All This and Heros too...

At the risk of repeating myself, I am posting a blog which I put up this morning over at  the Book Palace Blog concerning our forthcoming Heros the Spartan project. As many of you know, aside from my day job, I have been working on helping launch Illustrators Quarterly. As a brief aside, we now have the most amazing team of contributors who are all pooling their considerable talents to make this publication worthy of it's subject matter. But there is no getting around the fact that editing a publication such as Illustrators is a really full on job, so what I have attempted to do, with the aid of the team, is get issue 2 pretty well resolved way ahead of final copy date. I will be talking a bit more about Illustrators and the people behind it in the not too distant future. But on to Heros, which has also been occupying a lot of my time for the last few months. So ...

Let me fill you in on a few of the details, so you can get a handle on what is happening. Firstly and most importantly the format; the book is going to be the same size as our Wulf the Briton epic, so it's Gi-Normous, so that you can fully appreciate the artwork as Frank Bellamy intended it to be seen. Interestingly, Bellamy was such a perfectionist that he often worked on his strips the same size as they were reproduced, and never more than a quarter up, so he knew exactly how each pen line and brush stroke would reproduce. In addition and such was his professionalism, he reduced the number of bottles of colour Pelikan ink he worked with to ... 3, plus black. The reason being that Eric Bemrose who printed the Eagle would often have to retouch art which had colours that were proving unco-operative in repro and such work resulted in the publisher having a re-touching surcharge added to their bill. Bellamy's work NEVER incurred one of these charges.

So the good news is that, as with Wulf, you are getting the optimum best job we can deliver in terms of the pages being as Bellamy intended. There is one compromise we have had to make and that is that the book will not be presenting each double page spread on a single page. We fully explored the feasibility of such an approach, but we were left with two alternatives, one being a greatly reduced size for each Heros spread, the other being a book that would have to be bound along it's longer edge and would cost a fortune.

So in the end sanity prevailed, we went back and looked at the double page spread in our companion volume Wulf The Briton (there is one from Christmas 1959) and looked at the all important gutter. The wonderful thing about Prolong is the quality of their binding, the books are bound in signatures of four sheets and open out flat with no problem whatsoever, so in the end we decided that the answer to our problem was right under our noses. In addition the book will be much easier to handle and more of a reading experience. Plus it will greatly help in keeping the cost of this book down. So all in all we decided it was by far the best route to take.

Anyway and because I know you are keen to see something more substantive here are some before and after restorations plus...



The cover. Hope you like it.

Merry Christmas From Wee Sporty, Bill Boffin and Yours Truly

As readers of the recently published Wulf the Briton magnum opus will recall, there was one week in 1959, when Wulf the Briton did not make Express Weekly's front page. This enviable slot had been his regular and unchallenged fiefdom ever since Ron Embleton's masterful development of the strip had threatened to usurp even the pre-eminence of Dan Dare. The week in question was for the issue cover dated December 26th 1959 and by this stage of the game Wulf was on a real roll, with seething rivalries between a breakaway faction of the Brigantes under the leadership of the beautiful and scheming Cartamandua and the remainder of the tribe under the leadership of their king Venutius, cuckolded husband of Cartamandua (although this was never spelled out for obvious reasons) leading to some of the most spectacular battle sequences ever seen in any comic, anytime, anywhere. And if that wasn't enough earlier in the year there had been gladiatorial combat, siege and starvation in the depths of a cruel winter with a vengeful Marius Actus and the 20th legion determined to destroy Wulf and his followers and in the run up to Christmas there had been yet more landings as the forces of Imperial Rome under the command of Agricola set about to bring order to the unruly Brits. But while all that was going on Wulf and his comrades in arms Basta and Greatorix, had their hands full with a bunch of Saxon Vikings who were wreaking havoc on the Northern coasts.

So when my Christmas issue of Express Weekly arrived I was momentarily mystified, but only for a moment as I saw Wulf make his only ever appearance as a truly spectacular, full color double page spread across the center of the comic. The front page was in the meantime reserved for Bill Mevin's Wee Sporty. Mevin it should be mentioned was a highly talented illustrator, whose training had included a stint working under the directorship of David Hand, who (according to who you read) was at one time Walt Disney's creative right hand man. Hand left the studio in 1944 somewhat disillusioned in the wake of the strike that had nearly crippled the studio in 1941 and the resultant unionization. (Hand pictured above second from left in the storyboard discussion photograph) Disney never really forgave Hand for leaving and was firmly of the opinion, despite Hand's denials, that his move was as a result of an approach from the UK's Rank Studio. J. Arthur Rank was a man whose ambitions seemed limitless as regards creating an Albionesque version of Hollywood, complete with stars (under contract to Rank) and epic productions, directed by some of the most exciting home grown talents that would see the studio as a credible force in international cinema.

