In 1992, I made an effort to gather information,
about the late Brian Lewis, with the idea of publishing
a small appreciation of his life and career.
Back then, it was all about writing letters and sending them out!
Then sitting back and waiting to see what came back.
In the end, not very much came back and I started a new job. My life changed direction and my enthusiasm for self publishing evaporated.
It was a shame, that some of the leads that I was given, came to naught but the information that I am using to form these posts, came directly from the hand of Mister Lewis himself.
One of the few contacts that I made was with Alan Vince and in 1993, he very kindly, sent me a photocopy of a
hand written resume that he had received from Brian.
In the last part of Brian's resume, we had come as far as 1966.
So we are beginning this post at his entry for
1967/8/9 Worked on various puppet projects for films for C.O.I. Apple Films - all came unstuck (in) 1970 - first heart attack.
1970/71/72 Years of struggle to survive, doing any bloody thing - even living on Soc. Sec.
1972 Joined Linden Artists (after a period in pornography, drawings, films, etc ) also a stint on Countdown drawing feature material, also Thunderbirds, U.F.O., etc. Also odd bits of advertising work and assisting film designer.
The letter from Brian is undated but the list of years ends at 1972 and in the final paragraph he writes:
"From then on, never looked back - now doing all manner of book illo's, strip work, paperback covers, etc, etc, etc.
.... and whatever the future brings tea-la!
P.S. Not forgetting my stint in House of Hammer"
Since Brian makes no mention of Dez Skinn's other publishing venture, Starburst magazine, which began in December 1977, it is possible that this resume was written before that time.
1977 seems to have been a busy year for Brian as he contributed illustrations, like the one above, for convention badges, as well as covers for convention booklets and even fanzines.
It was the year that Star Wars came out and the science fiction fans were buzzing in anticipation. It's effect can be seen in the badge, where a wanton Princes Leia type female is backed up by a Chewbacca type Wookiee.
Brian Lewis seems to have enjoyed including a touch of eroticism in these images. The four badges are all drawn on one sheet of art board and three of them depict semi-naked women. I don't know if it was a holdover from the time he spent drawing erotic illustrations, something he refers to in the resume, or something he just enjoyed doing... he certainly did it well.
The cover that he contributed to the young Steve Green's fanzine, Astron, followed a similar theme and according to
zinewiki.com :
The cover artwork for Astron #1 was commissioned by Green
from the noted British magazine and comics artist Brian
Lewis. It coincided with Lewis being commissioned to produce
a Star Wars-themed cover for the first issue of the news-
stand magazine Starburst, hence the inclusion of R2D2 and
Princess Leia lookalikes. The movie had its UK premiere in
December 1977.
Staying with the erotic vein, that I seem to be following at the moment, one of the comic strips that Brian worked on in 1972 was "Suki", for the men's magazine New Direction.
He may, or may not, have lumped this "Carry-On" type humour strip in with his work in pornography but if he did, he was being a trifle harsh because they are sweet and harmless by today's standards.
Suki, was more closely related is drawing style to the work that Brian had done for the weekly comics, along the lines of "Les Dawson is Superflop" or "Charlie's Choice", with a little titilation thrown in.
Les Dawson is Superflop
from the pages of Look-In
(Thanks to The Bronze Age Of Blogs)
Charlie's Choice
from the pages of Wham or Smash.
AND NOW... OUR FEATURE ATTRACTION
SUKI
from the pages of the Men's Magazine
New Direction.
I am lucky enough to have been carrying around with me, for well over forty years now, a collected edition of New Direction that contains two Suki strips. I will post the second one later on.
This one is for Win Wiacek :
"As an aside, one of the very best strips I ever saw was by Brian Lewis called Oh, Suki. I only ever saw two episodes, and I think it’s from a magazine called New Direction. It was a superb blend of cartoon and full colour painting written in the style of a Carry On film; I’ve never seen any others, but it would be great to think there’s a book out there collecting those…"
who is the only person that I have ever found on the Web who has mentioned these strips.
If the full colour strips exist, I have never seen them but given how much I enjoyed Brian Lewis' use of colour, I can only imagine the delight of reading them.
Until the next time.
