New Additions

[Terry Doyle]

Hi there

 

Yesterday, I took a two hour drive down to the Midlands (UK) to look through an archive of original British artwork from the 1960s onwards.

 

I was specifically looking for examples from three 1965 strips that ran in the anthology title, VALIANT.

 

The archive was like an Alladin's cave. Stacks and stacks of orginal art . . . no way to see a that much within the space of a short visit.

 

Luckily, I was able to locate a total of seven examples from three strips I remember well from that magical year of 1965, when I was a small boy, and some pieces of the nostalgia jigsaw have been put into place.

 

Three of the seven new additions:

 

The Steel Claw by Jesus Blasco

 

From THE STEEL CLAW (which my CAF episodes come from), there was a terrific storyline feauturing our hero's attempts to free a captured scientist being held by a traitor in a castle fortress. The Gothic mix contained elements of Roger Corman's 1960s feature fim adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe's "The pit and the Pendulum" (1961) and "The Masque of the Red Death" (1964). Also, part of the story is reminiscent of the British AVENGERS teleplay, "Castle De'ath". Artist Jesus Blasco's atmospheric b&w art superbly captures the gothic elements of the three sources of influence to perfection. An unbeatable combination for my collector's needs: Nostalgia and aesthetics.

 

Kelly's Eye by Francisco Solano Lopez

 

Tim Kelly, owner of the life-preserving Eye of Zoltec, was at the Italian village of Raffino when it was attacked by mysterious giant bats. The inhabitants feared that they were being punished for disturbing the remains of Count Varga, who had been a human vampire. Tim went to the late count's grim mansion and saw Gino, his grandson, being carried off by a giant bat. Then he returned to Raffino and discovered that the villagers had called in troops . . .

 

Mytek the Mighty by Eric Bradbury

 

MYTEK THE MIGHTY featured a giant robot ape (no doubt inspired by KING KONG). The robot ape was piloted, and could travel underwater, but fell into the hands of the evil Gogra - who used it to wreak havoc and destruction. The strip ran in weekly episodes comprising two-and-a-half pages of artwork. Sadly, none of the full page originals are know to exist - only a selection of the third half-pages. Presented, here, is a half-page example from 1965.

 

Further examples from the above three serials are currently on display in my CAF (see link below).

 

 

[ShaneTurgeon]

Very cool new additions, Terry. I'm somewhat surprised to learn that an archive would sell pieces...is there a bit more of a story there?

[Terry Doyle]

Sorry, yes.

 

It's the IPC archive that was auctioned off several years ago. Bought up by a wealthy collector who, once he had cherry-picked all the pieces of interest to him, is now selling-off the rest.

 

Lots of great art at affordable prices.

 

[furthur]

That Steel Claw piece is particularly nice Terry. Congrats!!!

[QuickS-migration]

 

These pages are amazing and way better art than Dark Knight Returns.

 

 

[Terry Doyle]

Received in the mail this morning, four more pages to the 1965 STEEL CLAW storyline I've been collecting.

 

The story ran for a total of nine two-page episodes (18 pages in total). I now have 9 of the 18 pages (50%).

 

Here's an example from the latest additions (you can see the others in my CAF - link at bottom of this post);

 

THE STEEL CLAW by Jesus Blasco - episode 8 page 2

[Speedy-D]

Wow, that sounds like quite a task, and quite an accomplishment so far. How do you even go about tracking down 18 specific pages from 45+ years ago?

[Terry Doyle]

Wow, that sounds like quite a task, and quite an accomplishment so far. How do you even go about tracking down 18 specific pages from 45+ years ago?

 

The IPC archive was bought up by a wealthy collector (currently living in Canada) several years ago.

 

Once he cherry-picked the artworks of interest to him, he consigned the remainder to be released for sale through his UK agent, Blase Books.

 

I made an appointment to visit the archive several weeks ago. I bought-up what I could find (it's a vast selection and a lot of stuff has been mis-filed).

 

It was an impossible task to go through stacks and stacks of artwork within the space of a short visit, so I left a listing of what I was looking for.

 

Good enough, a further search yielded some more pages for me.

 

No guarantee further examples will surface . . . and I think it's unlikely that I'll ever put-together the complete stories (as I do know some of these pages had already been sold before I became aware of the archive surfacing). But that's okay, as I'm more than happy with what I've managed to locate.