Comic Cuts - 30 January 2015

I can't believe it's the end of the month already. A twelfth of the way through the year. Under 100 days to the election in May. Another year older come April.

Hopefully, a new book out next month. I've now settled on a title, so I'm pleased to announce that the next book from Bear Alley Books will be...

This is the project I have been working on since before Christmas. The book will gather up a lot of previously little-seen illustrative artwork from the pages of Look and Learn, Bible Story, Ranger,  World of Wonder and Once Upon a Time, including Lawrence's magnificent 'Herod the Great' strip from Bible Story, the serials 'The Range Rider' (Ranger), 'Pinnocchio' and 'Jason and the Golden Fleece' (both Once Upon a Time) in full, and  scarce illustrations from various weeklies and annuals. In colour.

The cover is a piece originally painted for Bible Story which has only appeared in a limited edition book in the Netherlands; I haven't quite finished it, so that will have to wait before it's revealed.

I reported last week that I was writing the introductory material. Well, I still am. It is my intention to cover the whole of Don's career in the introduction so that the illustrations in the book will have some context. Tucked away on my hard drive was an unpublished piece about Don written shortly after his death that did much of the groundwork. This I've expanded greatly—it is already doubled in length and I've only reach the 1960s!—and it will be woven through the book.

But I thought I'd take a break from the writing and spend Wednesday coming up with some ideas on how the book should look. I roughed out a couple of pages and a title page and cover and the signature above will be a running theme through the design of the book. (Well, that's the plan at the moment... it might change as I get into the layouts!)

Today's random scans are a quartet of covers by Ed Mortelmans, who is probably better known for his work with Four Square. These are all from Panther in the 1950s.

 

 

While I'm working on layouts, the Bear Alley blog may have to take a back seat. I do have more World of Wonder galleries, but we will just have to see what happens over the weekend.