The Shrinker (Special Offer)

The Shrinker
Published: 24 July 2026
Format: A4, 206 black & white pages, paperback with matte cover

Available via Ebay (coming soon)

PLEASE NOTE: The book is currently on special offer for early buyers. The offer will end in two weeks on 7 August.

Orders can be made via Paypal (steve [at] bearalley.co.uk), price £25.99 including p&p. Please make sure you include your address when paying by Paypal. 

US orders can also be made via Paypal, £28.99 sterling including p&p. Again, please make sure you include your address when paying by Paypal. 

Please ask for other overseas prices; I can usually offer postage at a cheaper rate than Ebay's Global Shipping. Same applies if you want to buy more than one volume at a time.

"Gloating evilly, the sinister Capek held 
the two men in his scrawny fist..."

The story begins with a near miss on a dark and stormy night. An R.A.F. transporter narrowly misses an unlit array on a craggy island and Squadron-Leader Flint and Sergeant Slake return later to ask the owner of a bleak and seemingly long-deserted castle to put a light atop the mysterious pylons.

As they walk towards the castle, the spidery figure of Capek watches over his storage cells, charged by the lightning that has been drawn to the aerial array. Positioning a gull before a strange device that emits a blue light that arcs through the window and hits the approaching R.A.F. men and throws them to the ground. Seconds later, they realise that a vast wall that has appeared before them is the step they were climbing and that they have been shrunk to no more than an inch in height!

The story was the creation of David Motton and Mike Western, and I'm pleased to say that the book will include a foreword from David and an introduction from Pete Western, Mike's son. Mike went on to draw the first two stories featuring the evil Capek 120 of the strip's 200 pages) before handing over to Carlos Cruz. David Motton would write four of the five Shrinker stories, taking a short break when Western left, when the strip was continued by Roger Noel Cook.

The Shrinker contains all five stories that ran in Buster and Valiant, which would see the evil Capek jailed more than once, only to escape or to be persuaded into helping the population of an island threatened by a volcano, which gives a British space rocket expert an idea: a rocket powerful enough to launch men towards Mars would be impossible... but what if the men and their capsule were shrunk to midget size?

Mytek the Mighty Volume 4

Mytek the Mighty Volume 4
Published: 14 November 2025
Format: A4, 199 b/w pages, paperback with matte cover

Available via Ebay

Advance orders can be made via Paypal (steve [at] bearalley.co.uk), price £27.50 including p&p. Please make sure you include your address when paying by Paypal. Please ask for overseas prices. Due to recent postal changes, American and other overseas orders should be made through Paypal in UK sterling; just e-mail me and I can offer postage much cheaper than Ebay's Global Shipping. Same offer applies if you want to buy more than one volume at a time.

"From the beauty of the African jungle emerged 
a nightmarish creature unknown to man!"

Mytek is still suffereing the aftereffects of Gogra's missiles when a new menace emerges: thanks to a serum thrown carelessly away, microscopic creatures are growing into gigantic monsters! Soon after, Gogra once again goes on the rampage, this time accompanied by a giant robot-rhino!

Vanishing sea vessels lead Professor Boyce—Mytek's creator—and Dirk Mason to investigate a mass of weed, only to find that it is controlled by their old enemy, Gogra.

Boyce, Mason and Mytek are sent to an uninhabited Pacific island after swarms of giant insects reach America's coast. A nuclear device may be to blame... but will they make it safe before chromo-rays from the device create more giant creatures.

Mytek is launched into space to rescue two lost astronauts who have crash-landed on the planet Umbra. The planet is bathed in a strong light, and almost as soon as Mytek lands, something bizarre happens... his shadow comes to life and creeps away, slipping into a cleft too narrow for the giant ape to follow.

Follow Professor Boyce, Dirk Mason and Mytek in their final adventures from the pages of Valiant.

