From Top Secret to Action

Richard Sheaf has sent over another example of Fleetway's recycled covers. The cover for Top Secret Picture Library no.31 (1975) became to cover to Action Annual 1982 six years later.

Top Secret was one of my favourites when I was a kid. It featured the adventures of John Havok, an unwilling agent of a British Secret Service department, blackmailed into risking his life after he was unfairly blamed for the crash of a plane. John Havok of the original illustration becomes Dredger of D.I.6—another of my favourite characters from that era. Guess I just had a thing for reluctant secret agents.

Comic Cuts

Here we are 10 days after work on the house began and so far we've had workmen in on 5 of them. My office (cleared out 8 days ago) is a complete wreck and, although the window is in the hole I still can't move everything back in because the trim still needs to be done. Half of my office is in the living room, making that room unusable and the delicate eco-system of the office (which I share with a number of spiders) is ruined beyond all repair. Where books I needed to refer to were within arms' length, they're now buried somewhere.

Still, the windows look nice. And once we can get the curtains back up I'll start feeling a little less like an exhibit. I'm actually looking forward to doing some shopping and getting some fresh air that isn't swooshing in through gaping holes in the walls.

A quick review: the latest issue of Jeff Hawke's Cosmos is now out. Vol.4 No.3 (issue 12, April 2008), sees the magazine going perfect bound and the pagination increased to 80 pages. This allows space for the reprinting of three Jeff Hawke stories: 'Here Be Tygers' (originally published in the Daily Express in 1971-72), 'S.O.S.' (1969-70) and 'Rescue Party' (1970). Each story has accompanying notes by Duncan Lunan on their scientific background and, amongst the handful of other features in the magazine, Andrew Darlington examines the history of Ron Turner's comic strip 'Space Ace'. It all makes for a fine package and, bar a little moiré affecting some of the heavily letratoned strips, the reproduction of the strips is incredibly good.

Hopefully anyone introduced (or re-introduced) to Jeff Hawke by the recent Titan Books' reprint will discover Jeff Hawke's Cosmos. The background material on the stories makes great reading, but the strips themselves are enough to make this a must have. It's a snip at £7 per issue; subscriptions are available (£18.50 UK; £28 overseas airmail) from The Jeff Hawke Club, 6 The Close, Alwoodly, Leeds LS17 7RD (please enclose an SAE with enquiries). You can find out more about the publication and about Jeff Hawke at the Jeff Hawke website.

News from around the net... and elsewhere

* The latest issue of Book and Magazine Collector (#296, July 2008) contains a 70th birthday article for the Beano by Norman Wright & David Ashford.

* Photos from the recent Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons and Sean Phillips signing at Forbidden Planet for Joel Meadows' Studio Space book, which is now available from Image Comics in both hardback (ISBN 978-1582409092, 31 May 2008) and softcover (ISBN 978-1582409085, 31 May 2008). (link via Journalista)

* Pádraig Ó Méalóid begins a long interview with Alan Moore at the Forbidden Planet International blog, with part two to follow.

* The final part of Kristy Valenti's appreciation of Peter O'Donnell is up: part 1, part 2, part 3. (link via Journalista)

* Jim McCarthy and Steve Parkhouse will be signing copies of Sex Pistols: The Graphic Novel (Omnibus Press ISBN 978-1846095085, 9 June 2008) at Forbidden Planet on Saturday, 28 June between 1 and 2pm.

* In The Independent (13 June) Tom Lubbock takes a look at a 1936 Punch cartoon by Pont (Graham Laidler)

A J Budrys (1931-2008)

Algis "A. J." Budrys died on 9 June at the age of 77. An obituary is due in The Guardian shortly but I thought I'd post the following listing of his books.

Obituaries: Chicago Tribune (11 June); The Independent (14 June); The Times (7 July), The Guardian (12 September).

