Crash and Burn: What the heck is happening with British reprints?

Downright depressing news from lots of places, but what has spurred me into action is a new report from the otherwise always-a-pleasure-to-read Steve Holland at Bear Alley. Looks like we're coming up on a winter of discontent, and many hoped-for projects have been postponed, delayed or canceled outright.

Doctor Who: "The Crimson Hand": I've been watching this develop for several months now, and the news gets worse all the time. After twelve collected editions of the Doctor Who comic, a license dispute between the BBC and Panini has scuttled the third and final edition of Tenth Doctor episodes and left the whole line up in the air.



Panini collected all of the terrific Fourth and Fifth Doctor stories, all the weird Sixth Doctor ones and all the amazingly good Eighth Doctor ones. There weren't quite enough Ninth Doctor stories, but they did release a 100-page magazine with all those, and they released one in a proposed series of Seventh Doctor books, some of which at least were drawn well. (The late 80s and early 90s were a... troubled time for the comic.)

The Tenth Doctor's adventures were compiled in a pair of books called "The Bride of Sontar" and "The Widow's Curse." The storylines were meant to be wrapped up in "The Crimson Hand," but DWM's editor Tom Spilsbury confirmed on the Gallifrey Base Forum that the book never went to print. Spilsbury has, understandly, been tight-lipped about the rumors that have been spreading about why it was canceled and whether we might see it in the future, but there's a wide gap between "understandable" and "preferable" when you're a fan.

For my money, the strip has been weaker since the property returned to TV, but that's not to say it's at all bad, and that last Donna Noble comic, "Time of My Life," was so terrific that there wasn't a hat size to fit it. I don't buy Doctor Who Magazine, but the consensus among fans is that this last chunk of Tenth Doctor stories really was fun and special. I was really looking forward to Panini's collection of them.

Century 21: I reviewed the fourth volume of these reprints over at my Bookshelf blog last month, concluding that their production was going to keep me from preordering any more of them. An anonymous commenter suggested that Reynolds & Hearn was having some business trouble.



In a post earlier today, Steve (who, unlike me, enjoyed the reprints, which included wonderful artwork by the likes of Ron Embleton and Frank Bellamy) confirmed that Reynolds & Hearn has liquidated and resolved to close the company, leaving the proposed fifth volume up in the air. Whether another company which has acquired their publishing list does put "They Walk Among Us" back on the schedule has yet to be determined.

Titan Books: Charley's War, James Bond, Battle Picture Weekly, Action, Misty: But the real personal heartbreak comes from learning that internal business at Titan has left a whole pile of long-anticipated classic comics in limbo. There have been problems here for some time; Diamond did not ship the most recent volumes of Charley's War (from last year, vol. 6) and James Bond (from the spring, vol. 17) to my comic shop, and has no additional stock to meet my store's request, so I'm waiting for Titan to make an "offered again" opportunity for Bizarro Wuxtry to reorder them.



In the meantime, Titan has been soliciting one Battle collection after another, without actually producing any of them. Every few months, Previews will list another title and it will get ordered and everybody will wonder what the heck has happened to all the previous titles that they've offered. For those without long memories, these include:

Johnny Red Vol. 1: Falcon's First Flight
Darkie's Mob
The Best of Land Battle
Rat Pack Vol. 1
Major Eazy Vol. 1
The Best of Action Vol. 1
The Best of Misty Vol. 1

None of these have been formally canceled, although Holland does believe that the company's Roy of the Rovers line is dead. Darkie's Mob, by John Wagner and the late Mike Western, hasn't been officially kicked to 2011 yet, but nobody's optimistic enough to suggest that it will actually arrive before Christmas. And the seventh volume of Charley's War, which I believe deals with the infamous "monocled mutineer" Percy Toplis, is still scheduled for next month. Shame I can't read volume six first.

Oh yeah, and Fantagraphics pushed the first Pogo book back again, to December. That's not British, but it's intended as a Christmas gift, so I'm steamed about it.

