Comic Bits 4 -Done and Dusted

 

It is done. Comic Bits 4 is currently awaiting my approval after I get a proof copy and then I will give the details.

The issue will be packed with information about creators unknown these days but who were real Masters of Comic Art. But above all else Comic Bits will do what it always does; put back into printcomic strips and characters long forgotten going back to the early 20th century and in one case early 19th.

It took three days to put it all together and I was fretting over the cover to 02:30 hrs in the morning but then the cover design hit me. So all done and dusted. The magazine is a mix of black and white as well as colour and the usual 80pp.

One thing I have to say that I enjoyed which made the work quicker and easier (and fun) was getting out my reference books and notes as well as comics to provide the contents.

And... I have enough m,aterial to start on  number 5 but when that happens is open to question. 

A.C.E.?

 

Is there any online presence of Gifford's old Association of Comic Enthusiasts?

I am getting too old.....

 It is 00:30 hrs (come on you know the time) and I have just gotten up to page 53 of Comic Bits 4.  I really should be drawing but...

Anyway, I needed a sample comic strip by a specific  Golden-Silver Ages British artist. There is a mish -mash but not great quality. Then I found it. A full comic strip in good quality so I thought I'd pop over to the blog in question and see whether I could ask to use the blogger's scans. Only polite thing to do -though it is rare these days.

It was my blog. I have posted so much over three decades on British comics history that I tend to forget a lot!  I looked at the strip and thought "I still have those scans" and I do. That I found them is a miracle in itself!

Tomorrow I hope to complete CB 4 and then comes the hesitancy of designing a cover. Oh boy.

Incidentally, I have already gathered some of the material for CB 5.  Do it while you have the energy I say (the magazine you dirty minded....)

I forgot to say that other than long forgotten character discoveries...there is another British Bat-man type. Well there had to be hadn't there?

Comic Bits 4 Is Getting There!

 In two days working until 0220 hrs (or 2.20 am) I have just gotten up to page 34 of Comic Bits 4 -feature articles on forgotten British creators and plenty of comic strips featuring characters long forgotten.

I want to cram as much into this one as I can. CB is usually 80pp but now that we've had colour since issue 3 it is a great opportunity to present strips as they first appeared. 

I will update as and when I can so stand by!

Weekly Rewind! Ep142: NEW STAR WARS Marvel Legends DC Street Fighter Tomb Raider Tick More News!

 

The Messed Up History Of Green Lantern

 

ionnalee; word of mouth

 

My "Best" Artt?

 I am infamous for hating all of my own artwork. Ben Dilworth once stated: "You will one day draw the best comic ever. Next day you'll look at it and say it's a pile of s---!"

He wasn't wrong!

Krakos Sands of Terror was once up for a cover of the year award. The reason it was withdrawn was due to the print on demand company I use losing a lot of data and that meant my cover was "not on sale" even though it was. I never worry too much about these things. 

The character in a door way with a giant grasping hand about to grab him was "incredibly atmospheric".  Let's not spoil that by saying it was not meant to be a giant grasping hand!

I think the cover works and draws the eye in and that is what a book cover should do. If I was going to re-introduce William A. Ward's character to a new audience after more than 70 years the cover had to be good. Of course, Ward's Krakis appears on the cover of Comic Bits 2

Come on -the Angel of the Burning Fire deservedsomething nice.

The same applied to anothjer Ward character The Bat (one of many bat characters from the 1920s-1950s). The character originallky appeared as a back up in Black Tower Adventures volume 1 but the story never concluded. I will not give away the story or what The Bat did but after he did it Lee Mondo wrote "What an utter cold b-----!" People who have seen the book, which ended with "in a church tower a Bat lies dying", have said similar  and that the scene had such an effect is pleasing.

One thing about Ward's strips is that he worked in animation sothe strips are full of talking heads, static figures walking but some nice imagination used at points. So Krakos and The Bat had to be far more animated and be true to the original characters but what modern readers expect. As a copy of Krakos's origin was not found until after the Sands of Terror I had to improvise. My biggest surprise was finding that my origin was spot on with Ward's!

The Bat had a whole back story added including ancestral history. His beloved Stahlia was rather like a 1940s horror film set; witchcraft, Vampires, werewolves and even a Frankenstein. A neutral European Duchy that was occupied by Germans in WW2 the Soviets and then the hated Kamorans. The Bat was out to reclaim his country and it got a bit bloody.

