Comic Cuts - 8 March 2013

After two months I finally have something concrete to announce. Ahead of the appearance of the Ranger book, Bear Alley Books will be reprinting two classic stories in full colour.

I have spent hours scratching my head over these two strips – the original idea was to reprint them in black & white. But from the moment I started cleaning up the artwork I realised they needed to be seen in colour. The problem for me as a one-man operation is that colour is insanely expensive for the number of books I can afford to print.

My desire to see these stories back in print – and to celebrate two years of publishing at Bear Alley Books – has got the better of me. So I'm pleased to announce that, as soon as I sign off on the proofs, Bear Alley Books will be offering King Solomon's Mines adapted by Mike Butterworth with beautifully painted artwork by Mike Hubbard and Treasure Island, again adapted by Butterworth but with gorgeous artwork by John Millar Watt. The books are 40 and 44 pages of full colour respectively and I'll be offering them at not far off print cost plus p&p.

Because of the costs, I can't offer the usual discount for pre-orders – sorry – but I will be able to offer the two as a pair and I'll pass on the savings in p&p.

King Solomon's Mines, artwork by Mike Hubbard

Treasure Island, artwork by John Millar Watt

Random scans. Rule number one: you'll never find anything if you look for it. Look for something else and what you're actually after will turn up. This is how I managed to turn up a copy of Target 5 by Colin Forbes with the original Gino d'Achille cover. I remember this one from when I was a kid, although the circumstances are a little hazy. For some reason we were being looked after by my Nan, so it must have been a rare trip to the cinema or the theatre for my Mum. The idea was that we would be in bed and asleep before she arrived back home. No chance ... not with this book. I was up until the wee hours of the morning, unwilling (and maybe unable) to put it down. Thirty-something years later, I sometimes wish I could read with that intensity but nowadays I read for five minutes and I'm dozing off. No wonder it takes me weeks to read a book.

The other pic. is a leftover from last week's recent purchases. I picked up a copy of Posy Simmonds' Mustn't Grumble about three weeks ago and promptly buried it beneath a stack of comics. Coincidentally, Posy's Tamara Drewe was probably the last substantial book that I managed to read in a single sitting.

So... we have the last few episodes of Lesley Shane's adventure wrapping up over the weekend, along with some further episodes of Spot the Strip. On Monday we have the first part of the story of David Jones, a.k.a. John Henry Harvey, a.k.a. Operator 1384. Jones was a Welsh coal miner who abandoned his family and joined the foreign legion in 1925. What happened when he tied to leave... well, you'll just have to wait and see.