Did You Know...? Gums

Amanda and I - and you I hope - have really enjoyed getting to know our staff through their Desert Island Discs and other blogs so we thought we could keep that going with a new 'feature' Did you Know? with some interesting (hopefully!) facts that will allow you to get to know our colleagues across the sites a little better. And I thought I better get the ball rolling. So for those of you who don't know me, I am Stacey Whittle, I have worked in the Library Services for 21 years now - though I am sure there has been a maths incident or error as that seems a VERY long time! I am a Library Assistant in the Walton Library but what you may not know is that I also write comic strips for children.

“Monster Fun” was originally a weekly children’s comic which ran from 1975 – 1976 when it merged with Buster. “Gums”, the shark with false teeth, is a strip that debuted in 1976 by Roy Davies and Robert Nixon. Monster Fun was resurrected in recent years by the publishing company Rebellion who also publish the British weekly comic “2000AD”. 

I have some history with 2000AD as I used to have a podcast which reviewed 2000AD, and then a second podcast which looked back at the early issues of 2000AD and I interviewed as many 2000AD creators as I could. I was then asked to moderate panels of 2000AD creators at comic conventions, and over the years have interviewed some legends of British comics, like my absolute favourite comic writer John Wagner (the creator of Judge Dredd). I also interviewed Pat Mills, the man who launched 2000AD, Battle and Action among others and was recently seen on Doctor Who Unleashed after his Who comic strip about Beep the Meep was made into an episode starring David Tennant. The artist on that strip was the amazing Dave Gibbons - famously the artist who worked on Watchmen and whom I was lucky enough to interview last year. I’ve interviewed so many comic legends e.g. Brian Bolland, Mick McMahon, and Peter Milligan, Alan Grant, John Higgins, Henry Flint and a host of other amazing comic book creators and over the years I have got to know some of the editorial staff too.  

Out of the blue last year I received a call from one of the editors I knew who was now editing Monster Fun - he thought I was very funny (he is a wise and clever man) and that I would be perfect to take on the challenge of writing Gums. Though I have been a paid writer on and off for years it has always been in non-fiction, articles, reviews and blogs etc. so I thought this was a terrible idea, but he would not be dissuaded, and I found myself with a contract and a deadline and an overwhelming feeling of panic and dread. I spent some time researching how to lay out a comic strip and trying to think of what funny things could happen to a shark with no teeth. I will, thankfully, never have to re-live the feeling of sending my first strip to my editor ever again. Luckily he liked it, gave me some great advice on improving for the next one, and promptly sent me another contract and gave me another deadline. And that has been the way for the last year.  

Every month I think I can’t possibly do it but then an image of a toothless shark on a mobility scooter will pop into my head, or an image of a little goldfish popping out of a sharks bum and I think, yes, ok I CAN do this. So I do. I am extremely lucky to work with the amazing artist Brett Parson, who also draws Tankgirl amongst other things. He is a genius at shark expressions – and I wonder how old he was when he discovered that! And because of how comics work, I send the script off 3 months in advance, and then I don’t have anything more to do with it, and so I wait with baited breath for publication day to see how my script is magically brought to life by Brett and I am always left gobsmacked, and giddy and absolutely amazed that this is something that I do!

I write children’s comics and I couldn’t be more proud!