Fun Online came as a bit of a surprise. Early in 1996, I'd been approached by Gil Page of Fleetway to write a script for a top secret project. The strip would appear in a series of pan-European editions of the same magazine. The lead character was called Zocky (!) and was a high-tech cyber-detective, who also happened to be a crocodile. Obviously, this was pitched at the younger reader.
I wrote several scripts which I assumed were simply to give the project sponsors something to pull to pieces. But history repeated itself and amazingly, the scripts I wrote were used pretty much as I had written them, with only minimal changes.
Then the project took an even stranger turn. My old 2000AD colleague, Richard Burton, contacted me to say he'd been appointed editor of a new multi-edition computer magazine - aimed at children - which would be published by a new Egmont company called Egmont Interactive. We would report to the German Egmont office, not the Danish Egmont office that Fleetway reported to . . . and would I like to be associate editor on the magazine?

It was the same magazine I'd been writing Zocky for - Fun Online!
It was a real pleasure to be working with Richard again, and the bonus was that the Managing Director of Egmont Interactive UK was Jon Davidge, who'd been publisher and MD of Fleetway while I was involved with 2000AD.
For the first few weeks we didn't have a designer. Richard and I kicked around a few styles and we finally settled on a very informal look to the mag. As we were dealing with a very young audience, I suggested we use calligraphy-style typefaces, closer to the hand-lettering style you'd see in a comic.
Our next task was to find some writers who knew the computer hardware and software markets. Fortunately, help was at hand in the form of Simi Belo of Maxis Software. She gave us a list of freelance writers and we started contacting them to see if they'd contribute to our grand new venture.
With our new designer on board we began preparing our first issue.