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 Thunderbirds

The archivist, everything-in-order side of me doesn't approve of them, but Reynolds & Hearn has released the first two volumes in a series of large-format reprints of Gerry Anderson tie-in comics. These feature the lovely artwork of Ron Embleton, Mike Noble, Frank Bellamy, Eric Eden and others, with adventures from the comic versions of Thunderbirds, Stingray, Captain Scarlet and others. These originally ran in 1965-69 in the pages of the anthology TV Century 21 and its sequels and spinoffs. The first volume features an introduction by Chris Bentley, who makes a strong case for including this comic alongside Eagle and 2000 AD as the three most important and influential of British comics.

As a sampler, these are very good books. I finished the first one and enjoyed most of the ten stories in it, though I was disappointed by the reproduction of the Stingray adventure "Haunting of Station 17." I realize that reprinting double-page spreads is a challenge, but it's always a bummer to see artwork and word balloons disappear into a book's gutter. It's made worse when it's such lovely painting by Ron Embleton, and when the pages have an outside margin of about an inch. These could surely have been laid out with a greater inside margin to prevent that happening,

Otherwise, the book is a very good sampler of the comic, with a mix of short stories and the longer epics. It leads with a really interesting Fireball XL5 story which crosses over into both Stingray and Lady Penelope, which instantly disproves the old thought that a similar crossover in Battle Picture Weekly was British comics' first - TV21 beat them by thirteen years! My favorite story in the book was another Lady Penelope serial, drawn by Frank Langford. This, and many of the other stories here, were scripted by regular Gerry Anderson TV scribe Alan Fennell, but there's an interesting Zero X story about a planet of skeleton monsters written by Angus P. Allan, who went on to write the majority of the strips in Look-In during the 1970s and 1980s, which is worth a read. There never was a Zero X TV series; this was the ship that International Rescue and Spectrum had to keep getting out of trouble.

At any rate, Reynolds & Hearn released two volumes of this series in the spring. A third, "Escape from Aquatraz," and apparently focussing just on Stingray episodes, is due before Christmas. I would have preferred straight reprints of everything in their original order - I don't suppose we'll ever get such a thing - but whether you just want to kick back with some nostalgic, escapist fun or would like to reappraise some artwork that was even better than you thought it was, you should certainly check these out.

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Read more of what (very little) I've written about Ron Embleton at A Journal of Zarjaz Things.

I have not any real reviews for this book, only previews. If you see a review of it, or post one yourself, let me know and I will list it here.

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In other news this month, I do like to make updates when something from the Reprint This! wish list makes it back into print. Rebellion has made this reader at least a little happy by issuing a new, limited edition collection of the first storyline for the grouchy, future detective Armitage by Dave Stone and Sean Phillips. The reprint appears in the freebie "graphic novel" bagged with Judge Dredd Megazine # 287, and it's available in US shops now. If you're going digital, you can purchase PDFs or CBRs of this Megazine and the reprint (130 pages in all) from Clickwheel for just $3.99.

It's been strongly hinted that a follow-up edition, featuring some of the Charlie Adlard-drawn episodes, might appear in another Meg before the end of the year. Hopefully all the time spent adding these episodes to the company's digital archive will count towards a proper bookshelf edition before much longer!

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I haven't thought of it in years, but when I was a kid, Dik Browne's Hägar the Horrible was one of my family's favorite strips. There have been dozens of paperbacks over the years, but it's finally getting the archival hardback treatment from Titan. The first collection, featuring all the strips from 1973-74, is due in November. Titan's look back at the British wartime strip Jane is finally back on the schedule as well. It was anticipated some months ago but delayed due to production issues. Still no sign of their long-overdue Best of Battle book, sadly.

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A few months ago, I passed along the rumor, originally reported by Chris Duffy at the mostly-defunct "Comic Books Are Interesting" blog, that the obscure King Aroo, a delightful, surreal, pun-filled 1950s strip by Jack Kent, might be due for a collection. Publishers Weekly this month confirmed that IDW does indeed have a collection planned for 2010. It's part of their "Library of American Comics" imprint, and other strips selected for 2010 releases include Blondie and Secret Agent X-9. The latter strip was scripted by Dashiel Hammett, the godfather of American detective fiction, and drawn by Alex Raymond, and I've been curious to see it for many years now. Preceding all of these, however, is a collection of a later Raymond strip, the detective drama Rip Kirby, which began in 1946. IDW plans five volumes compiling all of Raymond's work on the title before his untimely death in 1956; the first of these fifty-dollar hardcovers is due late next month, and a second in March of next year.

