Comic Cuts - 12 May 2017

I found it a bit of a struggle to get any work done this week and I've only myself to blame. It was just one of those weeks when any distraction – anything – was more interesting than knuckling down and getting going. My computer is low on disc space, so it became an almost daily ritual to clear the decks a little. The workspace on my computer is a measly 3.8gb, as of Thursday afternoon,

And that 3.8gb is being filled constantly with e-mails full of attachments, podcasts downloading automatically, scans of comics, scans of covers, downloaded music and video plus lots of space-snaffling scans that I generate myself. The latter is a particularly frustrating problem as it can take years for me to get around to tidying them up. Case of point, some of the pictures below I scanned from copies of books that I disposed of back in 2010 before we moved house. The cleaned up versions are quite a lot smaller than the original scans and are stored on external hard drives. I've got over 5,800 book cover scans that need cleaning up, clocking in at a whopping 29.4gb. I've been working on lists of annuals and have a folder with 12gb of scans; and my Valiant folder with stuff relating to the new book is 15gb.

What I need is a few months free of doing anything else just to make an impact on that lot.

Other distractions this week include the upcoming One-Eyed Jack reprint from Rebellion – I was answering a few questions for an article but I was double-checking everything I said as it wouldn't look too good if the guy writing about Valiant got his Valiant facts wrong. My Mum was over the following day (Tuesday) and Wednesday became a bit of a runaround and I only managed to write 500 words in the late afternoon. 

But they were 500 words about Mytek the Mighty and one of the most insane stories that ever appeared in Valiant. Here's a taster from the book:

The giant mechanical ape had been left to roam in peace from his hidden plateau base. But Gogra has survived and returns to Africa to stir up the Akari tribe using a pair of giant robotic hands. After capturing Professor Boyce and Dirk Mason, Gogra finds and traps Mytek and steals the ape’s electronic brain.
    Escaping, Boyce realises that a new brain will not restore Mytek’s memories or what he has learned over the years. “We may find that we have created an uncontrollable monster!” he confesses.
    Thus begins the longest—it lasted fifteen months—and arguably the most crazily inventive of the Mytek stories. Already bizarre, the strip went into weird overdrive when giant legs began attacking a helpless village and then give chase to Mytek, kicking his backside.
    Eventually, Gogra’s creations assemble into a giant robotic replica of himself called Gogriath. The next few months of storylines involve humiliating dances, lava monsters, an attack on Mytek by the Jakortan air force (“The pilots are mistaking us for Gogriath!” “A natural mistake, Dirk! It’s not often you see two giant robots in one day!”), a burst dam and, along the way, discovering that Gogriath can spit bullets out of its mouth, pump water out of its ears and spray liquid from its fingers.

Claang! Random scans this week... apes!