50 years of Commando coffee table book

05/09/2011 by admin.

On Monday I had the day off and decided to go to the National Army Museum in London to see the Commando exhibition. Because it wasn’t a weekend (like it is when I go to comic conventions) the Underground was actually working! The museum itself is a fair walk from the station, past the Royal Chelsea Hospital. The houses round that way are nice mind you.

 

When I rule my own country this is what the narrowest streets will look like.

Anyway after the walk I reached the museum, which has a banner outside advertising the exhibition. It did start on the first of this month though, the banner may not stay until the end! The museum itself is deceptively small on the outside, the inside is full of maze-like small rooms crammed with informative exhibits. The actual army exhibition part goes forwards in time as you climb the stairs, the first hall is about the New Model Army, for instance, whilst the one closest to the exhibition (on the top floor) is about 40’s and 50’s National Service.

 

The Commando exhibition itself is actually quite small, and confined to one room. It’s primarily original cover artwork, which is no bad thing as the work of Ken Barr, Jose Maria Jorge et al is beautiful! There’s a mixture of ages too. DC Thomson are great at keeping their original artwork, which allows for top-notch reprints. They even have the original art for the very first issue, which will be reprinted shortly. You aren’t supposed to take pictures, and a small bloke who might have been a Gurkha caught me XD. But here’s one of the ones I managed to smuggle across the lines!

 

50 years old and it looks like the paint’s barely dry!

Apart from the cover artwork there’s actually disappointingly little else, but only so much of a “serious” museum can be turned over to “mere” comics. There’s a very brief history of boys’ adventure comics mentioning The Boys’ Own Paper (with a 1916 monthly issue on display), examples of Commando’s IPC competitors, a mention of The Victor and a copy of “Battle Action Force”. This latter was an odd choice, Battle Picture Weekly (later Battle Action) is regarded as one of the greatest British comics ever, but Battle Action Force was just a stupid toy catalogue disguised as a comic (though unfortunately a sign of things to come).

There’s also one small cabinet featuring some authentic Commando equipment such as a silenced Sten Gun, a Commando knife, a few berets (and a helmet with a nasty-looking hole!). Behind it is a painting of the famous Saint Nazaire raid, which virtually immobilised Germany’s best battleships for the rest of the war.

Unfortunately there’s almost no interior artwork (I’d love to see the fine lines of Jose Maria Jorge up close!) but there is some more curious items - examples of the “transparencies” that used to be laid over the artwork. These have the comics logo, the knife and the title painted on them. They also have the cover of issue 11 “Closer Than Brothers” assembled with it’s transparencies, as it would have been back in 1961 for the printers! Of course today all of that is added to the art digitally instead.

One final important detail is that a couple of the descriptions lament the fact that comics are not taken seriously in Britain, and that the hard work of writers and artists deserves to be recognised and remembered much better than it is. Hopefully this display will be a small step in that direction!

In the museum’s shop the 50 Years a Home for Heroes book is on sale. It will be in bookshops at the end of the month. It’s about as thick as an annual but very large!

Like so

As well as a general history of Commando, it also contains articles on writers and artists (”general overview” articles rather than ones for individuals, unfortunately) with some amusing anecdotes and insights into their working methods.

 

With scattered-around bits of cover art. Here’s where keeping the originals comes in handy!

There’s also 6 reprinted stories, with 4 pages to each page at original size! Plus the covers are reproduced in colour (unlike the various other reprint books).

 

Why yes he does have a story in there!

Finally the reprinted stories have introductions with big blow-ups of the cover art and detail on the stories, such as how they were developed with the writer, editor and artist. These pages look magnificent, and the whole book is printed on thick, heavy matte paper that really shows off the art.

Must be about the original size of the paintings!

Despite it’s small size this exhibition is well worth visiting. The nearest underground station is Sloane Square. From there go left down the street in the picture above, then left again and right at the crossroads past the Royal Chelsea Hospital, then just go straight! Entry is free and there’s plenty else to look at in the building too.

Posted in 2010's, DC Thomson, Commando | 1 Comment »

The Beano “Gnashional Trust” special

02/08/2011 by admin.

In keeping with my timely updates on current comics, this one is actually going off sale tomorrow, but oh well. DC Thomson have teamed up with the National Trust to bring a Beano with several stories featuring the characters visiting famous locations around Britain.

Once again I’ve been taking photos of the glossy pages with the flash rather than scanning them -_-

I must remember it’s okay to scan modern comics it’s only crumbling 100 year old ones you have to be careful with!

