Andrew Sumner

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Andrew Sumner is a British magazine publisher and movie journalist, currently employed by IPC Media as Publishing Director of their weekly celebrity title, Now.

Contents

[edit] Background

According to his 2005 introduction to Titan Books' archive collection of classic IPC comic strips featuring Lion Comic's master-villain, The Spider (The King of Crooks by Jerry Siegel, Ted Cowan and Reg Bunn, ISBN 978-1845760007), Sumner was born and raised in Merseyside (in the North West of England).

[edit] Early career

Sumner wrote regularly for John Brown's comics news magazine, Speakeasy, in the late 80s/early 90s (alongside other contributors such as Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison and graphic designer Rian Hughes). Following Speakeasy's transformation into the abortive comics anthology, Blast, Sumner contributed a number of articles to Marvel UK's equally abortive mondo movie title, Bizarre, before serving as a movie correspondent for the NME, Vox and Future Publishing's Total Film throughout the mid/late 90s.

From its launch in 1997, Sumner has written almost exclusively for IPC Media's music and movie magazine Uncut (Sumner's work for Uncut seemingly focuses on genre cinema - with an emphasis on action movies, film noir, comic book movies, classic westerns and WWII combat movies). Sumner's byline has appeared less frequently since late 2005 but he still appears to contribute occasional DVD reviews.

[edit] Publishing career

Sumner was appointed publisher of Emap Healthcare's Therapy Weekly (a weekly newspaper for occupational therapists and physiotherapists) in 1998, before transferring to Emap Esprit in 2000 as the publisher of Slimming Magazine. Sumner added alternative health magazine Here's Health to his Emap publishing portfolio in 2001 and launched Celebrity Bodies (a celebrity diet title that was villified by the British government's health secretary and caused a brief media sensation in the spring of 2001) before joining IPC Media in May 2002.

Sumner joined IPC Media as publishing manager of men's magazine Loaded in 2002. He was promoted to publisher in June 2003, a position he held until September 2005 when he became publishing director of Uncut (he had served as Uncut's publisher since July 2004).

Along the way, he served as the launch publisher of IPC's men's weekly Nuts (for its first six months of existence, from January 2004 to June 2004) and launched Uncut DVD (alongside Uncut founding editor Allan Jones) in October 2005. Uncut DVD was a resounding critical hit ("the only great movie magazine") but closed after publishing three quarterly issues.

Sumner became publishing director of Now in January 2006 and launched www.nowmagazine.co.uk in August 2006. In January 2008, www.nowmagazine.co.uk won the Silver Medal for best celebrity website at the BT Online Excellence Awards.

[edit] Turner Classic Movies

From May 2005 to December 2005, Sumner presented The Uncut Film on Turner Classic Movies (UK), a series of contemporary classic movies selected by Uncut that ran (uninterrupted and uncut) on TCM UK at 9pm Wednesdays.

Sumner introduced each episode with a detailed on-air critique/celebration of the classic movie to come. Among the movies featured were All The President's Men, Rio Bravo, Cool Hand Luke, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Blood Simple and Scarface.

[edit] IPC Media Comics Archive

A renowned comics fan, Sumner was instrumental in revitalising IPC's long-dormant library of 1960s adventure heroes from the pages of such fondly-remembered weekly UK comics as Lion, Valiant and Smash.

In 2004, Sumner established relationships with DC Comics' Vice President of Sales Bob Wayne and Titan Books' Editorial Director Katy Wild that saw the launch of three new comic book series from DC's WildStorm imprint throughout 2005 and 2006 (Albion, Thunderbolt Jaxon and Battler Britton) and an ongoing range of classic reprint archive editions from Titan Books (The King of Crooks, The Steel Claw and the recently-published Albion Origins).

Famed UK radio producer Dirk Maggs is currently working on audio adventures for Sexton Blake.

[edit] External links

[edit] Interviews