Nick Locking.

Remember that name, because once you've met the bloke, it's impossible to forget him.

As well as being the writer for Avatar's Robocop: Simple Machines series, due in April 2004, he did The Attrocity, drawn by Tony Rollinson (tonyr), who also drew my first story in Trailer Park of Terror.

But I'd forgotten, until the other day, that Nick had a sensitive side. He's not all "huge robotic destruction."

Don't believe me?

Well take a look at this. Some time ago, on a thread in The V, ticked off with what Marvel were announcing as potential stories for their The End publishing initiative, where they publish the 'final' stories of various characters, I asked for suggestions for other characters' final tales.

Nick came up with the following. I defy anyone to read it without a lump in their throat...

CALVIN AND HOBBES: THE END
A blonde man in his late thirties works a dead-end, low-pay office job for fifty hours a week, scraping together enough money to afford a dinner of ramen noodles and an evening spent alone in front of his second-hand television. Every week he phones his estranged parents and is harangued for his failure to achieve anything in life. He has no friends, no girlfriend, and has little-to-no contact with people outside his job. One day, despondent and miserable, he idly digs through a box of junk from his life, and comes across a faded and battered stuffed toy - a tiger. Remembering for the first time in years the happy, carefree days of his childhood, he touches the tiger's face, his eyes brimming with tears. Calvin decides to embark on one last, great adventure with the best friend he has ever known, and walks, carrying only a light sweater and his friend Hobbes, into the snowy, wintry woods behind his tiny mid-west apartment. Nobody ever sees Calvin again.