 This has given the artists a chance to show off their skills with renditions of these grand stately piles…

While we’re here I may as well mention that the Beano has recently been running a two-page “Retro Beano” spread with classic reprints. After the shock demise of Classics From the Comics this was a welcome addition. Also the stories are presented with their original colour.

89-90 eh? I just missed these! Started getting it in 1991

There is also other reprints in the issue as Roger The Dodger and Minnie The Minx are reprints from the 80’s too at the moment, but those are “disguised” reprints with new colouring and occasionally updated dialogue (what is clearly a tape player becomes a “ipod” for instance!).

There’s also been a series of activity pages called “Where’s Dennis?”, reprinted from a big book from 1999. Unfortunately they have decided to “update” these too, by pasting on the face of the modern “TV Dennis” (who is seemingly not going to be with us much longer anyway, things are moving towards the old one being bought back). However the pasted-on artwork is at a higher resolution and sticks out a mile.

Also he’s near the middle of the picture where people will look first anyway.

Harrumph! Grrrumph! I bet it’s all PC these days anyway. Back in my day they’d give away free bows and arrows with the comic, you wouldn’t get that these days…

Oh.

Posted in Beano, 2010's, DC Thomson | 1 Comment »

Comic Football

30/07/2011 by admin.

I’ve had a week off work so you’d think I would have made an update eh? In fact I’ve not done much of anything all week. This is your future, kids!

Anyway, I’ve just now taken a subscription to the newest British comic! It’s called Comic Football and uses the DFC’s subscription only method, but being monthly a whole year’s subscription is only £19.50! That’s cheaper than 3 issues of Spaceship Away!

Only picture I could find!

The website, http://www.comicfootball.co.uk/ used to have a lot more on it, but appears now to just be a couple of sample gag strips, a buy page and a non-working “shop”. Anyway, from what I remember of the old and actually informative website this is more like a football-related version of the modern Dandy than Roy of the Rovers or the ill-fated Striker. I also expect most of the jokes will go right over my head!

But with that said it’s still a new British comic, and at the price you can’t really say no. There is also a 6-month subscription available and right now you can download the first issue for free! Any new comic is a brave venture and well worth supporting, so erm, step up to the spot and score a penalty and don’t send it for an early bath. Or something.

Posted in Comic Football, 2010's | 1 Comment »

Why manga is not going to “save” comics

09/07/2011 by admin.

You almost can’t have a discussion about the state of comics in Britain or the USA without somebody piping up with something along the lines of the following:

“The weekly anthology format is dead, manga, on the other hand…”

“US comics are all superheroes. It’s not like manga, which…”

“Comics have lost their way. The kids are all reading manga, so…”

And so on. If you ask me there’s a great deal of nonsense talked about how manga is some sort of magic potion that will put British comics back on their feet. After all it works in Japan doesn’t it? And just look at those shelves creaking under the weight of so many of those paperback sized volumes! Remember when the corner shop had that many comics in the seventies?

Let’s begin by looking at the format of those paperback sized books. Apparently “kids love that chunky format” and anyway “the weekly anthology comic is dead”. Well in Japan the nearest equivalent of “that chunky format” are books called Tankobon.

They’re a tiny bit smaller and have pointless dust jackets that keep springing off.

Tankobon are what the US comic fans would probably irritatingly call “trades”. IE they are collections of a number of chapters of one story. Ever notice how the end of every chapter of a manga book contains some cliffhanger or major plot revelation?

 

Read right to left, by the way!

Why would they go putting a cliffhanger in the middle of a book? Because the stories were not originally published in this way. They were originally published, one chapter at a time… in a weekly anthology.

You wouldn’t want to bind a year’s worth of these.

I had a book at one point that said “manga” “in total” sells 5 million copies “an issue”, but there is also monthly anthologies as well. On the other hand Wikipedia says that Shonen Jump, the most popular of the weekly anthologies has a circulation of 2.8 million. That’s the best-ever selling issue of The Beano (1950) plus the best-ever selling issue of Viz (1991?) and then a few hundred thousand more. Weekly anthologies are dead? It’s all a matter of perspective!

According to Bakuman, which I should think gets the technical details of the manga industry right amid the expected dramatic licence, reader surveys are everything to the editors in Japan. An unpopular series will be ruthlessly dropped whilst a big hit will run and run, even to the point of silly artificial extensions to the story. Britain dropped that sort of thing in the 1840’s! Of course only a popular series will make it to Tankobon format, and only the most popular of those will ever escape Japan. Nearly all the Japanese-originated manga on the shelves in Britain is only there because people bought it in a weekly anthology - in their millions.

