Marvel UK celebration planned for London Film and Comic Con

A teaser image for Revolutionary War, Marvel's upcoming limited series featuring many Marvel UK characters. Image © Marvel

A teaser image for Revolutionary War, Marvel’s upcoming limited series featuring many Marvel UK characters. Image © Marvel

Creators and former staff who were part of Marvel UK and its publications will appear at the next London Film and Comic Con at Earl’s Court on Saturday 5th October.

Organiser Mike Conroy hopes the panel will prove a celebration of the company’s achievements – in particular, its US titles such as Dragons Claws, Death’s Head, Death’s Head II, Warheads, Motormouth.

The full list of Marvel UK creatives at the event will be confirmed in the next few days, but confirmed guests so far are Andy Lanning and Alan Cowsill, writers of the upcoming Revolutionary War mini series which will revive many Marvel UK characters next year; now Titan Comics editor Steve White, who edited the critically acclaimed Knights of Pendragon original series, along with many British Marvel UK titles; Dan Abnett, who wrote Death’s Head II and many more Marvel UK US titles during Paul Neary’s tenure in the 1990s as editor in chief (often with Andy Lanning); and John Freeman, former editor of Doctor Who Magazine, who also edited Death’s Head II, Warheads, the weekly UK comic Overkill, who is currently editor at digital comics publisher ROK Comics.

The event is intended to mark almost 25 years since Marvel UK made its first foray into the US market with Dragons Claws and Death’s Head, projects fronted by Comiccraft’s Richard Starkings.

Revolutionary War, which launches in January, is an eight-issue publishing event written by Andy Lanning and Alan Cowsill. The book celebrates the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Marvel UK line with revival issues for Death’s Head II, Knights of Pendragon, Dark Angel, Motormouth and more. A teaser image for the series, possibly by Mark Brooks, was posted on Twitter by the book’s editor, Steve Wacker, earlier this month.

• To book tickets or for more info visit: www.londonfilmandcomiccon.com/winter

• Read our feature – Marvel UK’s “Genesis ’92″: Looking Back and What Might Have Been



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4 replies

  1. Quite rightly, 2000AD is seen as the peak of British comics over the
    last 30+ years, it has had the longevity, & has seeped into the
    British psyche like no other home grown comic other than perhaps ‘The
    Eagle’ or ‘The Beano’. But I think the importance of Marvel UK is often downplayed. Yes, it has been the home to (perhaps too many) licensed titles over the years, but it’s position as a finder & nurturer of British talent
    easily equals it’s more celebrated rival. Alan Davis, Doug Braithwaite,
    Kev Hopgood, Gary Erskine, Mark Farmer, Mike Collins, Jamie Delano,
    Dermot Power, Gary Frank, Cam Smith, Dave Taylor, Steve Dillon (the list
    goes on & on) all got their first ‘break’ there. Even yours truly, after years of banging on 2000AD’s door to no effect, I got offered a chance by Steve White on one of those many licensed tiles (Action Force) in ’88, & almost 30 years later, I’m still making a living drawing comics.

    • It was a fantastic place to work during my five years there. Cut my teeth writing The Real Ghostbusters and Thundercats thanks to Richard Starkings and John Tomlinson and learnt a lot from them, and Paul Neary, later. And of course editing Doctor Who Magazine was fantastic, despite the lack of an accompanying TV show for much of my tenure!

      • Whenever I visited the offices on Arundel St. to deliver artwork, it always seemed like a terribly exciting place to work. Original artwork everywhere, shelves & shelves covered with Transformer & G.I.Joe toys etc. I never visited during Paul Neary’s reign when Liam & Hitch were hard at work in the basement, but I imagine the atmosphere must have been like creative electricity!

      • It was often manic in that basement as Liam and Bryan will recall – there were issues of some titles where Liam and Bryan would be doing pencils and a host of artists would be on hand to ink the pages as soon as they were finished, all sitting around a large table passing pages to each other as I recall, or working on their own art boards to get a book out the door.

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