The inevitable happened and after work on the full length feature Animal Farm was completed and the studio had failed to secure a distribution deal for it's animated cartoons series Animaland and The Musical Paintbox, the J. Arthur beancounters pulled the rug out from under Hand and his studio and for Mevin and a lot of the other talents, they had to ply their skills elsewhere.

For Mevin, the break was something of a blessing in disguise as he was able to develop his own ideas and style rather than expending energy on work which was so heavily Disney influenced (doubtless at J Arthur's behest), that it looked way too dated before it had even been shown to audiences that would inevitably make less than favorable comparisons with the epics being produced in the Mouse Factory.

Mevin's style blossomed and moved with the times and included a lot of TV based cartoon strips for such series as Dr Who, Bugs Bunny, Space Patrol and newspaper work such as the Mevin creation The Soapremes and The Perishers.

I'm also including a couple more Christmas themed pages from the same issue to help with such things as part games. Courtesy of the inimitable Bill Boffin as drawn by Selby Donnison.


Lovely stuff!

An Embarrasment of Reprints - Hal Foster's Prince Valiant Rides Again

I remember my first sighting of Harold Foster's Prince Valiant. It was on the back of James Warren's Creepy magazine wherein amongst the various goodies that Warren's Captain Company were offering was seven volumes of Prince Valiant published by Hastings House. When a few months later I came across copies of the books in London's newly opened pioneering independent comic and fantasy shop Dark They Were and Golden Eyed, I was indeed impressed with the production values of the books which charted Valiant's adventures from his boyhood to ascendancy as fully fledged Prince, married to the lovely Aleta, who of course is a Princess - of the Misty Isles - no less.


The only thing wrong with these books was that they were presented in the guise of illustrated texts, rather than comic strips. So what you were looking at, beautiful and captivating as the images were, was a bastardized version of Foster's ground breaking strip - you were still not actually looking at the pages as Foster intended, rather you were looking at the pages that Hastings House thought would be more likely to gain the approval of librarians and teachers. The books had been in print since the 1950s in an era where even comics as respectable as Foster's Prince Valiant would have been regarded as unworthy of life between hard covers, so the imperative was evidently that Prince Valiant had to look like a proper illustrated book.

There was by the time (1972) that I was ferreting around in DTWAGE's new arrivals shelve, other incarnations of Foster's masterpiece, in the form of some French softback albums, but the repro on these was just appalling and Woody Gelman's recently published Nostalgia Press reprints of Valiant's early years were not much better, albeit both these publications being in color, whereas the Hastings House books were in black and white.

Something else was definitely required and it was sometime in the late 1970's that an Austrian publisher by name of Heinz Pollischansky published two handsome black and white folios of Prinz Eisenherz. The pages from each strip were housed in a smart looking box, with English text on the front pages and German on a smaller version printed on the reverse of each individual plate. The only slight problem was that the years in question 1954 and 1955 were not quite as captivating as the early years of the strips run, as by now Prince Valiant having plighed his troth with the lovely Aleta was turning into a medieval Dagwood to Aleta's Blondie. In the process much of the dark fantasy which had so characterized the early years of the strip had been lost. More volumes followed in book format but frustratingly they continued on the run from the 1950's, although tantalisingly the first two years of the strips run were also included.

But this wasn't the end of the quest for a format that would accord full justice to Foster's swashbuckler. Nope, just as you were clearing shelf room for Pollischansky's reprints, along comes Rick Norwood, who with admirable dedication to the cause set out to source his prints directly from  Foster's original artwork, or failing that high quality proofs so that each year's Valiants would be the optimal best that any enthusiast could hope for. The first volume appeared in 1984 and was truly impressive, however there were a few caveats. The first was the sheer size, Norwood had decided to publish the books the same size as the original Sunday Comic pages, the dimensions of which were so huge that it made extraordinary demands on storage of the books. Forget about clearing shelf space, there seemed no other solution beyond clearing a drawer in an artist's plan chest, and this coupled with the fact that to keep
 his soaring costs down each volume was paperbound dictated that even reading the thing was an event that required a certain amount of pre-planning.

