Reprint This! Sapphire & Steel

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 missing gem is SAPPHIRE & STEEL by Angus Allen and Arthur Ranson. The title characters are agents of an unknown agency with incredible powers. They're not human. In the TV series that spawned them, they never explained what they were or where they came from, just that they appeared when something went wrong with the flow or order of time and required their presence to correct things.



Sapphire & Steel was the creation of PJ Hammond, who wrote 28 of the British TV series' 34 episodes. It starred David McCallum and Joanna Lumley and was notable for its minimalist sets, casting and special effects, telling its bizarre tales of other-dimensional hauntings and violence with a strange, deliberate pacing that recalled stage plays . Imagine Henrik Ibsen and MR James collaborating on a Doctor Who episode and you're about halfway there.

There used to be this incredibly fun comic called Look-In which featured comic adventures of practically everything which ran on Britain's commercial stations in the 1970s and 1980s, with a lineup of strips including (and I cribbed this list straight from The Look-In Picture Strip Archive) American imports like Charlie's Angels, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, Knight Rider, Logan's Run and The Man From Atlantis, along with British productions like Space: 1999, The Tomorrow People, Sapphire & Steel, Timeslip, Robin Of Sherwood, Dick Turpin, Worzel Gummidge, The Famous Five, Catweazle, Freewheelers and Smuggler. Most of these strips were scripted by Angus Allen, one of the unsung heroes of British comics, along with several other writers and artists well known to anyone with an interest in the genre, from Gerry Anderson's old collaborator Alan Fennell to John Burns and Jim Baikie, who still put in work for 2000 AD.

Look-In ran for more than twenty years, with all the Sapphire & Steel episodes (76, comprising 14 adventures) appearing over two long runs from 1979-81. No, they aren't as good as the TV series which, while dated, still retains its remarkable power to scare the bejeezus out of under-tens, as my own kids' nerve-racking encounters with it in 2006 demonstrate. But it's still a super, unpredictable comic, with some downright weird and successful art choices by Arthur Ranson. The whole run could fit comfortably in a nice, 160-page hardback. Maybe Carlton Books, who put together that collection of TV21 Thunderbirds episodes, along with some "best-of" collections of British girls' comics like Jackie and Girl, could find a market for this*? So how about it?



The Look-In Picture Strip Archive is certainly worth a look. Its incomplete S&S archive satisfied me until I obtained a complete set of scans. They really would be improved by adding more material (they only have 36 of the 216 Tomorrow People episodes), but it's still a good source for examples of some other rare comics that need to be reprinted. Give 'em a visit!

And special thanks to my anonymous reader who prompted me last week to write this entry... whoever y'all are!

(Originally posted February 18, 2008, 19:20 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

* ETA: Once again, my lack of knowledge about what's available in the UK confounds me. Turns out there is actually a "Best of Look-In" book from Carlton, which contains a three-part Sapphire & Steel story. It was released in September 2007. So there you go, Carlton's already ahead of me here. Now get the rest of the stories out, guys!!

Reprint This! 25. Coda

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!

I decided to do this series of articles based on an earlier, three-part feature, but chose to keep it limited to 24 titles for the sake of personal convenience and to make sure I had an end in sight as I did my daily writing. But there are plenty of other great comics that deserve to see the light of day as well. Here are five others which would be great to see again... which I'd certainly buy if only my local comic shop could order them from somebody!



HERBIE by Richard E. Hughes and Ogden Whitney

I don't know nearly enough about this series, which is incredibly odd and readable, save that you do not wish to mess with the ultra-powerful Mr. Popnecker, else he'll bop somebody with that there lollipop. Herbie first appeared in American Comic Group's Forbidden Worlds in 1958, and made periodic appearances before getting his own title in 1964. ACG went out of business in 1967. Back issues are incredibly scarce and start at around $20 for good condition copies. There's no telling who might have the rights to Herbie, suggesting that any compilation would probably be a long time in coming. However, an episode was reprinted in 2005's Art Out of Time and there were a couple of mid '90s black and white reprints with new art from celebrity fans like Bob Burden and John Byrne, so I reckon somebody must know. (edited to add: LJ's spook_town informs us that the rights to ACG's library may currently belong to Roger Broughton. So, D&Q, Fanta, y'all go invite him around for drinks, okay?)



