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Hexagon Comics Kabur #11: The Mountains of the Moon

 

KABUR #11: THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON  by Jean-Marc Lofficier, art by José Luis Ruiz Perez, Moacir Muniz, Mario Guevara, Roberto Castro; cover by Mario Guevara. 

7x10 squarebound comic, 

76 pages b&w
ISBN-13: TBA. 

US$12.95

https://www.hexagoncomics.com/shop-kabur-11-the-mountains-of-the-moon.html

33. THE MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON by Jean-Marc Lofficier; art by José Luis Ruiz Pérez.
THE SEA SERPENT story by Jean-Marc Lofficier; art by Moacir Muniz
THE JUSTICE OF KABUR story by Jean-Marc Lofficier; art by Mario Guevara.
THE STAR PRINCE story by Jean-Marc Lofficier; art by Roberto Castro.
PIN-UPS

The last obstacle Kabur must cross on his way to Arkhanal are the fearsome Mountains of the Moon, home to a race of savage wolf-men. But these are engaged in a merciless war against the once-peaceful Stone Men, led by a wild creature known as Zhagrid… Will the Prince of Thule thwart the diabolical plans of his sworn enemy, Selinor Psah, before he finds the one he has been looking for…

Plus three "TALES OF KABUR" recounting heretofore untold adventures of our hero and his friends.

There is something about black and white artwork that it has to be done correctly and the black needs to balance out with the white -which sounds odd but true. The DC Showcase and Marvel Essentials collections all showed just how good b&w art is -often looking better than the published colour work.

Now, the stories in this comic are going to be solid and well paced. I've not found one yet that has failed in that aspect. But comics (much to the annoyance of some "super star" writers) is a visual medium. This book proves how true that is.

José Luis Ruiz Perez turns in more excellent work and his style is a treat to look at.  Moacir Muniz has now put him on my list of artists to keep an eye on -lovely work; the splash page and art that follows shows that he could well become a master of horror comics!  Mario Guevara's work in this issue I think is possibly his best to date and I've actually gone through those pages a few times. Roberto Castro also turns in some great pages.

The art, story and characters just pull you in and I have no idea why I was surprised (I may be getting old).  I think that added colour would have detracted from the art (and made the book far more expensive). All of this behind an eye catching cover -this is a good way to celebrate Kabur's 50th!

Cinebook Ltd Newsletter 216 - December 2025

 

Dear Reader, Here we are at the end of another year! Let’s take some time to catch a breath, rest a while, celebrate family and friends, and then we can look forward to tackling the next one. Preferably with a few good books at hand, of course! Such as our offering for this month, for example: XIII’s latest adventure, Moscow – Spaso House. Follow our favourite amnesiac (sorry, Jason Bourne) to the capital of Russia for a tense jaunt through its murky intelligence scene – inter-service rivalries, ancient grudges, a touch of corruption, and voila! But is this whole adventure a mere sideshow to his trouble back home … or a chance for him to make new allies? We’re also making our next catalogue available to you for consultation and download. Fifteen titles including the next four Blake & Mortimer Complete Collections, another Lucky Luke by … homage, the conclusions to two series, and the beginning of a new one! All of us wish you a merry festive season and a wonderful new year to come! December with Cinebook – ‘tis the season to be reading! French Quarter Magazine is a Las Vegas-based cultural magazine on all things French. This month, we answered a few questions for them about our work, our beliefs and our future. Read the interview here. XIII 27 Youri Jigounov & Yves Sente Moscow – Spaso House Captured in Cuba as he was trying to exfiltrate a Russian hacker on behalf of Janet Fitzsimmons (the woman who controls him through a chip in his head and secretly runs the entire US government), XIII is taken to Moscow … Read more Cinebook Catalogue 40   Winter/Spring 2026 Our latest catalogue, with 15 new titles and 1 new series! …

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It WAS The Golden Age of the British Small Press

 

This 2008 posting from the old Word Press CBO should have been saved here but I can't find it so let's do another reposting shall we?
_________________________________________________________________________

Well,you will have to excuse me and the fact that this is going to be a lengthy text/illo item.  The article was written a year ago for someone but never used.  As I looked through my boxes of Small Press items I realised that there were some publications I missed out -unintentionally.

