Lindsay Moran - The Monkhouse Oct 19 1987

If you're ever going to ask "Where are they now?", you should be asking it about Lindsay Moran. I don't know how Alan stumbled upon him (Alan Seaman booked the acts for our fledgling club, using the technology of the 1980s, which now seems akin to alchemy in its unimaginability) but we were glad he did.

A total hit, with his tutu and accordion, Lindsay Moran was the sort of comic novelty act that possibly only the 1980s could produce. Visual and surreal, satirical and whimsical, he was an act who one assumed would eventually end up on TV, although that was something that was only beginning to happen, and not everyone. As it was, I spotted him in an advert or two, but not much more.

Googling Linday Moran, I uncover a clandestine CIA Officer first, which is nice but unhelpful.

Rather more reassuringly, a Google of Lindsay Moran Artist uncovers a successful artist and printmaker, far better suited to that world than what the stand up comedy arena was about to become in the subsequent decade.

Lindsay Moran, at one of his exhibitions, circa 2013. Tutu, we assume, just out of shot.

Marc Soda became Marc Blake. We'll probably hear more about him anon.

It was Gil Kane - Oct 9 1977

I was right, it was Gil Kane! 37 years later I'm vindicated. Well, 37 years later I can be sure of what was already bleeding obvious to me when I was 15.

I'm drawn this centrespread, copying from an illustration in a Marvel weekly reprint. And, as you can see, the editor had credited it as being by Jim Starlin and Klaus Janson. Whereas, as any fule kno, it's very clearly a Jim Starlin drawing, inked by Klaus Janson.

I marvel to this day that I can recognise these things at first glance, but that's what comic readers of my generation can do. We can tell which producer has made a record, we can identify individual guitarists playing the solos, and we know our comic artists at a glimpse. It is nigh on impossible to mistake Jim Starlin for Gil Kane, George Perez for Neal Adams, Barry Smith for John Buscema, Gene Colan for Jack Kirby, and so on. If those names mean anything to you, you're probably in the same boat. If they don't, well that's the shame of twentieth century art history, that comic books never got taken as seriously as most other art forms.

Mind you, as geek pedants go, I'm hardly in the highest echelon, as you can see from my spelling of "Dr Who". I was clearly all about the visuals.

Records For The Day: Golden Earrings by The Enid,Love Bug by Tina Charles, Live In Trouble by The Barron Knights, Rocking All Over The World by Status Quo, and Sleeping Late by Dr Hook.






Because there's been interest in using some of my childhood diary spreads in a BBC TV show called the Peoples History Of Pop - my Records For The Day caught the eye of a researcher - I've dug a few more out and put them up here on the My 1970s Diary. (I kept the Picture Diary from 1974 to 1978 but to date have only found a couple of volumes from 1977).