Present Ideas: Commando

In the run up to Christmas there is always a need for a little extra inspiration when it comes to deciding which presents to buy (or put on your Christmas list). There is merchandise out there to do with British comics if you look hard enough. Today: Commando.

The DC Thomson on-line shop has a selection of Commando items not available elsewhere including metal signs featuring Commando cover artwork. The initial two of these were straight covers complete with logo but two new signs have recently been added. These are designed to look like old Commando advertising signs and feature the cover art of Ken Barr for Gun Fury issue 24 and Ian Kennedy for Slogger's War issue 2852.

From something designed to look old fashioned to something right up to date and the latest Commando tie-ins are i-Phone covers. Currently there are three available all featuring Ian Kennedy cover artwork along with the Commando logo. These feature images of a 'desert pink' SAS land rover from Vampire Hunt issue 2552, a paratrooper from Strike In Silence issue 2854, and a Soviet Hind attack helicopter from Combat Zone issue 2606.

Carlton still has a large number of those doorstop size 10 and 12 story Commando reprint books in print plus a growing selection of the smaller three story paperbacks that are reminiscent of the IPC Picture Library Holiday Specials and these are readily available through shops and via mail order companies. However the DC Thomson on-line shop also sells these titles and their unique selling point is that the larger books are autographed by Commando editor Calum Laird. While reading these if you fancy a nice cup of tea there is now a Commando mug specifically for the task.

The full list of Commando items in the DC Thomson on-line shop is here.

Radio show about Nelson creators: Dan Berry, Rob Davis, Sarah McIntyre and more...

Panel Borders: Nelson

Continuing our month of shows looking at depictions of lives on the page, Dan Berry talks to four of his fellow creators who worked on the award winning anthology graphic novel Nelson, published by Blank Slate Books, including the book's co-editor Rob Davis and artists Jonathan Edwards, Sarah McIntyre & Suzy Varty.

Nelson depicts 54 days in the life of the titular character, a young and then adult female Londoner, who is born in the first chapter set in 1968 and we follower her life to middle age in the present day. Dan discusses the history of the project, the aspects of autobiography that were absorbed into each creator's pages and the collaborative processes involved in working on a exquisite corpse method of storytelling. 

(Recorded at Thought Bubble Festival, Leeds 2011 and edited by Alex Fitch)

8pm, Sunday 9th December 2012, Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com / podcast at www.panelborders.wordpress.com

In Review: The Amazing Mr X - Special Edition

In 2011 the University of Dundee ran a comic art competition as part of the annual Dundee Comics Day to create a new Beano-style comic strip of one or two pages. The competition was won by Steve English's Belle's Magic Mobile which was printed in The Beano in February 2012 as well as in the University's Anthology One publication.

In 2012 the competition was for a three page strip and a cover image based on The Dandy's 1940s superhero The Amazing Mr X. Entrants were allowed to update the character in any form they wanted and the competition was won by Steve Marchant with a tongue-in-cheek take on an elderly Mr X still attempting his heroics. Rather than running the winner and runners up as part of Anthology Two, the University imprint UniVerse have put out a separate title entitled The Amazing Mr X and labelled it as a Special Edition.

Yet despite that description, this is more than just a publication of the competition winners as it reprints original pages from The Dandy as well as including a feature on the background and history of the character.

Dundee Comics Day organiser, and director of the Scottish Centre For Comics Studies, Dr Chris Murray writes about the background to Mr X in The Dandy where he first appeared in issue 272 in 1944 as what Chris describes as "Britain's first home-grown superhero". While the superhero grew to dominate the American comics scene, Britain never really  succumbed to the idea with most superhero characters that appeared in British comics over the years being reprints of American stories or British stories using US characters. Indeed The Amazing Mr X only lasted 14 issues (plus a single appearance in the 1962 Dandy annual courtesy of Dudley D Watkins) and Chris postulates why the character failed to gain a following with The Dandy's readership. The book reprints 3 of those 14 stories which were in the 'picture and paragraph' format that we now tend to associate with Rupert Bear. These are certainly interesting as an historical document but seventy years after they were originally published they are now more of a curiosity piece than actually being entertaining.
 

The book then goes on to publish the strip by the Dundee Comics Prize winner, Steve Marchant, which Chris says "undercuts the tome of the usual superhero story with a playful satire on the mythology of the superhero". Personally I prefer the Darren O'Toole written and A Kaviraj illustrated runner-up strip (above) which sets the scene for a potential ongoing series that the actual winner did not, while the other runner-up, Gavin Boyle, presents an amusing Scottish themed tongue-in-cheek version of the character. A further 11 stories from the competition cover a multitude of styles and ideas, some rather more interesting than others, giving a total of 14 new strips with the character, echoing the original number of 1940s episodes. 

The Amazing Mr X: Special Edition is not at all what I was expecting to see from UniVerse given their previous two Anthology titles. A very well produced, 76 page US comic sized book, it will be of interest to devoted Dandy fans as well as no doubt proving to be something of a curiosity to students of old British comics. 

The Amazing Mr X: Special Edition has a cover price of £8 and is available, as the other UniVerse titles are, by sending an e-mail requesting details to - universecomic@gmail.com

SHAKO: the only bear on the CIA death list!

This is no cute and cuddly polar bear. He’s a blizzard of white hot horror, the terror of the frozen wastes, he is SHAKO - and he is death!

When a US Air Force plane crashes in the Arctic, the great white polar bear Shako gets his first taste of human flesh! Unfortunately for the C.I.A., the beast has swallowed the top secret capsule being transported by the plane, so they must track down the deadly creature to retrieve it.

This won’t be an easy task, because Shako hates mankind, and what Shako hates, Shako destroys!

Written by Pat Mills (Charley’s War, Marshal Law) and John Wagner (A History of Violence, Judge Dredd), the series - collected for the first time in book format - features stunning art from a number of European artists, including Ramon Sola (Flesh), and with a cover by Jock (The Losers, Batman).

Shako is a true classic from the early days of 2000AD when blood-thirsty ultra-violence was a hallmark of an anarchic new comic which would go on to become a British institution.

Vicious, uncompromising and with bleak black humour, Shako is a ‘bear necessity’ for all comic book fans!

• Buy Shako from amazon.co.uk

• Buy Shako from forbidenplanet.com