W. R. Hutton

W. Richard Hutton's writing career seems to have begun during the Second World War but it was a year after V.E. Day, that he suddenly found success writing crime and western paperbacks for Hamilton & Co., who published eight of his short novels in only six months. Some were little more than pamphlets, but a rather more substantial series appeared in 1947-49 from Fiction House who published a run of murder mysteries featuring Detective Inspector Goldie of Scotland Yard in their Piccadilly Novels line.

Hutton had two hardcover Western novels published in 1950 by Quality Press but seems to have disappeared soon after that, perhaps into pseudonymous anonymity.

Beyond the 22 novels listed below, Hutton continues to remain frustratingly elusive. The only firm information I have on him is that he was the honorary secretary of the Bristol Writers' and Artists' Association writers' collective (chairman Leslie Urquhart-White [born Leslie Dorando White], 1909-1972), who published a miscellany of prose and verse entitled Bristol Packet in 1944, reviewed in the Western Mail (23 November 1944) thus:

"Bristol Packet," a publication which seems to have been inspired by the appearance of "Wales" and "The Welsh Review," makes its bow at half-a-crown a time in a bright green and white cover. There are more than 60 poems, articles and short stories, some by experienced writers, others by unknown contributors banded together in the Bristol Writers' Association, with Mr. W. R. Hutton, of 19, Cavendish-road, Henleaze, as secretary. The contents have a strong Bristol tang, but Wales is represented by two writers, Keidrych Rhys and Idris Davies. Altogether it is an attractive publication, with a special interest for those who have watched the progress of similar literary ventures in Wales.

In March 1945, a report on an address by City Librarian James Ross at the Bristol Central Library, notes that the Bristol Writers' Association was present and a vote of thanks was proposed by Hutton (chairman), although the stated position may have been in error—all other mentions give his post as secretary.

In 1946 the Association was involved in setting up an exhibition of the work of a 30-year-old local artist named George Melhuish (1916-1985). After searching for available premises in Bristol and concluding that none could be found, the exhibition was moved to the Alpine Club in South Audley Street, London W1, where it ran between the 4th and 22nd of June 1946, partly funded by the Association from sales of stories by members.

Later in 1946, the Association, through Bristol-based Rankin Bros., published a slim volume of reproductions of Melhuish's work with an introductory essay by Hutton. This, as far as I can discover, is the last activity of the Association, although Hutton's connections with Bristol continued with the publication of two editions of Arrowsmith’s Guide to the City and County of Bristol in 1946-47.

The address given for Hutton in 1944 might offer a clue to his movements. The property was owned by Ernestine St John  Kiddle, who died there on 26 March 1941. A few months later, her furniture and effects were auctioned off, along with the property itself, a stone-built, semi-detached house conveniently situated with level approach to Dudham Down, shops and 'bus services. The house was big: five bedrooms, one of which had an en suite kitchen, meaning that the upper floor could be let as a separate flat.

Hutton was definitely living at that address in 1944-46 but had probably left by 1950. According to the local phone book, 19 Cavendish Road was the residence of Griffith Leonard Tanswell (1902-1994) in 1950-54. What became of Hutton after that remains a mystery.

PUBLICATIONS

Novels
Dead Man’s Range. London, Hamilton, Jun 1946.
Sinister Mistress. London, Hamilton, 1946.
Trigger Fever. London, Hamilton, Nov 1946.
Riders of the Bar X. London, Hamilton, Dec 1946.
Rustlers of the Night. London, Hamilton, Dec 1946.
Valley of Death (by Richard Hutton). London, Hamilton, Dec 1946.
Broadway Racket. London, Hamilton, Dec 1946.
Dead Men Tell (by Johnnie James). London, Grant Hughes, Dec 1946.
Enduring Passion. London, Hamilton, Apr 1947.
Not A Dog’s Chance. London, Piccadilly Novels, Sep 1947.
Death At the Golden Cockerel. London, Piccadilly Novels, Jan 1948.
Death Of A Wide-Boy. London, Piccadilly Novels, Apr 1948.
Rough Riders. London, Grant Hughes, 1948.
Death At the Drome. London, Piccadilly Novels, Jul 1948.
Outlaw’s Town. Glasgow, Muir-Watson, Apr 1949.
Murder In Transit. London, Piccadilly Novels, Apr 1949.
Outlaw of Lost Canyon. London, Grant Hughes, Jun 1949.
Colt Justice. London, Grant Hughes, Oct 1949.
Injun Brand. London, Hamilton, May 1950.
A Gun Totin’ Hombre. London, Quality, Oct 1950.
Arapaho Charlie. London, Quality, Dec 1950.
Gunslinger’s Luck. London, Hamilton, Sep 1951.

