Nigel Parkinson, Cartoonist

Nigel Parkinson, Cartoonist
Me at a Comic Con

Sunday 3 March 2013

Dandy Days

I first drew for The Dandy in 1983- that's thirty years ago (yikes!)- and the man who gave me the job was Ian Gray (far left) who I've written about here. But in 1985, while on a three day trip to Dundee, I made a bit of a breakthrough, thanks to Ian again, and also the self-proclaimed Comics' Genius, Jimmy MacKenzie (centre) who took it upon himself to give me sage advice and some blunt words of encouragement. Between the two of us, on a pub crawl in Dundee, we came up with a script which, despite the copious amounts of alcohol consumed, I managed to draw up the following morning before going into the DC Thomson office for 9am. Ro, (front), is the famous DCT touch-up artist and colourist, etc, the only permanent member of the team during the entire time I worked for The Dandy. I don't know why I wasn't invited to her Leaving Do last year. Must have been an oversight. On the right is Morris Heggie, who became editor in 1987 and, a scant 11 years later (!) offered me the Owen Goal strip, which really established me there, once and for all. He's now in charge of archives and special projects. Here's one for the archives, eh, Mo?! I don't know how Steve Bright got you all to pose for a photo in a pub, though. What are the chances?

2 comments:

Keith said...

Whatever Happened to Jim MacKenzie??

NP said...

Jim left DCT around 1990... it's a long story...