Comic Cuts

Not a lot to say newswise. The Frank Bellamy book is in the process of being designed. David Ashford and I are still tidying up the last bits of text for the Thriller Index. The next Trigan Empire Collection is at the printers. It's one of those days when we've slipped into the cracks between the interesting bits of book publishing. Hopefully I'll have some more interesting news soon.

And there's not a huge amount happening elsewhere when it comes to classic British comics... thank goodness for Kit Carter!

* With The Dandy about to celebrate its 70th birthday, Lew Stringer takes a look at some of the adventure strips that appeared in the paper over the years.

* The new Dan Dare comic from Virgin Comics is about to arrive in comic shops. If you're still uncertain about the revamping of such an iconic character there's a nice piece here written by Garth Ennis about his attitude to the character and Garth is interviewed by Emmett Furey at Comic Book Resources (29 November). Meanwhile, Tom Spurgeon reviews the first issue at his Comic's Reporter column. For two other examples of non-Hampson Dan Dare, Steve Flanagan publishes a page of Ian Kennedy's DD from the 1987 Dan Dare Annual plus a page drawn by Ron Turner from the same volume.

* A rare copy of the first issue of Viz was auctioned in Newcastle for £950. BBC News (28 November) quotes John Anderson as saying: "What makes this copy even rarer is that there were two printings of the first edition, but the second run has a crucial difference. They were giving a free ice cream with the issue, which turns out just to be a picture of an ice cream stapled inside the cover. On the first printing it's in red and on the second it's black and white."