Thrill Power, 1957 Style, in the new Eagle Times

The new issue of Eagle Times, Volume 26 Number 1 - the magazine published by the Eagle Society - features an interview article by downthetubes writer Jeremy Briggs entitled "A Thrill Of A Lifetime In 1957".

"The Thrill Of A Lifetime article in this Eagle Times has perhaps the most unusual back story any comics article that I have ever written,"  Jeremy tells us. "It began late on the Sunday afternoon of the 2012 Hi-Ex comics convention in Inverness when an older gentlemen called Bob Pegg spotted artist Graeme Neil Reid wearing a Dan Dare t-shirt.

"If Graeme had not have been wearing that t-shirt, if Bob and Graeme had not been so chatty to each other, if Graeme had not known that I wrote articles for the Eagle Society, and if I had not have been in shouting distance of Graeme at the time, then this article would not have happened.

“This is the story of a 12-year-old Yorkshire schoolboy who won a competition in Eagle comic in 1957 to fly both him and his father to Africa for an all-expenses paid holiday in what today is Zambia, Zimbabwe and Kenya.

"That would still be a major prize in any comic or magazine today - imagine what it was like over half a century ago for a schoolboy who had never been further from home than Wales, let alone even seen an intercontinental airliner."

Other features in this 25th birthday issue include -

Dan Dare Pilot of the Future on Radio Luxembourg - a review of the radio serial, sponsored by Horlicks, that aired five days a week on 208 Medium Waveband from 1951 - 1956. The article includes a story listing and is accompanied by a short article on the origins of the malted milk product known as Horlicks.

Serial Thrillers: The Adventure Serial on British Radio - a review of Charles Norton’s new book about four immensely popular series from the Golden Age of British Radio: Paul Temple, Dick Barton, Dan Dare and Journey into Space.

P.C.49 and the Case of the Circular Tins - a further adaptation from one of Alan Stranks' famous radio stories

An obituary of Charles Chilton MBE (1917 - 2013), the renowned radio writer and producer, and writer of the 'Riders of the Range' strip that ran in Eagle from 1950 until 1962, plus a report on the funeral service held on 11th January, 2013, to commemorate his life.

How I learned to stop worrying and appreciate the genius of John M Burns - a look at the career and varied work of one of the artists who drew Dan Dare for new Eagle in 1990.

When is a Hampson not a Hampson? - on the particular challenge and difficulties of reliably attributing Eagle Dan Dare artwork to its original creator and lead artist, Frank Hampson.

Charles William (Bill) Nuttall - Artist - a former Eagle letterer (Eagle Society member David Gould) provides a biographical review of the early career of lettering artist and illustrator, Bill Nuttall, and his personal recollections of working with Bill at Eagle from the mid-1960s.

Mann of Battle: Part 1 - a look at the World War II strip that ran weekly in Eagle from 1962 - 1964, written by Alfred Carney Allan and drawn initially by Luis Bermejo, then for most of its life by Brian Lewis.

Dan Dare Holiday Special 1990 - the third in a series of articles about Eagle-related holiday specials, this one looking at the only Dan Dare-specific special to be published.

Interviewing Marcus Morris - a photo-illustrated article recounting a visit in 1987 to the home of former Eagle editor Marcus Morris

Lion, King of Picture Story Papers - a review of Steve Holland's recent book about Eagle's 1950s' rival - the comic that eventually swallowed Eagle in 1969.

• Membership of the Eagle Society is via Annual Subscription to Eagle Times magazine, which is published four times annually. The subscription rate for 2013 is: UK £27 Overseas £38 (in £s Sterling, please) Postal applications to: Keith Howard 25A Station Road Harrow Middlesex HA1 2UA United Kingdom If you wish to pay by Paypal (to the eagle-times hotmail address below) we request an additional payment of £1.50. Enquiries: eagle-times@hotmail.com. 

• More info: http://eagle-times.blogspot.co.uk

In Review: Lion - King of Picture Story Papers

by Steve Holland
Published by Bear Alley Books at £24.99
Paperback 262 black and white pages


The Book: A history of the famous Lion weekly, which ran from 1952 until 1974. Steve Holland tells the story of Lion’s creation and development in four detailed chapters, before proceeding to catalogue all the strips, text stories and features in the weekly, the annuals and the Summer Specials, with publication dates and remarkably full details of writers and artists. The book is fully illustrated in black and white, with individual pages from every continuing strip in the weekly.

The Review (by Steve Winders): Unlike its more famous contemporary, Eagle, which has spawned many books, this is the first work devoted to Lion, a paper which began as a much inferior rival to Eagle, but which steadily improved through the 1960s as Eagle declined and was eventually absorbed by it in 1969. Author Steve Holland is a comics enthusiast of long standing and has gathered his information together over many years. Consequently it is accurate and highly detailed. (I spotted just one inconsequential error in the whole book and that was not about Lion, but Eagle, which moved to web offset printing in September 1967 and not January 1968).