But, you say, that is Japan! Kids and casual readers in Britain today aren’t after serial stories that they have to remember to buy every week. The days of title-loyalty are gone, today people want something they can buy the odd issue of - ideally something that has a complete story in it. Why can’t British comics do more of that? Why cant…

…oh, yeah. Those.

Yes, those. Remind me again how many pocket libraries are still going?

(NB: Actually two pocket story papers are also still going - but they’re aimed at old women and so I don’t own any!)

 Of course, part of the popularity of manga is it’s style… or is it? What is “manga style”? Big eyes and pointy chins?

Like this, yeah?

And this is textbook

And that’s pretty typical too

And, wait… they don’t all have big eyes.

Neither do they!

“Small eye syndrome” makes it’s way into the most popular series!

Chins aren’t always pointy…

This could be Corporal Clott!

If there was no text in this picture would you even call it manga style at all?

All of those are pictures from my own collection, which is not exactly huge by any standards. And I’ve only stuck to ones originated in Japan and not taken anything from the UK small press!

The fact is claiming there is a “manga style” is as absurd as claiming there is “British style”, “American style” or “European style”. Reading comics is as popular in places such as France and Belgium as it is in Japan, yet when was the last time you heard anybody saying Ligne claire was going to save British comics?

 

Though Ligne claire Hurricanes have saved Britain.

I would suspect many of the people claiming that “manga” is some sort of miracle cure that will put British/US comics back on their feet are working with this equation in mind:

I don’t know about the USA, But surely us Britons ought to know better than that? Does this terrible ebay auction composite image I’ve knocked together ring any bells?

It didn’t work for them!

“Ah” you say, “what about Scott Pilgrim?”. Well every rule has it’s exceptions, and the Viz ripoffs very nearly had their own exception in the shape of Oink! (ironically it lacked both the swear words and vicious social satire that made Viz so popular, but that’s because it wasn’t just a cynical copy!). Oink! only failed because of prudish 1980’s WH Smith staff putting it on the top shelf. The rest of the cynical “if it worked for them it’ll work for us!” publications, however, collapsed because they were simply poor copies cashing it in - and the readers knew it!

Another commonly heard view, primarily relating to US comics, is that they’re “all about superheroes”. Manga on the other runs over a huge range of genres - including wizard battles, basketball, romantic comedy, political tirades, war, noir, space adventures and even creating manga. And that’s just my own collection! And so, runs the argument, “doing manga” will introduce a range of new genres and bring in new readers.

what?

To say US comics are “all superheroes” is like saying British comics are “all slapstick and WW2″.

 

And current affairs, obviously.

The mainstream titles available in ordinary shops now might be, but it was not always like that - and need not be like that again! British comics of the past encompassed a vast range of genres including detectives, football, nurses, romance, schools (boarding to secondary modern), horror, spies, horse riding, sailing… Even sprinting got a look in! There are many reasons why we aren’t seeing the launch of new and varied comics - but “they’re not paperback sized and full of screentoning” is not one of them!

And even if it was, would it really help? Imagine a company that took it upon themselves to licence translations of Japanese manga, and at the same time commission hundreds of new local titles in the same format and style. If “manga is going to save comics” was really true, that company would be raking it in wouldn’t they?

Pictured: This is not what “raking it in” looks like.

The fact of the matter is that sales of all periodicals are falling. Comics, newspapers, car magazines, music magazines. All of them.

Pictured: Publications that are in trouble

In the end, manga is not some magic potion that the British comics industry is going to take and suddenly everything will be alright. The reason comic readership in this country is so low and so high in other countries is simply down to the culture. Publishing and retailing are businesses, and they are only going to take on things that will make them money.

In countries such as Japan and France comics are part of mainstream culture and are read by a huge cross-section of society. Any publisher who shut the door on the idea of starting a comic, or a shop who tried to prevent a new comic from being sold by charging ridiculous shelf rental prices, would be committing suicide. But simply copying the format and style of the comics in those countries (though there is a place for both!) is not going to help a great deal.

So what will save British comics? What will create a new generation of avid readers? What will turn people who haven’t touched a comic in 20 years to have another go and be pleasantly surprised?

One of these is a start

That’s right - you! Do you work with anybody who has young children? Ask them “when are you starting them on The Beano?”. Know anybody who is off to see the latest Green Lantern film? Remark “of course, the comic is better”. In fact, when somebody says they are off to see the latest Harry Potter you could always slip in “Who needs Harry Potter, I’ve got Billy Bunter!” - you never know XD.

