Friday, February 22, 2013

Comic Cuts - 22 February 2013

This has been my second full week concentrating on the Ranger book. Trying to keep things bubbling along, I have worked on a few scans in between bouts of writing the introduction. The latter is now coming together quite nicely and was 5,700 words at the last count.

The scans have been fun to work on. Only a handful of pieces of original artwork seems to have survived for Ranger, some of it black & white war illustrations. To get the best possible reproduction, I have reset a number of pages and dropped in the original artwork, an example of which you can see above. Not to toot my own trumpet, but the results look pretty darn good and pushing up the quality of the artwork should give the finished book a chance at looking good once it is printed.

The actual index bit of the book is also almost complete. With luck and a good tail wind, I should be starting on layouts next week and finalising the content as far as reprint strips is concerned. I'm definitely planning to include 'Macbeth', as drawn by Ruggero Giovannini and at least one strip by Franco Caprioli. The final decision will depend on balancing page count with costs and making sure that the end result is affordable.

I need some help with one section ... I'd like to include the two Ranger books but I only have one of them. So can anyone help out with the contents of the second (1968) annual? That's the one pictured above.

Random scans ... sticking with the Ranger theme, here are four covers from the magazine painted by James E. McConnell, a regular artist here on Bear Alley, although normally its his paperback covers.

 
 
 
Roy Cross should be making an appearance on Bear Alley over the weekend. Next week, we will be back on the trail with Lesley Shane.

3 comments:

  1. Really looking forward to the Ranger Book, Steve. I've a memory that an original Trigan Empire story (never in Look and Learn) appeared in a Ranger Annual - if this is the case and it is one that didn't appear in the series of 12 Trigan reprints, could it be included in your book?

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  2. Both Ranger books had Trigan stories but a reprint isn't possible because of the copyright on the strip. The license would cost more than the cost of putting the rest of the book together combined.

    But I do have access to some others which I will be using.

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  3. Hi Steve,

    Those covers look gorgeous - I realise full colour is probably cost prohibitive, but would a black and white cover gallery be a goer? Hopefully some the rare original art includes a cover?

    john morrison

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