Combat Colin, a slapstick comedy adventure comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 created, written and drawn by humour comic artist/writer Lew Stringer

Lew Stringer

-Biography:Stringer began his career from the late 1970s with a series of fanzines, many featuring his popular Brickman character; these were read by several pro creators who encouraged Stringer to try comics as a profession and Stringer recalls that "Alan Moore actually introduced me to one of...

. It appeared in a number of Marvel UK

Marvel UK

Marvel UK was an imprint of Marvel Comics formed in 1972 to reprint US produced stories for the British weekly comic market, though it later did produce original material by British creators such as Alan Moore, John Wagner, Dave Gibbons, Steve Dillon and Grant Morrison.Panini Comics obtained the...

 titles.

Publication history

Combat Colin appeared as a back-up humour strip in Action Force comic in the 1980s. Stringer had a back-up story, Robocapers in The Transformers and was asked if he could come up with something similar for Action Force and he came up with a story about a character who was originally named Dumbo when he submitted it.

The story then moved over to The Transformers

The Transformers (Marvel Comics)

The Transformers was an 80-issue American comic book series published by Marvel Comics telling the story of the Transformers. Originally scheduled as a four issue mini-series, it spawned a mythology that would inform other versions of the saga...

comic for a popular run. After editorial changes dropped humour material from Marvel UK's comics in 1991, Marvel UK gave Lew Stringer the rights to Combat Colin and he revived the character in several small-press titles and fanzines, including a Combat Colin Special with new material.

Colin has recently reappeared as a supporting character in the Brickman

Brickman

Brickman is a humour comic strip and character created by UK cartoonist Lew Stringer, and appears to be Stringer's most recurring character. A parody of Batman, the spoof features the adventures of zillionaire Loose Brayne and his partner Tina Trowel who fight crime in Guffon City, fighting...

back-up strips for Image Comics

Image Comics

Image Comics is a United States comic book publisher. It was founded in 1992 by high-profile illustrators as a venue where creators could publish their material without giving up the copyrights to the characters they created, as creator-owned properties. It was immediately successful, and remains...

' Elephantmen

Elephantmen

Elephantmen is an American ongoing monthly comic book published by Image Comics and written by Richard Starkings with art by Moritat and a number of other artists...

series. His final appearance to date will be in the Brickman strip in Elephantmen

Elephantmen

Elephantmen is an American ongoing monthly comic book published by Image Comics and written by Richard Starkings with art by Moritat and a number of other artists...

 No.24, Feb 2010.

Fictional character biography

Colin Doobrey-Smiff, otherwise known as Combat Colin wanted to be a war hero, but even the army thought he was too thick for them; instead, he lived with his Mum and Dad in a suburban English neighbourhood. In the beginning, the strips were simplistic complete slapstick half-page stories. As time progressed, the strip's popularity enabled it to become a full pager. Here, Stringer was allowed to develop the character in a series of two to six part serials. Colin also acquired an assistant, Semi-Automatic Steve, and a host of supporting characters including their girlfriends The Giggly Sisters and a catalogue of recurring villains such as Madprof, Dr Nasty, and Megabrain.

A fan of The Prisoner

The Prisoner

The Prisoner is a 17-episode British television series first broadcast in the UK from 29 September 1967 to 1 February 1968. Starring and co-created by Patrick McGoohan, it combined spy fiction with elements of science fiction, allegory and psychological drama.The series follows a British former...

 television series, Stringer often added references to the TV show in the strip, most blatantly when Combat Colin found himself in "The Place of No Return"; a village resembling Portmeirion

Portmeirion

Portmeirion is a popular tourist village in Gwynedd, North Wales. It was designed and built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975 in the style of an Italian village and is now owned by a charitable trust....

 in the TV series. Trapped in the Village, Colin discovered it to be a place where old comic characters (Stringer's comedy back-up characters for Marvel UK) were "retired" to. Starting a revolt, Colin led his fellow heroes to escape.

In the final issue of Marvel UK's Transformers series, Combat Colin fought a final battle against Megabrain. Afterwards, he and Steve threw away all their weapons to live a life of pacifism - unfortunately, one of those weapons was a nuclear bomb and they were seemingly killed. A new story Stringer produced for a one-off mini-comic revealed that the nuclear bomb had thrown the heroes back in time to Blackpool

Blackpool

Blackpool is a borough, seaside town, and unitary authority area of Lancashire, in North West England. It is situated along England's west coast by the Irish Sea, between the Ribble and Wyre estuaries, northwest of Preston, north of Liverpool, and northwest of Manchester...

in 1967.

Collected editions

"The Place of No Return" has recently been reprinted as "Village of the Doomed" in the book Brickman Begins!.

External links

• Lew Stringer's Combat Colin gallery at ComicSpace
• Combat Colin at Joepedia
• Combat Colin at the Transformers wiki