Non-fiction
George Melhuish, with an introduction by W. Richard Hutton. Bristol, Bristol Writers' & Artists' Association, 1946.
Arrowsmith’s Guide to the City and County of Bristol, 1946-1947. Bristol, J. W. Arrowsmith, 1946.
Arrowsmith’s Guide to the City and County of Bristol, 1947-1948. Bristol, J. W. Arrowsmith, 1947.

Comic Cuts - 16 June 2017

After a couple of slow and steady days I had a mare of a day on Wednesday which has rather thrown the whole week out of kilter. I'm off to visit family today (Friday) and Thursday is usually the day I spend writing the Comic Cuts column, cleaning up a selection of random scans and also writing the feature that is posted on Saturday (the latter often spills over into Friday and, if it involves lots of research, I'll often spend Sunday finishing it off for the following week).

So I only had three days to pack the paying bits of work into...

... and everything was going OK until Wednesday morning, when I woke up to no internet access. Reboot the wireless box. Internet returns... for about three minutes. Reboot the wireless box. Internet returns... this time for five minutes. Reboot the wireless box. No internet. Reboot the wireless box. Internet returns for three or four minutes.

And this has been the situation since I woke up. It's now ten o'clock on Wednesday evening and I rebooted the wireless box eight minutes ago. It died almost instantly. I can keep writing because Blogger allows me to work offline, but I can't save what I'm writing. All I can do is keep going and hope that, when I reboot the wireless box again in a couple of minutes, the connection to the internet will be stable enough for me to save the changes I've made.

So here I am, writing this on Wednesday, working on the theory that if I get this out of the way I may be able to catch up on the paying work tomorrow. If—and at the moment it's a big IF—the internet connection is stable. This has happened before with Talk Talk. Last time this happened, I phoned and was sent a new connector to plug into the phone socket. Since the connector was never the problem, I can't say I understood why. Now I understand why... the guy I spoke to had no idea what was wrong, so he sent me the new connector so that he could say that some action had been taken to resolve the problem. I really can't recommend Talk Talk to anyone. Since starting this paragraph, I've rebooted the wireless box twice.

And now it's Thursday morning. I eventually had to give up trying to write the column last night because the connection to the internet was so unstable I couldn't upload any images. The only positive that I can take from the problems I had on Wednesday is that I cleaned up quite a few covers.

I was saddened to hear that Alan Austin died in May after a long battle with cancer. Alan was a very active member when British comics fandom took off in the 1970s, publishing a great many fanzines and the first British comic book price guide. He was also a book dealer of note. I probably first met him at Westminster Comic Mart, but after moving to Alan's home town of Colchester, I would occasionally bump into him shopping or trawling around the charity shops. Oddly, I saw more of him than ever when I was doing research at the Family Records Centre in London, as, to get there, I had to walk through Exmouth Market, where Alan ran a shop for a few years.

Alan had written a book about his experiences which I believe will be published shortly.

And as I'm seeing red at the moment, what better theme to choose for our random scans than 'red'.

Commando 5027-5030

Commando issues on sale 15 June 2017

Brand new Commando issues 5027-5030 are incoming, ready for all Commando fans to take home!

Size doesn’t matter in this Commando bundle, as our heroes range from the mighty John Littlejohn, a big Commando with an even bigger attitude, to weedy West Virginian combat medic Jimmy Hopper. But in Commando it’s about bravery, not bulk, and our heroes have it in stacks!

