EXTRACTS: illustrators issue 3 © 2013 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

82 a “Ronald” Maiden, which gave rise to the “Micron” name. The company was under-capitalized from the start, and although its founders lacked editorial experience, they gave Fleetway commendable competition more than two years before Dundee publisher D C Thomson dipped a cautious toe into the war-comic water with Commando in July 1961. Fleetway’s War Picture Library was launched in September 1958; Combat Picture Library in March 1959 with Sea Hunt . Despite its expeditious start, GMS/Micron was always a minnow in the picture-libraries pond for reasons to be explored in a moment or two. Some of the early Combat Picture Librar y product has been labeled “dire”, but the company offered an alternative platform to several artists who had their work used before or later by Fleetway and Thomson. Examples included John Vernon, a long-serving cover artist for British paperback publishers, who at one stage turned out stories of Jeff Curtiss , “the Navy’s ace troubleshooter” for Combat Picture Library at the rate of one a month. Doug Church, an artist who became a key designer and developer of Fleetway comic titles, including 2000AD , began his career drawing for the Combat Picture Library —and carried on to do one or two more after he had joined the giant London rival! I shared many lunch breaks with Doug and his friend Barrie Tomlinson, in later years a high-flying Fleetway Group Editor, but then a humble sub-editor working on Tiger ; very keen on his amusing, Goon-like Anti-Trombone League. Doug would keep up an incessant, quick- fire patter. He always had an infectious chuckle ready for his own jokes. Doug’s other abiding interest was hi-fi sound. In 2005, and in retirement, I’m told, “he loved the sound system he had installed in his house, and his love of terrible, terrible puns hadn’t changed at all!” John Pollack, another artist known for his book-jacket work, drew a Combat Picture Library series about Nigel Hawke, Pioneer Air Fighter , a character suggested by myself as a replacement for the Fleetway Thriller Picture Library ’s discontinued World War I hero, Dogfight Dixon . Other cross-company artists identified by collectors and bibliographers are Jorge Macabich, Fernando Fernandez, Raphael Auraleon, Frank Fuentes Man, and Ferran Sostres. Such a roll call, which is possibly far from complete, speaks for itself. Micron should not be slightingly cast aside. My own association with Micron began in the autumn of 1962, when the company advertised two situations vacant in World’s Press News . The jobs were for editors—one to be responsible for its new 8mm Magazine for cine-film hobbyists—the other for the Combat Picture Library, and similar publications. Sadly, the company was already in serious financial trouble, and by July 1964 was bankrupt. But at this date it was expanding and moving its small editorial team into fresh new offices in Wallington, Surrey. Station Chambers was above a supermarket on the corner of the main Woodcote Road and Ross Parade. The building was actually a converted Odeon cinema that had closed in 1957, and presumably hadn’t been the right premises in the right place to become a bingo hall. In 1934, when it was built, it must have looked rather grand—white Portland stone facade in the art deco style, and an auditorium that could seat more than 900 film-goers. Today, I read that the supermarket has gone, and the building houses a pub, the Whispering Moon, with the original Odeon entrance and foyer as its entrance. In 1962, the only whispers were TOP: Moody and atmospheric cover art by John S. Smith for the Keith Chapman scripted story Those in Peri l. ABOVE: Primo Macarini cover for Combat Picture Librar y 200, Blood in the Orient .