The publishers won’t touch comics if they aren’t popular, the retailers won’t stock comics if they aren’t popular. So let’s make them popular. Success won’t be won by idle expectation, we need to be Alan Sugars and not scratchcard addicts!

 

Posted in British comics industry, Opinion pieces, The future, 2010's, Blog | 1 Comment »

Red, White & Blue to be re-launched!

12/05/2011 by admin.

Having produced four issues of my self-published comic The Red, White & Blue, plus one of The Trident storypaper, I thought it was high time I looked into selling them online. I’d also “recently” discovered that the character of Sexton Blake was not public domain, as originally thought, but was owned by IPC. I decided to contact them and ask for permission to use him in my own comics… and got turned down!*

Anyway, the upshot of this is that I will need to re-launch the Red, White & Blue and Trident with my own characters. I have some ideas that I’m currently putting together. One advantage of starting from scratch with my own character is that the continuity issues of 70-odd years of constant publication Sexton Blake had behind him no longer exist - so my own detective(s)** can have a cohesive background and the stories can all link together. This isn’t going to turn into a serial, though - the long text story in each issue will still be complete, just like it was in the Union Jack!

 The covers of the old series…

Of course, I need to dispose of the old stock of printed comics, but I can’t sell them. Instead I’ll just chuck them in the recycling. Mind you, though, I wouldn’t want to overwhelm Cambridgeshire recycling with one huge lump of paper all in one go. So I’ll distribute the comics to people for free at some event, they can then take them back to all different ends of the country/world and dispose of them there. Of course I’m not sure which event I can dispose of them at yet.

Picture unrelated. It is especially unrelated to Saturday May 28th.

In order to dispose of the comics I’ve been putting them into “packs”. Most of the packs, for the people who get to me first, will contain issues 1-4 of the Red, White & Blue and issue 1 of The Trident. Then a few with issue 3 missing. Then a few with issue 3 and The Trident missing. Then many with just issues 1 & 2 and then finally a few issue 2’s on their own.

Pilez O different sizez

There’s no suitable comic events coming up before my planned emigration time that I can reasonably get to and/or get a table at. So whatever I distribute them at I’ll have to have them in a backpack and wear a T-shirt with “Free Comics!” written on it. Events such as the MCM Expo May 28th at the Excel Centre, London usually have “Free Hug” people, so it will just be an extension of that with something you can read on the bog.

Like this but in T-shirt form.

As an aside I did take that box to work to see if anybody there wanted the lure of free Jingo. I think I only gave away 3 packs at most. Yep, I literally can’t give it away! …so when the re-launch comes (earmarked for August, hopefully issue 1 of the new Trident will be sooner) and the comics are available online, make sure you form an orderly line to pay £1.50 for something people didn’t want for free!

Tempted?

 * - They also mentioned that a certain large US comic company owns “exclusive print rights” …which possibly explains the non-appearance of the next Snowbooks compliation. It’s also a worrying development as we’ll quite possibly see some full colour version of Sexton Blake fighting against the British government and Empire after uncovering unjust conspiracies. Doubtless set in 1895 but showing him being assisted by Tinker who didn’t appear until 1904 in the proper stories. Or at least that’s the worst-case scenario. Hopefully the big US comic company will just be content to sit on the character and not do anything with him - staying out of print is far better than the wringer they’d put him through in the interests of “updating”.

** - *devious grin*

Posted in IPC, 2010's, Me!, RWB, Sexton Blake | 1 Comment »

Starscape Storypaper

07/05/2011 by admin.

Story Papers have virtually vanished from cultural history. A lot of people are aware of “Penny Dreadfuls” and “Comics”… but what came between? Far too many people (including me back in 2005/6) just assume that anything which costs aroundabout a penny and contains text stories is automatically a Penny Dreadful.

Story papers actually pre-date the Penny Dreadfuls too, I doubt The Young Gentlemen’s Magazine of 1777 featured many pirates or highwaymen. It was “The Young Gentlemen’s Magazine” because, of course, most working class boys and girls were illiterate! Compulsory schooling in the 19th century saw the rise of the Penny Dreadful as dodgy publishers vied to produce the most gruesome horror stories. By the 1860’s a moral backlash resulted in some more “worthy” publications (many of these early ones from the presses of Edwin J. Brett - formerly a leading Penny Dreadful publisher!). Then the Boys’ Own Paper of 1879 and Chums of 1892 put the Dreadfuls into retreat.

