Upcoming Releases

An occasional column of comic-related books and magazines that you might want to look out for...

CROK is the latest release from Justin Marriott, publisher of Paperback Fanatic and Battling Britons. This broadens out his coverage of comics beyond the war genre – CROK stands for Comics Rule, OK! – and its coverage mirrors Marriott's own experience of growing up reading Action!, 2000AD and Halls of Horror.

The first issue covers a broad range of subjects, from Lion's The Black Archer and Jet's Bala The Briton to the SF yarns in Judy and Bryan Talbot's art on Nemesis the Warlock. Written chiefly by Marriott and Jim O'Brien, the first issue dips into the work of Bill Ward (Judge Dredd), John Kent (Varoomshka), David Lloyd (his early fanzine career), Carlos Ezquerra (early horror stories) and Clifford Harper (Class War Comix).

A few of my favourite characters and subjects from this issue: Night Raven (I loved the text stories, and David Lloyd did a fantastic strip version; here both Dez Skinn and Steve Parkhouse contribute first hand knowledge), James Bacon's exploration of the Garth Ennis/John McCrea strip Troubled Souls, Marriott's look back at Kids Rule, OK and Jim O'Brien's take on Tammy's Slaves of War Orphan Farm.

It's an excellent debut, as you would expect from Justin,
Jim and James.

Comics Rule OK
Justin Marriott, 28 Oct 2023, 51pp, £5.99. Available via Amazon.

Comic Scene is back with its 2024 Yearbook, now published in A5 size with a spine rather than the A4 magazine of yesteryear.

Its a 100-page volume with an eclectic mix of contents, beginning with a tribute to the late Kevin O'Neill – could there be a better place to start? – and a round-up of highlights of 2023 (and so up-to-date that there's mention of the passing of Keith Giffen and Tony Husband). I won't list every article as there are over two dozen, but some highlights include Joan Ormrod's history of the early days of Wonder Woman, interviews with Aly Fell and Anna Morozova, a look back at Beau Peep, AXA, Bogie Man and Bunty, dips into Spirou, graphic novels for youngsters, classic British comics and Manga.

Comic Scene was always a supporter of the small press and there's plenty on offer in this volume. The book is rounded off by an extensive directory of creators working for both mainstream and small press. And Pat Mills returns with a 'Final Word' about his latest creation M17.

There's something here for everyone.

Comic Scene 2024 Yearbook
ComicScene ISBN 978-173968195-1, November 2023, 100pp, £9.99. Available via the ComicScene website.

The Chefs of Death is a recent Kickstarter project... indeed a Kickstarted project as it achieved its goal. Created by Alex Finch, the story will take you back to the photo-stories of early Eagle when it relaunched in 1982 with the likes of Doomlord, Sgt. Streetwise and Thunderbolt & Smokey.

Finch says of Doomlord, "it was the first time I'd ever read a comic which featured a violent anti-hero and a bleak view of humanity, and even at such a young age I fell in love with it, and apart from Tom Baker's Doctor Who nothing has influenced my passion for science fiction more. Ever since that age I've always wanted to create my own photo strip comic, and, well, it took longer than planned, but I got here in the end!"

And The Chefs of Death is the result. It stars Ian Lane, Chris Denton, Chloe Taylor, Ben Schenck, Louisa Gosse and Finch himself.

There's still time to support this project on Kickstarter and a number of stretch goals that could be reached if enough people back the project.

The Chefs of Death Issue 1 by Alex Finch & others.
Alex Finch, December 2023, 34pp, £4.

Upcoming Releases

I'm sorry to say that I don't always have the time to dedicate to promoting comics the way I'd like to. Back in the days of Comic World we tried to cover the small press with reviews every month and occasional interviews. Well, today there's as vibrant a small press as there ever was, and whole new ways of publishing that mean the small press (and I count Bear Alley amongst their number) can produce some stunning books. Here are just a few that have caught my eye...

