Comic Cuts - 6 November 2020

With the new lockdown now in place, I had to take the morning off on Monday to travel into town to buy a pair of shoes. This is the level that we've reached where I'm now thinking that buying shoes is a BIG THING and worthy of note in this column. It wasn't so much the shoes as the trip into town, which is only my second since mid-March, about 33 weeks ago.

Fully masked and keeping at a sensible, social distance, I took an early bus as there was a better chance of missing any possible crowds. The bus I was on was quiet, with no students from the nearby university in sight (you can make your own jokes about students and early mornings); the traffic was relatively light, too. I popped into the bank, where there was a queue of people waiting to get in, and wandered off to the shoe shop, Clarke's being my preferred outlet because they do wide fittings. One slight hiccup: they didn't open until 10.00, so I still had time to kill.

So I wandered around some of the charity shops, but persuaded myself out of buying anything. I'm trying to get rid of stuff at the moment (see my eBay listings) and the last thing I need is to be filling up the shelves with new books, when I've still got books in boxes that have never seen a shelf. I'm still working my way through various boxes, and will have some Captain Britain's and various titles with CB coming up shortly. I'm uploading new items on Sundays and I'm trying not to overwhelm people with too many new items, as I've already got 130 items doing the rounds. I've sold about 50 items in the last month or so, so it's not going too badly.

After buying the shoes I wanted, I headed back home, had lunch and a bit of a break before heading out of the house once more, this time to drop all the packaged comics that had sold on Sunday down to the post office. We then continued walking as it was such a nice day and we thought it nice to take a walk in daylight. Our evening walk is now long after sunset and, thanks to some pretty lousy street lighting and poor road and path maintenance, a risky business—risking a fall on a broken path, or getting soaked because the rainwater on the roads doesn't drain away and cars can't see that they're sending waves of water over pedestrians when they roar through puddles.

Aside from the race to town, it has been a somewhat steady week of work. I did a big rewrite on one of the features for BAM! that finally hustled it into shape. Given that 2020 is the 70th anniversary of the first British comic pocket library, it was an obvious choice of subject for the first issue, and, about a decade ago, I'd written two articles on that very subject for a Spanish encyclopedia, that nobody will have read. So, using those two pieces as my starting point,  I've put together what I think is a fairly comprehensive look at the history of these little gems, although I hasten to say that, even at close to 7,000 words, it's not a definitive history, and there will be plenty of opportunity to revisit them in the future.

Two other articles I'll mention, as they tie-in with the pocket library theme. One is a look at the history of John Steel, whose adventures have been reprinted in one volume recently, with a second just about to appear; and I've an interview with a current, prolific writer for Commando.

Because I've had to clean up quite a few illustrations, I've only completed another 7 pages of layouts, bringing the current total to 62. A bit of a slow week but still heading in the right direction. I've also scanned some Giles collections for sale and thought it might be nice to clean up some of the wrap-around covers. The cartoon was just one that I liked.

No review this week. Instead, here are my Top 10 pumpkins from around town!