Paperback artists - new books to be released

Over here on the Books Palace website some new volumes catch the eye - all based around classic paperback artwork..

First up is '

This is described as... 

This deluxe special edition of the acclaimed The Art of Reginald Heade is extensively revised and greatly expanded. With almost double the page-count of the standard edition, it features over 400 additional, ultra-rare Heade artwork images, and presents many others in larger size than before.

First published 24 August 2018. This NEW EDITION published November 2020.

Author: Stephen James Walker
Artist: Reginald Heade
Publisher: Telos, due November 2020
Number of pages: 320
Format: Hard Cover; Full Colour illustrations
Size: 9" x 11" (220mm x 280mm)
ISBN: 9781845831165

Priced at £50 you can order it here

 Accompanying 

Priced at £50 you can order the book here

The Art of Reginald Heade – Volume Two is a veritable treasure trove for Reginald Heade's many admirers, and for anyone with a taste for classic pin-up and book cover artwork.

Author: Stephen James Walker, Steve Chibnall
Artist: Reginald Heade
Publisher: Telos, due November 2020
Number of pages: 384
Format: Hard Cover; Full Colour illustrations
Size: 9" x 11" (220mm x 280mm)
ISBN: 9781845831554

I'm hoping that at least one of the volumes will pick up on Heade's rarely seen comic strip artwork - see my notes on this subject here. 

If you're into vintage paperbook artwork then this book is for you

priced at £35 the book is described thus...

An affectionate and thoroughly-researched celebration of the classic Pan Books paperbacks, beautifully illustrated with sumptuous full-colour reproductions of over 300 of the original cover artworks.

Author: Colin Larkin
Artists: Various
Publisher: Telos, due November 2020
Number of pages: 256
Format: Hard Cover; Full Colour illustrations
Size: 9" x 11" (220mm x 280mm)
ISBN: 9781845839888

Due in November 2020 the book can be pre-ordered here

Lost Reginald Heade comic strip discovered? Can you help?

Telos (here) recently published the fantastic 'The art of Reginald Heade' volume, which while, naturally, focusing on Heade's paperback covers also delves a little into his rarely seen comic strip artwork. There's a review of the book here (written by me it has to be said).

Stephen Walker also published a sort of 'companion' article on Down the Tubes (here) digging a little more deeply into the comic artwork that Heade had produced. Stephen's sources were from well-respected publications, but in most cases more research was required to define precise start date, end date & even titles.

As Stephen notes in the article "...Alan Clark's Dictionary of British Comic Artists, Writers and Editors (British Library, 1998) noted Heade's work appeared in the 1940s and early 1950 in Knockout and Sun weeklies". He is able to identify strips that appeared in Knockout but as he says later in the article "...I have been unable to find any evidence of Heade having contributed to Sun, the other comic mentioned by Clark".

However, the Illustrated Comic Journal (#30, Winter 1995)

contains a long article by David Ashford on the many distinguished artists who have drawn Robin Hood over the years. He includes in his selection this excerpt from Sun comic dated 6th November 1956, drawn, he says, by Reginald Heade.

So the challenge is - do you have any copies of Sun magazine from that time that could be passed to Stephen for review to see if he can confirm that this is the missing Robin Hood strip he has been searching for for many years?

Leave a comment here or over on the Facebook page.