Publications

Novels
False Night. New York, Lion Books, 1954; restored text as Some Will Not Die, Evanston, IL, Regency Books, 1961; London, Mayflower, 1964; revised, Norfolk, VA, Starblaze Editions, 1978.
Man of Earth. New York, Ballantine Books, 1958.
Who?. New York, Pyramid Books, 1958; London, Victor Gollancz, 1962.
The Falling Torch. New York, Pyramid Books, 1959; expanded, New York, Baen Books, Jan 1991.
Rogue Moon. Greenwich, CT, Gold Medal, 1960; London, Frederick Muller, 1961; with new introductions by Algis Budrys and Joseph Milicia, Boston, Gregg Press, 1977; as The Death Machine, Poughkeepsie, Unifont, 2001.
The Amsirs and the Iron Thorn. Greenwich, CT, Gold Medal, 1967; as The Iron Thorn, London, Victor Gollancz, 1968.
Michaelmas. New York, Berkley Publishing, 1977; London, Victor Gollancz, 1977.
The Life Machine. New York, Berkley Publishing, 1979.
Cerberus. Eugene, OR, Pulphouse, Apr 1989. [chap]
Hard Landing. New York, Warner Books, Mar 1993.

Collections
The Unexpected Dimension. New York, Ballantine Books, 1960; London, Victor Gollancz, 1962.
Budrys Inferno. New York, Berkley, 1963; as The Furious Future, London, Victor Gollancz, 1964.
Blood and Burning. New York, Berkley, 1978; London, Victor Gollancz, 1979.
Entertainment. Framingham, MA, NESFA Press, Sep 1997.

Non-fiction
Truman and the Pendergasts (as Frank Mason). Evanston, IL, Regency Books, 1963.
Bicycles… How They Work and How to Fix Them (as Ajay Budrys). Rand McNally, 1976; edited by Ken Evans & Allan Scott, London, A. & C. Black, 1984.
Non-literary Influences on Science Fiction. Polk City, Iowa, Chris Drumm, 1983.
Benchmarks: Galaxy Bookshelf. Carbondale, IL, Southern Illinois University Press, May 1985.
Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. Eugene, OR, Pulphouse, 1990.
Writing to the Point: A Complete Guide to Selling Fiction. Evanston, IL, Unifont Co., Sep 1994.
Outposts: Literatures of Milieux. San Bernardino, CA, Borgo Press, 1996.
Unexplained. Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Unifont Books, 2000.

Others (as editor)
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Los Angeles, Bridge Publications, Mar 1985; New Era, Mar 1986.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume II. Los Angeles, Bridge Publications, Mar 1986; New Era, Mar 1986.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume III. Los Angeles, Bridge Publications, Apr 1987; New Era, Feb 1988.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume IV. Los Angeles, Bridge Publications, Jun 1988; New Era, Dec 1990.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume V. Los Angeles, Bridge Publications, May 1989; New Era, Mar 1993.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume VI. Los Angeles, Bridge Publications, Jun 1990.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume VII. Los Angeles, Bridge Publications, Jul 1991.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume VIII, with Dave Wolverton Los Angeles, Bridge Publications, Sep 1992.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume XV. Los Angeles, Bridge Publications, Sep 1999.
L. Ron Hubbard presents The Best of Writers of the Future. Los Angeles, Bridge Publications, Sep 2000.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume XVI. Los Angeles, Bridge Publications, Sep 2000.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume XVII. Los Angeles, Bridge Publications,Sep 2001.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume XVIII. Los Angeles, Bridge Publications/Galaxy Press, Sep 2002.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume XIX. Los Angeles, Bridge Publications/Galaxy Press, Sep 2003.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume XX. Los Angeles, Bridge Publications/Galaxy Press, Aug 2004.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume XXI. Hollywood, CA, Galaxy Press, Sep 2005.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume XXII. Hollywood, CA, Galaxy Press, Aug 2006.
L. Ron Hubbard presents Writers of the Future. Volume XXIII. Hollywood, CA, Galaxy Press, Sep 2007.

