Fireman Sam Annual 1991

Fireman Sam Annual 1991. Edited by Michael Stuart Phipps. Illustrated by County Studios, with stories and features by David Boyle, Stuart Branch, John Burns, Louise Cassell, Gary Gilbert and Marina Graham. London: Marvel Comics Ltd, in association with The Redan Company, 1991. Hardback, pictorial boards. ISBN 1-85400-119-1; ISBN-13 978-1-85400-119-1. Printed in Italy. Original British price £4.25, the printed price label still present on the inside cover. This is the Fireman Sam annual for 1991, the fifth in the original hardback series, issued for the Christmas trade of 1990. It belongs to the Marvel Comics / Redan run that began with the 1987 annual, before the title passed fully to The Redan Company and later to Egmont. The imprint on page 4 states that FIREMAN SAM Annual 1991 is published by Marvel Comics Ltd, 13/15 Arundel Street, London WC2, and that Fireman Sam, including all prominent characters in the annual and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are the trademarks and copyright of Prism Art and Design Ltd, 1986 and 1990. All rights reserved. Printed in Italy. Editorial credit is to Michael Stuart Phipps, printed beneath the contents; some trade listings shorten this to Mike Phipps. The contributors named on the same page are David Boyle, Stuart Branch, John Burns, Louise Cassell, County Studios, Gary Gilbert and Marina Graham. Boyle, Branch, Burns, Cassell, Gilbert and Graham supplied the prose, the comic-strip scripts, the puzzles and the activity pages. County Studios, the Welsh studio closely associated with Bumper Films and the television production, supplied the colour artwork. No individual artist is signed on the pages examined. The pictures follow the stop-motion character models of the original series, not the later computer-animated redesign: Sam in the yellow helmet with the red star badge, blue tunic with white spots, yellow trousers and black boots; Jupiter, the red fire engine; and the early Pontypandy cast. The characters and their likenesses were created for television by Rob Lee, the Cardiff illustrator who designed Fireman Sam after the original idea from former London firemen Dave Gingell and Dave Jones. Prism Art and Design Ltd held the copyright, dated 1986 and 1990 in this annual. Lee is the designer of the characters used throughout the book. He is not credited as author or editor of this annual, and the text is original material written for the annual rather than transcripts of broadcast episodes. Several pieces reuse the setting and running jokes of the S4C and BBC series, including Elvis Cridlington’s cooking, Norman Price’s practical jokes, Bella Lasagne’s cafe, and Sam’s shed full of unreliable inventions. The glazed pictorial boards show Sam on the village road with a hose, Jupiter behind him with Steele and Elvis aboard, Rosa the cat, Sarah and James, and Norman. The rear board repeats the illustration and carries the ISBN panel and barcode 9 781854 001191. The opening spread is titled “Meet the folks of Pontypandy!” and names Sarah and James, Station Officer Steele, Dilys Price, Fireman Sam, Elvis Cridlington, Bella Lasagne, Trevor Evans and Norman Price. Page 5 sets the scene: Pontypandy is a village in the hillsides of Wales; the fire station stands on a hill; Bella owns the cafe; Dilys runs Price’s General Store. The mix is picture stories, two reports told in Sam’s voice, a spot-the-mistake kitchen scene, a country-road maze, a dot-to-dot, a rebus, a dice board game, a shop-counting puzzle, a paper-puppet sheet with tracing instructions, and an anagram page. The puppet sheet is unused and uncut. Condition: near fine. Boards bright and unmarked, no creases, tape or ownership marks; spine tight and square; pages clean, white and complete, with no writing, colouring or repairs. The £4.25 label is intact. A complete copy of the 1991 Marvel annual, suitable for a run of the early Fireman Sam books or for a collection of British children’s annuals of the period.…