Spies, Footballers, Knights, and Elephantmen

A quick round-up of some goodies on sale now...

As you may have read on other blogs Egmont Magazines UK (publishers of Toxic) are launching four one-off "Souvenir Specials" reprinting British comic strips of the past. The first in this line of Egmont Classic Comics is out now: Roy of the Rovers.


The Roy of the Rovers comic has 64 pages, with a glossy cover and nice interior paper that Egmont describe as "tactile". The special includes selected football strips from the 1980s featuring Roy of course plus Billy's Boots, Mighty Mouse, Tommy's Troubles and others. The drawback is that the strips are all parts of continued stories, and there's no follow up issue. However the comic is clearly aimed at the nostalgia market so I'm sure the 30 somethings it's targeted at will appreciate this peek into the past. (Although as the comic is racked with the children's comics I'm not sure how most of them will notice it.)

Future Egmont Classic Comics will be Battle Picture Weekly in June, Buster in September, and Misty in December. Like Roy of the Rovers, all are exclusive to WH Smith and not available anywhere else. Cover price £3.99.


Titan Books have just published their latest Modesty Blaise album: The Lady Killers. Reprinting material from 1980/81 by Peter O'Donnell and Neville Colvin the reproduction isn't brilliant due to the source material but the high quality of the work is still evident. £11.99

Panini UK have now published the delayed third volume in their classic Captain Britain series. Captain Britain: The Lion and The Spider (£15.99) collects the final originated CB strips from Super Spider-Man and Captain Britain weekly (Nos. 239 - 247), Marvel Team-Up 65 / 66, and, at last, the British Black Knight series from Hulk Comic Nos. 1, 3-30.


The Black Knight is included because it featured the return of Captain Britain. It's a great little series which originally ran in tightly paced three page episodes in 1979 when Dez Skinn was revamping the Marvel UK weeklies into more traditional looking British comics. Hulk Comic was the outstanding superhero title of that period with mostly all new material commissioned by Dez. The splendid combination of Steve Parkhouse on script and John Stokes (and later with Paul Neary) on artwork made The Black Knight an exceptional strip and it's wonderful to see the first 29 episodes in this collection. Hopefully a Black Knight book will collect the remaining strips at some stage.


Last but not least the latest issue of Elephantmen (No.17) came out last week and is now back to a monthly schedule. Packaged by Active Images and published by Image Comics this 32 page US comic features script by Richard Starkings and artwork by Moritat and Rob Steen. There's a choice of covers; one by Rob Steen, one by Erik Larsen, - and on the back cover is the latest episode of my Brickman strip.

It's been 30 years since Brickman first appeared and I'm marking the anniversary year by killing him off! Yep, don't miss Elephantmen 17 for the first part of Brickman R.I.P.! Coming up in future months, the Battle for the Trowel and the NEW Brickman!

For more details on Elephantmen visit the official website here:
http://www.hipflask.com/issues/elephantmen17/

Official BRICKMAN website:
http://brickmancomics.tripod.com/