In reality,the article I wrote would make a hefty little book!

The joys back then were getting the latests from Hawarden,Cheshire -from Rich Holden’s Caged Comics -A5 and mini comics.  They were a riot of fun.

The same can be said of the great Merv Grist and his Gristavision comics.  I still have the classic cassette tape he sold at the time -”The Slugs That Ate Manhattan” -WHERE are you,Merv?!

And Cosmic Comics produced by Steve Lines between running his band Stormclouds [I still have the cassette tapes from back then and they are still a great listen];Blake The Egg was the oddest lines character -and Steve’s music zine,The Marden Beat,was a source of much interest if you were into Indie music at the time.

Fran Ashcroft.  What can one possibly say about Fran Ashcroft -or creation Spoonsy?!

So,to all of those I’ve missed out:my apologies.  You made the 1980s great!

Above:brother Mike,publisher of Zine Ager,to the rear Doc N,scribe of Vigilante Vulture,

the superb John Erasmus and some bearded maniac;Tom “lovely” Elmes. Westminster,c.1987

 

above:a rare newspaper photo c.1988 from the Bath mart:Jerry Holliday of KYO Comics,brother Mike,Sally & David Johnson and Dave’s dad.

And now -the article!

 

British Small Press –The Golden Age

Terry Hooper-Scharf

 

It can truly be said that the 1980s to early 1990s was the Golden Age of the Small Press,or Zines as they were known.

The term “Zine” was derived from “magazine”,basically because the fan press was mainly text and illoes only at one time –and later we saw “strip zines” added to these. But Zines was an all-encompassing term.

One of our [UK] first,if not the first fanzine was Heroes Unlimited in 1967.  This was a gestetner copied publication and the major contributing illustrator was none other than Paul Neary –a memorable Justice Society of America cover amongst his contributions.  Fantasy Domain in 1973 was a kind of “what comics are out now” and reviews along with “for sale” ads.   Blitzine was Phil Elliott and Paul Chester’s gestetner [look it up on the internet,kids!] magazine from 1975.  Paul E. Schofield came along in 1979 with the A5 [Digest] sized New Aeon.

 

It has to be remembered that the gestetner printer was,for many years,the only way of producing your fan magazine.  Basically you typed cutting into the stencil sheet which eventually went onto the roller of the hand cranked copier.  Any typoes had to be corrected using such stuff as nail polish!  My own school magazine from 1972 was produced by using the gestetner –don’t try looking for copies because the magazine was banned while being printed.  Starkers –The Magazine That Tells The Naked Truth would,I am sure,have lived on in infamy!

 

 

In the mid-1970s I well recall that fantastic new machine the photocopier.  You could walk into a printers or stationary shop and they would copy off your pages!  Copies became cheaper and so more and more would-be publishers decided to leap into the future!

 

Our mainUK news,reviews and articles publication would have been BEM and then Fantasy Advertiser,published by Martin Lock [the Harrier Comics publisher] and later Martin Skidmore. And for those looking for style and distinction there was Paul Gravett’s Escape magazine –now an online site.   

 

 

Strip-wise,we had the superb Super Adventure Stories published by Michael Gibas –which gave us classics such as Johnny Kurzman’s “Red Dragon”,whose saga was great fun and pre-dated both my own and Grant Morrison’s [Zenith]Red Dragon.  

 But it was in the 1983-84 period that things really went crazy.  We had great zines from Shane Oakley [ofAlbion fame] and Andrew Yoxall in the form of Hardware –which featured the very early work of Matt [D’Israeli] Brooker,Art Wetherell and the “where is he now??” Iskander Islam;and I must mention the inimitable John Erasmus. But there were other contributors –including the Oakster and Yoxies  own mad-cap work.