Hopefully the next time I find some reason to update this blog, it'll be with good news...!

Reprint This! Update on Major Eazy

The great war series Major Eazy by Alan Hebden and Carlos Ezquerra has been my personal favorite strip from the pages of Battle Picture Weekly, and was among the original features listed here hoping for a reprint. (See the original article.) A handful of episodes showed up in Titan's Best of Battle trade paperback last year, and we've been waiting for more.

The current (August 2010) issue of previews at last includes a solicitation for a hardcover collection of the series. It reads as follows:

From the pages of Battle, Britain's best-loved war comic! Major Eazy is a maverick soldier in a dirty war, caught up in the Allies' invasion of Italy in 1944 and determined to see justice done. Even when that means taking on villains on his own side, he doesn't pull any punches! More movie star than military, Eazy was the most laconic British officer ever to grace the pages of a comic.

The book, hopefully first in a series, is scheduled for release October 27 with a $19.95 retail price.

Reprint This! Update on Battle Picture Weekly

Battle Picture Weekly was, of course, one of the best and most important comics ever published. It wasn't just a simply entertaining, well-written and drawn collection of great war stories, it was a critical building block in the development of modern comics. Since without it, you'd never have had a 2000 AD, I've always been interested in it, and any chance to see these terrific stories is one worth taking.

The series and serials in BPW were drawn by some of the best artists working in Britain at the time, including Eric Bradbury, Joe Colquhoun, Carlos Ezquerra, Cam Kennedy and Mike Western. Many of the stories were devised by Pat Mills and John Wagner, and while they only scripted a few themselves, they assigned others to the likes of Gerry Finley-Day and Alan Hebden. They all developed storylines, sometimes sharply different from each other in tone, with vulnerable anti-heroes, radically different from the indestructible leads in American war comics. Reading just one issue of BPW after an identikit Robert Kanigher DC adventure is the greatest breath of fresh air in the medium.

Titan Books, which has been collecting Battle's most lauded strip, Charley's War, for several years now, landed the reprint rights to several old IPC properties what seemed like an eternity ago, and late last year finally released the first of their new Battle collections. The Best of Battle is similar in feel to their two Roy of the Rovers samplers, three hundred pages of reprints in a slightly oversized format with a paperback cover. The book contains the first 3-5 episodes of eighteen different series. Each comes with an introductory page and a short blurb written by either Mills or BPW's one-time editor, Dave Hunt.

I think the format is a good one, as far as samplers go, but it looks to me like Titan was a draft or two shy of assembling something really special. The most aggravating example is Hold Hill 109, a six-part serial by Steve MacManus and Jim Watson. Four of the six episodes are included in this book, which is nice, but what are the odds that Hold Hill 109 will ever be reprinted anywhere else? Between Charley's War, Johnny Red and Darkie's Mob, there are 12-13 episodes which are either already available in Titan collections or are due for release within a few months. Couldn't eight of those pages be given up to see all of Hold Hill 109?

I'm also a little surprised that Battle Action Force isn't even mentioned in the book. Admittedly, even with the nice artwork by John Cooper, the toy line tie-in, sort of a parallel antecedent to Hasbro's G.I. Joe line of the 1980s, was the sign that the comic's brightest moments had passed, but it still has a huge number of fans. Evidently there's some rights issues at work, as Palitoy still owns those characters like Baron Buckethead or whoever it was they were fighting prior to Cobra Commander, but considering just how important the Action Force was to Battle's later days - Johnny Red and Charley's War wouldn't have made it to their ends without Action Force sales propping up the comic - I think it should have been mentioned.

If readers would forgive the regular quibbling of a Monday morning quarterback, the book is truly a fine introduction to Battle, and one which will certainly get new readers excited about the other material Titan has planned. Six volumes of Charley's War are already out, the first collection of Johnny Red should be with us by the end of the month, and a complete Darkie's Mob - all 44 episodes - is solicited in the current Previews for later in the spring. The book also promises that collections of two of my favorite Battle series, Major Eazy and Rat Pack, are on the horizon.

