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Albion: Origins
01/12/2007 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: Titan Books. 112 page graphic novel. Price: £14.95 (UK), $19.95 (US), $24.95). ISBN: 978-1-84576-172-1. Buy Albion Origins in the USA - or Buy Albion Origins in the UK  check out website: www.titanbooks.com
Age has its advantages with a book like this as I actually bought 'Smash' where the first stories of 'Janus Stark' and 'Cursitor Doom' first appeared. I had read some 'Kelly's Eye' at the barbers but as 'Valiant' was principally displayed as a war comic missed out on 'The House Of Dolmann' although I have vague memories about it.
'Albion: Origins' features the earliest stories of these four comicstrips from the late-60s British comics. Unlike their American cousins, British comics outside of the Century 21 range were on newspaper quality paper. This made sure they were cheap and easily affordable. As you grew older, you moved up through the comics to the ones you felt suited your age and taste. It was a great time to be a youngster in the UK. I have to confess I was also getting my first taste of Marvel Comics reprints in the IPC range at the time and devoured everything else that was in the comics as well. Compared to our American cousins, our own more dramatic strips often used London and other British settings for our adventures and started getting more involved with the fantastic, horror and super-human. The four stories you will read in this book are a very good cross-section of the material we were reading.
'Kelly's Eye' is about Tim Kelly, possessor of the Eye of Zoltec which grants invulnerability to ever holds it. Doesn't do much for his clothes but leads to some interesting adventures. Reading his opening stories by writer Tom Tully and artist Francisco Solano Lopez, the limitations of the Eye were exploited so Kelly wasn't always as invulnerable as he felt he was. The single tale here would have been spread over several weeks and the suspense made you keep reading to see how he got out of the mess he invariably landed in.
'The House Of Dolmann' is a reference to a secret agent and his robotic puppets which he led his adventures with. I often thought there was a direct lineage to DC Thompson's 'General Jumbo' in 'The Beano' comic where a boy controlled miniature soldiers. Dolmann's robots were much, much larger. Again, the writer is Tom Tully and this time the artist was Eric Bradbury.
'The Incredible Adventures Of Janus Stark' was set in Victorian England and after an origin of Dickens persuasion follows his life and adventures as escapologist and do-gooder. Again, Tom Tully did the writing with the art by Francisco Solano Lopez. If anything, the absence of colour made the stories more appealing. In those days, colour in British comics tended to be rather garish and would certainly have been an invasion on some strips.
Finally, we have 'Cursitor Doom', created by Ken Mennell and drawn by Eric Bradbury. A rather more gothic strip with the Cursitor Doom as the mystic with former soldier Angus McCraggan providing the muscle as he sought to ward off deadly menaces. This is the first complete multi-part story. When I originally read it in the 60s, I wasn't that great a fan but here having all the parts together to read at once made it much more interesting.
If you're an adult wanting to re-live some of your childhood characters then you'll want to own this book. You might even persuade your kids or grand-kids away from the computer or game console to give them a look. The stories haven't aged badly and I hope enough of you people out there buy this so Titan will consider showing other British stories from these comics. If Leah Moore and John Reppion's book 'Albion', reviewed earlier in the year, piqued your interest, seeing the original influences can't be a bad thing. Books such as this preserve our own comicstrip heritage and we need to see more of them.
GF Willmetts
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