Pitch Publishing 978-1785-31324-0, 1 September 2017, 224pp, £14.99. Pre-order from Amazon.
In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, children's comics were a massive part of a young person's life. Comic Book Hero tells the inside story of how Barrie Tomlinson built up a successful boys' publishing group at IPC Magazines - now the stuff of legend among nostalgic and modern-day fans of the UK comic scene and its surrounding culture. Barrie started on Tiger comic as a subeditor, went on to be editor and eventually became head of the Boys' Sport and Adventure Department, in which capacity he launched Roy of the Rovers comic, the new Eagle, Scream, Speed, Wildcat, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles and Toxic Crusaders. The book tells about the Geoff Boycott, Big Daddy and Suzie Dando annuals he produced, and the 22 years spent writing the Scorer picture-strip for the Daily Mirror. Barrie also reveals dealings with the top stars as they joined Tiger, to make the title one of the most famous comics in Britain.
Millsverse, 6 June 2017. Available on Kindle from Amazon.
As much as I love the documentary Future Shock, I found myself watching back and wondering “Why am I the only one to be saying these slightly edgy things” and considering that, I decided Fuck it I’m going to write this book and bring it all out anyway...
I read somewhere, some fan was saying, Dredd was inspired by Clint Eastwood, well, if only it were that bloody simple! The whole process of creating characters is long, painful and in the British comic book industry, financially – it’s a nightmare and so I think that needed correcting as well.
Now whether that’s something that people want to read about or know, I’m not sure, I mean…for example all my favourite authors, when I was reading them, in my teens and twenties and thirties, perhaps to my shame, I had no interest in who they were, or what they did, or how they came up with stories. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller for example, I was never curious about it, I thought “Hey it’s a great book” but I think I’m in a minority there.
So it’s all those reasons [why the book was written], to really get under the bonnet of what 2000AD is about.
Titan Books ISBN 978-1782-76804-3, 12 September 2017, 136pp, £20.00 / $34.99. Pre-order from Amazon.
Hook Jaw - the comic so controversial, it got banned! Pat Mills and Ramon Sola's classic 70s 'sharksploitation' strip is collected in one volume by Titan Comics, featuring the great white shark that targets the corrupt and greedy!
Titan Books are following up their Hook Jaw mini-series revival by Si Spurier & Conor Boyle with a reprint of the original strip from the pages of Action. The strip has been a popular choice for revival over the years: in 2007, Spitfire Comics reprinted the bulk of the original Action strip from the period before it was pulled from the newsstands. The Spitfire Comics book went to a second edition in 2009—although both editions were short print runs.
The new Titan edition, at 136 pages in hardback compared to Spitfire's 96-page softcover, will presumably reprint more of the story as it appeared in the revived Action and, one hopes, some introductory material. The cover credit to writers Pat Mills and Ken Armstrong and artist Ramon Sola, seems to ignore the work of the strip's other artists, as did the Spitfire edition.
Titan Books ISBN 978-1785-86289-2, 24 October 2017, 160pp. Pre-order from Amazon.
Whilst on a mission to explore a distant galaxy, Dan and Dibgy set out in a scout ship and are forced to crash land on the planet Zyl by a race of scientifically advanced beings called the Zylans. They are currently at war with the inhabitants of the planet Vort, a war-like, barbarian race and need warriors to help them defeat their enemies. Their choice of Dare and Digby brings a most unexpected conclusion to their plans of planter domination.
Picking up from the earlier titles from Titan, this volume contains "Mission of the Earthmen" and "The Solid Space Mystery".
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