Comic Cuts - 25 March 2011

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I usually write these columns on a Thursday so that they can be posted early Friday morning. Sometimes that little lag causes some niggling problems and quick rewrites on Friday. Last week was the perfect example. I opened last week's column by saying "There's not much news to report". At that point I wasn't expecting copies of the Hurricane & Champion index to arrive until Saturday, or - more likely - during the following week. They turned up on Friday afternoon, as did another delivery. I'd ordered some stiff-backed envelopes to make sure that the copies people had ordered arrived pristine.

If you scroll down you'll see that I had copies of the index scattered around the house on Friday evening (hence the rather poor pic that appeared Saturday morning) and on Sunday started getting everything organized so that the first copies could be posted on Monday. Opened up the box of envelopes and... discovered that they were the wrong size! My fault: I'd put in the wrong code on the online order form. Aaaaagh!

So I ordered up some more, making sure that I put in the right code this time, and they arrived Tuesday afternoon. The first copies of the book were shipped out on Wednesday. I'm writing this Thursday morning, so I'm still the only person (apart from Mel and a couple of friends) to have seen the book.

Like any new venture there are some start-up nerves. Because I'm producing short print-runs, doing all the work myself and keeping my costs as low as possible, I'm not going to lose my shirt with Bear Alley Books, but it has still cost me over £400 so far. I'm not looking forward to my next credit card bill.

But while I've got the momentum, I've already got the next batch of books underway. I've been planning to do a collection of the old Look and Learn strip "Eagles Over the Western Front" since 2009; long-time readers may remember that I ran the strip here on Bear Alley. The serialisation stalled because I suddenly had access to a pile of original artwork, which I scanned and cleaned up. And then it stalled again, because more artwork turned up. I've only just - this week - managed to get that second batch of artwork on the scanner. So when I've pieced together the scans (the boards were too big for my A3 scanner) and cleaned them up, the collection of Eagles will feature 144 pages taken from Bill Lacey's original artwork. Sorting these out is going to be a mammoth job and I still have to earn a living in the meantime, so it may take a while. But I've started.

The plan is to do the whole strip - which ran to 223 pages in total - in three A4 volumes. I'm going to try to have all three volumes finished before releasing the first one so that there's as little delay between volumes as possible and I can release them, say, one month or six weeks apart (thus spreading the printing costs over more than one credit card bill!). Things might change, but that's the plan as of today.

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I've also heard today (Thursday) that my order of Mean Streetmaps is printed and should be with me in 6-8 days. With any luck that mean I will be shipping out pre-ordered copies by or before Monday, 4 April.

I mentioned last week that the paperback cover section of the Look and Learn picture library was soon to be updated... and that's just what happened on Thursday afternoon. The latest batch of 300 or so covers begins here if you do a search on the site. You can then use the 'next' button to scroll through the pages. If you're a regular reader, you'll recognise quite a few of the pics as having appeared here on Bear Alley in the past, but there are plenty of others that haven't.

This will probably be the last of our shipping reports on OOCL Hamburg, as she is due to dock in the UK within the next day or two. The last reported position I was able to check on was as of Thursday around 9 o'clock. She had passed Gibraltar around mid-day and, last time I looked, was sailing up the coast of Portugal and was about level with Lisbon. Everyone waiting for their copies of the Thriller Libraries index and the Wells Fargo & Pony Express book... the waiting is almost over. A couple of days to get into dock, a couple of days to get through customs, a day or two to get things sorted at the warehouse and copies will begin shipping out.

I've just realised that I'll have had four books out over the course of a fortnight. Way to go, me! Hope you all did some overtime last month and have bulging pay-packets!

Today's random scans celebrate the movies of Elizabeth Taylor, who died on Wednesday. I've also thrown in a bonus Cleopatra cover by Roger Hall. I'm not sure why artist David Tayler, who painted the cover for Pan's movie tie-in edition of Raintree County, made Taylor's dress yellow... but it was definitely white and pink, as can be seen in the pic above.

See you next week. I should have some "DVD extras" for the Hurricane & Champion index, although I also need some help filling in a couple of gaps. And I'm thinking of making Mickey Spillane the next cover gallery star depending on what I can get done Friday evening and over the weekend.

