Comic Cuts - 23 May 2014

Another week, another Comic Cuts column and not much to say. I'm still working on the Countdown to TV Action index and I still have no idea when it will be finished. I'm laying out pages 50 and 51and reports are coming in that, based on a poll of one person (me), it's a fine-looking book so far.

I'm very pleased with the way it is going. I wish I was faster, but if you've seen any of my previous books you'll know that I try and make these indexes look as good as possible. That means spending an extraordinary amount of time trying to clean up illustrations and, in the case of Countdown and TV Action, we're talking about taking scans from badly printed comics of predominantly line and wash art and Photoshopping the hell out of the scans to make them presentable once they've been through yet another printing process.

But when the latest page is from a beautiful and dramatic story by Keith Watson of bat-people attacking a spaceship, I feel that my time is being well spent.

Due to the pressure of trying to get this book out, there may be a break in transmission next week. I have a couple of galleries that I might be able to post and I have an idea for some posts that I want to do about old newspaper strips from the 1950s, but I must get this book out. That must be my first priority.

I do, however, have some random scans for you. I picked up three books by Neil Asher on Saturday. One I knew I had, but in a different edition [7th impression] which had a huge printed yellow sticker defacing the cover. But I got back home and discovered that I had one of the other two, too. Bah!

Lastly, I finally managed to dig out my copy of the late Lucius Shepard's The Golden, with its double cover—open the first cover to reveal the second cover underneath. Gorgeous artwork by Melvyn Grant.

 

 

 

Next week: see above. There might be something, there might not. Probably will be.