Who are ‘Lloyd and the Bear’?
So the initial plan was to release a Lloyd and the Bear book every 3 months but that’s fell apart somewhere by issue #6 and I found I’d rather take my time and bring out (hopefully?) a quality book than speed through it and come out with something I wasn’t proud of.
And hey, if you’ve been a long time follower of our old site lloydandthebear.com you’d know that with the first 5 books I’d redrawn them some three times!
But hey, I’m rambling and not evening answering the title of this post! Just who are Lloyd and the Bear?!?
These guys came about when, after trying a series of failed attempts at doing sci-fi/superhero series, I realised I wanted to do something different and as they say you should write about what you know! Still being the proud owner of a teddy bear that I’ve had since I was a kid I figured why not do a story about a kid and his teddy bear (who, unlike my bear – at least as far as I know – is an alien)
And it went from there! I’ll be honest, at first it was supposed to be a bit more of a bitter, sarcastic take on the sci-fi medium but my personal life changed (yeah, I met someone and got all happy and that, whatevs…) and with it so did the idea for the story and it became an all ages fun book!
Sure, I still try and get a few digs in here and there but I really wanted something that was accessible to as many people as possible. I have a nephew who when I started working on this was around the 6 year old mark and I found it really hard to find him books to read that didn’t talk down or were patronising so wanted to create something to fix that (Oh, he’s now 18 years old so y’know, again, I’ve been doing this book for AGES!)
So yeah, I had an idea, I did the planning and built an environment and history for the characters, worked out the first four issues and from there everything kind of fell in place! A number plot points that needed to be hit were put in place along with where the story would end. Initially I had it planned to be some 60 issues long but with hold ups and all I’ve realised I’m going to have to cut back a bit and maybe aim more for the 32 issue mark (ooh, knowing how issue #16 finishes and meaning it would be the halfway point that works out well! Let’s say 32 issues, ‘kay?)
Wait, still rambling! Sorry! So Lloyd and the Bear tells the tale of a boy and his teddy bear alien best friend as they battle Bear’s enemies the Shoal along with other bad ‘uns that get in their way (but also making friends too, so that’s cool!)
Even with a plan in place I really never thought I’d be still working on these guys but I love them so much and hopefully you are too if you’re visiting this site having read one of the books! Hey, if you’ve just stumbled on to this page why not click on our preview links to find out more about Lloyd and the Bear’s adventures!
Bear hugs!
PS. The nephew I mentioned? Didn’t take to the book as it was in in black and white which he regarded as old… Ouch.
