The Avengers International Fan Forum

how many have been done on the show....and any idea which one is the best...and rarest (not in print )???

Search on ebay for Dave Rogers who must have produced 3 or 4 and of course Marcus Hearn's recent book.
The original Rogers book was printed in 1983 and simply called The Avengers, the follow-up Avengers Anew was written two years later.

Bizzarely I picked that up at a car boot for 50p on Sunday !!!

Dave Roger's 'The Ultimate Avengers' is certainly one of the best. The story synopses are cut down from his earlier books, but there is much more behind the scenes information.

I must have most of them and Dave's "Complete" and "Ultimate" are good, despite the errors; Andrew Pixley's "Files" is *excellent* although cast not as a traditional reference but treating the episodes as documentary evidence of fact.
Alan, Alys & Richard's recent book is good, but obviously limited to series 1.
Rodney's "Subversive Champagne" is interested but a bit shorter than I was expecting, and the monochromatic and unexcitingly typset printing leaves me wanting something more - but that's a fault with Amazon rather than the book.

dissolute wrote:Andrew Pixley's "Files" is *excellent* although cast not as a traditional reference but treating the episodes as documentary evidence of fact.

Glad somebody liked it!

Just to warn any prospective readers, "The Avengers Files" is a case of caveat emptor. It was a daft idea as an experiment, we had fun with it, the finished result didn't really work ... and if you're after a behind-the-scenes book then you don't want this one. But we did have fun ...

All the best

Andrew

Andrew Pixley wrote:

dissolute wrote:Andrew Pixley's "Files" is *excellent* although cast not as a traditional reference but treating the episodes as documentary evidence of fact.

Glad somebody liked it!

Just to warn any prospective readers, "The Avengers Files" is a case of caveat emptor. It was a daft idea as an experiment, we had fun with it, the finished result didn't really work ... and if you're after a behind-the-scenes book then you don't want this one. But we did have fun ...

All the best

Andrew

well, the bottom line sometimes, when doing stuff like this, is to HAVE fun!

I think it worked brilliantly, especially if approached by a reader from the perspective of a "the great Game" of Sherlock Holmes fandom that treats the stories as real and thus attempts to view the entire series as a cohesive entity, and examine how the stories fit together into a true series of adventures that happened to John Steed (and his partners).

The Avengers is one of the very few TV series that suit this, because the "two against the underworld" and bizarre crimes are strangely reminiscent of the Conan Doyle oeuvre in the first place.

Something similar was done with an earlier biography of John Steed, though that used some invented details (not on screen or in other books/comics) to fill in the gaps in Steed's known background, but Andrew's book uses just about every published source, and so is a great guide to the breadth of Avengers stuff out that was out there from the 60s onwards.

mousemeat wrote:well, the bottom line sometimes, when doing stuff like this, is to HAVE fun!

Absolutely! In fact with devotion to any of these things - television shows, music, books, sport, hobbies - if ultimately you're not having fun, then it's really valuable hours of your life flying by when you should really be doing something else. And we did have fun. And in this case we also got paid a little bit. And sadly, it didn't quite work. But - heigh-ho - we move on and have fun with something else ...

But fun is very important, and it's always a delight to find people on forums like this understanding that ...

All the best

Andrew

You're too modest, Andrew. I've said it before, and I'll say it again--I loved the book. It was a breath of fresh air--the last thing the series needed was another episode guide. It put together a wealth of information that just wasn't readily available, and I thought it worked beautifully. If you had even a fraction as much fun writing it as I did reading it, then you must have had a blast.

Yes, episode guides are now well-served by websites and there's a wealth of background detail available too. The Avengers Files is a wonderful example of what a book can do that a website really can't (or shouldn't try to)!