Two rather nifty publications have arrived in the last couple of weeks from Rebellion on newsstands. The first was John Steel – well worth your galactic groats daddio – and this week it’s this little gem. The Return of Sexton Blake.

If you have a treasure trove of comic stories to revisit this is how to do it. A series of articles about a character lost to the mists of time, despite a prolific publishing history which will leave you gob smacked. A historical perspective, a look at some of the stories behind the characters development and a short story from 1908 all add to the mix.

A picture strip that will rekindle the memories of the retro crowd who poured over Action, Starlord, Battle, 2000AD and, yes, Tornado is included. The stand out story to me from that title was Victor Drago (I was probably binge watching on Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes reruns at the time). Here we discover it was meant to be Sexton Blake all the time but some rights issue got in the way. No issue now as the art by Mike Dorey and speech bubbles have all been remastered and the Sexton Blake name added as was originally intended (although the faithful assistant Tinker is still given his Tornado name Spencer in some of the panels!)

There’s a new story, setting the scene for some new comic strip adventures set around 1930, alongside the new novels that are being released.

Sexton Blake is indeed back after fifty years in the wilderness. I loved it. You will too.