The Before Albion volume I've mentioned as upcoming from Titan Books has a new title, Albion Origins. It should be out on 16 October. Here's the blurb from amazon.co.uk..."Now starring in Albion, the critically acclaimed graphic novel plotted by the legendary Alan Moore, come four of British comics' most loved - and most bizarre - characters! There's Tim Kelly, a boy who finds the Eye of Zoltec, a jewel which grants him fantastic power; Dolmann, a genius inventor with a legion of crime-fighting toys; occult troubleshooter Cursitor Doom; and victorian escapologist Janus Stark! Never-before-collected, boasting a stunning new cover by comics legend Brian Bolland ("Batman: The Killing Joke"), and featuring exclusive new articles exploring the history of these characters' comics, this is another amazing trip into the past!"
The latest Worlds of Don Lawrence newsletter notes that the next volume of Trigan Empire: The Collection will be released in November under the title The Puppet Emperor (where I've been referring to it as The Five Labours of Trigo, which is what we had on our little schedule). The book has been delayed to allow everyone more time to work on the Karl the Viking volumes which have been taking a little longer than anticipated; the idea was to replicate the original pages as best we could and that meant using the original lettering. But the years haven't been kind to the lettering on the original boards so balloons are being individually scanned and dropped onto the digital scans of the artwork. It's a time consuming job, as I'm sure you'll appreciate.
I'm going to be finishing off the introductory material for the Karl books over the next few weeks so if there's a sudden silence on the blog you'll know why. I've also got to start thinking about the next Trigan volume, our tenth, although chronologically it's number five in the series. The title is The Red Death and it contains some of my favourite Trigan stories so I'm looking forward to it immensely.
I'm also looking forward to the next Storm: The Collection volume which will contain the next two Dutch albums, The Living Planet and Vandaahl the Destroyer. The Storm books just got better and better as the 'Pandarve' series progressed and these two look fantastic. As a tease I'm posting the covers to the Dutch albums. The Living Planet, above, caused me some problems many years ago when I used it on the magazine Comic Collector to accompany an interview with Don Lawrence. The colour proof came back and I was asked by Matt (the managing editor at the publisher) whether I thought it was suitable -- I think it was more a case of "suitable for W. H. Smith's" rather than suitable for the readership. The thing that swung the argument was the blue nipples... blue nipples are fantasy nipples, not real nipples. We weren't too sure what W. H. Smith's policy on nudity was (as it seemed to depend solely on circulation) but as the cover was no worse than dozens of paperback covers that they'd stocked we got the cover approved and into the shops. Without any complaints.
The above cover is from the latest (2005) printing of Vandaahl the Destroyer.A couple of bits of news from elsewhere...
* The horror of Kevin O'Neill at the Forbidden Planet International blog will point you to some early examples of Kev O'Neill's work for the Legend Horror Classics magazine way back in 1975.
* Warren Ellis has a new column called 'The Sunday Hangover'. First episode available now.
Steve -
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to send a shout-out to applaud you for the good work you're doing. Just because all the folks out here on the world-famous Interwub may not often find anything to add to your bloggings and illo samples doesn't mean you don’t have an audience.
I left the UK in 1971 when I was seventeen, having grown up following the work of the likes of Don Lawrence, Frank Bellamy, etcetera. (I still have many of those old comics in boxes, including Eagles with a complete run of Heros the Spartan). It's great to see you promoting these unsurpassed talents. And I'm looking forward to your second Fleetway book, the adventure libraries since it will feature, among others, Ron Turner (Rick Random, Space Ace, TV21's the Daleks), who was – and is – perhaps the ultimate SF comics illustrator, even surpassing the Dan Dare studio.
Thanks for the kind words, Mark. I knew when I started this blog last August that it was going to cover some obscure authors and artists so I was resigned to the fact that I wouldn't get a vast amount of feedback. But what feedback I get is usually very interesting and informative. That (and the occasional ego-boosting comment) helps keep me going!
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