Mytek the Mighty Volume 3

Mytek the Mighty Volume 3
Published: 19 September 2025
Format: A4, 206 b/w pages, paperback with matte cover

Available via Ebay

Orders can also be made via Paypal (steve [at] bearalley.co.uk), price £27.50 including p&p. Please make sure you include your address when paying by Paypal. Please ask for overseas prices. Due to recent postal changes, American and other overseas orders should be made through Paypal in UK sterling; just e-mail me and I can offer postage much cheaper than Ebay's Global Shipping. Same offer applies if you want to buy more than one volume at a time.

"As the giant ape stared at Gogra, hateful memories stirred in its electronic brain"

Mytek the Mighty roars into its third volume, with Bill Lacey at the artistic helm and its arch-nemesis Gogra planning to build a robotic replica of himself: Gogriath! To power this giant monstrosity, Gogra needs something from Mytek—his brain!

Fitted with a new brain, Mytek needs to learn all over again who are friends and who are enemies. The sight of the massive mechanical Gogra sends Mytek crazy, but the battle between the two is no even match, as Gogra has fitted his replica with weapons and can control the giant ape with a form of electronic hypnosis.

Adding to Mytek's problems, a system of underground volcanic caverns contain a fantastic lava-monster that finds its way to the surface...

And Gogra isn't finished: he has used Gogriath to steal vast quantities of electronic equipment and has built a device that can be used to attract the Moon and cause earthquakes and tidal waves around the globe... unless he receives a huge ransom from every country on the World Council.

How Professor Boyce and Dirk Mason save their mighty friend from these monsters—both natural, mechanical and gravity-magnetic—is a thrilling adventure that will leave you breathless. 

Mytek the Mighty Volumes 1 & 2

Mytek the Mighty Volume 1
Published: 3 July 2025
Format: A4, 190 b/w pages, paperback with matte cover

Available via Ebay

Mytek the Mighty Volume 2 
Published: 3 July 2025
Format: A4, 180 b/w pages, paperback with matte cover

Available via Ebay

Orders for the pair can be made via Paypal (steve [at] bearalley.co.uk). The two volumes are £52.50 including p&p. You can order the books individually, price £27.50 including p&p. Please make sure you include your address when paying by Paypal. Due to recent postal changes, American and other overseas orders should be made through Paypal in UK sterling; just e-mail me and I can offer postage much cheaper than Ebay's Global Shipping. Same offer applies if you want to buy more than one volume at a time.

The latest titles from Bear Alley Books begin a run of four volumes reprinting the entire run of Valiant favourite, Mytek the Mighty. The giant robot ape ran between 1964 and 1970, the creation of Professor Arnold Boyce as the answer to rioting by Akari natives who worship a clay representation of an ape as a symbol of power and destruction. 

Boyce, whose laboratory is destroyed, creates a colossal robot in the shape of the ape-god which he and local game-warden Dirk Mason use to quell the riotous actions of the natives... but the Professor's problems are just beginning, as his villainous assistant, Gogra, begins making plans to steal the robot ape and use it to march against mankind.

The kidnapped ape leaves a trail of devastation behind it, unaware of its actions... but Professor Boyce has equipped the ape with a learning brain and Mytek begins to develop self-awareness...

This classic from era when Valiant was at its height of popularity was written by Tom Tully and drawn by Eric Bradbury, two masters of British weird menace stories, who are introduced in essays over the two volumes. Volume one contains the first of a two-part look at the career of writer extraordinaire Tom Tully, who penned many of the most fondly remembered strips during his decades-long time as a scriptwriter. Heros the Spartan, Johnny Cougar, Kelly's Eye, The Steel Claw, Slave of the Screamer, The Toys of Doom, Raven on the Wing, Football Family Robinson, Look Out for Lefty (the strip that got Action shut down), Death Game 1999, Harlem's Heroes, The Mean Arena, Johnny Red and twenty years of Roy of the Rovers — just some of the strips written by Tully. Volume two also takes a look at artist Eric Bradbury, using interviews with Eric in the 1990s and information from his daughter to build a picture of his life and works.

Note: Volumes three and four will follow at roughly two monthly intervals. 

