Forthcoming Thrills - 2024

[IndigoPrime]

Nice to see it's possible to untangle rights occasionally so this sort of thing can happen. I wish someone would have managed this with Zoids. (IDW did try.)

[Barrington Boots]

Agreed. Excited to see these collected BAF strips.

[broodblik]

[The Monarch]

if they can get action force back into print...could we get sonic the comic eventually i wonder?

[IndigoPrime]

Sonic would surely be somewhat simpler, given that the licenses wouldn't be so complicated.

[Steve Green]

There's a sonic fan called Daniel Ratcliffe (not that one) who has done a great job making case files versions of the sonic comics as a personal project (he's up to vol. 3)



@dantwohundred over on twitter

[GordonR]

Sonic would surely be somewhat simpler, given that the licenses wouldn't be so complicated.

I think you might be very wrong there. Action Force is a dead franchise, while Sonic is very much alive, and IDW currently have the licence to make Sonic comics.

(Further complicating things. Archie Comics published their own Sonic comics in the 90s for the US market, and their version lasted well into the 2010s, long long after the UK Sonic was history.)

[The Monarch]

its a shame but gordons right one can only dream though

[IndigoPrime]

I think you might be very wrong there. Action Force is a dead franchise, while Sonic is very much alive, and IDW currently have the licence to make Sonic comics.

Fair enough. I would have thought under those circumstances the current rights holder could, if it chose, work with the previous one and Sega.

[Richard]

"If it chose" is doing a lot of work in that sentence!

[IndigoPrime]

Well, as in, if it chose to pursue a set of reprints. It's not like this is unheard of in publishing. I'm not suggesting it could magic up a set of reprints from nowhere.

[Dash Decent]

Has Hibernia's new title, Lost Treasures been mentioned anywhere yet?

It reprints "The Long Way Home" by Jesús Blasco and "Children of the Stars" by John M. Burns.  92 pages.

[Dash Decent]

Further, stolen from Hibernia's Facebook page (and slightly edited by me):

Lost Treasures collects two complete stories from "Treasure" by masters of comic art, John M Burns and Jesús Blasco.

The first story 'Children of the Stars' tells the tale of the adventures of the Zexton family, as they set out for a new life on the planet Alpha Nine. The story is wonderfully drawn in its entirety by the late John M Burns, as Colin Brown of the John M Burns Facebook art group says "Children of the Stars is one of the best examples, (of his B&W work), being an artistic bridge between his first SF strip Space Family Robinson in 1966 and one of his most fondly remembered, Countdown in 1971."

The second strip featured is 'The Long Way Home', drawn in its entirety by Spanish comic master Jesús Blasco. It is one of his finest works. It charts the long odyssey of two children searching to find their parents across the crumbling Roman empire in fourth century Britain. Blasco's art on this story is simply amazing, some of the finest B&W artwork to be published in British comics. David Roach, in his preface says of the art, "Each page, each panel, is a masterclass in black and white composition, something that was always there is his work of course, but reached its peak here. But of course, I don't have to wax lyrical about how wonderful the strip is because, at last, you can read the whole thing here, collected at last. You're in for a treat."

This is a little different to our usual collections, but fitting well within our goal of shining a light on lesser known or forgotten masterpieces in British comics.  It has been an ambition of mine to reprint these two stories since stumbling across them in old copies of Treasure.

Lost Treasures is 92 pages, perfect bound, B&W, with an intro by me, David McDonald, and including a preface to The Long Way Home by comic artist and historian David Roach, detailing Blasco's work in British comics in the sixties and seventies.

This book is limited to 200 copies. Get the best-looking comic collection of 2024 while you can!

[Colin YNWA]

Nice one. As ever with Hibernia ordered as soon as I heard about it.

[Fortnight]

Maybe Hibernia could do editions of the remaining stories from Wildcat. I thought Rebellion would do volumes for Kitten Magee, Joe Alien, and the Wildcat Complete after they'd done Turbo Jones and Loner, but it's been a while now so I'm assuming it's not cost effective for them.

It'd be nice to see some of that fabulous Jose Ortiz & Ron Smith art collected properly.