It’s the galaxy’s greatest podcast – The 2000 AD Thrill-Cast brings you more from the worlds of 2000 AD!
With the sad news that comics legend Ian Kennedy has passed away at the age of 89, Molch-R talks with three people who knew Ian both professionally and personally – Martha Julian from the Thought Bubble convention where Ian was a regular guest of honour, Phillip B Vaughan from the University of Abertay, and Mark Seddon, who worked to bring Ian’s work to the masses. They discuss the life, work, and legacy of an artist whose career spanned seven decades.
On a brighter note, Molch-R also announces the star-studded online convention to celebrate 45 years of 2000 AD. The Galaxy’s Greatest: 2000 AD at 45 is being held online on 26 and 27 March. For more info, go to 2000AD.com
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Find Phillip on Twitter: www.twitter.com/phillipbvaughan Find Martha on Twitter: www.twitter.com/marfage Find Mark on Twitter: www.twitter.com/IanKennedyArt1 Find Molch-R on Twitter: www.twitter.com/molcher
The 2000 AD Thrill-Cast is the award-winning podcast that takes you behind-the-scenes at the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic with creator interviews, panels, and more! You can subscribe to the Thrill-Cast on your favourite podcast app, iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. You can also listen now at 2000AD.com/podcast or you can watch at youtube.com/2000ADonline
Everyone at 2000 AD is very saddened to learn of the passing of artist Ian Kennedy.
It is no hyperbole to describe Kennedy as a legend of British comics. With a career spanning more than seven decades, his meticulously detailed but dynamic work graced dozens of titles, from Hotspur to Bunty, from Commando to 2000 AD.
Born in Dundee in 1932, Kennedy was too young for service during World War Two but the planes flying overhead sparked a lifelong obsession with aircraft. After leaving school, he began work as a trainee illustrator in the Art Department of comic and magazine publisher DC Thomson & Co, where his first job was inking the black boxes of the crossword in the Sunday Post.
He switched to more lucrative freelancing in 1954, picking up jobs with Amalgamated Press — later IPC — through an agent, but continuing to work for DC Thomson. He worked on a dizzying number of titles, including Hotspur, Adventure, Rover, Bunty, Judy, Wizard, Thriller Picture Library, and Air Ace.
As tastes changed, so did the audience for his work. His style adapted perfectly to the new generation of science-fiction comics like 2000 AD, for which he worked on strips such as ‘Invasion’, ‘Judge Dredd’ and ‘M.A.C.H.1’, as well as on ‘Ro-Busters’ for stablemate Star Lord. One of his most famous covers featured the perfect intersection of the different parts of his career – Messerschmitt 109s from World War Two transported to the skies over Judge Dredd’s Mega-City One, with one pilot screaming “Himmel! This isn’t Stalingrad!”.
His richly coloured art, with his particular skill for sleek, dynamic and functional machines and spacecraft, was perfect for the relaunch of ‘Dan Dare’ in Eagle in the 1980s as well as Blake’s 7, M.A.S.K., the short-lived IPC title Wildcat.
But it was World War Two and his childhood love of aircraft that dominated his career, he produced more than 1,600 covers for DC Thomson’s classic war comic, Commando, as well as covers for Warlord, Victor, War Picture Library, Battle, Red Dagger and more.
In the age before credit boxes, many artists of Kennedy’s generation laboured in obscurity, unaware of the impact their work had on so many young minds. Fortunately, this was not the case for Kennedy, the internet and convention appearances allowing him to meet his fans and come to understand just how popular his art was and remains.
His humility and easy, unassuming, friendly manner endeared him to all who met him. Even though he had semi-retired, he continued working – producing covers for comics and graphic novels that betrayed no lessening of his talent.
We have lost another titan of British comics, it is no exaggeration to call Ian Kennedy irreplaceable.
Everyone at 2000 AD and Rebellion sends his family their deepest condolences.
Ian’s cover for 2000 AD Prog 446 (1985)Art from Ro-Busters: Midpoint (Starlord, 1798)Art from Ro-Busters: Farnborough Droid Show (Starlord, 1978)Art from Wildcat (1988) Cover for 2000 AD Prog 1961 (2015)
This brand new collection brings together the original story of Black Beth, first developed in the early 1970s by an unknown writer and Spanish artist Blas Gallego and appearing only once a decade later, alongside the modern revival by writer Alec Worley (Star Wars) and with stunning art from rising star DaNi (Coffin Bound).