REVIEWS
"Tom Tully packs each two-and-a-half page episode with bombastic scenes of battling mechanical monsters ... Eric Bradbury's atmospheric linework adorns the first two volumes, giving way to Bill Lacy's more dynamic style in three and four. There's much to admire about both artists, who never over-cram the action despite Tully's frequent, dense exposition." SFX 391, May 2025.

"[I]t’s quite clear Bear Alley have put a huge amount of effort in to making these collections look as good as possible ... Not only do you get some fantastic comic tales to read: the collections also include features on Tom Tully and Eric Bradbury, two masters of British weird menace stories." John Freeman, Down the Tubes, 4 July 2025

The Phantom Patrol

"Here come the Trojans — armed to the teeth! Get ready for big trouble!"

The Phantom Patrol by Willie Patterson and Gerry Embleton, edited and introduced by Steve Holland
To be published: 1 October 2024
Format: A4, 130 pages, b/w, softcover, with matte cover

 

Available now: CLICK HERE to visit my eBay Shop. Due to recent postal changes, American and other overseas orders should be made through Paypal in UK sterling; just e-mail me and I can offer postage much cheaper than Ebay's Global Shipping. Same offer applies if you want to buy more than one volume at a time.

Available on AMAZON.CO.UK.

THE PHANTOM PATROL

In the summer of 1941, Sergeant Joe Timm and his infantry patrol were trapped in the Greek hills a mile away from the sea and a hidden landing craft that would take them to safety. The Germans hold a vital Pass ahead of them and escape seems impossible. German shells begin to drop around their heads, uncovering a cavern with a curious looking craft. Inside, Joe grabs a strange-looking apparatus and rejoins his men just as the Germans advance into their hiding place. Escaping through the cave system, they reach their landing craft only to face more danger as Stuka dive-bomber turns and screams down at them. As the men hit the deck, Joe accidentally pushes a switch on the apparatus.

The Stuka disappears. Instead, on the horizon they see ancient galleys battling and Corporal Jock McLuckie realises the truth... it was they who had disappeared, transported back 3,000 years. With a tank, a landing craft, a handful of guns and a captured Nazi, the British infantry unit find themselves in the midst of the Trojan Wars.

The Phantom Patrol is a superb yarn of a kind that British comics did best. Fast-moving and wildly plotted, the story grows more complex as the patrol battles its way through Egypt and Private Paddy O'Connell finds himself adrift in time with a police trooper from the future. Flitting from past to future, will the Sarge and his men manage to escape back to now... and, given the situation they left behind, will they survive even if they do get back?

This lost classic with artwork by Gerry Embleton has been rarely seen since it's original appearance in Swift. The Phantom Patrol reprints all 57 episodes in one blockbuster volume with a wraparound colour cover by Chris Weston.

High Seas and High Adventures

High Seas and High Adventures
Published: 29 July 2024
Format: A4, 134 pages, with matte cover

AVAILABLE AT MY eBAY SHOP. EBay also allows foreign shipping, so the book should be available to anyone wherever they live (warzones excluded).

ALSO AVAILABLE VIA AMAZON.

HIGH SEAS AND HIGH ADVENTURES

Here is a collection of three classic stories by Jeffery Farnol and H. Rider Haggard, brought to life by one of the finest of all comic strip artists: Jesus Blasco.

Originally published in the pages of Look and Learn, 'Black Bartlemy's Treasure' and 'Martin Conisby's Revenge' (based on Martin Conisby's Vengeance) adapt two of Jeffery Farnol's most famous books – a tale of vengeance and death that begins with Conisby a galley slave on a Spanish ship. He escapes to a British ship and heads back to England to take his revenge on Sir Richard Brandon, the man responsible for his years of slavery, only to rescue and fall in love with Lady Joan, his enemy's daughter.

Thus begins a tale that follows Conisby's adventures on the high seas as he sails in search of Sir Richard aboard the ship of Adam Penfeather, who is looking for the treasure of pirate Black Bartlemy, left on an island with a treasure map hidden in a daggar the only clue.

