Redfox is a British fantasy comic published in the late 1980s, created and penciled by Fox. The comic won the 1987 Eagle Award for Best New British Comic of 1986, and was nominated for eight Eagle Awards in total.

Publication history

Redfox herself first appeared in the fanzine DragonLords in the early 1980s. Fox, a house artist at DragonLords, used the strip to comment on fantasy games-barbarian fashion, and later expanded his heroine's story into a three-issue Redfox fanzine. The fanzine stories were revised and redrawn to form the early issues of Harrier Comics' bimonthly US-format black-and-white comic, published from January 1986 to July 1987. Mike Lewis, one of the co-creators of DragonLords, provided additional writing for the early stories. An eight-page "origin of sorts", written by Harrier publisher Martin Lock and drawn by Fox, was published in the Harrier Comics title Swiftsure #9 (July 1986). Writer Chris Bell joined the creative team with issue #6 (November 1986), usually co-scripting the story over Fox's plots. Bell recounts how this happened: The last six pages of issue #6 were written in about three hours, when Fox had visited Chris Bell in Bristol for a weekend and stayed for three weeks and needed a script in a hurry to take back up to Nottingham with him. Chris had never written for comics before; Fox presented her with the image at the top of page 22, the phrase "a collection of enchanted cutlery", and a deadline of "yesterday". So she sat in her kitchen and wrote it. To her astonishment, he accepted it, and asked her to do the next issue as well, because the script for that had been abandoned half-finished. This was the beginning of the partnership which lasted until the end of the comic, two and a half years later. Bell established Valkyrie Press as a stand-alone publisher in the fall of 1987, solely to continue publishing Redfox with issue #11. Valkyrie later took on publishing Bryan Talbot's comic The Adventures of Luther Arkwright as well. After a further ten issues, publication ceased with issue #20 (June 1989). Various creators from British comics of the time occasionally helped out with the title: for example, Redfox #7 (January 1987) had a specially painted cover by John Bolton. Bryan Talbot contributed the cover art for issue #9, and Neil Gaiman wrote part of the final issue, when Chris Bell was distracted by the imminent arrival of her baby.

Overview

The Demon Queen Saga

Issues #5-10 (Sept. 1986 – July 1987) of Redfox comprised a story arc officially titled "The Demon Queen Saga", which was a turning point in more than one way. The series, which began as a comedy set in a fantasy world, suddenly became driven by angst and tragedy. This was around the time when comics such as Watchmen were popularizing treatment of more serious and adult themes. The story itself was an obvious clone of "The Dark Phoenix Saga" (published by Marvel Comics in its X-Men title in 1980). Both "The Demon Queen Saga" and "The Dark Phoenix Saga" share the following plot points: Fox was unashamed to admit that "The Demon Queen Saga" was almost entirely derived from the X-Men story arc. Besides giving the story an obviously similar title, when a reader wrote about issue #5, "Is this the start of some 'Dark Redfox' kind of saga?", Fox teasingly replied that there was little resemblance because Dark Phoenix had a "weaker sense of humor". Ironically, not long afterward, in Alpha Flight #57 (April 1988), Marvel created a thinly disguised version of the Demon Queen under the name of the Dreamqueen.

Major characters

Collected editions

The series has been collected into trade paperbacks:

Sources