Eagle Times vol.39 no.1 [Spring 2026]

For transparency's sake I'll say up front that there's an article written by me in this issue of Eagle Times. Is it the best thing in the issue? I'll have to leave that for you to decide (I'm biased!), but it does highlight something that's always worth a mention. The volume number shows that Eagle Times is in its 39th year, but there's always something new to write about when it comes to Eagle and the other related Hulton papers.

You would think that a strip that appeared in the early issues would have been widely covered, but that wasn't the case when I began looking into the origins of 'Skippy the Kangaroo'—no relation to the TV show—which was assumed to be a reprint from abroad. Not so, as I quickly discovered. I'm not going to repeat the whole article here, but it involves an animation house set up by "the French Walt Disney" Andre Sarrut, two brothers from Russia who began producing films in the UK, and a good deal of post-War misfortune.

Skippy is only one of ten features in this issue. Given the detail that some of the articles goes into and that they discuss strips that may have lasted for years, it's no surprise that many of them are multi-part, so in this issue we have part 3 of David Britton's look at 'Heros the Spartan' and part 4 of his look at 'Jeff Arnold, Rustler and the 6T6 Outfit', which this time has an emphasis on the Texas Rangers and local flora. I did say that the articles could be quite diverse.

Steve Winders offers a short tribute to the late Alan Vince, a story about P.C.49 (adapting one of the radio plays), the first part of a look at 'The Last of the Saxon Kings' drawn by Patrick Nicolle, an unwelcome addition to the paper when it first appeared across Eagle' centre pages and the first part of a look at 'Ordinary people and familiar places in Dan Dare'. So half the articles are written by people called Steve... that has to be a record for Eagle Times, surely!

Jim Duckett's lead article features 'The Adventure Club', an almost forgotten series of stories by thriller writer J. Jefferson Farjeon, whose novels I have been enjoying in the British Library Crime Classics series (notably The Z Murders, an early serial killer yarn, but also locked room murder mysteries Mystery in White, Thirteen Guests and Seven Dead). And at the magazine's opposite end, Alan Candish looks at the 'Greatest Britons' survey of 2002 and how many appeared in Eagle. 

The quarterly Eagle Times is the journal of the Eagle Society, with membership costing £30 in the UK, £50 (in sterling) overseas. You can send subscriptions to Bob Corn, Mayfield Lodge, Llanbadoc, Usk, Monmouthshire NP15 1SY; subs can also be submitted via PayPal to membership@eagle-society.org.uk. Back issues are available for newcomers to the magazine and they have even issued binders to keep those issues nice and neat.

Comic Cuts — 1 May 2026

I mentioned last week that I was asked whether I could identify the author behind a certain byline as one of their books is about to be reprinted. The byline was the house name Jeff Bogar, known to have been used by more than one author, and subject to a few bits of speculation that have muddied the water further.

"Bogar" wrote gangster novels in the early 1950s for Hamilton & Co. in 1950-51, the name relaunched when Hamilton introduced their Panther Books imprint for a further series of titles in 1953-55. I have six of the 21 novels that appeared under that name. Four more books appeared in America, but these proved to be reprints under different titles. One of those reprints has yet to be identified and might even have appeared under a different byline here in the UK.

I spent most of Sunday and Monday searching through volumes of old copyright records of book imported into the USA, which Hamilton & Co. did quite regularly from around March 1952 on. There have been a few credits attached to the earlier books, including one that credits Steve Frances (Hank Janson), which is wildly off the mark. Even the masterful Crime Fiction A Comprehensive Bibliography has somehow picked up some erroneous credits.

A call-out to some friends meant that I was able to get hold of scans or photos of the opening chapters of a further four books, and last week I'd ordered a copy of a book I thought might be the Rosetta Stone: The Interrupted Wedding by Leslie T. Barnard, a Boardman hardback, although I picked up a later paperback edition. The novel is set in Sicily and is a romantic thriller in which a British tourist is kidnapped by a Romany girl at knife point and is forced to marry her; it's nothing like the tough gangster novels of Jeff Bogar. 

To be honest, I had half convinced myself that Leslie Barnard was a red herring as the book looked nothing like the works I had to hand. It was full of elipses (that little row of three dots that I sometimes overuse!) and none of the staccato writing that was typical of tough-guy thrillers. However, I'd picked out a couple of other Hamilton & Co. books to look at for comparison, and—lo and behold—The Interrupted Wedding had a number of similarities to a book entitled Franzie, published under the byline Paul Pannier.

But I was still in two minds as neither book screamed Jeff Bogar. As luck would have it, another Rosetta Stone book arrived. Hoodmen's Bait, which appeared under the Bogar name in 1953 had been copyrighted in the USA and the publisher listed Leslie Barnard as the author. Here was the key, as it shared a lot of the DNA with the other titles I was reading: certain words, certain phrases, odd stylistic quirks: light switches snick, men snicker, the hero soothes and cracks his dialogue... it all added up to a recognisable group of "tells" (as they say in poker circles) that were shared by some books but were lacking in others.

And so I have been able to (at least provisionally) identify an additional four Jeff Bogar novels to Leslie Barnard, and I'm reasonably sure Francie is also by him. In some cases this is based on the opening chapter alone, but I'm pretty confident. You'll be able to judge for yourself when Stark House reprint My Gun, Her Body—what a title! Far better than Dinah for Danger, which is how it appeared in the UK.