His narrative explores the successes and failures of the paper and examines the contributions of editors, writers, artists and strips. He also provides details of sales figures and management changes, which were so important to the direction that the paper took.
Following the narrative, the book features short interviews with the paper’s first editor, Bernard Smith and with Barrie Tomlinson, who worked on Lion early in his career. These are followed by the full and detailed index of all Lion’s contents.

I was surprised by the large number of characters who appeared in Lion over the years. These include the familiar favourites Captain Condor, Robot Archie, Zip Nolan, Paddy Payne, The Spider and Adam Eterno, as well as the more obscure Red Knights of Morda, Oddball Oates and The 10,000 Disasters of Dort.

The book may seem expensive, but this is a specialist publication with a limited print run, published by the author and designed to appeal to the dedicated fan. It serves as a reminder that for all the many and varied books that have been written about Eagle over the years, none has explored its whole history in such detail. I have no hesitation in recommending this informative book.

Review by Steve Winders

• For more information on how to purchase Lion - King of Story Papers, visit the Bear Alley Books web site

Creator Spotlight: Oliver Passingham and 'Tobruk'

Over on Australian comics blog Pikitia Press, which occasionally diverges to cover British comics creators with some Antipodean connection, Matt Emery reports on an intriguing example of 1960s comics taking full advantage of popular mainstream media that might help boost sales.

In this case, it's the publication of a strip adapting the war film, Tobruk, in a Lion Summer Spectacular, drawn by Oliver Passingham, whose credits in a long career began with newspaper strips such as Lesley Shane, Rick Martin (working under a pseudonym, John Diamond), Jane Fortune and Sally Marsh during the 1950s.

Reprints of his Lesley Shane newspaper strips, by Amalgamated Press, which appear influenced by the work of Alex Raymond, led to work on Rick Random, School Friend and other Amalgamated titles.

Rubbing shoulders with comic and prose adaptions of films such as Batman, James Bond: You Only Live Twice and Thunderbirds, Passingham's Tobruk went through changes in production, revealed by close examination of the original art boards Matt has access to.

"The original board of the first page of Passingham's Tobruk is comprised of a photostat reproduction of the Tobruk movie poster as a header, a moody night scene depicted in inky washes, and two panels showing frogmen sabotaging a french freighter, depicted with ink line drawings and white paint highlights," he reveals.

"Upon examining the art-board I found Passingham had originally depicted the entire scene in washes... with the bottom two panels still visible under the pasted on replacement.

 

"My presumption for the redrawn panels is that Passingham may have been compelled by editorial to redraw the characters to resemble their movie counterparts," Matt feels. "He certainly nails the likeness of star George Peppard in the bottom panel close up. In those days of no video or internet reference Passingham did a fine job of capturing the scale of the movie and compressing it into the limits of a comic anthology."

You can view more art here on the Pikitia Press blog.

An example of Passingham's Lesley Shane strip, published in 1954 in, which was syndicated worldwide

 

Born in 1925, Oliver Passingham's credits include work with DC Thomson for over 33 years. In the 1970s he began to travel the world, living in the Canaries, on the French Riviera, Monte Carlo and a year in Sydney, Australia during 1980, eventually returning to London in 1990, retiring in 1993. He died in 2003.

His work has been the subject of exhibitions, including one at Arundel in 2009.

• Pikitia Press - English Comic Diversions

• More about Lesley Shane on Yesterday's Papers

 

Lion: King of Picture Story Papers From Bear Alley Books

Steve Holland of the Bear Alley blog is just about to release Lion: King Of Picture Story Papers, the second of his updated comics indexes available from Bear Alley Books.

 

Lion was a weekly boys adventure comic published by Amalgamated Press beginning in February 1952. With a cover character of spaceman Captain Condor, Lion was AP's answer to Hultons' Eagle comic and its cover character Dan Dare although, in its early days at least, Captain Condor was definitely the poor relation. Ironically enough with the AP/IPC takeover of Hultons in the 1960s, Eagle became part of the same company as Lion and was eventually amalgamated into it in 1969. Lion continued on until May 1974 when it was amalgamated into Valiant.

 

Steve tells the story of this in the book as well as providing a detailed stripography of the comic's stories with creator details in an A4 book that runs to 262 pages. The book's stripography also covers all the Lion annuals and specials.

 

Lion: King Of Picture Story Papers is due to be published on Friday 18 January 2013 and will cost £25.99 plus £4 UK postage. However all pre-orders received before then will get a 10% discount on the cover price.

 

The previous comic index, covering Hurricane and Champion, is still available from Bear Alley Books as well as titles on artist CL Doughty, Peter Jackson's London Is Stranger Than Fiction, reprints of the rare Sexton Blake annuals for 1938, 1940, 1941 and 1942, and three titles covering the full run of the World War One era Eagles Over The Western Front comic strip from early 1970s issues of Look And Learn magazine..

 

There is more information and ordering details of all the Bear Alley Books on the Bear Alley Books blog.

 

The Hurricane and Champion Comic Index was reviewed on downthetubes here.

