Comic Cuts - 7 November

Last Sunday's trip up to the ABC Show was the usual tale of travel woes—this time we ended up in Newbury Park via bus from Ingatestone; better than the show last March where we were diverted to Basildon, I guess, but still annoying when you've paid for a service that the railways just can't seem to provide.

That moan out of the way, the day was pretty good for everyone concerned. It was tipping it down when I arrived at the Royal National and there was some fear that it would put people off. Thankfully, the crowd that did turn up were spending like crazy, and I heard no complaints from the dealers.

I picked up a few odds and ends—nothing spectacular but a few items I thought looked interesting. I did finally find a copy of City of the Hidden Eyes, written by J. L. Morrissey, someone I'll revisit in one of these columns some day. Some of the other books are for columns yet to be written, so I'll leave those for now. But if I get time, I'll put together another paperback cover cavalcade column to show off some of the others.

Work is progressing on the Eagles Over the Western Front volumes. Mostly artwork cleaning, although that came to a grinding halt when my glasses broke (the tiny little screw holding the glass in place, this time, rather than the arm falling off, just for variation). I've a second pair, but they're for travel rather than reading, so not much help with close-up work. I did learn at the show of another two pages of original Eagles artwork that have survived the years, so we're now up to 57 pages that will be reproduced from Bill Lacey's original drawings.

That's about it for news. With 223 pages to scan and clean up, plus 55 pages of original artwork to sort out, I've not had much time for anything else. Most of volume 1 is done but that still leaves volume 2. Incidentally, I hope people who have been following the strip noticed the vast improvement of the episodes published during the week. I'm now working from my own scans which are a lot better than the rough scans I was previously posting.

Talking of strips to be posted, next week we begin something of an epic: Ruggero Giovannini's interpretation of Ben Hur. In colour. I thought it would make a nice change from the black & white strips I've been running for some months.