Dan Rickwood and Adam Thomas brought us the insane and often near legally prosecutable Bum Comic!  The often ‘saner’ contributions came from Matt Brooker and Ben Dilworth.  There was even an experimental Landscape format one off REQUIEM with a Dilworth dash of water colour added for colour.

 

Mark E. Ford produced,before being told to stop by DC,Eat The Magic Batzine which was a fan mag with covers and illoes by…Ben Dilworth!  Steve Lines produced his spooky,pop art orientated Fantastic Stories and Creepy Crawlies –again,Ben contributed and so did I with a Christmas tale featuring my sorcerers Kotar,Sabuta and Lady Silvana along with the “Keeper Of Tales”,The Creeper himself!

 

Of course,Ben produced his own publications under the Penguinflight banner.  A Letter From Siberia was A3 [larger than US B3] in size and in the middle was stapled the Digest sized Picasso’s Café.  This publication was produced using colour washes,ink washes and even colour pens.

 

Later,Ben and I designed acetate covers for my Preview Comic wherein we used stencilled images and car spray paint!  Ben was probably one of the group of ground-breaking creators responsible for the “Golden Age” of British Small Press and when he moved toJapan things were never the same.

But we also had Help Shark! And titles such as “Love Given Lightly” and “Splendid”,

both by Steven Martin.  Cally Stapleton produced wonderful art using linoleum cutting and Myra Hancock was…well,fab!

 

 

Cover designs and even art style techniques were experimented with and there was a huge interest in British zines from the US,Europe and beyond.  Ed Pinsent ran Fast Fiction but in 1985 I joined up with Jerry Holliday,Paul Brown and Darron Northall [on copying] to create the news,reviews,previews and interviews mag Zine Zone,which also became a mail order and mart service.

 

 

Zine Zone and the “Zine Zone Zoot Suit Crew” actually started out-selling Fast Fiction and promoting creators such as Rich Holden and his Caged zines and Fran Ashcroft’s Fenlock,Paul Grist’s Dancing Elephant Press and other new creators that were emerging kept the scene fresh.  I used to have “open house” in the apartment I was living in and anyone involved in the Small Press passing through or near Bristol popped in –the door bell ringing at anytime [including 3am in the morning thanks to my legendary insomnia!].  I could get 30-60 packages of publications or art samples a week

 

 

Bristol tended to be the place to be and 1984 had seen school kid Jerry Holliday and pal Joe Leigh produce Knock Yaself Out Comix –this developed into one of the best mixed-bag publications around and spawned some spin-offs such as Jerry and Joe’s Doxi The Dog [something Jerry is still working on over 20 years later].  How the magazine ever got published between the drinking bouts seems incredible!

The legendary anthropomorphic series Vigilante Vulture was written by Darron Northall and drawn by Paul Brown –based in the urban war zone known as Kowle West!  Even today,after so many years,it’s still a good read!  Interestingly,at one of the UK Comic Art Conventions,Shane Oakley and Andrew Yoxall were overjoyed to meet Brown and Northall –apparently,VV had been Oakley’s favourite “pick-me-up” read during his college years!  Sadly,the plans of Seattle based MU Press to publish the series in the US came to nothing. 

Tom Elmes,last heard of heading for France,produced the often gorey Post War Funnies,Post War Casualties and even the wickedly named [nothing to do with the contents] shocker titled Incest!  The Worm sticks in my mind.  However,the most cringable was without doubt “The Man Who At Himself To Death” –and he did! These days Tom is back in the UK and working on some award winning animation projects.

Another creator who liked to shock to see the reaction was Stephen Harrison and he drew the Andrew Yoxall written “The Little Git With The Chainsaw” –inspired by the Daily Mirror newspaper strip Andy Capp and the film ”The Evil Dead”!!!

It seemed that everyone knew everyone else in the Small Press back then,if they didn’t then either Ben Dilworth or myself quickly introduced them.

 

 

By the early 1990s most of the creators were either working in other media or had gone on to professional comics.  Zine Zone had become Zine Zone International covering the Small Press from around the world.  The UK Small Press,however,was deteriorating fast. 

