When thinking about Tolkien Comics everyone who collects
Tolkien books immediatly thinks about the very common and
very known The Hobbit Series
(first released as a three issue comic book series by eclipse books, but now
mostly available as one volume). The story was adapted from the original by Chuck Dixon, and illustrated by David T. Wenzel. This series was so succesful that there was even released a second edition
that introduced us to about 30 new pages of art by Wenzel. This comic The Hobbit book must have been translated in every possible language by now.
But long before the first appearance of the hobbit comics
there were the Lord of the rings comics. These The Lord
of the Rings comic albums were drawn based on the The Lord of the Rings Ralph Bakshi movie,
as is mentioned inside the Dutch
version of the comic albums. It is though vey difficult
to find any information on the when and how these comics
got published.
The first comics were probably released in Italy in 1979,
1980 and 1981. They were also published at least in Spain,
Finland, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland, and most
probably in many more places (but never outside Europe). Most of them, even when not in the Italian language, were
printed in Italy, and published by a local publisher. I received news that there also should exist a translation into Bulgarian, but probably only the first volume was published.
In the United States these comics didn't get published,
due to a copyright problem. They actually never got published
into English at all. But still are the only official comics based on The Lord
of the Rings that are licensed by Tolkien Enterprises, based
in California.
The artist, Luis Bermejo, who drew these comics was
of spanish origin. He is also responsibale for the fantastic covers. At the moment I have several copies of the Dutch version available. I would like to see if anyone has comics available from the other countries.
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