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I enjoyed the volume of Fred van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey's Action Philosophers that I read. I read at The Comics Reporter just yesterday that Evil Twin Comics is releasing a big collection of all three volumes, along with four bonus stories, later in the year. It's wacky, biographical fun, very well drawn, and a great gift for the know-it-all academic type in your life.

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The two "Skinny Showcases" from DC that I have mentioned before are both out. Bat Lash, reviewed the other day at my Bookshelf blog and Eclipso are each about half as thick as a usual Showcase for around half the price. Two other anticipated "Skinny Showcases" are off the table for now: the Ramona Fradon Super Friends was cancelled without explanation at the beginning of the summer, and The Creeper was axed in favor of a hardcover, color collection of all Steve Ditko's episodes, including the late 1970s ones from the World's Finest anthology which were not planned for the Showcase. That's due in 2010.

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This month's Marvelman update: Kurt Amacker interviewed writer Alan Moore last week, and he certainly seems to think that a collected edition of his old series is in the works. Even if, Alan being Alan, he'd like Marvel to publish the book without his name on it.

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Finally this time, assuming Diamond can be trusted to deliver them, Yen Press's brand-spankin' new editions of Kiyohiko Azuma's oddball, addictive family comedy Yotsuba&! should be in stores today. They've reissued the first five volumes and brought out the first English-language edition of the sixth, with at least two more scheduled for 2010.

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

Reprint This! Update on Humbug

This week, I finally finished Fantagraphics' quite amazing reconstruction of Humbug, the short-lived (1957-58) humor magazine that several members of the Original Gang of Idiots tried to finance themselves in the wake of Trump's cancellation. Reprints of this material, which ranges from everything from comics to one-act screenplays, has been hard to come by for decades, and fans of the creators, who include Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Jack Davis, Arnold Roth, Al Jaffee and others, have been looking forward to a collection like this for simply ages.

Fantagraphics' team of designers spent months reconstructing the original eleven issues of Humbug. Very little of the original artwork was available, meaning that in many cases they had to start with scans of the magazines themselves. These were less than ideal: in order to keep costs low, Humbug was printed on the cheapest, most awful paper available. But all this work was worth it, because the finished product is jawdropping. The package includes a pair of lengthy articles about the restoration, along with a mammoth interview with Jaffee and Roth. Collected as a pair of hardcover books in a slipcase, this is going to really require anybody hoping to knock this off the mountain of "best reprints of the year" to bring one heck of a product to the table.

As for the contents, yes, some of it's dated. I mean, these are fifty year-old satires, and many of its targets have faded into obscurity. A letters page stink after Humbug turned both barrels on Arkansas governor Orval Faubus had me scratching my head until I looked him up. Well, good for Humbug! Otherwise, provided you can recall the days of Sputnik-panic, Humbug's comedy remains pretty timely. Action movies rely on exactly the same cliches that they did a half-century ago, and Consumer Reports is still as anal-retentive as it was back then. You may not bust a lung laughing every tenth page, but it's pretty good for cover-to-cover chuckles, and all of the artwork is terrific.

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

Read other reviews of this book:

Mark Evanier at News from ME
Christopher Hermitage at Blog to Comm
Rick Klaw at San Antonio Current
Rod Lott at Bookgasm
Chris Mautner at Comic Book Resources

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In other news from the last month, well, there's not a lot about. Seems like most publishers will be waiting until the San Diego Comic-Con to make announcements this summer, but here's another thing or two that I've spotted. Actually, one thing that will be formally announced at San Diego is Viz's new "Shonen Sunday" imprint, the home of their forthcoming quarterly collections of Rumiko Takahashi's Rin-Ne and several other titles.

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Marvel has solicited a mammoth new hardback volume of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' celebrated Criminal. This 400-page book will reprint the first three paperback trades in one collection, and retails for $50. I haven't found the time to try it myself, but Criminal comes strongly recommended by several friends, and I do like Phillips' artwork a lot. This hardback will cost only $8 more than the three books bought individually. Hmmm. I should borrow the first of those trades and see about making the investment!

