ABOUT US
.
Sancho began life as Pancho, a half finished strip in a half finished mid-90s comic called Wasted. Wasted was to be edited by Ian and was to feature the best of the Dublin comics “scene”, but in actuality amounted to no more than 4 or 5 long editorial meetings in the basement cafÈ of Bewleys, Grafton Street; more a social club than a comic.
.
Pancho was the “Judge Dredd” headline strip, and featured JosÈ Maria Garcia in a mystical story of “Western Witchcraft” -- all the basic elements of Sancho were there: the occult overtones, Garcia as the outsider, the duster coat and neckerchief, the pentagram, the handlebar moustache... But as I was writing it, I had no idea where to go with it. Pancho appears on the first page of this first strip, materialising from the ether to do battle with banditos besieging his home village, and that’s about it. He had little else to do but cause heart attacks by the power of the mind alone, and look forlorn. I gave up.
.
Then about five years later I decided that I was unsatisfied in my day job as a graphic designer and that what I really needed to do was draw comics. So I drew several random pages of 2000ad characters (Dredd, RoBusters etc) with the vague idea of sending them to Tharg and knocking his alien socks off. I also drew 5 pages of a self-scripted strip, almost as a joke, resurrecting the Pancho character and updating him to 1980s San Diego. I retained the occult leanings (ever the Hellblazer/Preacher fan) as well as the general character design and gave him a flying “familiar” in the form of Tom Frost. I deliberately left the story unfinished at the end of the fifth page, wanting the reader to be left wondering what happened next. I printed up 10 or 15 of these, bound them together with copies of the 2000ad pages... and left them on my bedside locker gathering dust for 2 years. It’s not that I feared rejection, it’s just I’m a disorganised, lazy bastard.
.
Then in 2003, I went to the Comic Con in Bristol and attended a small press panel, the thrust of which was, if you think you’ve got a good idea for a strip/comic, no point in waiting for 2000ad or DC to come calling, publish it yourself! I was inspired, and came home brimming with ideas, filling up a notebook on the Ryanair flight back to Dublin. When I had my thoughts in order I called Ian.
.
Ian and I had worked on many many non-comic related projects over the years, from music to theatre to film, and he is the best writer and the genuinely wittiest person I know, as well as being my closest friend and heterosexual life partner. Who else was I gonna call? Ian and I sat down on many occasions thrashing out the story first, then fleshing out the characters, dreaming up their back stories, and then I went away to draw the character sketches. We decided to use the 5 pages of Pancho as the first 5 pages of the now renamed Sancho comic, the name change coming about because firstly Ian felt Pancho was a fat guy’s name, and secondly because in his early career we reckoned Sancho was definitely a frustrated sidekick to a slightly more dynamic character, just like Sancho Panza in Don Quixote.
.
I knew from the start it was important for Garcia to die at the end of issue one, and that it should be subtitled Sancho’s Last Case. After all how many comics have you read where the lead character is killed off so early? And if nobody liked it, then we could claim that we only ever planned to do one issue anyway!
.
It took us over a year to get the first issue out, and we launched it at our own stand at the London Comic Con in December of 2004. (Ian and myself had hawked a preview copy around Bristol in May of that year, getting great advice from many comics luminaries, and from Carl Critchlow and Alan Grant in particular who were very forthcoming in praise and creative criticism, both of which we took on board in equal measure -- thanks guys!)
.
It turned out people did like issue one, it sold well and got great reviews, so Ian and I then turned our attention to issue 2. With a dead Sancho on our hands, this one was always going to be difficult, so we decided to make it a “Sancho Presents” type of anthology, with 5 or 6 stories on a similar theme, and to feature 2 or 3 Sancho stories from his mid “no longer an exorcist priest, yet to be an Obi Wan Kenobi type hermit” period when he was a paranormal investigator. And what better theme for a comic horror anthology than vampirism in our own hometown of Dublin! It all made sense -- Stoker was from Dublin, Le Fanu was from Dublin, er, Lugosi was from Dublin. Ok, I made that last bit up, but vampires in Dublin, that’s gotta be classy. And so it proved: the anthology style went down a treat, we gave some comics-minded mates a chance at getting published, albeit in a small-press way, and most importantly, we made it to two issues! Good sales didn’t hurt either. Here’s the fine, fine thing about being doggedly and steadfastly small press: you get 1,000 copies printed and a few months later you look in the attic and you only have 200 copies left, and you are slightly pissed off. Until you realise that out of the 800 that have disappeared, at least 600 of them have been bought with real money by real people who enjoyed them enough not to email you with rude words or post them back to you demanding a refund. And then you tend not to feel pissed off anymore...
.
And as for issue 3 -- in this one Ian and I wanted all the stories to be about Sancho, to fill in more details of his back story, and to bring the bugger back to life! We realised a comic’s not much good with a dead hero, and if want to set this up as a continuing series we’d better find a clever way of resurrecting him, and pronto. So we have.
.
And what now? The next release will be issue 4, featurimg a story arc telling the ongoing tale of Sancho, Tom Frost, Willie et al and will cover at least 12 issues, which we hope to issue quarterly, a step up from our breakneck release schedule of one per year. Ian has the whole thing in his mind (which is an exceedingly twisted place) and promises me that there’ll be demons, zombies, Sherman tanks, religious phenomena, excorcisms, gratuitous over-the-top violence and more Mexican occult thrills than I can shake a Stabilo Swan Fineliner at.
.
I, for one, can’t wait to draw it.
.
Alan Nolan, November 2006