That, a few reviews and the ongoing saga of my passport application (a story for another time) have taken up the bulk of my week, although I have been looking into a few other authors and solved two of my long standing "mysteries that have me mystified" thanks to doing the deep dive into copyright records. I can't say the work has paid the rent this week, but I do love doing this kind of research, and there will be a book of one kind or another sometime in the future where I'll get to use the information.

I did mention some while back that I was planning to do more books based around the Mushroom Jungle era of paperbacks, and I have been tinkering with a couple of introductory articles for both Scion Ltd. and Curtis Warren. No idea which one I'll get to first. I still need an awful lot of cover scans before I can consider writing those books, but I'm always doing the research (as you can see from the above) and one day I'll reach a tipping point where it will become the next project to work on. 

Men Only Magazine 1935-1963 A History and Bibliography

Under the imprint of Sports History Publishing, Chris Harte has just released his latest book, continuing a run of titles that look at men's magazines. Now, these aren't the men's magazines of my youth, but the earlier general interest magazines of the 1930s, beginning with Lilliput, continuing with Men Only and (to conclude?) with his next book on London Opinion.

These pocket books filled a gap in the market for a men's interest magazine. The editorial of the first issue (which debuted on 22 November 1935) remarked: "Until today every magazine published in this country has been produced with at least one eye on the woman reader. We, on the other hand, are not interested in women readers. We don't want women readers. We won't have women readers. There is not a single magazine or newspaper dealing fairly and squarely with masculine interests."

And what were those interests?  Initially, the magazine featured articles only (no fiction), on sporting subjects, hunting, travel, flying, driving, and women, from 'Office Wives' to 'Why Don't Girls Leave Home'. The contents were truly diverse and included the likes of Karel Capek (author of R.U.R.) writing about 'How to Make a Lawn' and Louis Golding on the 'Wild Romance of London Streets'.

It was edited for eighteen years by Reginald Arkell and within a year was selling 800,000 copies a month. The contents soon introduced photographic studies and even female writers, but Arkell was nervous about his rivals Lilliput and Readers' Digest. He also had to cope with losing writers and staff to the war effort from 1939 on. For troop morale, some issues offered photographs of nudes by John Everard. The magazine had to slim down and increase its price as the paper shortage began to bite.

Complaints from readers that the magazine concentrated too heavily on service stories were addressed in 1944, coinciding with the release of Arkell's son from detention in Paris after four years in captivity. 

Post-War, the paper shortage continued to cause troubles, but Men Only had a steady sale—enough to survive a cull of titles in the late 1940s that saw the magazine incorporate the long-running Strand Magazine. In the early 1950s, the paper lost a libel case, had issues banned in various countries; and was merged with London Opinion; eventually it lost septuagenarian editor Arkell, replaced by 60-year-old Rubeigh Minney.

Under Minney the magazine began to feature more entertainment features, more pro-British features about successful businesses and businessmen. At the same time, there were reprints of features and cartoons from American magazines like Esquire and Collier's. Men Only needed freshening up, or so said the board of directors, and it was redesigned in 1958, the illustrated covers replaced with photos, some colour pictures were introduced and editor Minney was eased out in favour of Cyril Kersh.

Behind the scenes changes, with Newnes taken over by Odhams and a merger with Lilliput, a change of printer, and another change of publisher as Odhams was absorbed into I.P.C., the vast magazine empire owned by Mirror Newspapers. Eventually I.P.C. closed the title, planning to relaunch it in a larger size with mostly pictures of women; chairman Cecil King did not want his company associated with such a publication and sold Men Only to the News of the World, who went on to sell it to Martspress and thence to Paul Raymond, who turned it into the quintessential men's magazine that I alluded to in the opening paragraph.

Chris Harte's introduction fills in many, many more details that the above sketch, and the book has his usual issue by issue listings of the magazine's contents, indexes of writers, illustrators and photographers, and books with content drawn from the magazine. There are also dozens of photographs of contributors and staff. At over 240 A4 pages, it's a hefty book on the famous pocket magazine and a worthy companion to his history of Lilliput. 

The book is available from Dodman Books (sales@dodmanbooks.com) and should be available in all the usual places shortly.

Men Only Magazine 1935-1963 A History and Bibliography by Chris Harte
Sportin History Publishing ISBN 978-1898-01023-4, 2026, 243pp, £25.00. 

Rebellion Releases — 29 April 2026

The 2000AD website has posted an obituary for Barrie Tomlinson.

"Probably one of the most successful editors of his time, Barrie combined a deep knowledge of and passion for comics with a salesman’s eye for publicity. Thanks to him, Roy of the Rovers remains a household name while generations of readers have been thrilled, educated, and scared in equal measure by titles he launched and championed."

Continued here.

2000AD Prog 2480
Cover: Joe Currie.

JUDGE DREDD // SILENT WITNESS by Ken Niemand (w) Nick Dyer (a) John Charles (c) Annie Parkhouse (l)
BRINK // THE CALL OF THE VOID by Dan Abnett (w) INJ Culbard (a) Simon Bowland (l)
SILVER // MALIGNANT by Mike Carroll (w) Joe Currie (a) Simon Bowland (a)
THARG'S 3RILLERS // POSTER GIRL by Paul Starkey (w) Paul Marshall (a) Dylan Teague (c) Rob Steen (l)
HELIUM // RED OCTOBER by Ian Edginton (w) D'Israeli (a) Annie Parkhouse (l)

Charley's War Apex Edition by Pat Mills & Joe Colquhoun
Rebellion, 29 April 2026, 144pp, £100.00. Available via the 2000AD webshop.

