Grauniad strips

A real old curio here. Back around September 2007 we were asked to do some Mirabilis strips to go in the Guardian. There was no way we could get the main storyline started at that stage, as Leo was still finishing off a couple of books. So I wrote a bunch of one-off stories set throughout the Mirabilis year: "Diamond in the Sky", "Two by Two", "The Happy Event", "Home Front", "The Jar of Piccalilli", "Wrong Turning", "A Flower in Your Hair" and "Never Never on the Portsmouth Line".

With Leo tied up, we turned to my old mucker Russ Nicholson for the art. Russ used to illustrate girls' comics like Jackie way back when (not many people know that) and I can only imagine the effect of a shoggoth in the Lower Fifth hockey team.

Anyway, we made a start but decided that Russ's comic style and tone (as shown) was too different from Leo's for the strips ever to mesh, so the idea got dropped. Pity - I would like to have had a strip alongside Posy Simmonds. Oh, behave.

Martin McKenna later pencilled another of the stories - the Halloween one: "Wrong Turning". At some point in the distant future, when the four main Mirabilis graphic novels are complete, I'm hoping we can return to the short stories. We could use a blend of styles, with Leo and Nikos inking each other's pencils or whatever. Could be interesting?