The scans have been fun to work on. Only a handful of pieces of original artwork seems to have survived for Ranger, some of it black & white war illustrations. To get the best possible reproduction, I have reset a number of pages and dropped in the original artwork, an example of which you can see above. Not to toot my own trumpet, but the results look pretty darn good and pushing up the quality of the artwork should give the finished book a chance at looking good once it is printed.
The actual index bit of the book is also almost complete. With luck and a good tail wind, I should be starting on layouts next week and finalising the content as far as reprint strips is concerned. I'm definitely planning to include 'Macbeth', as drawn by Ruggero Giovannini and at least one strip by Franco Caprioli. The final decision will depend on balancing page count with costs and making sure that the end result is affordable.
Random scans ... sticking with the Ranger theme, here are four covers from the magazine painted by James E. McConnell, a regular artist here on Bear Alley, although normally its his paperback covers.
Really looking forward to the Ranger Book, Steve. I've a memory that an original Trigan Empire story (never in Look and Learn) appeared in a Ranger Annual - if this is the case and it is one that didn't appear in the series of 12 Trigan reprints, could it be included in your book?
ReplyDeleteBoth Ranger books had Trigan stories but a reprint isn't possible because of the copyright on the strip. The license would cost more than the cost of putting the rest of the book together combined.
ReplyDeleteBut I do have access to some others which I will be using.
Hi Steve,
ReplyDeleteThose covers look gorgeous - I realise full colour is probably cost prohibitive, but would a black and white cover gallery be a goer? Hopefully some the rare original art includes a cover?
john morrison