Karkus Khronicle Part One: (Kind of) Discovering the Karkus

Let's just say it sort of happened of its own accord. But how did The Karkus begin?

The year was 1997 and two things were happening. The first was that TSV - Time-Space Visualiser, the main Dr Who fanzine in New Zealand at the time, was about to reach its 50th issue. The second was that Telos, the other main fanzine of the time, was on the way out. The first thing was easy to spot; the second, not. More about that first thing later.

Telos was about to reach its 15th issue - and this was going to be a Land of Fiction special at one stage, combining articles on stories such as The Mind Robber (obviously) and the New Adventures Conundrum and Head Games among the other regular features. The idea was mine, pitched to Telos editor Jono Park, and while he mulled it over, I started my research, reading up on the fictional heroes of Dr Who's 'real' world. I was going to create mock 'trading cards' for each of them for the issue, with an illustration on the front side and a 'fact file' on the reverse - just like real super hero trading cards. Sadly, issue 15 of Telos never saw print; Jono pulled the plug, and issue 15 was instead a sort of 'best of' retrospective issue. The illustrations I (and another TSV artist Paul Potiki) did eventually made their way into print in one form or another. The Karkus illustration is below:

The boots are the correct colour!

Confession time: I didn't remember the Karkus from my own viewings of The Mind Robber. At all. Instead, I discovered him through the secondary Dr Who media of the time - maninly books, like The Universal Databank, The Completely Useless Encyclopedia, and the Mind Robber Target novelisation, where he's described as a monosyllabic Teutonic Hulk - down to the green skin. Made flesh in the TV serial he was a bit of a disappointment. But I loved and embraced the crap of Dr Who at the time, and I drew The Karkus as I saw him - the loose sock/condom mask - like a sock which hasn't got the entire foot (i.e. the brains) to fill the tip. Baggy tights, a silly accent and a toy ray gun, a balloon issuing from his mouth "Champion of ze vorld!"

I don't have that doodle now - the picture above is therefore the earliest version in existence. The idea continued to tickle me, though, and I thought about bringing the Karkus to life in his own Telepress - TSV.

The Karkus versus Saucer Smith (not really) part 1

In TSV 49 Graham Muir, the greatest living cartoonist to come out of Ashburton, completed a three-part sreial of his creation TARDIS Tales - apparently finishing the series for good. Just as Telos came to an end, I had the sudden realisation that if TARDIS Tales wasn't around, there would be a hole in TSV where a much-loved humour strip once lived. Could The Karkus fill that gap for an issue? The idea was never to replace TARDIS Tales; it wasn't intended to be a long-run thing. Reassured by the certainty that this project wouldn't occupy the next five years of my free time, I set about creating a story for my hero.

 Next: Enter a Time Lord.