Comic Cuts - 14 December 2012

The Lion book is growing like Topsy. On Wednesday I put in the title index and creators' index and despite redesigning a bunch of pages I wasn't happy with, slimming the book down somewhat, I'm still just over 250 pages. Scans of various features have been flying back and forth in an effort to i.d. some of the artists where work is currently uncredited. A lot of gaps have been filled over the past fifteen years and I'm pleased to say that the book is shaping up to be one of the most complete we've managed – including a contents listings for every holiday special and annual.

Because of Christmas and New Year holidays, I'm not sure how quickly I will be able to turn around proofs, but I'm thinking that the finished book will probably be available mid-January and I'll start taking advance orders on January 4th or thereabouts. That's my best guess at the moment and may be subject to change.

My efforts to get hold of one of the last issues of Dandy failed completely on Saturday when Smith's told me they had sold out completely. I have to say that it didn't come as a surprise. What did worry me was that they only had two of the four new issues of Commando and had no idea why their wholesalers had failed to deliver the others. I'm hoping that they have them tomorrow because one of the missing issues was a reprint of a yarn drawn by Jose Maria Jorge. I shall be most peeved if I miss that as well as the Dandy.

It's around this time of the year that I normally run sales figures for various annuals, but getting hold of accurate numbers is proving tricky. The best I have come up with relate to sales in November and from these I can offer you the following, which I believe will be the best-selling annuals of the year:

1 One Direction Official Annual 2013
2 Moshi Monster Official Annual 2013
3 Beano Annual 2013
4 Skylanders Official Annual 2013
5 Match Annual 2013

Random scans. I pulled a couple of Patrick Moore books off the shelf when the news that he had died began appearing in the newspapers. I can't do better than point you to the obituaries that appeared in the Guardian, the Independent, and the Telegraph. Moore was one of the people who inspired a love of astronomy in me when I was a youngster, for which I'll always be thankful.

Next week: The latest Paul Temple adventure continues to gather pace. I'm running this over the weekend, too, so don't forget to drop by.