Comic Cuts - 13 May 2011

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OUT NOW!

Last week I ended my blog mentioning that we were on the run-up to Friday the 13th. I've never had any superstitions regarding that day/date, having been born on Friday the 13th, but I'm beginning to get a bit nervous about Thursday evenings.

Last Thursday my computer went inexplicably wrong, which meant I could only post a brief message on Friday morning. This week it was the whole of Blogger that went belly-up. The explanation offered by Google is that, during scheduled maintenance work on Wednesday, some data corruption began impacting Blogger's behaviour, so they reset the whole system back to the Wednesday back-up and made the whole of Blogger "read only".

The impact here was that Thursday's post, the second part of a 2-part 'Man Who Searched for Fear' strip, disappeared, and I couldn't write anything last night for today. It also meant that a few minor updates also disappeared. Blogger are still trying to restore some of the missing posts and comments, so there may be some minor glitches still to come. For instance, I've reposted the second part of the strip... but will Blogger now attempt to repost it as well?

Anyway, enough with the problems: I've been with Blogger for four and a half years and it has been pretty reliable, so I'm not planning to make a move to another service. Blogger is a popular choice - a lot of blogs relating to British comics, such as Lew Stringer's Blimey!, Peter Richardson's Cloud 109 and the blogs relating to Book Palace Books and the Illustration Art Gallery, are all powered by Blogger.

To be published in June

Fortunately, there's not much news to relate, as I posted the last Comic Cuts column on Monday. As promised, pre-ordered copies of volume one of Eagles Over the Western Front have been posted out and the Bear Alley Books ordering system has been unaffected by the Blogger outage. My thanks to everyone who pre-ordered - a kind show of confidence which I think the books live up to. Volume two is all ready to go at the printers, so there shouldn't be any delay with the release and it will be out in time for the ABC Show in London on June 12th.

I'm hard at work on the next couple of books, one of which is an index. The other is a project I've had on the back-burner for a couple of years. I've no idea how long they'll take as I'm having to fit them in around earning a living but as soon as I have something concrete to say about their release, you'll be the second to know (because, obviously, I'll be the first to know!).

I've been having a bit of a spring clean and selling off some spares of Comic World magazine. You can find a gallery of the covers here and I still have copies for sale, although eight issues have now sold out and I've only a handful of spares of many others. Grab 'em while you can because once they're gone, that's it.

I'm planning to clear out some other boxes of comics and sell off any duplicates, which I'll offer here on Bear Alley first.

Talking of sales, Bob Edmands aimed me in the direction of an eBay listing of the first issue of Hurricane with the free gift, which eventually sold for £193 after 14 bids. Amazing! Mind you, I've no idea why I'm surprised as prices on first issues seem to keep going up and up.

Today's random scans...

Rob Matthews has pointed out an interesting bit of information relating to the Peter Cheyney cover gallery. The Ace cover for Calling Mr Callaghan is by Robert McGinnis and was originally used on Henry S. Maxfield's Legacy of a Spy (Fawcett Crest s288, 1959). Cheers, Rob.

And this one I spotted myself. "The best 10 best..." according to the cover. Oops. But even with the extraneous "best" removed the cover line still sound clunky... "The 10 best Commando Raids Comic Books Ever!"

Next week... at the moment I'm clueless. I'm running a day late thanks to Blogger and, as I suddenly had some spare time, sorted out some comics. I do have a little cover gallery lined up but given the day and the date and what's been happening, I'll hold that over for a day or two. I should have some more 'Man Who Searched for Fear' if I can get to grips with the scans over the weekend, Blogger and computer-willing.