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Today is a sad day, as a true pillar of the UK comics scene goes to his final rest.
Terry Wiley was a mainstay of the British "Small Press" comics community for decades.
I first met him in 1993, at that year's UK Comics Art Convention, when he and his then partner-in-comics Dave Mckinnon sold me several copies of their excellent surreal adventure series Sleaze Castle. Over the years we would meet at many other conventions and he would continue to sell me his creations, Pertera Etcetera, (co-created with Adrian Kermode and Dave Mckinnon), Surreal School Stories and latterly, the wonderful Verity Fair.
When I took over at Destination Venus in 2016 Terry was one of the first people to get in touch with offers of help, and he came to launch our first Small Press Day back in 2016, and returned again last year - in spite of the fact that, as we now know, his health was failing.
Terry was a creative, witty, deeply caring, unfailingly supportive force of nature. His live of wordplay and surreal sense of humour lit up every room he was in and continue to shine through his body of work. I didn't have the privilege of knowing him very well - others knew and loved him better than I, and I'll be thinking of all of them as they say their final goodbyes today.
But I think the best tribute I can pay is to get his work in front of as many new readers as possible. We still have copies of The Complete Sleaze Castle, Sleaze Castle the Director's Cut and Verity Fair: Custard Creams and Pink Elephants in stock. We encourage you to come and check out the genius and wit that Terry poured into their pages. 100% of the cover price from the sale of any of Terry's work will be divided equally between The Brain Tumour Charity and The Cat's Protection League, charities suggested by Dave Mckinnon.
Good night Terry - rest well.