Miller Western Comic Books: Exclusive Preview (UPDATED)

It's always fascinating for comic enthusiasts to discover more about the rich history of comics, and this new book from Midlands-based Ugly Duckling Press sets out to provide solid information about another little pocket of British comics history. Miller Western Comic Books is a full colour 272 page softback covering the cowboy comics published by L.Miller in the 1950s. Westerns were hugely popular at the time, but American comics were not being distributed into the UK. Len Miller had the rights to publish British editions of many cowboy comics, and later initiated the creation of some home grown Western strips. 

The book has been written by John Fairclough and designed by Mike Higgs. The print run is very limited and the price is £20 including postage and packing. You can order your copy by paying £20 via PayPal to blasebooks@aol.com or by cheque made payable to Blasé, and posted to:
Blasé Books,
Hazelwood,
Birchfield Road,
Redditch,
B97 6PU.

Overseas customers please contact Blasé for international postage rates. 

Thanks to Blasé Books I've been sent an exclusive preview of a few pages to showcase on this blog. Enjoy, and Go West, Young Fan! 

UPDATE 9th November 2014: Having now seen a copy of the book I can see it's certainly a worthy volume for any comic enthusiast's bookshelf. Bearing in mind this only covers the cowboy comics published by L.Miller, there were an incredible number of different titles on the newsagent's shelves back in the Fifties. 

John Fairclough takes us on a journey through the comics, giving background information on the movie stars various titles were based on, plus essential info on the comics of course, and any differences between the original American comics and the reprints. (It seems Len Miller could be a bit conservative at times, and he censored some of the pre-code strips before reprinting them.) 

The book has a clear layout by Mike Higgs and hundreds of comic covers are shown. In fact it's closer to over 1,000 covers I would guess, as there are an average of four or five covers to most pages.

This is a superb window into the past and a book well worth buying.