JAMES BOND by Takao Saito

Yeah, that's the same scan everybody's got. That's why we need a reprint. In 1964, Gildrose licensed four James Bond novels to Shokakugan, and Takao Saito, who'd later create Golgo 13, adapted them in monthly installments for Boy's Life. The stories were: Live and Let Die (9 parts, 1964-65), Thunderball (7 parts, 1965-66), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (9 parts, 1966) and The Man With the Golden Gun (8 parts, 1966-67). Single-volume editions were later issued and are highly prized by collectors.



JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS by Dan DeCarlo

All of it. Not a "best of." By DeCarlo. With his name on it. And while I'm at it, I'd like a pony.



THIRD WORLD WAR by Pat Mills, Carlos Ezquerra, Sean Phillips, John Hicklenton, Steve Pugh and others

Okay, so there are probably more representative images from 3WW that I could have used, but none of them would raise the eyebrows of my gamer geek girlfriend. It ran in the pages of Crisis from 1988-90. I maintain some small hope that Rebellion will announce a two-volume collection before we get too old and gray. This is certainly the most likely of these five, and I only moved it to the coda because Ezquerra got a couple of spotlight articles already.



PROPER V FOR VENDETTA WITHOUT THAT #$@&*! COLORING by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

Thinking that the first two-thirds of V for Vendetta is supposed to look like anything other than the above is like thinking that Humphrey Bogart is supposed to be wearing an ochre yellow jacket in Casablanca. And I'm missing five issues of Warrior, where it first appeared, so my set's not complete. Unfortunately, DC has the rights to V, and DC and Alan Moore don't get along anymore, so we'll probably see a complete Dan DeCarlo Josie before we ever see this restored to its proper, beautiful black and white.

* * *

That's that for Reprint This! as a regular feature, but I'll still use the tag from time to time when something occurs to me and I want to see an old favorite on bookshelves again, or when some publisher does the right thing and announces something good is coming up. As was mentioned some weeks ago, Vertical's bringing Osamu Tezuka's Black Jack to us in a new English edition and Thunderbirds was already out in a UK-only collection nobody'd heard of, so that's two down and 27 total to go. If one of your favorites is somewhere on this list, link to it, talk about it and let publishers know. Every bit of buzz helps!

(Originally posted January 24, 2008, 09:03 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! 24. The World's Greatest Superheroes

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 a couple of dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

At last we come to the final installment-of-this-length of this series, and not before time. This entry is a subject near and dear to my nostalgic heart. I've shied away from most superhero titles in this feature. I guess it's part of my growing disinterest in capes-and-fisticuffs fiction, but also because Marvel and DC seem like they're on a track to reprint all their superhero stuff before long anyway. However, there's one title they might overlook. When I was a kid, THE WORLD'S GREATEST SUPERHEROES was, for a couple of years, among the most important parts of my day, but it doesn't look like it's set for a reprint anytime soon. This newspaper strip, written initially by Martin Pasko and illustrated by George Tuska and the often-maligned Vince Colletta, was a serialized adventure pitting DC's superhero crew against a number of nefarious villains.



The World's Greatest Superheroes, which began in 1978, could be compared to a daily strip version of DC's long-running Justice League of America comic, in which some of Earth's mightiest defenders, operating from an orbital satellite, match wits against evil supervillains. The first serial featured Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash and Aquaman against the immortal Vandal Savage. The second sidelined Aquaman, and Batman and Robin joined the others in a battle with Dr. Destiny, master of dreams. The third and fourth serials also featured Black Lightning.

In mid-1979, the series was retitled The World's Greatest Superheroes Present Superman, and the Man of Steel got the strip, now written by Paul Levitz, all to himself for a few more years. I lost track of it when my dad stopped going into his office every day and bringing a copy of The Atlanta Constitution home. Nor would my folks change their subscription from the afternoon Journal to the morning paper, despite all the good comics like Peanuts running in the morning. In 1983, the strip went to Sundays-only, and it was cancelled in 1985.