Blasé Books releases Pictorial Guide to British 1950s Sci-Fi and Horror Comic Books

(via Lew Stringer): Redditch-based Blasé Books have just released The Pictorial Guide to British 1950s Sci-Fi & Horror Comic Books.

Designed by comics creator Mike Higgs, the 288-page full colour softback by comic historian Mike Morley (one of the contributors to the short-lived but wonderful Crikey! magazine) charts the fascinating and largely little-known period of Britian's comic history.

Spaceships, monsters and superhroes are all examind in what Blasé Books calls "their garish glory".

The book covers the sometimes short-lived but numerous UK comic books of 60 years ago including Captain Marvel, Race for the Moon, The Human Torch and Adventures into the Unknown - dozens of different titles which, as Lew Stringer points out on Blimey! It's Another Blog About Comics were not all American reprint. 

"Many were home grown British comics too, such as the Tit-Bits Science Fiction Comics with fantastic artwork by Ron Turner," he notes.

The book contains hundreds of sharply reproduced covers (and some interior pages) showing the sheer scale of the output of comics back then. Traditional British comics and story papers are also mentioned, when they fit the book's remit, such as Comet, Adventure, and Lion.

"Marcus Morris may have created Eagle as an antidote to comics such as this but, as people who were kids back then will tell you, readers often didn't choose between Eagle or horror comics, - they bought both!" says Lew.

"Sadly, many of these comics were short lived, when, as the author tells us, the witch-hunt against comics in the UK spearheaded by the National Union of Teachers put such comics out of business as publishers feared prosecution if they continued. Dark times indeed."

• You can order the book via the Blasé Books eBay store (which also sells British comics art)

• The limited edition book can also be obtained post free in the UK by sending a cheque in sterling for £14.95 payable to Blasé Books at: Blasé Books, Hazelwood, Birchfield Road, Redditch B97 6PU United Kingdom. 

(The post free price only applies to orders in the UK. If you live outside of the UK and want a copy please e-mail Blasé Books at the e-mail address above and they'll tell you how much postage will cost to ship the book to you).

Artist Spotlight: Jésus Blasco

The Illustration Art Gallery is spotlighting the work of the late Jésus Blasco this month, offering a 20 per cent discount on any orders of his original art, which includes pages of perhaps his best-known strip in the UK, The Steel Claw but also some gorgeous illustrations for Sleeping Beauty, Hansel & Gretel, Princess Grace, Snow White, The Wombles and many more.

Blasco (Jesús Blasco Monterde), considered one of the masters of Spanish comics, made his comics debut in 1935, working on the Spanish version of the Disney Mickey magazine, then creating 'Cuto', one of his best-known characters, for Boliche. Other early credits include work for Chicos, still working on 'Cuto' and several adventure and science-fiction comics.

Cuto for Chicos - early work
More info in Spanish

He began working for Fleetway in the 1950s, initially drawing Buffalo Bill for Comet in 1954, followed by Robin Hood for the Sun comic and various strips for Playhour. This was followed by plenty of work for titles such as Mirabelle and Valentine, before moving on to work such as Blackbow the Cheyenne for Swift, The Steel Claw for Valiant and Danger Man for Lion.

An incredibly versatile artist, he also drew strips such as The Water Babies and Alice in Wonderland for Once Upon a Time in 1970, before returning to action strips such as Dredger for Action and Invasion for 2000AD in the mid-1970s.

For Europe, he drew Los Guerilleros for Spirou from 1968 and at the end of the 1970s and into the 1980s he and his brothers Alejandro and Adriano worked on Une Bible en Bande Dessinée, followed by Tex Willer and Capitan Trueno with writer Victor Mora, with whom he also made the medieval series Tallafero in 1987.

Jésus Blasco's very productive and influential career ended with his death on 21st October 1995.

• The 20 per cent strictly limited exclusive discount expires on 30th November 2011. Gallery Page: www.illustrationartgallery.com/acatalog/Jesus_Blasco_Art.html

• Jesús Blasco Fleetway credit list (by Dave Roach, but in Spanish): http://deskartesmil.blogspot.com/2010/07/jesus-blasco-en-uk-1954-1983.html

• The work of Jesús Blasco: http://www.scholarsresource.com/browse/artist/2142573259?page=1

Adam Eterno art on sale on eBay

Three pages of Adam Eterno art by Solano Lopez are currently on sale on eBay.

All three pieces are from the Peter Hansen IPC Archive Collection, who bought IPC's entire archive of art some years back, and are all from Lion and Thunder No 1039, cover dated 3rd June 1973, in which Adam Eterno arrives on a Carribean island to battle injustice during the Festival of Xahu.

Immortal time-travelling Adam Eterno first appeared in Thunder comic in 1970, but proved such a popular character he survived several title mergers as Thunder merged with Lion after just 22 issues in 1971, then Valiant with Lion in 1974 (becoming Lion and Valiant). His last official appearance to date - albeit a reprint - was in the 1980 Valiant annual.

Auction items
• http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220736084463
• http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220736085078
• http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220736085611

• Adam Eterno Fan Site: http://adameternoforever.tripod.com