Sydney Jordan, Jim Holdaway & Brian Bolland all in one book

More details of the art of Jim Holdaway & Sydney Jordan book (first reported here) have been teased by The Book Palace here - due in Spring 2021 the books, as you might expect, look likely to contain rare art & photos...as well as some fresh new Brian Bolland art!

Check out the images below for a glimpse inside this book...

Here's that (newly completed) Brian Bolland art for the unpublished 3rd volume of Jeff Hawke reprints...

latest Catawiki auction - Jan 2021

These auctions end tonight (from 8pm CET)...don't forget!

The latest Catawiki auction is now open for bidding - it ends this Thursday (21st). Here are the British comic art highlights from it...

Lot 43666819 is here and is a half-page Robert Archie strip from Lion (10th April 1965) illustrated by Edward Kearon

Lot 43670965 is here and is again a Robert Archie strip from Lion (9th Dec 1967) from the story 'Trouble shooter' - art by Edward Kearon

Lot 44419377 is a Cecil Doughty image from (based on my 'translation' of the label) Look & Learn dated August 30th

Lot 443266885 is here and is a superb 1971 Don Lawrence page from the 'Tales from the Trigan empire' story 'the Duplicator' from the pages of Look and Learn

Good luck with your bids!

Russ Abbott & Carlos Ezquerra - part 1

The great thing about Russ Abbott's fun book is that it's been illustrated by some top-notch artistic talent from Bardon Press. 

First up, 3 pages of Carlos Ezquerra...

2000AD trading cards - series 1 (2007) - part 10

From 2007 here's my look at Strictly Ink's 2000AD trading cards. I've collected the basic collector cards (#1-72) but there were also Gold Foil, Costume & Bonus Cards.

As it points out on the packaging the odds of finding hand drawn sketch cards or bonus cards are 1:20 packs (so 1-2 per box). Foil cards were 1:12 packs and each box contained (on average) one hand drawn sketch or bonus card.

Cards 1-9 were here

Cards 10-18 were here

Cards 19-27 (part 1) is here

Cards 19-27 (part 2) is here

Cards 28-36 is here

Cards 37-45 (part 1) is here

Cards 37-45 (part 2) is here

Cards 46-54 is here

Cards 55-63 is here

Cards 64-72 is here...

Cards 71+72 were checklist cards

Samuel George London talks 'Band of Warriors'

I recently caught up with one of the busiest men in comics...Mr Samuel George London...not only does he present a weekly podcast ('Comics for the apocalypse - catch-up on any episodes you've missed right here ) but he can often be found Kickstarting new comics. Sam was kind enough to spend some time chatting to me about his great sounding new project, Band of Warriors...

‘Band of Warriors’ then...give us the elevator pitch... Jordan Thomas summed it up best by saying "boobs, bloodshed and betrayal" but to slightly expand on that, BoW merges actual historical events with Celtic and Greek mythology in an epic tale of adventure, betrayal and vengeance.

I think the story is partly inspired by your wife’s connections in France – is that right? That's right. My wife is French and specifically from Brittany. Breton people are very proud of their history, particularly their Celtic heritage and I relish the opportunity to try and capture that spirit in a comic.

So was this a particular period of time that you’d studied before? Or was it a more recent discovery? I had some knowledge of Greek mythology but I had no idea about the actual history from around the time of its creation. So, it was really interesting to learn about the history based on fairly recent archaeological discoveries.

You envisage this potentially as a 6-part series is that right? This first issue is part of a 6 issue arc I have planned but it also has scope to become an ongoing series if we get the right level of support. I hope we get there because I'd love to tell the full story.

So, you have plans to really flesh out this world...is it one particular geographical part of the world that you want to focus on or would you like to see the characters travel their world? Great question! This first issue is based in one particular part of the world, which is the palace of Knossos specifically but for the rest of the story there's a fair amount of travelling to other locations involved.

You’re clear that the art for the book is historically accurate. I've made it as historically accurate as I could but with mythological elements thrown in. So that bit won't be but it'll be a lot of fun.