5027: A Game of Hostages
The third instalment of Lieutenant Tom Dell and his S.A.S. squad’s adventures doesn’t disappoint as our boys prove they are still just as adept at landing themselves in trouble as they are at shooting their way out of it. But when their Yankee friend, Major Jake Ryan, rescues a reluctant German scientist, he is quickly dashed away to a secret soviet bunker, used as a hostage to negotiate the release of the scientist, for whom the Russians have their own nefarious plans….
    All this is wrapped up in Ian Kennedy’s stunning pastel cover, in which we see soviet soldiers’ silhouettes shooting from the mist, an eerie fairground and Commando first, glowing in the background. Meanwhile, a departure from Muller’s stylistic interior artwork in ‘Hunt and Harass’ (Commando No 5015), Vila and Morhain’s character designs still match their previous iterations, but with their own flair, opting for a more classic Commando look.

Story: George Low
Art: Vila & Morhain
Cover: Ian Kennedy

5028: Rogue Commando
Powell’s massive Commando John Littlejohn domineers the pages of R. Fuente’s illustrations, filling panels from head to toe! There’s an especially thrilling scene, justly captured in Jamieson’s cover in which a Yugoslavian partisan clings to a snapped rope, hanging perilously over a ravine, while the mighty Littlejohn bridges the frayed ends with only his muscles.
    But big as he may be, Littlejohn also manages to find himself in trouble.  And hot-tempered, he was no stranger to a fight, be that with Italians, Nazis, the Yugoslavians he’s trying to help or even his fellow Commandos…

Story: Powell
Art: R. Fuente
Cover: Jamieson
Originally Commando No 349 (August 1968)

5029: Hopper’s War
Jimmy Hopper’s cousin Rick always bullied him. Jimmy was an average kid, he never made the effort. But Rick was different, he joined the army the day he turned eighteen, never shying away from anything, so maybe he was right to judge him. But when Jimmy was drafted in 1968, he wasn’t ready to fight. He wasn’t happy with killing. That was when he decided to become a medic – saving lives instead of taking them. But when Rick is reunited with Jimmy amidst the violence of Vietnam, he sees him as only a coward, the bad blood still running between them…
    Using this unusual perspective for a Commando issue, Janek’s cover, while dramatic, with windswept jungle, a smoking flare and medics hurriedly loading a wounded soldier onto the helicopter, attention is instantly drawn to the medical red cross, a stand out theme in the issue.
    Also, like his work in ‘A Game of Hostages’, Morhain’s thick black lines take inspiration from Commando artists from the Golden era of pocket libraries, giving Commando its instantly recognisable artwork. But adding his own style, his illustrations use of white space during lulls in the fighting works as an excellent contrast to the use of dark, heavy blacks during the action, perfectly encapsulating the confusion and horror of battle.

Story: Ferg Handley
Art: Morhain
Cover: Janek Matysiak:

5030: Cold Sweat
Trust is the key theme in Costello’s Silver Age story from the 1990s. After Colin Copper falls off an icy slope and is left behind in a blizzard during the British retreat in Norway he is saved from death by a Norwegian villager. But, as the Nazis tighten their grip on Norway, Colin has to get out. Shown the way by the Norwegian’s son, Leif, Colin is soon captured by Nazis. Was is Leif? Has Colin been betrayed by the son of his saviour? Find out in this issue!
    With a setting like Norway, it’s easy to show flat barren snows capes, but Rigby simply does not allow this, dotting the panels with tall, thick pines and carefully shaded slopes. As a result, this dramatic setting is not lost in Phil Gascoine’s dark and moody cover, with Colin, caught in fear and surprise as two German soldiers take aim at him, framing the cover and barring all escape.

Story: Costello
Art: C. T. Rigby
Cover: Phil Gascoine
Originally Commando No 2613 (November 1992)

Rebellion Releases (2000AD)

Rebellion releases for 14–15 June 2017.