Probably the most successful,or best publicised,Small Press comic of recent years has been the O-Men,seemingly inspired by the great Silver Age comic series’ such as Doom Patrol –for those who missed out,the early issues have been compiled in “trade book” style.

Magic Malcolm is a US sized comic of superb quality which,from issue 10 onward will only be appearing in graphic novel style books.  Blink Twice Publications are Robin Etherington [creator and writer] and Lawrence Etherington [co-creator and artist].  This is a superb series that looks like a combination of Little Nemo,Alice In Wonderland and much more –but even that doesn’t do it justice.  You can check out more at www.studioblinktwice.com and learn not just about Magic Malcolm but also Tusk and Moon!

Dutch born,Bristol resident,Willie Hewes,has even featured in the local press with her stylish Amaranth comic;the story of a young woman living in Bristol who discovers she is a demon trapped in a human body and gets whisked off to meet the Lord of Hell.  A book that has achieved a cult following.  Learn more at Willie’s site  www.amaranthcomic.tk

My personal favourite,not just because it has Goth chicks,but because of some superb black and white artwork is Marcus Jones’ ZELTA.  Not for the faint hearted,this is definitely an adults only comic under Jones’ Screaming Demon Comics banner.  The story is about unhappy tattooist,Alex,who meets the girl of his dreams [or is that nightmares?],Zelta.  However,Alex starts getting strange dreams and visions….is Zelta really the Devil’s daughter??  Check out www.zeltacomic.co.uk

 

The big problem is that,with easier access to photocopiers and,of course,computers and printers,creativity has given  way to the more boring and mundane.  More and more Small Press items appear with “biographical” on the cover and high prices for just a few pages.  At one time,I can recall there being so many zines of quality that it was hard to select which to buy!  Talking to others who have been buying Small Press since the 1980s,I’ve heard the same thing “99.9% of what’s out there is crap” and “There is nothing out there these days”.

Well,there are a few,as I’ve noted,but where has all that creativity gone?  Staff at one comic shop that stocks Small Press items came up with the comment “we keep getting sent all this rubbish”!

When I had the chance to promote Small Pressers in the UK on the internet and via printed publications I put the word around –to publishers and even a service selling the publications.  It was now I learned just how much had changed.

 

The service promised to forward the information to publishers via its newsletter.  It never did.  Publishers who did respond [and that was unbelievably few] said that,yes,they would like their zines reviewed and publicised…..and I could buy those review copies direct!  Buy review copies?!! 

Unbelievably,the opportunity to let,potentially,thousands more comic buyers know about their publications was not good enough. The attitude was “why should I give away a copy of my comic  –you want to review it then buy a copy” 

And the mail order zine service I’ve had no explanation from.  Theirs was the “purchase from” address I was going to give. 

In all my years reviewing Small Press publications,from Zine Zone to Comic World,Comic Collector and Comics FX,I have nevercome across such negativity and lack of support to publicise zines.  It may be controversial but I think it safe to say that over-priced,uncreative publications are the norm in the UK these days with few exceptions.  A pity considering the

UK once led the way.

I am still interested in the Small Press!  It would be interesting to know what is being published in the US,Canada and elsewhere so,if you are out there and publishing,email me or send me a copy of what you’re publishing.  But don’t give up –if you want to produce your own zine:do it!

Email:hoopercomicsuk@yahoo.com

Terry Hooper-Scharf

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Cinebook Ltd XIII 27 - Spaso House

 

Authors: Yves Sente & Youri Jigounov
Age: 15 years and up
Size: 18.4 x 25.7 cm
Number of pages: 48 colour pages

ISBN: 9781800441750£7.99 inc. VAThttps://www.cinebook.co.uk/xiii-spaso-house-p-4590.html

Captured in Cuba as he was trying to exfiltrate a Russian hacker on behalf of Janet Fitzsimmons (the woman who controls him through a chip in his head and secretly runs the entire US government), XIII is taken to Moscow, where he once operated for a faction of the KGB. Caught in a deadly power struggle between Russian intelligence services, he must discover what happened during a decades-old mission … of which he has no memory! 

