Preview... WILDCAT: LONER

The second volume of stories from the short-lived 1980s comic Wildcat is coming in a few weeks from The Treasury of British Comics. Wildcat: Loner is a fabulous collection of strips illustrated by David Pugh and Eric Bradbury, from scripts by Barrie Tomlinson. 

This is some of David Pugh's most imaginative and detailed work, and of course you can't go wrong with Eric Bradbury who takes over the Loner strip later in the book. Barrie Tomlinson's scripts keep the story moving along at a fast, exciting pace, with clearly-told plots... the way good comics should be! Wildcat merged into Eagle, and the chapters from that comic are included as well, along with a full colour cover gallery.

• CREATIVE TEAM: Barrie Tomlinson (w) David Pugh, Eric Bradbury (a)
• RELEASE DATE: 5th September 2019
• PAPERBACK, 224 pages
• PRICE: £14.99 (UK)
• ISBN: 9781781086841

The second volume in the complete stories from Wildcat! Silver age comics meets Alice in Wonderland in this weird and Crusoe-esque absurdist science fiction! Ex-mercenary Loner always works alone. Even if it means being on an alien planet as the sole member of one of the spacecraft Wildcat’s exploration teams! With only his customised six-shooter, “Babe”, and some alien fur balls as company, Loner must contend with psychic aliens, subterranean monstrosities, and angry shapeshifters. He might be the toughest, but can he survive being shrunk, melted, and transformed on a planet that seems to want him dead? Join humanity’s last surviving ex-mercenary on a surreal and grotesque adventure down the alien rabbit hole…, 

Available in print from: book stores, Amazon, and UK comic book stores via Diamond Available in digital from: Treasury of British Comics webshop & apps for iPad, Android and Windows 10

Review: INVASION 1984!

Although I was reading Battle comic in 1983 it was mainly for Charley's War, which I'd cut out of the comic to save, and discard the rest. I don't think I ever read Invasion 1984 which appeared in its pages then, or maybe I just skimmed through it. Either way, I remembered nothing about it. A pity, because revisiting it now I find it's a cracking story!

Rebellion have collected the whole Invasion 1984 serial into one book as part of their Treasury of British Comics line. It's a 128 page softback on matt paper that has a very nice feel to it and reproduces the art well. 

Invasion 1984 is written by John Wagner and Alan Grant under their R.Clark pseudonym, and illustrated by Eric Bradbury. The story is old school entertainment about an alien invasion and humans fighting back against impossible odds. It may appear unsophisticated to readers more used to ponderous "talking heads" strips but for anyone who wants a bloody good yarn that's fast-paced and full of action, this is perfect. 

I was surprised at the amount of devastation the aliens incur on humanity. At the time, IPC were still reeling from the fuss about how violent Action was, and although there's no gore there is death and destruction on a grand scale. The invaders gun down innocent civilians with such regularity it's impossible to keep a body count. The humans are no better; annihilating Glasgow in a nuclear blast in a futile attempt to destroy an alien ship. 

Eric Bradbury was a veteran artist at this stage and his pages have a suitably grim and gritty feel to the action and a perfect balance of black and white. He really was one of the greatest adventure strip artists of the 20th Century. John Wagner and Alan Grant were also highly experienced by this point and although the story might not be in the same league as most of their 2000AD work it's still an excellently crafted tale. 

If you're looking for a good entertaining alien invasion story with some great art, Invasion 1984! is for you. On sale in bookshops now, or directly from the publisher here:
https://treasuryofbritishcomics.com/catalogue/RCA-B0048

Preview: BLACK MAX Volume 1

After the ridiculously manic over-reaction to American comics imports in the 1950s, (see here) horror comics for kids were effectively banned in Britain under the (Children and Young Persons) Harmful Publications Act. However, publishers knew that children loved monster stories, and that a well-told horror comic wouldn't really do them any harm. They were prevented from blatantly publishing horror comics, but did manage to inject elements of such stories into their traditional adventure comics. 

One such strip was Black Max, a serial that ran throughout the short-lived Thunder anthology weekly in 1970/71, and then into the merged Lion and Thunder. Black Max was basically presented as a war story, featuring arial combat in World War One, but it was its horror element that was its main attraction. 

Episode one art by Eric Bradbury.

That horror came in the form of giant mutated bats created by evil scientist Baron Maximilien Von Klorr, who used them to attack the Allied forces. Written by Frank Pepper and Ken Mennell, it was one of the more memorable series in Thunder, and deservedly became very popular with the readers. (On a personal note, it was also a favourite of my dad's, who started reading comics again a few years before he died.)