When I was a kid, I was incredibly aggravated that the strip became a Superman-only serial, because I enjoyed the other characters, especially Wonder Woman and the Flash. At the time, I figured that they reworked it due to the Christopher Reeve Superman film, which was released at Christmas, 1978. Since I tracked down some scans of the series online, and got hold of some 1980 episodes from the UGA library, I'm still certain that's the case, but I'm also struck by how unusual a drama serial with multiple characters feels. Pasko must have found it a great challenge to hop back and forth between the heroes in their individual situations with only three panels a day. In the first serial, Wonder Woman gets caught in a trap at the Empire State Building, and then the action shifts to the Flash in the Arctic, and then to Superman in Egypt. Two months later, Wonder Woman is still tied up in New York City!

In 1980 or so, DC released a digest-sized collection of the first serial, with the panels rearranged to fit two or three per page. Evidently it didn't sell well enough to follow up, so these stories haven't been seen in more than 25 years except by afficionados. Serial newspaper strips are incredibly fun to read in collected editions, though. Titan's been proving that with their addictive James Bond 007 and Modesty Blaise books, with Jeff Hawke newly joining their lineup. Marvel US is thought to be planning a collection of their Stan Lee-scripted Spider-Man strip later this year - there's an edition already out in England via Panini. Marvel always seems to execute the good ideas before DC can get theirs ready, so even if DC got started now, it would be months before we could see any such collected edition. However, these are incredibly fun stories which are sure to spark fond memories from readers, and the growing market for trade collections and reprints would surely have room for these strips. Presented right, as, say, a three-volume collection, you'd have a winner... or it might even work as a Showcase Presents. So how about it, DC?



Many thanks to Jared Bond for providing these nice scans from the series. Most appreciated!

Next week, Reprint This! wraps up with five other features I'd like to see again, but didn't feel like subjecting everybody to longer essays about for one reason or another.

(Originally posted January 18, 2008, 06:10 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! 23. Armitage

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 a couple of dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

Over in the Judge Dredd Megazine, the very sporadically-published ARMITAGE returned in December for a new series after his customary three or four years off. Created by Dave Stone and featuring artwork from some of Britain's best comics artists, this flawed-but-engaging series stars a gray-haired plainclothes detective in the future world of Brit-Cit, whose investigations invariably end up rubbing people in high places the wrong way.



Armitage is an aging, unarmed, grouchy detective who investigates gruesome murders among the rich and powerful in Brit-Cit. His investigations have often shown him crossing paths with the city-state's judicial masters. Armitage isn't one of them. There's a long history of secret handshakes and privilege in the world of British police, and a number of higher-ups who would rather Armitage leave things alone. So it's not entirely unlike Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse, really, with bizarre technology and secret cities. Dave Stone's grasp of future tech and ugly crimes has also been seen in his Doctor Who novels, and the excellent spinoff books featuring Bernice Summerfield, particularly the brilliant detective fiction pastiche Ship of Fools, which features some of the most gruesome, impossible murders a mystery novelist could ever concoct.

The series started out as a semi-regular for a few years, illustrated first by Sean Phillips (Criminal) and then by Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead, Savage) before losing its semi-regular status and only appearing very sporadically. A two-part adventure planned to run in 1995, with art by Kevin Cullen, never actually appeared. The artwork vanished shortly before it was due to be printed; there has been no confirmation that the pages were ever actually found. Other artists who have tackled short Armitage adventures include Steve Yeowell, Charlie Gillespie and John Ridgway.

Armitage returned in December for a new serial illustrated by the great John Cooper, who seems perfectly suited to illustrate a grouchy loner like our aging copper. Cooper's comic work stretches back to One-Eyed Jack in the pages of Valiant in the 1970s, although he may be best known for his work on Battle Picture Weekly's Johnny Red, a strip he illustrated for about six years. I haven't actually seen the first episode yet, although the new Megazine should be in American comic shops this week, and I can't wait for mine!

Anyway, the thirty-odd episodes of Armitage would make a really nice collected edition once the current Cooper-illustrated story is finished and can be compiled with them. The first serial could stand to be re-lettered -- Phillips was doing some odd things with his page sizes on this and the first Devlin Waugh story and these scans are kind of enormous so that you readers won't have to squint to read the word balloons on your computer screen. But with a little remastering, we'd get some great artwork by popular artists back in print and enjoy Stone's grisly future crimes without having to dig through eighteen years of magazines. So how about it, Rebellion? (And couldya shackle Stone to a desk somewhere and get some more pages out of him, so we won't have to wait until 2030 for volume two??)



