The Birth of Death by Jim Starlin

The Birth of Death
by Jim Starlin
from Star*Reach No. 1, April 1974

Although by 1974 he was regularly working for Marvel Comics, Jim Starlin nonetheless found time ro contribute a number of memorable black and white strips and color covers to the indie sf comic Star*Reach. 

This entry, from the inaugural issue of Star*Reach, is fully as 'cosmic' as any of Starlin's simultaneous work on Captain Marvel and Warlock for Marvel, as well as displaying an equally impressive level of draftsmanship.....for example, just how long did it take Starlin to draw each of the tiny outlined 'blebs' that make up the intricate stippling effect on the panel in the lower left-corner of page 4 ?!

Solar Wind by Peter Jones

Solar Wind
by Peter Jones
Paper Tiger (UK) 1980

Peter Jones was born in London in 1951 and began illustrating sf paperbacks in 1974, while he was a student at St Martin's School of Art in that city. He quickly became one of the most successful illustrators of UK sf and fantasy books during the 70s and 80s; today he does a variety of commercial and studio art works under the rubric of his company 'Solar Wind'.

clockwise from the upper left: Scenaptic Manhunt, Dark Twin,The Warlock in Spite of Himself, The Chalk Giants 

Solar Wind, the book, is a collection of Jones's sf and fantasy artwork published during the interval 1974 - 1980. While the majority of Jones's commissions were for UK-based publishers like Granda, Futura, and Sphere, some of his works are going to be recognized by US readers, particularly those repurposed as cover illustrations for classic early issues of Heavy Metal magazine.

The Second Experiment

Jones's artwork during the 70s had a more consciously 'artistic' sensibility as compared to some of the other artists also providing book covers at the time, such as Chris Foss. 

Jones tended to avoid a hard-edged, representational approach of Foss's compositions, and instead relied on depicting the spaceman, swordsman, serving-wench, or spaceship in a more metaphorical, figurative style.

Inferno

The Fabulous Riverboat

The Robert E. Howard Omnibus: 'Kidnapped'

If you were a sf and fantasy fan during the 70s, then it's highly likely that you'll be familiar with the works for which Peter Jones painted book covers. But there are certainly going to be some titles that are new, and seeing Jones's artwork may lead you to investigate reading them.  

A World Out of Time (top); Infinite Dreams (bottom)

So for that reason, as well as for those who simply appreciate great sf art, picking up a copy of 'Solar Wind' is well worth the effort. Both hardbound and softbound copies in good condition can be had for very reasonable prices, and as with all Paper Tiger / Dragon's Dream art titles, the reproductions are of good quality.

The Venus Trap (Perry Rhodan)

clockwise from the upper left: Buy Jupiter, Nightwatch, Today We Choose Faces, The Best of Robert 'E' Silverberg

The Wizard of Anharite

To Here and the Easel

The Neural Atrocity

New Eden

Vintage UK Sci-fi Ads and Stores

Vintage UK Sci-fi Ads and Stores

Everyone remembers the geek store(s) where they went to get their comics and sci-fi paperbacks when they were young and first discovering the genre. For me, growing up in Upstate New York, it was at first a mixture of various pharmacies and convenience stores, before graduating to regular trips to Gordon's Cigar Store and, in downtown Johnson City NY, 'Fat Cat Books'.

Below, I showcase some interesting blog posts looking at how sci-fi and fantasy media were marketed and sold in the UK back in the 1980s. As a smaller country, the UK tended to have a comparatively smaller number of retail stores, but these elicited lifelong feelings of fraternity on the part of their patrons.

The Vintage Toy Advertiser and Darkest London blogs have a nostalgic look back at the signal comic and book shops that were the places for sci-fi geeks to go, back 'in the day'.

According to the Darkest London post about the Forbidden Planet store at 23 Denmark Street:

I only have to see a glimpse of the Brian Bolland artwork which used to adorn the plastic bags (and the associated t-shirt my dad bought me on one trip) and I’m straight back to the uneven wooden floor, the smell of pulp paper, the shafts of light streaming through the dust which hung in the air, and the vague unease of my mum as the till rang through each 75p I’d spent on the recent releases.