First page of episode two. Art by Alfonso Font.

Now, Rebellion are collecting the early chapters in a book to be released on October 4th. Black Max Volume 1 reprints all the episodes from Thunder, plus the first few months of its continuation in the merged Lion and Thunder. The artwork is by the amazing Alfonso Font (who also provides an introduction and new cover), although the episode from Thunder No.1 was drawn by Eric Bradbury. (Presumably Bradbury's episode would have been drawn for the dummy issue of Thunder, and he may have been too busy to do the series once the comic got the green light months later.) Bradbury of course was a master of atmospheric horror in British comics. Font's style is lighter, but equally dramatic and his bats are the stuff of nightmares.

Black Max is a superb collection. Alfonso Font's work deserves to be seen and appreciated by a modern audience so I hope comic shops have ordered this marvellous book. If your local comic shop won't stock it, you can order it directly from the publisher here:
https://treasuryofbritishcomics.com

• CREATIVE TEAM: Frank Pepper, Ken Mennell (w) Eric Bradbury, Alfonso Font (a)
• RELEASE DATE: 4th October (UK) 24th October (US)
• PAPERBACK, 115 pages
• PRICE: £10.99 (UK) $16.99 (US)
• ISBN: 9781781086551
• DIAMOND: AUG182151

Ace fighter pilot Baron Maximilien Von Klorr is the scourge of the skies, menacing the Allied forces during the bloodiest battles in WWI. Skilled, ruthless and in possession of two giant, mutated kingbats who fight by his side, Von Klorr AKA Black Max is almost unstoppable. Only the brave pilots of the Royal Flying Corps, including Lieutenant Tom Wilson, oppose the Black Max's complete dominance of the air. Thrilling supernatural war comics from the pages of classic British comics Lion and Thunder!

Available in print from: book stores, Amazon, and comic book stores via Diamond

Available in digital from: 2000 AD webshop, 2000 AD iPad app, 2000 AD Android app, 2000 AD Windows 10 app

Von Hoffman's Invasion collected!

Here's a sneak peek at the cover for Von Hoffman's Invasion - Volume 1, coming from Rebellion Publishing in May! It's another book in their great series of The Treasury of British Comics and it'll collect the early episodes of the series by Tom Tully and Eric Bradbury that ran in Jet (and the merged Buster and Jet) in 1971.

You can pre-order the book from Amazon at this link:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Von-Hoffmans-Invasion-Vol-1/dp/1781086265/

No doubt Rebellion will release more information and preview pages over the next few months, but I hope this cover whets your appetite for now. Action-packed stuff from the heyday of British adventure weeklies! 

To see which books are currently available in The Treasury of British Comics line, visit their web shop now:
https://treasuryofbritishcomics.com

Preview: THE DRACULA FILE

This Thursday, 19th October, Rebellion publishes the fourth in its Treasury of British Comics books with The Dracula File collected from the pages of Scream! (and Scream! Holiday Specials). As well as the strips, it features a brand new cover by Chris Weston, an introduction by Scream! editor Ian Rimmer, A gallery of Scream! covers that featured Dracula, and a back up article by Dave McDonald charting the history of the path that led IPC to publish Scream!

Here's more info and images, courtesy of Rebellion...

• CREATIVE TEAM:  Gerry Finley-Day, Simon Furman, Ken Noble (w) Eric Bradbury, Geoff Senior, Keith Page (a) John Aldrich, Peter Knight (l)
• REGIONS: UK, worldwide digital
• RELEASE DATE: 19 October 2017
• PAPERBACK - 101 pages
• PRICE: £15.99 (UK) $19.99 (US)
• ISBN: 9781781085998
• DIAMOND: AUG171921

Fleeing vampire hunters from behind the iron Curtain, Count Dracula returns to Great Britain with an unquenchable thirst for blood! Unable to accept that the supernatural defector has slipped through his fingers, Rumanian KGB officer Stakis decides to defy his disbelieving superiors and destroy the unholy horror that has plagued the world for centuries. Will 1980s London become the Count’s permanent, new feeding ground? Written by 2000 AD stalwart Gerry Finley-Day and featuring Eric Bradbury’s nightmarish vision of horror’s greatest icon, The Dracula File is a book that you can really sink your teeth into!