Looking back at all of this work and many hundreds of other pages (I think someone estimate about 2000 pages)  I could not decide what I considered to be my best work and that I liked. That is until I had to check something from the last volume of Adventure and The Green Skies.  I have no idea what was going on aty the time but I looked at the art work and thought "That looks okay" and I think it will probably be my best but that is for others to decide.

I am not found of ego and I draw and wqrite what I like because companies are very restrictive and just want the same old stuff (usually movie or some modern comic "classic") for a 'new' book.  

When it comes down to it what I draw and publish -it is not up to me to say what is my best. It's up to readers and that is where it ends.

A few words on the classic reprints

 

Just a quick note about the GA reprints to update anyone interested.

I  am always -always- on the look out for any scans of pre-1952 UK comics.  The point is not to make money with reprints because, if I am being honest, the UK Golden Age books do not sell. 

The late Denis Gifford ran the Association of Comic Enthusiasts (ACE) and I am quite sure that a few have survived like me! I also ran Yahoo and other groups dealing with Platinum, Golden and Silver agesof UK comics -there is still a Face Book group loaded with many images. Nothing.

British Golden Age Comics blog has had 207,845 views but no sales of books from those views.

UK Golden Age Heroes and Comics 87,402 views but no books sold.

The Golden Age books are all as good a quality reprint as you can get and more than one page has taken a day to clean and make readable. This is work that has been going on for decades (that thought terrifies me!) and how much have I spent on all of this to try to preserve lost comics, characters and creators?  I think in a previous post on that subject I mentioned that I got to a  certain figure and then gave up as the total amount terrified me even more than the amount of time I spent on this.

Back in..1995 I put forward the idea of a British Comic Book Archive so that everything could be stored  at a central point and accessed for free. Thios idea came up after I had to help the family of the creator of the newspaper strip, Garth, Steve Dowling, find some samples of his work. Then the family of another long gone artist asked the same thing and it goes on and on.

Artists and writers whether the old Boys Papers (and my research proved the 'fact' that these NEVER contained comic strips because they were seen as "low art" to be wrong) , Penny Dreadfuls or comics were were always paid as little as a publisher could getr away with and some struggled to bring entertainment to  youngsters and oldsters alike. They at least deserve to be remembered and I was quite happy to find out that Louis Diamond, comics publisher and writer/artist is a relation (and, yes, he got "screwed over"by Amalgamated Press rathere like I was by its successor Fleetway years later).

Based on the percentage I get from a book sale (after printer and print on demand company) I would need to sell around 100 copies of one reprint book to get the money back I paid for one of the original albums/annuals or comics.

It is definitely a passion than for profit work!

Sadly, I chose a time when the internaet has created a new generation of illiteracy where no one wants to actual;ly read a printed book...but if it's free online well -grab it!

Discoveriung lost characters is fun and I get a kick out of it every time and from now the rediscovered items will appear only in Comic Bits -far easier than working on full lenth reprint books.

Text features, artists and writers bios -if they can be found- all blended together like a good coffee (I need a cup of coffee!) and filling 80 pages each issue. I'm so excited I may buy copies myself😂

ÁSDÍS - Electrified

 

New Constellations - I'm Waiting Now (Official Music Video)

 

Tales of the Thinker -The First Modern Age Strip

  Mad Mike and Ben Dilworth's 1988 strip

Madame Foretell: Debunked

 

Madame Foretell: Suggestions and Ventriloquism

 

RIP Rodolphe Jacquette 18th May, 1948 - 23rd September 2026

 Very sad.  Cinebook just announced this:

"It is with great sadness that we must report the passing last week of writer Rodolphe, known to our readers as the co-author of series "Trent", "Kenya", "Namibia", "Amazonia", "Scotland", and "Black Mary".

"Literature teacher, novelist, bookshop owner, journalist, scriptwriter … Rodolphe Jacquette was a great number of things in his life; he worked for such magazines as "Pilote" and "Métal Hurlant", and alongside some of the greatest names of Bandes Dessinées: Greg, Leo, FLorence Magnin, Annie Goetzinger, André Juillard, Serge Le Tendre … He leaves a legacy of over 200 comic albums written alone or with partners, but also of discovering and helping countless young authors and artists. He was one of those names you saw everywhere, and his absence will be painfully felt by all. "

Tempus fugit