(* Eagles Over the Western Front © Look and Learn Ltd.; map © Google Maps)

Robert L. Forward

Some years ago, in one of those mad moves you always regret, I sold off a lot of my SF collection. I simply didn't have the room to keep it and I was offered a fairly generous deal. We're not talking first editions in dustjackets but paperbacks I'd bought over the years, many of them purchased as they'd come out in the 1970s and 1980s which I'd kept in good condition.

Some I've regretted selling ever since: although I'd kept back a number of authors I particularly liked, I was pretty ruthless, even culling the likes of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov, who were probably responsible for my love of science fiction over all other authors. We all make mistakes... but I did need the space and I did need the money.

I recently picked up the omnibus edition of Joe Haldeman's Forever War, Forever Peace and Forever Free, published by Gollancz under the title War and Peace. Re-reading Forever War started me thinking about some of the other books that I'd parted with that I wouldn't mind re-reading, and one of the titles that sprang to mind was Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward. As I favour 'hard' science fiction, I leapt on Dragon's Egg when it came out. Who wouldn't want to read about an alien race who lived on a neutron star? I knew that a neutron star was a superdense collapsed star full of degenerate matter with an enormous gravitational pull (something I learned from reading Larry Niven!) and Forward's novel had a race of creatures, the Cheela, who lived on the surface of a neutron star. A sort of superdense version of Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity.

Forward also created Rocheworld, which I read as an abridged serial in Analog in the early 1980s. Flight of the Dragonfly was the full(er) version, originally published in 1984, although I gather that it was later published in a restored version. The Rocheworld was actually two planets linked by an ocean (a concept, incidentally, later used in one of the Storm books by Martin Lodewijk and Don Lawrence).

Well, as luck would have it, I managed to pick up copies of both books on Saturday in one of our local bookshops. It'll be a while before I get around to re-reading them, but at least I now have copies again.

Robert L. Forward also had a connection to another famous SF series: Dan Dare. About nine or ten years ago, I interviewed Bob Forward - Robert D. Forward - who was Robert L. Forward's son. At the time he was involved in the Dan Dare animated series that was broadcast on Channel 5 and he mentioned that one of the episodes was based on concepts that had appeared in one of his father's stories.

Dragon's Egg
New English Library 0450-05197-8, Aug 1981, 309pp, £1.50.

The Flight of the Dragonfly
New English Library 0450-05823-9, May 1985, 320pp, £2.25.

W. R. Burnett cover gallery

The following is a selection of Burnett's books that had British paperback editions. A complete bibliography of Burnett's work appears in my Kindle e-article Waiting For Darkness.

Little Caesar
Corgi Books S455, 1957, 188pp, 2/6. Cover by Oliver Brabbins
Hodder Paperbacks 0340-04315-6, 1968, 158pp, 3/6.
No Exit Press 0948-35353-8, 1989, 1989158pp, £1.99.

High Sierra
Corgi Books S536, 1958, 221pp, 2/6. Cover by Oliver Brabbins
Flamingo Books, nd (c.1973), 175pp, 30p.

Nobody Lives Forever
Corgi Books S494, 198pp, 2/6. Cover by S. R. Boldero

Tomorrow's Another Day
Corgi Books S654, 1959, 188pp, 2/6. Cover by Oliver Brabbins

The Asphalt Jungle
Corgi Books T128, 1955, 2/-. Cover by Roger Hall
Corgi Books GC1523
Flamingo Books, nd (c.1973), 176pp, 30p.
Prion 1853-85346-7, 1999, 224pp.

Stretch Dawson
Frederick Muller/Gold Medal 3, 1953, 172pp, 2/-.
Frederick Muller/Gold Medal 447, 1960, 158pp.

Captain Lightfoot
Corgi Books T404, 1957, 253pp, 2/-. Cover by Roger Hall.

Little Men, Big World
Corgi Books S422, 1957, 285pp.
Flamingo Books, nd (c.1973), 252pp, 35p.

Vanity Row
Corgi Books P7, 1956, 222pp.

Big Stan (as by John Monaghan)
Frederick Muller/Gold Medal 75, 1955, 159pp, 2/-.

Adobe Walls
Corgi Books T152, 1956, 192pp, 2/-. Cover by unknown (Osborne?)
Corgi Books SW1211, 1962, 158pp.

Pale Moon
Corgi Books S660, 1959, 252pp, 2/6. Cover by James E. McConnell

Underdog
Corgi Books 691, 1959, 191pp.

