Comic Cuts - 21 July 2017

I'm going to classify this week as "surprisingly productive" after I slacked off last week. We have finally had the roof of the utility room replaced after only seven years of complaining about leaks. Still no news on some of the other repairs that need doing to the house and its environs, but the main ones have now been done in the past year. What's the betting our rent will be going up shortly?

I've been working on a revision to an old Bear Alley series that I'll put out as an e-book via Kindle. I have a few of these available but rarely bother to promote them. However, they generate a couple of quid every month and help towards some of the costs I incur through Bear Alley. The largest costs are subscriptions to family research websites; those alone cost me over £250 a year, but I use them constantly to ferret out information on authors and artists, so much so that I can't really afford to drop them.

If you want to help, you can do something as simple as using the Amazon search box over on the left when you buy anything from Amazon. It won't cost you a penny, but I'll get a penny or two from anything you purchase as it will spot that you've gone to Amazon via Bear Alley.

But back to the roof...

Part of the problem with the original roof was that it didn't reach all the way back to the brickwork of the house. Rather, it rested on a wooden framework attached to the house and the join was then covered over. Because it wasn't flush, rain could get in, which was not so bad when the seals were new and worked; however, over time the seals perished and water managed to seep in. Problem two was caused by sagging. Although there was a camber to the roof, it wasn't great, and if the gutters filled up, water would pool on the roof and not run away. Again, it eventually found its way into the house. Third problem was the gutters themselves, which were covered by the wooden frame that held the roof slats in place. Being covered meant that they couldn't be cleaned out, hence the accumulation of dirt, leaves, bird droppings and everything else that ends up being washed down the roof to create a slurry in the gutter. The gutter itself was straight so the slurry just sat there.

Hopefully the new roof solves these problems. I guess the new seals alone will mean we're free from rain getting into the house. But hopefully it will last more than a few years and will still be water-tight even after everything's had a few soakings from wet and snowy winters and being baked during the summer. The pic above was taken Thursday morning... there's still some work to be finished (gutters, for instance) but I'll be posting this before the work is complete. So more pictures next week.

Following on from our brief round-up of soon-to-be-published British comics'-related titles, Rebellion have announced that they will be publishing a Scream! and Misty special for the newsstands in time for Halloween. Previews carries the following information:

Two of Britain's best-loved supernatural comics have been resurrected this Halloween and merged into one terrifying tome featuring all-new stories! Max the crazy computer makes a welcome return in The Thirteenth Floor by Guy Adams, John Stokes and Frazer Irving; the fangs are out in The Dracula File by Grainne McEntee and Tristan Jones; weirdos, warriors and weasels plucked from the pages of various 70s and 80s British comics congregate in Death-Man: The Gathering by Henry Flint; Kek-W and Simon Coleby collaborate on Black Max, the German World War One fighter pilot that's descended from a race of bat-people; the high-rise horrors of Birdwood are back in Return of the Sentinels by Hannah Berry and Ben Willsher; and fairies can be frightening in Fate of the Fairy Hunter by Alec Worley and DaNi.

That's a pretty darned good line-up of talent. It should be well worth the £3.99 price tag. It will be going on sale on 18 October.

Also out shortly is a collection of Shaky Kane strips from Deadline. Here's the press release:

"Read any GOOD BOOKS lately, punk?"
For the first time ever, Good News Bible: The Complete Deadline Strips of Shaky Kane collects Shaky Kane's complete comic strips and illustrations from the ground-breaking British counter-culture magazine, Deadline, which between 1988 and 1995 spawned Jamie Hewlett's Tank Girl and launched dozens of cartoonists' careers.
    Drenched in wry wit, Kane's politically charged, hallucinatory, Jack Kirby-infused punk cartoons crackle with intensity and bombast, remaining as relevant now as when they were first published 30 years ago.
    Zone in, tune out and get ready to meet God's own cops: The A-Men, The Sadistic Prowler, Pinhead Aliens invading Russia, trans-dimensional subhuman entities The Shadowmen, Pagan P.I.: Wiccaman, Dannii Minouge, and the man of destiny himself: The Space Boss SHAKY KANE.
    With an introduction from writer David Quantick, foreword from cartoonist and writer Nick Abadzis, afterword from cartoonist and comics academic Frank Santoro, and annotations from Shaky himself, this is the ultimate tome for baptising oneself in the perverse and psychedelic world of Britain's cosmic comics shaman... There is only one Shaky Kane.

You can order the book direct from Breakdown Press, with copies available from 15 August, price £24.99.

Given the view I had on Wednesday, here are this week's random scans:

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