In the 1890’s the Alfred Harmsworh (later Amalgamated Press) story papers The Halfpenny Marvel, Union Jack and Boys’ Friend, all initially priced a halfpenny, decimated the dreadfuls and by 1910 (the Harmsworth papers having increased greatly in quality over the 1900’s, and gone up to a penny themselves) they were virtually forgotten. Amalgamated Press pretty much had the field to themselves until the 1920’s when Scottish upstart DC Thomson appeared, launching “The Big Five” throughout the decade. Most of AP’s story papers were killed off in 1940 by severe paper shortages. After the war it was DC Thomson who dominated the story-paper market (they had reduced the schedule of their papers rather than wholesale cancelling) until the comics took over and the DCT papers gradually converted to comics, merged or closed. The last, The Rover, finally vanished in 1973.

…At least, that’s the story papers aimed at the working class Boys’ market. Three story papers survive today, all aimed at middle-aged women. The People’s Friend Library, My Weekly Library and The People’s Friend itself. If you consider Story Papers to “count” as comics (and I do) then The People’s Friend is easily the longest running one ever - going on 150 years! the Dandy, Detective Comics and, er, that Italian one don’t even come close.

But now there’s a new story paper on the scene, and this one is aimed at the typical comic readership of today. The Starscape Storypaper.

The cover wouldn’t have been seen on Chatterbox

For some reason it’s a tiny A6 size, and begins with an introduction by somebody who doesn’t seem to have seen a story paper and is under the impression they were “pocket book sized”. Mind you at least he does realise that story papers and penny dreadfuls were different things! He laments the decline of British adventure comics and wonders if a story paper could fill the gap between 2000AD and Harry Potter, a noble idea and one that’s worth a try!

He does seem under the impression that a paper with science fiction, superheroes and horror stories would be “modern”, though. Comics seem to have stopped at 2000AD, by way of 1977 XD. Mind you that’s the prevailing attitude in the British comics profession (such as it is - most of them working for American companies) anyway. 2000AD is good and anything that came before it is worthless, you only need to look at Comic Heroes!

Then again my own story paper, The Trident (re-launched, er, sometime in an A4 format with two complete stories and two serials) is going to be filled with early 20th century style jingoism, so what do I know?

Starscape alongside the next smallest story paper I know of (The Boys’ Friend Library) and the more typical “half tabloid” size

The first story is excellent, it features the assistant to the great wizard, Merlin, murdering him and stealing the ankh of eternal life that Merlin was preparing. But Merlin is not dead and returns to the assistant, Seth, as a ghost. Seth is incapable of dying so long as he has the ankh with him (and if he is separated from it suffers the pains of death without dying!). Merlin whisks him through time and forces him to fight in various wars or participate in various atrocities through history - usually on the losing side!

Eventually, though, Merlin needs his help - for some great evil is threatening “all realms”, including earth and the afterlife. Seth must travel through time and enlist the help of great heroes, starting with Beowulf!

The next story is about “exterminators” on a colony planet called variously Redworld or Dustworld. This planet is infested with giant insects called Earwigs (giant spiders, ants and scorpions are too predictable XD). The hero is the nerdy Stoss, who wanted to study the insects after they were exterminated, but his father has forced him to get the more ‘glamorous’ job at the sharp end!

Once a comic illustrator, always a comic illustrator!

This story is also a serial, and sets the scene, really. There’s no battles - but the main characters are crawling around in a dark, deserted and crumbling old building (evidently the lessons of a thousand horror movies still haven’t been learned in the future!) so the next part will doubtless be carnage.

Then we have the short, complete story. This has a some futuristic cyborg weaponary and an unexpected twist ending. A “future” with a “shock”, if you will XD.

Actually it’s a superhero story with two main heroes. One of them has the power of punching people, and the other has a power-suit that’s bulletproof and lets him leap long distances and smash people’s skulls in.

Which is better against armed mobsters, if we’re being honest

The rest of the heroes have the power of being killed by the henchmen of a criminal called “The Big Boss”. Somebody has sold them out… but who?

In all it’s a publication with it’s faults, but it’s well worth supporting… especially for the Merlin story! A kind of Justice League of middle ages Britain sounds awesome… even if that’s kind of already been done in the Arthurian legends XD.

This would be the bit where I give you a way of buying it, but Starscape’s website is, ahem, ‘quirky’ to navigate, so I’ll instead say go to a small press convention and hope they are there. Not much use for those of us that want to emigrate, mind you!