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Speaking of DC, while the first of the publisher's "Skinny Showcases," highlighting Bat Lash, was released this week, it looks like they've changed plans for the mini-line a little. Word has it that the planned volume for the Creeper has been cancelled in favor of a hardback edition, scheduled for later in the year, which will reprint all of Steve Ditko's work on the character, in color.

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A couple of days ago, IDW released advance word that they'll be tackling a mammoth archiving of Archie material from the 1940s and 50s, spotlighting early work by Bob Montana, Stan Goldberg and Dan DeCarlo. I was kind of curious why the Archie publishers don't just do this themselves, but they're kind of built around one sort of reprint, and not the archival stuff that IDW has been perfecting for the last couple of years. Go ahead and sign me up for the DeCarlo books, IDW. No word, incidentally, on whether spinoff material like Josie and the Pussycats is part of the deal.

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Last month, Titan made my day by announcing that Johnny Red is getting the first of what we hope will be a series of hardcover collections. This month, they've solicited the sixth in their series of Charley's War volumes, featuring another thirty or so never-before-reprinted episodes by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun. It should arrive in September. Also, they surprised me by jumping on the "long-running American comic strip" bandwagon and announcing a Wizard of Id series, also for September. That was one of those strips we used to get in Atlanta years ago and was later dropped, so I concede some nostalgic curiosity. Oh, that little king. He's so tyrannical!

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Lastly this time, Rebellion have quietly pushed back the ninth Nikolai Dante collection, "Amerika," from September to November, so that they can include the forthcoming "Lulu's War" storyline from the prog. The story will start in September's prog 1650 and run for about six weeks, and then be reprinted along with the last four Dante stories.

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

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! Update on Starman

I finished reading the second of DC's new Starman Omnibus collections, and I have to say that this is emphatically the right way to do a collected edition of a modern book. The fifty-buck hardcover reprints thirteen issues of James Robinson's superhero series, along with the first of the series' annuals and three issues from the anthology Showcase which feature the supporting players, along with considerable background details, commentary and sketches from the artists, who include Tony Harris, Guy Davis and Steve Yeowell.

If you've never had the pleasure of reading Starman, I really believe this is among the two or three best American comics of the '90s. It's the story of Jack Knight, a reluctant second-generation hero and the sixth to use the name, who defends the beautiful art deco metropolis of Opal City from bizarre crime. It's a book more about family and heritage and honor than it is fisticuffs and the usual superhero shenanigans. Robinson occasionally displays a tin ear for dialogue, but his narration is really captivating, and it's easy to get caught up in the grand sweep of Opal and her champions.

A detour to New York City to consult one of the DC Universe's original heroes, the Sandman, is so note-perfect that the publisher should use it to teach new writers how to craft an engaging crossover, and a later story which pits Jack and two unlikely allies against a demon in a poster is surprising at every turn, with a clever conclusion that will have a lasting, fascinating impact on future stories. It's definitely a title worth reading, and thumbs up to DC for creating such a nice package. They plan to publish the complete 81-issue series and all of its side stories and supplements in six of these omnibus volumes.

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Read more of what I've written about James Robinson at A Journal of Zarjaz Things.

Read other reviews of this series:
Van Jensen at ComicMix
Randy Lander at Inside Joke Theatre
Greg Oleksiuk at PopMatters
Jason Sacks at Comics Bulletin
Paul W. Smith at Den of Geek

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In other news, perhaps the month's biggest announcement has come from Alan Moore, confirming the rumors that Top Shelf will be issuing a complete edition of his "published-in-many-places" comedy The Bojeffries Saga. This new collection will include a new 24-page story that artist Steve Parkhouse is said to be tackling now. Moore's announcement came in the second part of the mammoth interview that Pádraig Ó Méalóid conducted for The Forbidden Planet Blog.

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Fantagraphics has unveiled a little more about their forthcoming collection of Gahan Wilson Playboy cartoons. It's still on track for an October release. The three-volume slipcased hardcover is going to set you back a tidy $125, which means I'm putting $10 a paycheck in the kitty for this starting now. The book will feature introductions by Neil Gaiman and Hugh Hefner, and not only every cartoon that Wilson's contributed in his fifty-one year tenure with the mag, but his fiction and accompanying illustrations as well. The behemoth will clock in at more than 1000 pages. Can't wait, even if my accountant might want to have a word or two with me about it.