The only other quibble that I have is that getting accurate shipping dates and advance plans from Titan is really like pulling teeth. Most of their books seem subject to interminable delays - where the devil is the third volume of Jeff Hawke, guys?! - and so it's impossible to guess exactly when we'll get the follow-up volumes that I've been craving. It's simply bad business to serve up an appetizer as tasty as this and shy away from the main course!

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Read more of what I've written about Battle Picture Weekly at A Journal of Zarjaz Things.

Read other reviews of The Best of Battle:

Steve Holland at Bear Alley
Bart Croonenborghs at Broken Frontier
John Freeman at Down the Tubes

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In other news, artist Steve Lieber was nice enough to drop me a line about his Image Comics series Underground, written by Jeff Parker. It's a five-part series about a park ranger in Kentucky trying to save a fragile cave system from developers in a town which badly needs the tourist business, leading to an ugly cat-and-mouse game. Underground doesn't seem to have shown up on many bloggers' radars, but it's a fine adventure with sympathetic characters and some really nice artwork. Image is releasing a collected edition of the miniseries on April 21.

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Over at Dark Horse, underground pioneer Denis Kitchen is the subject of a forthcoming retrospective. The Oddly Compelling Art of Denis Kitchen is a 200-page hardcover collection with an introduction by Neil Gaiman. Apparently, Kitchen was planning a similar project back when he was running the late, lamented Kitchen Sink Press in the early nineties, but it never came to fruition. The book's sure to be anticipated by fans of underground comix and goes on sale June 23rd.

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There is some big news, equally confusing and wonderful, from Rebellion, publishers of the Galaxy's Greatest Comic, 2000 AD. Seems they have signed a new deal with Simon & Schuster to distribute their line of graphic novels in the US. This deal looks like it's meant to target American mass market retailers - and not the direct market - with two collections every month, starting in the summer.

To be honest, there's little in the line to excite longtime 2000 AD fans like me, who've bought this material in multiple editions already, but putting the material out there for new readers to finally sample at every bookstore in America sounds like a very good thing indeed. The exception to that sentence is Harry Twenty on the High Rock, a 1983 serial written by Gerry Finley-Day (and an uncredited Alan Grant) with art by Alan Davis, who's contributing a new cover to the book. While it's been dusted off for magazine reprints, this serial has never been collected in book form before, and should be out in August.

Rebellion is also continuing their long-running line of collections which are available to British booksellers and, occasionally, to the American direct market via Diamond. August will see the release of the classic Harlem Heroes by Tom Tully, Dave Gibbons and Massimo Belardinelli, perhaps also including the sequel series, Inferno, along with the sixteenth in the series of Judge Dredd Case Files.

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On that note, I would like to thank readers for reading Reprint This!, and hope you'll understand that I've decided against continuing in the present format. I really seem to have exhausted the supply of good feature ideas for reprints that I would be genuinely excited to see and purchase at this time, and I've kind of been noticing that the "reprint news" summary like this one has been feeling more like work. I will continue using this blog to spotlight news and announcements that appeal to me, and have no intention of abandoning it, but I am removing the "deadline" element of it, so that I can continue sharing exciting news when it's fresh, rather than having a chore. Thanks for reading!

Reprint This! Update on Sam's Strip

Sam's Strip was the third newspaper comic devised by Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas, the team better known for Hi & Lois and Beetle Bailey. It ran for a little less than two years before the creators, unable to make much headway selling it, pulled the plug. It really is an odd little strip. Sam is a well-meaning grouch who's very much aware of the fourth wall separating his four panels from the rest of the newspaper funnies, and periodically interacts with his peers, with cameos by everybody from Charlie Brown to the character who'd later become Grandmama on The Addams Family.

