Bear Alley: Comic Cuts - 29 January 2010

BEAR ALLEY BOOKS

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The Bill Kellaway Quartet by Gwyn Evans
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"The narrative is packed with action and I think readers will have a lot of fun with [Hercules, Esq.] and there are some genuine moments of laugh out loud humour. I can understand why the film rights for this book were snapped up and even today I could envisage it being a very enjoyable one-off TV series." — Cross Examining Crime.
"Although there’s some criminous stuff going on and Bill often finds himself vying against or working with various lawbreakers, the stakes are never really life and death in this book ... There is some slam-bang action, though, as well as a smart, really likable protagonist and a lot of really clever plot twists, but what really makes HERCULES ESQ. work is Evans’s style, which is consistently breezy, fast-paced, and funny." — James Reasoner, Rough Edges.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Comic Cuts - 29 January 2010

A busy week... if I was on twitter you'd have seen a lot of very smiley tweets—or whatever it is you do to signify happiness—on Monday as I finished the introduction for Wells Fargo and on Tuesday the biographical sketches of author Kelman Frost and artist Don Dawrence. That doesn't quite complete the book but it does take care of almost all the writing, which means I can take a pause for a few days while the artwork goes off to be proofed.

Mind you, if I'd been twittering all this I probably wouldn't have any of these things finished. And I like to have some news for the news column!

The hot-off-the-press news (for me anyway) is that the next pair of Storm—The Collection albums are underway. I got the rough translation for the tenth collection through this week and have already started work on it. Volume ten contains two more albums: The Return of the Red Prince and The Von Neumann Machine, both written by Martin Lodewijk and both drawn by Don Lawrence. This puts us within spitting distance of completing the run of 22 albums that Don Lawrence drew, although I'm hopeful that the books have found enough of an audience to merit translating the new stories currently appearing in the Dutch comic Eppo. There's also the Storm-related book Commander Grek to think about, too.

Next week we have our regular monthly Recent Releases and Upcoming Releases columns and, mid-week, I'll be starting a new strip, something a little more substantial that the 4-part "Red Badge of Courage". In the meantime I'll leave you with a couple of covers to 'tease' the Upcoming Releases which will include details of the new Best of Battle and Darkie's Mob collections.