Dark They Were and Golden Eyed (bookshop)

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Coordinates: 51°30′51.3″N 0°8′3.7″W / 51.514250°N 0.134361°W / 51.514250; -0.134361
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Dark They Were and Golden Eyed
Company type
Collectables

Dark They Were and Golden Eyed

underground comics to the United Kingdom.[3]
It also sold American editions of mainstream science fiction books that were not easily obtained anywhere else.

The shop was named after a short story by Ray Bradbury.

History

The shop was started by Derek "Bram" Stokes, who had previously been a member of the editorial collective of the

Bedfordbury before moving to 10 Berwick Street in Soho
.

Frank Dobson, dubbed the "Godfather of British Fandom," a trained electrician, helped wire the new store — and was also paid in comics.[6]

Titan Entertainment Group, was also a customer, and produced a fanzine on the shop's hand-cranked duplicator.[3] Stokes and Landau were important forces behind the annual British Comic Art Convention, the so-called "UK Comicon," which ran, mostly in London, from 1968 to 1981. Stokes was the main organizer of the 1969 and 1971 editions, and Landau was a key organizer of the 1972 and 1973 editions of Comicon.[7]

The shop was also the semi-official correspondence address for the magazine

2000 AD.)[citation needed
]

Comics artist Brian Bolland drew some of the earliest pieces of advertising artwork for Dark They Were and Golden Eyed, which ran in various fanzines, convention programmes, and magazines such as Time Out, and were commissioned by future-Titan Distributors and Forbidden Planet co-founder (with Nick Landau) Mike Lake, who was "working there at the time" in c. 1978.[9] Illustrator and author James Cawthorn also produced adverts for the shop in 1977; they appeared in Time Out and other magazines. His illustrations were also featured on paper carrier bags used by the shop. (Cawthorn's graphic novels were published by David Britton's Savoy Press in Manchester.) Later adverts were created by Rod Vass, who designed and illustrated posters and carrier bags for the shop.[citation needed]

The shop later moved to a much larger ground floor and basement premises in St Anne's Court off Wardour Street in Soho, at that point proclaiming itself "the biggest and best science fiction, fantasy, and comic book store in the world."[10] At round this time, the store was also partnering with the Essex-based wholesaler Biytoo Books/Dangerous Visions.[10]

Dark They Were and Golden Eyed closed in 1981.[3] Visitors to the store following closure could see a message in the window telling them that Dark They Were and Golden Eyed may have gone, but the spirit lived on...[citation needed]

Legacy

Paul Hudson, later of the London comic shop Comic Showcase, was employed in Dark They Were and Golden Eyed. Illustrator and designer Floyd Hughes worked at the shop in the late 1970s. The shop was a key influence on three bookshops in Manchester run by David Britton and Michael Butterworth: House on the Borderland, Orbit in Shudehill, and Bookchain in Peter Street.[11]

In popular culture

Notable customers of the shop included

Forteana store named after another Bradbury short story "There Will Come Soft Rains". In his introduction to Shelf Life: Fantastic Stories Celebrating Bookstores, Neil Gaiman
writes of the shop's influence on him as a teen; the introduction is reprinted in his book The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction.

The photo on the cover of the U.K. Subs' single "Tomorrow's Girls" (released 31 Aug 1979) features the shop front in St Anne's Court.

References

  1. ^ Roberts, Peter (21 October 1972). "6th British Comicon". Checkpoint (25). Retrieved 8 September 2008.
  2. ^ Nicholls, Stan (December 2004). "Stan Nicholls - an infinity plus profile". infinity plus. self. Retrieved 8 September 2008.
  3. ^ a b c Barnett, David. "How cult comic book shop Forbidden Planet changed the way we consume geek culture: Four decades on, the institution is still enjoying a position both at the top of the market and in the hearts of nerds across the land," The Independent (07 September 2018).
  4. ^ Here Be Dragons Archived September 24, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ The Write Fantastic Archived July 23, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ a b Johnston, Rich. "ComICA – ‘Dark We Were And Golden Eyed’ Panel Report," Bleeding Cool (November 8, 2009).
  7. ^ Skinn, Dez. "Early days of UK comics conventions and marts" Archived 2012-02-01 at the Wayback Machine, DezSkinn.com. Accessed Mar. 3, 2013.
  8. ISBN 1-870870-26-3
    .
  9. ^ Bolland, Brian. "The 1970's – Dark They Were and Golden Eyed," The Art of Brian Bolland, p. 48.
  10. ^ a b DTW&GE advertisement, BEM #28 (May 1980), p. 40 (back cover).
  11. ^ Savage, Jon (10 May 2008). "Controlled chaos". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 September 2008.
  12. ^ Read Yourself Raw Archived May 15, 2008, at the Wayback Machine

51°30′51.3″N 0°8′3.7″W / 51.514250°N 0.134361°W / 51.514250; -0.134361

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