In February, Nottingham lost possibly its most famous scientist, the physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Sir Peter Mansfield, aged 83 years. Best known for his revolutionary work developing the MRI scanner, Sir Peter recently disclosed that when he told his school careers master that he wanted to become a scientist the reaction was akin to, ‘Okay, laddy, but let’s be serious.’ It transpired that, as a child, he had built his own printing press, so he was steered towards a career in printing, starting as a print assistant. At age 18, he moved sideways into rocketry (!) before being scooped up for National Service, after which he studied for his A-levels at night school and gained a place at Queen Mary’s College, London, where his scientific aspirations found a fertile seedbed.

What has all this to do with comics? Well, in the same interview Sir Peter revealed that the reason he built his own printing press was so he could publish his own comics!!!

Not a lot of people know that…