The Forbidden Planet store at 23 Denmark seems to have been the place to go back in the early 80s if you were a sci-fi fan in the London metropolitan area. It certainly had some great advertising support, such as a photo essay in which Torquemada, the archvillain from the 2000 AD comic 'Nemesis the Warlock', makes an in-store appearance:

The 23 Denmark Street and New Oxford Street stores also had their share of celebrity visitors, including Mark Hamill, Stephen King, Stan Lee, and Nichelle Nichols, among others.

American expatriate Dan Slott, who resided in London as a kid, remembers how things were when he had to patronize the Newsagent's stall, before the advent of Forbidden Planet:

Beano? What is this, where's my Spider-Man, where's my Avengers, where's Batman, why am I only getting this Beano thing and this guy Judge Dredd is kind of cool….....the pages would be in black and white for no reason.....!

A video clip featuring Slott's reminiscences is available here.

A more expansive post at The Vintage Toy Advisor covers a range of UK and US shops, mail order firms, and advertisements from the 80s.

If this back cover advertisement from a 1986 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special is any guide, it appears that 'Forbidden Planet' had two retail outlets, with the one on Denmark Street devoted to sci-fi books and comics, while the St. Giles High Street retail outlet was devoted to cinema and television media.

Forbidden Planet has since moved to a larger and more presentable retail locale in Covent Garden. But it remains the 'go to' place in the London for sci-fi and comic fans. Maybe I'll travel there someday........

The Art of Bryan Talbot

The Art of Bryan Talbot
by Bryan Talbot

 

'The Art of Bryan Talbot' (96 pp.) is a large (11.9"  x 9")  size trade paperback published in 2007 by NBM (Nantier, Beall, Minoustchine), a small press dedicated to publishing graphic novels and art.

Talbot (b. 1952) is one of most recognized graphic artists in the UK. This book provides an overview of his artistic output, starting with his work as an underground comix artist in the mid-70s.

Talbot's artistic skills enabled him to take on commercial artwork assignments for mainstream UK magazines and publishers.

 

Of course, Talbot's 'The Adventures of Luther Arkwright' gets deserved attention in this volume:

 

As does his work for 2000 AD comics, and such characters as Judge Dredd and Nemesis the Warlock:

 

In the 90s, Talbot produced 'Heart of Empire', the sequel to 'Arkwright':

 

As well as the graphic novel 'One Bad Rat'.

Some of Talbot's work in the 90s is less well known to American audiences, such his covers for the anthology series 'Neil Gaiman's Teknophage'..

 

The book closes with coverage of Talbot's work in the 2000s, most notably the 'Grandville' series of graphic novels. There also is a helpful 'Bryan Talbot Stripography' which lists his complete comic book and graphic novel output from 1971 to 2007.

'The Art of Bryan Talbot' can be found for affordable prices (i.e., under $10) at your usual online retailers, and it's worth getting if you are a fan of his work, a fan of the 'Arkwright' canon, or just someone who appreciates good graphic art in general. 

The book is well-produced, with the image reproductions at high resolution and the explanatory text assisting with, rather than competing with, the artwork. It's also sure to generate some severe 70s and 80s Nostalgia, particularly for UK readers.

Book Review: Be Pure ! Be Vigilant ! Behave !

Book Review: 

'Be Pure ! 

Be Vigilant ! 

Behave !' 
2000 AD and Judge Dredd: The Secret History

by Pat Mills

3 / 5 Stars

One super-fan would come into IPC HQ at Kings Reach Tower, and patiently explain to me at great length where I was going wrong, why I needed the benefit of his expert advice and why 2000 AD should be more like Heavy Metal or Metal Hurlant. I’m so glad I didn’t take his advice because I understand he ended his days sleeping under a railway viaduct.

‘Be Pure ! Be Vigilant ! Behave ! 2000 AD and Judge Dredd: A Secret History (255 pp.) was published by Millsverse Books in 2017.

Pat Mills (b. 1949) is of course one of the most well-known representatives of the comic book business in the UK and one of its more iconoclastic figures. As the above quotation shows, excessive modesty and humility are not in particularly abundant supply in the pages of ‘Be Pure !’, which chronicles Mills’s career in comics from the early 1970s up to 2017, the 40th anniversary of the first issue of 2000 AD.