The story (originally written as one epic book) continues through the pages of 'Martin Coniby's Revenge', where his discovery of Sir Richard's whereabouts leads him to rescue his enemy and takes him to an island where he is confronted by Lady Joan Brandon.

The third of our strips is another grueling tale of high adventure and vengeance as Thomas Wingfield sets off for the Indies, only to be wrecked at sea and rescued from certain death by his enemy. Escaping, Wingfield is washed up on the shores of a strange land and captured by its natives. He is saved from being sacrificed and taken to meet the emperor, Montezuma.

The adventure that follows sees Wingfield marry into the royal household and face the encroachment of Spanish invaders led by Cortez. All the time, Wingfield still burns with the desire to avenge the death of his mother and kill the man responsible.

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Longbow — Volumes 1 & 2

Doctor Jim Bennett had a strange secret -- he was also Longbow the last of the Cheyenne -- a white man who had been brought up as the son of a Cheyenne chief. In moments of danger, he would quietly steal out of Powder Creek and head for a hidden grove of giant redwood trees which lay beyond Cheyenne Crest. Before the mightiest of the redwood trees -- the tree of the Great Spirit which bore the sacred mark of the Cheyenne and which was guarded by Longbow's magnificent stallion, Flying Star...

Longbow, the last of the Cheyenne, is the latest character to be resurrected by Bear Alley Books, his over seventy adventures collected in two volumes filled with the amazing artwork of Don Lawrence, Geoff Campion, Jesus Blasco, Juan Gonzalez Alacreu, Keith Shone, R. Charles Roylance, Frank Humphris, Gerry Haylock, Rodney Sutton, Francisco Cueto, Cesar Lopez and Martin Salvador. 

Volume One includes a history of the character revealing his origins a decade earlier in the shape of Strongbow the Mohawk, how the strip mixed old and new stories by Mike (Trigan Empire) Butterworth and how his adventures were to continue following a merger. There are extensive biographies of five of Longbow's artists (Campion, Lawrence, Shone, Roylance and Blasco), plus a bonus feature, 'Along Indian Trails' introduced by Longbow.

Volume Two continues the story as Steve Winders delves into the history of Blackbow the Cheyenne in the pages of Eagle and how the character changed under the pen of Ted (Robot Archie, The Spider) Cowan and brush of artist Frank Humphris.

Humphris is one of the artists contributing to this volume, which also contains extensive biographies not only of Blackbow's long-time artist, but the remaining six who contributed to the Longbow saga: Francisco Cueto, Juan Gonzalez Alacreu, Gerald Haylock, Martin Salvador, Rodney Sutton and Cesar Lopez. This volume continues the bonus feature 'Along Indian Trails', introduced by Longbow.

Hoka-hey!

Details

Longbow Volume 1 by Mike Butterworth (author), Don Lawrence, Geoff Campion, Keith Shone, R. Charles Roylance, Jesus Blasco (artists)
Published: 21 August 2020
Format: A4 perfect bound, 134 b/w pages, with a full-colour cover by Don Lawrence

Longbow Volume 2 by Mike Butterworth (author), Don Lawrence, Geoff Campion, Keith Shone, R. Charles Roylance, Jesus Blasco, Francisco Cueto, Juan Gonzalez Alacreu, Gerry Haylock, Martin Salvador, Frank Humphris, Rodney Sutton, Cesar Lopez (artists)
Published: 21 August 2020
Format: A4 perfect bound, 140 b/w pages, with a full-colour cover by Don Lawrence

Order now
(please note: orders via Lulu's bookstore are priced in US dollars — it's an American company — but payment in UK sterling will not incur any fees.)

Click on the pictures to order:

The Complete Eagles Over the Western Front

Eagles Over the Western Front

The complete story in one volume

Bear Alley Books is proud to announce the release of a collected volume containing all 116 episodes of Eagles Over the Western Front, the classic story of aerial warfare set during the days of the R.F.C. Created by Mike Butterworth and Bill Lacey and serialised in the pages of Look and Learn in 1971-73, Eagles was previously available in three volumes.