Charley's War began serialisation in Battle in 1979, and as written by Pat Mills it is one of the greatest strips in the history of British comics, a serious look at how the First World War affected Britain's working class. Complementing the story was the artwork of Joe Colquhoun, fresh off the immensely popular Johnny Red, Colquhoun pushed himself even further detailing the wartime travails of Charley Bourne, producing stunning artwork each and every week.
    This book collects pages from the first few years of the series, including many complete episodes, printed at their original size so you can appreciate Joe Colquhoun's mastery of the artform!
    A webshop exclusive (£120.00) adds a slopcase

• 29 Apr. Scottish cartoonist Tom Gauld is the first non-French cartoonist to win Le Prix Gotlib. Tom received the Le Prix Gotlib trophy and a prize purse of €5000 during the du Festival du Livre de Paris (Paris Book Festival) held April 18. His collection La Physique pour les chats was a translation of Physics for Cats, published in 2024.
• 24 Apr. With Dan Dare promising to blast off again, Elizabeth Stanway tells us why, as a scientist, she's exciting to see the comics' return. "Despite its many reinventions over the decades, much of this premise has remained unchanged. Dare has always represented humanity’s best, and is typically shown as an optimistic exemplar of bravery, chivalry and honour. The Kickstarter page for the new Dan Dare: First Contact novel makes it clear that the current creative team respects the character’s origins."
• 22 Apr. Forbidden Planet TV's Andrew Sumner interviews Garth Ennis, John Higgins  Steve MacManus, Steve White and Rob Williams about the Action 50th Anniversary Special. (video, 46m)
• 17 Apr. The British Football Comic Podcast team have interviewed Ian Vosper and Barrie Mitchell for their latest episode. " It was such a special day, both Ian and Barrie were superb, kind, friendly and entertaining company...here is a record of that special day." (video, 1h 30m)
• 8 Apr. An interview with Dan Abnett. " I worked in comics at first – Marvel UK, then Marvel US, and then for DC and 2000AD (sometime call at once), and in the late 1990s started writing novels too, when Black Library (Games Workshop) offered me the chance. Once the novel-writing began, I kept doing comics too, because I love the form. Later, I started working on computer games too."
• 8 Apr. Dan Dare gets a reboot in (hopefully) November with Dan Dare: First Contact by Alex de Campi and Marc Laming. The impetus came from de Campi, who said: “I moved house a couple of years ago and was unpacking boxes of books when I pulled out some of my old Dan Dare compendia, so I sat down on the floor and re-read old Frank Hampson strips for an entire afternoon."
• 8 Apr. Barrow-in-Furness has been declared the UK's first Comic Book Town. "To celebrate, Barrow will be ‘flooded’ with comics distributed across the town in public spaces.As part of the project, LICAF is also launching a competition for two Children’s Comics Laureates, promoting the value of comics in building a love of reading."
• 6 Apr. Alan Moore has revealed the titles for the remainder of his Long London series of novels. The second novel, I Hear a New World, is due to appear in May 2026. "Set almost ten years after the first novel, in 1958, this sees Grace Shilling find her way into The Great When, a parallel version of London, with Dennis Knuckleyard following her." Here's the original interview.
• 27 Mar. Writer Alex DeCampi and artist Marc Laming have launched a Kickstarter to revive the classic British space adventurer Dan Dare, the Pilot of the Future.  DeCampi and Laming are bringing that universe roaring back with a new interpretation funded directly by fans. "Today [on Wordballoon] we’re talking about why Dan Dare still matters, how you modernize a legendary character without losing the DNA that made him special, and what they’re building with this Kickstarter campaign. From the story approach to the visual style, and what longtime fans and newcomers can expect." (video, 1h 2m)
• 26 Mar. Dennis the Menace turns 75. Alison Baker wonders why rule-breaking kids never go out of style. "Researchers have found that different age groups find different things funny. They characterise two types of humour evident in The Beano – disparaging, such as making fun of people, and slapstick."
• 17 Mar. TV writer Damon Lindelof (Lost, Watchmen) has apologised to Grant Morrison for a joke he said on a podcast: that the new series Lanterns is so named because "we all agreed that the 'Green' was stupid". Morrison didn't like the joke and took to Substack. Nathan Fillion, meanwhile, thought the joke was funny. James Gunn thought it was 💚.
• 16 Mar. Film director James McTeigue reflects on how V For Vendetta still resonates 20 years later. "I’d guess Alan Moore and David Lloyd would tell you that the political environment that they made hasn’t changed that much from when they made the book in the ’80s. I think we’re in another cycle of that."
• 16 Mar. Artist Alex Ross discusses the origins of Kingdom Come and whether it was based on Alan Moore's unpublished Twilight of the Superheroes. Ross reveals that he first approached writer James Robinson in 1993 with the idea... (video, 13m)
• 13 Mar. The sale of Peter Hansen's comic collection started spectacularly with a two-day auction that netted more than £100,000 including fees. The next instalment of the collection will be presented by Excalibur Auctions on Saturday 9th May 2026, with Anderson & Garland scheduled to host a further sale in Summer 2026.
• 13 Mar. Simon Spurrier on The Voice Said Kill.  "Set deep within the Louisiana bayou, and following a Wildlife & Fisheries agent on the worst day she could possibly imagine, it’s cut-throat and exciting in all the best ways..."
• 9 Mar. This year marks the 90th anniversary of Oor Wullue and The Broons, who first appeared in The Sunday Post in 1936. Morris Heggie, ex-editor of The Dandy, who wrote the scrips for many years, is interviewed by the Post, discussing the original editor R.D. Low and artist Dudley D. Watkins. The Post also publishes an article on how the characters kept up the morale of war-torn Scotland during WW2. BBC News also covers the anniversary.
• 5 Mar. With interest surrounding the sale of Peter Hansen's collection of British comics peaking ahead of the auction on 11-12 March, here's an old interview from 2019. 
• 3 Mar. A number of Giles' annual covers are coming up for auction shortly at Chiswick Auctions on 12 March 2026. "The cartoons, which include one of his original, carefully crafted Giles Annual covers, were gifts from the artist to his old editor, Harold Keeble."
• 3 Mar.  Rhonda Reinhart explores "The Many Lives of David Wright". 
• 25 Feb. Brands Untapped talks to Victoria Justice, Director of Consumer Products & Ecommerce at Rebellion, about Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and 2000AD's upcoming big milestone. "2000 AD will celebrate 50 years in 2027, so that’s a huge focus right now at Rebellion and full of relatively untapped potential. We’re already speaking to partners about ways to commemorate this exceptional anniversary… With big plans in the works for Judge Dredd!"
• 22 Feb. The illustrator who became a national catchphrase—W. Heath Robinson—is the subject of a brief radio clip from BBC Radio Surrey. (7m) "His cartoons of improbable military machines – pulleys, pipes and teetering platforms – offered a gentle, satirical counterpoint to the grim realities of war and helped to make him a household name."
• 22 Feb. Jacob Phillips introduces The Peril of the Brutal Dark—an Ezra Cain mystery—to Andrew Sumner at Forbidden Planet TV. "Cain's debut case is a hypnotic mean-street-walking pulp magazine mix of Hammett & Chandler, bled thru a dark Mignola filter with touch of Indiana Jones, all wrapped up within [writer Chris Condon]'s razor-sharp 40s dialogue and Jacob's carefully-researched and beautifully-rendered artwork." (video, 28m)
• 18 Feb. Dennis the Menace prepares to celebrate his 50th birthday with a special coin and the beginning of a Year of Mischief from March 2026. 
• 16 Feb. Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett discuss their new Gorillaz album, The Mountain. "I think that the fact that we are an animated band has helped just a little bit. Young people go, “What’s that? I love that animation. Let me check it out.” Then they hear the music and they go, “Oh, my God, I love it.” And then it brings a new audience."