Radio Play
Rogue Moon (broadcast 1979).

Audio
85.2 minutes of Algis Budrys reading from his own work. Evanston, IL, Unifont, 1995. [cassette tape]

About
An Algis Budrys Checklist. Polk City, Iowa, Chris Drumm, 1983.

Siege Diary - Day 8

Workmen are still tearing the place apart. All the windows are in, only one of them cracked (we're waiting for new glass). All the window trimming is being done and, outside, the suffits (I think that's how you spell it) are being torn away from the roof. The whole house reeks of something that smells like Airfix glue. Pretty trippy if you don't mind the headache.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Best of Roy of the Rovers: The 1980s

The Best of Roy of the Rovers: The 1980s is a bit of a misnomer for a book that reprints a straight two-year run of stories. Ironically, it is one of the strengths of the Roy of the Rovers strip that is proving to be a pain from a marketing point of view—the Roy strip was a soap-opera with a series of storylines that would dramatically (often very dramatically) reboot the strip. You cannot easily choose a random group of episodes as representative because overarching plots would sometimes take a whole season to unfold, come to fruition and reach some sort of resolution; the resolution could very well involve the demise of major characters in the best soap-opera tradition of, say, EastEnders. Unlike EastEnders, however (and, it must be said, American comics), dead characters were never brought back to life in desperate grabs for ratings or sales.

The strips here originally appeared in the weekly Roy of the Rovers between September 1980 and June 1982, taking in the whole of the 1980-81 and 1981-82 seasons and one of the most heart-stopping of all Roy stories. On 12 December 1981, Roy was shot by a mysterious gunman. Inspired by the 'who shot JR' publicity that had surrounded Dallas, the identity of the mystery shooter was kept secret for months.

The book opens with an injury-depleted Melchester Rovers struggling to find form as the season opens. There's plenty of action on the pitch and, because a match can last for a month or more, every game has something vital to the plot, whether it's the form of old players, the arrival of a new team-mate or touble at the top or the bottom of the league table that makes it crucial that Rovers win.

But the action wasn't always on the playing field: there was as much drama off the pitch as team-mates fall out with each other and—as in this volume—Roy has as many problems at home as he does at Melchester Stadium. Roy was one of the few characters in comics aimed at boys where Roy had a home life: he's married, to Penny, and has twin children, and author Tom Tully made sure that Penny was sometimes at the heart of a storyline long before WAGS took on a celebrity all of their own.

Roy's cousin, Arnie Meckiff, is another off-field troublemaker, as is Elton Blake, an actor who is to play Roy in a TV show... the list of people unhappy with Roy Race begins to grow as the new season kicks off, leading to the shocking sight of Roy being shot. Hospitalised and in a coma, Melchester Rovers' directors turn to one of the biggest names in football to take over the team—former England manager Sir Alf Ramsey.

And here we have another soap-opera staple: the strips are played out in a bizarre version of real time where a 90-minute football match can last four weeks but a season lasts a season and real world events are referred to (the Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Diana Spencer, for instance). Real people were part and parcel of the storylines, making the standard "any resemblance to actual persons is entirely coincidental" notice at the front of the book completely redundant—star guests were always popping up to Melchester to visit the team, some playing key roles in various plots.

Keeping all these elements bubbling along season after season took as much skill as Roy showed on the pitch, so all praise goes to Tom Tully, one of the finest writers British comics ever had. His was the hand behind the twisting plotlines and constant Greek chorus of terrace commentary that kept Roy at the top of the comics' league for twenty years. For eleven of those years he worked with artist David Sque who saw Roy through his mid-1970s to mid-1980s fluffy haircut era.

As for the book itself, Titan have published it in a flexiback format, with over 200 full-colour pages for an astonishing £9.99. They clearly have a lot of faith in Roy to sell as further volumes are already lined up (the Bumper Book for August and the first Archives volume in a bit of flux, although possibly as early as December). The colours look a little washy, although I seem to remember that the printing on the original comic didn't really pick up until 1986.