Speaking of Playboy, Dark Horse's collection of the two issues of the Hef-published Trump, mentioned here back in January, has been delayed and is due out in mid-August. This will feature classic work by Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee, Wally Wood, Mel Brooks, Max Shulman and many others. Incidentally, my son finished the first half of Fantagraphics' Humbug, the magazine that followed Trump, and not only proclaims it to be awesome, but also wants it noted that he's the only modern-day tween to have read it.

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In what sounds like it was a late April Fool's Day joke which went a little far, it's been strongly rumored that IDW is preparing a collection of Jack Kent's long-running newspaper strip King Aroo for later in the year. The strip ran for an impressive sixteen years before winding down in 1965, but it's incredibly obscure because only a single paperback collection was ever issued, in 1953, and because it only appeared in a handful of papers for most of its run. Some of the sample strips available online show it to be an incredibly charming and silly strip, reminiscent of Pogo with its puns and quirky characters, and while I'm curious to see more, I think IDW has something of an uphill climb selling this almost unknown character to a modern audience.

Speaking of Pogo, most recent word on the grapevine is that we'll be waiting until sometime in 2010 for the new line of Fantagraphics collections to get going.

And speaking of IDW, whether they are going to do something with King Aroo or not, they are planning a reprint of Elaine Lee and Michael Kaluta's 1980s SF serial Starstruck with new coloring.

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Over at DC, it looks like Peter Milligan's well-regarded '90s take on Shade the Changing Man is finally getting some long-overdue attention. A collection of the first six issues was released many moons ago, and it's finally getting a second later this year. Personally, I find Shade to have aged very badly, but I'm still looking forward to this earlier stuff from the run. But before that, DC is prepping hardcover collections from some of the other titles in their run, similar to the Starman books, including Fables and Alan Moore's Tom Strong. And they've finally solicited the Eclipso "Skinny Showcase" I've been talking about for August:

SHOWCASE PRESENTS: ECLIPSO TP
Written by Bob Haney
Art by Lee Elias, Alex Toth, Jack Sparling and Bernard Baily
Cover by Bernard Baily
One of the strangest comics villains ever stars in this volume collecting HOUSE OF SECRETS #61-80! On an expedition in the South Pacific, scientist Bruce Gordon’s dark side is unleashed after being exposed to a black diamond. Transformed into the powerful Eclipso, he embarked on an evil rampage as his good side attempted to reassert control.
Advance-solicited; on sale August 26 • 296 pg, B&W, $9.99 US

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If you're enjoying Drawn & Quarterly's collections of the Moomin comic strip, and who in their right mind isn't?, then you might want to check out some reissues of the classic Moomin picture books that Tove Jansson did in the 1960s and 1970s. The publisher is starting up a new line of children's books called D+Q Enfant devoted to "lost classics and new soon-to-be classics" which will include the old Moomin series. Fine, give me another reason to want to have another kid before too long.

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When I featured a blurb last month about our friends at Titan Books, I didn't have any news about Roy of the Rovers. Well, there's a new set of 1970s strips due in June - 208 pages of "scorching soccer action" from the period that introduced the hotheaded character Paco Diaz and took a hardline stance against hooliganism in the stands. Down the Tubes also points out that Titan's long-delayed Best of Battle is finally scheduled for next month as well. Fingers crossed!

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That is all for this month. I would like to thank everybody for reading and all the nice e-mails, and also let everybody know that June's updates will be a little delayed. Look for the feature article on the 5th and the news update on the 15th. Happy reading!

Update on Indiana Jones

In 1981, Marvel Comics got the license to release a three-issue adaptation of the hit film Raiders of the Lost Ark. The comic turned out to be pretty terrible, even if goodwill and curiosity turned the three-parter into a commerical hit. You know how Indy figures things out silently in the movies, and acts without telling people what he's up to? That's not how Indy works in that comic. Anyway, Marvel continued their license and released a pretty successful series of follow-up stories under the title The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones from 1983-86. This was a pretty uneven title, but it was occasionally very entertaining. The book seemed to suffer from the lack of a consistent creative team, but even if some of the contributions were a little underwhelming, you can tell from rereading the stories that veterans like John Byrne, Denny O'Neil, Howard Chaykin, Archie Goodwin and David Michelinie all enjoyed working with the character, and doing something a little different than the typical Marvel title.