Comic Cuts — 24 April 2026

It has been a week of fun and frustration in unequal measures. After a couple of weeks of scanning and cleaning artwork I was asked about a book originally published under a house name (a name used by more than one author) that is to be reprinted in the USA, and thought I would be able to help with the identity of the author. But while I was waiting for a copy of the text, I discovered that some of the scanning I'd done wasn't really up to scratch. The original comics weren't in the best of condition and when I started working on the pages on Sunday, I was having to spend a lot of time on every page, a mixture of ink splashes, poor lettering and heavy inking showing through from the reverse of the page.

There was only one solution, and on Monday I started re-scanning the whole strip—about 250 pages. I did a couple of test pages and I could get them cleaned up in a third of the time, so in the long run it probably won't have cost me too much time. But, y' know, frustrating to have to re-scan everything none the less.

My book collecting Spidey senses had been tingling for a few days as a friend of mine has been thinking of downsizing his collection and he definitely has some books I want. Quite how many we shall see. I'm not rolling in money, so I did a careful inventory of some of the books I had and made a wants list: no upgrades, just filling gaps. And limited to 50 books. And if he doesn't have them, so be it... I'm not allowed to rework the list. 

I've mentioned over the past month that I have been buying books to fill gaps, mostly in my SF collection. I bought a couple of Colin Kapp novels to complete the Cageworld series, and a couple by Edgar Pangborn novels from Star to complete the four novel set that they published. I put up a Colin Kapp cover gallery, and Pangborn will follow soon.

I also had to buy a book for the "identify the author" project mentioned above. I had been dipping in to a couple of books that I thought might be by a certain writer and thought I might have spotted his work. Well, the arrival of the Rosetta Stone book that I know to be his threw everything into doubt, and I've had to downgrade one of the books I was looking at from "author?" to "unknown". Just when I thought I was getting somewhere...

In the meantime, I had another inquiry about an obscure British comic strip. I know very little about it as it appeared in a magazine, not a comic. The only thing I do know about is the scriptwriter. I'm looking at my notes, and I think I need to do some deeper research... so that's something else I need to look into, whether for the comic reprint or just for myself.

Over at "find the author", I pulled a couple of books off my shelf for comparison to the Rosetta Stone. And one of them looks promising, so I may have two of this guy's books for comparison to the title that's being reprinted. I have emails out to a couple of other people in the hope that I can get more samples before I knuckle down and read the various texts.

I've had a doctor's appointment this week (just a regular check-up), had to go to Tesco's to do a "big shop" (usually when I buy a lot of tinned goods, which I don't like to leave to Mel to drag back on the bus), and today (Friday) I have an appointment with the dentist (again, just a regular check-up)... so you can't say life isn't exciting. I've been out more times this week than I have the past month! 

I have to end on a sad note and mention the passing of Barrie Tomlinson. I spoke to Barrie irregularly over a period of many years, whenever I had questions about his career at Fleetway/IPC. He responded to the best of his memory—which he claimed was poor, but he always seemed to have an answer. He contributed an essay to my Lion index (Lion: King of Picture Story Papers) in which he talked about his early days at Fleetway, which he joined in early 1961 as a sub on that paper. In 1967 moved to Tiger where he established himself as editor two years later.