I'm unashamedly a fan of this era of Roy's career and can't wait to relive the next few seasons as the 1980s progress: Roy's departure from Melchester to Melboro should make the next volume, followed by one of the most devestating storylines that ever hit the Rovers when the team were caught in the middle of a revolution in Basran... there's still plenty of action to come as Roy's
career progresses.

The Best of Roy of the Rovers: The 1980s. Titan Books (ISBN 978-1845769482), 13 June 2008, 208pp, £9.99.

Comic Cuts: Upcoming Books (Carlton)

Carlton have released some cover images and further details for their 2008 titles due in September and October.

SEPTEMBER

The Best of 2000AD (ISBN 978-1853756689, 1 September 2008).
"Attention Earthlets", Prion Books announces a publication containing the best bits of the most sought-after comic in the galaxy: "2000AD". This huge book contains hundreds of comic strips, features and articles from the utterly original and anarchic comic that defined a generation. "The Best of 2000AD" pays homage to the greatest sci-fi magazine of them all.

The Best of Boyfriend, edited by Melissa Hyland (ISBN 978-1853756658, 1 September 2008).
"Boyfriend", a new kind of girls' paper, was launched in the spring of 1959. It was the first girls' magazine to truly put music first. Each week there would be a new 'Boyfriend'—Russ Conway, Johnny Mathis, Lonnie Donegan—introducing his life story and, to prove that he had a softer side, his favourite romantic story.You could also meet 'The Girl Behind the Boy'. Whether this was so you could emulate her to get your own pop-star boyfriend or a case of "know your enemy" so you could steal her boyfriend, I don't know. Away from the music, Rachel Lindsay handed out fashion tips on everything from clothing to hairstyles and twins Johnny and Jeannie Talbot offered weekly advice on the "Boyfriend" problems page. "Boyfriend" really came into its own when the sixties began to swing. The magazine gave itself over to modern pop: as early as February 1963, before their first album was out, "Boyfriend" was describing The Beatles as "even more modern than modern." Cliff Richard was a favourite of the magazine and was given his own column to introduce other stars of the pop scene...although it's unlikely that Cliff ever got any closer to the column than cashing the pay cheque he earned from the magazine for using his name.
__Seven years after its birth, "Boyfriend" sank beneath a swelling tide of pop magazines and girls all over the country mourned its passing."The Best of Boyfriend" celebrates the life of an iconic sixties publication with a welter of material that represent some of the best pate.

The Best of Punch Cartoons, edited by Helen Walasek (ISBN 978-1853756795, 1 September 2008).
See details here.

The Biggest Jackie Annual Ever! The Best Thing for Girls—Next to Boys (ISBN 978-1853756672, 1 September 2008).
Your daughter, or even your granddaughter, probably has no idea what it was like growing up in the sixties and seventies. Nowadays, MTV, mobile phones, the internet and downloaded pop bypass much of the excitement of rushing to the newsagent each week to find out who were the featured pin-ups, which of your favourite stars were being interviewed and what intriguingly delicate problems Cathy and Claire were tackling. This bumper edition of nostalgic pages is from the magazine that was truly top of the pops with every girl in the country for almost thirty years after its first publication in 1964. The magazine's heyday came in the seventies when The Osmonds, David Essex, The Bay City Rollers, David Cassidy and Slade were among the regular faces appearing in its pages but it wasn't just for the pop, TV and film stars that girls beat a path to their local newsagent's door. Like the original magazine, "The Biggest Jackie Annual Ever!", it includes fashion and beauty tips, puzzles and quizzes to help you find out, for example, the difference between loving someone and being in love with someone, recipes, horoscopes and enthralling Readers' True Experiences, as well as a smattering of romantic picture story strips. Now is your change to relive all of those golden Jackie moments and show the youngsters in your life what life was like when you were growing up. You can listen to a few hits while you do so, too, because of "The Biggest Jackie Annual Ever!"

