Comic Cuts - 6 March 2015

The decision to print the Don Lawrence Scrapbook in China has meant completely reworking everything I've done to date. We're moving to a slightly different size, American Letter rather than A4. It's slightly squatter and slightly wider, which meant redesigning everything from scratch. I used a lot of the same layouts, but took the opportunity to make a few changes, adding a few pages to the introduction which I've expanded from 26 pages to 30 pages. I also dropped some of the pictures, which I'll now use elsewhere in the book, and added quite a few new ones—56 illustrations has become 68 illustrations, of which 24 were new. Hopefully you begin to understand why this book is taking so long to put together.

I will say here that I'm happier with the book now than I was before. Not that there was anything wrong with the earlier version... but adding these new illustrations gives a more thorough historical overview of Don's career and, hopefully, will introduce people to a lot of strips and illustrations they've never seen. I'm now getting down to the bulk of the book and will hopefully have some good news on its progress by this time next week.

I've been working on the Don Lawrence Scrapbook to the exclusion of almost everything else. I took a couple of days off to put together the Oliver Brabbins posts for Bear Alley because I needed a break but I still didn't have enough time to make the gallery itself—Thursday's post—very extensive. What I'll do today is forget the usual random scans and instead just spend a few hours cleaning up covers and adding them to the Brabbins gallery. So scroll down and you'll find some new illustrations to enjoy.

Last week, 2000AD celebrated its 38th birthday with the release of a free 'Origins' digital download featuring the debut stories of a number of different characters. One is actually a debut from another paper as 'Strontium Dog' first appeared in Starlord. While I was thinking about this fantastic series, I stumbled across the news that there is to be a fan-film, not for profit and unconnected to 2000AD or Rebellion A/S. Written and directed by Steven Sterlacchini and Steve Green, the creators behind the recent Judge Minty film (see below) set in the Judge Dredd universe.

The film's Facebook page has carried the news recently that the film's actors have been involved in a costume test day, from which a couple of posters have been put together to introduce the characters. The cast includes Matthew Simpson as Johnny Alpha and Kevin Horsham as Wulf Sternhammer. Harvey and Middenface McNulty have also been cast.

I'm planning to hand over Bear Alley to Jeremy Briggs, who will be writing about 'Danny Dare' tomorrow. Next week we should have an article about Charles Fox by Robert Kirkpatrick plus the increasingly irregular Recent and Upcoming releases columns.