Bill Lacey's stunning artwork—with two-thirds of the story scanned from surviving original art boards—captures every terrifying moment as Harry Hawkes, the hero of Eagles Over the Western Front, joins the only recently founded Royal Flying Corps and, with only a few weeks training, is sent to France to fly scouting and observation missions over the enemy lines at Ypres.

By the time Harry arrives on the front, the British B.E.2c scouting planes have become "Fokker fodder" thanks to the German development of an interrupter gear that synchronized machine guns with the aircraft's propeller, which allows German pilots to fly their planes straight towards their target, firing through the propeller arc.

Harry eventually joins a squadron flying the Airco DH.2 in the era of aerial dogfights and faces some of his most challenging months as German ace Max Immelmann scores victory after victory against British pilots on his way to earning Germany's highest honour, the Pour le Mérite—the 'Blue Max'.

Author Mike Butterworth is better known for writing 'The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire', but his career began many years before as a scriptwriter and editor for the Amalgamated Press's Sun, where penned dozens of stories featuring historical characters (Billy the Kid, Dick Turpin, Robin Hood) as well as creating 'Max Bravo, the Happy Hussar' and 'Battler Britton'.  For Comet he wrote authentic historical dramas as well as creating the science fiction adventurer 'Jet-Ace Logan'. Editorially he created the innovative Playhour Pictures, Valentine and the teenage magazine Honey. A prolific novelist, he wrote crime thrillers, bodice-rippers and historicals under a variety of pen-names.

Bill Lacey's first strips appeared in 1951, although the best of his early work appeared in the pages of Super Detective Library, where he was the original artist for Rick Random and Blackshirt. Lacey's work appeared in dozens of comics in the 1950s and 1960s, including Mickey Mouse Weekly, Cowboy Picture Library, Knockout, Express Weekly, Thriller Picture Library, Princess, Film Fun, Valiant, Buster, Tiger and Lion; during this time his strips ranged from adaptations of western novels such as 'The Covered Wagon' to weird fantasy classics like 'Mytek the Mighty'. In the 1970s he drew extensively for Look and Learn and for a number of D. C. Thomson's boys' papers, Bullet, Crunch and Buddy.

Reviews

"While you would expect a comic strip about a fighter pilot to involve our hero jumping in his plane and flying off to shoot down many of the enemy before returning safely home, in Eagles, especially in the early stories, the reason for our hero not to make it back to base is more often because of mechanical failure of the aircraft he is flying rather than any enemy action against him. As for shooting down the enemy, it is a plot point in at least two of the stories in Volume 1 that Harry has not actually shot down a single German plane despite be considered a good pilot. It all makes for an ongoing story that is interesting in its non-conformity to the expected rules of an aviation comic strip and it certainly makes the reader think about the frailty of the planes that RFC pilots were flying back then without the safety of parachutes...

__"Eagles Over The Western Front ... makes for an interesting and sometimes thoughtful read without missing out on the excitement or entertainment that one would expect of a good comic strip of its era. With more than half of all the pages in this book and its two sequels being scanned from the original art boards, the artwork quality is as good as it can possibly get and shows that Bear Alley Books can give well established companies, that are also reprinting similar B&W British comic strips from the era, a run for their money."—Jeremy Briggs, Down the Tubes

The Complete Captain Future

One of the stars of the 1950s pirate era of comic publishing, Norman Light's 'Captain Future' was the star of the comic Spaceman, which Light published in 1953-54. One of the most successful titles from the minor publishers of the era, it ran for 15 issues before disappearing. But 'Captain Future' lived on, briefly, in reprints, after the rights to the strips were picked up by former Hank Janson publisher Reg Carter.

Now, over sixty years after their original appearance, Bear Alley Books had gathered this action-packed series of pulp sf strips together for the first time. In a packed 200-page volume, all of Captain Future's comic strips are reprinted and, as a bonus back-up, we include three short stories by Tom Wade (a prolific writer for the infamous John Spencer quartet of sf magazines under multiple pseudonyms) featuring the Space Patrol. The Buccaneers of Space are introduced in a revealing special feature about the history of the Spaceman comic, its lead characters and the creative force behind them: Norman Light.

