Comic Cuts — 15 May 2026

While I'm waiting on news from Rebellion about a number of projects I'd like to do with them, I have been dipping into a couple of other areas that interest me. I've mentioned some research I was doing into 1950s paperbacks and checking through copyright records relating to them; well, that is just about done as I've scoured the volumes and can't find anything else of interest.

So I've switched track and have been looking at some comics from that era. Many, many years ago, I edited a magazine called Model Mart, about models and collectables, and one of the sections concerned comics. I decided that this was going to be my area and I'd write about things that interested me; that way I had something to look forward to every month. So there were pieces about Eagle, Lion and various other bits 'n' bobs. But the majority was part of a vast project I called "From Dan Dare to Judge Dredd", which was a planned history of British comics covering the previous fifty years (this, I should add, was in the mid-1990s).

Over a few years (1995-2000) I wrote... well, it must have been at least fifty articles; and with the fifth or sixth (it's a long time ago!) I decided I needed to step back further than Eagle so I could cover the independent comics of the time—the so-called "pirate" comics that would eventually lead to the horror comics crisis and the introduction of a new law in 1955.

Over the next two and a bit years I wrote about 75,000 words of material covering the likes of Gerald Swan, Arthur Soloway, Philipp Marx, and a lot of other pirates from around the UK before tackling various superheroes and spacemen. I never actually got as far as the horror comics as I gave up the editorship of the magazine in 2000 and the new editor had me writing about collectable trading cards, Gerry Anderson, a comics' news column (which lasted all of seven months), Ray Harryhausen, lots of movies from Hulk to The Matrix, and much more besides.

Some of the articles on comics were reused in a series for Jeff Hawke's Cosmos in 2003-06, and I've revamped one piece about Norman Light a couple of times in different books, but there's an awful lot that only ever saw the light of day on newsstands for a month before being replaced by another issue, and another, and another... and the series was soon forgotten. 

I've looked at it occasionally and back during the days of COVID (2020-21), I actually started re-writing a couple of sections from the beginning of the series, greatly expanding on what I had previously written (remember, the original features were for a magazine and had to fit into a limited page count). I could only get so far before other books got in the way; progress stalled for a couple of years, but I've spent the last few days on it in the hope that I can whip at least some of the text into shape.

My problem is that I'm very light on illustrations in places. If I had Denis Gifford's collection of these old pirate comics to hand, I wouldn't worry. But I don't. There may be some call-outs for help when I stumble into areas I know little about. 

I'm also not sure how far to take this first volume. There might be four volumes: Pirates, Superheroes, Space Heroes, Horror Comics. The first three are mapped out, thanks to those earlier articles; the fourth I have yet to start, although I've almost certainly got all the reference material I need... but not the comics. Again, I may need a hand there.

I have no idea when these books will appear, but I'll continue to write them when time allows and hopefully they'll see print one day. I don't expect there will be much of a market for them, but it's nice to have a "me" project that I can go to on occasion.