The Women of Galba in Greece!

The last episode of "The Women of Galba" appears in the Daily Mirror today which reminded me to share this item with you

Front cover (taken from G29)

Back cover

I'm fortunate to own a copy of a rare Greek edition of Garth reprints. This book includes:

1. F304-G86: The Women of Galba
2. T131-T208: Tigress by Martin Asbury
3. T53-T130: This land is mine by Martin Asbury

(Both the latter stories are credited to "Martin Ashbury" [sic] but their English is much better than my Greek - which is non-existent!)


It looks from the back cover as if Axa by Romero and Rip Kirby by Alex Raymond were also reprinted in this series of landscape books!

Interestingly, it's only in checking when the next story starts which Martin Baines is going to be doing in the Daily Mirror that I noticed that the last 2 strips of "the Women of Galba" (G85 & G86) were not included in the Daily Mirror Book of Garth 1976! It looks as if it was just to get the next story to start at the top of the page!

Opening panels

Also the quality of these Greek reprints leads me to believe the publishers must have used the original transparencies/film from the Daily Mirror as they are such good quality. The date in the book is 1989 so I doubt if Nancy was receiving royalty checks for syndication at this point, although she did while (and shortly after) Frank was alive!

Closing panels

If anyone can transliterate Greek for me, please get in contact and I'll supply a scan of the index pages

BE HERE TOMORROW for the next Frank bellamy Garth reprint in the Daily Mirror!

New Garth story - The Women of Galba

Martin Baines has kindly sent me the first episode of the next Frank Bellamy story to be coloured by him and reprinted in the Daily Mirror..."The Women of Galba".

© Daily Mirror

This story was first printed in the Daily Mirror of 27 December 1972  and continued until 10 April 1973 (Numbers F304-G86). It has previously been reprinted in black and white in The Daily Mirror Book of Garth, 1975; Garth Book Two: The women of Galba by Titan Books, 1985 and in the fan publication Menomonee Falls Gazette #114 (18/02/1974) - #131 (17/06/1974) - 6 daily strips per issue

An interesting fact for you historians is that the Daily Mirror of 22 March 1973 (during this story) states:  "Southern editions of the Mirror didn't appear yesterday because of industrial action. Here's a double ration of strips". Britain once again was suffering from printer's strikes.
 

John Ridgway colouring Garth

When I saw some of John Ridgway's colouring of the newspaper strip Garth, I had to catch him by email and ask permission to reproduce it.

John was kind enough to not only share the one I wanted (above) but also to send me copies of several others and agreed I could share them. I like to reciprocate and said is there anything he is working on that I can advertise for him? He hasn't actually got a web presence but DownTheTubes have kindly set up a page for him and he sent me this list:

"Currently I'm working on

• a Commando book for D.C.Thomson, 
• Colouring Age of Heroes for Strip magazine 
• Colouring some Ron Turner Space Ace stories for possible publication 
• Colouring Fudge and the Dragon and Speck's Inventions (yes that's Ken Reid's creation!) for ROK Comics 
• Working on designs for Frontiers – a space series I want to write 
• Working on scripts for two other series – Wereworld and Alternate Earth 
• Continuing to colour the Garth stories and Earthspace("I've been colouring up Earthspace by Sydney Jordan with the hope of convincing Express Newspapers to let us get it done in full colour as a graphic album")"

© Daily Mirror

© Daily Mirror

© Daily Mirror

© Daily Mirror

© Daily Mirror

Facebook group for the Garth newspaper strip

I think it's about time I mentioned Ant Jones' Facebook page which follows all things Garth. At the moment he is linking daily to the Daily Mirror's reprint of Garth by Frank Bellamy, but the FB (!) page has lots of really interesting versions of Bellamy including Bellamy's Garth in Hindi! Its brief is wider than my interest as it covers the whole history of the Garth strip.

I personally have not jumped into the "Facebook waters" in any depth but skirt around the fringes, but this is one place worth lingering. I generally watch new developments on the Net and sign up an account (using Frank Bellamy's name) in order to see whether I'll do anything with it at a later date. Facebook demanded too much time so I left it there. However it's worth dipping your toes in and visiting Ant's page just to browse the images by clicking on one and then 'scrolling' through.

To wet your appetite here's a piece from the Women of Galba story, coloured by John Ridgway and used with his permission

© Daily Mirror