I haven't blogged for over a week so here's a quick catch up. The image above is a preview of part of a page I've done for the indie comic Goof No.3. An anthology of new strips that will be launched at the Macc-Pow Comic Art Festival on June 27th at Macclesfield Town Hall. Presumably it'll be available by mail order afterwards from Marc Jackson the editor. (I'll post a link here in a new post when that happens.)
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I'll be posting a preview of the next Sgt Shouty strip when The77 No.12 is available to order in few days. Kickstarter backers will be receiving their issues soon.
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At the moment I'm working on ideas for the next Daft Dimension strip for Doctor Who Magazine. I'm also writing an introduction for a book that someone is publishing that will collect a classic humour strip not seen in decades! I'm sworn to secrecy for now but all will be revealed soon.
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Speaking of another classic humour strip, the publisher of The Collected Cloak (by Mike Higgs) informs me that Diamond UK will be handling its distribution to UK comic shops. However, bearing in mind that many UK comic shops have little or no interest in humour strips (especially vintage British humour strips) it's essential that you place an order with your local comic shop to ensure you get a copy. There's no point in assuming it'll be in stock otherwise. The Collected Cloak will be solicited in the August listings, for publication later this year, so August is when you need to ask your comic shop to order you a copy. (I'll post more info when I receive it regarding price etc.)
The Cloak by Mike Higgs
3 comments:
good newes
Fantastic news about the Collected Cloak. I've been anticipating this since an ad on the back of Crikey! #14 in 2010 that announced it as upcoming from Ugly Duckling Press. Never heard anymore about that project though. And to be honest, I've been wanting this collection since 1968!
Also intriguing to hear you're writing an introduction to a collection of another classic strip. Wonder what that could be? I know you recently wrote a foreword for Mervyn's Monsters, so maybe something in a similar vein?
We've been spoiled with some brilliant re-presentations of strips from our childhoods in recent years. Rebellion just produced The Legend Testers, Irmantas Povilaika curated and compiled that magnificent double volume of Ken Reid's Odhams strips a few years ago, and Bear Alley finally assembled a Phantom Patrol edition.
A couple that I'd still like to see, though they'd be very slim volumes, are Space Jinx and Moon Madness, both from the first 6 months of Smash! and both drawn by Brian Lewis, but in very different styles. Wonderful work from an artist who died too young and seems to be overlooked now.
Yes, we've been spoilt with the huge number of collected editions these past few years. I wish Rebellion's humour books had sold better but at least they're happy to licence the strips out to smaller publishers to do them. (If only DC Thomson would do the same.)
Space Jinx would be a bit tricky as it was a strip that ran over the centrespread so there's a risk of dialogue and art being lost in the gutter. And such a niché strip would have a low print run so it'd be glued binding (rather than more expensive stiched binding) which would definitely lead to gutter loss.
Moon Madness has already been collected, in The Treasury of British Comics Annual 2024, scanned from the original artwork. It only ran for a short time so it wasn't long enough for a standalone book. (I left it too late to order that Treasury annual and it sold out quickly. I have the comics, but it would have been nice to see the strip printed from its original art, including paste up marks etc.)
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