Who Dares Publishing
From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference
Who Dares Publishing was a seperate publisher set up by Andrew Skilleter producing a range of quality merchandise that included, poster prints, calendars (1986, 1987, 1988 and 1999) and bookmarks.
- Andrew Skilleter was working for W. H. Allen at the time when, on realising that there were no plans to commeemorate the 20th Anniversary of the TV series, with any art based projects, approached the then producer John Nathan-Turner.
- John Nathan-Turner was aware of Andrew Skilleter's work having approved all the covers for Target Books.
- The first items to be merchandised were a series of A3 poster prints featuring Omega from Arc of Infinity and Cybermen from Earthshock. The accompanying text was prepared by Richard Landon.
- Prepared in time for the 20th Anniversary event at Longleat House
2000 units were sold in the first five hours alone.
- Further prints were merchandised with Omega, Sontarans, K-9 and Davros and the Daleks being adapted into jigsaws by Waddington of Canada for the home and USA market.
- The licence to produce Doctor Who calenders in the USA had ended and Who Dares picked up it up. The first in 1986 was a showcase for Andrew Skilleter's work and sold 20,000 copies in the USA alone.
- While not illustrated by Andrew Skilleter, Who Dares Publishing allowed the publication of two other books of interest to him; The Man Who Drew Tomorrow - alook at the work of artist Frank Hampson, the second title was Timeview the complete collection of Doctor Who illustrations by Frank Bellamy. Timeview also won the 1986 British Book Production Award.
- Copyright for merchandise proved to be problematic and expensive, so for the calendars, individual copyright holders were kept to a minimum and along with Anthony Ainley's Master, not all the Doctor's likenesses were be used.
- In his book Blacklight: The Art of Andrew Skilleter the explains that the name Who Dares was part inspired by his love of the series he had come to late on ('Who'), and 'Dare' from his 1950's comic strip hero Dan (Dare), with an 's' added!