It was under Barrie's watch that Roy of the Rovers was given his own title. Barrie realised that he could create newspaper stories around the character, as Roy and Melchester Rovers were so firmly ingrained in the British psyche and by then known to two or three generations. Whether it was the birth of a baby, getting a kiss from Suzanne Dando, or being shot by a mystery intruder, Barrie was able to generate many column inches in newspapers that kept Roy and his Rovers in the public eye.

In 1978, Barrie became group editor, overseeing Battle and 2000AD amongst others, and over the next few years he was behind the launches of the new Eagle, Scream!!, Speed, MASK, Ring Raiders and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, amongst others. Wildcat was one of his favourites, quite an innovative anthology title where all the stories were linked, with four characters all exploring the same alien planet while the Wildcat spaceship sought a new home for Earth's surviving population.

Under the banner of Creative Editorial Services, Barrie continued to work for Fleetway Publications creating Hot-Shot and Toxic Crusaders, etc. As titles disappeared or were taken back in-house, he expanded to edit titles for Grandreams and Reginald Taylor, as well as writing the daily football strip 'Scorer' for the Daily Mirror (1989-2011). He contributed to the short-lived Fiz, published by the Daily Star, which drew on his sense of humour (inspired by The Goons) to answer problems as 'Pansy Pratt' and the cartoon 'Percy Puzzler'. He also wrote other strips, some books for Ladybird and Golden Books, and two volumes of autobiography, Real Roy of the Rovers Stuff (2016) and Comic Book Hero (2017).

Barrie's humour continued to thrive on Twitter, where he kept in touch with many fans, sharing crazy captions to photographs as well as his memories of working in comics. 

(* Scorer © Reach PLC. Can I remind all my readers not to rely on the "AI Overview" that you get when doing a Google search, as it is often wrong...

... as in the result I got while checking the copyright on the strip. A lot of people will assume that's correct, will use that information, and will only further confirm to the AI that the strip ran in The Sun. It didn't.)

Commando 5951-5954

To commemorate ANZAC Day on the 25th April, we have a special set of Commandos featuring the heroic exploits of the brave Australian and New Zealand military personnel. 

5951: Humpback Heroes

Australian Captain Tom Best and his men were veterans of the war in the desert, fighting on the front line and defending Tobruk from the Germans. 
    When they were pulled out for some much-deserved rest, they thought they had it made – that was until they were roped into a mission deep behind enemy lines to destroy an Afrika Korps fuel dump! 
    And to get there? Well, they’d have to ride camels in complete disguise. They were to become heroes on humpback!

Story: Brent Towns
Internal Art: Jaume Forns
Cover Art: Simon Pritchard

5952: Company of Heroes

 “Now that I’m in India, I’m going to fix up a nice, cushy desk job.” 
    Those were Lieutenant Brian Lawson’s words when he arrived in the barracks of the famous Hyderabad Fusiliers, and for a while it looked as though they might come true. But then came the war with Japan, and for Brian Lawson nothing could ever be the same again. For he was part of the… Company of Heroes! 

Story: Eric Hebden
Internal & Cover Art: Gordon C Livingstone
First published 1971 as No.610

5953: Terror Train

Tunisia, 1943. A German military supply train cuts through North Africa, delivering vital supplies to the German lines. Equipped with vicious anti-aircraft guns, making it impossible to attack from the skies, the behemoth train threatens the Allied stronghold.  
    Tasked with destroying it, Captain Mike Lambert and his New Zealand Long Range Desert Group unit must fight carriage to carriage to wrest control from the Germans and destroy the supply line once and for all.

Story: Rossa McPhillips
Internal Art: Jaume Forns
Cover Art: Keith Burns

5954: Spring the Trap
 
When Commando officer Richard Adam was ordered to lead his expert team into the Italian mountains to blow up a vital dam, he didn’t expect this mission to be much different from any of the others he had tackled. 
    Boy, was he in for a surprise...

Story: McDevitt
Internal Art: CT Rigby
Cover Art: Jeff Bevan
First published 1985 as No. 1864

Rebellion Releases — 22 April 2026

The first teaser trailer for the forthcoming Rogue Trooper movie was revealed today as part of a Deadline interview with filmmaker Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code, Mute, Warcraft).

The teaser was released alongside 4 new stills taken from Rogue Trooper, which is due for release later this year. You can watch the teaser trailer below.

Rogue Trooper is a fully animated science fiction feature from Rebellion and Liberty Films. Taken from 2000 AD, the legendary British comic book, which is also home to Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper was co-created by artist Dave Gibbons (Watchmen, Kingsman) and Gerry Finley-Day and has been adapted for the screen by Duncan Jones, who tells Deadline: 

"We began with storyboards and little videos of me and my editor, Barrett Heathcote, running around the garden reenacting bits and then sticking it all together and editing a film together, then making an animatic with the Unreal Engine, which was something we used as part of the process. But we didn’t know where we were going. We had this wonderful artist who actually we eventually requested become our production designer, Stephen Trumble, and he was giving us all of this fantastic concept artwork as we were going along. And we just kept on nudging it along, and changing things as we went, until we found something that holistically worked for the whole movie." The interview with Jones and producer Stuart Fenegan can be found here.

More news on Rogue Trooper will be revealed in the coming months.



