|
 By creator Pete Nash
It was the summer of 1985. I had finally landed a job as a design sub-editor on The Sun, Britain’s biggest-selling daily newspaper. But I wasn't as happy as I should have been. Having spent two years working on various Fleet Street tabloids as a freelance journalist seeking a full-time job, it should have been a cause for celebration. Instead, it felt like a bad career move because I feared that my prospects for advancement in the design department would be limited. In the event, my decision to accept the job turned out to be the right one. As the design department was responsible for processing the daily cartoons, I was exposed to the wonderful, original artwork of strips like George and Lynne and the fantasy heroine Axa. I was both inspired and determined. That was what I really wanted to do - a newspaper cartoon strip! It wasn't so much a new ambition as a rediscovered one. At school I was crazy about comics - so much so that I drew my own comic for my English CSE project when I should have written reviews of four very dull books we'd been given to read! Had the career advisors at school responded more positively to my desire to be an artist, I would have liked to have gone to Art College. But they told me I was deluding myself and that I should pursue a more practical career. After leaving school with no qualifications except Grade One CSEs in Art and English, I got a job as a messenger on a trade magazine called National Newsagent. Tim Miles, a reporter on the mag who went on to become a brilliant writer on the Daily Mail, advised me to pursue a career as a journalist. When I reminded him I didn't have any qualifications, he told me to "make some up." It was very good advice, and three months later I was working as a trainee reporter on a weekly paper in Canterbury. But I digress. Fast forward to 1985. There was only one problem with wanting to draw a newspaper strip; I wasn't a trained artist. Sure, I loved comics and I had that CSE in art, but that was it. Fortunately, I was deluded enough to believe I could teach myself - and so I spent every spare minute of the next few months sketching like a man possessed until I felt my efforts were at least presentable. My girlfriend Jill (now my long-suffering wife) thought I had taken leave of my senses, and she was probably right. My next problem was to come up with a theme for the strip. I firmly believed it should be a continuity strip, despite the fact that such strips were on the wane at the time. I toyed with a number of ideas before deciding on a football theme. There was no other football cartoon around, apart from Roy of the Rovers, which I believed had become tired and dated. I wanted the hero of my strip to be someone ordinary people could relate to: someone fallible and imperfect. And so Nick Jarvis was born. An ordinary guy with an ordinary name. He was an apprentice engineer who played football for a non-league side that had been drawn to play Manchester United in the third round of the FA Cup. His side were well beaten, but Nick shone, and he was spotted and signed by Jim Cassidy, manager of First Division club Thamesford.
So I'd created a strip and drawn the first ten panels. Although my drawings were amateurish, overdrawn and messy, I was confident the plots and dialogue would be good enough to sustain it and that my artwork would improve with time. But would the editor of The Sun see it that way?
The first Striker story featured a young Nick joining Thamesford, only to be accused of making love to a girl under 16. He was innocent, of course; the girl had been paid by rival team-mate Gary Lewis to set him up, and the truth finally emerged in court. A few months after Striker's debut, I had the nerve to ask Kelvin for a pay rise. "I'll tell you what," he said, "I'll give you a pay rise when you learn to draw." I had switched to working a two-day week on The Sun's design desk in order to spend an additional four days a week writing and drawing Striker. It soon became too much, so in 1986 I resigned from The Sun and became a full-time freelance, producing the strip from home. Kelvin wished me luck when I left, saying I could have my job back if Striker went "belly up". Not only did Striker keep going, but it went from strength to strength.
In August, 1990, Striker and all the other cartoons on The Sun's strips page switched to full colour. It was still drawn in pencil, brush and ink in A3 size, but then reduced by photocopier to the size it would appear in the paper and coloured with Pantone markers. But the biggest change to Striker - the switch to 3D - had its origins back in 1997. I was aware that computer programs like Photoshop or Illustrator could be used to colour Striker in a cleaner, simpler and more effective way than markers, and so I watched some demos to see how it might look. Photoshop's capabilities were impressive but I remember mentioning to the demonstrator that it was a shame it couldn't calculate perspectives (nowadays Photoshop can). The demonstrator said that if I wanted a program that could do that, I would have to check out the 3D packages. My knowledge of computers was so small I didn't even know such programs existed. But I was sufficiently intrigued to check them out. Three months later, armed with a copy of Lightwave and assisted by a consultant who specialised in the software, I sat down at my first PC and set out to learn how to produce 3D-generated artwork. It was a long and arduous process that took up so much time, I hired another artist, John Cooper, to draw Striker until it was ready to be launched in 3D. John was only the second artist to draw the strip - the first being a Spaniard called Manuel Benet who drew a few episodes in 1990 while I was working on another project. And so, on March 16, 1998, Striker made its debut as the world's first 3D-generated cartoon strip.
