Picture the scene: Saturday morning, postie delivers the prog, kettle goes on for my prog reading coffee and I got ready for my usual visit with Tharg and the guys. The prog was 1821, the 36th birthday prog and I was looking forward to something a bit special. I had no idea.
You see that bird headed chap? The one Johnny Alpha is talking to? Well that chap is named Whistlerby the good muties of the Doghouse and he's got a bit of history.
Y'see, back in 2003 when a younger droid than I was just starting to think about making some comics of my own, I had the bright idea of putting a few strip up on the 2000ADonline message board to see if anyone out there liked my stuff. I thought about what to draw and looking through my piles of doodles I came across a rough that grew into Whistler. A few shorts followed over the course of a year and I put out the collected strips at Dreddcon in 2003, at the same event where I was first published in FutureQuake. The following year I, along with my good compadre's took over FQ and the rest was history. I left Whistler taking a job as a combat instructor on the Doghouse. I'm sure there is a good story to be told that can explain just how a mighty organisation can work.
Eventually we were entrusted with Dogbreath and I took the opportunity to return to see what had happened to Whistler in the time since I had left him and discovered that he was still at the Doghouse and was still working with new recruits to help them get ready to face the scum of the universe. I left him after Dogbreath 20 as an outlaw following the events of 'The Final Solution'
Now, though, I know a little more about Whistler than I did. In prog 1692, he is seen as part of the group of muties apprehending Feral in a falshback recounted by Middenface Mcnulty. This paces Whistler on the Doghouse after it was rebuilt by the GCC, so I would assume that Whistler was back in action. Then, as is seen at the top of the post Whistler was involved in the second battle of Milton Keynes. I'm sure that at some point I'll realise what happened to Whistler in the gap between stories and Dogbreath will be home to those tales.
Thanks to John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra for the wonderful moment seeing my fan fiction cross over into canon.