Dark Horse has been Indy's comic home for several years now, and last year, they landed the rights to the old Marvel series, which had lapsed. The publisher has a really interesting reprint line, principally used for their licensed properties like this, Aliens or Buffy, which repackages about 350 pages in color for $25 in a format a little smaller than a standard American comic. Dark Horse had already released two of these Omnibus editions for their own Indiana Jones miniseries in 2008. This is the first Omnibus to reprint the Marvel series, and it collects the three-part Raiders adaptation and the first 12 issues of the ongoing series. Despite some genuinely awful coloring (as noted with examples in February at my LiveJournal), the comic has aged pretty well for something with so many thought balloons on the page, and the creators put Indiana through some pretty thrilling and fun paces. It's certainly worth checking out!

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I have not seen any substantive reviews of this book. If you see any or have written any, drop me a line and I will list them here.

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In other reprinting news, Yen Press has announced the release dates for the next three volumes of Yotsuba&!, the addictive family comedy series by Kiyohiko Azuma which had previously been published by ADV Manga. Volume six is due out in September, with the next two following in December and in April 2010.

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There have been rumors for ages that DC Comics will one day be releasing a complete collection of the 1940s Captain Marvel storyline "The Monster Society of Evil," a much-loved serial that ran for several months and was recently revisited by writer/artist Jeff Smith in a very fun new version. Looks like we'll finally be seeing this classic in December. The Amazon listing is right here if you'd like to pre-order it.

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In other DC news, looks like they've finalized plans for their Showcase Presents volumes through the end of the year, in a mix of $17 regular 500-page books along with ten buck 300-page "Skinny Showcases" in the summer, although it does appear they are slowing the number of titles released to allow people to actually catch up to them. Titles include Super Friends in May, The Creeper in June, the long-awaited Western adventure Bat Lash and the fourth collection of 1960s Batman in July; Eclipso in August; Warlord in September; House of Secrets volume two in October; DC Comics Presents the Superman Team-Ups in November; and the third volume of Wonder Woman in December.

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News of some other new releases from the good fellows over at Titan have crept out. October should see a sixth collection of Charley's War along with new sets of stories from Dan Dare ("Safari in Space") and Modesty Blaise ("Death in Slow Motion," with the previously-announced October collection, "Scarlet Maiden," moved forward to August). No announcements yet about a third set of Jeff Hawke adventures - the second collection was reviewed last month over at my bookshelf.

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Viz has not formally announced it yet, but it looks like they've got a plan for Rumiko Takahashi's InuYasha that I can get behind. The series, her longest-running but, to my mind, the least compelling, recently concluded and the 56th digest collection was issued in Japan in February. I picked up a few of these cheaply, but the prospect of having 56 of the darn things on my shelf was a little unappealing. Fortunately, it looks like they're going to begin issuing the series in their "VizBig" line, which collects three digests in a thick package priced about the same as two of the smaller ones, starting in November. They've already had some success with Dragon Ball, Rurouni Kenshin and Fushugi Yugi in this format, and I'm much more likely to follow InuYasha to its conclusion if I can spend less money on it, and not have to devote shelf space to 56 little books.

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Finally this time, Rebellion looks to have settled on October for release of the fifth Sinister Dexter collection - the fourth volume was just issued in England - and the first proper collection of the excellent Judge Dredd epic "Mechanismo." This should include the first two arcs, with artwork by Colin MacNeil and Peter Doherty, which were once compiled by the previous book publisher Hamlyn in an incomplete package, but ideally this one will also include the never-before-reprinted third arc, with art by Manuel Benet.

See you next month! Thanks for reading!

Reprint This! Update on The Freak Brothers

First things first: a welcoming wave to Chris Mautner over at Comic Book Resources, whose new column Collect This Now! has jumped on the Reprint This! bandwagon. It's always nice to have more people shouting at publishers with you. That said, I've got my next six features sketched out, so don't write about anything I'm planning to, would ya?

