British author Neil Gaiman is a phenomenon, with an international fan base, nearly two million Twitter followers and a string of best-selling books and graphic novels to his name. Today, Knockabout Comics, publishers of comics legends including Gilbert Shelton, Robert Crumb and Alan Moore, and Sequential, the digital graphic novel iPad app, announce the release of an exclusive – and totally free – digital collection of Neil Gaiman’s ‘lost’ comic strips from the 1980s, in aid of charity Malaria No More UK. 

The collection features Gaiman’s collaborations with Bryan Talbot, Dave McKean and others, and includes a very rare interview from 1988, Gaiman’s original typed notes for Sandman, sample scripts, project proposals, rarely seen early photos and more. Also included is an original cover by British underground comics great Hunt Emerson, specially commissioned for this collection, plus comment from Knockabout publisher Tony Bennett and comics historian Paul Gravett.

Neil Gaiman’s Lost Tales collects stories from the long out-of-print Outrageous Tales from the Old Testament and Seven Deadly Sins – both of which caused outrage upon publication – as well as SF tales from Trident Comics and a favourite from 2000AD, plus several others.

The free collection, which runs to over 100 pages, is exclusively available via the Sequential iPad app from today, and a donation of $0.50 will be made to Malaria No More UK for each download before December 31st, 2013. Sequential and Knockabout aim to raise up to $15,000 (over £9,000) for the charity’s work to bring an end to malaria, a preventable disease that is tragically one of the biggest killers of children in Africa.

Neil Gaiman’s Lost Tales is downloadable for free from within the Sequential iPad app, available for free on iTunes here