ROMO 2, part 26

So says creative coach Kim Gillingham, interviewed in the current issue of EMPIRE magazine (August 2026, with The Odyssey on the cover). Interviewed by Hayley Campbell, the first daughter of my old mucker Eddie Campbell, with whom I helped craft modern-day tales of the Ancient Greek Gods in his Deadface/Bacchus cycle of stories long before the likes of that fishy young upstart Percy Jackson came along - but that’s a tale for another time.

This arrived in the mail today - an advance copy of the second, paperback edition of my Original Graphic Novel (first in a series), ROMO the WolfBoy. It comes out in the USA on September 1st, becoming available here in the UK on November 26th (HINT: Just in time for Xmas!) And very happy with it I am too. But also, here is where the vital work to make the dream come true really begins. My loins are well girded.

Way back in 1961, more than six decades ago, he originated the Marvel Universe with the advent of The FANTASTIC FOUR. A few years earlier in 1957, for competitors DC, he had come up with a quartet of adventurers who famously cheated death known as The CHALLENGERS of the UNKNOWN. Although Johnny, Sue, Reed and Ben operated at a whole other cosmic level, the parallels were obvious. Following on from them, the hits kept right on coming (or in some instances coming back - his own character, CAPTAIN AMERICA, created with Joe ‘Hymie’ Simon, revived from 1941): IRON MAN, The Incredible HULK, The Mighty THOR, The Avengers, Silver Surfer, the original X-Men, and so on and so forth. All pouring forth from the mind and imagination of one man, Jack Kirby. Editor Stan Lee scripted the stories for the characters Kirby came up with, and for decades took almost all of the credit for them. But as anyone with eyes can see, it was down to the dreams of Jack Kirby all the way.

I used to take comfort in that knowledge.

Whatever else I had or hadn’t managed to achieve in my own comics career, there was still perhaps hope for me ahead.

Although I worked it up further for the occasion, you may recognise that portrait shot from the cover of the first, hardback edition of the book it eventually became. I had woken up with the name, ‘ROMO’, and the essence of the character as a wolf boy fully formed, and went into my then-studio along Rivington Street in yet-to-become trendy Shoreditch, and drew up the following layout sheet that very same day:

So’s not to embarrass anyone, myself not least, I shall be brief.

I knew I had something, and in between other paid work, in fits and starts I gradually built up the universe around ROMO. Then I was finally ready to launch it upon the world, and made THREE (count ‘em, 3) VALIANT ATTEMPTS.

The phoenix for UK Children’s Comics that came before The Phoenix Comic, aka the DFC. Many a fine strip was featured here, the best of them being the caveman-era Mezolith by Ben Haggarty and Adam Brockbank. Sarah McIntyre’s delightful animal comedy Vern & Lettuce was another personal favourite. Rob Deas started out their pro career here, ditto Neill Cameron, Kate Brown, and others I had showcased in my Mammoth Books of Best New Manga series. So this would have been about 2006-7.

Sadly, although I had plenty of discussions with the DFC’s editor-in-chief, I couldn’t agree to the terms of their contract as it was presented by the ultimate boss, Random House. What’s worse, many others went on to regret that they had done so.

Yep. One of the last of the independents, with a warranted reputation for quality. And it came SO CLOSE to happening - for a multi-book deal, too. But I was too immured by the pressures of other work on existing deadlines, and badly fumbled the ball. By the time I finally handed in my colour-spread sample, after a delay of about 8 months, not only was it overcooked and ill-conceived (trying to be all things all at once, rather than a standard piece of continuity), the enthusiasm of the company’s sales reps had all but diminished to zero. It remains one of the great disappoints of my career. 2012 I think. One of these days I’ll show that abortive spread sampler here. But not today.

Picking myself up, licking my wounds, I tried once again, circa 2014…

Wait, what? Yes, that’s right. I tried it out on the best of my then current UK publisher connections, SelfMadeHero… and they politely declined. Head honcho Emma Hayley quite rightly explained that they specialised in Adult Fiction, and had no line or precedent for such material suitable for children or otherwise All Ages. So that was that.

And weirdly, as I am doing this, SelfMadeHero announce their September slate of titles and 2 out of the 4 of them are arguably suitable for kids, or else All Ages. The goalposts shifted when I wasn’t even looking! So we have our aims in common at last and we strike the deal that leads us to here, and a (hopefully mass-market) paperback edition due that will lead on to foreign language editions aplenty and with Book Two of the further adventures of ROMO the WolfBoy in the works and on the way.

“That’s what dreams are for,” says Kim Gillingham. “They’re here to wake you up.”

er, NOT Romo, but this coming Saturday, July 18, I’ll be signing copies of UK Independent Comics revival A1 DEADLINE at Gosh! Comics, London.

And on Sunday, all day, I’ll be here at “Slick-Ziff” (SLCZF), armed with copies of ROMO and much else besides. Come on down and fill your boots, why don’t you.

One last diversionary tale, and for this we go back to 2010.

That there’s a prose book wot I wrote in between all the rest, between roughly 2000-2010 - about two and half of those years straight on the job. Why do I show it here? (official Myriad Editions cover on the left, which I hate: my own design on the right.)

The Clay Dreaming concerns an indigenous Australian (‘Aborigine’) lost in Victorian London - surely a vision of hell to such a person. Not so strange as it is based on real events and largely on real lives and an actual death. But the best transliteration of the foundational Aboriginal concept we call the ‘Dreaming’, Tjukurpa? … It is ‘TRUTH’.