Rebellion reveal their plans for classic Fleetway characters

[big bad bri]

I have yet to read my buster collection but when i add new ones to it Marney the fox stands out and it looks good and perhaps may be tinged with sadness in places as im an animal lover,i may even have accumulated all the parts now as i have most late 70s buster by now am sure just not sure how long it ran.

[Richard S.]

never come across Marney in any shape or form so I'm particularly intrigued by this (seemingly rather left-field) choice

[SID]

I never read Marney the Fox so am looking forward to getting/reading it.

[SID]

Oh great.... Reprints...

I sincerely hope to be proven wrong but it's hard to see a market for these past various 40/50 somethings buying one to regale their kids with.

Who'll look up from their phones for maybe a couple seconds, shrug, then go back tagging pictures of their friends in embaressing photos.

It's weird that for the most part the characters they've chosen to reprint are extremely derivative of stuff that was pretty old hat even when they were first published.

One Eyed Jack being Dirty Harry, Leopard of Lime St being Spider-Man etc. The article called it right on the nose with that.

I hope they got the archive and rights for a complete song if they didn't it has the makings of an almighty white elephant.

All that said, I'll buy a copy of each.

Fingers crossed that they will be successful. Obviously Misty must have done well to warrant a second volume.

[Lew Stringer]

Heidi MacDonald's excellent blog The Beat has expanded information about the books:

http://www.comicsbeat.com/2000ad-launch ... it-comics/

[big bad bri]

Lew's link says it is a new cover by john Stokes on the Marney the Fox GN.lets hope future reprints can commission new cover artwork from the original artists still around,the story also also mentions the Dracula files from scream is this correct Lew?

[Lew Stringer]

Lew's link says it is a new cover by john Stokes on the Marney the Fox GN.lets hope future reprints can commission new cover artwork from the original artists still around,the story also also mentions the Dracula files from scream is this correct Lew?

Heidi's blog is the first to mention The Dracula Files but she's only working from info received so it must be right. It's only been two years since Hibernia collected those stories though so I'm not sure if it's a good idea to bring it back in print again unless it carries additional material.
https://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2015 ... trips.html

[philcom55]

I'm so pleased that Marney will be collected at last. I haven't read many episodes but from what I've seen it was John's best work for IPC. He's a vastly underrated comic artist so I hope this book will give him more recognition amongst fans and the public. I consider him easily on par with any artist who's worked in comics.

A few years ago on this very site I asked John if he considered Marney the Fox to be his best work and he was gracious enough to reply as follows:

"...it was a labour of love, and I hope it comes through that whatever the pressure of deadlines, I was determined to put everything into those pages that they seemed to need, regardless of the expence in terms of time spent on them. Even now, I think it ranks as one of my top three jobs in terms of enjoyment and satisfaction. I guess I must have flirted with the idea of branching off into wildlife painting, but the everyday battle of doing six or more pages a week didn't allow for it to be more than a pipe dream."

[koollectablz]

Marney will be very interesting as it should have actual mainstream appeal, and yes, its just incredibly illustrated.

Reprinting The Dracula Files again so soon doesn't really make any sense.

[big bad bri]

There's a lot of people who don't have the dracula files or don't know about hibernia as its not a big company just a passionate fan.i missed the reprints of dracula files and 13th floor myself and remember buying the Doomlord collection from Gosh comics years ago.but made sure i bought the recent scream one they did as that seems to have sold out too.

[David McDonald]

There's a lot of people who don't have the dracula files or don't know about hibernia as its not a big company

This is spot on. My initial idea/plan was to get the material in print, and get it exposure. The print runs are tiny, low hundreds, so anyone who has a Hibernia edition has a genuine collectors edition. Rebellion have the resources and the track record to do great edition of Drac and his mates from the archive.

[big bad bri]

Now we have Rebellion owning the back catalogue of british greats what does this mean for any future Titan projects such as johnny Red and Hookjaw or will that be it from Titan comics for classic fleetway/Ipc characters?

[Lew Stringer]

Here's the cover for The Leopard from Lime Street book.

[big bad bri]

Here's the cover for The Leopard from Lime Street book.

I cant wait lets hope its the 1st of many,i'd love to see rebellion do at least 2 graphic novels a month or there abouts as i'm sure there is enough material to last them years.

[comixminx]

I don't think two collections a month is realistic, Bri - there's a lot of work in just scanning the art and cleaning it up, because they need to scan from printed copies in most cases / the vast majority of cases. But as you say, I hope they keep the pace up as much as possible, of course!