Inside the Rebellion Vault: Rediscovering the secret history of British comics

Somewhere, hidden in deepest, darkest Oxford — okay, the darkness might simply have been the weather when I was there — is a legitimate piece of comic book history. Or, more precisely, multiple pieces of comic book history: the archive of Rebellion’s Treasury of British Comics and 2000 AD, which consists of more than a century of back issues, original art, and more.

Easily one of the largest archival collections of comic book history (and almost certainly, one of the most substantial archives of British comic history in particular), Rebellion’s archive is predominantly made up of material published by what was one of the largest UK comic book publishers of the 20th century, IPC, and its many alternate names, subsidiary companies, and publishers purchased or absorbed into it across the years. (Including but not limited to Amalgamated Press, Oldhams Press, Fleetway Publications, and many more.) While Rebellion bought long-running British sci-fi anthology series 2000 AD at the start of the 21st century, it wasn’t until 2018 that it acquired the complete back catalog of IPC, reuniting what is in effect 130 years of material, and a record of pop culture unlike any other.

Yes, I wrote 130 years; the Rebellion archive includes copies of Comic Cuts from the 1890s, some of the earlier cartoon papers in the world. To see them — collected in bound editions that are, most likely over a century old in and of themselves, labeled with yellowing paper that they are “library editions” and not to be removed from the collection of a publisher that no longer exists — is a curious experience, because they are at once objects from a distant past and oddly contemporary, using illustration tricks and techniques (and employing a wicked sense of satire) still in use today.

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The intent, I was told, was not to make the archive a hidden, private collection of material owned and controlled by Rebellion [but] to maintain it as a piece of collective cultural history available to the UK in multiple forms. It’s a bold aim, true, but one that feels thrilling to consider the impact of in years to come. Just imagine what having access to all of this history could inspire in the future.