*Boys’ Adventure & War Comics: The latest in our series of high profile British updates! In 1975, Fleetway/IPC tried to cash in on its fondly-remembered adventure series by launching a new anthology, Vulcan, in an unusual slick-paper format with dimensions approximating those of the American comic book, rather than the customary magazine size of UK comics. Gleaning features from across its vast inventory, they ran “The Trigan Empire” from Look and Learn, as the lead, with “Kelly’s Eye”, “Mytek the Mighty” and “The Steel Claw” from Valiant, “The Spider” and “Robot Archie” from Lion, and “Saber, King of the Jungle” from Tiger, for a cross-section of top talent, including Don Lawrence, Reg Bunn, Solano Lopez, Joe Colquhoun and Jesus Blasco – an A-list roster for a Z-List budget, as IPC paid no reprint royalties at the time! Vulcan was tried out in a Scottish-only edition with the first issue released in March 1975, and after a successful 30-issue run, re-launched with a national edition in September that year. Any issues of Vulcan are scarce these days – the relative flimsiness of the slick paper stock means that copies are rather too easily damaged, unless stored carefully – but most elusive are the Scottish editions, which had a proportionately restricted print run. We are very happy to have acquired a complete run of the Scottish editions, all 30 issues. Most of these are around VG grade, some higher, some lower, although the #1 issue is Poor only with the back cover missing, affecting the Robot Archie story. Prices on them are high, but we believe they’re justified by the scarcity of the items; in 2015, we had almost two complete sets in at the same time, which completely amazed us, and they flew out again very rapidly – in our near 25 years of trading, we had only ever seen half-a-dozen Scottish Vulcans before then, and we really have no clue when, if ever, we’ll see them again. Pictured below: #1-3 and #30, the final issue. All issues are illustrated in our catalogue, where full grading and pricing information may be seen.