Bear Alley: Comic Cuts - 16 January 2015

BEAR ALLEY BOOKS

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The Bill Kellaway Quartet by Gwyn Evans
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"The narrative is packed with action and I think readers will have a lot of fun with [Hercules, Esq.] and there are some genuine moments of laugh out loud humour. I can understand why the film rights for this book were snapped up and even today I could envisage it being a very enjoyable one-off TV series." — Cross Examining Crime.
"Although there’s some criminous stuff going on and Bill often finds himself vying against or working with various lawbreakers, the stakes are never really life and death in this book ... There is some slam-bang action, though, as well as a smart, really likable protagonist and a lot of really clever plot twists, but what really makes HERCULES ESQ. work is Evans’s style, which is consistently breezy, fast-paced, and funny." — James Reasoner, Rough Edges.

Friday, January 16, 2015

Comic Cuts - 16 January 2015

I'm making progress on the new book, which is an art book along the lines of the C. L. Doughty book I did around this time two years ago. The two main differences are that it will be about a different artist and this one will be in colour. It will make the finished book a bit more pricey, but that's an unfortunate reality of short print-run publishing.

I've started work on the introductory material and have now sorted out some artwork that I'm planning to use for the cover. It's gorgeous... but you'll have to wait as it only arrived a couple of days ago.

Because I've been in gathering information mode for this new introduction, I haven't been up to much else. The shockwaves from the Charlie Hebdoe shootings have yet to subside, especially as five million copies of the latest issue hit the shelves with a (to some) controversial image. As always, the government's answer to protecting free speech is to try and chip away at our ability to speak freely. Thankfully, we'll be able to vote the idiot out in a few month's time.

On a happier note, Broadchurch has started up again. We've seen two episodes and we're already gripped. It has a couple of flaws, but we're not amongst the naysayers who think that the show is now so utterly unrealistic that there's no enjoyment to be had watching it. Bull. When has TV ever allowed realism to get in the way of telling a story? If the writer needs to get to point B from point A and he has 43 minutes to get there, short cuts are likely. And just because you have a twitter account that doesn't make you an expert on court procedure or even in the tiniest part knowledgeable about what the writer of the show intends to do with his plot or his characters.

Today's random scans are a quintet from John Berry for Panther Books in the period 1959-60. The tie-in to Spartacus is a 1960 reissue—the earlier 1959 edition had, I believe, an anonymous cover that wasn't a tie-in to the movie. I'll be running a piece about Berry over the weekend.

There may be some gaps in my daily output over the next couple of weeks while I try and get this book together. Not that it's all work: we're off partying tonight. If you don't see anything posted on Sunday you'll know it was a good one.