{"id":11197,"date":"2025-04-29T14:25:59","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T19:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=11197"},"modified":"2025-04-29T14:30:27","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T19:30:27","slug":"dark-they-were-and-golden-early-gigs-and-2x-brett-ewins-peter-milligan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2025\/04\/29\/dark-they-were-and-golden-early-gigs-and-2x-brett-ewins-peter-milligan\/","title":{"rendered":"Dark They Were and Golden &#8212; Early Gigs and 2x Brett Ewins \/ Peter Milligan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nIf you&#8217;re a fan of Dave Gibbons, you own it to yourself to <a href=\"https:\/\/darkandgolden.bigcartel.com\/product\/early-gigs-the-underground-comics-of-dave-gibbons\">get a copy of this book<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/pictures\/wissewords\/Early Gigs.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"1032\" alt=\"Cover of Early Gigs, showing a demented Dave Gibbons wielding a pencil\" class=\"aligncenter\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nIn the introduction Gibbons mentions <cite>Dark They Were and Golden Eyed<\/cite>, a legendary science fiction bookstore that was my first association when I saw the name of its publisher, Dark and Golden Books, who as they put it, <cite>are dedicated to charting a less travelled course through the history of British comics, finding and celebrating mislaid and forgotten classics for the audience of today in new high-quality editions<\/cite>. (The bookstore I&#8217;ve never visited, I just knew it from the ads in the back of sf zines and British comics).\n<\/p>\n<p>\nWith both <cite>Early Gigs<\/cite> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/darkandgolden.bigcartel.com\/product\/2-x-brett-ewins-and-peter-milligan\">Brett Ewins \/ Peter Milligan collection<\/a> I got at the same time, Dark and Golden Book has succeeded in bringing back in print some very obscure comics, stories that have been mouldering in long forgotten fanzines for literally decades. The Gibbons collection especially is a blast, each story introduced by the man himself, describing the circumstances in which it was made and for what purposes. Leaving through it the occasional preview of what would be the Dave Gibbons you know from <cite>Watchmen<\/cite> is already present, but you can also see how much of an influence Wally Wood was on him, as he himself acknowledges. For me this is also a peek at a world I barely know anything about, other than through Bryan Talbot&#8217;s <cite>Brainstorm<\/cite> collection of a few decades ago, a peek into the early seventies world of the UK underground.\n<\/p>\n<p>\nBrett Ewins \/ Peter Milligan collection too is a treat, containing their first collaboration, &#8220;Rooney&#8217;s Lay (1980), with their adaptation of Kafka&#8217;s &#8220;Int he Penal Colony&#8221; (1991) more than a decade later. Each of these stories is introduced by Peter Milligan, Brett Ewins <a href=\"\/wissewords2\/2015\/02\/17\/brett-ewins\/\">sadly having passed away<\/a> a decade ago. Both volumes are proper comics, as all of Dark and Golden Books projects seem to be, with cardboard covers and decent, thick paper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re a fan of Dave Gibbons, you own it to yourself to get a copy of this book. In the introduction Gibbons mentions Dark They Were and Golden Eyed, a legendary science fiction bookstore that was my first association when I saw the name of its publisher, Dark and Golden Books, who as they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11197"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11199,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11197\/revisions\/11199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}