Commando: Bandits at 12 O'clock, edited by George Low (ISBN 978-1847321282, 1 September 2008).
Everybody who has ever turned a page of a "Commando" war library has a favourite air story. The first thing to catch the attention are the names...Spitfire, Hurricane, Typhoon, Tempest, Whirlwind, Mosquito. Who wouldn't want to read a story with aircraft like that twisting and turning through the pages, machine guns or cannon flaming? And then there are the men who flew the fighters, bombers, seaplanes, flying boats and transport aircraft into combat. These pilots of every nationality had one aim...to make sure that they won their deadly duels high in the sky. "Commando: Bandits at 12 O'Clock" is a collection of some of the finest and most exciting air adventures ever published by "Commando", so strap in, buckle up and enjoy the ride!

Hospital Nurse Picture Library: Love on Ward B, edited by Melissa Hyland (ISBN 978-1853756665, 1 September 2008).
Blonde and impossibly beautiful, Sally Brown is a probationary nurse at General Hospital and the star of 'Hospital Nurse Picture Library'. With her friend and colleague Maureen Evans she patrols the kind of wards that would have been familiar to her readers thanks to television. "Emergency Ward 10" had been running since 1957 so everyone knew that hospitals were buildings full of dishy doctors and patients in need of a little tender loving care. The "Hospital Nurse" series was first launched in 1963 and for years thereafter, young girls, young women and not-so-young women invested a shilling each month to keep up with the romantic adventures of young Sally Brown. In the 1960s, nursing was second only to being an air hostess when it came to glamorous occupations for girls. Tales like "First Love", "Live and Love", "Kiss and Remember" and "Fooling With Love" tap into the obvious elements of love and romance—but titles like "Man Crazy" and "Naughty Nurse" hint that there is more fun to be had in these picture stories than between the prim covers of a Mills and Boon novel. If you think hospitals are just sterile wards full of sick people, think again.

OCTOBER

The Art of War, edited by David Roach (ISBN 978-1853756627, 6 October 2008).
From the 1950s to the '70s Fleetway and its successor IPC was the world's biggest comic-book publisher and its line of digest-sized Picture Libraries was the jewel in their crown. The most popular and longest lasting titles were "War", "Battle", "Air Ace" and "War at Sea", which ran for a combined total of over four and a half thousand issues. This is a collection of over 400 of the finest "War", "Battle", "Air Ace" and "War at Sea" covers, digitally remastered from the original archived artwork in a lavish format with the finest quality reproduction.

Battle Picture Library: Let 'em Have It, edited by Steve Holland (ISBN 978-1853756719, 6 October 2008).
By the time it was launched in 1961, "Battle Picture Library" already had two stablemates at Fleetway Publications—"War Picture Library" and "Air Ace Picture Library". To avoid any conflicts with its sister magazines, Battle concentrated solely on stories based on land, although the authors and artists had plenty of scope when deciding on settings for their tales of action and adventure. Stories such as "Fort Blood" or "The Fire-Eater" pit our fighting men against their bitter enemies in the heat and dust of the desert while "The Flame and the Fury" or "The Island of Guilt" see them slogging their way through the intense tropical humidity of the darkest jungles. The "Let 'Em Have It" collection features some of the finest stories ever to appear in the "Battle Picture Library" series, providing hours of entertainment for fans of fighting yarns whether they be revisiting the classic comic book series they remember from their youth, or whether they are going into Battle for the first time!

The Best of Alex 2008 by Charles Peattie & Russell Taylor (ISBN 978-1853756894, 6 October 2008). (If you follow the link to Amazon above you'll notice they've posted the wrong cover image—but orders are for the correct book.)

High Noon: Wild West Picture Library, edited by Steve Holland (ISBN 978-1853756726, 6 October 2008).
Whooping Injuns, wandering cowpokes, grizzled prospectors, mysterious hombres in sombreros and masked outlaws—this is the untamed West of our childhoods, where the heroes are rugged and honest, the villains are yellow-bellied cowards and only the toughest survive. From the Great Plains to dusty Texan trails and lawless prospecting towns, every thrilling story in this book is jam packed with gunfights, jaw busting saloon punch ups, racing stagecoaches and tomahawk throwing varmints. So saddle up partner, grab your six-gun and prepare to ride into town.

