Chinbeard Books recently announced plans to collect Eartha, a raunchy newspaper strip written by Donne Avenell and illustrated by John M. Burns, first published in the now defunct News of the World back in the 1980s.
The collection, edited by comic archivist and artist David Roach, follows an appeal for original art from the strip last year, and Chinbeard Books recent publication of the sci-fi fantasy strip Zetari, also drawn by John M. Burns.
“Eartha” was a colour weekly strip, the tale of a Stone Age cave girl preserved in ice for 10,000 years, revived in 1981 when a nuclear waste site in the north of England is excavated.
The new collection will be a unique, luxury, landscape hardback, containing over ninety per cent of the original unlettered artboards, as well as the full strips alongside them. Designed by Robert Hammond, the collection will include a foreword by artist Alan Davis and features from Paul Duncan. John M. Burns expert Colin Brown is also involved as Creative Consultant.
Written by Donne Avenell and illustrated by John M. Burns, this is a fantastical, silly, sumptuous-looking, action-adventure tale – with another strong female heroine at its core.
“A year ago, we were behind ‘Zetari’ (though, at the time, we stayed very much in the shadows),” say Chinbeard, “translating and publishing a sci-fi fantasy illustrated by the late, great John M Burns, which hadn’t ever been published in English, from 40 years ago.
“We’re very proud that the same core team here at Chinbeard Books (an imprint of AUK) will be premiering a second project based around the late, great John M Burns artwork next month.
“And we’re about to start working on a third too (which will be a two-volume collection)!
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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.
Categories: British Comics, British Comics - Collections, British Comics - Current British Publishers, British Comics - Newspaper Strips, Comics, Crowd Funding Projects, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News
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