Solar Wind: The Last Hurrah

By John Freeman on 21 September 2008

The are some constants in life: night follows day, the episode written by Steven Moffat will be the best story in any given season of new Doctor Who, and original Eagle fans will always hate any new version of Dan Dare.

Here is another one – Paul Von Scott will send a copy of his latest fanzine to SFX magazine and they will make it Fanzine Of The Month.

We have reported before that each of the four issues of his excellent A4 SF anthology title Omnivistascope have received the award, while his previous humorous title Solar Wind was also well received by the magazine’s reviewers as well as winning a National Comic Award in 2004 and being an Eagle Award nominee in 2005.

The latest issue of SFX, number 175, has the Bumper Book Of Solar Wind as the Fanzine Of The Month. The pair of softcover annual size books between them reprint the entire 500+ pages of the long running fanzine and are available from the Omnivistascope page at Lulu.com. Priced at less than £6 each these are remarkably good value and don’t be put off by the print-to-order supplier as the print quality is excellent.

In the meantime Paul plans to have issue 5 of Omnivistascope available in time for the Hi-Ex comics convention in February 2009. We are looking forward to both it and the convention.

The Bumper Book Of Solar Wind Volumes 1 and 2 are available at Lulu.com

Omnivistascope issue 1 to 4 and the few remaining back issues of Solar Wind are available direct from Paul at the Omnivistascope website.

About the Author
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John Freeman

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.