Review: Spaceship Away No.36

The latest issue of Spaceship Away has arrived, and it's a cracking issue! Published three times a year, issue 36 has 40 full colour pages with a solid content of top material. 

There's a brand new cover by the great Don Harley, who also contributes a back page illustration of Dan Dare. In the centrespread this issue there's a new illustration of Dan and Digby vs The Mekon, drawn by veteran illustrator Gerry Embleton. You may remember Gerry drew the initial new Dan Dare strip for the revived Eagle in 1982, but this time he tackles the original Dan, and it's a great illustration. (No, I'm not showing it here. Buy the issue to see it for yourselves.)

The all-new adventures of Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future continue in the serials Parsecular Tales and Mercury Revenant, both by Tim Booth. Incredibly detailed artwork. I still think these strips need a resumé box to bring readers up to speed. Four months is a long time to wait between issues and with all that people have going on in their lives it's difficult to remember the story so far without help. I appreciate that space is tight but perhaps by the use of a smaller font size a resumé could appear on page two every issue, beside the editorial?

There are two main articles in this issue and they're both excellent. I'm sure all fans of the classic Eagle will enjoy The Bruce Cornwell Story, a ten page feature  written by Bruce's son Anthony, with quotes from his father. A fascinating account of the artist's life and career.

The other article is a four page resumé by Jeremy Briggs of the strips that Dave Gibbons illustrated for The Hotspur and The Wizard in the mid 1970s. This is invaluable information for the many fans of Dave's work. I wasn't aware of most of the strips myself, not being a follower of those comics at the time. (Although I did cover The Year of the Shark Men recently. See here for that post.)

Other strips in this issue are 1950s reprints Jet Morgan in The World Next Door, humour strip Davy Rocket, and part 2 of Ron Turner's Nick Hazard and the Planet of Doom, coloured by Martin Baines.

There's also a free 20 page mini book featuring Chapter One of the prose story Operation Tau Ceti by Denis Steeper. 

As I said, all in all it's a great issue! It'll be available to order soon from the Spaceship Away website:
http://spaceshipaway.org.uk/

Here comes Spaceship Away No.35

Part 35 of Spaceship Away thudded through my letterbox this morning and it's a cracking issue to herald the 65th anniversary of Dan Dare. The excellent cover is by veteran Dan Dare artist Don Harley and he's also painted a fantastic centrespread featuring Colonel Dare and crew, plus an exclusive back cover of Chaplain Dan Dare, based on the original concept of the character as a vicar in space!

Inside this 40 page full colour issue there are two brand new Dan Dare strips by Tim Booth featuring the latest chapters of Parsecular Tales and Mercury Revenant. I'm pleased to see that Tim is now using a better lettering font than Comic Sans. This new font suits his work far better. 

Other strips in this issue include the start of the 1950s Jet Morgan serial The World Next Door drawn by Terence Patrick and a Ron Turner Nick Hazard story Planet of Doom, coloured by Martin Baines. 

It's good to see two humour strips joining the comic too, with Ray Aspden's new Thunderpants page and an uncredited Davy Rocket strip. I think Davy Rocket is a 1950s reprint but there's no information in the mag.

There are some great articles in this issue too. Alan Vince has written a six page feature on the artist Harold Johns, very well illustrated with examples of his work. Andrew Darlington looks back on 1969's Lion and Eagle merger and how it affected the Dan Dare reprints, and Jeremy Briggs writes about The Lost Eagle, the proposed 1973 revival of the comic that never reached fruition. There's the cover by Frank Bellamy of the dummy issue below but you'll see it full page size in Spaceship Away.

All in all it's a splendid issue and well worth checking out if you've never read it. Spaceship Away is published three times a year, with high production values to its printing. A quality product. You can order issues from the website here:
http://spaceshipaway.org.uk/

Thunderbirds in the comics

Unless you've been living on Mars (with those pesky Rock Snakes) you probably know there's a brand new Thunderbirds series coming to TV this Spring, entitled Thunderbirds Are Go. A mixture of CGI and models it promises to put a new spin on the old favourites but remaining true to the basics. 