In a world of swords and sorcery, the evil tyrant Rassau discovers that he is destined to be killed by a fearsome warrior called Beth. Together with his men, Rassau seeks Beth out, destroying her village and killing all held dear to her. With the aid of a former warrior – the blind Quido – Beth becomes a skilled fighter and sworn enemy of all that is evil! She will not rest until her people are avenged!
This brilliantly resurrected series mixes the best of sword-and-sorcery comics in the vein of Conan and Red Sonja, with a fresh perspective and stunning artwork!
Out on 8 June, the collection is available in both paperback and a webshop exclusive hardcover, featuring art from the original Black Beth story by Blas Gallego.
The Spider: Crime Unlimited collection is out now!
Never reprinted before, this hardcover collection brings together the pulp adventure stories of The Spider from the Picture Library series written by Jerry Siegel (Superman) and Donne Avenell (Adam Eterno)!
Don’t miss this collection of long-lost and fast-paced stories that helped make The Spider one of British comics’ greatest anti-hero comic strips!
The Spider is the uncrowned king of the New York underworld, so elusive to the police that he even manages to taunt the Police Commissioner at his retirement party. But Professor Aldo Cummings, a famous but ill-tempered scientist, determined to stop the schemes of the Spider once and for all, invents a ray-machine which will eliminate the evil from a person’s personality. But a tragic miscalculation will turn Professor Cummings into the Professor of Power, and he will seek a more direct confrontation with the Spider!
This hardcover book (measuring 245 × 177mm) follows the The Spider’s Syndicate of Crime collection from earlier this year. It is available to buy now from the Treasury of British Comics webshop, online retailers, and all good book and comic book stores, as well as digitally from our webshop and through the 2000 AD app.
The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire Vol.4 is now available to pre-order!
The best-selling science-fiction classic series continues with a fourth omnibus collecting the stories published from 1973 through to 1976.
Out on 25 May, it is available in a standard paperback edition or a webshop exclusive hardcover featuring a brand new cover by legendary artist John Burns (Judge Dredd, Nikolai Dante, Modesty Blaize).
Don Lawrence’s painted art continues to be a highlight of the series but, as he takes a sabbatical from the strip, Miguel Quesada and Philip Corke match his impressive work with their own style.
The Trigan Empire remains resilient against enemies on all fronts, from treacherous politicians, murderous Zith assassins, and alien invaders, Trigo and Janno protect the citizens of Elekton.
The Treasury of British Comics archive encompasses not just the largest collection of English language comics in the world but also more than a century of publishing of all kinds. In his regular look at classic British comics, David McDonald focuses not on one title in the archive – but all of them…
Since launching in 2016, the Treasury of British comics has brought us a plethora of classic comic collections from their archive. At the bottom of this very page, you will see it proudly proclaimed that The Treasury of British Comics is ‘The world’s largest archive of English-language comic books’.
I wonder have many ever actually considered how vast this archive actually is?
While we have all been enjoying reprint collections from the sixties to the present, these just represent the tip of the iceberg of material from that era and, in turn, that material is just the tip of the iceberg of the complete archive.
To get an idea of its size we need to go back to the late 19th Century and the burgeoning publishing empire of Alfred and Harold Harmsworth, who first published Comic Cuts in 1890. The Harmsworth brothers were publishing pioneers, taking advantage of the increasing reading ability across the population to launch cheap reading material.
The late 1800s saw them launch titles aimed at various demographics; boys story papers, women’s magazines and even newspapers, the ‘Daily Mail’ being one! A routine issue of The Halfpenny Marvel, issue six in December 1893, was one of their most important releases of the time, but more of that later.
In 1901 Harmsworth consolidated their various publishing interests into a single entity called ‘The Amalgamated Press’ and in 1912 the company moved into a building called ‘Fleetway House’.
From 1901, The Amalgamated Press launched waves of titles aimed at every demographic, nursery, boys, girls and general interest. There was a range of different formats too, from paperback pocket books to story papers – which contained serialised novels and short stories – to A3-size comics and magazines. Over the following decades titles would be cancelled after reaching their natural end and fresh titles launched that reflected the style and trends of the times.
The publishers were not averse to jump on current trends, launching Film Fun in 1920. This coincided with the rise in popularity of cinemas. Similarly, Radio Fun was launched in 1938 when the radio stars were starting to enter the kitchens of houses around the UK and Ireland.
‘Billy Bunter’, ‘Greyfriars’ and the phenomenon of boarding school stories, which was a firm middle class aspiration for many, proved a great selling point for big-selling titles like The Gem and The Magnet when they launched in 1907 and 1908. ‘Bunter’ creator and author Charles Hamilton built his reputation on these titles as the world’s most prolific author. Boarding school stories also appeared in girls’ titles like School Friends/Schoolgirl. ‘Bunter’ and ‘Greyfriars’ also made the leap to the new mass media with adaptations for radio and television.
