Bizarre Fathers/Glenn Fabry

In the summer of 1987, my friend Simon and I were working on a collection of songs for our next tape, provisionally entitled 'Bizarre Fathers', which was also the title of one of our songs. (The song had been written as a response to the behaviour of some of my friend's dads, like the one that slept every night in an armchair.)

That summer, I was also working at Oddbins in Shepperton. My boss had pointed out one of the customers to me - a very dishevelled looking character, with an impressive drinking habit, who kept strange hours - and said that he was a comic artist. 

Now, while this was the summer after both 'Watchmen' and 'The Dark Knight' - what a year 1986 had been! - I was still reading 2000AD and this chap allegedly worked for that comic. So, one afternoon, when he looked slightly less sociopathic than usual, I asked him if he really did draw for 2000AD and, if so, which strip. It turned out that he was Glenn Fabry, who drew 'Sláine'.

At that time, I liked my art to be quite literal and representative and it was a few years before I'd come to realise just what an amazing artist Glenn Fabry was, but, all the same, I thought this was a great opportunity, so I asked him if he'd draw the cover for 'Bizarre Fathers', and I was pleasantly surprised when he agreed.

However, over the next few weeks our exchanges became a little more stressed; I would ask him how the art was coming along and he was would be a bit terse and evasive. It didn't take long before I was only asking him every second or third time he came in. That said, it didn't stop me chatting to him and sometimes he was quite talkative and sometimes he clearly just wanted to get out of the shop. I just rolled with it, chuffed to be talking to someone who, in my eyes, was a bit of a celebrity and whom I found genuinely liked.

One day when he came in he asked me how much I'd be paying for this piece of art and this rather caught me out. Indeed, I can see now that perhaps both of us should have thought to discuss this upfront. Back then, I really wasn't sure what to say; I had no idea what the going rate might be. I suggested a couple of cases and a bottle of whatever cans and spirits it was that he drank at the time and he left without really indicating whether that was acceptable or not.

A couple of days later he brought in the artwork in the picture above. He told me he'd left the father figure in pencil to make him appear ghostly but I wonder whether, really, he abandoned the piece when he realised that I wasn't going to pay him a decent rate (even now, twenty-nine years later, I feel a bit embarrassed about it). 

But I was delighted with the drawing and treasured it for years before surrendering it to my parents' loft for safe-keeping. My brother came across it recently and I brought it home from London, this weekend. Time, I think, to get it framed and up on the wall. 

And Glenn, I'm sorry and thank you very much.