Six years ago in the middle of the fist Covid lockdown
issue #1 of The77 comic was produced.
Pretty inauspicious timing you’d think. And yet here we are all those years
later and not only is The77 thriving
(issue 12 was on Kickstarter back in February) but it’s now become an indie
comic publishing powerhouse with a plethora of titles under its umbrella - titles
such as Blazer!, This comic is Haunted, Pandora,
Lolz have been produced. Then there’s
the titles where they’ve used their (Kickstarter) expertise to help get books out
there that we might not have seen – Sha,
Ian Gibson’s Lifeboat, The incomplete Bogie Man, Red by day black by night and more
besides.
And, of course, like any decent comics publisher they
also produce annuals! Two issues so far of The77
annual and about 6 months ago the ‘long lost’ Blazer! annual for 1976 was finally published. For anyone playing catch-up
here Blazer! is a facsimile of the
comic featured in Steve MacManus' novel “The SheerGlam Conspiracy” -
a madcap tale of the rise and fall of a once mighty British comic book company.
The77 have given life to 4 issues of Blazer!
so far – all apparently rescued from the annals of history (ok, the 1970s) and
so perhaps now is the perfect time to bring out a Blazer! annual for all those fans of the comic right?
Well, it definitely looks the biz, it really, really
looks like a number of 1970s annuals that I have sat on my shelves right here.
I mean, it’s like a mint condition 1970s annual. A lot of care (and love) has
gone into the production of this so a big thumbs up for me for the design work
for this. Oh, and the covers too – lovely work by Ian Stopforth & Dan
Cornwell for the (regular & the variant) covers.
I got the first few issues of The77 but then found they were producing so many comics that I couldn’t
really keep up (I know, I know, they’re not producing a weekly comic and obviously
I could keep up but I decided to
switch to buying physical copies at conventions but even that has proved a
tricky promise to keep). Anyway, my point is that I suspect that, like all good
British comic annuals, not all of the material in the annual is new and that’s
fine. When you’ve got a comics vault like The77
have then it makes sense to mine it for content every so often. Only if you’ve
been buying all the titles will you spot what’s a reprint and what’s new. Again,
like generations of annual readers before me I’m blissfully unaware that some
of this material might have been
printed elsewhere before, to me it ALL looks new. OK, apart from Dan Cornwell’s
Godwin’s law strip that definitely
isn’t new to me but is of such high quality that I’m happy to see it reprinted
and hopefully it’s new to some readers. There are also plenty of ‘filler’ pages
– again that might sound like I’m being down on this but again that’s not the
case – they’re just very reminiscent of the filler pages that populated /
ruined [delete as appropriate] other 1970s annuals. Great stuff.
So, what do you get for your money? 96 pages, a mix of
colour and black & white artwork. Dan Cornwell contributes art as does Mike
Collins, Brendon Wright, Andrew Richmond, Mike Walters, Jeremy Dunn & Peter
Western amongst others. The quality of the art varies and this stands out only
because when you look at the annual which is so authentic looking that it comes as a surprise to you when you
realise that this is actually a ‘small press’ anthology title. BUT that feels
like I’m doing the annual down when that’s not my intention at all. The annual has
the best people that it could have contributing strips & artwork at a standard
that few others at this level can match. There’s also editorial pages, colouring
in to do (!), cut out pages (!), a word search, readers art and much more
There’s also a text story you can (authentically) skip
past because , y’know, this is an annual and it’s meant to be fun and not
involve reading because that is not as fun as comic strips and yet these
annuals ALWAYS had text pieces in them (because they’re much cheaper to produce
than comic strips but I only worked that out years later). And relax.
Look if, like me, you’re a bit behind with everything that
the The77 do then this annual is a
great way to get a bit caught up with that whilst at the same time giving you a
real Proustian rush for the ‘70s annuals of your childhood. Well done to all
concerned. The77 will be at Lawless comic convention this weekend – be sure to
stop by their (large!) table and pick up some comics from them.
Currently on sale here for £18.99 (plus postage I imagine)
Full disclosure – I was gifted a copy of Blazer! annual by editor Steve MacManus
