Chronicles of the Vagabond is a science fiction comic strip I wrote and illustrated when I was an art student way back in 1985. The story’s follows the adventures of the hapless crew of a lost survey spaceship who, after rather too long in deep space, have started to go a little crazy.
Actually, the story was part of a bigger project called Colossus, a comic strip magazine I published with my good friend Andy Wicks. We wrote and drew it in the scuzzy flat we rented in Kilburn, stumped up enough cash to get a couple of hundred copies printed, then flogged it wherever we could. We were especially proud to get it stocked on the counter at Forbidden Planet, which in those days consisted of two tiny stores just off Tottenham Court Road. If you were hanging around the Comic Mart in London’s Central Hall that year you might have seen us with our squad of pretty salesgirls and an able assistant called James Wallis, who went on to become one of the UK’s top gaming gurus. If you ever bought James’s zine Sound & Fury, I drew some of the covers and illustrated his Judge Dredd lampoon.
We sold every copy of Colossus and, incredibly, broke even. Sadly, we never got round to creating issue two. Maybe one day …
Graham Edwards 