Dancing Elephant Press

Artist and writer Paul Grist had previously self published his character Burglar Bill in his small press title Short Stories in June 1986, following that with the similarly self-published The Exploits of Burglar Bill in September 1986. Over the next few years Grist began producing stories for other British publishers, including Harrier Comics (notably for !Gag!, which published the third Burglar Bill tale), Trident and Fleetway. In the early 1990s Grist began work on what was intended to be a six issue Burglar Bill miniseries to be published via Trident, but Trident ran into financial difficulties after only one issue was released. Having spent the best part of a year working on the series, and feeling the career momentum he had built up prior to this had been lessened because he had not done other comics work during this time, in 1993 Paul Grist elected to self-publish and set up Dancing Elephant Press. Since Trident had previously published the first issue of what had become the Burglar Bill mini-series, Grist felt that it would be unwise to begin this new venture with what would amount to a reprint, and so developed a new series, Kane, reworking a story idea he had previously pitched unsuccessfully to DC Comics. With one person behind all creative aspects of the company, Dancing Elephant was largely restricted to producing one title at a time, so from 1993 to 2000, Kane was Dancing Elephant's sole ongoing title, although it did release apart the Burglar Bill Summer Fun Special which collected Bill's previously published short stories. In 2000, with sales for Kane having plateaued out, Grist released Jack Staff, a British superhero title whose initial conception had been as a rejected Union Jack story proposal to Marvel Comics. Its success and the resulting increased interest in Dancing Elephant's other series prompted Grist to start releasing his Burglar Bill series in 2003, though poor sales saw it end incomplete with the third issue. That same year Grist moved Jack Staff to Image Comics, finding letting them handle the publishing side of things preferable to the problems of self-publishing, with reprints of Kane and a relaunch of the Burglar Bill mini-series following soon after.

Kane

Burglar Bill

Mudman

Jack Staff

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