From the foreword:

My fascination with the science fiction of the Fifties began in around 1978, inspired by a school project that I was planning to do about sf magazines. Key to this project was Mike Ashley’s History of the Science Fiction Magazine and trips made to the Science Fiction Foundation, then a smallish room at Northeast London Polytechnic in Dagenham where I spent two very long days cribbing notes from Walter Gillings’ ‘The Impatient Dreamers’ and reading copies of Tales of Wonder, Fantasy and the early New Worlds—the first pulp magazines I had ever seen.
    In this shelf-packed Wonderland, I also found copies of Futuristic Science Stories, Worlds of Fantasy, Tales of Tomorrow and Wonders of the Spaceways, four tawdry, paperback-sized compilations which laughingly called themselves science fiction magazines. They had been damningly described in Ashley’s third volume as part of an unwelcome phenomena  that sprang up in the early Fifties: cheaply printed, low quality SF written by authors with no background in the field...
    It was during my trip to Dagenham that I first caught sight of these lurid magazines and their gaudy companions, novels by Vargo Statten, Volsted Gridban, Vektis Brack, Bengo Mistral and a dozen other guttural-sounding science fictional pseudonyms. I had heard that the Vargo Statten novels were not so bad and, being a member of the British Science Fiction Association, I was able to borrow titles from the Foundation’s library.
    Despite the warning of librarian Malcolm Edwards that “They’ll rot your brain,” I rather enjoyed the lively, no-nonsense pulp action of Vargo Statten and began reading others of that ilk, only to find that most of these cheap publishers had no quality threshold at all. But I was drawn to them by their vibrant, colourful covers, and amongst the stand-out talent was Norman Light, second only to Ron Turner when it came to depicting thrilling space battles or alien invasions.
    Light’s action-packed artwork became the focus of my first published article, which drew parallels between the paperback publishers and the ‘pirate’ comic strip publishers of the era. Norman Light was a key figure in the piece because he was not only an artist but also a publisher.
    Thirty-three years later I’m still a fan of Light’s artistry. Not for its quality—there were better artist/writers on a technical level and Light’s figurework tended to be what Denis Gifford described as “asymmetric”—but for its enthusiasm, vivacity and the artist’s obvious passion for good old pulp-style action.
    Here, then, are the complete adventures of Captain Future and the Space Patrol crewmen known as the Buccaneers of Space, one of Light’s finest creations. I hope you enjoy their outlandish adventures as much as I did when I first discovered them.

If you like your spaceships to soar, your galaxies to collide and your BEMs to be bestial, this is the thrill-filled collection for you.

The Man Who Searched For Fear

The Man Who Searched For Fear gathers together three adventure strips drawn by one of Britain's comic strip masters: Bill Lacey. Lacey's first strips appeared in 1951, although the best of his early work appeared in the pages of Super Detective Library, where he was the original artist for Rick Random and Blackshirt. Lacey's work appeared in dozens of comics in the 1950s and 1960s, including Mickey Mouse Weekly, Cowboy Picture Library, Knockout, Express Weekly, Thriller Picture Library, Princess, Film Fun, Valiant, Buster, Tiger and Lion; during this time his strips ranged from adaptations of western novels such as 'The Covered Wagon' to weird fantasy classics like 'Mytek the Mighty'. In the 1970s he drew extensively for Look and Learn and for a number of D. C. Thomson's boys' papers, Bullet, Crunch and Buddy.

The Man Who Searched For Fear is Bill Lacey at his best. The opening series in this new collection relates how Hugo Masterman, a delicate, unhappy child, who dreamed of travelling the world, lived to see his dream turn into a nightmare. In darkest Africa, with his companions dead through injury or illness, Masterman discovers the legendary graveyard of the elephants. Mauled by a lion, he survives by dragging himself back to civilisation on paralysed limbs. His discovery makes him immensely rich, but the tortures he has faced leave him unable to know fear.

