Comic Cuts - 15 July 2011

A second slow news week on the trot. I don't feel I've done anything other than work, eat and sleep, although I know that's not true. We were at a friend's party on Saturday night, but that now seems a very long time ago. Monday I restocked on packaging (it's amazing how bloody expensive envelopes are these days, especially when you add 20% VAT and the price of delivery!), so we're one step closer to releasing the third volume of Eagles Over the Western Front. With the release of the third volume, I will now be able to put all three books into one package for those of you who have yet to see the series.

As I mentioned last week, I've struggled to find any time to work on the Mike Western book for the past few weeks, so there may be a bit of a gap between the release of Eagles 3 and the next title from Bear Alley Books. I've just started on some extra work that I've taken on to pay for the new computer, time that I would have dedicated to my own writing given the chance. At least I can take comfort in the fact that this summer isn't quite the disaster of some previous years - this time last year we were moving house; June 2009, the washing machine went kaput; summer of 2008, long-time readers may recall, was when our previous house was being knocked about to resolve problems with the porch sinking and our landlord also decided to have new windows put in. I can pretty much guarantee that something will go wrong in early summer. This year it was the computer and the TV. I didn't tell you about the TV? Two days after the new computer arrived, the TV started acting up, the image on the screen suddenly disappearing or unable to stabilise unless I turned off the set for a minute or two. So we had to buy a new tele. Fortunately, I spotted quite a nice second hand flatscreen going cheaply.

Just in time for the digital switchover... it'll be interesting to see what stations we'll be able to pick up as we're in a bit of a dip here and have trouble picking up anything other than the BBC channels. There isn't much of the other channels that I miss watching - Lewis we've been watching on analogue, which we can still get until next week when they switch it off.

That just leaves me with some random scans to dig out. Ahead of the arrival of Hardware, the Chris Foss book, I found an old Arthur C. Clarke novel at a local charity shop, a 1973 (6th imp.) Pan edition of Earthlight. The same charity shop trawl also turned up the other two pics - the movie tie-in Telefon and the sequel to The Outlaw Josey Wales, which I included in my Clint Eastwood gallery here.

 

Next week. Again - and this is becoming a habit I'd like to break - I'm not sure what we'll have. There will be another Paul Temple adventure at some point when I've a chance to get the scans into photoshop; I've a little Henry Kuttner cover gallery lined up for the weekend and one for thriller writer Desmond Bagley in the works.