Comic Cuts — 17 June 2022

I'm finally back on schedule with the various books I have been putting together for a couple of European publishers. I was running late through most of May — through nobody's fault, I should add. It was simply a case that there was more work than anticipated, and that led to some pagination problems. All is sorted now and the book I am due to deliver today (Friday) will be delivered, so we're back on track.

That will be the eighth for Dolmen Editorial, who are also publishing a number of other reprints as part of their 'Albion' line, including The Trigan Empire, Black Max and The Thirteenth Floor. It's a nice set of titles, inspired by Rebellion's own line of reprints. Dolmen will be well ahead in their reprints of The Spider and The Steel Claw, with volume two of each due this month. Rebellion will be releasing volume two of The Steel Claw in November, by which time Dolmen will have volume three out, and volume four already in production.

Talking of The Steel Claw, Rebellion has released an image of Brian Bolland's fantastic cover for the next volume, Reign of the Brain. This will be the hardback exclusive, to be published on 9 November. Amazon says the book has only 112 pages compared to the first volume's 128 pages. It should mirror the contents of the Dolmen volume, which contains two of the weekly stories from Valiant, The Brian and The Lactians, plus a bonus story from Valiant Annual 1967, drawn by Carlos Cruz.

(Incidentally, the Dolmen volume one had 144 pages because it carried more introductory matter and a very nice colour gallery of previous Spanish translations of the strip.) 

I'm seriously thinking of getting myself a new computer. This one (hush... don't let it know we're talking about it!) is a bit old and knackered, like its owner. The fan has been rattling quite a lot of late, and I think (but I'm not sure) that the machine has been throttling back the processing speed — who knew they could do that? I think I might be suffering from thermal throttling, "a term that refers to a CPU which is throttling as a direct result of poor temperature management," according to this blog. "In other words, the CPU is working as intended (by stepping down its voltage and frequency to maintain safe operating temperatures), but it's clear the system has an issue with overheating."

I've noticed that the system is increasingly overwhelmed if I have quite a few things running or uploading/downloading, and everything will freeze up for a while as the machine figures out what is going on. I'm guessing (and it is a guess, because I know nothing about these things) that it's an age problem. Not things wearing out Wilf-style, but that this computer was designed for Windows 8, and upgrading to Windows 10 plus all the years of bolt-on patches and whatnot, means that the graphics and sound cards are struggling. I know the machine can't cope with Windows 11, so this seems a sensible time to start looking for a replacement.

That's "start looking"... I need to get some advice, look at some options and figure out a budget, and  that might take weeks! I'm not one to rush into anything, especially as I will need it to last until 2035!