British Comic Stamps: Valiant

Here's the eighth of our ten posts to mark the release of the Royal Mail's Comic Collection, celebrating 75 years of British comics. The Royal Mail have kindly sent us large versions of each stamp, so we thought we'd show them off in all their glory, in the order of first comic publication.

Valiant was a British boys’ adventure comic which ran from 1962 to 1976. It was published by IPC Magazines (but ended up at Egmont) and was one of their major adventure titles throughout the 1960s and early 1970s.

Aside from World War II characters like Captain Hurricane, Valiant ran innovative science fiction strips like the Steel Claw, an assistant to a scientist rendered invisible by his artificial hand. At first something of an anti-hero, he went on to work undercover for a British secret service, battling aliens and villains across the globe.

• Stamps and stamp products are available at all Post Office branches, online at www.royalmail.com/personal/comic-stamps-and-collectibles, the Royal Mail eBay shop: http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Royal-Mail-Stamp-Collections and from Royal Mail Tallents House (tel. 08457 641 641), 21 South Gyle Crescent, Edinburgh, EH12 9PB.

Striker bounces back again - into Nuts

Football comic Striker has kicked off its 25th anniversary year by signing exclusively to Nuts, Britain’s biggest-selling weekly mens lifestyle magazine published by IPC. (We're betting the team mascot might just be a bit racier than its past cheerleader, pictured here).

The computer-generated adventures of Warbury Warriors football club, which previously featured daily in The Sun and, for a time, in their own weekly comic, will launch in the issue going on sale on Tuesday 26th January.

Striker will have its own page in Nuts and will feature all-new adventures, starting with the resurrection of the destitute Warriors by Arab billionaire Sheikh Mustapha Futti Kulub (Gedditt!?).

Striker was created by journalist and artist Pete Nash back in 1985 and made its debut in The Sun newspaper in November of that year as a three-panel black-and-white cartoon, switching to colour four years later. In 1999, Striker became the first daily newspaper strip in the world to be created entirely in computer-generated 3D software.

“Nuts will be the perfect new home for Striker," says creator Pete Nash. "The magazine’s readership of young adult males matches Striker’s core following and the cheeky, entertaining style of Nuts is exactly on a par with Striker.

“What’s more is that a weekly format, rather than daily, will give me time to work on developing Striker into a movie and possible TV series. Talks are at an advanced stage with two producers and I can’t wait to see the Striker characters come to life in Nuts and on the screen.”

Launched in 2004, Nuts has established itself as the biggest brand in men's media and is the PPA Consumer Media Brand of the Year 2009, accounting for one out of every two men's lifestyle mags purchased at newsstand. Online, Nuts.co.uk is Britain's number one men's lifestyle website, according to the Hitwise UK Online Performance Awards 2008, and gives IPC an unparalleled total reach into what;s often regarded as the most elusive and hardest to please audience there is – young men.

“Pete Nash's Striker strips are legendary," added Nuts editor Dominic Smith. "To sign him up and bring the Warbury Warriors to Nuts readers exclusively every week is a dream come true.

"Without a doubt Striker is a perfect fit for Nuts, with our mix of sport, girls and humour.

"Striker will be must-read material for our football-mad fans - and we've got much more planned for the magazine this year that will underline Nuts' premier league position."

• Nuts is on sale every Tuesday, priced £1.70, and online at www.nuts.co.uk.

The Art of War

On sale now in all good bookshops is the simply gorgeous The Art of War by David Roach, featuring almost 1000 fabulous full-colour artworks created for the covers of Fleetway/IPC’s classic War, Battle, Air Ace and War at Sea Picture Libraries published from the 1950s to the 1970s.

The beautifully illustrated book comes with a foreword by Top Gear presenter and war comic book aficionado James May.

From the 1950s to the 1970s 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 covers, digitally remastered from the original archived artwork in a lavish format with the finest quality reproduction.

Over on the Today's Inspiration blog, David - an artist, illustrator, writer and historian with 20 years experience in the comics industry whose credits include Doctor Who, Batman and Star Wars - has written a series of posts (listed below) tying in with the launch of the book, and this post, "A warehouse full of art - dear God!" by blog owner Lief Peng outlines how, back in 2005, David and Rufus Dayglo uncovered a treasure trove of some 26,000 comic book pages from British girls and boys comics published by IPC, as well as about 10,000 Nursery pages, which they proceeded to catalogue*. Around 1400 war covers had survived, the best of which are in David's books.

"Rufus... has said on several occasions that it was the best summer of his life," David told Lief, "and you can bet the same goes for me - I was in heaven."

David's first post outlines the history of the comic and the art of Giorgio DeGaspari (already a legend in Italy by the time he started work for the UK market), with subsequent posts featuring the work of different artists: Pino Dell’orco, Allessandro Biffignandi, Jordi Penalva (who also drew covers for US titles such as Eerie), and, finally a round up of other artists who worked on the books such as Nino Caroseli, Graham Coton and Ian Kennedy.

• Buy The Art of War from amazon.co.uk

Art of War Features on Today's Inspiration - Direct Links:

• A Warehouse Full of Art
• The Cover Art of British War Comics Day 1 (Overview)
• The Cover Art of British War Comics Day 2 (the art of Pino Dell’orco)
• The Cover Art of British War Comics Day 3 (the art of Allessandro Biffignandi)
• The Cover Art of British War Comics Day 4 (the art of Jordi Penalva)
• The Cover Art of British War Comics Day 5 (the art of various artists)

* Unfortunately, in my opinion, while these war covers have been scanned for posterity, IPC made the decision to sell off the archive before digitally scanning much of it, meaning many of the pages are now scattered across the globe. Given the huge interest in these comics, this seems unwise as it would have made for much higher quality collections of archive Fleetway and IPC comics material and reduced the need for extensive digital restoration work on pages scanned from printed comics.

Reg Bunn Profiled

Top British comics blog Bear Alley has just profiled the early work of Spider artist Reg Bunn, detailing what looks to be his first ever published work, Buck Jones, Outlaw!, which actually appeared in Australia initially, In issue 6 of Buck Jones.

"Before long, Reg was drawing Buck's adventures for Comet" Steve Holland reveals, "and quickly established himself in that paper, adding Robin Hood to his weekly output and, for Sun, Clip McCord, which led onto work for Thriller Comics and other picture libraries. Eventually, Reg found himself with regular work in Lion and Tiger in the early 1960s and kept up a regular supply of weekly strips for these and other titles until his death in 1971."

Read this and much more about British comics creators on Bear Alley. It's a gem.