However the thing that eventually saw this project run out of steam was the cost of the color separations. Each volume of Norwood's Manuscript Press Edition Prince Valiant's was sourced from optimal quality black and white artwork and then using the pages of the original Sunday Comics as guides, new color separations were created. The cost of this part of the procedure, coupled with his already soaring printing costs and the need to sell enough of each highly priced edition to justify producing a new volume, dragged out the project to the point that only the most dedicated made it to volume three. A very limited edition of 26 copies was produced which contained all three volumes bound together as a way of writing a finis to the project.

Meanwhile an up and coming publisher by name of Fantagraphics Books was publishing the whole series of Prince Valiant in a much more affordable soft cover format. However as regards this reviewer at least I would have much rather spent a fortune on Norwood's epic enterprise than ploughed money into acquiring a set of books that didn't look that much better than a lot of other European editions that were also in print.

So for years my Manuscript editions remained my arbiter of what should be achieved with a reprint of Prince Valiant. That was until a year ago when I received a phone call from my main man in the comics 'hood Mr Geoff West, Chief Svengali and Master of the Universe otherwise known as The Book Palace. In the course of said call he mentioned that he had just taken a delivery of the new edition of Fantagraphics Prince Valiant.


"Yes Geoff, but is it as good as the Manuscript Press editions"?

""No, it's better, a LOT better, wait until you see it!"

And you know what?

He was right!

Check out this link for more information. Volume four covering the years 1943-1944 has just been published.

I am also including a sample from Valiant's first meeting with Morgana Le Fey to show a bit more of what Fantagraphics have achieved with this series. The first sample is from The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Strips and as you can see was shot from a Sunday Comics section with the curse of all comic restorers (I should know after working on The Wulf the Briton project) see through from the strip printed on the reverse side showing through loud and clear. Whereas the Fantagraphics page is scanned from Hal Foster's collection of proofs and what a difference this makes!

For lovers of Foster's unadulterated black and white line work it's also worth mentioning a fabulous Portugese edition of Prince Valiant by publisher Manuel Caldas. Only the first year 1937 has been published in English, but many more years are available in Spanish. Again check out this link for more information and the page above again shows the high fidelity of this edition's repro in comparison to previous efforts.

The Definitive Barks Collection???

I, along with many others in the blogosphere, have been enthusing over Fantagraphics newest Disney project. This is to reprint all the Gottfredson Mickey Mouse strips and if that was not enough cause for celebration then the second prong in their intent to share the best Disney comics with as wide an audience as possible their plan to publish all of Carl Barks legendary Duck comics. Starting this autumn/ winter with a collection from the peak of Bark's creative output with stories from the 1948-49 era including such classics as Lost in the Andes and Race to the South Seas. The latter story was hellishly rare as it had only been available as a March of Comics giveaway and until the stories were reprinted firstly by Russ Cochran and Bruce Hamilton and then later by Gladstone, this story used to command premium prices amongst collectors anxious to see one of the pivotal moments in the Gladstone, Donald relationship.

The story was also mega rare because at the time Western publishing had no desire to reprint the thing as some of the islanders depicted seemed to fall into the racial stereotyping quagmire and it wasn't until Oberon in Holland decided in the late 1970's to reprint ALL the Barks classic stories that this tale was dusted off and represented with the aid of genius draftsman Daan Jippes tracing some very shoddy photostats of the original comic.

So in the late 70's and throughout the 80's if you wanted stories like this one or Voodoo Hoodoo which is also appearing in this volume of the Fantagraphics collection you had to teach yourself Dutch and invest in a pile of Dutch Ducks.

So thank goodness for Fantagraphics as for the first time we are going to get the whole series of these stories in affordable format and with a very sympathetic coloring job provided by Rich Tommaso. Fantagraphics have provided a downloadable PDF of the new baby which you can access here.

My only slight (well perhaps more than slight) beef is with the cover image. Their original promo showed a cover which was to all intents and purposes a straight lift (bar lettering and recoloring) of Barks original classic cover design. This might seem lazy and non creative, but it was actually the way to go, designers are functionaries on jobs like this. They are acting as MC's to the main performance and as such they should cleave to the principle that less is more and not try and grab the spotlight themselves by attempting to be too clever and assembling elements of the artist's creation in ways which they were not intended to work. This is precisely what has happened with the new cover design, which falls into  the same trap as the earlier Gladstone series by cobbling together portions of Barks' story panels to try and create a new cover image - this just doesn't work. The beauty of using artwork which was designed to fulfill the function of a cover is that it's already designed to do the job you request of it. And it conforms to that most important design principle;

Less is More.

