Sexton Blake Volume 1, the latest collection from Bear Alley Books, is now available. This is the first of two volumes that will collect all the “Sexton Blake” strips from the British weekly, Valiant, plus the Valiant Annual and the Valiant Book of Sexton Blake.
Part Sherlock Holmes, part action hero, Sexton Blake was created by Harry Blyth in 1893, six years after rival Sherlock Holmes first appeared in print. The character went on to become a publishing phenomenon, appearing in 4000 stories told written and drawn by over 200 different writers and artists… including comics.
Visit this dedicated Bear Alley Books page and you can still get the usual early-bird discount – but don’t dawdle, chums, because the collection is officially published on Saturday, 10th October 2026.
“Guv’nor! The – The ceiling! It’s coming down on us!
We – We’re trapped in a giant press!”
To many he was “the office boy’s Sherlock Holmes” or “the other Baker Street detective” but a saga of over 3800 individual cases and 150 million words cannot be so easily summarised in five simple words. Dorothy L. Sayers was rather more eloquent when she claimed that Sexton Blake’s stories “present the nearest modern approach to a national folk-lore.”
“These cliffhanger serials are thrill-rides in a tradition that dates back many years: secret panels and passages, portraits that watch you, ceilings that will descend onto you, rooms that will fill with water and drown you, arrows and swords are aimed at you… every story is a Gothic masterpiece.
Sexton Blake had recently celebrated his 74th anniversary when his adventures began appearing in Valiant, introducing a new audience to the detective’s thrilling adventures – a new style of Gothic chiller, where every stairway might unfold into a slide, where flagstones and floors have trapdoors, and secret panels line passageways; walls and ceilings shift, underground chambers fill with water and shimmering ghosts draw the adventurers into deadly danger.
These cliffhanger serials had a history dating back in comics to the 1940s, a history explored in the introduction to Sexton Blake Volume 1. Reprinted under licence from copyright owners Rebellion are some of the most exciting, written and drawn for the pages of Valiant by Harold Lamb and Eric Dadswell during the late 1960s, when the weekly comic was at its peak.
(As archivist Philip Rushton has previously noted, the adventures were often based on old “Maxwell Hawke” scripts commissioned for Buster).
This volume, and its companion, due for release in November, reprints the full run of the “Sexton Blake” strip from 1968-70, along with a strip from Valiant Annual and five strips from the Valiant Book of Sexton Blake, published to celebrate Blake’s appearance on television, where he and Tinker were played by Laurence Payne and Roger Foss.
Collected for the first time, these stories still offer all the thrills and chills they did sixty years ago.
• Sexton Blake Volume 1 | Published by Bear Alley Books on 10th October 2026 | Format: A4, 164 black & white pages, paperback with matte cover | Preorder your copy here
As always, Bear Alley are offering an early-bird discount for readers who order early. You’ll know the drill if you’re a regular customer: payment is via Paypal and orders can take 8-10 days. The books will be back up to cover price and postage on release day and should be available at the Bear Alley shop on Ebay. The option to pay via Paypal will also remain available.
Orders can be made via Paypal (steve [at] bearalley.co.uk), price £23.99 including p&p. Please make sure you include your address when paying by Paypal. US orders can also be made via Paypal, £26.99 sterling including p&p. Again, please make sure you include your address when paying by Paypal.
Please ask for other overseas prices; publisher Steve Holland can usually offer postage at a cheaper rate than Ebay’s Global Shipping. The same applies if you want to buy more than one volume at a time.
More Sexton Blake…
Bear Alley has republished several Sexton Blake annuals. Here are direct links to these releases
• Blakania: The Sexton Blake Resource
Created at the tail end of the Victorian era, Sexton Blake rapidly became one of the most popular fictional characters of the 20th Century. He featured in thousands of adventure stories published in countless papers, magazines and comics. He also appeared in stage plays, radio dramas, films and television serials. In these articles, you’ll discover what made him such a quintessential part of the English landscape for so long; how he changed with the times; his cultural significance; and why he faded from view in the mid-1970s.
• The Casebook of Sexton Blake (Wordsworth Mystery & Supernatural)
This thrilling collection presents seven exploits from his ‘golden age’
Award-winning writer Mark Hodder, keeper of the invaluable Blakiania resource online, introduces Blake to a new audience, and George Mann and Jimmy Broxton bring us the first new comic in decades. Plus, Karl Stockinterviews the writers and artists.
The Special also includes the Sexton Blake comic strip originally published under the title “Victor Drago” in the short-lived comic, Tornado, written by Chris Lowder (writing as Bill Henry) and featuring art by Mike Dorey.
• Sexton Blake and the Great War
A collection comprising three text stories from Union Jack magazine dating from World War One and the lead up to it.
• Sexton Blake versus The Master Crooks
Three more tales pitting Blake against bank robbers, impostors and kidnappers, duels with swords, and pursues his foes by any means necessary
Every hero has allies; men and women of great ability and character, drawn into their orbit by circumstance and adventure. This was never truer than for Sexton Blake, Britain’s greatest detective…
Did you know…
• When Valiant featured Sexton Blake in new strips during 1968 to tie in with the then current TV series, another six stories appeared in full colour on a run of bubble gum cards. Here is Story 5, with art, it’s believed, by Eric Dadswell. (With thanks to Philip Rushton).
As David McDonald of Hibernia Comics has previously noted, the comic is advertised on each card but, oddly, there seems to be no mention of the cards in Valiant itself.
There were 72 different cards to collect, which built up to six different comic stories. Artists also included Mike Western. The reverse of the cards, which do turn up occasionally on auction sites such as eBay, seem to be images from the television show.
• Sexton Blake returned to comics in the short lived weekly, Tornado, albeit as “Victor Drago”, written by Bill Henry (an alias of Chris Lowder), with art by Mike Dorey, initially as comic strip, then illustrated stories. Mike Dorey based the look on the actor David Farrar, who played Sexton Blake in two movies in the 1940s.
As documented in Hibernia Comics Beyond 2000AD, Fleetway’s Tornado editor Kelvin Gosnell was forced to change the character’s name to Victor Drago due to confusion over the right to use the name ‘Sexton Blake’, then still owned by IPC.
The name change came late in the day: as Sexton Blake expert Mark Hodder has previously noted, Detective-Inspector Carter looks identical to Sexton Blake’s friend, Detective-Inspector Coutts.
In the first comic strip, “Terror of Troll Island”, the detective duo begin their journey to the South West is Drago’s Rolls Royce, the Silver Lady. Just four panels later, this vehicle is referred to as the Grey Panther, which, of course, is the name of Sexton Blake’s Rolls. Just in case there’s any lingering doubt that this strip was originally intended to be about Blake, the car’s number plate is SB 192.
Interviewed in Judge Dredd Megazine No. 384, Chris Lowder recalled: “We got Mike Dorey on it, and he was a bloody brilliant artist. But then [Tornado editor] Roy Preston said that we’re going to rename the main character Victor Drago … I complained bitterly, and I was so angry because I’d done all this work and had all these things lined up. I said, ‘No, it’s not just a name change, you’re missing the point.’ I told them to get someone else to finish it off.”
By 2020, any rights issues had clearly been addressed: when Rebellion, who own most characters published by IPC and Fleetway, the latter owned at one point by Egmont, published The Return of Sexton Blake, the “Victor Drago” strip was published as originally planned, as “Sexton Blake”.
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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, Comic Previews, Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News
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