2000AD Prog 2035
Cover: Richard Elson
Judge Dredd: The Fields by Rob Williams (w) Chris Weston (a) Dylan Teague (c) Annie Parkhouse (l)
Brink: Skeleton Life by Dan Abnett (w) INJ Culbard (a) Simon Bowland (l)
Defoe: Diehards by Pat Mills (w) Colin MacNeil (a) Ellie De Ville (l)
Grey Area: Back in Black by Dan Abnett (w) Mark Harrison (a) Annie Parkhouse (l)
Hunted: Furies by Gordon Rennie (w) PJ Holden (a) Len O'Grady (c) Ellie De Ville (l)

The Complete Skizz by Alan Moore and Jim Baikie
Rebellion ISBN 978-1781-08542-4, 15 June 2017, 272pp, £19.99 / $25.00. Available from Amazon.
The ultimate illegal alien! Alan Moore's out of print classic returns in a brand new complete collection! When Interpreter Zhcchz of the Tau-Ceti Imperium crashed his ship into the small blue "Hellworld"-classed planet, the odds of surviving were stacked against him. Stranded in the polluted, hostile British city of Birmingham, Skizz is befriended by Roxy, a plucky young local girl. But danger is ever present - from bad food to Prime Minister Thatcher's hostile government alien-hunters, this E.T. may soon be R.I.P!

One-Eyed Jack by John Wagner, Gerry Finley-Day and John Cooper
Rebellion ISBN 978-1781-08572-1, 15 June 2017, 156pp, £14.99. Available from Amazon.
John Wagner's take-no-prisoners-cop and the forerunner to Judge Dredd is collected for the very first time! Part Dirty Harry, part Judge Dredd, all badass! Police Detective Jack McBane is the toughest, meanest law enforcer in 1970's New York City. Having lost his left eye in the line of duty, McBane will stop at nothing to rid the crime-infested streets of scumbags and villains - even if it means having to occasionally break the rules! This is the first collection from Rebellion's dedicated Treasury of British Comics line, collecting lost comics from the golden age of British comics.

Lawless: Welcome to Badrock by Dan Abnett and Phil Winslade
Rebellion ISBN 978-1781-08543-1, 15 June 2017, 179pp, £14.99 / $20.00. Available from Amazon.
The first collection of 2000 AD's latest breakout success set in the Judge Dredd universe, with an incredible new female Judge. The backwater planet of 43 Rega has spent five years recovering from an invasion of aliens known as the Zhind. isolated and a hotbed for trouble makers, Badrock is an colony township desperate for a strong law enforcer to take charge. Enter Colonial. Marshal Meta Lawson. Tough, surly and determined, Lawson seems to be ideal for the role. But is this law-woman exactly who she claims to be?

One-Eyed Jack

(* To celebrate the release of One-Eyed Jack by Rebellion, I'm happy to present the following abridged extract from my upcoming Valiant index; the text will almost certainly be revised between now and publication, but this will give you a taste of the book.)

But it was the third strip that readers really responded to. One-Eyed Jack was a police officer the likes of which had never been seen in British comics, where readers were more likely to be offered ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ or stories in a “spot the clue” format—‘Brett Marlowe, Detective’ (Lion) or ‘Can You Catch a Crook?’ (Eagle, Swift), for example. The only American cop in British comics at that time was Zip Nolan, a motorcycle officer with the Highway Patrol who had been appearing on and off in the pages of Valiant since it merged with Lion in 1974. In fact, Nolan was one of the characters dropped to make way for newcomer Jack McBane, although he reappeared, albeit briefly, a month later.

Jackson Delaware McBane (to give him his full name) was a no-nonsense cop with the 94th Precinct who has played by the rulebook his whole career until he and his partner, Willy Novak, answer an emergency call about an armed robbery. A shot creases Jack’s face and he loses an eye. Now wearing an eye patch, he storms into the office of Lieutenant Carelli at the 94th and angrily confronts his boss after reading that the kid responsible has been acquitted. “Someone got to the jury,” growls Carelli. “The punk must have friends.”

McBane attacks the boy in a pool hall and learns that Tony Valenti was responsible for buying the jury. The mobster springs a trap for McBane in a warehouse, but McBane kills him without mercy.

McBane sums up the credo of the strip in the final frame of the first episode: “I was a good cop. I played it by the book for ten years, but not any more. As long as there are scum like Tony Valenti about, there’ll be a place for one-eyed Jack.”

