King of Crooks (featuring The British Spider)

Edition excerpt from King of Crooks (featuring The British Spider) (2005): From the comics vault comes a classic tale of terror and intrigue introducing a villain equipped with an amazingly versatile exoskeleton and a brain to match — the British comics character, The Spider! His greatest ambition is to become the ‘King of Crime’. To achieve this goal, he organises a gang of criminals including such specialists as ‘Professor’ Pelham, a brilliant crooked scientist, and Roy Ordini, ace safecracker, and embarks on his felonious spree! Reprinted in hardback for the first time in forty years this collection brings together the earliest adventures of devious arch-criminal and twisted mastermind, the “King of Crooks”. Originally created by writer/artists Ted Cowan and Reg Bunn for British comic Lion, he was the ultimate anti-hero. In a time saturated by square-jawed and multi-colour superheroes, the British Spider character was in it for himself. These are extremely rare, long out of print stories not seen since the 1960s, and the collection also contains an introduction by IPC's Andrew Sumner, a story checklist, an article chronicling the history of the character, and a new cover by acclaimed artist Garry Leach. An amazing trip through the Silver Age of British comics, a piece of history every person interested in comics should own!