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| Cover art by Paul Ward |
BRICKMAN began life as a one page comic strip on the back cover of AFTER IMAGE No.3, a fanzine I published in November 1979.
Only back then he was called "Brick-Person" for some forgotten reason. As that was the final issue of After Image,
the Dim Knight didn't appear again until 1981, when the fanzine bug struck me again and I published METAMORPH (which became
FANTASY EXPRESS with its third issue).
After five issues of METAMORPH/FANTASY EXPRESS, I was beginning to break into comics professionally as a humour artist/writer.
Therefore I put all my energies into comics (rather than writing articles) and gave the (by then) popular Brickman his own
occassional mini-comics: BLIMEY! IT'S BRICKMAN; BRICKMAN ON TOAST; and THE EARLY BRICKMAN.
After that, I tended to produce Brickman strips few and far between, as I had professional comics work to concentrate
on. But the golfball-eyed chumpion of justice had a following in UK fandom so he returned again in Harrier Comics' SWIFTSURE
No.6, and his own BRICKMAN special in 1986. I even managed to sneak him in as a guest star in my "Combat Colin"
strip in Marvel's top-selling TRANSFORMERS comic for a few issues in 1990.
By 1995 I'd been working in comics for 12 years, but feeling the urge to self publish once again, I produced three issues
of YAMPY TALES comic. Within its pages were reprints of Combat Colin (Marvel had returned all rights to me) and brand new
Brickman stories.
BRICKMAN BEGINS! collects all of these adventures, from the very first in 1979, to the last in 1996, together for the
first time in one volume!
Will Brickman return again? He always seems to bounce back. (Although his ball-shaped head might have something to do
with it).
- Lew Stringer, January 2005
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