The A-Z project turned out to be more successful than I expected. It started just because I wanted to do some daily drawing to get the creative essence flowing in the morning, but needed some kind of theme rather than just conjuring up something new out of thin air every day. This led to the idea of drawing a comic character a day, working through the alphabet, and that quickly led to the idea of having those characters suggested by others.

And that led to the idea of using Facebook, which turned out to be surprisingly well-suited for a project such as this. A Facebook group has a discussion board for user participation, a wall for announcements and a gallery for showing the results, which could then be commented upon. One element I didn't consider, originally thinking that I'd end up with a small group of 20 or so friends making the suggestions, is the network aspect - where friends of friends see what their friends are doing, get interested, and join up too, so the group ended up with about 175 members during the voting process (I tried to avoid using the word 'voting' as it brings to mind all that is horrible about modern 'entertainment' - but that's what it is, and it's a successful format, I guess).

I'd already made my own list, but once the suggestions started coming in, I decided to keep out of it in case I influenced anyone's thinking. Top of my list for A was Asterix, but I ended up having to draw Axel Pressbutton - no problem, I was a subscriber to Warrior and it remains one of my favourite comics to this day. At least I got to draw Obelix later on (I had Oor Wullie on my list). And I felt sure I'd get to draw Judge Dredd - a character I've never drawn properly before - yet I ended up having to draw Judge Death instead. Funny how people's minds work!

There were one or two I had to struggle through with less enthusiasm. While I did go through a phase reading Peanuts paperback collections, mainly for Snoopy as the rest of the strip was too culturally different for me as a 9-year old English child, I can't say that I was massively pleased to see I had to draw Linus for L (I had Luther Arkwright). The other main character I balked at somewhat was Professor Xavier - mainly because he's actually just a bald man in a wheelchair, but also because it was the fourth Marvel character, and I was always a DC kid! But it's good to be made to go beyond your comfort zone, and apart from that, the finished alphabet was refreshingly diverse. It could possibly have done with a bit more 'ethnic' diversity, maybe a few more females, and an underground comix character would have been good, but it did lead me to buying a volume of Ranma and a volume of Usagi Yojimbo after I'd read more about them while getting reference. I was actually enjoyably familiar with the majority of the characters, and had enough reference at hand.

Out of the 26 characters, 3 are from Warrior, 2 from The Beano, 4 Marvel, 1 DC (I don't count V) and 4 are from 2000AD. 6 are women, the rest male (5 are non-human). 12 are British creations, 9 American, 4 Franco-Belgian, and 1 is Japanese (though 3 characters are Japanese).

I've been asked which is my favourite, a very difficult question! Character-wise, there are so many there that mean quite a lot to me. The British comic characters from the early eighties coincide with a time when I really enjoyed my comics - so the Warrior characters (especially V and Marvelman) and the 2000AD ones (mainly Judge Death and Nemesis - I've never read Zenith, which came later). The ones I've known longest and have a great affection for would be Captain Haddock and Obelix (see this blog entry) - both sidekicks to title characters. I'm a huge fan of Leloup's Yoko Tsuno. Drawing-wise, I'm happy with nearly all of them... but they all have niggles too, which as any artist will tell you, is all they can see when they look at their own work!