After the excitement and socializing of last week, it has been a very quiet week. I promised myself that I'd take a couple of days off after such a hectic weekend at the Comic Swap Meet (scroll down for a report on that).
I sold some books, so the first job was to do a stock take and order up some books. What I actually did was turn on the scanner and scan the covers of all the books I'd bought the previous week. After that, the stock take? No.... after that update some of my old cover galleries (Joe Haldeman, Harry Harrison, Ken MacLeod). Eventually I got around to uploading the cover and contents for the new book, and then I ordered up the restocks alongside a proof copy of... THE SHRINKER.
Yes, that's the next book. THE SHRINKER is a classic weird menace tale from the pages of Buster (1962-65), later reprinted in Valiant (1968-70). I'm using the latter pages because they're a better fit for the size of book I print; Buster was still a tabloid until 1965, which, ironically, would have meant shrinking the pages down significantly.
The story begins with a near miss on a dark and stormy night. An R.A.F. transporter narrowly misses an unlit array on a craggy island and Squadron-Leader Flint and Sergeant Slake return later to ask the owner of a bleak and seemingly long-deserted castle to put a light atop the mysterious pylons.
As they walk towards the castle, the spidery figure of Capek watches over his storage cells, charged by the lightning that has been drawn to the aerial array. Positioning a gull before a strange device that emits a blue light that arcs through the window and hits the approaching R.A.F. men and throws them to the ground. Seconds later, they realise that a vast wall that has appeared before them is the step they were climbing and that they have been shrunk to no more than an inch in height!
The story was the creation of David Motton and Mike Western, and I'm pleased to say that the book will include a forward from David and an introduction from Pete Western, Mike's son. Mike went on to draw the first two stories featuring the evil Capek 120 of the strip's 200 pages) before handing over to Carlos Cruz. David Motton would write four of the five Shrinker stories, taking a short break when Western left, when the strip was continued by Roger Noel Cook.
THE SHRINKER contains all five stories that ran in Buster and Valiant, which would see the evil Capek jailed more than once, only to escape or to be persuaded into helping the population of an island threatened by a volcano, which gives a British space rocket expert an idea: a rocket powerful enough to launch men towards Mars would be impossible... but what if the men and their capsule were shrunk to midget size?
I'm waiting on the proof copy to arrive and once that has been checked I'll be able to figure out a release date. Early- to mid-July seems likely. More news next week.
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