Naturally, the strip became a fast favorite of comics afficionados, who enjoyed the in-jokes and what we might term as "metatextual commentary" if this blog was any more po-faced than it actually is. With regular asides to the readers, light commentary on current events and trips to a prop closet stocked with a variety of word balloons, Sam's Strip was lost on many comics page editors, and the strip never had more than 60 client papers.

Well, it might have been a failure in its day, but Sam's Strip has grown into a cult classic over time. Fantagraphics recently released a very nice paperback edition which compiles the series in its entirety. It includes annotations to explain some of the topical references of the early 1960s and commentary by Jerry Dumas. This may not be a book worth going too far out of your way to sample, but if you enjoy newspaper funnies, then this might be a very nice addition to your bookshelves. Give it a try!

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Read more of what I've written about the publishers at A Journal of Zarjaz Things.

Read other reviews of this book:

Chris Barat at News and Views
KC Carlson at Comics Worth Reading
Allan Holtz at Stripper's Guide
Chad Nevett at Comic Book Resources
Andrew Williams at Den of Geek

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The biggest news of the last month comes from the good folks over at Titan, who have finally confirmed the rumors - hardback editions of the terrific Johnny Red are in the works. The long-running series by Tom Tully and, initially, Joe Colquhoun, ran for a decade in the pages of Battle Picture Weekly. This is a big favorite of mine, and one of BPW's best series. I've been rereading the John Cooper-drawn era lately and it's a consistently wonderful strip which you should all check out. The first in what we hope will be an annual collection is due in September.

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The second biggest news of the month - and any other month, it'd be the biggest - is that Steve Holland of the wonderful Bear Alley blog has formally announced he's going into the publishing business with Bear Alley Books, looking at doing small print-run, complete editions of classic British comics, done right. Holland has the knowledge and the commitment to make certain his collections are as comprehensive and good-looking as bookshelf editions can be, and I wish him all the success in the world with his new venture. First up from Bear Alley, later this summer: complete collections of the time-travelling war yarn The Phantom Patrol, with art by Gerry Embleton, and the excellent late sixties occult thriller Cursitor Doom, with art by Eric Bradbury and Geoff Campion. Steve's commissioned new covers by Chris Weston and John Ridgway for the titles.

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In other news, as if you didn't have enough books to buy this year, the long-rumored Groo Treasury has finally been scheduled by Dark Horse. This 336-page collection of the earliest episodes of the comedy strip by Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier is due in October, which is nice, because I was not keen on filling up on those little 80-page collections of the old Epic Comics series. That'd get a little expensive.

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DC has announced they're releasing what might be the first-ever collection of Mike Grell's weird 1970s swords-and-lasers fantasy The Warlord, a title I enjoyed for about seven weeks when I was twelve, in their Showcase Presents line. The 528-page book, scheduled for September, reprints the character's debut in the anthology 1st Issue Special and the first 28 issues of his own book. If I was still in touch with a couple of guys I went to middle school with, I'd let them know, but I'm not, so I'm telling you.

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So ten days ago, I was talking about how somebody needs to release more old Osamu Tezuka comics in the US. Well, the company Digital Manga Publishing is way ahead of me; there's a complete, done-in-one omnibus collection of Tezuka's 1968-69 serial Swallowing the Earth due in July! Great news, I am looking forward to seeing it. For more Tezuka, the wonderful Helen McCarthy is putting the final touches on a big, image-heavy coffee table biography of Tezuka for Abrams, the company that brought you Mark Evanier's wonderful tribute to Jack Kirby last year. The book is due out in October. And speaking of Abrams...

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In another example of what's either a late April Fool's gag or definitive proof that everything that ever appeared in a newspaper is going to end up in a hardcover collected edition before much longer, Abrams is bringing out a collection of Stuart Hample's Woody Allen comic strip. No, I never knew there was a Woody Allen comic strip, either. It ran in the 1970s. The book is entitled Dread and Superficiality: Woody Allen as a Comic Strip and is due out in November. With an introduction by Buckminster Fuller. Oh, now I know this is a gag!

