Time for something a little serious. To the left is the original Action Man himself, Mr. Steve MacManus, who recently announced he would be stepping down from his editorial position at Egmont after 38 years in comics.
Born in London but schooled in Devon, Steve began working as a sub-editor for IPC in October 1973. He spent his first two years working on Valiant, before being head-hunted to the new Battle Picture Weekly in 1975 under Dave Hunt. His time on Battle served as an excellent training ground, working with freelance creators Pat Mills and John Wagner, both former editors themselves. Hunt, Mills and Wagner showed MacManus the editorial ropes: “David Hunt taught me everything I know about the process of editing a weekly comic, and how to run a stable of freelance writers and artists. Pat Mills and John Wagner showed me how to appraise a script and, indeed, how to create a character.”
During this two year tenure, Steve freelanced for Action, but was never on the editorial staff. IPC paid him £5 for each of his Action Man stunts, and used his face to front the comic. Steve kindly allows us the same privilege, in strict accordance with the disclaimer below. Unfortunately, whilst at IPC, no such disclaimer was in place and, much to his annoyance, editorial pieces of dubious content, regaling readers with tales of drunken debauchery, were credited to his name.
Although not on staff at Action, Steve contributed to the first five months of the title, writing the odd episode of Dredger, and providing the strips The Running Man and Sport’s Not For Losers!: “Both concepts were given to me by Pat Mills, who also mentored me through each script I wrote. When Pat was working on [Action], most of the stories had his imprint on them. I would go down to the office twice a week, and we would work out the plot between us, then I would go away and write it.” (more…)
