Lew Stringer (born 22 March 1959 in England) is a freelance comic artist and scriptwriter. Biography Stringer began his career from the late 1970s with a series of fanzines, many featuring his popular Brickman character; these were read by several professional creators (including Kevin O'Neill, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons) who encouraged Stringer to try comics as a profession and Stringer recalls that "Alan Moore actually introduced me to one of the editors at Marvel UK – Bernie Jaye who was editor on The Daredevils". He sold his first professional cartoon to Marvel UK (the British branch of Marvel Comics) in 1983 where it appeared in The Daredevils comic, after which he worked for a short time as art assistant to the cartoonist Mike Higgs (creator of Moonbird and The Cloak). Since then Stringer has freelanced for numerous British comics for various companies and audiences. His best remembered creations are Tom Thug and Pete and His Pimple for Oink! comic (1986), which outlasted that comic and continued into Buster comic, and Combat Colin the halfwit hero who featured in Action Force and The Transformers comics. Prior to Colin joining Transformers, Stringer had written another, similarly slapstick, strip Robo-Capers for that title. Robo-Capers was replaced by Combat Colin when the reprints of American G.I. Joe strips were added to the Transformers comic. Robo-Capers returned for a single story, which featured Colin and his sidekick, in Issue No. 200. After a change of editorial direction in 1991, Marvel UK handed the rights of Combat Colin to Stringer and he has used him in small-press titles, such as the Combat Colin Special and Yampy Tales. On 30 September 2012, Combat Colin returned in an all-new story for the launch of new David Lloyd's new online comic Aces Weekly and two other new stories featuring the character have appeared there since. Stringer has also worked as a writer on CiTV Tellytots; was one of the main writers on Sonic the Comic, where he created several fan-favourite characters and stories; and has been a long time artist/writer for Viz and many other publications. He has written Toxic!'s Team TOXIC! strip since the first issue (and drawn it since issue 15); this proved popular enough with the readers to gain two pages an issue and lead to other comic strips being brought in. In October 2012 reprints of Team Toxic began to appear in the magazine