EXTRACTS: JOHN STEEL Fleetway Picture Library Classics © 2020 Book Palace Books (272 PAGES in Full edition)

FLEETWAY PICTURE LIBRARY ™ CLA SS IC S 6 Hawk’ but he does look and act suspiciously like Bunn’s later creation, ‘The Spider’! With the coming of the Thriller Comics Library and the Super Detective Library , there were yet more outlets for Bunn’s talents. His Super Detective Library strips featuring ‘Ernest Dudley, the Armchair Detective’ were pleasing but it was for the Thriller Comics Library that he really came into his own, working on such diverse titles as ‘The Scottish Chiefs’ and ‘Captain Kidd of the Spanish Main’’ as well as three stirring Western tales of the U.S. Cavalry, ‘The Border Trumpet’, ‘The White Invader’ and ‘Sabre and Tomahawk’. Bunn’s work for Comet and Sun had been notable for its open, rounded, jovial, warm- spirited style, filled with robust characters, a style that was fairly juvenile in its expression. His work for the Thriller Comics, however, began to show a more adult quality, his figures becoming more realistic. The change was very much apparent in his ‘Buck Jones’ strips for the later issues of the Cowboy Comics Library and even more so in the ‘John Steel’ story reprinted in the present volume. Here his style has changed dramatically, becoming more brooding and angular, his characters taller and more elongated. There is little that remains of the carefree manner of his early strips; the jolly conviviality of his earlier ‘Buck Jones’ and ‘Robin Hood’ adventures is beginning to transform into the harder, grimmer quality of his later work for Lion. It is interesting to contrast his detective-style ‘Clip McCord’ that he drew in 1950 with the same sort of character, ‘John Steel’, ten years later. His fantasy strips, ‘The Waxer’ and, particularly, ‘The Spider’, benefited from these style changes and this, together with the atmosphere of ominous foreboding that Bunn inculcated, earned ‘The Spider’ near cult status with a whole new generation of readers. Together with writer, Ted Cowan, Bunn created the character of a mysterious scientist whose desire is to become the greatest master criminal the world has known. By the time ‘The Spider’ began in the pages of Lion in 1965, Bunn’s new style, the panels rendered with finely-etched line work, had completely changed. Reg Bunn can be said to have been at the forefront of this country’s first real steps into the world of the adventure picture strip, his style perfectly appropriate for the post-war comics. As the years passed and new types of strips were required, so Bunn altered his style to fit the changing times, while at the same time retaining that all-important ‘readable’ quality that he always brought to his work. He was a true professional and it is pleasing that his work is now being appreciated by a newer generation. David Ashford August 2019