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Friday, April 24, 2015

From the past... Captain Future!

Bear Alley Books have announced their latest offering and it's sure to interest fans of 1950s UK independent comics. The Complete Captain Future is to be a 200 page A4 softback reprinting Norman Light's space hero character. The artwork has a retro charm about it by modern standards but it's very well illustrated and certainly worthy of a collection. 

For some reason, outside of Eagle and The Beano, postwar and 1950s British comics are sometimes overlooked by collectors but it was an important decade for the industry. It was a time when comics broke free of the traditional formulas and more independent companies surfaced. Adventure comics began to hold their own instead of being a back up to the funnies, and the influence of American comics encouraged UK artists to create more dynamic page layouts. Basically that postwar/1950s period set the scene for decades to come. Captain Future is a perfect representation of those times. 

If you order The Complete Captain Future before publication you'll get a discount. (I've just ordered my copy.) Here's the Bear Alley Books page where you can discover more about the book and how to order it:
http://bearalleybooks.blogspot.co.uk/

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why Captain I wonder ? Captain America, Britain, Marvel, Victory, Future and I recently heard of a Canadian one called Captain Canuck.

Lew Stringer said...

I think it simply adds an air of authority without sounding too high ranking. To be a Captain sounds young and cool, but a General or Colonel sounds like an older, more establishment figure.

Captains Kirk, Hurricane, Scarlet, etc. The list goes on.

Mikeodee said...

Captain Underpants....there's an authority figure for ya! ;-)

Lew Stringer said...

It's true! He'd have less authority as plain Mister Underpants. :)

John Pitt said...

This is yet another one I hadn't heard of. There are lots of hidden gems from the 50's. Thank goodness for the likes of Steve and yourself for bringing them to our attention!

Lew Stringer said...

Whenever I meet up with Mike Higgs we usually end up talking about this era. It sounds like a very interesting time when readers never knew what gems they'd find in their local newsagents. Sadly it'd never happen today as the distribution system is so different.

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