Nick Landau
Encyclopedia
Nick Landau is a British
media figure, currently co-owner of the Titan Entertainment Group
, which publishes Titan Magazines
and Titan Books
.
offices to interview then-editor Pat Mills
for Comic Media News. Mills was already planning on resigning once the comic had become established, and following the interview, had decided that Landau would make a suitable chief sub-editor, saying:
Landau didn't get that job due to his lack of experience, but he was soon given the same position at IPC Magazines' Action. When Mills stepped down after sixteen issues, replaced by Kelvin Gosnell
, Landau was brought in as Gosnell's chief sub-editor. Gosnell was overwhelmed by the amount of work needed to launch Starlord
, and Landau took up the slack. As Gosnell describes it, "As soon as Starlord came on the scene, I lost it. I had to have someone running 2000 AD and that was Nick Landau. He was halfway between editor and chief sub" and Roy Preston was made a sub-editor to take up the slack and help Landau. With the focus on the launch of Starlord (issue #1 was cover dated May 13, 1978), Landau, Preston and art editor Kevin O'Neill
had more creative freedom. As Mills says, "Some of the best decisions on 2000 AD' s future were made while they were running the show. They were responsible for "The Cursed Earth," credit cards and encouraged talented artists like Garry Leach
and Brian Bolland
," although Gosnell disagrees, stating that "[t]his wonderful gush of creative freedom they felt when I started on Starlord nearly got 2000 AD taken off the market."
They ran into legal problems over fill-in stories for "The Cursed Earth" (which satirised the big food companies, including figures like Ronald McDonald
and the Jolly Green Giant) but the main problems came over Inferno, the sequel to Harlem Heroes
. Concerns were raised over the violence in the story, but the sequence of events is unclear, as David Bishop
writes in Thrill Power Overload
, "[t]rying to determine exactly what happened next is problematic, due to conflicting memories and the passage of time." The outcome was that, with issue #86 (cover-dated 14 October 1978), when Starlord was merged into 2000 AD, Landau was moved into the same role at Battle, swapping places with Steve MacManus
. Landau soon resigned from Battle and made the move into the world of commerce.
for imported comic books in the 1970s, and with the closure of one of his leading customers he needed to take a radical step to avoid going out of business himself.
Landau established the Forbidden Planet
chain of shops – the first was opened in Denmark Street, London in 1978, also known as 'Tin Pan Alley
' – and now runs the business, as part of the Titan Entertainment Group (TEG), with current business partner and wife Vivian Cheung.
As well as the shops, TEG now includes Titan Books
, publishers of both new and licensed graphic novels and film and TV tie-ins; Titan Magazines
, publishers of Star Trek Magazine
, the Wallace and Gromit
comic, UK editions of Simpsons Comics, and many other titles; and Titan Merchandise, producers of high-quality licensed merchandise for global properties, including Marvel Comics
, Doctor Who
, Kick-Ass, and Hammer Horror.
TEG no longer distributes comics. In 1992 Forbidden Planet and Titan parted company with then-business partner Mike Lake, who sold Titan Distributors to the US comics distributor Diamond Comic Distributors
and then established his own Forbidden Planet line of stores, Forbidden Planet International, mainly in northern England and Scotland.
Landau puts the success of Forbidden Planet down to the location of the store and the success of Star Wars
, which prompted a surge of interest in science fiction memorabilia and comics.
Customers have included Ridley Scott
, who was looking for storyboard artists during the making of Dune
. Landau recalls his team ended up providing the director with a number of people from the comic book industry.
Although TEG has made some attempts to establish Forbidden Planet abroad, there are no longer any TEG-owned FP stores outside the UK.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
media figure, currently co-owner of the Titan Entertainment Group
Titan Entertainment Group
Titan Entertainment Group is a British retailing and publishing company, owner of the Forbidden Planet bookstore chain, Titan Magazines, and Titan Books. TEG is run by Nick Landau and Vivan Cheung.- Titan Distributors :...
, which publishes Titan Magazines
Titan Magazines
Titan Magazines is the magazine-publishing division of Nick Landau's Titan Publishing Group. Titan also owns several Forbidden Planet specialist comics and collector stores .Titan Magazines' publishing director is Chris Teather.TPG also owns Titan Books,...
and Titan Books
Titan Books
Titan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981. It is based at offices in London, England's Bankside area. The Books Division has two main areas of publishing: film & TV tie-ins/cinema reference books; and graphic novels and comics reference/art titles. The...
