THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW ROYAL MAIL STAMP!!!

Right, here we go....hope you've been to the toilet, because this is gonna be a big one...

So today sees the launch of a new Royal Mail stamp collection based on famous stage musicals throughout the years. As you can see, one of them is based on The Rocky Horror Show poster that I did bloody ages ago! How cool is that?!

I should add that the very cool Return To The Forbidden Planet stamp was drawn by my fellow comic creator friend, Garen Ewing (creator of The Rainbow Orchid), and you can read all about his Royal Mail story HERE.

Oi! Back to me! So anyway, folks in Britain can either purchase the stamps separately for 97p, from all good Post Offices, or there's also a variety of collector packs also from Post Offices, or online here for everyone else!

So how the hell did a bloke like me get to have his work on an official stamp that's been approved by The Queen? Well I'm very glad you asked.....READ ON!

Waaaaayyyy back in 2005, in the days before I was known for drawing zombies for 2000AD, I was recommended by my good buddy, John Higgins, to Shaun Webb Design--quality graphic designers and all round lovely people. They were after a new version of a poster for the return of The Rocky Horror Show. Shaun had a very clear idea of what he wanted for the poster and submitted this mock up for me...

 Here's the initial pencils....

 This is the inks for the girl. The background was drawn on a separate layer to allow them to move elements around easily. This wasn't the final version of the face...

 Here's the first crack at colouring her, though we decided against the flat colour style and later went for a more blended airbrush approach. Though I do actually like this version....

 I lost track of the number of alternate faces we tried on her. It got to the point where I'd rubbed out and redrawn her so many times, holes were appearing on my paper. Here's just a couple. One, not pictured here, was so bad, I swear it looked like a sex doll....

 This is the separate background. Such a shame the final version didn't use all the cool Berni Wrightson esque machinery on the top.

 And here's a scan of the final poster!

 We later even did a cool Christmas version of it....

 And as a special bonus because you're all looking pretty today, here's a few panels of the special comic strip I did that was in the collectable brochure...

This was a show that toured the entire country. I was jumping up and down like a girl when I saw it on the side of a bus in Oxford, and it was such a great day when it came to Liverpool and a bunch of us went to see it...

So that's my tale....6 years later I got a lovely call from SWD ( who I occasionally still do the odd job for) telling me that it was being turned into a Royal Mail stamp. The moral...?

I don't care! Just get my stamp! ;)

L