Look-In: The Best of the Eighties, edited by Graham Kibble-White (ISBN 978-1853756863, 6 October 2008).
"Look-in: The Best of the Eighties" is a collection of some of the most memorable and nostalgic picture strip stories, interviews and features to have appeared in the top kids' magazine of the decade. Also referred to as the "Junior TV Times", "Look-in" was first published in 1971 and ran all the way through to 1994. During the 1980s, the magazine was at its peak, changing its cover design in 1981 to use photographs rather than the old artwork, but retaining the picture strips that everyone loved so much. As well as picture story strips based on TV shows like "Robin of Sherwood" or "Dangermouse", the eighties' "Look-in" featured the stories of pop stars in picture strips—"Duran Duran", "Wham!", "Bucks Fizz", "Madness", "Bros", "A-ha", and many more. In addition, the magazine offered behind-the-scenes glimpses of kids' favourite TV shows, interviews with pop, sport, TV and movie stars, pin-ups, quizzes and features on everything from skateboarding and BMX to popular science. Of course, the magazine continued to list broadcast highlights specifically of interest to kids for all of the different ITV regions, continuing to earn its ranking as the "Junior TV Times" and making itself an indispensable item in households all over the UK!

Rick Random, Space Detective, edited by Steve Holland (ISBN 978-1853756733, 6 October 2008).
Rick Random, Space Detective, was a comic book character who appeared in "Super Detective Library", published by Amalgamated Press, from 1954. His first appearance was in the "Super Detective Library" number 37 in a tale titled "Crime Rides the Spaceways". Random worked for the Interplanetary Bureau of Investigation, and among his arch-enemies was a futuristic bank robber, John Jolson, who used a matter transmitter in one story to steal gold from London's Interplanetary Bank. Random's female companion was Detective Superintendent Andi Andrews. Rick Random proved as difficult to kill off in the real world as he did in his sci-fi adventures. He was resurrected in the late seventies in 2000 AD, where he enjoyed a whole new audience. Now you can enjoy ten of Rick's original interplanetary adventures all over again, with the wonderful artwork of Ron Turner reproduced larger and more excitingly than ever before.

Comic Cuts

Let chaos reign. We're having the windows done so I'm writing everything to the shriek of drills and the thump and crack of shattering glass as the old wooden frames are ripped out and nice new plastic frames go in. It's a job that's been on the cards for a few years but our landlord has only just gotten around to it.

It's going to be pretty chaotic around here for the next couple of months as there's a lot of other work lined up—the porch is going to be ripped down and there's redecorating and re-roofing still to come. We're moving furniture and shelves around constantly and for about four weeks we're going to have to put a lot of it in storage while rooms are redecorated because there just aren't any nooks or crannies where we can squeeze more things into. All our nooks and crannies are stuffed to the gills already.

I'm still on the Sci-Fi Art book juggling bits of writing with desperate and frantic e-mails trying to locate pictures. I'm nearly three-quarters of the way through the text but there's a long way to go with the illustrations as I've probably only got a third of the number I need. Anyone with lots of sf pulps and US paperbacks is more than welcome to get in touch if they fancy doing some scanning.

Here are a couple of strays that won't be in the SF book but, as I had them off the shelf anyway I thought I'd pop them on the scanner. One of my first loves about science fiction was the Chris Foss covers that were appearing in the early 1970s—this isn't going to be news to regular readers but I got heavily into sf around 1974 and every paperback (except New English Library) had a Foss spaceship, or a spaceship in the style of Chris Foss.

You never forget your first love, so I've always gotten a big buzz out of finding spaceship covers on older paperbacks. Here are a handful that I think you'll like. Forget your flying torpedoes—this is what spaceships ought to look like: colourful and with bits jutting out of them. Foss before Chris Foss.

