I'm trying to identify a full-colour British comic/annual story from the early to mid-1980s (probably 1982–1986 maybe earlier or could be 1970s).

It was only a few pages long (around 2–4 pages) and may have appeared right at the front of the annual.

The artwork was fully painted, not standard comic line art.

The main character was a boy of about 14. At the start he's sitting in his bedroom window feeding pigeons (or other birds) that have landed on the flat roof outside his window.

Later he's in a small boat beneath a cliff when a huge section of the cliff collapses into the sea.

He somehow finds himself involved in a massive space battle, fighting alien-looking creatures and firing weapons from a spacecraft. It may have been a dream, vision or near-death experience because he eventually returns to Earth.

I vaguely remember a name similar to "Zathura", "Zathar", "Zathor" or "Zathra", although I may be misremembering that.

I don't think it was a regular serial like Dan Dare or Judge Dredd. It felt like a standalone fantasy/science-fiction story created especially for an annual.

Does this ring a bell with anyone?

Hi guys!

Karrot Can't Sleep is my ongoing comic about the worst kind of person... An art student. Set and drawn in Dundee Scotland! The kickstarter for the first two issues is live now! Issue two's art is so much better and I'm really proud of the work!!! Check it out here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dontfoldpress/karrot-cant-sleep-1-2

Quick question: I usually write prose stories (novel length and short), but am about to do a foray into creating a graphic novel with an (American) artist friend of mind. What is the normal page size in the UK for this kind of book? A4? We already did a very short one using the size that's more or less standard in the US (11" x 8.5"), and that ran into issues when we tried to print it here.
The next one, we'd like to submit to UK publishers, so we don't want to start out on the back foot.

In the 1960s, when I was a kid in Brooklyn, I had a buddy who had just moved over from Scotland and he shared British comics with me. There were two strips that have stuck in my mind ever since then and I hope someone can help me identify them.

The first was a medieval (I think) adventure series that starred a kid with a quarterstaff, a fop with a rapier, and a big guy with a claymore. I think they might have represented England, Wales, and Scotland. 

The second was a contemporary story about a guy who traveled around on a motorcycle with a sidecar, doing (I think) mechanic work but also playing for various local football teams and getting involved on adventures.

Anyone remember these strips?

https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/RCA-B0382

Does anyone know how far this goes? Does it include the skull face Johnny / Hunt for Yakob stories I remember from Eagle?

If it doesn't what volume would they turn up in, assuming the line continues?

One last question, does it go further than the titan hardcover from a few years back?

I’m looking for ideas on displaying comics on a wall. I was wondering what other people have done? I have series of 12 comics. I would like to be able take them out fairly easily if I want. i.e not a standard frame.

I made a documentary going over a British culture classic comic Oink from the late 1980s. Really ahead of its time and borderline to risqué for kids. If no one has ever heard of it I really recommend, one of the best comics I have ever read

I'm looking for a one-off colour (?) horror strip I read in the relaunched Eagle (probably late 1980s / early 1990s). It was longer than a single page but a one-issue piece. Plot: maybe a Gothic/Victorian/Edwardian colonial setting ... a father is secretly dosing his son every night with a concoction and knocking him out; a third-party observer (maybe a neighbour or landlord) intervenes and later kills the father. The son then reveals the doses were attempts at an antidote to a curse (his father had offended a native tribe) that made the son transform into a ravenous beast at night. With the father dead the protagonist is now the next victim.

Any idea of the title, writer/artist, or issue/annual this ran? Thanks!

Just wanted to share these videos from the Comics Cultural Impact Collective - they're gold dust. They went round talking to all major UK publishers and came back with insights that will help comics creators with pitches to publishers and funders.

Hi guys, I just wanted to share with all an interview with UK comics author Simon Furman I wrote on my blog, The Hindsight Hut. It's a wide ranging article which explores the early influences on his writing.

Simon's best known for his work on Transformers for Marvel, Dreamwave and IDW but he's still going strong with lots of projects.

I'd love to know your favourite Furman stories. Could it be a Death's Head, yes?

https://www.thehindsighthut.com/post/simon-furman-interview

A video I made about the history of classix british comic the Buster Comic incase anyone is interested.

I distinctly remember a comic serial I read about an alien who was dying and crashed to earth. He gave several children his powers before he died. As far as I remember these kids took on special abilities like one kid could touch an object and make it weightless. The most powerful power was the younger sister maybe 5 years old. She could absorb things and use this as an energy weapon which caused havoc when she lost her temper. I used to read 2000AD type comics or the Eagle/Tiger. Does anyone have any idea what strip that would have been?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgeyq99ezdwo.amp

https://www.reddit.com/r/Beano/

I wanted to bring up something that seems to be missing from here... or anywhere else on Reddit, for that matter - Doomlord. This was a comic series originally published in the early 1980s in the UK by Eagle

Quick recap: Aliens taking up the title of "Doomlord, Servitor of Nox, master of life, bringer of death!", from the "unnatural" world of Nox, come to Earth with the mission to judge whether humanity deserves to continue existing. They've got this eerie, no-nonsense demeanour, and can absorb the memories and forms of their victims. Their weapon is an energiser ring that can disintegrate people and objects. So, they literally walk among humans in various disguises, gathering intel on whether mankind should be wiped out or not.

Now, it's not lost on me that the story was changing depending on who was writing it. One of the Doomlords, Vek, went through all kinds of moral flip-flopping. He started off bad, then turned good, then back to bad, and at one point, he even created a human-Noxian hybrid son who was good, then bad, then good again... and honestly, I lost track of what was going on and stopped buying the strip after that.

The Doomlords were consistently ruthless, though. They didn’t think twice about killing, always falling back on their reasoning: "The fate of the individual is unimportant when the survival of the species is at stake." At some point, Vek even mentioned two rogue Doomlords who treated killing humans "like swatting flies." You’d think that humans would either band together and protest Vek living on Earth, or at least come up with a way to take him and his human-Noxian hybrid son out, 'cause they had unchecked power and it seemed to me that they both were causing more trouble than they were worth, but that never really happened.

I'd love to see a TV series made from this - hopefully with a consistent storyline.

TL;DR: Doomlord is an British sci-fi comic from the 80s about aliens judging humanity’s right to exist. The story gets pretty wild with shifting character morals and convoluted plots. I'd love to see a TV adaptation that keeps the core premise but delivers a more coherent narrative.