Comic Cuts

I've spent the week slogging through various chores, cleaning up artwork for a future project from Bear Alley Books and spending some time doing research for the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. The latter is mostly detective work relating to names, dates of birth and death and that kind of thing, so it's a nice change of pace from spotting out rust-damage and re-inking and occasionally re-lettering panels from scans of comics that are definitely showing their age.

I'm doing some of the research for the second time round having disastrously erased the file of notes I was keeping. By the time I noticed that it had disappeared, there was no way to recover it. Aaarrgh! The only silver lining I can squeeze out of the situation is that it's a little bit quicker doing the work second time around because I can remember some of the names I spent fruitless hours working on, so I know where not to waste the time.

One thing I was peeved to miss was the launch of The Rainbow Orchid, Garen Ewing's fabulous first volume of the adventures of Julius Chancer. I had been hoping to take a day off and head down to London but it was not to be. There was an excellent review of the book by James Lovegrove in the Financial Times (3 August). For more background, there's an interview with Garen at David O'Connell's Scribblehound website and you can always visit Garen's own website for the history of the strip and a preview of volume 2.

On a more positive note, I was digging around for some comics I need for a post I'm planning for next week and stumbled across some magazines and a book that I've spent a year looking for. It proves once again my long-held belief that the best way to find something is to look for something else.