(Originally posted January 11, 2008, 04:35 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

(Update 9/09: Magazine-sized reprints of Armitage are now available.)

Reprint This! 22. Urusei Yatsura

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 a couple of dozen titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

Three more entries to go in this series, and I've gotta say, I'm winding down, and really running out of new ways to say "This is really great, somebody should reprint it," and I want to have this feature finished before the end of the month. So Rumiko Takahashi's fans will, I hope, forgive me if I don't do URUSEI YATSURA, her first continuing comic series, justice. You'd think this would be a no-brainer for Viz, who have repackaged almost all of her other series for US distribution, but the poor sales of an earlier effort still have an impact on this property.




















Briefly, because I'm winding down here, Urusei Yatsura is a sprawling, silly gag strip in which aliens from the planet Uru stop by Earth. A dimwitted teen named Ataru Moroboshi, who hopelessly chases girls with tongue a-droolin', inadvertently proposes to their princess, a cute girl named Lum. She wears a tiger-striped bikini, has an incredibly short temper, has fallen passionately in love with Ataru, and works out her issues of jealousy by electrocuting Ataru often enough for him to go off the idea. The aliens decide to stay in Tokyo indefinitely, or at least until Lum and Ataru agree on a wedding date. Since Ataru has no intention of ever doing such a thing and giving up his flirting, this might be a while. Wacky hijinks follow, especially as many of Lum's friends and family show up to find out what's happening on Earth, and like it enough to set a spell and cause havoc.


Urusei Yatsura first appeared in the pages of Japan's Shonen Sunday in 1978. If I understand correctly, it had a number of short tryout runs of six or eight weeks for its first two years before it finally joined the regular lineup in 1980. It ran weekly until its conclusion in 1987, spawning a TV series, several video games, feature films and direct-to-video releases. As with most Japanese series, the weekly output is enormous, and the series was repackaged in a number of formats, most commonly a series of 34 digests, each about 180 pages. Urusei Yatsura is still phenomenally popular in Japan, and Lum a heavily-licensed icon who appears on pachinko machines and ads for electric companies, and the series has stayed in print through a variety of differently-formatted editions. The original run of 34 books begun a hugely-promoted re-release last year with new introductions and artwork contributions by other Japanese artists; about two-thirds of these new volumes are back in print.

Urusei Yatsura would appear to be a good introduction to Takahashi's work since it is very broad and very silly, without much continuity or ongoing plotlines. But this might actually work against it, as her more popular series in the US have been the longer, serialized stories. Back when Viz was producing traditionally American-sized comic reprints, they released a few Lum miniseries in that format, and some of these were collected in their older, odd-sized $14.95 line of graphic novels. But while they eventually repackaged Maison Ikkoku in the more familiar, less expensive digests, and restarted Ranma 1/2 and InuYasha in those lines, Urusei Yatsura was left behind due to low sales, with the bulk of the series untranslated. But really, Viz, it's been years and it's time to do the series right and promote it to a new audience. Besides, it's looking like y'all will be running out of Dr. Slump and Golgo 13 books to take my money in a few months' time, so you'll need something new on the shelves I want to buy. So how about it, guys?

Background on the series' publication was pilfered from the good folk over at the wonderful Takahashi fan site Rumic World. Visit them for more information! And while this is entry's about the comic series, have a pinup from one of the animated adaptations fer yer Livejournalling pleasure. Be back Friday for another entry as I wrap up this feature.

(Originally posted January 04, 2008, 02:50 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! 21. Tippy Teen

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.

I batted a couple of titles and ideas back and forth when nailing down my final list of 24. One, Marshal Law, was removed when a new collection was announced before I could feature it here. So for a couple of days, its slot was taken by THE COMPLETE DAN DeCARLO JOSIE & THE PUSSYCATS. But then I thought, "Hellfire, you're already asking for Marvelman, would you like the Fountain of Youth while you're at it?" Besides, when I was doing the scanning, I didn't actually have any DeCarlo Josie, though I do now, so it got moved to the epilogue feature which'll follow this up.

