Heralding the imminent arrival on bookshop shelves the world over, former drinking companion (one night down the Escape bar in the late 80s), ex-NME reviewer, and once disciple of the old Velocity mag (he quite liked it a bit), nice guy Andrew Collins (BBC 6 Music, Radio Times, et cetera) has penned a very favourable review of our eagerly awaited (over a year) anthology, The Great Unwashed from Escape Books in this month’s Word magazine (actually came out last month, but in the great scheme of Pleece scheduling, that was way ahead of time!)

Indie-trousered comic strip siblings get all anthologised

Emerging from a revitalised small-press UK comics scene 25 years ago, their doleful, monochrome strips found in magazines like Crisis, A1 and Escape (now a book publishing imprint), Brighton-based Gary and Warren Pleece chimed with the Oxfam-tailored, fanzines-in-Tesco-bags, C86 Indie culture. The Great Unwashed collects early, parochially low-key triumphs from under their 80s, Enterprise Allowance Scheme-funded Velocity umbrella with fighting-fit new collaborations. Warren’s fluid, minimalist inkmanship and geometric panelling give life to Gary’s understated, arch scripts (“several frames of inconsequentiality pass”), absorbing pop culture like a dual sponge with titles like Native New Yorkers, the wordless Dead Souls, Bertrand de Plastique and family saga The Higsons. Mixing seafront sleaze, the American nightmare and post-modern voyages into period drama, this one-stop shop is a joy, inducing dewy-eyed nostalgia in the grown-up comix fan who still pines for Los Bros Hernandez. With Warren now very much overground, it’s pleasing he and Gary have not “done a Gallaghers”. ANDREW COLLINS