And now, this week's release...

2000AD Prog 2479
Cover: Steven Austin, with Matt Soffe

JUDGE DREDD // FLAMES AND WHITE PHOSPHOROUS by TC Eglington (w) Paul Marshall (a) Quinton Winter (c) Annie Parkhouse (l)
BRINK // THE CALL OF THE VOID by Dan Abnett (w) INJ Culbard (a) Simon Bowland (l)
SILVER // MALIGNANT by Mike Carroll (w) Joe Currie (c) Simon Bowland (l)
FUTURE SHOCKS // CREATURE FEATURETTE by Lilith Allen (w) Philip Read (a) Rob Steen (l)
HELIUM // RED OCTOBER by Ian Edginton (w) D'Israeli (a) Annie Parkhouse (l)

Comic Cuts — 17 April 2026

I'm still cleaning up artwork, so there's not much in the way of news. I've taken it fairly slowly this week, putting together a couple of biographical sketches of creators that were involved in the books I'm currently working on. Not that there was an urgent need, but I wanted to make sure I had all my facts straight should I need them for an introduction. 

I have one more to do for someone I know very little about, and those can take just as long — not in the writing, but the banging your head into a brick wall trying to find even the tiniest fragment of information. I have no biographical details for the artist I wrote up yesterday, not even a birth or death date, and to achieve that level of zero knowledge, I researched (as best I could) ten people with the same name, ruling out six where I could figure out their occupations (they were not artists) or their year of death (while our artist was still working). But that still leaves four, any one of which could be our guy.

But that's most of a day's work. The packing and post associated with Bear Alley Books can take some time, and whether I sell one or ten books, the Post Office doesn't get any closer. There's mowing the lawn and we're having a general spring clean around the house; a leak in the roof needed fixing; I'm chasing up a missing birth certificate which has taken over a month to arrive — all distractions that slow down any progress I'm trying to make on the books. It's a miracle I get any out, let alone five a year.

(2024: Beyond the Void, Forgotten Authors Vol. 5, High Seas and High Adventures, The Phantom Patrol, Dreaming of Utopia; 2025: Mytek Vols. 1-4, The Air Ace Companion; 2026: Action... and more to follow!)

Cleaning up artwork can be fiddly. Letterpress printing was never meant for anything but for a quick read and the paper quality was never great, and six decades on its often yellow with age. The slightest imperfection would send ink spraying across the page, and line work would drop out and disappear. This is especially noticeable in the gutters between the panels and in the captions and word balloons. 

What I'm doing isn't restoration. That would require a lot more work. What I'm doing is mostly cleaning up any damage in the balloons, tidying up panel borders and removing any obvious problems on a page. Here's a typical example (certainly not the worst, but it happened to be on the page I was working on when I had the notion to show you what I was talking about when I said I was cleaning up pages).

The scan showed some damage, perhaps where a patch was used to correct a spelling error, or over-inking on the reverse page was showing through. It's the sort of problem that appeared in every single episode and is easily fixed by zooming in and attacking the lettering with a tiny eraser, but boy is it time consuming!

Another common problem is where the page has a small tear affecting the lettering. Here I generally use Photoshop to copy the existing lettering, although I have had to go in with a pencil tool in a couple of instances and fix some lettering. The results are usually invisible — you won't notice any difference when you're reading the book and that means all the hard work will have been worth it. It's not The Repair Shop and nobody is filming it... so I thought I'd give it a mention.

(The header picture is a reminder that I've made a few additions to my Anne McCaffrey cover gallery. As I've not included any of the books that she wrote in collaboration, I thought I'd use this one here. I've also added a couple of early paperbacks to the Desmond Bagley cover gallery recently. I'm tinkering with these old galleries constantly and hopefully I'll get some new ones up in the near future, adding to the recent galleries featuring Colin Kapp and Richard Coles (just scroll down if you've missed them).

Rebellion Releases — 15 April 2026

Acclaimed by readers since it first debuted in Judge Dredd Megazine 424 back in 2020, Megatropolis is an art-deco futurist noir series set in an alternative universe which reimagines the core elements of Mega-City One for a wholly new vision of Judge Dredd’s world. Created by Ken Niemand and artist Dave Taylor, the series has been one of the Megazine’s most popular stories since it debuted, and served as a stunning spotlight for Taylor’s astounding artistry.

With Dave Taylor sadly passing away in 2025, midway through completing another incredible run on the series, we didn’t want for the story to remain incomplete, as readers deserved the opportunity to see the entire series, including Taylor’s work – and so Rebellion are proud to announce that artist Chris Weston will be joining Megatropolis with April’s issue 491, ensuring that the second storyline will run through until its planned conclusion later this year.

For Weston, this is a chance to pay tribute to a friend and colleague, and in speaking to 2000 AD about the news he told us “like everyone else, I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of ​Dave Taylor. I was instantly consumed with regret that I didn’t spend more time hanging out with him as I always found him great company. He had the gift of the gab and would have an amusing take on all manner of topics: from politics to UFOs. Mostly we talked about our shared love of the art of Jean “Moebius” Giraud. Dave got to spend time working with Moebius and the  Incal and Blueberry maestro had an undeniable influence on his work.” 

Continue reading the interview at the 2000AD website. Meanwhile, here's this week's releases...

2000AD Prog 2478
Cover: John McCrea & Mike Spicer.