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Finally this time, a couple of interesting Judge Dredd collections from Rebellion are in the pipeline for November. The 14th volume in their Complete Case Files series will include all the 2000 AD strips up to prog 700, including the epic "Necropolis" and all of its lead-in stories, drawn by Carlos Ezquerra. The collection won't include the separate serial The Dead Man, which ran for a few months prior to "Necropolis" and dumped readers on their heads with the beautiful revelation that the two strips were intricately connected. Happily, The Dead Man is getting its own trade collection alongside CCF 14, so new readers can enjoy all of its beautiful John Ridgway artwork and read it at the same time as the main Dredd strip.

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That's all for this month! See you in July!

Reprint This! More on the Titan reprint line

Amazon fishing has revealed a few great new books coming later this year...

In August...


The Bumper Book of Roy and the Rovers
I didn't see this one in Diamond. It's apparently a greatest hits drawn from the 1958-1971 Roy annuals. There are two other Roy books forthcoming: a Best of the '80s edition which was solicited in Diamond, and a 1954-55 complete edition, which wasn't.

In September, Modesty Blaise: Green Cobra. This was solicited by Diamond last month, and is the 14th book in the series.

For her 20th anniversary, The Cream of Tank Girl hardcover edition (208 pgs), due in October...

Also in October, a great big 320 page Christmas cracker: The Best of Battle (320 pgs). And speaking of Battle...


Charley's War Book Five (112 pgs)

No sign yet of Action or Misty material, which I suppose may be coming in 2009...

(Originally posted May 22, 2008, 14:54 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! Update: Johnny Red, Major Eazy and the Rat Pack all called up for service!

Titan has announced that they have acquired reprint rights to more of the Battle material, specifically noting Johnny Red, Major Eazy and Rat Pack, my three favorite strips from that classic comic, as among the strips which will be reappearing soon. The major new reprint series will begin with the long-running soccer strip Roy of the Rovers as the spearhead, and also incorporate material from the comics Action, Buster, Tammy and, possibly most excitingly, Misty! Here's the announcement, from Down the Tubes.

Further brief reading:
The Bookseller
Bear Alley
The Comics Reporter

MistyComic.co.uk reprints the Down the Tubes announcement, but there's no further news yet from Roy of the Rovers.com, Captain Hurricane's Best of Battle or The Sevenpenny Nightmare, who are probably waiting for specifics as to what's to come. More details as they become available!

See the Reprint This! articles on:

Johnny Red
Major Eazy
Rat Pack

(Originally posted March 01, 2008, 05:17 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! 16. Rat Pack

UPDATE: Titan has released a hardcover collection of the first 25 episodes.

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

Sadly still missing in action are the adventures of RAT PACK, the most bloodthirsty and dangerous men to ever tangle behind Nazi lines in the pages of a comic book. The series was devised by Pat Mills and John Wagner, and it was written and illustrated by dozens of the top talents of the 1970s over its six year run.



Like Johnny Red and Major Eazy, two of the earlier Reprint This! features, Rat Pack first appeared in the pages of Battle Picture Weekly. This was one of the original seven strips from the 1975 debut issue, and very much the centerpiece. Prior to IPC's Battle, most weekly comics had two-page episodes for their features. Battle had a standard of three pages per strip, with Rat Pack given a comparatively expansive six pages a week.

Very little in Rat Pack changed over the course of its run. Inspired by The Dirty Dozen, it was the tale of four soldiers who'd broken regulations and were serving time in a military prison when they were given a second chance by Major Taggart, who needed four expendable, yet talented, men for impossible missions behind enemy lines. They are: a big tough guy, a knife-thrower, a superb athlete and a safecracker. It's broadly reminiscent of DC's mid-70s war titles like Sgt. Rock or The Unknown Soldier, with inspiring, larger-than-life heroes having improbably successful suicide missions, except the Rat Pack is made up of such a bunch of dirty, back-stabbing thugs, you just hope nobody you care about gets inspired by them! It's very addictive stuff for young readers.