Ian Gibson's Lifeboat by Ian Gibson
The 77 Publications, Autumn 2023, £25 (hc) / £18 (pb) / £10 (digital).

Ian Gibson's Lifeboat is the long awaited 60 page book by the artist behind The Ballad of Halo Jones (with Alan Moore), Robo-Hunter and Judge Dredd (John Wagner) and Miracle Man (J.M. DeMatteis).
    Following a hugely successful crowd-fundeder earlier in the year, this special edition of Book 1 of Ian Gibson' Lifeboat contains the first three chapters of his 'Magnum Opus' and offers the reader an exclusive and extensive analysis of Ian's techniques and character development.
    The book features reflections and commentary from those who best know Ian's work and also foreword by long time collaborator, John Wagner with contributions from Steve MacManus, David Roach and Steve Parkhouse.

Candy, Andy & The Bearandas by Alan Dein, foreword by Jamie Anderson.
Four Corner Books ISBN 978-190982921-3, 26 October 2023, 92pp, £15. Available via Amazon.

‘Candy and Andy is such a strange and wonderful sixties time capsule combining off beat creativity, captivating photography, an incongruous narrative, and material that, through a contemporary lens, often borders on the harrowing!’ – Jamie Anderson
    Living in a picture-perfect English village, two panda bears, Mr and Mrs Bearanda, bring up their plastic children, Candy and Andy…

    Devised by Gerry Anderson’s Century 21 Productions (Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet) for the 1960s comic book market, the images created for the Candy and Andy photostrips are a surreal, unique look at domesticity, the family and childhood. Their unusual nature meant they never reached the popularity of other Anderson characters, and the photo story comics were abandoned after just a year.
    Candy, Andy & The Bearandas presents the best of the surviving original transparencies from Gerry Anderson’s brilliantly bizarre project: driving their striped Mini, preparing for Bonfire Night, or going for a boat ride, Candy, Andy and the Bearandas live in an unforgettable, dreamlike world. The carefully restored images are lovingly presented in a faux leather-bound hardback (with foil-blocking and tipped-in cover image).
    It also features a Foreword by Gerry Anderson’s son, Jamie Anderson, and an introduction detailing the history of the Candy and Andy project by historian and broadcaster Alan Dein.

Sherlock Holmes and the Empire Builders Volume 1: The Gene Genie by Joel Meadows & Andy Bennett
Tripwire Comics ISBN 978-139996075-5, 27 December 2023, £25.00 Available via Amazon.

Sherlock Holmes and The Empire Builders is an epic alternate world sci fi adventure featuring The World’s Greatest Detective as people have never seen him before.
     When Watson leaves Holmes to help Crick unravel the DNA helix and finds himself in the employ of England’s most evil man, Holmes is forced to team up with an unlikely group to defeat this monstrous figure and return England to its status quo. With your support here we can get the first part of this exciting graphic novel out to readers!
     Testing the waters with three shorts which ran in Tripwire magazine, we felt that now was the time to debut this in its own graphic novel series. This will be a hardcover with a dust jacket running at 88 pages with 68 pages of story (much of which will be new material) plus character sketches, script pages and an interview offering extra information on the series.
     Covers by Mark Chiarello & Walter Simonson

The Tomorrow People — The Complete Look-In Comics: Volume Two by Angus Allan, John M Burns, Mike Noble, Bill Titcombe, Leslie Branton
Oak Tree Books / Chinbeard Books, February 2024, £39.99.

