I have cheated slightly on the "no shadows" rule because it fixed a
small art problem, and again, no background in panel 2 - less is more.
Ireland's
Hibernia imprint has recently done a collection of the
Tower King storyline from the early days of the
1980s Eagle revival, and it's one of the high points thanks to a fast-paced script from Alan Hebden and some cracking Jose Ortiz artwork that - I will be blunt here - was far too good for the strip, or Eagle. Even today it's pretty gobsmacking in places, especially presented as it is in the original oversized Eagle format rather than the usual US-format for trade collections, so you can really drown in the artwork and I had to stop looking at it in case I started trying to emulate the meticulous hatching and brilliant use of solid blacks to make the characters feel like real people, even if they're grotesque post-apocalyptic mutants living in the ruins of London reduced to a new feudal era - trying to copy it would drive me mad eventually. If nothing else, it makes for a pretty macabre colouring-in book for younger kids you might be determined to turn into weirdos, as seems to have been the long-term effect of the Eagle on those who grew up with it.
I got my copy from
Comicsy, but it's a limited print run of 200 thanks to the deal agreed with the current copyright owners of the material and last I heard Hibernia were down to the low double-figures of the remaining stock, so if you think the entire run of a brilliantly-rendered post-apocalyptic romp sounds like something you'd be interested in checking out, you might want to grab one quick.
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