Comic Cuts — 24 April 2026

It has been a week of fun and frustration in unequal measures. After a couple of weeks of scanning and cleaning artwork I was asked about a book originally published under a house name (a name used by more than one author) that is to be reprinted in the USA, and thought I would be able to help with the identity of the author. But while I was waiting for a copy of the text, I discovered that some of the scanning I'd done wasn't really up to scratch. The original comics weren't in the best of condition and when I started working on the pages on Sunday, I was having to spend a lot of time on every page, a mixture of ink splashes, poor lettering and heavy inking showing through from the reverse of the page.

There was only one solution, and on Monday I started re-scanning the whole strip—about 250 pages. I did a couple of test pages and I could get them cleaned up in a third of the time, so in the long run it probably won't have cost me too much time. But, y' know, frustrating to have to re-scan everything none the less.

My book collecting Spidey senses had been tingling for a few days as a friend of mine has been thinking of downsizing his collection and he definitely has some books I want. Quite how many we shall see. I'm not rolling in money, so I did a careful inventory of some of the books I had and made a wants list: no upgrades, just filling gaps. And limited to 50 books. And if he doesn't have them, so be it... I'm not allowed to rework the list. 

I've mentioned over the past month that I have been buying books to fill gaps, mostly in my SF collection. I bought a couple of Colin Kapp novels to complete the Cageworld series, and a couple by Edgar Pangborn novels from Star to complete the four novel set that they published. I put up a Colin Kapp cover gallery, and Pangborn will follow soon.

I also had to buy a book for the "identify the author" project mentioned above. I had been dipping in to a couple of books that I thought might be by a certain writer and thought I might have spotted his work. Well, the arrival of the Rosetta Stone book that I know to be his threw everything into doubt, and I've had to downgrade one of the books I was looking at from "author?" to "unknown". Just when I thought I was getting somewhere...

In the meantime, I had another inquiry about an obscure British comic strip. I know very little about it as it appeared in a magazine, not a comic. The only thing I do know about is the scriptwriter. I'm looking at my notes, and I think I need to do some deeper research... so that's something else I need to look into, whether for the comic reprint or just for myself.

Over at "find the author", I pulled a couple of books off my shelf for comparison to the Rosetta Stone. And one of them looks promising, so I may have two of this guy's books for comparison to the title that's being reprinted. I have emails out to a couple of other people in the hope that I can get more samples before I knuckle down and read the various texts.

I've had a doctor's appointment this week (just a regular check-up), had to go to Tesco's to do a "big shop" (usually when I buy a lot of tinned goods, which I don't like to leave to Mel to drag back on the bus), and today (Friday) I have an appointment with the dentist (again, just a regular check-up)... so you can't say life isn't exciting. I've been out more times this week than I have the past month! 

I have to end on a sad note and mention the passing of Barrie Tomlinson. I spoke to Barrie irregularly over a period of many years, whenever I had questions about his career at Fleetway/IPC. He responded to the best of his memory—which he claimed was poor, but he always seemed to have an answer. He contributed an essay to my Lion index (Lion: King of Picture Story Papers) in which he talked about his early days at Fleetway, which he joined in early 1961 as a sub on that paper. In 1967 moved to Tiger where he established himself as editor two years later.

It was under Barrie's watch that Roy of the Rovers was given his own title. Barrie realised that he could create newspaper stories around the character, as Roy and Melchester Rovers were so firmly ingrained in the British psyche and by then known to two or three generations. Whether it was the birth of a baby, getting a kiss from Suzanne Dando, or being shot by a mystery intruder, Barrie was able to generate many column inches in newspapers that kept Roy and his Rovers in the public eye.

In 1978, Barrie became group editor, overseeing Battle and 2000AD amongst others, and over the next few years he was behind the launches of the new Eagle, Scream!!, Speed, MASK, Ring Raiders and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, amongst others. Wildcat was one of his favourites, quite an innovative anthology title where all the stories were linked, with four characters all exploring the same alien planet while the Wildcat spaceship sought a new home for Earth's surviving population.

Under the banner of Creative Editorial Services, Barrie continued to work for Fleetway Publications creating Hot-Shot and Toxic Crusaders, etc. As titles disappeared or were taken back in-house, he expanded to edit titles for Grandreams and Reginald Taylor, as well as writing the daily football strip 'Scorer' for the Daily Mirror (1989-2011). He contributed to the short-lived Fiz, published by the Daily Star, which drew on his sense of humour (inspired by The Goons) to answer problems as 'Pansy Pratt' and the cartoon 'Percy Puzzler'. He also wrote other strips, some books for Ladybird and Golden Books, and two volumes of autobiography, Real Roy of the Rovers Stuff (2016) and Comic Book Hero (2017).

Barrie's humour continued to thrive on Twitter, where he kept in touch with many fans, sharing crazy captions to photographs as well as his memories of working in comics. 

(* Scorer © Reach PLC. Can I remind all my readers not to rely on the "AI Overview" that you get when doing a Google search, as it is often wrong...

... as in the result I got while checking the copyright on the strip. A lot of people will assume that's correct, will use that information, and will only further confirm to the AI that the strip ran in The Sun. It didn't.)