Creatively, Rat Pack had a very high turnover, as no artist could commit to the demanding schedule for more than a month or two at a time. Carlos Ezquerra handled the art for the first two-part story before it passed down through a who's who of British comic greats, including Eric Bradbury, John Cooper, Cam Kennedy, Colin Page and Mike White. The late Italian artist Massimo Belardinelli did some of his first British work for Rat Pack. The strip's writers included Mills, Wagner, Gerry Finley-Day, Eric Hebden and his son Alan, and Terry Magee.

Rat Pack's turnover may be a strike against any publisher considering a reprint line, since you can't promote it on the backs of any particular names. Then you have the usual issues with old Fleetway stuff, like a loss of the original art. But the fabulously entertaining stories are really worth seeing again, and Titan's done such a good job with Charley's War that I can't believe they wouldn't do Rat Pack proud as well. They'd look great on shelves in annual hardback collections... so how about it, Titan?

(As always, the stalwart lads over at Captain Hurricane's Best of Battle were very helpful in providing background and scans for this article. Give 'em a visit!)



(Originally posted November 09, 2007, 09:19 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

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Edited to add: (3/1/08) Titan has announced that they have acquired reprint rights to more of the Battle material, specifically noting Johnny Red, Major Eazy and Rat Pack as among the strips which will be reappearing soon. The major new reprint series will begin with the long-running soccer strip Roy of the Rovers as the spearhead, and also incorporate material from the comics Action, Buster, Tammy and, possibly most excitingly, Misty! Here's the announcement, from Down the Tubes. More details as they become available!

Reprint This! 13. Major Eazy

UPDATE: Titan released a hardcover collection of the first 30 episodes in 2012.

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

Carlos Ezquerra's excellent artwork was first noticed as one of the anonymous contributors to DC Thomson's Warlord in the early 1970s. Recognizing him as a talent worth tracking down, the editors of IPC's Battle Picture Weekly found his English agent and gave him some work. Ezquerra's commitments to DCT kept him from taking on a long-term series for a few more months, but when he was free, Battle had the perfect strip for him: the battlefield exploits of a rule-breaking iconoclast called MAJOR EAZY.



Major Eazy was a laid-back, longhaired, scruffy tactical genius and crack shot who drove his Bentley around Italy in 1944, in charge of a small platoon and constantly rubbing his commanding officers and various American sergeants the wrong way, yet always getting the better of everybody by way of his refusal to do anything "by the book." Eazy had a very strong sense of morality, honor and justice, and treated his enemies with more respect than his comrades would.

After 35 episodes, the story flashed back to North Africa in 1941 and presented tales of Eazy's earlier days. There was also a celebrated thirteen-week crossover with another Battle series, Rat Pack, in which Eazy took over that unit while their commanding officer was recuperating. Eazy's laconic approach to the war was a huge hit with many readers, but his popularity was not unanimous. The editors of Battle occasionally printed grouchy letters from uptight point-missing kids who complained that an unshaven, rule-breaking fellow like Eazy wouldn't really have got very far in the British army, and his behavior was sometimes jolly disgraceful!

Objectively, Charley's War was the best of all the strips to appear in Battle, and Johnny Red might have been the most popular, but Major Eazy is certainly my favorite. Certainly, there's an element of repetition - Alan Barnes, editor of Judge Dredd Megazine, is said to have ruled out reprinting Eazy in that comic because "if you've read one Major Eazy, you've read them all." I certainly don't agree with that, although the early days of the strip certainly would have benefitted from longer, multi-part stories instead of one-offs. But even when the plot feels familiar, there's always an exciting, witty payoff to Eazy's latest idea. Plus, the artwork is just fantastic. I could look at these pages for days.

