Broken Frontier celebrates British Comics

Comic book news site Broken Frontier (www.brokenfrontier.com) has rolled out Brits on Top!, a special week-long event celebrating the British comics scene - with coverage of 2000 AD, The Dandy, Commando and the upcoming STRIP Magazine.

The event includes plenty of  interviews and anecdotes and more about our industry - its successes, its highlights and most importantly, how it continues to succeed and adapt despite the harsh realities of the news stand and declining sales figures.

The range of articles and interviews and there's plenty to stir debate. In his interview for the site, for example, Pat Mills is unequivocal about the reasons for 2000 AD's survival on the British news stand. "[It's] because so many of us who work on it and have worked on it are passionate about it," he argues.

"Over the last ten years it’s had one excellent editor [Matt Smith] - the first one I could ever say that about. He hasn’t tried to turn it into Loaded, Deadline, Warrior, or an American comic clone, or a vehicle for Vertigo-style writer and artists, like some of his predecessors. Just 2000AD. Why do we want to be any of those alternatives?! That’s got to have made a difference.

"And because it had very firm foundations. I had a year to get 2000AD right. I had six weeks to do Action! And I think all of us – creators and readers -  like 2000AD in our different ways. So many people in comics didn’t actually like comics and when readers realize this they walk away."

Broken Frontier Managing Editor Andy Oliver, a born and bred Brit, was responsible for putting the event together. He says: "With Brits on Top! we wanted not just to shamelessly wallow in the nostalgia of the golden age of British weekly comics, but also to shine a spotlight on the rich diversity of the contemporary UK comics scene.”

From the great newsagent survivors like The Dandy and the game-changing 2000 AD through to the indie sensibilities of publishers like Blank Slate and Nobrow, this event looks to introduce Broken Frontier’s large international audience to some of the most distinct approaches to the medium to be found in Dear Old Blighty.

“Brits on Top! is both a celebration of our uniquely British comics traditions," says Oliver, "and an opportunity to look forward in eager anticipation to the next chapter in the story of the industry on these shores."

The celebration started with features on publishers Blank Slate, Commando and and interview with 2000 AD's creator Pat Mills. All week long, creators from Mike Carey and Shaky Kane to Bryan Talbot and Rufus Dayglo share their childhood memories about growing up on British comics. 

Established in autumn 2002, Broken Frontier quickly built a solid reputation for its extensive, unique, and critical coverage of the comic book industry. Coverage includes headline news, interviews, articles, reviews, columns and blogs. The website covers every corner of the comic book industry, from mainstream to independent publishers, from print and digital publications to film and tv adaptations.

Additionally, Broken Frontier is the publisher of the first digital comic book magazine for mobile devices, The Frontiersman.

Brits on Top: Direct feature Links

• War Papers: The Best of British War Comics
Andy Oliver takes a look at some of the compilations available of classic British war comics.

• Full Metal Mayhem with the ABC Warriors
The ABC Warriors hit the United States full throttle with this new collection of stories by Pat Mills and Simon Bisley.

• Comic Cuts: Brit Creators Reminisce! - Part 1
Noted Brit creators share childhood memories of UK comics: Mike Carey, Shaky Kane, Tony Lee and Gary Northfield


• Comic Cuts: Brit Creators Reminisce! - Part 2
From cowboy-eating dinosaurs to plucky World War II fighter pilots, we've more childhood memories from Rufus Dayglo, Simon Fraser, Nick Abadzis and David Hine

• Commando: 50 Years on the Frontline
BF talks to Commando editor Calum Laird about five decades of the Eagle Award-winning war comic


• Enter the DFC Library 
BF takes a look at the wonderful, all-ages, collected offerings from the much-missed DFC weekly.

• Etchings on a Blank Slate: An interiew with Kenny Penman Part 1
In the first part of a major three-part interview BF talks to Blank Slate publisher Kenny Penman about BSB's diverse output and the state of the comics industry in 2011.


• Etchings on a Blank Slate: An interiew with Kenny Penman Part 2
In the second part of their interview with Blank Slate's Kenny Penman BF talk about the ambitious Nelson project, Oliver East's Trains are...Mint and Darryl Cunningham's  Psychiatric Tales.

• Fine and Dandy: 75 Years of Desperate Dan and Company
For nearly 75 years the home of Desperate Dan and Korky the Cat, The Dandy got a major makeover last year. BF talks to ed-in-chief Craig Graham about the relaunch of the classic Brit humour comic.

