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Please consider supporting Comic Bits Online because it is a very rare thing in these days of company mouthpiece blogs that are only interested in selling publicity to you. With support CBO can continue its work to bring you real comics news and expand to produce the video content for this site. Money from sales of Black Tower Comics & Books helps so please consider checking out the online store.
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Terry Hooper-Scharf

Thursday, 23 May 2024

Kult Creations: Helga Frankenstein V -Vengeance Express



Writer John A. Short
Art Gabrielle Noble
48pp
Perfect bound
US comic size
Full colour
UK £7.00
Europe £10.00
Outside Europe £15.00

Helga's most eventful and spectacular adventure yet! Her and her friends and family travel across the mysterious country of Golgothica on the track of a cure for vampirism! Can Helga save her friend and undead nun, Sister Genevieve? What they don't know is that a wealthy enemy has hired a whole monster revenge squad to take his vengeance on Helga and her family. 



Who will survive? 

And what will it mean to the wider world of this hidden European land? 

Season finale energy!


Well, what can I write? To be honest almost anything I mention from this issue is going to be a spoiler! Short's script/story delivers some surprises as well as twists and is far more serious than some of his other work with the tongue-in-cheek naughty Carry On style quips absent. Which is a good thing as this is more like a Hammer Horror film that you wish they had made!

Then we have the full colour art by Gabrielle Noble whose work I first saw a long time ago on Spliffy The Stoner ChickThere always seems to be a sense of fun in the art even if the story is serious as this one is. I have no idea why I like the art style but I do and that is all that matters as far as I am concerned.  Whether vampire, creation of Frankenstein or werewolf the art pulls it all off very well.

But the end of this story arc leaves some unanswered questions especially with the human-vampire peace pact so the question is.... when does the second story arc begin!

The Short and Noble team have always provided the goods and this is no exception and you can still buy previous volumes by using the link above.  Highly recommended.

Sunday, 19 May 2024

How Did I Get Into Comics?

 


I was asked how I got into comics?  Well, according to my late gran I was looking over magazines and images when too young to read and eventually my grandfather, Bill, started buying me the weekly comics that came out back then (comic strips not some photos promoting products like today).  

 I used to fill old receipt books with comic strips and it wasn't until my secondary school days that I got into writing and editing. QRD did an interview with me that covered much of this -

https://hoopercomicart.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-qrd-interview-terry-hooper-scharf.html

After leaving school I started writing more and more and my intention was to get into editing or publishing comics.  I missed an opportunity to see Stan Lee live on BBC TVs Pebble Mill At One to go to see people at Thorpe and Porter which mainly published black and white reprint comics.  

Things progressed from there and at one point Paul Neary invited me to London and the Marvel UK offices and I was offered an editor's job -but had to then withdraw the offer because of things that were going on at the time. Gil Page while managing editor at Fleetway put me forward as an editor of new comic projects but the "boys upstairs" baulked at the idea of spending money on a dead industry.  I had, as already posted elsewhere, issues 1-5 of a German language version of D-Gruppe (Germany's Premiere super hero team) for Bastei Verlag in Germany but Egmont then bought the company and any ongoing or new projects were cancelled.

By that time I realised that I needed to0 publish myt own titles more and so it began.

Potted history for you right there.

Monday, 13 May 2024

Black Tower Comics: Dark Night Detectives: Everything Is Under Control and The Ministry of Safety

 


 
A4
Black & White
50 Pages
Price: £6.00 (excl. VAT)
Ships in 3–5 business days
 http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/the-dark-night-detectives/paperback/product-21975325.html

Its a world where if you stand up for what is right you'll be lucky if its just a beating you get.

A world where people are starving (if poor) and the rich live in luxury.

A world where you have to have birthing Rights.

Where sacrificing someone to the Devil is acceptable -as long as they pay the wages.

A world where if you DO NOT take that bribe you WILL be made an example of.

This shows off Dilworth's skill at writing dark and brooding stories with a hint of satire but just too true to modern life!  It also shows his skill as an artistic story teller and designer.  Some of Ben Dilworth's most provoking and dark work in ages.


 

A4

28pp

B&W

£7.00

https://www.lulu.com/en/en/shop/terry-hooper/the-dark-night-detectives-no-2-november-2020/paperback/product-7jr8g8.html

Its a world where if you stand up for what is right you'll be lucky if its just a beating you get. A world where people are starving (if poor) and the rich live in luxury. A world where you have to have birthing Rights. Where sacrificing someone to the Devil is acceptable -as long as they pay the wages. A world where if you DO NOT take that bribe you WILL be made an example of. 

This was the dystopian world set up by Ben Dilworth in Small Press publications in the 1980 and some strips in Black Tower books and led on to The Dark Night Detectives: Everything Is Under Control. 

Now Detective Inspector Black and Special Constable (Community Policing) Jones are back and it is still dar, bleak and depressingly familiar in a way.

 The ending will make you ask more than a few questions.



Sunday, 12 May 2024

How Many Posts? Where From? What Have I Got Planned?


I've just been looking at the number of posts each year since 2010. At that time (2010) this was a backup blog for the WordPress CBO because the number of views each day was so high that WP kept going down. There were also other problems and Blogger seemed far easier to use in the long run.

One problem is that Blogger continuously shifts where it operates from. I was once asked what my job was as I seemed to travel and post from all over the world. I was an agent of U.N.C.L.E.!  I checked and found that the blog url identified the server as Italy, France, Germany....well everywhere really.  This causes some problems as some countries block others or use systems that will block others.  Also Blogger blocks views from various countries for their own reasons -the Peoples Republic of China for one.

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Here are the years and post totals

 2024 (so far)  347 posts

2023                731 posts

2022                495

2021                747

2020                993 -apparently I stopped a lot of people going insane in lockdown!

2019               865

2018               765

2017               979

2016               1188

2015               1271

2014               1167

2013               443  (this was a back-up blog back then)

2012               541

2011               227

2010              33

And yet, with all of those posts garnering over 10 million views comments and feedback are rarer than a solar eclipse (if I had thought ahead and had that reference a few weeks ago it would have been topical!).  Even the mega posts that took a few days to put together and had thousands of words and in some cases a hundred or more images -on topics not handled before on the net....virtual silence.   

It is one reason why I stopped doing the mega posts even though the ones I posted are still getting lots of views.  Go figure.  

Reviews I noticed are still being read years after posting such as Titan Books The Secret Service - Kingsman was posted in 2014 and as you can see (to the right) it is still being checked out a I've been told people are still buying based on CBO reviews. Checking the dashboard every so often I look at what posts are being read and in the last week there were five that I just asked "What the heck are those?" but they went back to 2013, 2016 and so on (but I cannot remember them!).  

How many posts for 2024? Who knows because I review whatever I receive and I post what I like -comics, action figures, music -why not? My blog and enough people check the stuff out -68,013 last month alone. 

So...we'll see.