The team at SHIFT are organising a crowdfunder for a Deluxe Colour Edition of Brian Bolland‘s amazing, hilarious The Actress and the Bishop, gathering all the strips in full colour for the first time.
The planned new Deluxe Colour Edition will also include prose and illustrations, and will be accompanied by a companion black and white volume, showcasing Brian’s incredible linework.
Sign up here to be notified of the project launch on Kickstarter
The Actress and the Bishop is a whimsical rhyming strip by artist Brian Bolland, first featured as a three-page feature in the anthology title A1 (#1 and #3) in 1989. A full-length, 20-page story about the pair followed, seventeen years later, in Bolland Strips!, published by Knockabout Comics, back in 2005.
Taking its inspiration from the colloquial British exclamation, attributed to a conversation between the actress Lillie Langtry and the Bishop of Worcester, popularised by Leslie Charteris, author of The Saint novels, Brian’s cheeky strip features an actress living with a bishop, who always dresses as though in the middle of celebrating a royal wedding.
This Deluxe hardback will come with gold foil accentuated dust jacket, printed endpapers, coloured head and tail bands, ribbon and signed by Brian – the ultimate collection of Brian Bolland’s Actress and the Bishop.
The book will feature the strips “The Actress and the Bishop Go Boating”, “The Actress and the Bishop Throw a Party” (originally printed in A1), “The Actress and the Bishop and the Thing in the Shed” (from Bolland Strips!) and, finally, “The Actress and the Bishop Go to the Seaside” (published in SHIFT Anthology volume 2 issue 5).
The collection will be rounded off with two prose stories with spot illustrations from Brian: “The Actress and the Bishop Go Shopping” and “The Actress and the Bishop Take Up Sport”, plus pin ups, covers, preliminary art and an interview.
Brian is colouring the strips over the coming months, for an estimated delivery in November.
• Sign up here to be notified of the project launch on Kickstarter
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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