Going back to issue six of the Halfpenny Marvel from 1893, the importance of that issue was the introduction of The Amalgamated Press’s most important character and major asset for the first half of the 20th Century: Sexton Blake.
Blake was the star of the Union Jack story paper, but he also appeared in Illustrated Chips, The Boys Friend, Marvel Library, Sexton Blake Library and many others. These were all text stories, but he would later appear in Knock-Out and Valiant in comic form.
Blake was big business for AP, with his exploits selling in the millions and also transferring to stage, radio, and screen. Blake was also one of the longest characters in print, published from 1893 to 1970 (there are reprint titles after 1970, but these were not published by IPC).
However, while Roy of the Rovers and Judge Dredd are catching up, they all have a bit to go before they beat the longest-running character in the archive – the nursery character Tiger Tim, who first appeared in the magazine The World & his Wife in the late 1800s, then in Rainbow and Tiger Tim’s weekly, right up to the 1980s in Playhour.
Wartime brought its own difficulties to the publishing world. From 1939 to 1946 the story paper ‘Champion’ went from 28 pages to 16, lost its colour cover, was reduced in size by a third, and increased in price by 50 per cent! Paper shortages and inflation meant Champion did well to survive the war; other titles were cancelled, but AP did re-launch War Illustrated to some success, which had also been published during the Great war.
Along the way, The Amalgamated Press absorbed other companies like ‘Traps Holmes’ ‘Cassells’ and ‘J.B. Allen’, and then in 1959, The Amalgamated Press itself was taken over by the Mirror Group and renamed ‘Fleetway Publications’. Fleetway saw a range of new titles, reflecting the changing times.; Buster and Valiant were launched, Lion and Tiger were updated, and titles like Knock-Out and Radio Fun were cancelled.
Picture libraries started in the fifties and, under the Fleetway banner, expanded to be an important part of the publisher’s output in the sixties and seventies. Romance titles that had started in the fifties also found success in the sixties, morphing into the girl’s teen magazines like Pink and Mirabelle in the seventies.
The Mirror Group also purchased the publisher ‘Odhams’ (which itself had previously bought publishers ‘Hulton’ and ‘Newnes’), creating the company IPC in 1963. The merger with ‘Odhams’ brought its Power line of comics like Smash, Pow and Wham into the archive. Later in the sixties, some of ‘City Magazines’ comics like TV21 and Penelope also became part of the archive.
In 1968 all the various entities publishing comics owned by IPC, such as Fleetway and Odhams, were consolidated and renamed IPC Magazines. At this stage IPC was reckoned to be the biggest publisher in the world.
IPC Magazines brought another slew of titles to the archive, with a line of humour and girls’ titles starting in the seventies, as well as Action, Battle, 2000 AD and Starlord. The seventies are seen as one of the golden ages of British comics.
The late eighties and nineties are well documented for the decline in the traditional British comic market, but it did bring a new type of comic to the archive. Licensed comics like Action Force, Mask, Sonic the Comic and the million selling Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles are all there.
To get a grasp on the actual amount of material contained in the archive, consider five of the titles with the longest longevity in the archive over the last century or so: 2000 AD, Comic Cuts, Illustrated Chips, The Champion, and War Picture Library. These have a cumulative total of nearly fifteen thousand issues, and an estimated quarter of a million pages!
That figure is only for five titles, the true number of individual titles in the archive is in the hundreds – and this is not just comics and story papers, but also includes non-fiction, magazines and novels.
The actual page count is in the millions.
The importance of this archive goes far beyond the very enjoyable collections of classic characters’ adventures.
A major part of the archive is from a time before the proliferation of the smartphone, the internet, television and even radio. Print was the social media, the Google of its day. So, in addition to the sterling adventures, laughs and romance contained in the archive, there is also a glimpse into social attitudes and norms, political mood and the changes in them over the decades. It gives a fabulous insight into the war efforts and how it was used as a very effective propaganda tool. It also charts changes in technology and fashion, social mobility, race relations and, my favourite, the ads!
The archive is bursting with over a century of iconic characters and stories, but there is so much more, and I look forward to seeing what else the custodians of the archive bring to us in the future.
