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Spotlight On Portsmouth Comic Con: Simon Fraser

Published

8 years ago

February 20, 2018

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Caledonian Spirit

♦ Portsmouth Comic Con takes place 5-6 May 2018 and Tripwire is proud to be a part of it. Here is the twelfth spotlight feature on one of its special guests, Simon Fraser…

Simon Fraser has a career spanning several decades drawing comics and illustrations. Perhaps he is best known as the artist on 2000AD’s The Adventures of Nikolai Dante and Shimura there too with writer Robbie Morrison. He has also drawn Doctor Who for Titan and Judge Dredd as well as his own creation Lily Mackenzie.

Fraser is from Scotland originally but he relocated to the US a number of years ago. He has read comics since he was a child as he admitted in an interview with 2000AD Review back in 2002:”My inspiration for getting into comics was…comics! I read a lot as a kid and it slowly dawned on me that some people out there made a living drawing this stuff….what a great job! Also Roger Kettle who is the writer of ‘Beau Peep’ and ‘a Man Called Horace’ is a family friend so he showed me it was possible.”

In fact, his first comics job led him to 2000AD, he recalled in the same interview: “I was working on another Fleetway publication Roy of the Rovers which was actually a very difficult job for me to get as the Editor knew that I wasn’t that interested in Football, so he was reluctant to hire me. From there I did a couple of full colour Dredd samples for Dave Bishop and he gave me the Shimura job.” 2000AD Review Simon Fraser interview

He sees himself as being part of a long Scottish comic tradition, which he spoke about in an interview in the Daily Record back in 2009:I’m of Glasgow stock so I’m pretty good at telling stories, which is a good skill to have in this line…There are an awful lot of very good Scots comic people. I think it must have something to do with Scots being natural storytellers.” Daily Record Simon Fraser interview

He was part of the ACTIVATE comix. com collective in Brooklyn. His heavily illustrative style has won him a following around the world. His most recent work is Kingsman: The Red Diamond with writer Rob Williams for Image, featuring the Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons created characters who have appeared in two major Hollywood movies.

He does make it back over here every now and again and Portsmouth is proud to have him as part of the show’s line-up.