Bloodgard 1989

After REVERIE closed, I still wanted to continue doing Bloodgard, so I kept an eye on the Australian comic scene.

REVERIE had managed an interesting record, being the first Australian comice of the eighties to go PAST a four-issue barrier, making it to seven full issues. But that record was to be beaten by a bunch of comic creators in Sydney.

Cyclone Comics were THE Australian comics of the LATE eighties, publishing the Southern Squadron and The Dark Nebula, amongst other titles. And last I remember, they got up to 12 or 14 issues of the Southern Squadron...four issues of which were reprinted by an American publisher in the nineties.

In 1989, I prepared a character submission of the Bloodgard concept, which used THIS graphic (although, the original version of it also had Southern Squadron characters in it, too) and sent it TO Sydney.

I eventually travelled up there and met Gary Chaloner and David de Vries, although we weren't able to do much more. I forget exactly why Bloodgard didn't make it into the Cyclone line-up, but it was a good attempt anyway. And it was quite a night out with the crew. Anyway, the Cyclone crew ended up doing quite well for themselves, with Gary Chaloner doing, most recently, Will Eisner's John Law...and David de Vries and Glen Lumsden doing a very nice updated, futuristic batch of Phantom stories for Marvel Comics. I'd still like to know what happened to The Dark Nebula, which was a comic I'd always enjoyed for years before it became a Cyclone Comics staple.

There was one last attempt in 1989 to try to publish Bloodgard myself, but personal circumstances halted anything further. Still...that's not the end of the story.