Anyway, once upon a time, you could buy The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers at Sears. No kidding. The old Sears outlet store at Belmont Hills shopping center in Smyrna, Georgia had a small section of clearout books and magazines. It was there that we found the old collection of the X-Men "Phoenix Saga" for about three bucks, and a handful of these lunatic comics which were certainly not aimed at eleven year-olds. Frankly, I was afraid to have them in the house. I read a friend's copies, and never really warmed to them at the time, on account of drugs, in Reagan's America, being the devil's business.

Well, if your mind is a little more open than mine was in 1982, then you'll be incredibly pleased to know that one of America's funniest comic series has been compiled in a mammoth, 624-page edition by Knockout Press, sporting this lovely Rian Hughes-designed cover. This is said to contain every single appearance by Gilbert Shelton's trio of goofball ne'er-do-wells, who move from one dingy San Francisco apartment to another, when they're not running a bus to New York, starting a commune, being hijacked by terrorists or becoming leaders of the planet's most powerful religion. Shelton has not done nearly enough work in comics; these stories feature some of the funniest plots I've ever followed, with one lunatic right turn after another building situations into a spectacular pyramid of chaos. He and his co-writers (Dave Sheridan and Paul Mavrides are also credited) have a masterful sense of making their stories appear to be stream-of-consciousness silly, but in some of the longer tales, most notably "The Idiots Abroad" and "Grass Roots," every little piece that appears is vital to the overall plot, and the spiralling catastrophe that follows. This is really great stuff.

Knockout's presentation is really impressive. It's a little thicker than a Marvel Essentials, printed on glossy paper with a dust jacket. It contains two color sections and includes all sorts of bonus material, including posters, magazine covers and a series of hilarious cutaway diagrams of the various superstructures and amusement parks said to be part of the Rip Off Press empire. In all, the book is just a jawdroppingly good presentation of some fantastic comics. You should get a copy for yourself today.

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Read a little more about this volume:

The Rag Blog has some prerelease hype
Alex Fitch interviews Shelton at Panel Borders
Other than these, I have not seen very much in the way of proper reviews of the book in hand. Most of what I found were copies of the original announcements and notifications of Shelton's British book-signing tour. If you reviewed this book, drop me a line and I will link to it here.

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Each month, I like to pass along a little news about reprint projects I find interesting, as I find announcements of them. This month, IDW led into the big, NYCC weekend with this word about a really great new series...

IDW Publishing is pleased to announce the forthcoming release of The Bloom County Library. Beginning in October 2009, each of the five volumes will collect nearly two years worth of daily and Sunday strips, in chronological order. This will be the very first time that many of these comic strips have been collected, and the first time in a beautifully designed, hardcover format. The books will be part of IDW's Library of American Comics imprint, and designed by Eisner Award-winner Dean Mullaney.

"Fans have pestered me for years," said Berkeley Breathed, "for this ultimate Bloom County collection in that polite, respectful badgering way that only fans can manage. Thank God I can now tell them something better than just 'please remove your tent from my lawn.' I can say, 'It's coming!"

Berkeley Breathed's Bloom County is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed newspaper strips of modern times. Premiering on December 8th, 1980 — a month after the election of Ronald Reagan as President — the strip brought to the comics pages a unique amalgam of contemporary politics and fantasy, all told with hilarious humor and wit.

The beloved and quirky denizens of Bloom County include Opus, Steve Dallas, Bill the Cat, Milo Bloom, Michael Binkley, and Cutter John. Breathed was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1987 for his work on Bloom County. The strip was published in an astounding 1200 newspapers.

The phenomenon that was Bloom County spawned a merchandizing bonanza, as well as two spin-off strips, Outland and Opus. The first paperback collection of the strip, Loose Tails, sold over one million copies. Bloom County paperbacks cumulatively sold over six million copies. At the height of the strip's popularity, Breathed walked away on August 6th, 1989.

IDW Publishing Special Projects Editor Scott Dunbier conceived the series. "I'm absolutely thrilled to be editing the Bloom County Library," said Dunbier. "This is a series that I can't wait to hold in my hands."

The Bloom County Library will also contain a series of "Context Pages" sprinkled throughout the volumes. These pages will provide perspective for the reader, presenting a variety of real-life events and personalities that were contemporary at the time of original publication.

