Comic Cuts - 21 September 2012

The Not Forgotten book is almost done. I was working on the layouts during the week – with a day off on Tuesday because my Mum came over to visit.A little break like that makes you realise that you need a little break every now and then. At the time of writing, all the pages are laid out bar two as I need to clean up some pics to slot into the bibliography section at the back of the book. Otherwise it's just unrelenting text.

I also managed to do the front matter (copyright/contents pages) and that just leaves me the cover and the whole thing is done – three weeks to produce a 96 page book. Not quite so impressive when you remember how I admitted last week that a lot of the text was already written, but still not bad... there was still quite a bit of writing to do, a lot to double-check and many images to scan and clean up.

The 35 people covered – at lengths ranging from a few hundred words to 2,500 words – are: Alan Hemus, Tony Hart, Robert Peacock, Jose 'Pepe' Gonzalez, Jose Casanovas Sr., Ron 'Nobby' Clark, Malcolm Douglas, Bernet Toledano, John Donegan, Adrian Kermode, Giorgio Bellavitis, John Ryan, Francisco Hidalgo, Roy Raymonde, Carlos Roume, Ricardo Garijo, Terry Challis, Xavier Musquera, Francis 'Smilby' Wilford-Smith, Geoffrey Bond, Richard Hook, Ian Scott, Bill Ritchie, Virgilio Muzzi, John Hicklenton, Peter O'Donnell, Roy Mitchell, Victor de la Fuente, Ted Rawlings, Fernando Fernandez, E. C. Tubb, Jose Maria Jorge, Les Gibbard and Paddy Morris.

The whole thing clocks in at around 35,000 words for 96 pages. I should be able to do it for £12.99 or thereabouts but I'll have to double-check the costs. I'll also have to see if I can put this up on Kindle – the text only, of course. No pics.

My Kindle experimentation hasn't gone very far; I had planned to assault the e-book platform last spring, but never managed to get around to it. I did put up an article on Sexton Blake's origins in June which has been downloaded a total of 6 (!) times, twice at Amazon.com and four times from Amazon.co.uk. My royalties amount to $0.70 + £1.04, which is about enough to buy some milk and a bag of crisps. Not a good return for two days work. The few of you who have looked into this kind of thing will know that you don't get paid by Amazon.com until you hit $100 – and even then they take $30 back in tax unless you fill in a ton of forms. At this rate (70 cents in 3 months) it will be 2023 or 2024 before they send me my 70 dollars.

A few weeks ago I mentioned the troubles that Strip Magazine was having with its distribution. Well, the good news is that issue 5 has arrived in the UK and made its way through customs. This is a bumper issue and wraps up a number of stories and storylines in order to make way for a relaunch.

The additional material has now been released in the digital edition of the magazine as a unique issue 6, which has its own cover (above)... and which is going to confuse the hell out of collectors in the future!

Random scans. Following the death of film producer Stanley Long on 10 September, I dug out the novelisations of his three Adventure films which I recall with great nostalgia. From their days on video, I might add, as I'm not that old.

 

 

A nice little Denis McLoughlin cover from a Boardman pocket magazine. The Art of Denis McLoughlin is reviewed here.

I'm not sure what I'm doing next week. At some point there will be the regular updates for the Upcoming Releases and Recent Releases columns. I'm planning a Volsted Gridban/Ted Tubb gallery for Sunday. That's as far as my planning goes.