Not sure who the artist is for the three Digit Books' covers but the top one is Norman Light, who deserves a gallery of his own. Something to think about doing to keep myself sane while they're tearing the house down around my ears maybe.

News from around the Net...

* Lew Stringer reviews The Beano: 70 Years of Fun, a special 68-page collectors edition commemorating the upcoming 70th birthday of "the best British comic ever" (or so it says on the cover).

* Hot-Shot Hamish has been appearing in Scotland's The Sunday Mail for some weeks. Episodes are being posted online. One of British comics' hidden gems, Hot-Shot was written by Fred Baker and drawn by Julio Schiaffino for Scorcher & Score, and subsequently for Tiger, back in the early 1970s; Hot-Shot then teamed up with Mighty Mouse from Roy of the Rovers, in which title the pair's adventures continued until 1991.

* Alan Grant is to be interviewed by Ian Rankin as part of the Borders Book Festival on Sunday, 22 June. (link via Down the Tubes)

* Talking of Alan Grant, you can now download for free the first issue of Wasted which should be hitting the shops in June (although I notice that the issue is dated May and was first posted online at least as early as February and maybe as far back in November 2007.

* Bryan Talbot remembers the Finnish comics festival Kemi over at Forbidden Planet International.

* Richard Bruton remembers the old Captain Britain over at the Forbidden Planet International blog before tackling the new series, Captain Britain and MI13, by Paul Cornell & Leonard Kirk. The mainstream media made a mini-fuss over the appearance of Gordon Brown in the strip with the BBC Breakfast TV show discussing the appearance before being joined in the studio by Lawrence Etherington. The appearance even made the pages of the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail (all on 3 June). The latter interviewed writer Paul Cornell who is quoted as saying, "I'm quite a fan of Gordon Brown—so I'm pleased we've given him a PR boost on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world."

Vargo Statten SF Magazine - part 2

The second batch of covers for the Vargo Statten SF Magazine.

Twenty pictures covering nineteen issues... I've posted two for the final issue as I noticed that the colouring was so different on the two copies I've seen.

The magazine was a spin-off from the hugely successful Vargo Statten novels published by Scion Ltd. from 1950. Written by John Russell Fearn, already well-established in American pulps as a leading sf writer, the Statten novels were colourful, exciting adventure yarns, strong on ideas and action.

By 1950, the original paperback market was looking for ways to expand their output and Scion led the way with Fearn's novels. Publishers began to flood the market with dozens of other titles, often using bizarre pseudonyms (Astron Del Martia, Vektis Brack, Bengo Mistral, etc.) to disguise the names of authors who had no background in sf. With no quality control at work, the good sf that was appearing (usually from Scion and Hamilton & Co.) was swamped by mediocre stories.

The Vargo Statten SF Magazine arrived in January 1954 and styled itself upon the pulp action of the novels. This made the magazine too juvenile for the tastes of many, although at the same time the magazine was very fan-friendly, carrying columns and reviews by some of the leading fans of the day, notably A. Vince Clarke's "Inquisitor" column and a "Who's Who in Fandom". The lead stories were generally written by some of the better authors contributing to Scion, namely Fearn himself and E. C. Tubb. As a market for new writers, the magazine scored only once, publishing the first sf story by Barrington J. Bayley.

The magazine had potential but changes behind the scenes led to numerous problems. Scion needed to be re-financed, owing large debts to their printers and editor Alistair Patterson departed after only three issues. John Russell Fearn took over as editor and struggled to find good material with only a limited budget. A film fan, he introduced adaptations of movies such as It Came From Outer Space and Them!. With issue 6, Vargo Statten was dropped from the title, which became the more sedate British Science Fiction Magazine and Fearn began revising old stories from American pulps to eke out the money. Science articles were a regular feature, as they were in most British sf magazines.