Further Reading:
Friardale.co.uk is an excellent resource on Story Papers, especially anything ‘Bunter’ related
The Blakiana section of Mark Hodder’s site, mark-hodder.com, has everything you need to know about ‘Sexton Blake’
‘Judge Dredd’ writer Mike Carroll has great infographics on the various mergers of AP/IPC/Fleetway on his Rusty Staples blog
David McDonald is the publisher of Hibernia Comics and editor of Hibernia’s collections of classic British comics, titles include The Tower King, Doomlord, The Angry Planet and The Indestructible Man. He is also the author of the Comic Archive series exploring British comics through interviews and articles. Hibernia’s titles can be bought here www.comicsy.co.uk/hibernia. Follow him on Twitter @hiberniabooks and Facebook @HiberniaComics
All opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Rebellion, its owners, or its employees.
Discover the fascinating history of British comics with 35% off the gorgeous Masters of British Comic Art in hardcover and digital.
Nominated for ‘Best comics-related book’ at the 2021 Eisner Awards, this wildly entertaining and educational tome is a journey through the history of British comics – from the birth of the 20th century to the ‘80s invasion of American comics and through to today’s best contemporary artists!
A high-production hardcover compendium perfect as a coffee table book or academic encyclopedia, Masters of British Comics is painstakingly researched. Behind a brand new cover by superstar artist Brian Bolland, and featuring artwork from a vast number highly-acclaimed artists carefully scanned from original artwork, Masters of British Comic Art is the definitive study and celebration of a beloved industry!
Featuring a Who’s Who of talent, including Brian Bolland, Yvonne Hutton, Dave Gibbons, celebrated greats such as Don Lawrence and lost masters like Reg Bunn and Shirley Bellwood.
Author and 2000 AD artist David Roach takes us on a journey through time detailing the surprising and fascinating evolution of the art from its humble beginnings to its current world-conquering status.
A sweeping historical fantasy with stunning art from one of British comics’ undisputed masters, the first Karl the Viking collection is out now!
Following its best-selling reprints of his The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire series, the Treasury of British Comics brings one of master artist Don Lawrence’s most popular and enduring comic book strips back into print.
The paperback collection is now available to buy alongside the limited webshop exclusive hardcover, with a brand new cover by breakout comics artist Tom Foster (Judge Dredd)
Originally serialised in Lion, Karl the Viking is a sweeping historical fantasy story of an orphaned Saxon boy, adopted and raised by the Viking Eingar after his raid on Britain. Upon coming of age Karl succeeds Eingar and leads his tribe into battle in Britain against wild tribes of Picts, and re-connects with his old Saxon family, gaining an ally in his cousin Godwulf, and making an enemy of the Earl of Eastumbria.
These fast-paced stories were drawn by Don Lawrence shortly before he revolutionised painted comic art with The Trigan Empire, when he was already a master of pen and ink, and his Karl the Viking series was the pinnacle of black and white comic art.
They depended on him – and the world depended on them! The first collection of The Sarge is now available to pre-order.
Written by Gerry Finley-Day and drawn by Mike Western, this gritty World War Two series was one of the most popular in the pages of the revolutionary Battle Picture Weekly in the late 1970s.
British Sergeant Jim Masters, a veteran of WW1, has to shepherd his inexperienced but over-confident platoon. From Dunkirk to North Africa, the might of the German army face the ultimate adversaries when Masters and his boys spring into action!
With colour centre spreads restored to their former glory, this hardcover collection really is Battle at its best!
Before his incredible artwork on The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire, Don Lawrence had already proven himself to be a unique and stunning talent with his work on historical fantasy series Karl the Viking for the pages of Lion.
Continuing our series of short essays commissioned from selected comics critics that explore 2000 AD and the Treasury of British Comics’ latest graphic novel collections, Doris V. Sutherland reviews the epic sweep of this breathtakingly drawn series…
Created by artist Don Lawrence and writer Ted Cowan, Karl the Viking was one of the more durable features to appear in Lion, not only running for a chunk of the sixties but also being reprinted multiple times since then. Now, Karl’s first six adventures have been gathered together for a Treasury of British Comics collection, allowing both newcomers and the nostalgic alike to see just what made this character a hit with Lion’s readers…
The first tale, “The Sword of Eingar”, includes Karl’s origin story. The saga opens with a band of Vikings pillaging a Saxon village. One of the Saxons takes arms against the Viking leader, Eignar the manslayer; and although the Saxon is defeated, Eingar is impressed by the man’s skill (“Indeed this is no ordinary Saxon! He fights like a man–like a Viking!”). He decides to adopt the Saxon’s orphaned baby, naming the boy Karl and raising him “in the harsh, barbaric manner of the Norsemen.” Karl grows into something of an inbetweener, inheriting the martial skill of the Vikings while retaining the wisdom and nobility that the comic associates with Saxons.
