Since January I've been working on a number of different projects. One is the 4-volume collection of Mytek the Mighty, which I'm hoping will have the first two volumes released next month, pending approval from Rebellion. Above is the cover for volume two.
The second is an index to a title that we haven't covered before, Express Weekly, but it is a tricky one to tackle as I have only a very limited number of copies and a fairly sketchy knowledge of all the ins and outs that went on behind the scenes. I've written up what I can about the early years, but there are still quite a few gaps and it may require a trip up to London to the British Library to fill them.
But while I was waiting on proof copies of the Mytek books, I thought I'd have a change of pace and get some work done on a third project that I've mentioned to one or two people in the past. Back in 2007 Book Palace published The War Libraries, which has been out of print for a little while now. I'm asked about copies every now and then and say the same thing: I'll get around to putting out the information somehow, some time in the future, in some format or other.
Back in 2005, the artwork for a huge number of covers sat in a warehouse at Iron Mountain in Canning Town, while more could be found sitting in the basement of the Blue Fin Building in Southwark. One or two busy cameras photographed as much as possible and I'm hoping to use lots of those photos as illustrations.
I'm working on Air Ace, as that's the more compact series, with only 545 issues to worry about. The original lists had some gaps that I'm trying to fill; I've compiled an artist and author index, which was missing from the earlier book, and I'm planning to write some biographical sketches of some of the creators involved. I'm thinking of doing maybe a dozen, so that should break up the lists quite adequately, and make the book a bit more colourful and interesting. I'm thinking of maybe calling it The Air Ace Companion, or similar, and follow the same style for later volumes covering War, Battle and maybe others.
That's should keep me busy!
By the way, some of my Bear Alley Books will be available at the Glasgow Commando & British Weekly Comics Swapmeet (29th Glasgow Scouts, Cameron Hall, 147 Mossgiel Road, Glasgow G43 2BY) thanks to Karl Kennedy, who is driving up from Colchester and kindly offered to flog some books on my behalf. So if you want to have a look at some of the comic strip reprint titles we've released, including the most recent — The Phantom Patrol — head to Cameron Hall. It's £2 to get in (which is less than what it costs to post the books to customers) and you'll find plenty of people to meet, artwork to enjoy and comics to buy.
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