Artwork is perfectly fine. No problem with it at all. Same goes for the story which is well enough paced and the right amount of "passive" and action scenes.  When the original series ended it did so cleanly and it was a series I read through more than once and I still do not think that it can be beaten.

However, I do wonder whether this type of thing has run its course? It's a problem with comics, movies and TV that there is a success and no new ideas around so "Hey -that XIII series was very popular and got good reviews so let's keep flogging it!"  And that is the impression I get here. I read it and think back almost immediately to the first series and that this does not compare. If it had been The XIII Legacy looking at what happens to another agent who has memory loss then it might have worked with a clever twist to the agent finding out about the first (XIII) one.

Of course, my opinion means nothing and so all I can do is ask how long the series can drag on when fans thought it was all over a long time ago?

I also know that there will be fans of the series out there and THEY are the ones who count because THEY pay for the books and their likes and continued support keeps things rolling on.  Maybe this year I am the Scrooge of Comics Christmas?

Hexagon Comics Kabur #10: The Hounds of Kyros

 

KABUR #10: THE HOUNDS OF KYROS  by Jean-Marc Lofficier, Roy Thomas; art by José Luis Ruiz Pérez, Luciano Bernasconi, Miguel Angel Yzaguirre; cover by José Luis Ruiz Perez.

7x10 squarebound comic, 

76 pages b&w
ISBN-13: 978-1-64932-394-1. 

US$12.95

https://www.hexagoncomics.com/shop-kabur-10-the-hounds-of-kyros.html

32. THE HOUNDS OF KYROS story by Roy Thomas & Jean-Marc Lofficier, dialogue by Jean-Marc Lofficier; art by José Luis Ruiz Pérez.
EPILOG: AND YET IT MOVES story by Jean-Marc Lofficier; art by Miguel Angel Yzaguirre.
BAO IN VENLANA story by Jean-Marc Lofficier; art by Luciano Bernasconi.SKETCHBOOK by José Luis Ruiz Pérez.



As Kabur approaches the Mountains of the Moon, he witnesses a strange metal fortress fall from the sky, destroying a nearby village... With the help of several travelers he must then face the terrifying creature that emerges from the ship, accompanied by two fearsome hounds... Fortunately, in this desperate fight, Kabur will be able to rely on another extraordinary visitor, also from the stars...

This 48-page saga by Roy Thomas, Jean-Marc Lofficier and José Luis Ruiz Pérez is supplemented by an Epilog by Miguel Angel Yzaguirre and a tbonus ale recounting an heretofore untold adventure of Bao by Luciano Bernasconi.

I love looking through a well drawn black and white comic and the artists on this book are well worth studying.  The stories are all well written (Roy Thomas writes one!) and the action well paced.  I like the blend of barbarian and sci fi and Homicron looks really good in this incarnation and I don't think I've seen the character drawn like this before (but my mind is a porridge filled with over 5 decades of comic characters so who knows!).

Nice to see an old hand like Bernasconi drawing a comic strip and that can only be topped by José Luis Ruiz Pérez sketchbook pages.  Quite honestly you cannot go wrong with this book and I got far more enjoyment out of it than I do the current Avengers run at Marvel -a series I have followed since the 1960s.

I'm hoping Hexagon books get good sales but it deserves to get them. If you have not tried a Hexagon book before 😲 then try this one and if you don't find it a fun read well...why are you here?!

You can order via the Hexagon link provided and at least that way you know the money from sale goes straight to the company.

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Info Uploaded. Next Reading and then Reviews!

😳 Right, I have just uploaded the details of 12 books to review that all turned up at the same time and just as the severe eye strain hit and then my older brother passed away.

I will start read later on (it's 14.40hrs UK) and the first reviews should appear tomorrow and as this is Hexagon Comics character Kabur's 50th I'll start with one of the four books featuring him.

My mother always kept saying that if I carried on doing it I'd go blind but I never realised she meant reading comics!!

My apologies to Cinebook Ltd and Hexagon Comics for the delay.

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