Comic Cuts - 15 February 2013

The life of a freelance writer is a rather dull life if you're not, say, Neil Gaiman ... and I'm sure he also has weeks where he just has to get his head down and do some writing. So this week I have been concentrating solely on Ranger, trying to hustle the introduction into some sort of readable shape and wrestling with the index, adding details to some of the sparse entries that I've had listed for years.

To give you an idea of the mundane work that has to be done, I spent a good hunk of Wednesday listing 67 individually titled photo features that weren't otherwise covered in the index. And it was as exciting as it sounds, turning pages gently so as not to tear already tattered and fragile copies of the magazine, pausing on spreads and jotting down such titles as ''Master Fisherman at Work' or 'Ranger Takes You to the Motor Show', noting how they were illustrated, noting the date, then moving on to the next feature.

Well, someone's got to do it.

By the way, our column header is the cover I'm thinking of using on the book, based on the cover from the first issue.

Meanwhile, for those of you who have been introduced to Lesley Shane through the reprinting of one of her detective tales, I may have some good news. Some art pulls have come to light of a far higher quality than the strips currently being reproduced here on Bear Alley. Good enough for a possible Bear Alley Book. We shall just have to wait and see.

Random scans... this week we celebrate the appearance of 2012 DA14, the 50-metre-long asteroid currently racing towards Earth. It will arrive at its closest approach, missing us by some 27,500 kilometres (17,100 miles) – well within the orbit of the moon and inside the orbit of some TV satellites – at 7:26 this evening. As you might expect, meteors and asteroids have been a popular subject for causing devastation on Earth in science fiction novels for many years. Here's a selection...

Russian meteorite  - video posted this (Friday) morning

Next week: I have a couple of items lined up for the weekend, one of them a sketch of writer Michael Ogden. And we're back on the trail with Lesley Shane from Monday as Edward Yates tries to figure out how to get £1 million's worth of stolen jewels out of the country.