What you may also know is that last October it was announced that DC Thomson will be publishing a monthly Thunderbirds Are Go magazine this year, plus an annual. Thomsons are being very hush-hush about it so there's no news on contents or publication date as yet but I'll post info as soon as I get the go ahead. (Although you'll probably hear of it elsewhere first.)

This isn't the first time there's been a Thunderbirds magazine of course. The series has a long association with comics, dating back to TV Century 21 No.52 in early 1966 (cover above) which featured the first Thunderbirds comic strip illustrated by the great Frank Bellamy...

The Thunderbirds strip replaced the Lady Penelope strip (which had been running in TV21 since issue 1 in January 1965). However this heralded a promotion, with Lady Penelope gaining her own weekly publication. 

Thunderbirds became a major part of TV21 but never had its own ongoing comic at that time, although in 1966 there was the Thunderbirds Extra, a 48 page glossy one-off which effectively was the first Thunderbirds solo comic...

The special featured several long complete Thunderbirds strips by a variety of top 1960s artists including Brian Lewis...

Don Harley...

...and Ron Turner...

There were other Thunderbirds specials and annuals of course, but I'm mainly focusing on the regular comics for this post. 

TV21's Thunderbirds strip ended in 1970. A year later, Polystyle gained the licence to publish strips based on Gerry Anderson shows and launched Countdown (see blog post here)...

A brand new Thunderbirds strip began in Countdown No.1, illustrated by Don Harley...

Countdown became TV Action in 1972 and its falling fortunes led to some reprint in its pages including Frank Bellamy Thunderbirds strips from TV21. TV Action later dropped the Thunderbirds strips before the comic ended in 1973 but nine years later in 1982 Polystyle published the Thunderbirds Special. This 48 page comic was all-reprint, gathering strips from various annuals and specials.

Presumably it sold well enough for Polystyle to publish two more Thunderbirds Specials in 1983 and 1984. Again, all reprint.

A few years later, in 1988, Action 21 was launched, published by David Nightingale of Engale Marketing in Blackpool (based at Lytham Road's excellent Thunderbooks comic shop). Superbly designed by Graham Bleathman, Action 21 was a 20 page A4 comic on quality paper, containing sharply reproduced reprints of TV21 strips including Bellamy's Thunderbirds. Sadly the limited distribution comic didn't last too long but it was a worthy exercise. (Back issues are still available from the publisher. Click here to see.)

In 1991, with Thunderbirds enjoying a revived surge of popularity for a new generation (due to repeats on TV), Fleetway launched Thunderbirds the Comic, a 24 page fortnightly edited by Alan Fennell who had been the original editor of TV21, as well as a writer on the TV series.

For its first three issues Thunderbirds the Comic only contained reprints of TV21 strips (plus great new cutaways by Graham Bleathman) but from issue 4 it began to include new material in the form of strip adaptations of TV episodes featuring fantastic artwork by people such as Steve Kyte and Keith Watson...

Thunderbirds the Comic was initially a massive success for Fleetway and ran for 89 issues, concluding in March 1995. Convinced there was still potential in the comic, Alan Fennell gained the licence to publish it himself as Thunderbirds Are Go! 

For a few issues it was cheaper than its predecessor but Thunderbirds Are Go! didn't survive for long. (I think it lasted 8 issues.) Its contents were once again TV21 reprints plus photo-strips using screen grabs from the TV series. (Unfortunately the quality of the photos wasn't too good in issue one, with some looking like they'd simply been photographed from the TV screen.)

In 1999 Redan launched their own Thunderbirds monthly magazine, with a slick design in tune with other Thunderbirds merchandise of the time.

The direction of Redan's Thunderbirds mag was distinctly younger than previous publications featuring the property. Its emphasis was on simply told photo-stories and activity pages (and new cutaways by Graham Bleathman)...

Undoubtedly this was a disappointment for older fans but it proved to be the right decision by Redan as the publication ran for several years. 

So... what will DC Thomson's new Thunderbirds Are Go magazine be like when it arrives on our shelves? The last 49 years of Thunderbirds comics (and indeed British comics in general) have shown a gradual simplification in tone. TV21 was very sophisticated compared to today's comics, but that didn't deter readers back in 1965. (I was five years old when TV21 No.1 was published. Loved it!) 