A reprint of Major Eazy would be complicated by its format. The first twelve episodes were told in three-page episodes, starting with a color double-page centerspread. There's no way to compile this in print without using a pin-up or cover on every fourth page, which certainly won't please any graphics novel editor . But Titan has certainly proven itself able to handle odd formats and color images with their Charley's War editions. Including the 13 episode crossover with Rat Pack, there are 91 episodes of the series, so call it no more than 364 pages. That could certainly be done in three of their nice hardcover volumes with room for background and creator interviews. So how about it, Titan?



For more information on Battle and Major Eazy, including some story scans (from which a couple of these images were cropped), be sure to visit Captain Hurricane's Best of Battle.



(Originally posted October 09, 2007, 06:07 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

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Edited to add: (3/1/08) Titan has announced that they have acquired reprint rights to more of the Battle material, specifically noting Johnny Red, Major Eazy and Rat Pack as among the strips which will be reappearing soon. The major new reprint series will begin with the long-running soccer strip Roy of the Rovers as the spearhead, and also incorporate material from the comics Action, Buster, Tammy and, possibly most excitingly, Misty! Here's the announcement, from Down the Tubes. More details as they become available!

Edited to add: (8/2/10) Titan has solicited the first Major Eazy hardback in the August 2010 edition of Previews for release in October.

Reprint This! 10. Johnny Red

UPDATE: The first 75 or so episodes of Johnny Red have been reprinted in 3 hardcover volumes by Titan, released in 2011-13. Go, buy 'em all!

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected two dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One title that's been missing in action for years is JOHNNY RED, a World War Two thriller created by Tom Tully and the late Joe Colquhoun. It ran in the pages of Battle Picture Weekly from 1977-87, with other artists including John Cooper and Carlos Pino. This was one of Battle's best-loved series, an exciting rollercoaster of a comic that's as unpredictable as it is inventive and fun to read.



Johnny Red has a great premise. It's about a pilot who's been busted out of the service for striking an officer and, lacking any other prospects during the war, is scrubbing decks on a merchant ship in the Barents Sea. He steals the ship's Hurricane after the pilot bites it in a German attack and fights off the Nazi airmen, but feels he doesn't have any option but to land the plane in Russia after his ship goes down.

In Siberia, he joins a squadron of bedraggled, demoralized frontliners who are barely surviving after the Germans have cut most of their supply lines. But Johnny faces awkward questions from the Russian intelligence who want to know exactly what it is that he's doing there at all...

Johnny Red was an immediate hit with Battle's readers, and it racked up something like 500 three-page episodes over the course of its run, appearing in almost every issue for a decade and finally ending when an ailing Battle merged with Eagle and it was decided to save money by running reprints. The first two years were drawn by the great Joe Colquhoun. After 96 episodes, Colquhoun was moved to a new feature, Charley's War, and John Cooper took over. Cooper was better known for several earlier strips about lone wolf, tough-guy spies, but really raised his game to follow in Colquhoun's shoes. This was a pretty shrewd move on Battle's part, splitting the successful team the way they did, but it was to both series' benefit.

Incidentally, the images you see here were cropped from the quite nice scans available at Falcon Squadron, a Johnny Red fan site where readers can enjoy the first four years of the strip. This is the next best thing to a bookshelf reprint, although no real substitute. It's been speculated that the fans at Spitfire Comics have considered licensing the rights, and other people have held out hope that Titan, who've brought us the excellent series of Charley's War books, among others, might try out a nice hardcover collection one day. I think it's a winner in the right hands, so how about it, Titan?



(Originally posted September 07, 2007, 08:01 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

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Edited to add: (3/1/08) Titan has announced that they have acquired reprint rights to more of the Battle material, specifically noting Johnny Red, Major Eazy and Rat Pack as among the strips which will be reappearing soon. The major new reprint series will begin with the long-running soccer strip Roy of the Rovers as the spearhead, and also incorporate material from the comics Action, Buster, Tammy and, possibly most excitingly, Misty! Here's the announcement, from Down the Tubes. More details as they become available!