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Friday, August 21, 2020

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:


Monday, April 6, 2020

Rocket: The First Space-Age Weekly


Although the “space-age” truly began in the autumn of 1957 when Sputnik beep-beeped around the globe for three weeks, the race to create a rocket that could propel a satellite into low Earth orbit had been underway for over a decade. Advances made during the Second World War led to the development of the rocket propulsion systems that would launch cosmonauts and astronauts into space in the early 1960s. Rocket was, some might say, ahead of its time. With its features on missiles and descriptions of three-stage rocketry, it mapped out a blueprint of how we might break the bonds of gravity and seek adventures beyond the stratosphere. Colourful comic strips gave its readers glimpses of the kinds of world that could be discovered in our solar system and in other galaxies—but it lasted a mere 32 weeks and was long gone by the time ham radio operators tuned in to hear the Russian satellite’s signal as it orbited 15 times a day, or citizens heard recordings of it on their regular news broadcasts.

These were the days when Dan Dare of Eagle and Captain Condor of Lion commanded a readership of over a million children between them, and dozens of other comics—and adult newspapers—had space heroes whose names still echo down the years: Jeff Hawke, Rick Random, JetAce Logan, Don Conquest, Space Kingley and Jet Morgan to name but a few. Capt. W. E. Johns and Patrick Moore were penning intergalactic adventures and Journey Into Space was the last evening radio show to attract a bigger audience than the television shows it was broadcast against.

With science fiction proving so popular, the question has to be asked: Why was Rocket such a failure? Hopefully Rocket: The First Space-Age Weekly will answer that question, looking at the strips and features that made up Rocket’s contents, the creators behind them, and revealing how the weekly paper was doomed from almost the moment the first issue hit the newsstands.

 
 
 

Hurricane and Champion: The Companion Papers to Valiant


Hurricane and Champion: The Companion Papers to Valiant

Bear Alley Books is proud to announce a new edition of Hurricane and Champion: The Companion Papers to Valiant. This updated index details the histories of both papers and reveals—some for the first time—the names of many of the creators behind the classic comic strips that filled their pages. It now includes information on the twelve associated annuals.

Heavily illustrated throughout, the new edition of Hurricane and Champion also includes an expanded creators' indexes covering both papers and annuals, and a new full-colour cover by Jordi Penalva.

In his introduction, Steve Holland describes how Hurricane (1964-65) went through four phases during its lifetime and reveals the many problems faced by Champion (1966) during its brief 15-issue run.


Reviews of the first edition:
  • "It's no easy feat to produce these accounts and Steve deserves praise for his hard work. The many changes of ownership that befell the Amalgamated Press titles, many finally coming to rest at Egmont (who now own almost every character first published by Fleetway Editions after 1st January 1970), means any documentation listing contributors and sales figures is scant ... Steve has nevertheless assembled a fascinating account of both titles."—John Freeman, Down the Tubes.
  • "Steve's feature article in this Hurricane and Champion book takes up 25 of its 48 pages and it, like the rest of the book, is heavily illustrated. The book is well worth the money."—Jeremy Briggs, Down the Tubes
  • "I can appreciate Hurricane and Champion far more now from a mature perspective, and even though I only have a couple of issues in my collection I found Steve's history of those comics a fascinating read. If I enjoyed it I'm sure that actual fans of those titles will be over the moon with this book."—Lew Stringer, Blimey!.

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