The book consists of brief chapters, arranged in a loose chronological order. Things start in 1971, when Mills and fellow talent John Wagner were living and working in Scotland for D. C. Thompson and its lineup of romance and humor titles. The narrative then moves to London, where Mills was involved with Battle Picture Weekly and Action before being asked by IPC in 1976 to launch a science-fiction title, one capable of exploiting the anticipated boom in the genre associated with the release of an American film called Star Wars.

That sci-fi comic was of course 2000 AD and, as they say, the rest is history.

Mills rightly devotes considerable space to his work developing 2000 AD and his collaborations with other artists and writers to create the memorable characters that made the comic so successful when it launched in February 1977. These are the book's most interesting chapters.

Subsequent chapters describe Mills’s freelance career writing for additional 2000 AD comics, such as Crisis, for which he created ‘Third World War’. Mills also offers vignettes about working for American publishers Marvel and DC; his involvement with the indie comic Toxic in the early 1990s; and his partnership with the French artist Olivier Ledroit on the title 'Requiem: Vampire Knight'.

Throughout ‘Be Pure !’ Mills, as one might expect, freely expresses his opinions about the comic book industry in the UK and its faults (which, as Mills sees them, are myriad). Mills regards anyone who interfered with his creative vision as a cretin, and thus, former 2000 AD editors Steve McManus, Alan MacKenzie, John Tomlinson, and David Bishop (among many others) all are the targets of his animadversions.

Mills’s ongoing antipathy (which has reached pathological levels, in my opinion) for the De La Salle Order and its former faculty at his grammar school, St. Joseph’s College in Ipswich, also comes in for treatment in the pages of ‘Be Pure !’. It seems that the De La Salle Order members Brother James and Brother Solomon, as Mills refers to them, were the inspirations both for Dredd, and 'Torquemada' from 'Nemesis the Warlock'. 

Mills, who is a Marxist (a de rigueur stance for almost all of those members of the British intelligentsia who do comics, science fiction, and other pop culture media), also takes pains in the book to present himself as a friend and champion of the Oppressed Proletariat. Make no mistake, dear reader: Mills is a man who diligently has used the comic book medium to advocate for the rejection of the status quo, the repudiation of Fascism, and the emancipation of the downtrodden. 

This virtue signaling gets a bit tedious at times............

So, who will want a copy of 'Be Pure ! Be Vigilant ! Behave !' ? Well, fans of the early years of 2000 AD certainly will find much to be of interest, as will those who desire an insider's point of view of the British comics scene since the 1970s. I do recommend that Mills's book be read in conjunction with viewing the 2017 documentary Future Shock! The Story of 2000 AD in order to obtain a more ...........rounded, shall we say, overview of the franchise.

Killraven: Amazing Adventures No. 27

Killraven: 'Amazing Adventures' No. 27 (November 1974)

The cover for ‘Amazing Adventures’ No. 27 (November 1974) is uncredited but judging by the intricate style of the artwork and the ‘cosmic’ background, it’s probably Jim Starlin (and maybe the illustration was originally designed for an issue of ‘Captain Marvel’ or ‘Warlock’ ?).

‘The Death Breeders’ is scripted by Don McGregor, and Craig Russell provides the artwork.

The book opens with Killraven and company iceboating on Lake Michigan, where they are attacked by giant lampreys (?!). This is less cheesy than it sounds; as the scan’s I’ve posted below indicate, it’s a harrowing battle that sees poor Grok the mutant nearly exsanguinated...

This issue introduces Volcana Ash, a woman with the attributes of Medusa and the Human Torch. She leads the rebels to Milwaukee, where the Martians have set up a colony of human slaves who are treated most heinously. It’s Killraven’s intent to free the wretched slaves, but the Martians have other plans…

This issue is a welcome change from the rather mediocre efforts of the previous several installments of ‘Amazing Adventures’. Russell’s artwork is dynamic and shows attention to detail, and McGregor’s plot provides as much brutality and bloodshed as a Code-approved book could allow in 1974.

The Marvel Bullpen page trumpets the forthcoming hardbound book ‘Origins of Marvel Comics’, as well as a new magazine called ‘Nostalgia Illustrated’ (?!) which seems to have been yet another a spur-of-the-moment effort by Stan Lee to cash in on the nostalgia craze then gripping the popular culture.

Editor Roy Thomas’s essay refers to the staff’s pastimes in that Summer of '74:

“Steve Englehart and Gil Kane were basking languidly by their swimming pools – and maybe sneaking a fast dip or two between deadlines.”