with other popular TV series at the time, like Star Trek and Land Of The Giants. How did you decide what to feature in your cover illustrations?
Alan Willow: I was told what to do. They would say, for the next cover on such-and-such a date, we want Land Of The Giants, and it would usually be an excerpt out of the main picture story.

GACCH: What medium would you use for the TV21 & Joe 90 covers?
Alan Willow: I used gouache. I would draw it out on thin paper in pencil. When I got the drawing right, I would trace it down onto a piece of watercolour board and then paint it. I still work in gouache, I quite like it - it's a nice medium and fairly strong. You can go back to almost a watercolour finish, or if you want to build it up you can make it quite opaque and strong and bright. Nowadays they just need very simple line drawings, and all the colour and airbrush work would be put in digitally, which I think is a good thing. For comics I think digital artwork is far better. I can remember doing lots of artwork using an airbrush, and the airbrush would splatter, or the colour would run underneath the mask, and if you can't hide it you've got to start the whole bloody job over again! With computers you don't have that problem.

Alan Willow Illustration: The last painted cover of TV21, dated 4 July 1970, before Star Trek was promoted to an opening strip page on the front.

Alan Willow: Computers weren't around then, so everything was done by hand really. I mean, I'm quite a good hand letterer, and when I did my own comics, I wrote them, drew them and did the lettering, the titles - everything. But I work in a school now, and all the kids are great at pulling stuff off the computer but they can't do (speech) bubble writing or hand lettering. I show them how to do it but they just can't get it. I think a lot of kids are losing those skills now...

GACCH: Can you tell us about how you came to do the illustrations for the Doctor Who novelisations?
Alan Willow: I just did the insides, for about five of the books. The publisher was quite happy with them but I was quite young then, and my drawing wasn't particularly good. I don't know what you thought of them?

GACCH: I quite like them actually.
Alan Willow: Oh well (laughs), no accounting for taste! I was working at the time through an artists' agency called Rogers and Company - a guy called Jack Wall. Marvellous bloke! Arrow Books was one of his main customers, and he put the work in my direction. I went down to see them, and the editor told me, 'This is the story, and the scenes I want you to illustrate are this one, and this one, etc.' from the book. So I was pretty much told what to do.

GACCH: Would you have been given photographic reference for the actors or monsters?
Alan Willow: Yes. I can't remember but I would have been photographs or some form of pictorial reference as you would have needed those in front of you to draw them.

Illustration: Some of Alan Willow's illustrations for the early Target Doctor Who novelisations: from left to right, The Cybermen, The Abominable Snowmen, and The Sea-Devils.

GACCH: Was there any chance you might have done a cover?
Alan Willow: I was just never asked to do covers, just the inside illustrations. It wasn't a massive amount of work. Do you have the actual books? I ask as I have this website now, and the only reason I built it is because one of the kids at school is a genius on computers, and he said, 'Come on Mr Willow, you've got to have a website!'. But I didn't have anything to put on it because a lot of the work I've got is for licenced characters, and for copyright reasons I couldn't use that. So I dug up some really old stuff I found and said, 'put that on in the meantime' and I'll replace it later on, and that's basically what's there. But he had a look through the archives, and found my name on those Doctor Who books I had done. But the only thing is, he was a bit cheeky - and fifteen - and he thought it would be really funny to put my name on all of them! I told him to change it, and put it back how it was.

GACCH: The website 'archive' also features an Eerie magazine cover from 1968, so how did that come about?
Alan Willow: Oh yes, I did that when I went to New York. I was really young, and I was given the address of this guy who a friend of mine knew, and I phoned him up and he said I could crash at his place in the Bronx. While I was there I went round looking for work, and I went to Warren magazines and actually met James Warren. I said, 'I'm an artist over from England for a while - have you got any work?' and I showed him my stuff. He asked, 'Do you want to do a cover? How much would you charge?', and like a bloody idiot I said fifty dollars, and I think he jumped over the desk and shook my hand! (laughs) I think the going rate at the time was about two hundred!

Alan Willow Illustration: Alan Willow's cover for Eerie issue 19, December 1968.

Alan Willow: I had a great time in New York. I went to D.C. Comics, and just went into reception and said, 'I'm over from England and really like comics. Can I meet anyone and have a look around?' They said 'hang on', and next minute this guy in t-shirt, shorts and sandals came down the stairs - he was one of the top guys there - and said, 'Hi! Come on up!'. And I met all the artists who were my heroes! They were just ordinary guys sitting at their desks working - I couldn't believe it! They took me round, and there was little bald-headed guy with glasses, and he said, 'Hello', and I asked, 'Who are you?', and he replied, 'Carmine Infantino.' Absolutely brilliant artist, I knew his work and everything. Joe Kubert was there. It was just absolutely amazing. I don't think that would happen in England so much, just walk in off the street. The guy was really nice, and I asked, 'Is there any chance of doing any work?', and he said 'Yeah, stick around'. But I didn't. I looked in the papers at the time, and there was about three columns of 'artists wanted' - it was just unbelievable, but I didn't have a green card, or a permit to stay in New York, so I went to San Francisco after that.

GACCH: There's also a cover illustration - Age Of The Dinosaurs - on your website?
Alan Willow: That was for Bassetts the confectioners. You recall the sweet cigarette picture cards? That was the album for them. I did a lot of those. I did one on space, dinosaurs, animals, Bananaman I drew for them... loads of them. They didn't have any sort of editorial staff there, so they just asked for an album, with fifty cards and all the copy to go with it. You choose the subject, just do what you want. So I did the whole thing. Sometimes it was a wallchart, or a poster, to fit the cards on. I invented some characters called the Vorgans...