The strip was contemporary—the very first caption read “New York, December 1975”—violent and fast moving. It couldn’t be anything else if it was to fit a story with a beginning, a middle and an end into three or four pages. Of the 38 McBane stories in Valiant, 33 were complete stories and the longest serial ran to three episodes. This didn’t leave any space for characters to be developed, so making McBane a single-minded, justice seeking missile side-stepped the problem of also trying to make him human, or even likeable.

John Wagner would later say he was inspired by “every American cop show I’d ever seen, but Dirty Harry was the main one.” The look was also based on Hollywood’s depiction of New York. John Cooper had never been to America but had watched “millions” of American films. “That’s where I got most of the look from. The film Bullitt with Steve McQueen – he had a Mustang. I based his car more or less on that, something similar.”

Despite his lack of first hand experience, Cooper was called upon to depict real life locations, from Manhattan apartments and Central Park to Hell’s Kitchen’s back alleys and the docklands along the East River. The 94th is a real NYPD precinct, based at Greenpoint, Brooklyn. How true to life Cooper made any of these was immaterial to Valiant’s readers, whose own experiences of New York were almost certainly limited to the same movies Cooper was watching.

The attraction wasn’t the realism but the frenetic and violent action. In his second outing, McBane connects the deaths of a seemingly random pair of people killed by a sniper to the trial of an ex-Vietnam Marine Corps. marksman, Charles Edward Vosper. By using another witness as bait, McBane draws out Vosper and kills him. “You call it murder, friend… I call it justice,” he tells a shocked civilian.

Murder was not always McBane’s end game: when he lures the leader of a Brooklyn bike gang into an ambush, he begins beating him ruthlessly but Novak warns him: “Easy, Jack. We want him in one piece for the trial.” “Yeah… you’re right, Novak,” replies Jack. “No sense soiling my hands. Book him!”

The stories were written by John Wagner, M. Scott Goodall, Gerry Finley-Day and possibly others. Some of the most notable stories included the tale in which McBane was framed for the death of informant “Gimpy” Kowalski; McBane tracks down the real killer, Manny Zeigler, but his plan to rattle him to get a confession backfires when Zeigler dies and he is found kneeling over the dead killer’s body by a patrolman.

The Jigsaw Killer was a 2-parter which began with the discovery of a body in a classy Manhattan apartment, the only clue a jigsaw piece. Over the next two days, two more bodies are found with jigsaw pieces which begin to build into a picture of a face.

Other stories involved bombing campaigns in Chinatown as part of a protection racket and in Madison Square and Broadway by a bomber demanding a ransom of one million dollars; bank, jewellery and security van heists; McBane takes down crooked financiers, plane hijackers, corrupt labour unions and a gang of enforcers who call themselves the Donald Duck Wrecking Company.

One of the most intense stories was the final serial to appear in Valiant before it merged with Battle. It begins with a robbery at a fur warehouse, McBane nad Novak arriving just in time to be rammed out off the road by the robbers’ truck. McBane shoots one of the crooks and when his mask is removed it reveals Nicky Cantrell… his nephew!

The measure of the strip's success was that it had started as the third of three new strips, tucked away in the back of the paper. Two months later, when Valiant was again being promoted through a toy bargains collecting scheme and adding another new strip, ‘One-Eyed Jack’ moved to pole position and remained as the paper’s lead story for the next eight months. “Jack was an instant hit,” recalls John Wagner. “The first week he appeared he leapt to the top of the readers’ poll, scoring twice as many votes as the previous regular top story, ‘Captain Hurricane’. It was a position he never lost in my few remaining months as Valiant editor."

Comic Cuts - 9 June 2017

If like me you're fed up with the election, I'll try to keep this column politics-free. I don't have a clue how the voting went, as I'm writing this Thursday morning, long before the polling stations close. We have a ritual for days like these which involves heading out to vote and then rewarding ourselves with fish & chips. We have two very good fish & chip shops here in Wivenhoe, one of which has won national awards. Of course, we use the other one because it's closer, but the service is friendly and the portions are generous. What more could you want?