Available in print from: book stores, Amazon, and comic book stores via Diamond Available in digital from: Treasury of British Comics webshop

Review: The Leopard from Lime Street

In this, the second book in Rebellion's Treasury of British Comics line, The Leopard From Lime Street reprints the weekly episodes that originally appeared in Buster from 12th March 1976 to 11th June 1977. 

This was during a period when I'd stopped buying most British comics so the strips are new to me. Well, not entirely true. I'd seen one or two episodes back then, and haughtily dismissed the strip as a rip-off of Spider-Man. On a very basic surface level, it certainly is, but The Leopard from Lime Street has a charm and excitement all its own, and the artwork is of the highest standard seen in British weeklies. 

The plot: young Billy Farmer is scratched by a radioactive leopard and gains the strength and agility of a jungle cat. He makes a costume and sets out to fight crime, whilst taking photos for his local paper. Yep, the similarities to Spider-Man are glaring, but the British working class setting and distinctive UK storylines raise it above being a mere Spidey copy. Tom Tully's lively, fast-paced scripts carry the reader along, making the book an exciting page turner. The art, by Mike Western and Eric Bradbury is crisp and detailed, giving the strips a toughness and streetwise quality. It was very unusual in British comics back then for two artists to work as a pencil/ink team but it really works. In later episodes I'm guessing Western may have only supplied layouts, as Bradbury's style becomes more evident, but it's all great. Two of the best British artists working together? What's not to like?

I know that The Leopard from Lime Street has long had a dedicated following in British comics and I've never really understood why... until now. The advantage of this collected edition is it gives the reader the opportunity to get into the storylines and put aside any concerns of the source that inspired it. 

The book has an introduction by Steve Holland, and in the back there's a preview of forthcoming books in the Treasury of British Comics line, including Marney the Fox and Faceache. It's all looking good, so I hope fans of UK comics who have been clamouring for a return to the "good old days" will support these books so the line can grow. 

• CREATIVE TEAM:  Tom Tully (w) Eric Bradbury, Mike Western (a) 
• REGIONS: UK, worldwide digital
• RELEASE DATE: 13 July 2017
• PAPERBACK - 162 pages
• PRICE: £14.99 (UK)
• ISBN: 9781781085974
• DIAMOND: MAY171761

Available in print from: book stores, Amazon, and comic book stores via Diamond Available in digital from: 2000 AD webshop, 2000 AD iPad app, 2000 AD Android app, 2000 AD Windows 10 app

The big SMASH! revamp of 1969

As this week marks 48 years since IPC redesigned Smash! into a more traditional comic I thought I'd re-present this old article of mine from several years ago, with a few revisions and additions...

This week, 48 years ago, (Saturday 8th March 1969) UK newsagents saw the launch of IPC's revamped Smash! weekly. The comic had been in continuous publication since early 1966 by Odhams, and had contained a balanced mixture of funnies, adventure strips, Marvel reprints and even included the Batman newspaper strip in most issues. Now under IPC's charge, radical changes had arrived.

The International Publishing Corporation (IPC) had begun in 1963 following the merger of three of the UK's major publishers, George Newnes, Odhams Press, and Fleetway Publications who joined the Mirror Group to form IPC. Five years later in 1968 IPC Magazines Ltd was formed to gather the comics and magazines it had acquired under one publishing company.

The IPC influence had been gradually infiltrating Smash! several months before the new look issue by introducing war strip Sergeant Rock Paratrooper and wrestling series King of the Ring. Before then, Smash! had pretty much ignored the traditional UK adventure fare of war and sport serials. The adventure series it had contained had been fantastic in nature, from the British superhero Rubber Man to the time-traveling series The Legend Testers. Smash! had been an escapist comic, non-establishment in many ways, and readers loved that aspect of it. IPC's takeover heralded a move to neuter Smash's maverick nature and turn it into a standard boy's adventure weekly.

Seven of the old Smash strips carried over into the relaunch issue: four funnies (Bad Penny; Swots and the Blots; - both with Leo Baxendale now at the helm, plus Wiz War, and Percy's Pets) and three adventure strips (Bunsen's Burner; King of the Ring, and Sergeant Rock Paratrooper - the latter being a reprint from Lion). Most of the 40 page comic featured brand new characters, although some had been intended for a new comic called Blackjack that never got past the dummy issue stage. 

