Hurrah! As the years have passed since my first post on After You've Gone about the 'Pop Pic Library' series of music-related comic books, a remarkable piece of the publishing jigsaw has just been discovered!
Somehow, the original aluminium offset lithographic plates for two of the covers have surfaced: No.57 'Pleasant Valley Sunday' by The Monkees, and No.58 'I'll Never Fall in Love Again" by Tom Jones. Both hit singles were issued in the Summer of 1967, so the comics themselves would have likely been published around this time.
As with most of the numbers that were issued later on in the run of the series which seems to have ended in 1968 with No.72 ('Congratulations' by Cliff Richard), the original comic books themselves are hard to find. In fact, to my knowledge, a copy of 'Pleasant Valley Sunday' has never turned up on the market. But these cover plates are the first ever publicly known examples of ephemera relating to the Pop Pic Library universe.
Many of us fans are still hoping to come across the beautiful original artwork for the covers which was provided by such luminaries of the UK romance comics scene as the Spanish artists Jose Maria Miralles and Angel Badia Camps. These were occasionally signed. It's clear however, that the lack of credits in the comic books for the photographer or their agency of the colour picture of the singer or band that always appeared the back page, or for any of the songwriters and record labels, surely means that Pop Pic Library was unlikely to have been fully endorsed or authorised by many of the rights owners themselves.
I always look forward to seeing new research on the series, and perhaps others may be able to track down exactly who was responsible at Wells Gardner, Darton and Company, the publishers, for creating this intriguing and ever so Sixties slice of POP culture.
For anyone interested in purchasing these original aluminium offset lithographic plates, please contact David Walker at The Shibusa Gallery: david@shibusa-gallery.co.uk