Bitter Ground
Corgi Books SW783, 1960, 223pp, 2/6. Cover by Kossin

Mi Amigo
Corgi Books SW1131, 1962, 157pp.

The Widow Barony
Corgi Books GN1414, 1963, 254pp.

Hurricane & Champion is here!

Printed copies of the Hurricane & Champion index arrived Friday and I will start shipping out pre-ordered copies on Monday. Sorry about the quality of the pic... I took this in the office late in the evening. The copy of Mean Streetmaps below is the proof copy, which I should have completed proofing by this evening. I was planning to have it finished yesterday but other work got in the way during the day and I ended up watching Comic Relief last night.

Head over to the Bear Alley Books blog for more details and ordering information.

Comic Cuts - 18 March 2011

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Click here for ordering information

Although there's not much new to report following last week's announcement of the upcoming release of the  Hurricane & Champion Index and the essay collection Mean Streetmaps, I've spent almost every spare moment working on these books for the past week, doing all the fiddly little jobs that need to be done. There's a lot more to publishing than writing something and having it magically appear in the hands of readers. There are forms to fill in, proofs to be read, print runs to ponder over, promotional material to be written.

So the good news—and there's no bad news, so relax—is that everything's not only done and dusted on the Hurricane & Champion Index but printed copies are due in today or tomorrow and I'll be posting out pre-ordered copies from Monday next week.

Mean Streetmaps, being a longer book, took longer to proof (and, I might add, I could only do one at a time and picked the easier one to start with), but I should have finished copies to hand in a week or two.

This week I've also registered the ISBNs for both books, so they will be appearing on Amazon shortly, although they'll be hellishly expensive. Being short print-run books, I don't have the economies of scale of other publishers and Amazon demand such a high percentage of the sale price that I'd lose money on every sale if they were offered at cover price. So whilst both books will go up on Amazon's marketplace, the price will have to be bumped up dramatically. It's simple economics. Postage costs are also horrific these days, even in the UK. To the USA and outside the EU they're crippling, so I'm exploring other avenues that might make it easier and cheaper to buy the book. Even packaging costs have gone up, not only the base price but VAT has increased to 20%—something I forgot about when I was juggling all the figures to come up with prices. Hey ho, I'll remember next time. Why anyone would want all the hassle of self-publishing a book I don't know. They'd have to be nuts.

Sidestepping the issue of my mental condition for a moment, let's catch up with a couple of books where all the hassle has been left to someone else and see what's happening to the Thriller Libraries Index and the Don Lawrence Wells Fargo & Pony Express book.

The OOCL Hamburg was last reported to be in the middle of the Arabian Sea on Monday and heading west towards the Gulf of Aden; the ship is still expected to reach the UK on Sunday 27 March.


For entertainment (huh?) I've been spending a little time each evening cleaning up covers for the next update on the Look and Learn picture gallery website. I'd hoped to have 1,000 images up as part of a paperback cover gallery last year and failed quite spectacularly thanks to moving house. I did manage 700, which I guess—given the circumstances—was pretty good. Still, it wasn't what I'd aimed for, so I'm determined to hit target this year. That's around 3 books a day that need to be scanned and cleaned, which doesn't sound much but is actually a good chunk of time if the covers are poor as some can take up to an hour to clean. Those creases and rust stains don't clean themselves. (But anyone can—and some people do—send me scans, which often feature in the weekly 'random scans'.)

By the way, the gallery linked above is easily searchable: you can search by artist (Sam Peffer, John L. Baker, Carl Wilton, etc.), or genre (crime, western, science fiction, etc.). Just stick in the word paperback after the search term to limit the results. I'm busily writing all the file information for the next batch and will let you know when it goes up.

So... I'm keeping busy.

Here's today's random scan, which comes with a question attached. This 1956 Corgi Book is clearly signed by Marcus Stone, but a quick search of the internet reveals that there was another artist of that name, Marcus Clayton Stone (1840-1921), a very good biography of whom can be found here. So, the question is: Is Marcus Stone, cover artist, related to Marcus Stone, illustrator of Dickens?

(* Hurricane and Champion © IPC Media; Mean Streetmaps © Steve Holland; Map © Google Maps.)

News from Spaceship Away!