I managed to put in an enjoyable couple of days on the Valiant index, adding another 1,500 words to the introduction (now standing at roughly 39,000 words) about the tail-end of the original run of 'The Steel Claw'. This was the era that I first read Valiant, so I remember some of the stories very fondly, although now that I've got some distance from that early excitement I must admit that some of the situations Louis Crandell found himself in were daft in the extreme. (See below... this is the first episode I read when I found a copy of Valiant (8 Feb 1969) belonging to the older brother of a schoolfriend I was visiting. I started buying Valiant in late November or early December 1969, when I was 7.)

It's one of the reasons why, when asked what my favourite strip was from my childhood, I shouldn't really say 'The Steel Claw'. What I actually mean is 'The Return of the Claw' which took the character back to basics; the suited superhero who could punch through walls and gasped "Great dynamos!" every five minutes was dumped in favour of a miserable, haunted Louis Crandell facing dangers he had no desire to face. The new strip was drawn by Jesus Blasco... and this was the first time I was seeing his version of the character as, back in 1969-70, Carlos Cruz was the regular Claw artist.

The Claw departed again in 1973, but in 1975 Vulcan began reprinting all the early adventures drawn by Blasco. For the first time I discovered how Crandell joined the Shadow Squad. The stories were so brilliant that, aged 13, I "novelised" one of them, the neatly hand-written story taking up thirty or forty pages of a large notebook. Sadly, the notebook was thrown out when I moved out of the family home and into a shared flat.

I rather wish I'd kept it. For someone who can't throw anything away ("just in case"), I was surprisingly unsentimental about personal stuff. Very little has survived from that era apart from a couple of school projects - one on trees and one on Winston Churchill. The one I wish I still had was the project I did on a science fiction magazine called Outlands, but it was handed in for marking and I never saw it again.

It was a project that ran away from me... I was heavily into science fiction and had just discovered Mike Ashley's History of the Science Fiction Magazine in paperback. (I was aware of some of the history as I was a reader of Science Fiction Monthly, whose posters adorned my walls when I was a kid, and Mike had written a series for that mag. on the subject.) To cut a long story short, I decided to write about British SF magazines, started researching the subject (which involved a couple of trips to Dagenham where the British SF Association had their library) and the more I read, the narrower the focus became. So from "all" SF magazines it became "early" (1930s to 1950s) and then, eventually, it boiled right down to one magazine that had one issue in 1946.

Forty years later I still let projects get away from me. The Valiant index is just the latest of a long line!

Random scans today for some reason on the subject of change...

Rebellion Releases (2000AD)

Rebellion releases for 7 June 2017.

2000AD Prog 2034
Cover: Brendan McCarthy
Judge Dredd: Hoverods by TC Eglington (w) Brendan McCarthy (a) Dom Reagan/McCarthy (c) Annie Parkhouse (l)
Defoe: Diehards by Pat Mills (w) Colin MacNeil (a) Ellie De Ville (l)
Brink: Skeleton Life by Dan Abnett (w) INJ Culbard (a) Simon Bowland (l)
Scarlet Traces: Cold War - Book 2 by Ian Edginton (w) D'Israeli (a) Annie Parkhouse (l)
Cursed: The Fall of Deadworld by Kek-W (w) Dave Kendall (a) Annie Parkhouse (l)

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".

Henry Sutton cover gallery

NOVELS

Gorleston (Sceptre, 1995)
Sceptre 0340-64987-9, (Jun) 1996, 246pp.

Bank Holiday Monday
Sceptre 0340-64989-5, (Mar) 1997, 245pp.

The Househunter
Sceptre 0340-71731-9, (Jan) 1999, 240pp.

Flying
Sceptre 0340-71733-2, (Jan) 2001, 240pp.

Kids' Stuff
Serpent's Tail 1852-42837-6, (Nov) 2003, 256pp.

Thong Nation
Serpent's Tail 978-1852-42894-5, (Jun) 2005, 224pp.

Get Me Out of Here (Harvill Secker, 2010)
Vintage 978-0088-53562-1, (Mar) 2011, £7.99.

