Back in the 1960’s when I was a lad here in the United Kingdom, newsagent shelves were groaning with children’s comics. Various publishers produced Summer Specials, usually a larger & glossier comic than the weekly comic. The format followed the weekly comic that is, adventure, sport and war pictorial strips, factual information, puzzles and a simple board game. It was the perfect accompaniment to any lad’s summer holiday. In my case usually spent at the beach.

This Green Lion Comics Autumn Special is my attempt at creating a Summer Special. (I decided on an Autumn Special theme just to be different). So in this Special you will find new adventures of The Guard and The Grey Shadow, some new characters, some puzzles, some factual information, a board game and a some surprises.

Corporal McGill story

A few years ago a collection of short stories was published by a small comic publisher Viper Comics, which featured tales about the Sasquatch, the Canadian mythical creature. Stories covered the whole spectrum of plot tales, including humorous, serious, horror and so on. I was so taken my this collection that I was interested in doing my own story. And this McGill short tale is my offering.

I also took the opportunity with this story to push the series plot forward, in mentioning that changes were coming to Snowy Bay. We’ll be seeing these changes at some point in the coming months.

Autumn Express

This is a fast moving, pulp action style story. Lots of shooting and daring do, with a twist in the tale at the end. This is the second story in the Rubicon series and introduces two new characters, Taff Griffiths and Arthur Shepley. Taff is a Grade One Utility Man Operative for British Intelligence. He’s given all of the most difficult jobs to carry out. ‘Taff’ is a slang term for a Welshman, so we can assume from this that Taff is indeed welsh.

Shepley is a fellow colleague of Arthur’s based in Russia (for this story, but also elsewhere in the world as required), and speaks fluent Russian.

Scallywag

A new ‘hero’ or more accurately a fly by night character. Only in the hero business for the money as we discover in this short two page story. This particular character is still a work in progress, but he will be making other appearances in this series hopefully.

Robin Guard

Last Christmas I created Robin Guard for the panto story. I was so taken with this character that I started to get ideas as to how to use the character again. But this time not in a panto, but to set the stories in the middle ages at the same time as when Robin Hood was supposed to have existed. So this and other Robin Guard stories should be considered as a separate series that have no connection to last year’s panto or to the regular Guard series.

Behind the scenes

page one.

Green Lion Comics, story and characters © Adrian Banfield, 2017.