.
2000 AD
In the mid-1970s, after finishing a post-grad course at film school, Landau got his break when he came to the 2000 AD2000 AD (comic)
2000 AD is a weekly British science fiction-oriented comic. As a comics anthology it serialises a number of separate stories each issue and was first published by IPC Magazines in 1977, the first issue dated 26 February. IPC then shifted the title to its Fleetway comics subsidiary which was sold...
offices to interview then-editor Pat Mills
Pat Mills
Pat Mills, nicknamed 'the godfather of British comics', is a comics writer and editor who, along with John Wagner, revitalised British boys comics in the 1970s, and has remained a leading light in British comics ever since....
for Comic Media News. Mills was already planning on resigning once the comic had become established, and following the interview, had decided that Landau would make a suitable chief sub-editor, saying:
Nick was clearly an exceptional person and I knew he would be of great value, but Sanders rightly regarded most comic fans with deep suspicion, irrelevant to a mainstream undertaking. I agreed with feeling and still do. Nick was the exception to an otherwise golden rule.
Landau didn't get that job due to his lack of experience, but he was soon given the same position at IPC Magazines' Action. When Mills stepped down after sixteen issues, replaced by Kelvin Gosnell
Kelvin Gosnell
Kelvin Gosnell is a British comics writer and editor. He was involved in the founding of the long-running comic 2000 AD in 1977.-Biography:...
, Landau was brought in as Gosnell's chief sub-editor. Gosnell was overwhelmed by the amount of work needed to launch Starlord
Starlord
Starlord was a short-lived weekly British science fiction comic published by IPC in 1978 as a sister title to 2000 AD, which had been launched the previous year in anticipation of a science fiction boom surrounding Star Wars....
, and Landau took up the slack. As Gosnell describes it, "As soon as Starlord came on the scene, I lost it. I had to have someone running 2000 AD and that was Nick Landau. He was halfway between editor and chief sub" and Roy Preston was made a sub-editor to take up the slack and help Landau. With the focus on the launch of Starlord (issue #1 was cover dated May 13, 1978), Landau, Preston and art editor Kevin O'Neill
Kevin O'Neill (comics)
Kevin O'Neill is an English comic book illustrator best known as the co-creator of Nemesis the Warlock, Marshal Law , and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen .-Early career:...
had more creative freedom. As Mills says, "Some of the best decisions on 2000 AD
Garry Leach
-Biography:Garry Leach studied Graphic Design at St. Martin's School of Art. He was first noted for his early work for 2000 AD, which was mainly on one-off stories featuring Dan Dare and M.A.C.H. 1. He then became a fan-favourite for his work on the series The VCs.In 1981 he joined Dez Skinn's...
and Brian Bolland
Brian Bolland
Brian Bolland is a British comics artist, known for his meticulous, detailed linework and eye-catching compositions. Best known in the UK as one of the definitive Judge Dredd artists for British comics anthology 2000 AD, he spearheaded the 'British Invasion' of the American comics industry, and in...
," although Gosnell disagrees, stating that "[t]his wonderful gush of creative freedom they felt when I started on Starlord nearly got 2000 AD taken off the market."
They ran into legal problems over fill-in stories for "The Cursed Earth" (which satirised the big food companies, including figures like Ronald McDonald
Ronald McDonald
Ronald McDonald is a clown character used as the primary mascot of the McDonald's fast-food restaurant chain. In television commercials, the clown inhabits a fantasy world called McDonaldland, and has adventures with his friends Mayor McCheese, the Hamburglar, Grimace, Birdie the Early Bird, and...
and the Jolly Green Giant) but the main problems came over Inferno, the sequel to Harlem Heroes
Harlem Heroes
Harlem Heroes is a British comic strip that formed part of the original line-up of 2000 AD. Inspired by the popularity during the 1970s of kung fu films and the Harlem Globetrotters, Harlem Heroes was devised by Pat Mills, employing elements from his Hellball comic strip, and scripted by Tom Tully...
. Concerns were raised over the violence in the story, but the sequence of events is unclear, as David Bishop
David Bishop
David Bishop is a screenwriter and author. Born in New Zealand, he was a UK comics editor during the 1990s, running such titles as the Judge Dredd Megazine and 2000 AD, the latter between 1996 and the summer of 2000....
writes in Thrill Power Overload
Thrill Power Overload
Thrill Power Overload, or TPO is the title of a book about the history of the British comic 2000 AD written by David Bishop, one of its editors.- History :...
