Tube Surfing: 2 December 2008

It is not often we would advertise cars here on downthetubes but take a look at this cutaway of a Honda Accord. The artist is Graham Bleathman, more familiar perhaps for creating cutaways of Thunderbirds or other Gerry Anderson creations. Graham turned the inside of the vehicle into numerous rooms with workers in them performing the functions that the car requires. These designs were then passed over to model makers and CGI animators to turn the concept into a 30 second Honda advert entitled All In One Place. More of Graham's designs for the car, and the finished advert, can be found on the Motion Theory website. Other examples of Graham's work can be found on his own website.

The London Evening Standard began reprinting Modesty Blaise strips as of yesterday. The strip is The Gabriel Set-Up written, as all Modesty Blaise newspaper strips were, by Peter O'Donnell with art by Jim Holdaway. This was the third Modesty story originally published in the London Evening Standard beginning in January 1964 and reprinted in the first of Titan's current set of Modesty Blaise softcover reprint books, itself entitled The Gabriel Set-Up. It is good to see a major newspaper printing an adventure strip, even if it is one that is readily available elsewhere, so let's hope that they get good feedback from their readers.

Meanwhile in the new Radio Times, the one with the Doctor Who Christmas special on the cover, artist Graeme Neil Reid has turned mild mannered reporter Andrew Marr into SuperMarr in a four image colour comic strip as part of the magazine's Review Of The Year. Graeme talks about the creation of the strip on his blog I Got No Work Done Today Because... and teases about a new secret project that he is working on.

The Western Fiction Review blog has an interview with Doctor Who cover artist Tony Masero on the subject of his numerous covers for western novels including the Edge and Adam Steele series. Masero produced covers for Target Doctor Who paperbacks as diverse as the first Doctor story The Reign Of Terror, the third Doctor story The Ambassadors Of Death and the sixth Doctor story Terror Of The Vervoids which do receive a passing mention in the interview.

Finally a brief piece of Commando Webbing. Commando and Panini Spiderman writer Ferg Handley is interviewed on the Commando Mag website using questions supplied by Commando readers. In the interview, which is spread over two parts, Ferg talks about his inspiration of writing the war stories and the amount of research that they entail, as well as discussing his recurring Commando characters, Ramsey's Raiders. While Ferg does not have a website or a blog he will be appearing at the Hi-Ex comics convention in Inverness on 14/15 February 2009. Part One of the interview is here, followed by part two here.

(With thanks to Katie Bleathman, Richard Sheaf and Steve Holland)