Lion King of Picture Story Papers

Lion King of Picture Story Papers

Bear Alley Books proudly presents the second index in our new series charting the history of British comics. Lion King of Picture Story Papers is a massive, 262-page volume covering the story of one of the most popular titles released in the post-Second World War "silver age" of British comics. Launched in 1952, Lion was Amalgamated Press's answer to Eagle, featuring its own space hero, Captain Condor on its cover.

This was one of the company's first adventure story comics and its twenty-two-year history is the story of British adventure strips in the 1950s and 1960s. Over the years Lion starred some of the most popular characters in British comics, including Robot Archie, Paddy Payne, Karl the Viking, Zip Nolan, The Spider, The Spellbinder, Black Max and Adam Eterno. 290 authors and artists are identified in the index which also covers the Lion Annual, Lion Holiday Special and Lion and Valiant Special Extra.

Heavily illustrated throughout, Lion King of Picture Story Papers includes a lengthy historical introduction, an index to the weekly comic covering comics, text stories and features, contents listings for all 35 Lion Annuals and spin-off annuals, all 17 Lion Holiday Specials and Lion and Valiant Special Extras and includes a title index and creator's index.

Author Steve Holland began writing about British comics over thirty years ago, writing or co-writing a series of indexes between 1990-97. These are now being re-released by Bear Alley Books, thoroughly revised and expanded with a vast amount of new information discovered in the past two decades, alongside a number of previously unpublished indexes. The War Libraries and The Thriller Libraries are already available from Book Palace Books; Hurricane & Champion was published in 2011 by Bear Alley Books.

 

 

Reviews 

• "Steve Holland’s narrative ... gives a detailed account of how the weekly was created and developed; its successes and failures and the editors, writers, artists and strips. Following his narrative, the book features short interviews with the paper’s first editor, Bernard Smith and with Barrie Tomlinson, who worked on Lion early in his career. The book then goes on to catalogue all the strips, text stories and features in the weekly, the annuals and the Summer specials, with publication dates and remarkably full details of writers and artists."—Steve Winders, Down the Tubes.
• "It's a great read in itself and has sent me back to the Lion comic to re-read some of my childhood favourites.  The pictures are reproduced crystal clearly and even this old man can read the original art ... It's a gorgeous book and if we are snow-bound as the media has been saying for weeks, I have plenty to keep me amused this chilly January weekend!"—Norman Boyd, Frank Bellamy Checklist Blog
• "A very nice book...loads to read and reread for reference."—Peter Gray, Peter Gray's Comics
• "Fans of classic British comics will be pleased to hear that Steve Holland has revised and expanded his index for Lion comic into an impressive 262 page A4 softback book. Lion, King of Picture Story Papers is published by Bear Alley Books for £25.99 plus £4 postage. Well worth it for fans of the fondly-remembered weekly, as the book features a 100 page history of the comic, profusely illustrated with sharp, clear samples of strips, behind the scenes photographs of the editorial staff, and the index section itself runs to around 160 pages with details of all the strips in the weekly, annuals, and specials. Even if Lion was before your time this is still an absorbing book for anyone with a genuine interest in the history of British comics. It's a great showcase of the outstanding artistic talent that was working in comics back then, with many full page examples of artwork from Joe Colquhoun, Reg Bunn, Leo Baxendale, Don Lawrence and many more. "—Lew Stringer, Blimey! Another Blog About Comics.
  

Format
Lion King of Picture Story Papers is published in A4 saddle-stitch format, 262 pages b/w with a stunning colour cover by Ron Forbes and a back cover by Mike Western.
ISBN: 9781907081675

Publication Date
Published on 18 January 2013.

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EU: £25.99 + £6.50

US: £25.99 + £6.50

RoW: £25.99 + £8.50

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(* Lion © IPC Media)