Apollo 11: Behind the Scenes?

Contributions to our 40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing Comics Celebration album on the downthetubes forum are coming in daily, with this latest gem from comics, storyboard artist and illustrator Martin Baines, a tongue-in-cheek tip of the hat to the film Capricorn One, which capitalised on deeply ingrained claims that the moon landings never happened by positing a faked landing on Mars, all shot in a remote film studio.

Martin's credits include work for Match of the Day Magazine, Spaceship Away and many other magazines: he's represented by Smudged Pencil.

Here at downthetubes we're unconvinced by sceptics - given voice recently by character Tyrone Dobbs in Coronation Street, of all places - that the moon landings never happened, but Martin's art gave us a laugh.

Other contributors so far include Bugpowder contributor Dan Fish with a strip called "The Moon's A Balloon", the Etherington Brothers, Mike Nicoll, Malcolm Kirk, Doctor Who illustrator Colin Howard, games artist Gary Hall and Bob Bello.

More contributions from comics artists and illustrators to help mark this major anniversary for space exploration are very welcome: we see it as an opportunity to present a portfolio of themed work based on space and space exploration (real or imagined) that should generate press interest given the upcoming anniversary.

The album can be “embedded” on any web site. If there’s a strong response to this, we may also do a MyEbook version.

Text pieces are also welcomed: we're not quite sure how to present those yet, perhaps in another part of the downthetubes forum. We don’t want writers to be left out.

If you don't want to join our forum and upload art but would like to join in with the celebrations, simply send your work to johnfreeman6-moonlandinganniversaryart@yahoo.co.uk. Please ensure images are no larger than 2MB in size.

• Visit the downthetubes forum at: http://downthetubes.ning.com