Brian Lewis and The House of Hammer

Brian Lewis illustrated several strips for the Dez Skinn edited House of Hammer.

The longer stories were all adaptations of Hammer Horror films and they were my introduction to his artwork.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am reposting these images from the great Blog : 

http://joeackerman.blogspot.co.uk/

The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.

Basically, I was unwilling to take apart the collected edition of Brian's strips,  which was published by Quality in 1982; under the title Halls of Horror.

This is still the largest collection of Brian Lewis comic strips ever published and it came out three years or so after his untimely demise.  It is a shame that no one has seen the value in publishing a book about Brian because there is a lot of lovely work to choose from!

Stuart Immonen and Star Wars from Marvel Comics

It is a sad comment on the modern day comic book industry, that no one stays on a Title for very long anymore.

The latest example of this, at least the latest example that makes an impression on me, is the discovery that a personal favourite artist, is leaving a book that he only took over the art chores on six months ago!

Stuart Immonen is leaving the revamped 

All-New Captain America,

to take over from the departing John Cassaday,

on the fledgling Marvel Comics Star Wars title.

Remember the old days, when an artist would be associated with a title for years?

I had actually completely missed the fact that Marvel Comics had regained the rights to publish the Star Wars comics.  Hardly surprising though, when I find so very little in the new comics to interest me at all but I am surprised that I missed the fact that 

John Cassaday was involved. 

The Planetary, by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday

was a title that captured my attention and managed to hold it, all the way to the last issue.  It is well worth the reading, which is more than I can say for a lot of the books coming out lately.

Anyway, the point is, that I am disappointed in the fact that a comic book, that I was beginning to really enjoy, will be left hanging... I am, after all, following the artist and not the writer; as shallow as that may sound.

From the very beginning of my fascination with comic books, I have always acknowledged the importance of the writer and yet, when it comes right down to it... I can read a poor story with good art but I cannot read a great story illustrated with art that I don't enjoy.  I am sure that I have missed some great stories over the years but I am a visual person and the art has to be graphically appealing for me to be interested.

I am really looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of the new book from Stuart and Kathryn Immonen,

"Russian Olive to Red King",

they are both amazing at what they do and I paid Kathryn the highest honour by buying her Lady Sif story published in Journey into Mystery last year, even though the art wasn't quite to my taste.

An even bigger concession on my part, was that I began to really enjoy the artwork of Valerio Schiti by the time I had read them all.  Heck, I even bought them as back-issues!

Brian Lewis: A Second Suki Strip

As I said, in an earlier post, I have two examples of the Erotic/Humour Strip, entitled Suki,

that Brian Lewis drew for New Directions Magazine.

As usual, I quickly forgot that the second story was still waiting to be posted!

So Here it is.

According to Win Wiacek,

there were also strips that were fully painted in colour and if anyone reading this has any examples of them, I would love to see them.

Brian Lewis in Vampirella #82

Well, it took about as long as I expected but here it is,

PREY OF THE WOLF.

I always felt that Brian had been "squeezed" into six pages and that the story would have had more room to breath in eight but it is what it is.

Brian died in December, 1978 and it is likely that this didn't get published until August or September of 1979.

Since it was, to my knowledge, Brian's first work for an American publisher, it is a great shame that he didn't live to see it come out.

As I stated in my last post, there are scans of this story already available on-line but none that are as large and crisp.

It is a neat little story and I hope you like it.

I have found reasonable scans of some of Brian's strips that he did for the old House of Hammer and I will be adding them soon.