Comic Cuts - 19 November 2010

Over at the Look and Learn website, where I write the historical bits for the blog, Laurence Heyworth has recently launched a £2 per image initiative. The idea was given a 'soft' launch back in late June to see whether it would fly and, since then, Laurence has issued over 200 licenses, "mainly to historians (national, military and local), art-lovers (both of illustration and fine art) and Bible teachers," he says. But it isn't exclusively an educational tool. "We've also issued licenses to someone giving a lecture on the Panama Canal and even, by special permission, to someone wanting an image to use on the jars of his home-made jam! Needless to say, we are hoping that, with the benefit of some publicity, we will sell many more licenses."

To give the initiative a boost, Laurence mailed out 10,000 free sets of postcards which include some very nice images by the likes of John Millar Watt, Ron Embleton and James McConnell and are well worth having. If you want a set -- and this applies to UK addresses only, I'm afraid -- e-mail the address below with your name and address. Thirteen free cards! Why would you not send off for them?

This shameless plug is brought to you by Lemsip, Sinex and a big box of tissues as I was struck down with a cold on Monday which still hasn't shifted and, to be frank, I've not done much this week; my sleep pattern (odd at the best of times) is completely to pot and I've tried to avoid the computer as much as possible. On a more positive note, I have caught up with a load of episodes of Wallander (the 13-part first season of the Swedish version), sorted out some of my comics, emptied a couple of boxes and, when I did get to the computer, cleaned up a few pictures for future galleries.

The only bit of notable work was to spend an on-and-off (mostly off) day digging around for information on John McNamara, the artist of our current Paul Temple strip. Almost nothing was known about him before, so I'm rather pleased that I managed to dig out quite a bit of information. You can see the results here, on the Illustration Art Gallery blog where I've been writing a regular weekly piece about artists for the past couple of months... take a look through the blog archive to see who else has been covered.

Some more details of the Illustration Art Gallery show: some of the original artwork on display will include work by artists Frank Bellamy, Frank Hampson, Ron Embleton, Angus McBride, James McConnell, John Millar Watt, Jim Holdaway, Reg Smuthe, Philip Mendoza, Graham Coton, Don Harley, Don Lawrence, Oliver Frey, C. L. Doughty, Jack Hayes and Fortunino Matania. Artwork will be on sale for prices ranging from £75 to £5,000, including some original pages from The Trigan Empire (see our column header).

The show will run from 14 to 19 December, 10 am to 7 pm daily, at 8 Duke Street, St James's, London SW1Y 6BN. Contact details can be found on the flyers below (scroll down if you missed them).

Today's random scan... Satan is a Woman by Gil Brewer. I've written about Brewer before, but hadn't seen the following until recently. In order, the pictures are the original Gold Medal printing (1951), the New Fiction Press reprint (1952) and the original Barye Phillips artwork, which was auctioned off in August.

Not sure how New Fiction Press could claim that there's was "not a reprint" as it was certainly a reprint and even had a repainted cover.

That's your lot...  I'm crawling off to bed!