Monday, February 18, 2013

X-Ray Specs by Mike Lacey


Some time around November of last year I was asked which comic characters were my favourite, and up in that list was X-Ray Specs, which was illustrated by the fantastic Mike Lacey. Shortly afterwards, I was overwhelmed to receive some original artwork for one of the strips as a Christmas present from my dad! This is my first, and currently only, original artwork that appeared in a British comic that I am lucky enough to own!

Original art is huge and there's no way I could scan the full boards in my A4 scanner, so I've scanned it panel by panel instead. The numbers at the top of the board reveal the size the page was printed at - 209mm across, but the actual artwork is about 38cm x 52cm. I'm not sure what the 66.3 in the bottom right corner is.

Here they are, and as always, click on the images, and then again, to view in full size!
















Although I don't own the issue it appeared in, although I have tried to hunt down a copy, you can find it in Buster dated 6th August 1988.



4 comments:

Peter Gray said...

well done having that...its interesting how big Mike drew...

Lew Stringer said...

That's about the size most of us drew pages for Buster, Peter. (Except for Jack Oliver who, as you know, drew printed size and was brilliant at it.)

Nice present, George. Mike did some excellent work. He'd previously been an engineer so he was not only good at cartoning but also at drawing techincal stuff. Perfect for some of the X-Ray Specs escapades.

The number in the corner would be a note to the printer, and I think it's the percentage to reduce the image for printing. I had a look at my old pages and they carry the same figure.

George Shiers said...

It always amazed me how Mike could draw car engines or plane engines or whatever Ray came across so well - I guess that explains it!

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