Other Main Sites

• Broken Frontier web site: www.brokenfrontier.com
• Follow Broken Frontier on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brokenfrontier
• Become a fan on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/brokenfrontier

Dan Dare in the spotlight of new Judge Dredd Megazine

As well as some great comic strip, the latest issue of Judge Dredd Megazine, on sale tomorrow (Wednesday 17th August) features two mammoth features by downthetubes occasional contributor Matthew Badham on the history of Dan Dare and the new Doctor Who in Comics exhibition at London' Cartoon Museum.

Strip-wise, the issue includes Judge Dredd by Alan Grant and Jon Davis-Hunt, Samizdat Squad by Arthur Wyatt and Paul Marshall, Numbercruncher by Si Spurrier and PJ Holden and Cursed Earth Koburn by Gordon Rennie and Carlos Ezquerra.

And if all that - including a potted history of Doctor Who - wasn't enough for you, how about an interview with Brian Azzarello (by Joel Meadows), film reviews and a bagged reprint: volume two of Mercy Heights by John Tomlinson, with art from Lee Sullivan, Trevor Hairsine and Neil Googe?

Go, you know you're tempted. Get down to your local newsagents and grab a copy!

• Read our review of the Doctor Who in Comics exhibition by David Baillie

In Memoriam: Francisco Solano Lopez

Francisco Solano Lopez at the Lucca festival in 2007. Photo by Giacomo Bartalesi. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

(via Lew Stringer,  The Comics Journal and lanaicon.com): We're sorry to report the death of legendary Argentinian comics artist Francisco Solano Lopez, whose work for British comics across several decades enthralled and inspired countless comics fans.

Lopez, who has died of a cerebral hemorrhage aged 83, is perhaps best known to British comic fans for his work on strips such as Adam Eterno (which first appeared in Thunder), Janus Stark and Kelly's Eye, but worldwide he's perhaps best known as the co-creator of the controversial comic El Eternauta, first published in Hora Cero Semanal from 1957 to 1959, a strip he would return to many times in his long career.

A more than capable artist across many different genres, some of his more recent work includes the adult series El Instituto (Young Witches, published by EROS Comix in the US), a cheerfully perverse saga of supernaturally-powered sisters.

'El Eternau

Born in October 1928 in Buenos Aires, Lopez began working in 1953 for the publishing house Columba, where he met long term working partner Hector German Oesterheld. When  Oesterheld founded the publishing house Frontera, they worked on a new strip that told the story of a schoolteacher, Juan Salvo, and his family who fight against an invasion of aliens, and confront them on the battleground of Buenos Aires: El Eternauta.

Lopez was inspired by the idea of alien invaders in the creation of the character, and Oesterheld liked science fiction, revealing in one interview that his origins came from the success of another SF character, Rolo, an adopted Martian.

From the start, this story of a man fighting against alien invaders (the epitome of faceless authority) struck an instant chord in Argentina. Now regarded as something of a symbol of struggle in his native country, its subject matter commenting on social injustice, dictatorship and US imperialism that brought its creators unwelcome attention from Argentina's military junta of the time. Eventually, Lopez was forced to flee the country, ending up in Spain from where he began to start work for Fleetway in late 1959, finally moving to London to be closer to his scriptwriters.

'The Vikings' - Lopez' first Adam Eterno
work for Thunder Number 17

His many British comics credits included Battler Britton for Thriller Picture Library,  Galaxus: The Thing from Outer Space and Pete's Pocket Army for Buster, Janus Stark for Smash and Valiant, Kelly's Eye for Knockout and Valiant), Raven on the Wing for Valiant, Adam Eterno for Thunder and Lion and much more. (DanDare.info has a full listing of his British credits).

"Although the artist found fame in adult comics (and found credits where due, unlike on his anonymous UK work) his strips formed a huge and important part of British comics," Notes Lew Stringer. "Due to the gritty edge of his style his pages still seem exciting and vibrant today."

The workload was enormous and Lopez was aided in the demands of his British publisher by artists in his own art studio in Buenos Aires such as Ramiro Bujeiro, Tibor Horvath, Silvia Lechuca, the Schiaffino brothers, Julio and Jorge with whom Lopez had worked on Bull Rocket in the early 1950s, and Nestor Morales.