The old attitude in publishing used to be that if your comic was aimed at 5 to 11 year olds, you'd write it for the older end of the target audience and the younger ones would catch up (and feel 'big' that they were reading something that wasn't 'babyish') - because children will drop a comic like a stone if they think it's infantile. Publishers could take risks like that when sales were half a million or so. Today it's a different scene, with many children struggling with their reading, a culture with more emphasis on visuals, and publishers not wanting to risk alienating the ones who do pick up their mags. It's possible that Thunderbirds Are Go will follow the direction of Doctor Who Adventures and suchlike and have a focus on 'activity pages' and pull-out posters - and inevitably be bagged with gifts. We'll know soon enough. The good thing is that once again there'll be a Thunderbirds magazine in newsagents (hopefully with some comic strip). 

For a more detailed history of Thunderbirds comic strips see the excellently researched Technodelic website:
http://www.technodelic.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Upload01/Thunderbirds01.htm

UPDATE: I've just received this first image of the new character designs for the new series. What do you think, folks?

SOLO (1967)

The 1960s were a prolific time for comics and many were selling in tremendous numbers. Some however didn't fare so well. One of those was Solo, published by City Magazines and Century 21 Publishing, which lasted just 31 weeks.

With the successes of TV Century 21 and Lady Penelope, City/Century 21 clearly felt confident enough to expand their line. They launched TV Tornado and the bizarrely unsettling nursery comic Candy in January 1967, swiftly followed by Solo a month later.

Solo was a bit of an odd mixture to begin with. Some of its contents were licensed Walt Disney strips, while the rest of the comic covered other TV programmes. This meant it contained things such as a strip adaptation of Disney's version of Mary Poppins...

...running alongside the adventures of The Man from UNCLE...

Two different target audiences in one comic. A recipe for disaster. 

The main focus on the early issues was the inclusion of The Scarecrow, based on the new Disney TV mini-series starring Patrick McGoohan (shown in the UK as the movie Dr.Syn alias The Scarecrow). The full colour centrespread of the comic featured the comic strip drawn by Dan Spiegle, although I understand this was edited together from the American comic published by Gold Key.

Solo also featured other reprints from American comics such as the Super Goof and Uncle Scrooge short stories. There were home-grown funnies too, with a Sgt.Bilko page drawn by Tom Kerr...

...an originated Batman spoof, Fatman and Sparrow, also by Tom Kerr...

...and a strip based on US comedy Run, Buddy, Run drawn initially by Reg Parlett!

The back page featured an advertising strip drawn specially for Solo, - Dinky Driver drawn by Jon Davis. (Rivaling TV21's Corgo Model Club News.) 

All in all, a strange mixture of stories with no one strip being a huge draw. (I remember giving up after issue 1, completely disinterested and put off by Mary Poppins which I considered too babyish by the time I was old enough for The Man from UNCLE and Sgt.Bilko.) It was inevitable the comic would have to change.

That change came quickly with issue 19, heralding a redesigned logo and more of an inclination towards its older age group. The masthead also now carried the words 'Anti-Mysteron Edition', and warnings about the Mysteron threat. As the Captain Scarlet TV series hadn't even begun yet, this may have led to a few confused readers. 

Unsurprisingly, the revamp didn't help sales and Solo published its last issue dated September 16th 1967, still a week or two before Captain Scarlet began on ITV. Its chilling cover headlining the 'Victims of the Mysterons', - presumably photos of staff members at City Magazines. 

Inside, Spectrum News tied in with the cover story, and was equally bleak, whipping up its young readers' paranoia against an imaginary menace.

Preparations were under way for Solo to merge into TV Tornado, although the announcement was fairly underwhelming...

That issue also carried the first episode of The Mysterons, - a three page strip telling the story from the point of view of Spectrum's antagonists! As in the TV series, it's Earth who inadvertently begin the war. Art by Don Harley.

A new non-licensed adventure strip had begun with the revamp, - Tomorrow West, about a time traveller stuck in the old West. 

Solo was a slick production; 24 glossy pages, excellent Photogravure reproduction, but I think its initial uncomfortable mix of stories and its later Mysteron-themed items (before the TV series had even aired) did it no favours.

You can read more about Solo and other Century 21 titles at the excellent Technodelic website: 
http://www.technodelic.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Upload02/MarkoftheMysterons.htm