Comic Cuts - 18 May 2012

 

I'm writing this Wednesday night rather than last thing Thursday, as I normally would. Nothing dramatic is happening — I'm just going to have limited access to the net tomorrow night. I've spent the week sorting out the text that I started last week and I now have — or, hopefully, will have by the time you read this as there's still some way to go — a roughly 17,000-word short history of London.

This is part of my attempt to generate text that might be published in e-book form that will also include some reprint fiction. I was hoping to announce things this week but I've spent so much time trying to get all my ducks lined up that I've not had time to sit down and work out which duck goes where. All I know is that they're facing in the right direction.

One of the projects is a reprint collection of Peter Jackson's classic Evening News strips 'London is Stranger than Fiction' and 'London Explorer'. That might not be the final cover above, but I rather like it. More news on that one shortly.

One quick bit of news: William Rudling of Jeff Hawke's Cosmos fame is one of the finalists of Radio 4's 'So You Want to be a Scientist?' challenge, which began on the Material World radio show last September. William submitted a theory that people who look the same also often sound the same; he is now involved in experiments to see whether one's facial structure has an affect on the tone of one's voices.

The experiment is being run through the University of Leeds and you can find out more about it — and get involved — by clicking here. More information about the radio show can be found here.

Today's random scannery has a story paper theme to it. The first character on show, Invisible Dick, was the star of Rover in the 1920s. In an odd move, perhaps showing just how popular the character was, some of the stories were reprinted in a hardback collection by D. C. Thomson in 1926. The experiment seems to have been unsuccessful as there were no more reprints until after WW2. Frank Topham is almost certainly a pseudonym created just for the reprints; the true author remains unknown.

Morgyn the Mighty was also from Rover, first appearing in 1928. Morgyn became a comic strip in the early issues of The Beano and later reappeared in Victor. He was almost identical to Strang the Terrible, who debuted in text form in Adventure in 1931 and also appeared in comic strip form in the Beano. This hardcover reprint was undated but appeared in 1951, according to the British Library, although while I was digging around the internet, I noticed that one dealer has a copy for sale which he claims has a dedication dated 1949. The hardback includes black & white illustrations and a dust-jacket drawn by Dudley D. Watkins.

And, finally, Wilson, the world's most mysterious athlete. The Truth About Wilson originally appeared in Wizard in 1943 and was subsequently reprinted in book form in paperback in 1962 as part of the Red Lion Library series. The Truth About Wilson is credited to W. S. K. Webb, the name of the first-person narrator of the book, a reporter for the London Daily Clarion, but the true author was almost certainly Gilbert Dalton.

Next week, we continue with The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain, adapted by Bill Baker.