JUDGE DREDD // FLAMES AND WHITE PHOSPHOROUS by TC Eglington (w) Paul Marshall (a) Quinton Winter (c) Annie Parkhouse (l)
BRINK // THE CALL OF THE VOID by Dan Abnett (w) INJ Culbard (a) Simon Bowland (l)
SILVER // MALIGNANT by Mike Carroll (w) Joe Currie (a) Simon Bowland (a)
FUTURE SHOCKS // THE VESSEL by James Peaty (w) Steve Yeowell (a) John Charles (c) Rob Steen (l)
HELIUM // RED OCTOBER by Ian Edginton (w) D'Israeli (a) Annie Parkhouse (l)

Judge Dredd Megazine #491
Cover: Dylan Teague.

JUDGE DREDD // FEAR CITY by Karl Stock (w) Dan McDaid (a) Jack Davies (c) Simon Bowland (l)
ATOMFALL // THE WICKED ISLE by Jonathan L. Howard (w) Anthony Williams (a) Rob Steen)
FARGO & MCBANE // FAVOURED SONS by Ken Niemand (w) PJ Holden (a) Quinton Winter (c) Annie Parkhouse (l)
DEPARTMENT K // ...NO MORE by Ned Hartley (w) Mike Walters (a) Simon Bowland (l) 
ROK THE WORLD by John Wagner (w) Dan Cornwell (a) Jim Boswell (c) Rob Steen (l)
MEGATROPOLIS II by Ken Niemand (w) Chris Weston (a) Antonietta Saulino (c) Rob Steen (l)

Action 50th Anniversary Special
Cover: John Higgins.

HOOKJAW // NECROMONE: Steve White (w) Staz Johnson (a) Matt Soffe (c) Rob Steen (l)
HELLMAN // A WINTER'S TALE: Garth Ennis (w) Mike Dorey (a) Rob Steen (l)
LOOK OUT FOR LEFTY // ARISE, SIR LEFTY! Rob Williams (w) Patrick Goddard (a) Rob Steen (l)
DREDGER // AFTER THE ACTION: Garth Ennis (w) John Higgins (a) Rob Steen (l)

Richard Coles cover gallery

NOVELS

Murder Before Evensong (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, Jun 2022)
W&N 978-1476-61264-7, Mar 2023, 371pp, £9.99. Cover by Holly Ovenden

A Death in the Parish (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, Jun 2023)
W&N 978-1474-61268-5, Feb 2024, 414pp, £9.99. Cover by Holly Ovenden

Murder at the Monastery (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, Jun 2024)
W&N 978-1474-61272-2, Feb 2025, 399pp, £9.99. Cover by Holly Ovenden

Murder Under the Mistletoe (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, Oct 2024)
W&N 978-1399-62147-2, Oct 2024, 143pp, £12.99 [hardcover]. Cover by Holly Ovenden

A Death on Location (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, Jun 2025)
W&N 978-1399-62143-4, Feb 2026, 405pp, £9.99. Cover by Holly Ovenden

Colin Kapp cover gallery

An early favourite of mine thanks to his remarkable Unorthodox Engineers series of stories in New Worlds and New Writings in SF (and, I confess, the Chris Foss covers on his novels), Colin Kapp was never an especially prolific author. I rather lost track of him in 1982, having picked up the first two of the Cageworld books. I don't remember ever seeing the last two in our local book shops, and I've only recently — April 2026 — picked them up via Ebay. 

There was a collection of the Unorthodox Engineers stories from Dobson, but I believe it appeared just as Dobson was going out of business, so was never widely distributed. Copies go for inflated prices and I'd love to see it as an SF Masterworks. Of his novels, The Dark Mind is probably his best, along with his novelette 'Lambda 1' and sequel 'The Imagination Trap'. 

There was a further novel advertised, The Timewinders, which was also caught up in the demise of his publisher, Dennis Dobson and never appeared. I wonder what happened to the manuscript?

Transfinite Man (New York, Berkley, 1964; as The Dark Mind, London, Corgi, 1965)
Corgi Books GS7160, 1965, 157pp, 3/6. Cover by Josh Kirby

The Patterns of Chaos (London, Gollancz, 1972; New York, Award, 1973)
Panther 0586-03918-X, 1974, 192pp. Cover by Chris Foss

The Wizard of Anharitte (New York, Award, 1973; London, Panther, 1975)
Panther 0586-04192-3, 1975, 174pp, 50p. Cover by Peter Jones.

Survival Game (New York, Ballantine, 1976; London, Dobson, 1977)
(no UK paperback edition)

The Chaos Weapon (New York, Del Rey, 1977; London, Dobson, 1979)
(no UK paperback edition)

Manalone (London, Panther, 1977)
Panther 0586-04234-2, 1977, 197pp, 75p. Cover by Chris Foss

The Ion War (London, Ace Books, 1978; London, Dobson, 1979)
(no UK paperback edition)

The Unorthodox Engineers (London, Dobson, 1979)
(no paperback edition)

Cageworld #1: Search for the Sun! (London, NEL, 1982; New York, DAW Books, 1983)
New English Library 0450-05131-5, Mar 1982, 172pp, £1.25. Cover by Gerald Grace

Cageworld #2: The Lost Worlds of Cronus (London, NEL, 1982; New York, DAW Books, 1983)
New English Library 0450-05409-9, Mar 1982, 170pp, £1.25. Cover by Gerald Grace

Cageworld #3: The Tyrant of Hades (London, NEL, 1982; New York, DAW Books, 1984)
New English Library 0450-05469-1. 1982, 173pp. Cover by Gerry Grace

Cageworld #4: Star-Search (London, NEL, 1983; New York, DAW Books, 1984)
New English Library, 0450-05531-0, Jan 1983, 171pp, £1.25. Cover by Gerry Grace

Comic Cuts — 10 April 2026

I mentioned last week that I was just starting a new book. Well, I'm still working on it. The artwork will be clean and ready to go in the next couple of days and I'm starting to dig around to find out more about the creators. That said, I don't think there will be lengthy introductions in this one as the strip alone fills quite a substantial book, but I do want to make sure that, should I mention anything about the strip or its creators, I'm straight on my facts.

