Nigel Maughan, cartoonist and writer, wrote and drew hundreds of full page comic strips for almost all the adult humour comics of the early and mid 1990s, including Viz, using the nom de plume of Nicholas Schwab. Nigel was a serving police officer and spent his time between shifts creating numerous characters and drawing them, often on speck. He also drew gulley strips, spot cartoons, article illustrations and numerous other cartoons for a wide range of business and special interest magazines. His employers were often suspicious of anyone with press connections, and editors were suspicious of anyone with Police connections, so he tried to conceal his work identity both from his employers and his editors. Many editors would allocate him two or three pages and just print what he sent. Chris Donald of Viz and Kev Sutherland gave strong editorial direction but most editors would buy his strips unseen.
All the magazines worked on payment cycles of 90 days (representing the time it took for the money to come back from the distributors) so if a magazine folded the contributors were ripped off out of 3 months money, also many magazines would not return pages of original artwork. Nigel retained all his artwork and the characters copyrights, only sending in photocopies and submitting the same work to several different magazines many years apart so that he would eventually get paid for all his work. Such was the fickle nature of these numerous comics he submitted the same artwork to several different titles and never got paid for any of them. That's why his work not only appears in (almost) all the adult humour comics of that period, but the same strip often appears in many different titles. He stopped drawing comics when he was sent to Bosnia as a U.N. Peace Monitor in 1997 and the strain of sending pages back became too much. He also found that magazines paid much more for article illustrations, actually paid for them on time and in full and they were far less work so he hung up his comics hat in 2000. He now self publishes his own comics in Newcastle Upon Tyne often re-cycling many of his comics characters from the 1990's.
Contributions to adult humour magazines, late 1980s - mid 1990s[]
Not sure if this is worth doing but here goes, this is not an exhaustive list: Character Title followed by Periodical and issue number.
- "Torch Boy", Acne #29
- "Kenneth Clarke and the Cremated Remains of the Late Doctor Menegele", Zit Christmas Annual, Smut #118
- "Captain Correction", Gag #1, Smut #7, 74, Gutter #9
- "P.C. McGitt", Smut #32
- "Harry the Head", Smut #37-38
- "What If?... Dog Shit Ever Became Valuable", Gutter #9, Smut # 77
- "Vivian Sectionist", Elephant Parts #6, Pulp #15
- "The Snort", Gutter #4
- "Bill the Bus Driver, Smut #76, 82; Spit #2, 3
- "Rita's Rubbers", Elephant Parts #9; Pulp #14-15, Smut #39, 50
- "Little Stan, He Thinks He's an Old Man", Spit #37, 49, 57; Smut #78
- "Terry and his Naff Zoo", Smut #121
Dragula VIZ #26 Daves Round Smut #68 Sven and His Swiss Army Pen Knife Arse Zit #95 and Smut#74 Royal of The Rovers C'mon Ref # 6 and Smut #109 Kentucky Fried Kittens Spit #36 and Smut #111 P.C. Ray and his C.S. gas spray Smut #70 Lolittas Lathe Acne #28 and Smut #70 Otto Gordon Traffic Warden Ziggy #21 and #22. Completely redrawn for Spit #36 Taylors Ice Warriors C'mon Ref #1 and # 4 Turnstile Teddy C'mon Ref #3 and Smut #109 Donald Doze Appeared in various episodes in Pulp, Gutter and Smut. Simon Sparker and His Magic Marker Elephant Parts #8, Pulp #16 and Acne #28