Oak Tree Books and Chinbeard Books are pleased to announce that ‘The Tomorrow People — The Complete Look-In Comics: Volume Two’ is slated for publication in February 2024 and is available to pre-order today. The collection is released in association with Rebellion and the Treasury of British Comics.
    In collaboration with series creator and writer Roger Price, the team of Robert Hammond and Barnaby Eaton-Jones (the creative forces behind the award-winning ‘Robin of Sherwood — The Complete Look-In Comics’) alongside writer and expert Andy Davidson, have joined forces yet again for the second volume of beautifully restored Tomorrow People strips from the pages of Look-In magazine.
    This announcement follows the successful release of ‘The Tomorrow People — The Complete Look-In Comics: Volume One’ earlier this year.
    “I always think of the comic strip version of The Tomorrow People as demonstrating what it could have been if it had a decent budget,
and with today’s technology.” says series creator, Roger Price.
    This is Volume Two of a two-volume collection featuring every Look-In strip of The Tomorrow People, showcases the creative flair of John M. Burns, Mike Noble, Bill Titcombe, Leslie Branton, and Angus P. Allan.
    It includes pages lovingly restored from the original art boards, concluding articles, features, and posters, as well as a foreword by actor (and Tomorrow Person) Nicholas Young.
    ‘The Tomorrow People — The Complete Look-In Comics: Volume Two’ is available to pre-order now in limited edition hardback from AUK Direct.
    For those that missed out on ‘Volume One’, there are a limited number of copies left available here.

Upcoming releases

Rebellion are releasing two 2000AD strips in early 2018 that hark back to the comics' earliest days. In February they are releasing Ant Wars, which originally appeared in progs 71-85 in 1978, but was conceived as a Them!-style, giant-animals-attack yarn during 2000AD's creation. Written by Gerry Finley-Day and drawn for the most part by Jose Luis Ferrer and Alfonso Azpiri, the strip was subsequently reprinted in Eagle (1986).

The book will also include 'Zancudo' from Judge Dredd Megazine (2005) by Si Spurrier and Cam Kennedy, and has a cover by Kevin O'Neill.

A month later, Rebellion are reprinting M.A.C.H.1 (ISBN 978-1781-08613-1) which debuted in the first Prog. John Probe was 2000AD's answer to the hugely popular Six Million Dollar Man, Probe's adventures were written and drawn by two dozen different artists and writers.

Titan Comics have released some further information about their upcoming Dan Dare comic book. It is to be written by Peter Milligan (recently to be found writing The Mummy for Titan) and drawn by Alberto Foche, well-known in Spain but a newcomer to British comics. Covers have been painted by Chrisian Ward, Alberto Foche and a retro cover by Chris Weston.

Down the Tubes sums up the plot thus: "In Titan Comics’ new tale, Earth and the solar system is at peace for the first time in human history – and Dan Dare doesn’t know what to do with himself. Then, a huge unknown alien vessel arrives in the solar system and obliterates a moon of Saturn in a show of strength, Dare finds himself thrust back into a new adventure that threatens not just Earth – but all life in the entire universe!"

The 4-issue mini-series begins in October.

Pat Mills is doing a paperback version of his autobiography, Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave!. Already available on Kindle, Mills has said that the print version should be available within the next week or two. A new cover by Alex Ronald has been produced for the book which has now replaced the previous cover on the Kindle edition.

Pat has also been working on an audio version of the book which will be made available through Spokenword Audio. Spokenword's press-release notes that the book will be released on the Spokenword website for download in August, with other platforms (Audible, iTunes, etc.) following in September.

An interview conducted by Afshin Rattansi with Pat will be appearing on Russia Today's Going Underground programme on July 22nd. We're also waiting for Accident Man starring Scott Adkins, which has been filmed but has yet to be given a release date.

Upcoming releases

Comic Book Hero: Working with Britain's picture strip legends by Barry Tomlinson.
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.

Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave! 2000 AD & Judge Dredd: The Secret History by Pat Mills.
Millsverse, 6 June 2017. Available on Kindle from Amazon.

Extract from a recent interview with Pat Mills:

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.

Hook Jaw by Pat Mills, Ken Armstrong & Ramon Sola.
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. 

Dan Dare: Mission of the Earthmen by Eric Eden, Don Harley & Bruce Cornwell.
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".