July is shaping up to be a frantic month as we prepare for the release of three new publications. Here's the latest news:
STRIKER: THE FINAL WHISTLE
The final episode of Striker will be featured in a commemorative 52-page collectors' edition of the comic titled Striker: The Final Whistle. Priced at £4.95 with a perfect bound gloss cover, it will go on sale at our online shop from Thursday, July 4, and will be printed around the middle of July (exact date to be confirmed shortly).
We're working with our distributors to make the comic available in as many newsagents as possible - but the quickest and easiest way to ensure you don't miss out is to buy from our shop and have it mailed to you direct from the printing house. If you haven't done so already, sign up and register at the bottom of our home page to make sure you receive email notifications from Striker HQ.
A digital version version is also being considered.
At least 33 pages of The Final Whistle will be all-new comic strips, picking up from where issue 24 left off and bringing Striker to a fitting finale after 34 memorable years in print.
There will also be a frank and revealing interview with the original 'Mr Striker' Nick Jarvis, plus a special Nashy's News column from Striker creator Pete Nash. He explains that while Striker is coming to an end as a comic and newspaper strip, there will hopefully be a new future for Striker in a different format.
Comics guru John Freeman from downthetubes.net will be writing about Striker and the state of the UK comic industry - and there will be a special Fanzone section.
PSYCOPS: ALL 18 EPISODES IN ONE MASSIVE BOOK
It's an open secret that Pete Nash - under the pseudonym Wilbur - created another serialised comic strip called Psycops that ran in The Sun alongside Striker from July, 1994, to the start of 1999. The adventures are being reprinted in their entirety for the very first time in a 304-page book available as a softcover version and a limited edition of 250 signed hardbacks. Prices will be announced shortly.
An outlandish mix of The Fugitive, The X-Files and Starman, Psycops follows the adventures of feisty British private eye Charity Wilde who is forced to go on the run from the CIA with a human-like alien she nicknames Gabriel. Using Gabriel's unique mental ability called Psysight, the odd couple travel the world incognito as private eyes investigating strange mysteries.
As the cases they investigate become ever more bizarre, Charity is tormented by a burning question: why did Gabriel come to earth - and can she really trust him?
All 18 episodes are written by Pete Nash, who also drew the strip for the first 18 months. It was then briefly drawn by the late British comic artist John Cooper before the artwork was passed on to John M Burns, one of Britain's most talented comic artists. Some sample strips will be uploaded to this website in the next few days.
Psycops will be available to buy exclusively from our online shop from early July.
STRIKER: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION - VOLUME 8 AND BEYOND
With a scheduled release date around the end of July, Volume 8 of the complete Striker collection is giving creator Pete Nash a major headache. This book covers the start of the first comic era - and he's grappling with what to include from those first comics and what to leave out.
The most likely outcome is that the period covering the 87 weekly comics that were published between 2003 and 2005 will be compiled into at least three volumes. All the Striker comic stories will be included, along with some of the football action strips and selected comic covers. But there's unlikely to be any room for the features and interviews, other than the odd stand-out few.
Pete said: "Once the last comic and the Psycops book is out of the way - and with no more new Striker strips to work on after mid-July - I'm hoping I'll have the time to fully focus on Volume 8. It's possible we could miss the end-of-July target by a week or two, but the lighter workload means subsequent books will be able to come out more regularly - about every three months or so.
"As long as the demand is there, I will continue to publish the books until the last volume, which would take us to where we are now."
Stay tuned for for more updates on all these titles very soon.