New Treasury books for 2019

Cover art by Phil Gascoine.

A browse through Amazon this evening caused me to notice a few new books that I'm sure will be of interest to Blimey! readers. Scheduled for their Treasury of British Comics line for next year are three more collections of classic strips. These will include...

Fran of the Floods, by Alan Davidson and Phil Gascoine, from the popular Jinty weekly. 
www.amazon.co.uk/Jinty-Fran-Floods-Gascoine-Phil/dp/1781086729/

Wildcat Book 1: Turbo Jones by Barrie Tomlinson and Ian Kennedy, reprinting the story from the short-lived Wildcat comic.
www.amazon.co.uk/Wildcat-Turbo-Jones-Barrie-Tomlinson/dp/1781086656/

Cover art by Ian Kennedy.

...and one I know lots of people have been hoping to see...

Billy's Boots, Book One written by Fred Baker and drawn by John Gillatt (although John didn't take over the strip until later, so that'll be corrected as these early episodes were by Mike Western, Tom Kerr, and others). The story reprinted from Scorcher from 1970. 
www.amazon.co.uk/Billys-Boots-1-Fred-Baker/dp/1781086710

Cover art by Tom Kerr and Mike Western.

These three books are currently scheduled for the early part of 2019 and I'm sure more will follow. No doubt Rebellion will reveal more info officially over the coming weeks! 

These are exciting times for fans of classic British comics and I hope you'll give the books your full support! 

John Gillatt

On Facebook today, John Freeman made the sad announcement that artist John Gillatt has passed away. A popular and prolific artist in the heyday of boys' adventure comics, John Gillatt's work was primarily published in Tiger weekly. He was the original artist on SF strip Jet-Ace Logan for Comet comic in the late 1950s, and remained as one of the artists on the strip when it moved to Tiger in 1959. (The examples shown above are from Tiger dated 26th January 1963.)

Proving himself to be a perfect choice for drawing busy action scenes and a master of figurework and distinctive facial expressions, Gillatt swiftly became one of Tiger's top artists, working on strips such as The Black Archer and Johnny Cougar in the 1960s and then moving on to Football Family Robinson in late 1969 (replacing Joe Colquhoun). 

Later, he became the permanent artist on the long-running Billy's Boots serial for the comic, where his eye for detail and skill at drawing the human figure made him the definitive illustrator on the strip. Billy's Boots also proved very popular in Holland, where it had its own reprint series for which Gillatt painted new covers and supplied additional art. John was also the artist on the Scorer daily strip for the Daily Mirror for several years. 

John Freeman published a tribute to John Gillatt a couple of years ago on the Down the Tubes blog which you can see here:
http://downthetubes.net/?p=14018

No doubt more tributes will be posted online soon to this great comic artist and I'll update this post with links to them as and when.

New tribute to John Gillatt here:
http://downthetubes.net/?p=35570

A 1990 revival of Jet-Ace Logan by John Gillatt.

The ORIGINAL Billy's Boots! (1963)

Most of you will be familiar with Billy's Boots, the adventure strip that began in football weekly Scorcher in 1970 and later continued in Tiger for many years. However, several years before that there was another strip with that name and a similar premise. This Billy's Boots was in Tiger in the early sixties, and the example above is from the issue dated 23rd February 1963.

These original boots had a scientific explanation for their power, as opposed to the supernatural influence of the later version. I'm not sure who the artist of this strip was but it's a very nice, bold cartooning style reminiscent of Peter Maddocks and Wally Fawkes.