Spaceship Away!, the long-running (since 2003) Dan Dare magazine, is now under new management. The announcement has been expected for some time as it has been widely known that Rod Barzilay, the magazine's founder, was planning to step down as editor. The 22 issues under Rod's editorship have been notable for the high standards of presentation that he set from the beginning. The latest (Autumn 2010) issue was a bumper 52 pages, printed in full colour throughout with a gorgeous wraparound Ian Kennedy cover.

The issue saw the last three episodes of 'Green Nemesis', Rod's meticulous recreation of the original Dan Dare. Spaceship Away! was originally founded as a vehicle to run 'The Phoenix Mission', a new Dan Dare story (written under license) which was to have been drawn by Keith Watson; the project, which dates back to the early 1990s, was financed by fans who were offered the opportunity to buy the original artwork for the story. Watson's death in 1994 after only one completed page put the project on hold until Don Harley, one of Frank Hampson's original assistants—and, many would argue, responsible for some of Dan's finest hours—agreed to pick up the baton.

Spaceship Away! was launched some years later as a means to publish 'The Phoenix Mission', the first 24-page issue appearing in the Autumn of 2003. A second Dan Dare strip, 'Project Pluto', was added with the second issue and a prequel, 'Rocket Pilot' with issue three. By issue 8, the page count was up to 40 pages, with the line-up now featuring regular humour strips, features and interviews, as well as a reprint of 'Journey Into Space'. A newly colourised 'Garth' has been published in recent issues.

It is no secret that the magazine has been heavily subsidised throughout its lifetime and the handover has been in the planning for many months. The new editor will be Des Shaw.

On Friday, Rod announced that "It has taken longer than expected but now new licenses have been paid and most details of this years' Spaceship Away!s have been sorted."

Publication of the 3-yearly issues will now move to March, July and November, with issue 23 due within the next few of weeks. Recent rises in costs, including license fees, postage and packaging, has meant that the 7-for-the-price-of-6 offer that has been a feature of the magazine since its beginning has been brought to an end, although subscriptions for three issues at a time will still be available. The cover price has risen to £7.50 (the first price rise since the magazine's inception) and a three issue sub. will cost £20, which still results in a substantial saving. EU and overseas subscriptions for surface mail delivery have risen to £24; airmail to EU countries is now £27 and airmail overseas is £30.

Copies (including back issues) can still be ordered via the Spaceship Away! website.

Issue 23 will begin a new Dan Dare story written by John Freeman with artwork by Mike Nicoll and lettering by Jim Campbell. According to Freeman, 'Pre-Emptive Strike' "is set on the moon and [features] some very bizarre aliens designed by Mike."

Here at Bear Alley we wish Rod all the best for the future.

James M. Cain cover gallery

For more information on James M. Cain see Wikipedia.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (New York, Knopf, 1934; London, Cape, 1934)
Guild Books 1, (Feb) 1941, 6d.
Guild Books 233, (Aug) 1947, 96pp, 1/-. Cover design
Penguin Books 874, 1952, 122pp. Cover design
Panther Books 1004, Jan 1960, 124pp.
Panther Books 0586-01004-1-2, 1970. Cover photo
Pan Books 0330-26312-9, 1981, 124pp.
Orion Books 0752-86174-3, 2005.

Serenade (New York, Knopf, 1937; London, Cape, 1938)
Penguin Books 902, 1953, 206pp.
Corgi Books GN7284, 173pp.
Pan Books 0330-26341-2, 1981, 173pp.
Orion Books 0752-86175-1, 2005, 210pp.

Mildred Pierce (New York, Knopf, 1941; London, Hale, 1943)
Pocket Books, 1950, 323pp.
----, 1952, 323pp.
Ace Books H233, Nov 1958, 272pp, 3/6. Cover by unknown
Corgi Books FN7205, 1965, 286pp.
Hamlyn 0600-20439-1, 1982, 237pp.

Love's Lovely Counterfeit (New York, Knopf, 1942)
Robert Hale, c.1955, 2/-.
Corgi Books, 1966, 126pp.

Double Indemnity (New York, Avon, 1943)
Orion Books (Crime Masterworks 6) 978-075286427-3, 2005, vii+136pp, 2002.

