Kelvin Gosnell

Kelvin Gosnell
Nationality	British
Notable works	The Stainless Steel Rat (comics adaptation)

Kelvin Gosnell is a British comics writer and editor. He was involved in the founding of the long-running comic 2000 AD in 1977.

Gosnell was working as a sub-editor in IPC's competition department when Pat Mills asked if he would be interested in working on Action where he wrote Dredger and The Suicide Club. It was during this period that he read an article in the Evening Standard on the forthcoming sci-fi films in the late seventies and concluded that a science-fiction comic would complement the other genres the company was publishing. He suggested it to managing editor Jack Le Grand who turned it down, but mentioned it to Mills who suggested Gosnell write his ideas down in a memo, which Mills then passed on to John Sanders, head of the Youth Group in IPC. Sanders recalls Gosnell from those years:

"Gosnell wrote lots of memos and Le Grand stuffed lots of them. I liked talking to Gosnell. He was a better ideas man than he was an editor, and there is always a place for someone like him. Gosnell was enormously noisy, enormously enthusiastic. He was a great guy to have around because he was always bubbling. Good ideas men often create dissent. You have to give them space to do that."

Sanders liked the ideas and passed it over to Mills to develop into a dummy issue to show to the IPC Board. After it was approved Mills brought Gosnell onto the staff in an official capacity as he recalls "I felt I owed Kelvin something for suggesting the idea in the first place, for which he hadn't been paid. I asked for him to be appointed editor designate. His input was valuable on strips like M.A.C.H. 1 and Dan Dare, because of his technical and science fiction knowledge."Kevin O'Neill, who was the art assistant in the early days, recalls the discussion between Mills and Gosnell "They had these ranting conversations, lots of swearing and cursing... Pat and Kelvin had a poisonous, venomous hatred of cosy editorial chats seen in the like of Valiant, that sort of kindly 'Uncle Editor' stuff. They wanted to do the opposite of that, an irreverent sort of editorial figure." Gosnell suggested either "an imperious intelligent alien or a computer" and it was the former that met with the most approval. They then bought a latex Neanderthal mask, added a pony tail, a brooch (for the Rosette of Sirius) and Gosnell put it on with a grey jumpsuit with silver stripes to complete the outfit. Tharg's alien slang also largely came from Gosnell based on "invented swearwords from his schooldays."

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