The knock- on effect of the rise in interest rates—they went from 9% to 15% over a period of 18 months, was an urgent need on my part to generate as much income as possible in an environment where businesses were going belly-up. One of the businesses heading into meltdown was my agent’s. It wasn’t a question of if, more like when. Despite being one of the most prestigious illustration agencies in London (back in the days when there were about 20 agencies and each one would confine itself to repping no more than 30 illustrators) my agent had always been a bit iffy about payments—the three month wait for payment often extending to six months. In fact a favourite whispered aside at the annual Christmas party would be “When was the last time he paid you?’, followed by “…and how much are you owed?” Fortunately, I had retained a few clients independently, mainly animation studios who I would provide storyboards and backgrounds for. But even these were feeling the pinch, in the case of one studio decamping from their central London studio, letting go 90% of their work force and another studio going bust when they were faced with a post-production bill that they couldn’t pay and the ad agency concerned was not prepared to cover.
Eventually all that was left were my own clients, which was not enough to cover the mega-mortgage, let alone the school fees for our eldest lad, mercifully his younger brother was still learning to crawl.
I needed to source another revenue stream.
The thought occurred to me that comics, might—just might provide a secure source of income. Insofar as they were episodic, with each episode amounting to several pages of work and each complete story amounting to several weeks worth of episodes. So I set about to create some samples…
