British comics expert Steve Holland has launched his own publishing venture, Bear Alley Books, and is set to reprint some comic classics for fans of UK material.
Working for various publishers Steve has been involved in the research of many British comic collections of recent years (The Trigan Empire, The Steel Claw and the various War Picture Library collections for example) and has decided it's now time to produce his own books. "Bear Alley Books has been born out of a desire to put some classic British comic strips back into print" says Steve on his blog. "There has been no tradition here for reprinting strips as albums as there is across Europe and, increasingly, in America. Almost none of the strips I remember with great affection from my youth are in print."
The first two reprint collections from Bear Alley are to be launched this August: Cursitor Doom, which originally appeared in IPC's Smash! in 1969-70, and The Phantom Patrol, which originally appeared in Swift in the early 1960s and was reprinted as The Ghost Patrol in Odhams' Smash! in 1966.
Cursitor Doom features artwork by Eric Bradbury and (below) Geoff Campion. Scripts are by Ken Mennell, M.Scott Goodhall and Christopher Lowder. Doom, a paranormal investigator with mysterious abilities, has been a firm favourite of UK comic fans for decades. Dez Skinn revived the character as Amadaeus Wolf for his Quality Comics line several years ago. The book from Bear Alley will feature a brand new wraparound cover by John Ridgway.
The Phantom Patrol, a group of British infantrymen who are transported back in time, features artwork by Gerry Embleton and a brand new cover by Chris Weston.
The books will be limited to just 300 copies each; a realistic figure for the relatively small market for classic British comics. It's a print run that larger publishers would not even consider, but which is feasible for a smaller outfit such as Bear Alley Books.
I wish Steve all the best with this exciting new venture. When it comes to classic UK adventure strips Steve knows his stuff so to my mind he's definitely the right man for the job. To find out more details of the books visit the website at:
http://bearalleybooks.blogspot.com/
6 comments:
Very exciting news and linked the new blog to my blog list..
As you say it all depends on the price now..
£20 maybe..or £25..£30???
we will see..
I think its a wonderful idea..and Steve is as you say the right man for the job..if he needs an assistant I would happily help..:)
I also wonder what the scans will be like...
Roll on August..
That's great news. I hope he does really well.
Okay, that's a bit weird. Look at that first panel of the Cursitor Doom strip, then scroll down the page and look at he pic of Dez Skin.
Hope you're well Lew.
All the best.
Hi Peter
Had a chat with Steve about this project recently. From the sounds of it he's spend a lot of time on cleaning up the artwork for scanning and printing. Think this is gonna be good!
Matt Badham
Yes it does..
I'm involved in helping Steve in one of the humour comic books writing an introduction which he is working on. Steve needs a lot of support from us to make this work...email him today to ask if you can help in anyway.
No one deserves better than Steve, to have a comic publishing of his own. The man is a repository of information on British Comics.
I wish him all the best on his venture, and looking forward to his first set of 2 books.
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