In Review: Commando and Starblazer Calendars 2009

Two years ago I began the review of the last Art of Commando calendar with "You wait years for a Commando calendar to come along, and then two arrive at once!" After nothing last year save for the usual Beano and Broons calendars, this year we get two digest related calendars, another Art Of Commando and, to everyone's astonishment, Starblazer.

Taking The Art Of Commando first, this is styled along the lines of the classy 2007 Art Of Commando with full colour square illustrations of the original art complete with original publishing details and the artist credited. Dates are simple white boxes at the bottom of each A3 page with no holiday details or the unusual World War II dates of the previous incarnation. The illustrations were chosen by Commando's editor, Calum Laird and as DC Thomson's premier cover artist Ian Kennedy gets six of the twelve illustrations covering planes, tanks and submarines, Jeff Bevan provides two including a terrific Motor Torpedo Boat attack on enemy shipping while Chaco, Jose Maria Jorge, Keith Page and Gordon Livingstone provide one each.

Indeed the art is so original that in Ian Kennedy's Sub Chaser for July you can see where the Commando title logo was stuck on and then removed again. The only niggle with the calendar is that some of the illustrations are already available on the official Commando website as high quality wallpapers and it would have been nice to see others in their place. That said the calendar is a top quality product and does show that Commando covers are as good as, if not better than, the IPC combat Picture Library covers that are celebrated in David Roach's books Aarrgghh! It's War and The Art Of War. A similar title for Commando would be an essential purchase if it was ever published.

The Starblazer calendar is of a similar high quality with art chosen by Starblazer editor Bill McLoughlin. Here again Ian Kennedy is celebrated with nine of the twelve illustrations and the other three are all by Colin MacNeil. In fact all but the cover illustration are from very late on in the title's history, issue 196 onwards - the cover being from issue 33, The Lost Planet. Again the layout is similar to the Commando calendar with the rectangular illustrations taking up more than half of each A3 page and the credits consigned to the bottom of the page. Interestingly while DC Thomson are normally considered to retain all their original artwork one of the Colin MacNeil covers from this calendar is currently available for sale on eBay. The calendar is an excellent reminder of why we used to buy Starblazer all those years ago and does make you wish that DC Thomson and Carlton/Prion would get their act together and give us a big Starblazer reprint book along the lines of Commando: Dirty Dozen.

Both calendars are available from Unique Comic Collectibles and cost £13.50 each including postage. More details are available at their website.

In Review: Classics From The Comics 149

It has been out for a while but it is still worth giving the latest issue DC Thomson's monthly reprint magazine Classics From The Comics a hearty pat on the back. Issue 149 includes two sections that are new to the title.

As a black and white humour reprint magazine they normally cover the eight DCT humour titles - Dandy, Beano, Topper, Beezer, Sparky and the three less well remembered, Nutty, Cracker and Buzz. The title is 68 pages of reprints from these titles and have recently started putting the originating comic and year on each reprint. Eagle eyed readers with see the usual DCT publishing date on each page which means that, for instance, we now know that the reprint of Baby Crockett on page 22 of the current issue was originally printed in the issue of Beezer dated 24 April 1965.

Now while some of the old style humour titles also printed adventure strips aimed at a slightly younger audience than the adventure comics themselves, Classics has appeared to be wary of reprinting these. However this issue things have changed and, heralded by a page entitled Best For Boys where they mention adventure heroes such as the athlete Wilson, pilot Matt Braddock, amateur sportsman Bernard Briggs and DCT's Tarzan character Morgan The Mighty, the issue reprints the original three pages of The Tough Of The Track comic strip drawn by Pete Sutherland and published in the 30 June 1962 issue of The Victor. They also ask for suggestions as to who else should be featured. Let us hope that this will be popular enough to be continued as it is something of a stretch for a humour title.

Something that isn't so much of a stretch for the title is another new section entitled Classic Artist. This features Dennis The Menace's artist creator David Law with a one page biography and photograph plus five pages of art that are credited to him covering Dennis, Corporal Clott, Beryl The Peril and Cap'n Hand. While it would be good for Classics to credit all the artists for their work this is a good starting point.

From its Ken H Harrison tug of war cover featuring Desperate Dan vs various other characters to its (oddly) coloured Korky The Cat back cover, at only £2 Classics From The Comics is a title worth looking out for and certainly dipping into at least now and again.

Classics From the Comics is a 68 page A4 black and white magazine published monthly by DC Thomson and should be available in newsagents. It is also available on subscription directly from DC Thomson.

Solar Wind: The Last Hurrah

The are some constants in life: night follows day, the episode written by Steven Moffat will be the best story in any given season of new Doctor Who, and original Eagle fans will always hate any new version of Dan Dare.

Here is another one - Paul Von Scott will send a copy of his latest fanzine to SFX magazine and they will make it Fanzine Of The Month.

We have reported before that each of the four issues of his excellent A4 SF anthology title Omnivistascope have received the award, while his previous humorous title Solar Wind was also well received by the magazine's reviewers as well as winning a National Comic Award in 2004 and being an Eagle Award nominee in 2005.

The latest issue of SFX, number 175, has the Bumper Book Of Solar Wind as the Fanzine Of The Month. The pair of softcover annual size books between them reprint the entire 500+ pages of the long running fanzine and are available from the Omnivistascope page at Lulu.com. Priced at less than £6 each these are remarkably good value and don't be put off by the print-to-order supplier as the print quality is excellent.

In the meantime Paul plans to have issue 5 of Omnivistascope available in time for the Hi-Ex comics convention in February 2009. We are looking forward to both it and the convention.

The Bumper Book Of Solar Wind Volumes 1 and 2 are available at Lulu.com

Omnivistascope issue 1 to 4 and the few remaining back issues of Solar Wind are available direct from Paul at the Omnivistascope website.

Scotland's Celebrity Chef

The latest cookbook from Scotland's newest celebrity chef, Maw Broon, has just been released. Last year's offering, simply entitled Maw Broon's Cookbook, sold over 170000 copies and so Mrs Brown has released a second this time entitled Maw Broon's But An' Ben Cookbook featuring recipes from their holiday cottage in the country.

Last year BBC Scotland viewers were treated to the sight of DC Thomson managing editor David Donaldson putting on his pinny and chef's hat to cook one of the recipes when Maw was unable to make an appearance.

Some of the recipes from the first book can be found on Scotland.org and it did take some criticism for the perceived unhealthiness of some of the recipes, so this year there is a push to emphasise the healthier recipes. This such a large family to cook for Mrs Brown was unable to come to the BBC Radio Scotland studio this year and so her publisher, Ron Grosset, appeared on her behalf.

To tie in with the release of the first book, the newspaper that The Broons appear in, The Sunday Post, published a Burns Supper supplement and a version of this is now being made available to the wider public as a paperback entitled The Broons' Burns Night.

Both of the Maw Broon's Cookbooks are currently available from Amazon and the The Broons' Burns Night is due to be released on 9 October 2008.