Posted in Starscape, small press, 2010's | 1 Comment »

Master Impudence returns!

02/05/2011 by admin.

who? Well here he is in the latest Dandy, being cheeky to Her Majesty…

And here he is, having  jumped comic, publisher and century, in Chums in 1899!

Posted in 2010's, Dandy, Chums, Cassell & co, DC Thomson, 1890's | 1 Comment »

Red, White & Blue issue 4

28/04/2011 by admin.

On the 26th of April I finally put the finishing touches on Issue 4 of my own British adventure comic, the Red, White & Blue (cover dated Jan-Feb 2011, ahem). It contains 5 stories in both text and strip form, plus an editor’s page in the style of The Boys’ Friend and such-like story papers from the 1900’s.

The cover

As this is a proper British adventure comic it has parts of stories on the cover, in the same way that The Boys’ Friend, Eagle and Victor did! Usually the story on the cover will be the colour story, but in other issues (starting with the next) a new/important story will be given it’s first page on the cover to promote it.

Why yes, photo reference was used heavily here!

An interior story called “A Sting in the Tail”, a short complete strip about speedway racing. Based extremely loosely on real events… which a friend on Facebook posted on his page once.

Now this is a wall of text!

The complete Sexton Blake text story, and the primary reason for this comic being so late. It’s almost 25,000 words crammed into 10 pages… at 7.5 point font! Other pages do have some block illustrations. The story itself is called “Sexton Blake in Hong Kong” and is set in 1900. That’s the pre-Tinker era, when Sexton Blake was assisted by a Chinese boy called We-Wee. In this story he leaves the detective’s service after getting homesick… though in the actual Blake canon he did feature in one more story in 1901!

Thuuuugs!

Tigers of Punjab, a war-adventure serial set during the Partition of India in 1947. Like Action, Battle and 2000AD this is a more “hard hitting” story - or it was, at any rate. I have now converted it into a more generic adventure story rather than a harsh criticism of Imperial policy. (Though not a criticism of the Empire itself… you ought to know me better than that!)

 

 That actually says “Korea Sky” in Korean… I doubt Altavista would be good with fancy compound words!

The continuation of Sarah Millman, and also part of the text serial story called The Day of Green Skulls. I needed a filler, so this story is actually just based on an amalgamation of the two places I’ve worked ful-time at getting attacked by crazed animal rights activist, with the main character being based on me! (As one of the scientists, of course, not the attackers).

So when can you buy this? Erm, well, actually quite possibly never! There appears to be no conventions I can reasonably get tables at between now and August, when I hope to emigrate. Also the use of Sexton Blake prevents me from setting up an online shop. I used to think the character was in the public domain, but actually he still belongs to IPC. Reportedly IPC don’t mind “non profit” fan fiction, but the setting up of an online store rather than selling comics at car-boot-ish conventions could eventually nudge my publications into profitable territory. Yep, I’m just producing these comics for fun!

I could always maybe cheekily ask IPC for permission to use the character. Well stranger things have happened - Spaceship Away gets published despite the Dan Dare Corporation being a bunch of petulant childish mud-slinging vermin, after all.

Issue 5 is cover-dated Mar-Apr… so I doubt it will be on schedule! However as we do have time off at the moment I have managed to finish the Sexton Blake tale for issue 5, a rather more modest 10,000 words… and set in the 1980’s! In the previous issues I treated the text stories as afterthoughts, and worked on them at work, using time at home after work to concentrate on the “hard” drawing and inking. However it turns out I really need to use relaxed, stress-free time to write the text stories in, or else they turn into mush.

Posted in 2010's, Me!, RWB, Sexton Blake | 1 Comment »

Does Wilson live on?

21/04/2011 by admin.

 

O_O

Posted in Life Imitating Art, Wizard, 2010's, DC Thomson | 1 Comment »

Space Watch reprinted!

31/03/2011 by admin.

It’s actually probably close to going off-sale now, but the science fiction Commando comic “Space Watch”, reviewed by me right back at the start of this blog, has been reprinted!

 

Mildly-changed cover. The fading of the original printing is most likely due to age and not older printing techniques!

However if you remember my review I was actually pretty disappointed with it. But of course you are regularly buying Commando anyway in order to support the very last Boys’ Own comic, right?

On one forum I go to people speculated if it was a  ”rejected” issue of Starblazer. It isn’t, it was originally part of a series of stories, all (except this one) with “Challenge” in their name and most set in simulations of past conflicts.

Posted in 2010's, DC Thomson, 1990's, Commando | 1 Comment »