After Eingar disturbs a Celtic burial ground, a mysterious crone shows up and curses the Vikings. Sure enough, bad luck follows and Eingar disappears. Karl is next in line to become chief, but his ethnic background proves a point of contention. And so, he is forced to compete with a brutal Viking named Skurl to find Eingar’s sword and prove himself worthy. Along the way, Karl meets his Saxon kindred and strikes a deal with the locals: “If I become chieftain of his markland, this village will never again suffer at Viking hands”. The story’s finale puts Karl against both his rival Skurl and the villainous nobleman who killed Eingar.
Much of Karl the Viking feels like a halfway point between the worthy history lessons of the Eagle and the unabashed, escapist pulp of its less reputable rivals. Don Lawrence’s artwork is lavish stuff indeed, produced in an era when historical comics were treated as an extension to schoolbook illustrations. The characters are rendered with care, as are the backgrounds of thatched villages, craggy cliffs, foreboding forests and roaring seas. The weapons, armour and sailing vessels are similarly detailed, although as the strip progresses, it becomes clear that Karl inhabits a carefree mash-up of different eras. The stories are often violent but, in contrast to the later likes of Action and 2000 AD, bloodshed is seldom front-and-centre, instead being left to the imagination or summarised in textual captions (“Soon the crackle of flames from plundered cottages mingled with the screams of the dying”).
In Ted Cowan’s scripts, romance trumps historical accuracy. Karl’s adventures have a thick vein of fantasy: characters divine images in smoke or water, while thunderbolts appear at fortuitous moments as though hurled by Thor himself. “The Sword of Eingar” plays things relatively safe in this respect, but the second story plunges headlong into fanciful adventures with anachronisms that would make Asterix blush.
In “The Long Voyage to Oxaca” Karl meets a small group of Mesoamericans who were set adrift at sea. One of them happens to be the rightful heir to the throne, and Karl is duty-bound to get the boy-king Tihuana back home again. The journey takes Karl and company to some remarkable places: a land in which peaceful cavemen need help fending themselves against hostile neanderthals and even dinosaurs; Atlantis, shortly before its destruction; and a vast river that is familiar to the Aztecs (“We call it the Amazona, which means ‘the breaker of boats’!”) The weirdness continues to the very end of the journey. After making the brisk trip from the Amazon to Mexico, Karl must face Tihuana’s evil uncle and his soldiers – who wear what appears to be Mongolian armour. Did Genghis Khan reach the Americas before the Vikings…?
“Selgor the Wolf” puts Karl on a journey to find the fabled riches of Woden, said to be located under a gigantic yellow eye. The climax sums up how Karl’s adventures teeter between magic and rationalism. The “eye” turns out to be a giant mirror capable of reflecting sunlight and burning ships; if ancient writers are to be believed, such a device was actually invented by Archimedes. Yet the treasure’s guardian is pure fantasy: a gigantic caterpillar-like creature that catches humans on its tongue the way a frog catches flies. Serving as antagonist in this story is the berserker Selgor, a man prone to taking on a lupine aspect when hit by bloodlust (“Look! His face has changed! He’s more like an animal!”). Selgor returns in “The False God”, now masquerading as Thor – and convincing enough Vikings that Karl is deemed a blasphemer. In another anachronistic flourish, the action climaxes in Sicily – which is apparently still populated by ancient Romans.
The weirdest story in the collection is “The Powers of Helvud”. This time around the enemy is not a mortal man but rather a swarm of fungal spores, depicted as small winged globes, that blow into Karl’s homeland from afar and form growths resembling clenched fists (“By Odin, they look too much like human hands!”) The Vikings try cooking the fungus, and despite Karl’s protestations (“Fools, the fungus is accursed! It has been sent by a demon-of-darkness”) one man actually eats it, promptly going violently mad and glowing. This turns out to be the work of an evil spirit named Helvud, who commands a forest full of tree-demons – and who himself turns out t resemble a gigantic specimen of hand-fungus (“Odin, god of battles, ride on your eight-hooved horse and grant us life until the evil of the fungus has been crushed!”). The final story, “El Sarid the Merciless”, is comparatively sedate, Karl’s opponent being a Saracen hypnotist.
Whether it is depicting grimy, quasi-historical combat or plunging headlong into sword-and-sorcery, Karl the Viking remains a sumptuous strip, standing out from its contemporaries just as its handsome protagonist stands out amongst his uncouth warriors.
Doris V. Sutherlandis the UK-based author behind the independent comic series Midnight Widows and official tie-ins for television series including Doctor Who and The Omega Factor. She has contributed articles to Women Write About Comics, Amazing Stories, Killer Horror Critic, Belladonna Magazine and other outlets.