Lopez returned to Argentina in 1974, planning to work for publishers Columba once more, but Oesterheld convinced him to continue with the second part of El Eternauta with a new publishing house, the Editorial Records - but the dangerous political climate forced Oesterheld to go into hiding and, after a mysterious fire at his house Lopez again headed for Madrid, Spain, from where he gained publication of El Eternauta and a new SF story, Slot Barr in the Italian magazines LancioStory and Skorpio.

'Evaristo'

By the 1980s he was living in Rio de Janeiro, working for US publishers such as Dark Horse and Fantagraphics as well as Italian comics, producing two news strips – El Ministerio and El Televisor with Ricardo Barreiro and a tough police series Evaristo from scripts by Carlos Sampayo.

Ever able to adapt to almost any style, he started working on erotic comics in the 1990s, achieving success with strips such as El Prostíbulo del Terror and Sexy Symphony, produced in collaboration with his son Gabriel Solano Lopez as writer, a full-colour series without words for the magazine Kiss Comix.

Franciso and his son achieved joint success in comics with the surrealist Ana, published by Fantagraphics, following a French girl  from her days as idealistic student to adult burnout and beyond.

His work in adult comics gained him First Prize for Best Erotic Author in the Barcelona Erotic Show and Best Cartoonist Realist from the Diario de Avisos in Spain.

The Comics Journal notes he also drew an adaptation of the classic horror movie Freaks, in 1991, as adapted by Jim Woodring (for Fantagraphics imprint Monster Comics).

In 1995 he moved back to Buenos Aires and returned to his beloved Eternauta in 2001, now written by his regular collaborator Pablo Maiztegui (who signs his work as 'POL'). This time, though, it had a more ambitious story, set 40 years in the future in a Buenos Aires rebuilt by the invaders, where massive brainwashing of the survivors made people believe that the alien arrival was peaceful, and only a few know the truth.

An article for Bahianoticias.com, published in March 2010, reveals the authors' intention was to portray a different form of domination - based not on military might but in manipulating the masses.

"We're taking a look at the present time, based on an explicit metaphor," explained Lopez. "The country invaded by aliens, which are actually international finance... we were interested in showing how the invaders were able to perpetuate the domination through the mechanisms of democracy."

A recent illustration by Lopez for Telam's Seccion Impossible

Continuing to work into his 80s, he signed a deal with the Argentinain natonal news agency, Télam, to illustrate two new editorial projects - a historical comic strip centring on two adventurers, sort of local time travellers, by Pablo Maiztegui and a sitcom by Teodoro Boot which describes the life of Mr. Monti, head of a family and magazine writer who uses his imagination to make ends meet.

The latest episode of Sección imposible includes the dedication "Adiós Maestro, con el afecto y la admiración de siempre." (Goodbye Master, with affection and admiration forever).

While this award-winning artist's comics spans many decades and he will be best remembered for his politically charged El Eternauta, fans in Britain will always remember him best for his memorable contributions to the likes of Buster, Valiant and Lion. He will be much missed.

• Francisco Solano Lopez, born 26th October 1928, died 12th August 2011

Web Links

• Francisco Solano Lopez - Lambiek

• Career Overview for Bahianoticias.com - on Flickr (in Spanish)

• Francisco Solano Lopez Biography on DanDare.info

• A full listing of his British credits on dandare.info (first published in the French magazine Pimpf Issue 11)

Tributes and Obituaries

• Bleeding Cool

• Blimey! It's Another Blog about Comics

• Comics Journal
"Francisco Solano López was a titan of South American comics, on a level with the great Alberto Breccia, the temporary honorary Argentinean (during the 1950s) Hugo Pratt, and the hugely influential writer Hector Oesterheld (who collaborated with all three)."

• Comics Reporter

• Lanacion.com: report of Lopez death (in Spanish)
El dibujante Francisco Solano López, que ilustró la mítica historieta El Eternauta, creada por Héctor Germán Oesterheld, falleció esta madrugada luego de una hemorragia cerebral de la que no se pudo recuperar.

Lobey Dosser: A Very Surreal Glaswegian

(Updated with GI Bride pictures and extra information): I've been discussing the ephemeral nature of newspaper strips and newspaper strip characters with friends this week, so it seems apt that my attention was drawn to a character and artist whose many fans who are clearly determined should never be forgotten.

