The latest issue of the Airfix Collectors’ Club journal, Constant Scale, is available completing the twenty-third year of the club, and includes another article from downthetubes contributor Jeremy Briggs focused on plastic kits featured in comics – this time focusing on the DC Thomson adventure weeklies, Bullet and Warlord.
Constant Scale Issue 92 includes a five-page article on the “Fireball’s Modelling News” page, that began in DC Thomson’s Bullet comic, then moved into Warlord when the two comics were amalgamated. It ran for almost a year in Bullet and then for another six and a half years in Warlord, where it eventually settled on the title “Modelling News” in the winged Warlord shield.
“Yet despite its longevity,” Jeremy notes, “it is now all but forgotten.”
Jeremy has previously covered the Airfix Modellers’ Club page in Constant Scale 82, which included his interview with ex-IPC staffer Kelvin Gosnell on the page that ran between 1973 and 1981 in a mixture of Lion, Valiant, Battle and Buster comics, and in Number 74, and its little remembered replacement, the Humbrol Modeller’s Club page, in Number 75.
Constant Scale issue 92 is only available from the Airfix Collectors’ Club. Back issues, both print and e-copies, are also available.
• More details about the Airfix Collectors’ Club and how to join are available on its website – airfixcollectorsclub.co.uk, where you will also find a number of articles taken from the magazine
- About the Author
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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.
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