Hidden away in Castle Doomcrest on a remote Scottish isle, Masterman offers a prize to any man who can bring fear into his life. His visitors relate bizarre adventures in the hope of earning Masterman's reward: how a man escapes a shark attack and becomes a god to a lost island civilisation; how an assassin plans to destroy an emperor by crashing his imperial train; how a man survives being left without supplies on an Alpine mountain . . . these are just a few of the tales that Masterman hears in his search to stir his emotions.

Adding to the excitement are two bonus stories. "Agent of the Queen" stars Agent Smith of Britain's nascent Secret Service. When Queen Victoria's life is threatened with assassination at the Great Exhibition of 1851, Agent Smith teams up with Captain Jack Stalwart to thwart the threat; and, in a second adventure, they team up again to discover how Russians are smuggling arms into India.

Finally, Lacey's adaptation of Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations" is another—but very different—Victorian adventure as young Pip finds himself in the hands of people who may or may not have his best interests at heart: the convict Magwitch, the odd Uncle Pumblechook, the bizarre Miss Havisham, the beautiful Estella, the lawyer Mr. Jaggers, his rival Bentley Drummle . . . against all odds will Pip still achieve his goal to become a gentleman.

Worlds of Adventure by Gino D'Antonio

GINO D'ANTONIO IN FULL COLOUR

"Superb production and a treasured addition to the groaning bookshelf!"—Dave Gibbons

Worlds of Adventure gathers together four never previously reprinted, full-colour strips illustrated by Gino D'Antonio.

In the late 1960s, while he was writing the epic Storia del West in his native Italy, D'Antonio was collaborating with Mike Butterworth to adapt some of literature's most famous adventure stories: 'The Wanderings of Ulysses', 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea', 'Quo Vadis' and 'A Tale of Two Cities'. These tales span history from Greek myth and the gladiatorial circus's of Rome to the French Revolution and an innovatory French tale describing the adventures of Nemo, a 19th century Ulysses wandering the oceans in the wake of the Industrial Revolution.

D'Antonio was a popular artist in England, although his name was known only to the editorial staff and agents through whom he worked. He had been drawing for British comics for over a decade, his first illustrations appearing in 1955 followed by his first strips in 1956. D'Antonio worked for some of Britain's finest comics, including Eagle, Express Weekly and Boys' World, although he will always be remembered for his war comics, drawn for War, Battle, War at Sea and Front Line in 1958-68. Thanks to their constant recycling, they influenced a hugely diverse range of artist, including Dave Gibbons, Mick McMahon and Rufus Dayglo.

"The only artist whose work I copied and traced on a regular basis when I was growing up was the Italian master Gino D’Antonio"—Mike McMahon.

King Solomon's Mines

On the opposite side of the chamber were some wooden boxes. "There are the diamonds," I cried. Sir Henry held the light over the top box, which had been rendered rotten by time. Smashing my hand through the wood, I drew it out full, not of diamonds, but of gold pieces.

Welcome to H. Rider Haggard's classic novel adapted in full colour by Mike Hubbard, originally serialised in the pages of Ranger and reprinted for the first time! This was a daring attempt to publish the novel in its original language, using Haggard's own words, although abridged, making it one of the most faithful of all adaptations.

Treasure Island

We had not built a fire the first night we had stayed there, and it seemed strange that there should be one burning tonight. It was at this moment that a shrill voice broke forth out of the darkness. "Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!" and so forth, without pause. Silver's parrot, Captain Flint! I turned to flee, and ran straight into the arms of Long John Silver!

Here for the first time since it was serialised in the pages of Ranger is one of the finest adaptations of the classic Treasure Island, beautifully painted by John Millar Watt and retold in Robert Louis Stevenson's original language – making it one of the most faithful adaptations and well as one of the most visually stunning.

Treasure Island & King Solomon's Mines

You can order both Treasure Island and King Solomon's Mines together and save on postage & packing.