From December 1954, the printers Dragon Press also became the publisher and Fearn's budget was cut again. Unknown bylines such as Maxwell M. Commander and Ralph Gaylen were appearing, some almost certainly pen-names while others were authors whose sales to the British Space Fiction Magazine (as the title became in June 1955) were often their one and only contribution to sf.

Under Dragon Press the magazine settled to a digest format with 128 pages (having initially appeared as a pulp and then in a large digest format). As well as a new title, the magazine also adopted a standard cover design, but even these cost-cutting exercises failed to save the magazine from a national printers' strike and the last issue appeared in February 1956.

Vargo Statten SF Magazine

As promised, here's the first part of the Vargo Statten SF Magazine gallery, a supplement to the recent gallery of John Richards covers. Richards was responsible for the February, April, September, November and December issues for 1954 and the January 1955 issue (issues 2, 3, 6, 7, 8 & 9). The artist for the remaining issues was Ron Turner—which is excuse enough to put these up!

You'll notice that there were some oddities with the magazine, namely that the covers for issues 6 & 9 and 7 & 8 are repeated. Annoyingly, my issue 10 has a damaged cover—so if anyone has a better copy, an improved scan would be very welcome.

Update: 19 July 2008

Thanks to Phil Stephensen-Payne, I've replaced the damaged issue 10 with a far superior (and complete) version.

Part 2 tomorrow.

W J Roberts

One of the artists I've been looking at recently, albeit briefly, was W. J. Roberts, who drew pulp-style sf covers for the first serious British pulp magazine, Tales of Wonder. I've always wondered what those initials stood for.

I took the opportunity of working on the Sci-Fi Art book to do a little digging and, although I've not turned up much, I can at least answer that one question.

W. J. Roberts appears to have lived his whole life in South London. His birth, on 27 July 1898, was registered in Stepney, and I was able to trace some of his movements through the London phone book: 411 Norwood Road, Streatham SE.27 [1930], 125A St. Juliaus Farm Road, Streatham SE27 [1932/34] and 43 Mount Ephriam Road, Streatham SW16 [1935/76]. It was his disappearance from that last address that gave me the clue to his year of death and a quick search in records for around that period showed that only one W. J. Roberts was registered as having died in London: Wilfred Joseph Roberts, whose death was registered in Lambeth in the second quarter volume for 1976.

I dropped a line to Mike Ashley who says: "I remember asking Wally Gillings about him and I recall he called him by a less than common name. In other words he wasn't Will/Bill or Wally, and I'm pretty sure he did call him Wilf—but it's a fleeting memory of 30+ years ago."

Roberts' covers appeared on a number of pulps from World's Work (1913) Ltd., including issues of the Mystery Thriller series, Mystery Stories, Tales of Terror, Fireside Ghost Stories, Tales of the Uncanny, Tales of Ghosts and Haunted Houses and Tales of Wonder. One cover was used three times.

Scans for this little gallery have come from the Galactic Central page for World's Work. If you have any better scans (or you have magazines not shown and want to submit some scans), let me know. (The full list of magazines covered at GC can be found here.)

It's a shame that the war intervened and Tales of Wonder was forced to use a standardised cover design for its final few issues. W. J. Roberts presumably had a career outside these pulps, although the only other cover illustration I'm aware of is the dust-jacket for Quick Curtain by Alan Melville (London, Skeffington, 1934). There may be dozens, even hundreds, of further examples of his work hidden away in anonymity or on long discarded dust-jackets. A shame, as he was a very capable and imaginative artist.

Update:

Another cover (see Comments): Love—And Forget by Molly Waring (London, Wright & Brown, 1943). I've had to tidy up the image a lot from the photograph I spotted on eBay. And below is a possible Roberts cover for Mystery at Friar's Pardon by Martin Porlock (Philip Macdonald) (London, Collins, 1931) spotted by Jamie Sturgeon. The signature looks different (it could almost by 'Robb')—but signatures do change. I thought I'd share it anyway.

Any more out there?