Comic Cuts — 14 July 2023

Now that I've announced that I'm working on a thorough revamp of my old Badger Tracks "book" — in quotes because it was actually a photocopied newsletter, albeit a 104-page photocopied newsletter — I've had to knuckle down and actually get some of it written.

I've learned a lot in the last 25 years, so there's a lot to add as I piece together Beyond The Void: The Remarkable History of Badger Books — my preferred title for the new book. The introduction, which covers the history of the company and the various different series that Badger published, clocks in at over 15,500 words, and the checklist and index are all done, identifying quite a few additional pen-names over what I managed last time.

The next section is basically "The Men Behind the Books", with little essays (and some not so little ones) on the likes of John F Watt, John Glasby, Tony Glynn, William H Fear, Bryan Haven and the mighty Lionel Fanthorpe. Some of these are new, and some I've gone back to original interviews and correspondence to expand them so that, even if you still own a copy of the original version, there's going to be something new. I've also written a piece about Henry Fox and I might squeeze in info. on a couple of other artists who were associated with John Spencer/Badger Books. Oh, and there will be a short piece on the old Spencer comics, too.

Digging back through correspondence has been lots of fun, and finding things like an appreciative letter from John Glasby that he sent after seeing the original version of Badger Tracks in which I'd heaped quite a bit of praise on his Badger science fiction novels. "I was very pleased with the piece you wrote around the A J Merak novels, 'No Dawns and No Horizons', especially as I recall one review of Hydrosphere which was extremely critical!"

There are also one or two frustrations. For instance, I know I had copies of Bryan Haven's They Lived In Glory and Operation Samurai because they're not on my wants list and... well, I remember having them! But where they've got to I don't know. They weren't on the shelf when I scanned all my Badger Books a couple of years ago, and I have a horrible feeling they might have been lost when Peter Haining died. Peter was writing a lot of true war books towards the end of his life, and he was borrowing a lot of Badger and Digit books, some of which might not have come back. Most frustrating, but I'll figure a way around the problem.

With essays completed on Haven, Watt and Glasby in the past few days, I feel I'm getting back to match fitness, although the big test will be when it comes to do all the layouts and whatnots that putting a book together requires. It also means that I haven't done much work on the other two books I'm working on, although one will be the subject of a meeting next week to hopefully finish up and move forward to getting a proof copy printed.

The rain has helped and hindered. The area where I have reseeded the grass in the back garden is sprouting nicely. On Friday and Saturday I dug out the few weeds that had survived the blitz and were starting to grow again and sowed more seed in the areas where the new growth was looking patchy. As it has only been a few days there isn't much to see, but we'll hopefully know whether it has worked by next week.

Normally I'm reporting on our tomatoes around this time of year. Unfortunately, the two plants we had were attacked by black fly and were looking a bit feak and weeble (as my ex- used to say). There are about six tomatoes and a handful of flowers,. A courgette plant has been attacked by slugs and we have a new cucumber plant that looks fine... so far. Frankly, we're not expecting the levels of home-grown salad that we've had in the past.

How has the rain helped? Well, it has kept me focused on work, hopefully given the new grass seeds a bit of a boost, and we had a double rainbow yesterday. Aren't they meant to bring good luck? We could do with some...