It was a disaster. The best thing that could be said about it was that it was different. But did it look better? Absolutely not. The colours were murky; my retouching of the 3D images looked heavy and clumsy, and the images themselves lacked the comic "feel". Stuart Higgins, the new editor at The Sun, didn't like it and neither did most of his staff, although I remember being heartened by a phone call from Steve Waring - later to become The Sun's sports editor - who said the new look was a bold move and "the future of comics". Despite Steve's welcome encouragement, I was extremely depressed that all my efforts to improve the strip had seemingly come to nothing. The phrase "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" came to mind.
After three weeks, I phoned the managing editor to say that I was going to end the 3D look and return to the drawn strip. He didn't try to talk me out of it! For the rest of that year, Striker continued to be drawn by John Cooper while a talented writer called Andy Walker was working with me on some of the stories. I was also writing another strip in The Sun called Psycops, which I had created three years earlier.
The new format of Striker made its debut on January 4, 1999. I was reasonably happy with it at the time, but looking back I still think the colours - particularly the tones on the characters' faces - were too dark and murky. But the overall look and composition was much better, and this time Striker 3D was here to stay - there was no going back to paper, pencil and ink!
The new-look Striker was a turning point for the success of the strip. The Mirror tried to match it by hiring an artist to colour their Scorer strip and insert photographic backgrounds. But it wasn't - and isn't - 3D. In 2002, my long relationship with The Sun started to deteriorate. In addition to the newspaper strip, I wanted to fulfil a long-held ambition to publish a weekly comic that would feature Striker as a major part of its content. The Sun and I had many discussions in the months that followed but there were issues that just couldn’t be resolved. In August, 2002, I reluctantly gave a year’s notice to terminate my contract. Twelve months later, on Thursday, August 28, 2003, I said goodbye to The Sun - and Striker the comic was born.
Surviving as an independent publisher was always going to be tough and so it proved to be. I had a launch budget of around £300,000, which put my family’s house firmly on the line. That may sound like a lot of money and it is – but compared to the £15 million spent by the big publishers of Zoo and Nuts, it was peanuts. The first comic consisted of 32 pages, of which 13 were comic strip pages. The rest were mainly feature pages produced by my good mate Steve McKenlay, who quit his job as Sports Editor of The Sunday Mirror to help me at Striker. My artists were Simon Ravenhill, Juan Cabrera, Will Turner, Luca Bonomo and Joel Carpenter, while Lucinda Martin and my wife Jill worked miracles in the management department. I remember the indescribable feeling of relief when our distributors called me to say the projected sales figure for our first issue was 39,000. Three days later, they called again to say they had made a mistake – the actual figure was just over 29,000. That hurt. It meant we were dangerously close to our break-even figure of 28,000. For the first six weeks sales hardly dipped, due mainly to a promotion we had in WH Smith. But when the promotion ended, availability plummeted – and sales slowly began to slide. Wholesalers and retailers told us our product was good and that we needed to spend more on promotion – well, they would say that, wouldn’t they – but we just didn’t have the budget. People, young and old alike, loved the comic and we were inundated with phone calls from disappointed readers saying they couldn’t find Striker. We in turn inundated our distributor with phone calls and had many angry meetings with them. I always knew that in the long-term we would need to raise serious money from corporate investors – but as sales slipped below break even, I began to wonder whether we would survive that long. A drastic solution was needed – and we found it with an idea that was to make publishing history. In July 2004, Striker 3D Ltd became Striker 3D Plc – a move that would allow us to sell shares to our readers. Despite my fears that we would never raise enough money, our fantastic readers raised nearly £200,000 by buying shares in blocks of £25. It was a truly phenomenal achievement. An advertising agency pledged another £100,000 by agreeing to trade future invoices for shares.
The future once again looked promising. We even managed to cut our operating costs while increasing pagination to 36 pages by adding a glossy cover. Combined with an increase in the cover price from £1 to £1.50, our operating figures quickly went into the black. Months of meetings with potential investors followed. All were amazed by Striker’s innovative 3D artwork and gripping storylines but they just couldn’t get their heads round the fact that adults would want to buy a comic – even though 20,000 of them were already doing so every Thursday, despite its limited availability. They were depressing days. I was sick of the money men telling us what a great product we had whilst politely declining to invest. Sales were continuing their gentle yet agonising decline and I had to accept that Striker was never going to make it as a stand-alone publication. Somehow, against all the odds, we produced 87 memorable issues of Striker. They included what I believe is probably the best Striker story ever – Chuck’s Choice. But on Thursday, May 12, 2005, the last Striker comic was published.
It looked like the end. But in true Striker fashion, there was a twist in the tale. I was offered the chance to take Striker back to The Sun on terms that would preserve Striker 3D’s independence whilst enabling The Sun to share in its success. It’s been an amazing journey – but the best is yet to come! |
ADVERTISEMENT |
I often wonder why he decided to publish a strip that was so badly drawn. Maybe it was because it was so badly drawn! Whatever the reason, it was Kelvin who gave Striker its debut on November 11, 1985 - replacing Axa - when a less imaginative editor would probably have binned it. 
