* Jeremy Briggs has given The War Libraries a sterling review at the Down the Tubes blog. "To the collector the information in it is so valuable that it really makes the book itself invaluable. Since it is a limited print run don’t miss out on this mine of information." Phew!
* Lew Stringer reviews Albion Origins and gives it the thumbs up at Blimey! "Reproduction of the strips is extremely good considering scans of 40 year old comics were the source material. Thankfully, no attempt has been made to edit out the title logos at the beginning of each episode, and every strip retains the toplines, resumé captions, etc as they did in their original publications. Some may dislike this, thinking they disrupt the flow of story, but in truth they add to the authenticity of those bygone comics, when cliffhangers were described as "spine chilling" and each installment "breath taking". All of which was part of what made British comics of the sixties so compelling and exciting."
* Lew also points out that the new Dandy Xtreme is reprinting classic Dudley D. Watkins 'Desperate Dan' yarns newly coloured... and the strip he shows looks pretty good.
* Jonathan Ross had an article in The Guardian ('The unsung hero behind Spider-Man', 14 September) about his love of Steve Ditko to tie in with his In Search of Steve Ditko programme last Sunday. For more on Jonathan's trip to New York at license-payer's expense see here.
* Frazer Diamond (better known as Toonhound) has a feature at the BBC News website (14 September) in which he discusses the decline of... but wait... no! As Frazer points out, the British comics' industry has simply evolved. 'The comic lives on' -- they're not the comics you or I remember from the 1960s and 1970s but they're still out there.
* Steve Flanagan discusses 'Kitty Hawke and Worrals of the WAAF versus Angela Air Hostess' at Gad, Sir! Comics (19 September).
* Ever wondered what Belle of the Ballet did after leaving school? Look like she discovered spandex and joined X-Force. (Pic via Richard Johnston's Lying in the Gutters)
Belle as a super-heroine? Not such a daft progression as you might think.
ReplyDeleteDid you know that Michelle Yeoh, depictor of breathtaking stunts and martial arts in the likes of Police Story 3, Tomorrow Never Dies and Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger, originally trained as a ballerina in London, before an injury left her fitness too erratic?
Similarly, Joanna Lumley had to give up a planned ballet career because she grew too tall, but used her training when playing Purdey in The New Avengers.
Obviously, that's still make-believe, but it's as close as we're going to get.