And it is here, dear reader, that time suddenly spins back nearly thirty years to the summer of 1978 when this writer - aged a tender 13 - collected these very same World Of The Vorgans sweet cigarette cards - Vorgans being reptilian humanoids with crested heads. And for the rest of the afternoon after the interview, I'm quite chuffed at discovering who the creator was after all these years. And Alan Willow is no less surprised, though for different reasons.

Alan Willow: Oh my god! I've actually met someone who read it! My brother in California has got the poster with all the cards on - the complete set. I did a lot of stuff like that for Bassetts - all one-offs, the product of a fevered imagination! I did the Vorgans when I first moved to Leeds, living in a bedsit with my wife and first baby, before we found a house. I drew them at the kitchen table! Each card was about twice up on printed size, again in gouache. I did another called Survival On Star Colony 9, about a guy with a strange creature on a lead. It was a prison colony on another planet. I don't know what was in my head when I did that stuff!

Alan Willow
Illustration: World Of The Vorgans was a fantasy quest across an alien planet, as young Gior is sent to find the Gem of Ganos in the Land of Eternal Night (left, top centre and right), while Survival On Star Colony 9 pits human Ranil Zen against the Raidons (bottom centre and right). © Petal Designs.

GACCH: You mentioned you might have done something for Space:1999?
Alan Willow: It might have been the jigsaws but I really can't remember. I did so much stuff in those days, as I worked with art agencies. They were in touch with D.C. Thomson, IPC, various other companies, and a lot of the stuff I did was licenced characters. It's like the annual stuff - I looked at it (see the Joe 90 illustration above, and the Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet illustrations below), it definitely is my stuff but I can't remember doing it.

Alan Willow Illustration: Prog 126 of 2000AD & Starlord, dated 18 August 1979, with a cover promoting Disaster 1990! drawn by Alan Willow.

GACCH: One strip I do recall you doing in the late 1970s was Disaster 1990, for 2000AD?
Alan Willow: Was that about the rising water levels? That's another one of mine which wasn't that brilliant! I've got a whole load of original 2000AD comics, and the artists in it are absolutely superb. I don't know why I was taken on to do that strip, as my figure drawing wasn't really up to scratch at the time.

After the interview, this writer became involved in trying to identify the artists of another SF strip called Starhawk, which ran through various D.C. Thomson comics in the late 1970s and early 1980s... and some more of Alan's work crops up here! He drew the strip for issue 51 of The Crunch (see below), issue 1063 of Hotspur & Crunch, and 1097 of Hotspur. After been shown the relevant pages at the Starhawk website, Alan comments, 'I had completely forgotten about that one. It's so strange to see my work for D C Thomson again after all this time. I can only say that the quality of their scripts matched the quality of my artwork!!! I think that at that time my figure drawing left a little to be desired although the enthusiasm and action was there! I also remember a strip I did for D C Thomson about robots rebelling against their human masters! And also one, I think, called 'Castles in the Sky' or something like that.'

GACCH: Did you do any more comic work after that?
Alan Willow: I moved up to Leeds about 1977, but I was still in touch with an art agency in London - I think they got me Disaster 1990. I did that for a while, in my spare time. Then when I left the job I was working in, I went freelance and I did a lot of work in packaging design. And I worked for Waddingtons Games as well.

GACCH: Was that just the packaging, or the games themselves?
Alan Willow: Both. I did the actual puzzles - wrote them, designed them and did the artwork. They had a series called Pocket Puzzles, and I had a completely free hand on that. It was a set of six initially, and it was like a box of playing cards. The idea was each card in the pack had a different puzzle or game on it. Some you could put together to make up a board, and some were cut out things. It was something to keep kids happy on holiday or travelling. Something you could keep in your pocket. So they left it completely to me, and I chose the subjects. We did one on dinosaurs, pirates, space ones, all different things like that.

There's an artists' agency in Norfolk called Simon Gurling, and I did some work for them when they relaunched the Wombles. I illustrated an annual, and also did the style guide for them. What happened was several artists submitted Wombles drawings, and mine were chosen. I went down to Copyright Promotions in Banbury in Oxfordshire, to meet the agent, and was given photographs of the Womble characters. And then I went to London, where they filmed the animations, and my job was to turn the puppets into line drawings that other artists could follow. So that was quite a big job, doing all the characters and their machines - the helicopter, the car and the other things they had. But it didn't last long, and the relaunch's success was in question. I think they did two series, but the spin-offs from all the licensing didn't really work. They did two annuals, and only a few other bits and pieces. But Thunderbirds has taken off again, and did really well. I can understand Redan for doing reprints, as there's a new generation of kids. No good for artists from my point of view though.

Illustration: Alan Willow's rough for the opening page of the Mission File 'Ravine Rescue' in issue 28 of the Redan Thunderbirds magazine, and how the artist interpreted it for the printed issue.

GACCH: Now that you're no longer doing Thunderbirds, are you doing anything else for Redan?
Alan Willow: Not for Redan. I'm starting a project of my own. Another thing I've done is work in schools for kids with special needs and learning difficulties, and what I did, because they know I'm a cartoonist and draw, the kids would ask me to do drawings for them, to help them. I've got a lot of work as well for Leeds Training And Enterprise Council, doing educational games to go round schools. So the last few years a large chunk of my work has been on educational projects. I've noticed a lot of school worksheets are really boring so I am going to use the story/puzzle format I developed using my own characters to make them more interesting - adventure stories and puzzles combined. But you've got to do it to National Curriculum, so I'm working with a maths teacher and we're trying to do something together. I like the creative side and the concepts, more than doing finished artwork as I don't have the patience for it any more. At the moment it's in very early stages, and we don't know if it will take off or not.

And the Gerry Anderson Complete Comic History wishes Alan Willow the best of luck with this new venture.