With the revamp, even the cover numbering was dropped, effectively making the redesigned Smash! feel like a totally new comic, as was the intention of course.Under Odhams, Smash! had been read by both boys and girls but IPC's attitude was to compartmentalise their comics, so the new Smash! was toplined as "Britain's Biggest Boys' Paper", effectively telling all the girls to push off, which seemed unfair. The revamp also brought about other strange decisions, such as dropping Ken Reid's The Nervs and Mike Higgs' The Cloak, - two popular and uniquely funny strips that didn't fit the narrower parameters that IPC had for their humour strips. (I was told by insiders that an internal memo went around IPC that The Nervs should never be reprinted in any of their comics because new management considered it too vulgar. Sure enough the strip never was reprinted or revived.)

A few months after The Cloak ended Mike Higgs was writing and drawing Space School for the new Whizzer and Chips. However it was an uneasy and relatively short tenure, with the strip only lasting for a year. The freedom that Mike had enjoyed on The Cloak, developing characters and serials, was denied him and as the editor wanted Mike to adapt to more of a IPC house style, which Mike was reluctant to do, he left the comic. It had been short-sighted and poor treatment by management towards such an inventive talent.

Although IPC still had a licence to reprint Marvel strips at that time, the Marvel material was also dropped for the Smash! relaunch. With a new logo too, the new Smash! was totally unrecognisable from the comic it had been just seven days earlier. However, despite all this, it was a strong publication due to the arrival of new characters and top quality artists who had never worked for the comic before.

Leading the comic were dynamic covers by Geoff Campion, one of Fleetway's major artists, illustrating the new Warriors of the World feature. (These were numbered, presumably in an attempt to fool newcomers into thinking Smash! was a new comic.) Inside, the first strip was Master of the Marsh, - a serial about unruly schoolkids being brought to book by "wildman of the fens" Patchman. It was drawn by Solano Lopez, known for his Kelly's Eye strip in Valiant.

The rest of the comic's new strips included the tepid World-Wide Wanderers about a football team comprised of racial stereotypes; Rebbels on the Run concerning the three Rebbel brothers who run away from the orphanage (nicely drawn by John Stokes); and His Sporting Lordship, drawn by Doug Maxted, which proved to be hugely popular as working class Lord Henry Nobbs embarked on numerous sporting achievements week by week.

However the two strips that remain memorable for most comic fans were Cursitor Doom and The Incredible Adventures of Janus Stark.

Cursitor Doom was a mystic investigator, fighting "foes beyond the comprehension of other men". It was drawn by long time Fleetway artist Eric Bradbury who drenched the series in dark brooding menace. An absolutely perfect choice to illustrate a series such as this.

The new editor of Smash! probably expected Janus Stark to be a hit as the first episode ran to five pages, - an unusual privilege in those days. Episode one recounted the origin of the Victorian escapologist, with all the grime and poverty of the era superbly illustrated by Solano Lopez.

For myself (and others as I've since discovered) Janus Stark was the main reason to keep buying this new version of the comic. The Victorian setting added a mystique to the story and Lopez's depictions of the somewhat demonic-looking Janus Stark using his pliable limbs to escape imprisonment brought a real sense of suspense to the stories. Unlike previous Smash hero Rubber Man, Janus Stark didn't actually have rubber bones, so his feats of escapology were often difficult struggles that kept the reader engrossed.

Overall, Smash! had lost a great deal in the revamp, - its swingin' sixties demeanour, most of its pop culture references, its sense of anarchy, the chatty fan scene of its letters pages (replaced by standard reader's jokes) and its unique identity. Admittedly with the 1960s drawing to a close changes were undoubtedly needed, but even today I'm not sure that making Smash! conform to the template of a traditional boys' weekly was ideal. Unfortunately, sales had been declining and a revamp was necessary, so bringing in editors from Fleetway, IPC tried to emulate the successful format of Lion and Valiant. 

Ideally, it might have been better if the new editors had retained the talents of Ken Reid and Mike Higgs, instead of dismissing them for no good reason. Both creators had built up a loyal following only for them to suddenly have their income taken away on the personal whims of old-fashioned editors who didn't appreciate what inventive, funny, creators they had on their hands. (I don't think Ken was employed by IPC again until he created Sub for Scorcher, many months later.) 

As it turned out Smash! only ran for another two years before merging into Valiant. In 1970 industrial action plagued IPC, with various comics skipping occasional weeks. By November it caused Smash! and several other weekly IPC comics to vanish from the newsstands for two months, and this obviously impacted on profits. With readers having drifted away during the strike perhaps things never recovered when Smash! returned in January 1971 and the merger a few months later with Valiant may have been inevitable. 

