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: 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! 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.