Most Glasgow residents know about this statue in Kelvingrove Park - but outside of Glasgow, some comics fans may be unaware of the comic characters it's based on has worldwide cult status.

"Lobey Dosser" was a strip by Partick-born Bud Neill, which ran in the Glasgow Evening Times between 1949 and 1955. Capitalising on the interest in Westerns of the time - and an outlet for the artist's childhood love of westerns - it's the surreal adventures of the Sheriff of Calton Creek, a township in the Arizona desert populated by Glaswegians.

"Lobey Dosser" and his two legged horse (yes, you read correctly, two legs) "El Fideldo" or "Elfie" for short were regularly pitted against his arch nemesis, the forever black masked "Rank Bajin" (a right bad one in the Glaswegian vernacular). With a villain named that how can you go wrong?

It's a funny and at times surreal strip with many well-known characters besides Lobey, including the G.I. Bride - who frequently featured in Bud's pocket cartoons, and became a long running character in the Lobey Dosser series.

The strip was extremely popular with Glaswegians in its day (and continues to be), merging the adventure style of the silent era western movies with traditional Glasgow stage humour, particularly pantomime. The outrageous puns and surrealistic drawings have endured over time and now attract a cult following.

The G.I. Bride was always found standing in Arizona with her "wean" in her arms (her baby, prophetically called Ned), invariably trying to thumb a ride back to Scotland with plaintive cries like "Ony o’ youse blokes goin’ the length o’ Pertick?" or simply the plea: “Pertick?”. Like many real-life Scottish women of the time, she had married a GI and followed him to America, only to discover disappointment in the land of plenty.

Neill, who died in 1970, was a regular theatregoer, and this character was probably inspired by Tommy Morgan's popular stage character, Big Beenie, the G.I. War Bride. The popularity of the Glasgow stage comedian's pantomime-style parodies of the city's culture was not lost on Neill, and was to influence his best known cartoon strip.

Funded by public subscription, the Lobey Dosser two-legged equestrian statue created by sculptors Tony Morrow and Nick Gillon in Woodlands Road as a tribute to Neill during Glasgow’s year as European City of Culture in 1990 (although some sources say it didn't actually get put in place until 1992).

Earlier this year, commuters at Partick Interchange, the rail/underground/bus station, found themselves greeted by a companion statue of the GI Bride, a work the Evening Times reported had been scheduled to return to Partick in time for the Homecoming celebrations in 2009, but her arrival was much delayed.

The newspaper reported that Colin Beattie, publican and patron of the arts, organised and financed the GI Bride project with support from Strathclyde Partnership for Transport.

“I think Bud Neill might have been amused at the GI Bride finally making her journey home to an integrated transport hub in Partick," he said. “I hope it will bring a smile to the millions of people who will use the station each year.”

The artist for the project was Ranald MacColl, a cartoonist, who is an authority on Neill’s life and works. and who has edited various collections, including Lobey's the Wee Boy!, published in 1992, containing five of his adventures; and Lobey Dosser: Further Adventures of the Wee Boy!, published in 1998.

Randall also charted Bud's other work in books such as Bud Neill's Magic!: A Collection of Bud Neill's Pocket Cartoons.

"The cartoon strip is an ephemeral creature and it is precisely this hit-and-run quality which sorts the wheat from the chaff," notes Ranald of the strip in his introduction to Lobey's the Wee Boy!. "Prosaic and glib cartoon art is consigned along with yesterday's newspaper, to the bin and oblivion; the few great strips lodge themselves in the public's psyche.

"A decade after Lobey's last ride into the sunset Bud was still receiving a steady drip of global correspondence from the little sheriff's aficionados offering what amounted to substantial bribes in return for copies of the scarce books reproduced here. And four decades later the Dosser admiration society flourishes-a testament to the enduring popularity of Bud Neill's Indian ink cowboy character."

- With thanks to Chris Barnett for the original tip about 'Lobey Dosser'

Web Links

• Lobey Dosser Fan Site

• Lobey Dosser feature on Bear Alley by Jeremy Briggs

• The Glasgow Story: Budd Neill

• SPT News: Home at Last!

• Other comics related statues in the UK -

Desperate Dan, Minie The Minx and Dawg in Dundee

Andy Capp in Hartlepool

Giles' Grandma, Vera, the Twins and Butch the Dog in Ipswich

Dan Dare bust in Southport (originally outside Cambridge Arcade now in Southport College library)