In truth though, it's impossible to say whether Smash! would have survived if the strikes hadn't happened. IPC had clearly tried to make their version of the comic popular by using some of their top talents on it and, to be fair, although it was completely different from its previous incarnation, IPC's Smash! was still a very enjoyable comic in its own right. Perhaps, as kids, we would have warmed to it more if it had been launched as a totally new comic, and not traded on the name of one it no longer resembled? Even so, both versions of Smash! had their strengths and weaknesses and were both enjoyable on their own merits. 

UPDATE 2020: Rebellion are reviving Smash! in May 2020 with a one-off special. It'll be totally different from its two predecessors but it will feature new stories of the great UK characters such as The Steel Claw (from Valiant), Johnny Future (from Fantastic), and Cursitor Doom (from IPC's Smash!). Here's the cover to look out for...

The BIG ONE merges into BUSTER (1965)

The Big One was a comic published by Fleetway from 17th October 1964 to 20th February 1965. A very short run, perhaps partly due to its cumbersome size, as the comic was a huge broadsheet format, far bigger than the tabloid-sized Topper and Beezer it was competing against. Perhaps another factor in its failure was that it was almost entirely filled with reprints. Now, its target group may have been too young to have read the stories before, but they may have found them too old fashioned. 

What may have really stuck the boot in though was that, as I understand it, the popular TV news / consumer programme On The Braden Beat did an item about The Big One, exposing it as a reprint comic. Something that may have led parents to believe they were being ripped off. 

Whatever the reasons for its downfall, The Big One didn't make a big impact and merged into Buster with the issue dated 27th February 1965. The cover of that first merged issue (above) is by Angel Nadal. 

Inside, the combined forces of Buster and The Big One had the unfortunate aspect of bringing in several reprints from the failed title, but Buster's own strips were strong enough to balance things. Here's the episode of Maxwell Hawke and the Phantom Zombie from that issue, drawn by Eric Bradbury...

The Micky the Mimic strip was a reprint of Hi-Fi Sid from Radio Fun.

At this period in time, publishers were still smarting from the anti-horror comics campaign of the 1950s. They were no longer allowed to publish horror comics as such, but they knew that kids loved such stuff. It seems to me that the compromise was to have a lot of dark, spooky material tucked away inside comics such as Buster, as you saw from the Maxwell Hawke strip. This air of shadowy menace was also evident in the new series, Toys of Doom, superbly drawn by Solano Lopez...

There was lightness amongsty the gloom too of course; a balance which was Buster's strength. The centre pages featured a variety of (reprint) humour strips from The Big One, including Tough Tex, a 1950s reprint from Comet by George Parlett.

Not all the adventure strips were grim either. Sweeny's Swingsters was Fleetway's attempts to relate to the pop fans of the day. I don't think they quite got it. Art by Mario Capaldi. It only lasted until May of that year.

On the back page, Charlie Drake, based on the TV star, with art by Arthur Martin...

It's worth noting that at this time, Buster was still a large format comic. Not as huge as The Big One had been, but the same size as a tabloid newspaper such as the Daily Mirror. It would reduce in size in October 1965, but gain twice as many pages. 

VALIANT celebrates the New Year (in 1965)

For my final post for this year, here are a few pages from the New Year issue of Valiant for 1965. Cover by the excellent Mike Western.

Valiant was mainly an adventure comic but it featured a healthy amount of humour strips too, and they were all celebrating the New Year. Here's Sporty by Reg Wooton (the only cartoonist at Fleetway back then to have a credit in the title box)...

The Nutts, drawn by Angel Nadal...

Billy Bunter, with art by Reg Parlett...

The Crows, also by Reg Parlett, next to one of the many ads back then trying to encourage readers to join the armed forces when they left school. Thankfully such adverts were phased out as British comics became increasingly aimed at a younger audience...

The adventure strips in this issue didn't bother shoehorning New Year into the ongoing storylines but it wouldn't be right blogging about Valiant without showing a taste of the dramatic strips. Here's that week's episode of The Steel Claw, drawn by Jesus Blasco...

Mytek the Mighty, drawn by Eric Bradbury...

Finally, the back page featured It's A Dog's Life, a European reprint of the Boulle and Bill series by Roba. You can read more about this strip in an older article I did here:
https://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/boule-bill-billy-buddy-or-pete-larry.html

All that's left to say is to wish you all a Happy and Healthy New Year, and to thank you for following this blog. Here's to good things for 2017!