Comic Cuts - 15 June 2012

A rather short column this week. I've been exploring one or two new ways of printing things this week and, although I don't have anything definitive to report, there should be some interesting new projects to announce shortly as I explore the possibilities of producing some posters.

I'm setting up the pre-ordering page for Peter Jackson's London is Stranger Than Fiction, which should be launched shortly. [PLEASE NOTE: The page did appear Friday but there's a problem that needs to be fixed ... the pre-order page will return shortly.] Pre-orders for the Sexton Blake Annual 1940 have been coming in steadily, although not in the numbers I'd hoped for — I'm guessing that the announcement missed everyone's pay day by a week and we're approaching the summer holiday season. With that in mind, I'm thinking of keeping the pre-order offer open until the end of the month, which means another payday should have rolled around. I hope you'll take the opportunity to pick up the books. You probably haven't noticed, but postage prices at Bear Alley Books remain the same despite the Royal Mail putting their prices up in April.

Talking of avoiding postage, I managed to put an article up on Kindle. It didn't quite go to plan as I was hoping to make it a free article to help promote the launch of the Sexton Blake Annual. As it turned out, I found myself stuck on a page that demanded a price be put on the "book", so I put the minimum possible. The article is available internationally, although only in English: UK, USA, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

At least the price isn't too great... and I notice that one person has had a look at it since it went live on the 9th. One reader a week... so it could be six years before I see any money out of Kindle as it will take that long before I reach the minimum for them to write out a cheque.

Still, from the tiniest acorns... I'm working on a couple of books that might add a few pence (or cents) to the pot.

A quick word of thanks to Martin Baines who answered a late night call to arms and very kindly coloured up a black & white image I had. Martin knows what he's doing — he colours Garth for the Daily Mirror amongst other things. You can see lots of examples of his work here.

The next Kindle books from Bear Alley Books should be Hercules, Esq. and The Homicide Club by Gwyn Evans. These should also be available as paperbacks at the same time. The first is almost ready to go; the latter still needs a lot of work but I've been distracted by other things.

One distraction was a trip down to the dentist last week. Thankfully it was just a filling that had come out and it was replaced for free as it was still under warranty. Less pleasant was a dose of food poisoning on Wednesday night which... actually, I'm not going to go into any details at all. It wasn't pleasant.

It does, however, explain why I've not had a chance to put together any scans this week. So, rather more random than the usual random scans, here are a couple of books I picked up last weekend on the trawl around the charity shops. The first two are thrillers with cover art by Chris Moore, who was the go to guy for this kind of thing, although I prefer his science fiction artwork.

The third book was a filler I picked up for the Hammond Innes cover gallery (part 1, part 2). No idea who the artist is. Of the three, I'll probably read the Joe Poyer at the earliest chance I get and it involves the Nazis wartime efforts to develop the V-10 and launch a space mission with Wernher von Braun as one of the leading characters. 

Moby Dick concludes on Sunday and we should then slip comfortably into another short strip — just a four-parter that will take us up to next week's Comic Cuts column. The week after that will be Recent Releases and Upcoming Releases update week, so I'll probably fill-in with some pictures from World of Wonder. This Sunday will also see the next part of Paperback Cover Cavalcade, continuing my recently instigated occasional series on smutty books with a feature about Her and her siblings.