Justin Marriott publishes a series of terrific fanzines through Amazon’s Createspace service which are primarily dedicated to vintage paperbacks, but often cross over into comics material.

The latest example of this is Hot Lead, which although mainly focused on vintage western paperbacks, has a lengthy article on comic artist Frank Bellamy’s western comics and an overview of the history of western comics.

A page from the Frank Bellamy feature on Frank Bellamy’s western comics work, including the Garth stories

This latest issue also has a great gallery feature on brilliant artist Tony Masero, who downthetubes will know better for his Doctor Who work, perhaps, and much, much more. I’ve got a copy of the issue but haven’t had a chance to read it in full yet – but it looks terrific, and if you’re at all interested in vintage books then these titles should be on your hit list.

Art by Tony Masero – featured in Hot Lead Issue 2

Justin began publishing his flagship fanzine The Paperback Fanatic in 2007, and has developed the range with The Sleazy Rider, Pulp Horror and the brilliantly-titled Men of Violence, which focuses on men’s action/adventure novels, both well known and obscure.

• Check out Justin’s most recent zines here on Amazon.co.uk – using this link helps support dowthetubes

• There’s an interview with Justin here about his titles on MensPulpMags

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John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Star Trek Explorer (previously known as Star Trek Magazine) and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War and “Dan Dare”. He’s the writer of "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: downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News, Magazines

Tags: Adventure Comics, downthetubes News, Fanzines, Frank Bellamy, Hot Lead, Justin Marriott, Tony Masero