My Criminal World (Harvill Secker, 2013)
Vintage 978-0099-57856-7, (Apr) 2014, 279pp, £8.99. Cover by Geoff Grandfield

NOVELS AS JAMES HENRY

First Frost [co-written with James Garbutt] (2011)
Corgi Books 978-0552-16176-3, 2011, 460pp, £6.99. Cover photos by Ilona Wellman / Yolande de Kort; design by Claire Ward

NOVELS AS HARRY BRETT

Time To Win (Little Brown, Apr 2017)
X

NON-FICTION

UAE MA Creative Writing Anthologies 2015: Prose Fiction, edited with  Jean McNeil.
Egg Box Publishing 978-0993-29621-5, (Nov) 2015, 176pp.

Walter Wyles (1925-2017)

Walter Wyles, whose illustrations graced women's magazines from the fifties to the seventies when they were selling up to three and a half million copies every week, and who was the first British illustrator to be commissioned to draw romantic illustrations by an American magazine (Redbook in 1964), died in April 2017. Known for his exceptional ability at drawing women, which meant that many authors asked that he should provide illustrations for their stories and novels, he worked as a book cover artist for Corgi, Fontana, Star and Bantam, amongst others. While the bulk of his work appeared on novels by the likes of Claire Lorrimer and Catherine Marchant, Wyles also produced covers for Beasts of Gor by John Norman and Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock.

Walter Wyles was born in Canterbury, Kent in 1925, the son of Walter HenryWyles, a solder in the British Army, and Francesca Calvente, from Malaga, southern Spain. In childhood he suffered from poliomyelitis, which left him with a permanent pronounced limp.

Thanks to a recommendation from a primary school teacher, he began attending the Sidney Cooper Art School in Canterbury on a part-time basis; in 1939, at the age of 14, he was awarded a full scholarship but attended for only four months. When World War II broke out, he first began training as a book binder before becoming a junior draughtsman, working for two aircraft manufacturing companies between 1940 and 1942. He then worked for a display company in the West End of London whilst also serving as a part-time Air Raid Warden on the roof of the building where he was employed.

During this period he attended art classes in his spare time at a school off Fleet Street and began working for War Artists and at Cavendish Studios, producing large paintings of battles. After the war he began freelancing fashion illustrations for various trade magazines, including Tailor & Cutter, Man & His Clothes and The Draper's Record.

In the 1950s he began freelancing illustrations to Woman where he was encouraged by editors Mary Grieve and George Watts to experiment with his art, producing detailed oil paintings for historical subjects and more painterly watercolours for more contemporary images. A brief biography at the Lever Gallery says of Wyles' work:

Encouraged by increasingly radical art directors, Wyles’ style continued to develop and push boundaries.  During the 1960s, Wyles’ work evolved from standard realism to a style more reflective of other influences notably American illustrators who incorporated more high contrast colours, Japanese woodcuts, Old Masters (Series done for Woman in 1961) and science fiction.
   Partly as a result of his early experience as a technical fashion illustrator, Wyles was known for exceptional portraits of women. These portraits show an artistic sensibility and fascination with the human form that captures a mood well beyond technical drawing.  For his book cover portraits, Wyles was known for using “real women” rather than fashion models. While this often suited clients, as professional models were expensive to hire, for Wyles this was a creative preference for life drawing over working from photographs.

His work appeared in all the major women's weekly and monthly magazines as well, weathering the downturn in the fortunes of these magazines as they began losing advertising revenue to television and photographs became a cheaper option to painted illustrations. In the early 1980s, Wyles suffered a series of heart attacks which led him to reduce his work commitments. Wyles began representing himself when he and other artists discovered that they had been swindled by their agent and had to take the agent to court to recover payments due.

In later years he continued to paint and took on portrait commissions which he painted in a purpose-built studio at his Canterbury home.

Wyles is survived by his wife Margaret (nee Jarrold), whom he met when she was a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. They married in 1954 and had two sons, Nick and Glyn.

(* Much of the information above was derived from Bryn Havord's article on Wyles in Illustrators #6, Winter 2013. Further examples of Wyles' work can be seen at this Flickr gallery.)