So she may be a third-stringer in my lineup, but that's okay, because Samm Schwartz's TIPPY TEEN was kind of a third-stringer in real life. Quite plainly an Archie cash-in, her short lived series is nevertheless incredibly charming, goofy, mod and with-it, daddy-o! I think some of the early Archie Comics credits are still disputed, but Schwartz generally gets the accolades for turning Jughead into one of the most popular characters there, and was in charge of some of the secondary titles in the late 1950s and early '60s. Then he moved to Tower Comics and created this delightful little universe.



You probably haven't heard of Tippy Teen before. I hadn't, until our buddies at Mister Kitty did a writeup about her on their Stupid Comics site last year. I was immediately taken by the character names and the swingin' 60s stylin'. You know, Archie reprints are a dollar a dozen, but odds are, since there's just so damn much of the stuff, you're usually going to run into lots of rotten 1980s work by drones copying old house styles and briefly hooking random characters into much uglier fashions and fads. Since Tippy Teen only lasted a few years in the late sixties, you're guaranteed that every issue contains thematically similar mod, groovy jargon and sensibilities.

Tippy inverts the Archie formula by having one lead girl juggling a pair of dueling boyfriends, neither of whom is really developed all that much. Her best friend is called Go-Go, and her spinoff book Go-Go and Animal sports one of the greatest names for a comic book in history. There was also a comic-sized tabloid magazine called Teen-In which featured Tippy strips along with amazing facts and trivia about period pop acts like the Cowsills and Sonny & Cher.

But there's more to Tippy Teen than just some cute period slang and with-it clothes. I'm not sure how much of Tippy Teen is Schwartz's work and how much his various collaborators working in a standard style (Toonopedia suggests that Dan DeCarlo and Bob White were also involved, among others), but this is just some wonderful cartooning here. A few scans here don't do it justice, but I have two issues and I passed another two on to Mister Kitty for their archives and they're all incredibly entertaining on several levels. The casual, fun style is just gorgeous, and feels natural, rather than a "house style."

Anyway, the Tippy Teen world was about one-half of the output of a short-lived company called Tower Comics, which hired Schwartz away from the Archie company, MLJ. Tower Comics was an imprint of Tower Books formed in 1965 to grab some of the growing market, and is best known for a superhero series called THUNDER Agents, which was sort of a cross between the Fantastic Four and the Man from UNCLE, if you can imagine such a thing. Tower had their superhero books, all part of the THUNDER Agents' world, and their teen books, all part of Tippy's world, but neither were very successful and the imprint was folded in 1969. Tower's books were twice as expensive as Marvel and DC's, and MLJ's for that matter, for twice the content. But value for money isn't relevant in a world where purchasing decisions were often made by parents at drugstore spinner racks, where the cheaper product was going to win out every time. Took DC another decade to figure that one out.

Anyway, there were 46 issues in total of Tippy Teen and her spin-off titles. The entirety of them could be reprinted in three thick editions. I have no idea who'd consider reprinting them. In the 1970s, an outfit called Atlas Comics tried to cash-in on Marvel's newsstand success and they reprinted some Tippy stories under the name Vicki, but otherwise she's not been seen in close to forty years. But I tend to think that if a couple of books, marketed to young girls but comprehensive enough to satisfy collectors, were available, they could certainly do well. The fact that my own daughter is a voracious reader of all things Betty & Veronica is proof that a market still exists, and any good publisher could make a strong pitch towards tweenagers while equally targetting completists by including all the strips, with as much source credit as is possible. The material is quite honestly good enough to make it worth a try.



(Originally posted December 26, 2007, 11:48 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! - oh, wait, you have... ummm... anyway, this is the 20th installment...

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!

Y'all get a break from things this week, because I went to all the trouble of drafting an article about how the late 1960s Thunderbirds strips from TV21 need to be collected again, especially because mine are in these stupidly pricy 48-page collections. Europeans have been overpaying for this format since the early 1960s, and what's needed is a proper old hardback with nice binding. Then I found out that such a thing actually exists already. It's 160 pages and it was released in 2002.



Well, let my poor research be a lesson to you all. Here, enjoy a couple of scans of this glorious Frank Bellamy artwork. Things will be back to normal in nine days. And now, the next time my pal chetbakerfan rings and asks if I want to go in with the shipping on an amazon.co.uk order, I know what I want!





(Originally posted December 18, 2007, 04:40 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)