Is It A Bird? Is It A Plane?

No, it’s Superman artist Frank Quitely!

- Garry Fraser

YOU could say it started with The Broons, but Glasgow-born Frank Quitely’s comic career really took off thanks to The Greens, a more risqué version of the Sunday Post strip.

“Even before I went to school, drawing was my main hobby and it was school when I first realised I was better than my peers,” says Frank. “At art college, I heard about an underground comic called Electric Soup, where everyone wrote and drew their own stories.

“I thought I’d do a spoof Broons script and make it really crazy! I was told I couldn’t just copy the characters so I made some modifications and came up with The Greens!”

It’s strange that an artist at the forefront of Marvel and DC Comics’ superheroes was inspired by comic characters of a totally different dimension. More likely the inspiration came through artist Dudley D Watkins, the man behind The Broons, Oor Wullie and many more characters.

“The Broons and Oor Wullie were part of my weekly routine for as long as I can remember,” says Frank. “I loved drawing and I loved picture books and comics.

“There were other strips in Electric Soup that were far more hard-hitting so I didn’t think my parents would approve. So I distanced myself from it, changing my name from Vincent Deighan to Frank Quitely, a spoonerism of ‘quite frankly’. The name stuck, and although nowadays everyone calls me Vincent, I always sign my work ‘Frank’.”