I am always -always- on the look out for any scans of pre-1952 UK comics. The point is not to make money with reprints because, if I am being honest, the UK Golden Age books do not sell.
The late Denis Gifford ran the Association of Comic Enthusiasts (ACE) and I am quite sure that a few have survived like me! I also ran Yahoo and other groups dealing with Platinum, Golden and Silver agesof UK comics -there is still a Face Book group loaded with many images. Nothing.
British Golden Age Comics blog has had 207,845 views but no sales of books from those views.
UK Golden Age Heroes and Comics 87,402 views but no books sold.
The Golden Age books are all as good a quality reprint as you can get and more than one page has taken a day to clean and make readable. This is work that has been going on for decades (that thought terrifies me!) and how much have I spent on all of this to try to preserve lost comics, characters and creators? I think in a previous post on that subject I mentioned that I got to a certain figure and then gave up as the total amount terrified me even more than the amount of time I spent on this.
Back in..1995 I put forward the idea of a British Comic Book Archive so that everything could be stored at a central point and accessed for free. Thios idea came up after I had to help the family of the creator of the newspaper strip, Garth, Steve Dowling, find some samples of his work. Then the family of another long gone artist asked the same thing and it goes on and on.
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Artists and writers whether the old Boys Papers (and my research proved the 'fact' that these NEVER contained comic strips because they were seen as "low art" to be wrong) , Penny Dreadfuls or comics were were always paid as little as a publisher could getr away with and some struggled to bring entertainment to youngsters and oldsters alike. They at least deserve to be remembered and I was quite happy to find out that Louis Diamond, comics publisher and writer/artist is a relation (and, yes, he got "screwed over"by Amalgamated Press rathere like I was by its successor Fleetway years later).
Based on the percentage I get from a book sale (after printer and print on demand company) I would need to sell around 100 copies of one reprint book to get the money back I paid for one of the original albums/annuals or comics.
It is definitely a passion than for profit work!
Sadly, I chose a time when the internaet has created a new generation of illiteracy where no one wants to actual;ly read a printed book...but if it's free online well -grab it!
Discoveriung lost characters is fun and I get a kick out of it every time and from now the rediscovered items will appear only in Comic Bits -far easier than working on full lenth reprint books.
Text features, artists and writers bios -if they can be found- all blended together like a good coffee (I need a cup of coffee!) and filling 80 pages each issue. I'm so excited I may buy copies myself😂
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