Marv – Glenn Fabry

It is easy for me to remember the day on the calendar that Glenn Fabry celebrates the day of his birth as it is also the same day that the first Covid lockdown started in the UK back in 2020. Also because my mother shares her birthday with Glenn (different year, obviously).

Back in 1987 the United Kingdom Comic Art Convention started to be held in the Institute of Education in London. This seemed to be the perfect venue as it boasted a capacious showpiece lecture theatre with a stage on which was hosted the introductory “meet the creators” event – invaluable pre-Internet when many of us did not know what our favourite writers and artists looked like, the fancy dress/cosplay contest, the charity auction, and many of the star creator interviews. Also on the campus were many smaller rooms which held workshops, mini-exhibitions, signings, and the more intimate interviews with guests. Back in ’87 I was peering through the glass window of the door of one of those seminar rooms when I saw Glenn Fabry (who I recognised from his intro on the stage at the earlier event) on his own in the corner hard at work at a drawing board. Not knowing any better I knocked and when given permission to enter I asked him if he would sign the copy of the Sláine tpb I had just picked up in the dealers room. Instead of him telling me to clear off and asking couldn’t I see he was busy he instead greeted me warmly and happily obliged and even remarqued (my first remarque!) the title page with the three rays of the sun symbol found on Sláine’s cloak clasp. What a class act. That is the kind and generous behaviour that forever endears someone to a young impressionable comics fan. That and being one of Britain’s greatest comic artists.

I have long since made peace with the fact that I will never acquire one of GF’s high-end pieces – a painted cover or a Sláine page – just as I will never obtain a page from Frank Miller’s first and best Sin City serial (now known as The Hard Goodbye). On the rare occasions they come to market or auction they are prohibitively expensive, and even though I have not been given any info to make me think so I feel that I am on the home straight with the finishing line faintly visible in the distance, and so I am winding down in my OA collecting; I do not seem to have the same hunger anymore. So when this drawing of Marv by Glenn Fabry turned up it seemed like the economy way of checking two boxes with one tick/killing two birds with one stone/separating two of Kevin’s arms (or legs) from his torso with one saw. It did not bother me that the artwork’s description made no reference to it having been published or that it is in just pencil; those were never dealbreakers for me.

When I was queuing for a convention drawing from Glenn last July at the London Film and Comic Convention (queuing for a drawing that I had to in the end cancel because I had run out of money and time; and that is also the reason why I do not have a recent photo of GF as I usually wait for the drawing to be completed before taking the photograph, barring exceptional circumstances such as with Michael Golden; I am still working on that description) I was leafing through his portfolios and his published artbook and was surprised to find that the drawing had been published, which was just gravy. It was whilst I was at Glenn’s pitch that a couple approached his table. I assume they were refugees from the Film and TV Celebrities floor downstairs as the male loudly asked his partner, “Who’s he?” I am guessing he meant what did GF do as there was, as there was with all the artists in Artists Alley, on the wall behind the creator a large poster with their work on it and name in large type. As no reply was forthcoming from the man’s partner I just as loudly replied, “He’s one of Britain’s greatest comic artists”. I felt quite proud after I did that as Glenn was so in the zone of drawing someone’s convention sketch that he was oblivious to the query, and besides he would never have been so immodest as to make that claim for himself as he is, as is stated in the title, British. It was on the train going home later that day that I realised I was wrong to say that because Glenn Fabry is in actual fact one of the world’s greatest comic artists. Doh.

Thank you, Glenn, and very many happy returns! (And happy birthday, mum.)