Dogfight Dixon, Psycho Warriors and Swordsmen

One of the latest batch of hardback Fleetway Picture Library Classics from Book Palace reprints some of my favourite episodes from the pages of Thriller Picture Library. I was always a bit of a fan of Air Ace Picture Library and found by chance some reprints of Dogfight Dixon tales dating from around 1966-67. Many years later, my small collection of Thriller Picture Library is mostly issues of Jet-Ace Logan, John Steel and... Dogfight Dixon.

Four stories are reprinted here, beginning with Donald Oliver Graham (DOG... geddit?) Dixon looking longingly out of the window of his classroom, and even 500 lines can't dull the desire to take to the air. His father has other ideas, and wants him to join his Regiment, the Royal Light Infantry, where a Dixon has served since its formation two hundred years before. Injured, his father looks forward to seeing his son in uniform after learning of his enlistment... and a schism forms when he learns that his son has joined the Royal Flying Corps.

Posted to France, the newly nicknamed Dogfight is given the job of checking out the situation of an infantry battalion, pinned down by German shelling. Dogfight destroys a siege gun only to discover two more on the way and it requires all his flying skills and courage to take them out of action. And the stubborn Colonel who had refused any help from the R.F.C.—Dogfight's own father!

I'm always surprised at how good these old stories are, and the depth of emotion some of them managed to convey amongst the action. There is enough excitement and aerial action to thrill the schoolboy readership the books were originally aimed at, but they can be appreciated by an older audience too, for their fine artwork and the storytelling talent on display.

Dogfight's original writer was Ralph Coveney, with artwork by Dino Battaglia. The rest of the tales are the work of Donne Avenell, Ian Kellie and Michael Moorcock, with artwork by Aldoma Puig, Amador Garcia and Allen Pollack. Of these, 'Hawks of the Desert' sees Dogfight joining a mysterious Professor of Islamic Studies in a secret desert mission to stop Turkish forces sweeping into Cairo; 'The Phantom Camel' pits Dogfight against a German ace over Western Front; and 'The Zeppelin Menace' sees 13 Squadron escorting bombers on a mission to destroy Zeppelin sheds that fails badly, without a bomb falling on the target...

Moving forward in time to the Second World War, Jorge Moliterni's Psycho War Stories may be a slightly overstated title, but it contains some excellent tales from the pages of War and Battle picture libraries. Reading the introduction (a welcome addition to the book), it is editor Peter Richardson who found Moliterni's work compelling when he stumbled upon it at the age of nine. He went on to discover that Moliterni's stories often had a dark, menacing theme and characters whose pathological hatred knew no bounds. 

I first came across Moliterni aged 12 in the pages of another picture library, Top Secret, and loved his work. His work was still as dramatic as ever, and it's great to see where Moliterni's journey in the UK began with the reprinting of these earlier stories.

Fighting of a different kind can be found in By the Sword!, a collection of six stories from Thriller Picture Library featuring a variety of classic heroes, from The Three Musketeers and Rob Roy to Claude Duval and Dick Turpin. It's a fine volume that will also introduce you to a range of artists who began making their names around this period, including Graham Coton, CL Doughty, Fred Holmes, Patrick Nicolle, Arthur Horowicz and Reg Bunn. 

The latter, especially, will surprise fans who only know his work from 'The Spider'. As he was pushed to deliver more pages each week, he concentrated on foreground figures and used cross-hatching to fill the backgrounds on many pages. Here you can see Bunn putting in far more detail in his artwork, packing in far more characters (their faces unmistakable even this early in Bunn's career), and bringing far more polish to the pages. Not to dismiss his later work, but , given time, I've always thought that the Spider strip could have been even better than it was. 

There's a nice introduction to the various characters by Norman Wright, who probably knows his way around Thriller better than anyone. Introductions are a nice addition to these volumes of older material, and I hope that Book Palace will continue with them in future.

Jorge Moliterni's Psycho War Stories. Book Palace Books ISBN 978-191354864-3, 24 March 2025, 276pp, £25.00. Available via Amazon.
By the Sword. Book Palace Books ISBN 978-191354866-7, 24 March 2025, 272pp, £25.00. Available via Amazon.
Dogfight Dixon. Book Palace Books ISBN 978-191354867-4, 17 March 2025, 268pp, £25.00. Available via Amazon.

Fleetway Picture Library Classics

They're like buses... you wait for ages and three come along at once. I'm talking the latest releases from The Book Palace, of course.

The latest trio are collections of pocket libraries, namely a second volume of Larrigan westerns entitled Larrigan Rides Again, a gathering of four of Gino D'Antonio's Frontline War Stories, and Captain Blood, which brings together four pirate yarns.

I can cover all three at reasonable pace, because we have seen quite a few of these volumes in the past - I think there has been ten volumes already, bringing together scarce issues of Thriller, Super Detective, Lone Rider, War and Battle picture libraries. The slight difference here is that these latest volumes are proper hardcovers rather than the flexiback covers of earlier volumes, which makes them even sturdier.

The first Larrigan collection brought together episodes drawn by Arturo Del Castillo for Lone Rider Picture Library (with one episode being slipped into the Cowboy Picture Library when Lone Rider folded). This volume picks up the remaining four episodes that appeared in Lone Rider and Cowboy, three drawn by Emilio Frejo and one by Carlos Roume. Frejo did his best to keep some continuity of look with Del Castillo's issues, but frankly need not have bothered; he was shaking off the influence by his last story ('Ghost Town') and it's my favourite of the three. Roume's rugged, square-jawed cowboys are always welcome.

Larrigan was one of those drifting cowboys who would arrive in town and finds himself caught up in a feud between cattlemen and rustlers or a local sheriff and invading gunfighters long before Sergio Leone filmed A Fistful of Dollars, which owed a debt to Kurosawa's Yojimbo, which itself owed a debt to Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest.

Captain Blood is also a sequel - to Pirates! - but this volume concentrates on Rafael Sabatini's classic pirate yarns, Captain Blood: His Odyssey (1922) and two collections The Chronicles of Captain Blood (1931) and The Fortunes of Captain Blood (1936). The Thriller Picture Library versions of the latter two adapted four  (of ten) stories from the first and two (of six) from the second. The artwork changed from issue to issue: C. E. Drury, Robert Forrest and Guido Buzelli drew these, with Forrest also drawing The Black Swan adapting another Sabatini pirate novel from 1932.

The third volume is a collection of four stories drawn by Gino D'Antonio. I love D'Antonio's work in War and Battle picture libraries and reprinted quite a bit when I had the opportunity a decade or so ago. His war work is simply amazing and any collection of his 34 full-length war stories is a winner in my eyes.

D'Antonio was drawing these stories through the studio of Roy D'Ami and even there he was admired by his fellow artists for the skill with which he depicted men in the middle of fighting mayhem.

Captain Blood (Fleetway Picture Library Classics)
Book Palace Books ISBN 978-191334842-1, 2023. 272pp, £25.00. Available via Amazon.

Gino D'Antonio's Frontline War Stories (Fleetway Picture Library Archives)
Book Palace Books ISBN 978-191334834-6, 2023, 272pp, £25.00. Available via Amazon.

Larrigan Rides Again (Fleetway Picture Library Classics)
Book Palace Books ISBN 978-191334841-4, 2023, 268pp, £25.00. Available via Amazon.