, "[t]rying to determine exactly what happened next is problematic, due to conflicting memories and the passage of time." The outcome was that, with issue #86 (cover-dated 14 October 1978), when Starlord was merged into 2000 AD, Landau was moved into the same role at Battle, swapping places with Steve MacManus
Steve MacManus
Steve MacManus is a British comic writer and editor, particularly known for his work at 2000 AD.Born in London and educated in Devon, MacManus joined IPC in 1973, aged 20, as a sub-editor on the boys' weekly comic Valiant, until 1975 when he moved to Battle Picture Weekly under editor David Hunt...
. Landau soon resigned from Battle and made the move into the world of commerce.
Titan Entertainment Group
Landau first saw the opportunity to distribute American comics in the UK in the 1970s, when only a small range of US comic books were available in British news agents. He says the reason he opened the first store was because he was a distributorDirect market
The direct market is the dominant distribution and retail network for North American comic books. It consists of one dominant distributor and the majority of comics specialty stores, as well as other retailers of comic books and related merchandise...
for imported comic books in the 1970s, and with the closure of one of his leading customers he needed to take a radical step to avoid going out of business himself.
Landau established the Forbidden Planet
Forbidden Planet (bookstore)
Forbidden Planet is the trading name of two separate science fiction, fantasy and horror bookshop chains across the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the United States of America, after the feature film of the same name....
chain of shops – the first was opened in Denmark Street, London in 1978, also known as 'Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century...
' – and now runs the business, as part of the Titan Entertainment Group (TEG), with current business partner and wife Vivian Cheung.
As well as the shops, TEG now includes Titan Books
Titan Books
Titan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981. It is based at offices in London, England's Bankside area. The Books Division has two main areas of publishing: film & TV tie-ins/cinema reference books; and graphic novels and comics reference/art titles. The...
, publishers of both new and licensed graphic novels and film and TV tie-ins; Titan Magazines
Titan Magazines
Titan Magazines is the magazine-publishing division of Nick Landau's Titan Publishing Group. Titan also owns several Forbidden Planet specialist comics and collector stores .Titan Magazines' publishing director is Chris Teather.TPG also owns Titan Books,...
, publishers of Star Trek Magazine
Star Trek Magazine
Star Trek Magazine is an authorized periodical published bi-monthly by Titan UK in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, devoted to the Star Trek franchise. The magazine has limited distribution in Europe...
, the Wallace and Gromit
Wallace and Gromit
Wallace and Gromit are the main characters in a series consisting of four British animated short films and a feature-length film by Nick Park of Aardman Animations...
comic, UK editions of Simpsons Comics, and many other titles; and Titan Merchandise, producers of high-quality licensed merchandise for global properties, including Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
, Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
, Kick-Ass, and Hammer Horror.
TEG no longer distributes comics. In 1992 Forbidden Planet and Titan parted company with then-business partner Mike Lake, who sold Titan Distributors to the US comics distributor Diamond Comic Distributors
Diamond Comic Distributors
Diamond Comic Distributors, Inc. is the largest comic book distributor serving North America. They transport comic books from both big and small comic book publishers, or suppliers, to the retailers. Diamond dominates the direct market in the United States, and has exclusive arrangements with most...
and then established his own Forbidden Planet line of stores, Forbidden Planet International, mainly in northern England and Scotland.
Landau puts the success of Forbidden Planet down to the location of the store and the success of Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
, which prompted a surge of interest in science fiction memorabilia and comics.
Customers have included Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists , Alien , Blade Runner , Legend , Thelma & Louise , G. I...
, who was looking for storyboard artists during the making of Dune
Dune (film)
Dune is a 1984 science fiction film written and directed by David Lynch, based on the 1965 Frank Herbert novel of the same name. The film stars Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides, and includes an ensemble of well-known American and European actors in supporting roles. It was filmed at the Churubusco...
. Landau recalls his team ended up providing the director with a number of people from the comic book industry.
Although TEG has made some attempts to establish Forbidden Planet abroad, there are no longer any TEG-owned FP stores outside the UK.
External links
- Titan Magazines US official site
- Titan Magazines UK official site
- Titan Books official site
- Forbidden Planet official site