Well, to begin with, we’re all fairly sure now there was a big bang, and some 13.8 billion years later, give or take, I came along. That was in Liverpool, where I later studied at what is now the city’s John Moores University. Specialising in economics, I left with a Social Studies degree and an ‘Er, what happens now?’ expression.
Jobs included sealing cardboard boxes in a warehouse, calculating the bonuses for the city’s grave diggers at Liverpool City Council, and (laughably ineptly) drumming in a band. Then I saw the ad in the Liverpool Echo – “Could you be a scriptwriter for today’s top teenage girls’ magazine?” Demonstrating breath-taking chutzpah, I sent off a sample script. Demonstrating breath-taking forensic skill, someone spotted a speck of talent in it. In a ‘You couldn’t make it up’ moment, they gave me a job.
So it was off to that there London, to IPC Magazines, to write romantic fiction photo-stories. As we’ve all discovered recently…economics…romantic fiction…it’s just the same, really. Anyway, for one reason or another, I seemed to get to grips with telling sequential-image stories.
Adventure beckoned – the boys’ adventure market, that is – when the re-launched, photo-story-featuring Eagle took me on as assistant editor. Next, as the photo-story fad faded, it was time for pure comic-strip, and the role of editor on the short-lived, minor-cult classic Scream!
SCREAM! STORY IMAGE © 2013 EGMONT UK LTD.
A switch of company to Marvel Comics UK followed, where the now group editor Rimmer worked on titles including the UK version of Spider-Man Weekly, the critically acclaimed Captain Britain, and the hugely popular and mega-successful Transformers.
Adventure beckoned again when I took the plunge to forsake editorial work, striking out on my own as a freelance writer. And glory be, I’m still one today…so that ‘Er, what happens now?’ expression is still getting plenty of use.
(For comic writing credits, click here)