It wasn't all work over the bank holiday weekend; in fact, I've been taking it easy, catching up on a couple of films and reading half a book (which is quick for me, these days). Also a surprise visit from my Mum—I was trying to phone her and wondering why she wasn't answering when the doorbell rang. We were forced (forced, I tell you) to go down the pub and have a nice meal, and then have a little wander along the river and up through the park. Total work done on Wednesday: zero!

I'll get back to it the moment I'm finished here. Promise.

I was interviewed by Tom Fordy of the Daily Telegraph recently and the results appeared at the weekend, which I missed entirely. So if you have the Telegraph or Sunday Telegraph, a decent scan would be appreciated. For once, it was an intelligent discussion of Action and its place in British comics history — although it did have the clickbaity headline: "'More blood, more blood!' The violent 1970s comic that corrupted Britain's boys".

Underneath, however, was a far more reasoned story of Action's origins and demise. Steve MacManus and Garth Ennis were also interviewed, so there was no question about the direction the conversation would take from the viewpoint of the interviewees. Fortunately, Fordy used to work in a comic shop in Bristol, so he was the right guy to write the piece, which he did without making it over-sensational. 

The book also got its first review, on Mike Carroll's blog. I'll not quote it at length but it's the kind of review every author hopes for: "[T]he book is extensively illustrated throughout and an absolute must-have for anyone interested in Action, its impact, the British comics industry, or even if you’re just interested in Britain in the mid 1970s. Highly recommended!" 

Getting a book reviewed is not easy. Self-published, print-on-demand books especially, as they are ignored by the newspapers that might get a title out to a broader public. Also, I'm the wrong sort of person for Booktube or Booktok—I'm not writing about Romantasy. Also, I'm not sexy. Or young. Or female.

(And now I'm going to be fed a lot of Booktok videos by Youtube because I've mentioned Booktok. It's spoiling all the video recommendations I get for my current obsession, Angine de Poitrine. They are the Ig Nobel Award of math rock... first you think "That's so stupid", then you think "Actually that's not bad", and finally "I must spend a whole afternoon discovering who these guys really are!". It's not too difficult, but I'll leave you with Khn and Glek. Those crazy Canadians Martians and their microtonal noodling...)

Commando 5947-5950

Lord Peter Flint – AKA Warlord – is back for a new, high-stakes mission in the next Commando set. Alongside that, we have a story about the fiercely brave Polish resistance fighters in occupied 1944 Warsaw, as well as two fantastic, reprinted tales. Issues 5947-5950 on sale today, April 9th. 

5947: Codename Warlord: Shadow Sands

Lord Peter Flint is on one of his most dangerous — and important — missions yet!
‘Shadow Sands’ is the codename for the biological weapons project collecting anthrax spores on an isolated Maunsell Fort off the coast of England. Flint’s handler, Kingpin, was at the fort when it was raided by a team of German commandos and Professor Kranz’s robot Panzermen. Now he’s been taken hostage along with the leading scientists!
    But Intelligence believes someone on board the fort helped the Germans — and they suspect Kingpin! Kingpin, a traitor?! It can’t be true!
    Warlord has until midnight to rescue the hostages and clear Kingpin’s name!

Story: Dominic Teague
Internal Art: Paolo Ongaro
Cover Art: Neil Roberts

5948: Desert Double-Cross
 
The German soldier stood well braced, Schmeisser shuddering in his strong hands and cutting down the attackers. He had learnt the ways of war in France, Crete, North Africa — a tough school for any soldier. And beside him, firing with equal calmness, was a British soldier — a veteran hardened in the battles of Dunkirk, Tobruk, El Alamein.
    That day, many British and German soldiers fought the hardest fight of their lives in the ruins of an old desert fort. Not against each other, but as allies!

Story: CG Walker
Internal Art: Cam Kennedy
Cover Art: Ian Kennedy
First published 1971 as No.604

5949: Phoenix From The Flame

 Warsaw, summer of 1944. Not everyone had bowed down to the German occupation. Like other brave members of the underground Polish Home Army,
    Monika Proch risked her life for her country to be free.
    The previous year, Warsaw had seen how cruelly the Nazis could crush rebellion, with the utter destruction of the Jewish ghetto. Monika vowed the rest of her city would not receive the same fate.
    Together with the other men and women of the Resistance, they would rise against the Nazi invaders like a… PHOENIX FROM THE FLAMES!

Story: Andrew Knighton
Internal Art: Vicente Alcazar
Cover Art: Marco Bianchini

5950: Swamp Strike
 
 If you’re a member of a platoon trekking through miles of hostile jungle to attack a secret enemy supply dump, you want the man in command to be a cool, reliable bloke whom you can trust.
    But what happens when you’re led by someone whose lies nearly landed you in prison?

Story: CG Walker
Internal Art: Carrion
Cover Art: Philpott
First published 1984 as No. 1858