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At the con, probably the biggest news came from Yen Press, who announced that they'd be picking up the license for Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba&!, which ADV has been ignoring for more than a year now. Volume six will be released in the fall.

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In other reprinting news, DC's latest solicitations reveal several interesting books coming in the spring. Here are four that caught my eye:

SHOWCASE PRESENTS: SUPER FRIENDS VOL. 1 TP
Written by E. Nelson Bridwell and Dennis O'Neil
Art by Ric Estrada, Vince Colletta, Ramona Fradon, Bob Smith and Kurt Schaffenberger
Cover by Alex Toth
The superstars of the 1970s animated adventures star in this new, bargain-priced volume collecting SUPER FRIENDS #1-24!
Advance-solicited; on sale May 27 • 448 pg, B&W, $9.99 US

STARMAN OMNIBUS VOL. 3 HC
Written by James Robinson
Art by Tony Harris, Gene Ha, Dusty Abell, Phil Jimenez, J.H. Williams III and others
Cover by Tony Harris
In this third volume Opal City is terrorized by Dr. Pip, an eccentric bomber. Plus, Starman teams up with Batman to save the life of Solomon Grundy. Collecting STARMAN #30-38, STARMAN ANNUAL #2, STARMAN SECRET FILES #1 and THE SHADE #1-4.
Advance-solicited; on sale June 17 • 432 pg, FC, $49.99 US

BAYOU VOL. 1 TP
Written by Jeremy Love
Art and cover by Jeremy Love
"BAYOU, which tackles racism and violence in 1930s Mississippi, is as hypnotic as it is unsettling." — Wired
The first book from the original webcomics imprint of DC Comics is here! South of the Mason-Dixon Line lies a strange land of gods and monsters; a world parallel to our own, born from centuries of slavery, civil war, and hate.
Lee Wagstaff is the daughter of a black sharecropper in the Depression-era town of Charon, Mississippi. When Lily Westmoreland, her white playmate, is snatched by agents of an evil creature known as Bog, Lee's father is accused of kidnapping. Lee's only hope is to follow Lily's trail into this fantastic and frightening alternate world. Along the way she enlists the help of a benevolent, blues-singing swamp monster called Bayou. Together, Lee and Bayou trek across a hauntingly familiar Southern Neverland, confronting creatures both benign and malevolent, in an effort to rescue Lily and save Lee's father from being lynched.
BAYOU VOL. 1 collects the first four chapters of the critically acclaimed webcomic series by Glyph Award nominee Jeremy Love.
Advance-solicited; on sale May 27 • 8.375" x 6", FC, 160 pg, $14.99 US

PREACHER BOOK ONE HC
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Steve Dillon
Cover by Glenn Fabry
"Features more blood and blasphemy than any mainstream comic in memory. Cool." — Entertainment Weekly
Available for the first time in hardcover, preacher Jesse Custer begins his dark journey to find God, in this volume collecting PREACHER #1-12, plus pinups from PREACHER #50 and #66. After merging with a bizarre spiritual force called Genesis, Texan preacher Jesse Custer has become completely disillusioned with the beliefs to which he had dedicated his entire life. Now possessing the power of "the word," an ability to make people do whatever he utters, Custer begins a violent and riotous journey across the country. Joined by his gun-toting girlfriend Tulip and the hard-drinking Irish vampire Cassidy, Custer loses faith in both God and man as he witnesses dark atrocities and improbable calamities during his exploration of America. This new collected edition features an all-new introduction by series writer Garth Ennis.
Advance-solicited; on sale June 24 • FC, 352 pg, $34.99 US • Mature Readers

Super Friends is interesting because of that very nice price point - definitely one to grab for the under-tens in your house, and cheap enough to give to 'em with a package of crayons. Starman is quite probably the best mainstream American comic of the '90s - it's that or Morrison's Doom Patrol anyway - and this complete repackaging is just gorgeous. The Bayou collection is a nice vote of confidence from DC towards its webcomic initiative, and while I still, blasphemously, think Preacher would have been improved by hinting and not showing its excesses, this looks to be an interesting repackage of the title.

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Finally this time, MI-6.co.uk reports some good news from Titan:

Fans of the comic-strip James Bond adventures will be thrilled to learn that the final two compendiums from Titan Books are on the way. Once released, Titan will have published all 52 of the classic stories since their original syndication in newspapers from 1958 to 1983, including seven adventures not released in the UK.

