Comic Cuts — 7 April 2023

After last week's excitement—and I do find getting a new book out exciting—this week has been a bit patchy and not so smooth running. Not that anything has gone wrong, but I just haven't had a good run at the work that needs to be done.

For instance, I hoped to have the first pass of The Spider artwork finished on Monday, but I had pages left over until Thursday; that means I won't finish the second pass until today (Friday), rather than Wednesday. One reason was that I had to take a break mid-week while we got started on the next book we're doing. I was kicked out of my office so Mel could use the scanner, so I took the opportunity to get my next Forgotten Authors essay started... which I now have to leave behind while I return to The Spider.

I'm working on the last (sixth) volume, with more Mytek and Kelly's Eye up next. In between, I'm hoping to get some introductions written as having Mel working with me for a bit means that we should be able to get some more titles out. I'm planning to reprint a handful of old 1920s thrillers, including at least one more Gwyn (Hercules, Esq.) Evans. As I said last week, these old paperbacks don't sell very well for us, but they're books that I just want to have nice copies of on my shelf... and maybe there are other people out there that will enjoy them.

As well as publishing On the Queen's Service, I had another book make an appearance in late March. Don Lawrence: Meister der Illustrations – und Comickunst was a reprint of the material I put together for Don Lawrence: A Scrapbook of Strip and Illustration that was going to be a book in 2014 but which was eventually published as an Illustrators special in 2018. That version was cut by 16 pages, excluding some of Lawrence's illustrations for Look and Learn and Speed & Power. These have been reinstated for the All Verlag edition, which has also been expanded so that where I had trimmed down some of the text material that Lawrence was illustrating, the text has been reinstated—and translated into German, including a serialised western by John Hunter and two short stories by Arthur C. Clarke. The book has grown to 198 pages and is a thing of beauty.

Once the Illustrators edition has sold out, I might put the collection together as planned in a limited run but at a slightly lower price than the special. You never know, but maybe one day I'll also get around to finishing the book that was supposed to follow it... Ron Embleton: A Scrapbook of Strip and Illustration. (Please don't hold your breath waiting for this! It's something I barely got started on.)

I'm not sure what will be happening next week as I'm planning to take a couple of days off following the bank holiday—it's my birthday!—so I may or may not have time to write... maybe just something short. My point being that, if I don't post as normal, I'm not dead. Just enjoying myself.

(* The Spider (c) Rebellion Publishing. One euphemism for penis I could imagine slipping through, but two in the same panel...? Someone in Lion's editorial office was having a laugh!)