British Newspaper Strip Club changes hands

By John Freeman on August 9, 2011

There’s a change of command at the All Devon Collectors Club, longtime archivists of British newspaper strips.

An offshoot of the old South West Comic Collectors Club, the ADCCC, mainly centred on the Exeter area, has members far and wide – and continues the relentless search for prime quality images for the (complete) British story booklets that is their raison d’etre.

The desire of elder members to see old newspaper strips again, linked with the poor quality of the yellowing photocopies that were doing the rounds, provided the impetus for the club to decide to track down and reprint ‘lost’ Garth strips. A search for other British titles naturally followed, such as Romeo Brown and Paul Temple.

Unfortunately, longtime co-ordinator Dave Westaway‘s health has deteriorated recently and as a result, he is no longer able to continue his duties with the ADCCC.

Luckily another member of the ADCCC, Paul Trotter, also editor of the the bi-monthly Newspaper Strip Gazette, has taken on the administration role and is as enthusiastic as Dave about the old newspaper strips.

“Although I will see through to the end any correspondence, already started all future orders for the club’s limited edition newspaper strip collections (listed here on the main DTT site), suggestion and offers of help should now be directed to Paul,” Dave tells us.

“The club will continue to run very much as it has done for the last few years,” he adds.

“I would like to thank all members for their enthusiastic support and help over the last eight years. Many of them have given time in searching, cleaning, providing colouring and artwork… I’ve been very grateful and would much appreciate it if you can give the same support to Paul.”

Dave has long supported our work at DTT and offered help on British comic collections I’ve edited on a freelance basis for Titan Books. I wish him all the very best and offer a heartfelt thanks to him for his dedicated service preserving our British comics heritage.

• To contact the ADCCC, write to Paul Trotter, ADCCC, DSC Publications, 20 Wreake Drive, Rearsby, Leicester LE7 4YZ or email him via dsccomicsATaol.com

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.