Three of a Kind (Career in C Major, The Embezzler, Double Indemnity) (New York, Knopf, 1943; London, Hale, 1956)
abridged as Double Indemnity and The Embezzler. London, Pocket Books, 1950, 218pp.
as Double Indemnity. Corgi Books FN7206, 1965, 285pp.

Past All Dishonor (New York, Knopf, 1946)
Robert Hale, 1955, 2/-. Cover by McConnell?
Ace Books H470, Jun 1961, 2/6.
Digit Books R865, May 1964, 160pp, 2/6. Cover by Michel
Corgi Books GN7581, 1967, 124pp, 3/6.
Hamlyn 0600-20440-5, 1983, 126pp.

The Butterfly (New York, Avon, 1947)
Corgi Books, 1966, 70pp

Sinful Woman (New York, Avon, 1947)
(see Jealous Woman, below)

The Moth (New York, Knopf, 1948; London, Hale, 1950; abridged, New York, NAL, 1950)
Ace Books H209, Aug 1958, 192pp, 2/6. Cover by unknown
Tandem Books 33, 1965, 187pp.
Corgi Books 0552-07958-8, 1968, 286pp.

Jealous Woman (New York, Avon, 1950)
Ace Books H253, Mar 1959, 192pp, 2/6. Cover by John Vernon
[with Sinful Woman] Corgi Books GN7440, 1966, 190pp, 3/6. Cover: photo

The Root of His Evil (New York, Avon, 1951; London, Hale, 1954; as Shameless, New York, Avon, 1958)
Ace Books H296, Sep 1959, 192pp, 2/6. Cover by John Vernon
Corgi Books GN7518, 1966, 175pp, 3/6.

Galatea (New York, Knopf, 1953; London, Hale, 1954)
Ace Books H345, Apr 1960, 156pp, 2/6. Cover by unknown
Corgi Books GN7207, 1965, 158pp.
Magnum 041705840-3, 1981, 158pp.

Mignon (New York, Dial Press, 1962; London, Hale, 1963)
Corgi Books GN7002, 1964, 201pp. Cover by James Avati [US reprint]

The Magician's Wife (New York, Dial Press, 1965; London, Hale, 1966)
Corgi Books 0552-07850-6, 1968, 174pp, 3/6. Cover: photo.

Rainbow's End (Mason-Charter, 1975; London, W. H. Allen, 1975)
Magnum Books 0417-02020-1, 1977, 191pp, 70p. Cover photo by Bill Carter

The Institute (Mason-Charter, 1976; London, Hale, 1977)
Magnum Books 0417-01830-4, 1977.

The Baby in the Icebox and other short fiction, ed. Roy Hoopes (New York, Holt, 1981; London, Hale, 1982)
Penguin Books, 1984

Cloud Nine (New York, Mysterious Press, 1984; London, Hale, 1985)
(no UK paperback?)

The Enchanted Isle (New York, Mysterious Press, 1985)
(no UK paperback?)

Omnibus Editions
Cain Omnibus (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Serenade, Mildred Pierce) (Cleveland, World, 1946)
The Embezzler [and] Double Indemnity (Triangle Books, 1948)
Three of Hearts (Love's Lovely Counterfeit, The Butterfly, Past All Dishonour) (London, Hale, 1949)
Everybody Does It (Career in C Major, The Embezzler) (New York, NAL, 1949)
Jealous Woman [and] Sinful Woman (London, Hale, 1955)
Cain X 3 (The Postman Always Lives Twice, Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity), intro. by Tom Wolfe (New York, Knopf, 1969)
Three Novels by James M. Cain (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Serenade) (New York, Bantam, 1973)
Hard Cain (Sinful Woman, Jealous Woman, Root of His Evil), intro. by Harlan Ellison (Boston, G. K. Hall, 1980)
Four Complete Novels (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity, Serenade) (New York, Avenel Books, 1982)
The Five Great Novels of James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Serenade, Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity, The Butterfly) (London, Picador, 1985)
Three by Cain (Serenade, Love's Lovely Counterfeit, The Butterfly) (New York, McKay, 1989)
Three Complete Novels (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce) (New York, Wings, 1994)

Non-fiction
Our Government (New York, Knopf, 1930; London, Allen & Unwin, 1930)
For Men Only: A Collection of Short Stories (as editor) (Cleveland, World, 1944)
60 Years of Journalism, ed. Roy Hoopes (Bowling Green, OH, Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1985)