Comic Cuts - 10 January 2014

After a gentle start to the year I've managed to get my act together and do some work this week. I've been working on the third and final strip that I'm planning to include in The Man Who Searched For Fear collection, which gathers together some of Bill Lacey's work from Look and Learn. Above is a page from "Agent Of The Queen", which appeared in 1976. There were two terrific Victorian-era adventure yarns in the series, one set in England and a second set in India; it's another of those little lost gems that you stumble across occasionally, although I have to admit that I'm of an age where I read this first time round.

A problem with the third story, Lacey's adaptation of "Great Expectations", was that some of the pages needed to have the text reset and, rather than have some pages with original text and some pages with reset text, I've done the whole lot. I've had to take a little longer on the strip than I'd planned, but it looks 100% better.  I still have three pages to do, which will probably have been done by the time you read this. That leaves some heading replacements to do, an introduction to write and a cover to prepare. Fingers crossed, I'll have some more news next week.

While you're waiting for The Man Who Searched For Fear, you might want to pick up Ron Turner's Space Ace volume two, which has just been released. Like the first volume, released last year, Space Ace has four stories dating from 1957-60 from the pages of Lone Star Magazine and the Lone Star Annual. Old folks like me might remember a couple of the stories from the pages of JRF Presents, published back in the mid-1980s, which shows you how long editor John Lawrence has been promoting Ron Turner.

This new volume is a beautifully produced 40-page A4 magazine format in full colour. The originals were in black & white but these have now been gorgeously coloured by John Ridgway, whose airbrush-style computer colouring perfectly compliments Turner's style of chiaroscuro, where shape is created out of light and shadow. I can understand why some people would prefer to see the original b/w but the letters-page in this second volume proves that I'm not the only one who loves John's colour interpretation.

You can get hold of the latest collection for £8.95 (UK) or £14.00 (Overseas) including p&p — and that's pretty much at cost, I can assure you — with payments through Paypal via spaceace.54 AT virginmedia.com or by cheque or postal order to John Lawrence, 39 Carterweys, Dunstable, Beds. LU5 4RB.

It's well worth the price.

I don't have much in the way of random scans for you this week. My trek around Colchester's charity shops these past two Saturdays hasn't netted me anything of special interest, although I have picked up a book starring John Luther — The Calling by Neil Cross — which is the first of three Luther novels Cross is writing based on the TV show he created in 2010, now sadly ended.  I don't think the other two novels have appeared yet.

Although I'm more keen on paperbacks — space being at a premium on my shelves — I did pick up a hardback of John Le Carre's A Delicate Truth. He's one of the few authors I try to keep up with. I can always pick up the paperback and pass this copy on. I'm amazed (and pleased) to see that this is an 8th printing of the hardback, proving that there are people of both wealth and taste out there in reader-land.

I should have a couple of biographies up over the weekend, pulling together what little information there is on a couple of artists. Next week I'll hopefully have the remaining strips for the "School Friend" Pets Annual. I've rather enjoyed putting this set of strips together . . . I'll have to think about doing some more of a similar vintage.