An episode of what Syd Jordan describes as the “outlandish” story about the god, Pan, Sitting Tennants, published in 1972
Another panel from the Italian version of Hole in Space, drawn by Syd, published in 1967.
designers. Exposure to the salubrious environs of a small Berkshire aerodrome and billeted in a splendid country house, our perception of life as a glorious adventure full of possibilities, was given a major boost after the years of wartime austerity in Scotland. Our literary education a hallmark of Scottish schooling at that time, was thus augmented by the physical experience of living with fellow students
from many countries, some of whom had actually escaped death from Hitler's gas chambers. EFA: Who has influenced your artwork and your writing? SYD: When I began working with Bill McCail in his little studio in Dundee in 1950, I met a number of artists who were either ex D.C Thomson men as he was, or
Shorty’s Secret, drawn by Martin Asbury, published in 1972
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still working for that celebrated publishing house. Friendly and helpful, they helped me to handle the problems of comic strip drawing. Bill's business partner, Len Fullerton, was a formidable wildlife artist but had also ventured into Flash Gordon territory with a strip entitled Argo Under The Ocean. This he drew, in the Alex Raymond style, and I soon began to collect Raymond's Rip Kirby strips appearing in the Daily Mail at that time. Raymond's photographic accuracy and economy of line, influenced my style from there on and was the yard-stick with which I measured my own efforts. D.C Thomson, had a group of writers before and after the war, who were masters of their craft. Their stories were ingenious, wellpaced and beautifully written in terms of comic book literature. I was brought up on them and their influence never left me. Later, Ray Bradbury's 'left field' approach to science fantasy and before him, the works of H. G Wells, William Hope Hodgeson (The House On The Borderland), Poe, Bram Stoker and the many volumes of the 'creepy story' type tales which I gathered in the 1950's, all opened a window into the bizarre and exotic. EFA: Apart from the time you worked with Patterson, you wrote, unlike most British artists, your own stories. What was your favourite and why? SYD: I think that Sitting Tenants was a story which, considering the outlandish premise, worked better than I thought it would when I started it. The notion of an extra-terrestrial landlord calling a halt to Mankind's tenure of Earth was pretty wild but it allowed me to