Comic Cuts - 15 May 2015

I'm pleased to say that copies of the new Complete Captain Future book went out on time and I began hearing from folks who had received their copies on Friday or Saturday of last week. The first review I had in was the comment that the book was "So different from some of the other strips you've reprinted. More energy, perhaps, than skill. The punk rock of British comics." I rather like that: "the punk rock of British comics"—the strip certainly had that home-made, raw energy over talent feel to it.

Anyway,  I had four dozen copies ordered before publication which is gratifying as I fully expected the book to struggle to even two dozen. Thank you all for showing some faith in this very self-indulgent project. If you haven't picked up a copy, the book is available now.

Meanwhile, I'm being kept busy with my new role as editor of Hotel Business magazine. It's a trade mag and can really only be considered a part-time job, so I'm hoping that, once I'm settled in, I can get back to work on more books. I've quite a few projects that I want to do once I've figured out how much time I have to spare and where in the month the spare time falls. Hopefully there will be at least one decent block that I can use to dedicate myself fully to the task of writing.

As opposed to re-writing, which is what Hotel Business is all about. Just this morning I've taken a couple of PR pieces and turned them into short features, one about refurbishing a self-contained apartment with a small kitchen and a second about refitting a hotel with new carpets.

And I always thought the life of a writer would be glamorous!

The main problems so far have been technical: I lost a morning to my internet connection about ten days ago: the connection wouldn't stay active for more than a couple of minutes, which meant every couple of minutes I was disconnected from the mail server used by the magazine. It seems to have been a weather-related problem at Talk Talk. And this Wednesday just gone, I woke up to find that the mail server was returning error messages and I was unable to connect. It was fixed briefly and fell over again in the afternoon. Thankfully I had a few bits that needed writing up, so I was able to keep going.

That's not why we have today's selection of random scans... well, having a bit of spare time did help! I grab scans from the internet whenever I see them, which means I now have a massive folder of scans—some good, some very, very poor—of which these happen to be the first four. Three are definitely by Edward Mortelmans: A Wreath for the Enemy (Four Square 55, 1958), Bury the Past (Four Square 69, 1958) and I'll Cry Tomorrow (Four Square 100, 1959). The Witnesses (Four Square 64, 1958) is unsigned but might also be Mortelmans but there were a couple of other artists working for Four Square at the time so I can't be 100% certain.

 

 

 

I'm hoping that the pair of artist biographies that I've had sitting around for two weeks will finally show up next week. Also a biographical sketch of Beatrice Kelston. I attempted to research her almost exactly five years ago and you can read the results in this May 2010 post. Did I find out more this time around? You'll have to wait until the weekend to find out!

(An attempt to generate a little tension. But seriously... do you think I'd put together another post if I hadn't found out anything?)