Comic Cuts - 11 November 2012

Having commented a couple of weeks ago on how planned projects can drag on, I'm pleased to say that the next offering from Bear Alley Books is starting to shape up. The title will be Pages From History: Illustrated by C. L. Doughty and the end book will be about double the size I originally planned. The origins of the book date back to early 2010 when I was working on a collection of H. Rider Haggard strips — due out next year from Book Palace Books. BPB boss Geoff West had sent me a huge pile of original art boards, including the pages that went into the Haggard book and the Eagles Over The Western Front collections. Plus two almost complete strips by C. L. Doughty.

Although the boards were scanned before we moved (July 2010), nothing was done with them. My computer woes this past summer brought my plans for Bear Alley to a grinding halt, but the Doughty strips were always in the back of my mind. Having worked on them rather fitfully over the past few months, the book is finally starting to come together. I'm expanding it to include a fourth strip, 'The Crusader', based on the legend of Prester John, and a lot of Doughty's historical illustrations. I'm still working on the artwork clean-up of the other three strips, but that has been progressing nicely; the introduction is written in rough and clocks in at around 4,000 words; I have some pages designed (in rough) and a cover, which you can see at the top of this column.

If I was to draw up a giant thermometer, something like the old Blue Peter totaliser, I'm not quite sure where that would put me. Maybe half way? Some strip pages still need to be cleaned and relettered and, as mentioned above, there's now a fourth strip to sort out — which, again, is being reproduced from original art. And there's going to be a little bonus strip, previously unpublished.

More news of how far we've filled that totaliser next week.

Some more book news for 2012: following the success of the slimmer Commando reprints this year, Carlton are publishing four more volumes next April with the titles confirmed as Desert Rats, Dive! Dive! Dive!, Who Dares Wins and Bombs Away.

Today's random scans selection are four from Sam Peffer, two Pans, two Digits. This really was a random choice... picked a picture in a file at random and hoped that I could get a theme out of it. And the other three were the first three Peffs I could lay my hands on... which I think goes to prove that Sam never did a duff cover.

Our serial 'The Sea Wolf' takes a break for the weekend and will return on Monday for the concluding five episodes.