Brown Watson Annual - Part 2

(* Jeremy Briggs returns to take another look at those elusive...)

BROWN WATSON ANNUALS - Part 2

From the comments both on and off line, the blog on the Brown Watson annuals has sparked quite a few memories. The piece was intended to give a flavour of the type of the live action TV tie-in annuals the Brown Watson company produced in the mid to late Seventies and of the British artists that they used to produce the artwork, artists who would become better known to us in later years. The reprinting of American and French strips in these annuals is of less interest, while we will cover the later Grandreams annuals at a different time.

As mentioned last time John Bolton art is in a surprising number of these annuals either as full comic strips, as spot illustrations for text stories, or as frontispieces. The previous post showed the copyright 1977 New Avengers annual which had colour Bolton comic strips. The copyright 1978 New Avengers annual above reprints two French comic strips by Pierre LeGoff and relegates Bolton to spot illustrations.

The previous post showed Bolton strip art from the copyright 1977 Planet of the Apes Annual. He is also in the other two Apes annuals. The copyright 1975 Apes annual above reprints American comic strips and uses Bolton spot illustrations, while the copyright 1976 annual uses him for one colour comic strip and Trigan Empire, Dan Dare and War/Battle Picture Library artist Oliver Frey for the other, as seen below.

The black covered Bionic Woman Annual copyright 1978 shown last time with colour Ian Gibson comic strips is complemented by the pink covered copyright 1977 one which also has colour Gibson strips and this nice single page origin of the character.

Last, but definitely not least, is more colour David Lloyd art. Last time it was from the Logan's Run Annual which was copyright 1978 and was based on the TV series rather than the movie or the books, while this time it is from another late Seventies TV series based on a previously created character. The Dick Barton Special Agent Annual is copyright 1978 and is based on the Southern Television series screened in early 1979 with Tony Vogel and the eponymous agent. In this annual, David Lloyd illustrated two 9 page strips which ran over three chapters each in the annual with six pages of black and white art and three of colour in each story, plus all the spot illustrations in the book.

The other annuals that were mentioned by readers last time in the comments section include The Magician and The Gemini Man. Without having these to hand I can only refer you to the excellent Tony's Trading website which has a remarkable selection of annuals covers and is always worth having a browse through, although even he does not have those two particular titles. As last time, if you can add any further titles then hit the comment button.