Savoy Books: Fudge and the Dragon

		Fudge and the Dragon Ken Reid 1980 b/w comic strip w /colour plates 335mm x 244mm Soft covers Reprint of 1949 University of London Press edition 128pp ISBN 0 86130 007 6

Fudge and Speck embark on a journey to the Land of Nowhere. When Blink, one of their woodland elf friends, is turned into a caterpillar by Mor, the angry magician, they ask Woozle the Wood Wizard to help turn him back into an elf. But Woozle is so scatty and absent minded he forgets to put a vital ingredient into the spell, with disastrous results. Only a Dragon's Tooth can save the unfortunate Blink!

Soft cover facsimile of the original. Contains fully illustrated 1979 interview with Reid by David Britton. Before the collapse of Savoy Books Ltd in 1981 we planned to republish six 'Fudge the Elf' titles. Other titles were to have been, Fudge's Trip to the Moon, Fudge in Toffee Town, Fudge Turns Detective and Frolics with Fudge. Hopefully, before we die, we will return a couple more 'Fudge' books to the market place and put into book form for the first time Speck's Inventions, which contains possibly the most breathtaking of all Ken's art.

With additional Check List guide to the original Fudge newspaper strips by David Britton and David McCulloch.

In The Revenant Zone: Of Elves And Ethics (All About Ken Reid's Fudge) by Carolyn Horn.

• A few copies of this title are still available. See the Orders page for purchase details.

"Two books of interest (again from Savoy) are The Tides of Lust by Samuel R Delany, and Charles Platt's The Gas. Both are highly erotic, some would say pornographic, and are definitely not for the squeamish. The Gas has an absorbing, if slightly laboured, introduction by Philip José Farmer who presents a rational argument for the existence of such books and puts the writers intent in context. Some readers may view the dichotomy inherent in publishing books like Fudge the Elf and John Warren's Return from the Wild alongside The Gas and The Tides of Lust with some puzzlement. Exploitation—if so which? The answer is neither. Britton and Butterworth care deeply about all the books they publish and are quick to defend them, reasonably, against unreasonable attacks. An interesting footnote is that the Savoy offices on Deansgate, Manchester, were raided recently by the police, who took away 3000 copies of The Tides of Lust and 2000 copies (approx) of The Gas. The authorities appear to have made up their minds already—have you?"

JERRY MORRELL

Letter:

"How delighted to read in Mr Manchester's Diary that the adventures of Fudge, the Elf, together with his pal Speck, are being reproduced again in facsimile book form. His enthralling adventures portrayed so vividly by the hand of the master cartoonist Ken Reid delighted millions of young and old readers in the News.

"I would carefully cut out his cartoon strip each night and paste it into a scrapbook, for Ken Reid's work was really ahead of its time."

JOHN DOCHERTY, Manchester Evening News reader, 1980