Comic Cuts - 15 June 2018

Rather by surprise, I seem to have another volume of Forgotten Authors almost completed. Having spent so much time on writing up W. N. Willis and then following that with a related piece, I discovered that I had the bulk of another collection completed as I had already written a few other (shorter) essays and they totted up almost to a full book's worth. One piece I had, which was almost completed, just needed the bibliography tidying up (which I did on Monday) and I then jumped straight into another piece that I've wanted to expand upon for some while as new information has come to light since I wrote the original piece in 2008.

Add them all together and I think I have about 65,000 words already, to which I need to add a couple of shorter pieces and an introduction. And I need to do rewrites on all the essays, check spellings, footnotes and links. And lay out the book and write an index. Oh, and I have to design the cover.

Maybe I'm not so close to finishing after all...

I was pleased to see that the IndieGoGo project being run by Irmantas Povilaika jumped following the interview we ran last weekend. When I checked the numbers just now (it's Thursday afternoon as I write) he had raised 95% of his total. This is for the boxed-set of two volumes of Ken Reid reprints entitled The Power Pack and if you haven't backed the project yet, you can get a 23% discount against the final cost of the books by backing the project now rather than waiting until the books are printed.

I haven't much else to add. My trip to dentist (dental hygienist) went fine on Friday. We watched Tomb Raider – the one with Alicia Vikander – on Saturday, which was all the better for being a dialed down version of the Angelina Jolie films from nearly two decades ago, themselves sub-par Indiana Jones adventures with Jolie treating everything from stone statues coming to life to time travel as if it was just another day in the office. The new one is hamstrung by being a re-packaged origin story with endless flashbacks and having a plot that echoes Temple of Doom. Still, it was better than the previous two and if there's a sequel I'll be happy to give it a try.

I've also just finished the 10-episode SyFy series Krypton, set 200 years before the birth of Kal-El (Superman). It's another series where supposedly brilliant people and military leaders react to everything as if they were teenagers so that the teenage audience can understand their actions. Krypton is home to a lot of good-looking British and Irish actors and has a lot of winding corridors and winding streets and winding tunnels. Also, everyone loves Seg-El, grandfather-to-be of Superman: Daron-Vex (who crushed the El family) wants him to marry his daughter; top Kryptonian military warrior Lyta-Zod wants to marry him; Nyssa Vex wants his baby; others fall in line whenever he has a plan. Mind you, I think at some point or other, every one of his friends has either pulled a gun on him or somehow betrayed him.

Random scans... a couple of books relating to tombs, a couple of Tomb Raider ties, and a pair of raiders. It's not so random, these days...