The penultimate title and sixteenth in the Titan Books collection will be "The Girl Machine", due for release on 30th June 2009 in the UK and USA. Previously skipped over in earlier releases, "The Girl Machine" will include the titular adventure as well as "Beware Of Butterflies" and "The Nevsky Nude".

All three stories were drawn by Yaroslav Horak and written by Jim Lawrence and were first published in the Daily Express between 1973 and 1974 and have not been seen since their original syndication.

The volume will also contains a brand new introduction by one of the Bond cast and a host of exclusive feature material.

The final and seventeenth collection from Titan will take its title from 1976 strip adventure "Nightbird". Rounding out the series, the volume will also include "Hot-Shot" and "Ape of Diamonds". The reason these stories were skipped over earlier in the series is often rumoured to be connected to rights issues, but this is incorrect. The real reason the strips were passed over in 2007 will become apparent when the volume is released in early 2010. All three adventures were written by Jim Lawrence and drawn by Yaroslav Horak.

More next month!

(Originally posted Feb 10 2009 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! Update on One Pound Gospel

Viz released the last episodes of Rumiko Takahashi's One Pound Gospel in English for the first time this month. This series, with three or four new installments released every couple of years over a two decade run, has long been overdue for a proper digest edition with the artwork in its original configuration. In the mid-90s, Viz released three collections in their old graphic novel format, but let those go out of print. Now the series, which finally concluded in 2007, is available in full in four digests.

It's an incredibly cute and occasionally hilarious comedy about a weak-willed boxer named Kosaku who cannot stop his unhealthy eating habits, and can't get over his doomed crush on an attractive young nun who sees a spark of potential in him. Kosaku kind of radiates between a hopelessly ingratiating dimwit and the great underdog hero for whom you'll enjoy cheering in the ring, and his supporting cast, notably his long-suffering coach, provides endless fun. Sister Angela, meanwhile, has her own (quite small) supporting cast, notably the mother superior who understands neither boxing nor Sister Angela's support of this clumsy young fighter.

It's a delightful comedy of errors and manners, with excellent artwork and hilarious moments. Possibly the best is a great five-part story in the third volume, in which everybody misunderstands everybody else and a rival boxer with an awful intestinal problem that keeps forcing his matches with Kosaku to be postponed conspires to make everybody's situation unbearable. It's really great stuff, and you should definitely look into it!

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Read more of what I've written about Rumiko Takahashi at A Journal of Zarjaz Things.

Read other reviews of One Pound Gospel:
Ai Kano at Animanganation
Greg McElhatton at CBR
Pop Culture Shock
Greg Hackman at Mania.com
Connie at Slightly Biased Manga

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In related reprinting news, Pat Mills is interviewed about the classic Charley's War, which he wrote for Battle Picture Weekly in the early 80s, over at Comicon.

Titan is planning two Modesty Blaise books for 2009: The Lady Killers in April and The Scarlet Maiden in October.

Here's some more information about the forthcoming collections of Steve Ditko's The Creeper and Sergio Aragones' Bat Lash, planned for June and July 2009:

SHOWCASE PRESENTS: THE CREEPER TP
Writers: Steve Ditko, Don Segall, Dennis O'Neil, Bob Haney, Len Wein and Michael Fleisher
Artists: Steve Ditko, Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, Mike Peppe, Jack Sparling, Dick Dillon, Sid Greene, Irv Novick, Ernie Chua, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Mike Royer
Collects: SHOWCASE #73, BEWARE THE CREEPER #1-6, THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #80, JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #70, DETECTIVE COMICS #418, 447 and 448, THE JOKER #3 and 1ST ISSUE SPECIAL #7
$9.99 US, 296 pages

SHOWCASE PRESENTS: BAT LASH TP
Writers: Sergio Aragones, Dennis O'Neil, Nick Cardy, Len Wein and Cary Bates
Artists: Nick Cardy, Mike Sekowsky, George Moliterni and Dan Spiegle
Collects: SHOWCASE #76, BAT LASH #1-7, DC SPECIAL SERIES #16 and stories from JONAH HEX #49, 51 and 52
$9.99 US, 240 pages

(Originally posted December 19, 2008, 12:35 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

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.)