I’m not sure I can think of any other comics from this time period – have you come across any? I’m sure there are probably loads of bande dessinée books out there but I’m just not familiar with them... Kill the Minotaur is set at the same time and even includes King Minos as well but it's more of a comic book interpretation of the original Minotaur mythos. Whereas BoW is attempting to reflect actual history along with the mythology.

You’re perhaps best known as the writer of the ‘Milford Green’ comic series but you’ve written a number of different comics series I think... Thanks and yes. My other series include The S Factor with Chris Panda published by Action Lab, which is about the dark underbelly of a superhero dating reality TV show. Then there's Project Hoax with Dan Butcher, which is an all-ages one-shot horror comic. And lastly, there's Access Denied with Mikael Hankonen from the Milford Green series, which is about humans visiting androids living on Mars for the first time.

Federico Avila Corsini is an artist I haven’t come across before – how did you ‘meet’ him? I put an artist call out on both Twitter and Reddit, and thankfully Federico got in touch with me via Reddit. I'm so glad he did because otherwise I wouldn't have come across him.

What was it about Federico’s art style that made you think he’d be the right artist for this project?

He has the right balance of realism and fanaticism in his art to capture the historical accuracy as well as the mythology. When he first sent through the character designs, I was over the moon at how they turned out.

What has Nicole, the editor, been able to add to the project would you say? I've worked with Nicole on every project I've written so far apart from the original Milford Green but she seems to be able to point out small things in the story that needed tweaking in order to really put the icing on the cake. In regards to BoW #1, she managed to iron out the creases that I had in a big action scene. I honestly can't wait for everyone to see it.

Thanks for your time Sam!

You can find Band of Warriors on Kickstarter right here

You can follow San on Twitter @SamuelGLondon

latest Catawiki auction - Jan 2021

The latest Catawiki auction is now open for bidding - it ends this Thursday (21st). Here are the British comic art highlights from it...

Lot 43666819 is here and is a half-page Robert Archie strip from Lion (10th April 1965) illustrated by Edward Kearon

Lot 43670965 is here and is again a Robert Archie strip from Lion (9th Dec 1967) from the story 'Trouble shooter' - art by Edward Kearon

Lot 44419377 is a Cecil Doughty image from (based on my 'translation' of the label) Look & Learn dated August 30th

Lot 443266885 is here and is a superb 1971 Don Lawrence page from the 'Tales from the Trigan empire' story 'the Duplicator' from the pages of Look and Learn

Good luck with your bids!

Goodies fun book (2)

Inspired by this recent post (by friend of the blog Michael Carroll) I've tracked down both the 'Goodies fun books'. They're quite different beasts - this volumes is aimed at a much younger audience than this volume (which is much more 'adventure' strip orientated).

Anyway, this volume...It's A4 size 52 pages (including covers) with a mix of colour and black & white artwork. I've not included examples of all the material but I've got most of the strips here - they're mainly single page strips - again in contrast to the 'adventure' volume where the strips were often 3 pages long.

This art is signed by 'Fel' who it turns out is Bert Felstead - a veteran of Fleetway nursery titles (says Steve Holland (and one other person) when I posted this query originally).

I've included this pages as an excuse to show a beautiful Basil Reynolds image of a red squirrel

UPDATED: The Beano & The Dandy jigsaws

Following on from recent jigsaws posts...

The Perishers jigsaws are here

2000AD jigsaws are here

Captain Britain jigsaws are here

Swift jigsaws are here

...and because, even now, Christmas is the season of the largest jigsaw puzzle in the house. Anyway, my eye was caught by Beano / Dandy jigsaws and so I went to see what I could find. There are probably more but here's what I've found so far - if you know of more do just let me know...

Jigsaws with no obvious manufacturere

Gibsons jigsaws

Gibsons jigsaw reference - G800

Gibsons jigsaw reference - G7015

Another Gibsons produced jigsaw - reference number unknown

Gibsons jigsaw reference - G7071 (I think!)

Jigsaws produced by MB

there's a Bash Street Kids jigsaw lurking at the back of this photo...

Jigsaws produced by Waddingtons

Jigsaws produced by Michael Shanfield