Tickled to come across this lapsed
ebay link - not sure how exactly I stumbled across it, I was on Google at the time but hey things move in mysterious ways with t'internet!
Someone was selling their Zulu War book collection and included my comics or to quote;
"This is a superb and extremely rare 2-part comic series account of the Battle of Rorke's Drift.......it is an action-packed comic strip re-telling of this famous battle!"
The seller then goes on to give a very detailed breakdown of each issues contents and has scanned in a couple of interior pages as well as the covers, telling us;
"Single copies are hard to come by and a full set of both issues together in 1 auction is even rarer!"
And he's not wrong, I can tell by the 'M56 Comics' title on the first issue's cover that it must be a first printing as I think the second printing had
'Accent UK' listed instead, although I should check that with my file copies!
This is I think the second ebay auction I've seen recently, the other from last autumn or so and both went for a fair amount higher than their original cover price plus postage which is interesting. no mention if these are signed copies or whether that would devalue them or not!
I do have a few copies of the Zulu comic left, (although only the second printing of the first issue), and occasionally take some with me to whatever comic show
Dave West and I are attending. They generally still attract some interest and I enjoy it when they sell albeit they do have a certain 'vintage' look to them alongside Accent UK's glossy output and Dave's hardcover books.
Zulu was the first 'proper' comic I ever published after producing a few mini's and led to hooking up with Dave (and initially
Barry Renshaw) to form Accent UK. Sadly life's little distractions have meant that I've still not properly followed it up despite various other smaller strips being produced over the years so that's one of the reasons why I'm working on something at the moment but won't say more in case I jinx anything!
Still it is nice to have a little reminder of where I started and the comic did take me to some amazing and surprising places such as national museums where it was stocked and I did a few signings tying into various Zulu War events and it was of course the catalyst which eventually led me to finally visiting Rorke's Drift for real in 2010 when I couldn't resist the following pic, taken by the one and only
Ian Knight,
the authority on all things Zulu!