That being said I will say that designer Jacob Covey has done a sterling job in constructing a Barksian feel to all the elements he has assembled and the letter forms look really lovely, neatly complimented by the clean and unfussy color scheme. It's also worth pointing out that Fantagraphics will be including all of Bark's covers, which again gives this collection the edge over it's Gladstone predecessor in terms of completeness.

My only other slight concern at the moment is the interpretation of the simpler palette which typified Western printings treatment of these stories when they first appeared. Light yellow was one of the main colors employed. It added brightness without getting too citric. Full on 100% yellow was used on much smaller areas. In the sample posted on their PDF RichTommaso seems to have drifted into using the full on sherbert hued yellow rather than the more laid back yellow which is required. Hopefully this is just a minor aberration. The rest of the pages look lovely and again as with Prince Valiant (and Book Palace Books Wulf the Briton) they appear to be using that lovely off white matte archival paper to help present the pages in as sympathetic a way as possible.

Can't wait to see the finished product.

In the meantime check out Rich Tommaso's Web of Comics - excellent reading (and viewing!).

Here for your edification is a comparison with the Fantagraphics pages first, followed by the pages from the original Western comic followed lastly by  Gladstone's treatment.

Two Views of the Battle of Agincourt

I well remember when I were a lad, that there were still homes that afforded shelf space to Cassell's History of England. These ponderous and heavy volumes were historical shelf mates to the Encyclopedia Brittanica and were published in an age where Britain still had an empire and a concomitant patrician sense of ease with itself. Cassell's History of Britain as the title implies, took an unashamedly Anglo centric view of world events, many of which it's namesake had helped shape. The books published in 1871 were aimed directly at a middle class, who had seen their prospects improve on the back of the British Empire and it's ability via an industrialized and increasingly educated work force to exploit the fruits of it's territorial dominions.

Looking at these books nearly a century later, they seemed like the product of another world, created by minds with an entirely different take on the world around them and nowhere was this contrast more acute than in the depiction of the staple element of all good history books - warfare and the depiction of men in action.

Here as an example is the source of one of the engravings that was reproduced in fine black densely crosshatched line on the yellowing pages of Cassell's History of England. I wish that I could show you the actual page, but not having the books themselves and not having any immediate desire to remedy this situation, I present instead the template for the engraving; Sir John Gilbert's painting of the English army on the morning of Agincourt.

Now even allowing for the fact that they've been on the march for weeks and their personal hygiene, let alone depilatory arrangements will have become somewhat compromised even by medieval standards, the men, in Gilbert's painting all look incredibly ancient with those full beards, some of which have turned white on the campaign. They look more like Victorian gentlemen dressed for the part rather than men of action. The symbolism of the ravens rising up en masse as the priest conducts his sermon was of course entirely lost on my nine year old mind.


When it came to action scenes, Cassell's History of Britain sucked on ice.

Unlike Ron Embelton's depiction of the Battle of Agincourt, which for me was everything I could have wished for and more.

More of Ron Embleton's sublime artistry is on show at The Look and Learn website

and his brilliant comic strip Wulf the Briton has been collected together and published in a huge and sumptuous volume (with yours truly editing it - therefore shameless plug) by Book Palace Books.

The Art of Restoration, McLoughlin, Minton and the Bloody Pulps!

As mentioned earlier on this blog, now that Wulf the Briton is published, Book Palace Books have been back on my case reminding me that there is work to be done completing "The Art of Denis McLoughlin" book which was occupying my "spare time" for the earlier part of last year.

So I'm back on the McLoughlin case and last night I was restoring as best I could some scans that Steve Taylor (the man behind the amazing Dan Dare website) had sent me. They were scans of some of those fabulous McLoughlin 'Noir" type covers that he hosts on his site.

But as is often the way with this kind of exercise, there were problems to be addressed. All the shortcomings that needed fixing were the result of a greater problem and that is the absence of about 99% of Denis McLoughlin's original artworks. There are some original McLoughlin artworks in the hands of collectors but they are primarily his Wild West paintings - all the other work, including all those superb hardboiled covers are gone ... as in REAL gone Daddyo!

Robert Lesser in his book Pulp Art (excellent and indispensable volume),  fulminated about the destruction and disappearance of so much of America's trash art. He should complain! When I see the fantastic biographies of Norman Saunders, Reynold Brown and most recently Hugh Ward and the articles that preceded these lovely books in Dan Zimmer's Illustration magazine, I am constantly amazed at just how much there is still out there.

Sadly this is not the case with Denis McLoughlin, which is why reconstructive surgery is being applied to some of the surviving covers. The artist did have up until the time of his self-imposed death, a complete set of perfect proofs of all his 'Noir" covers. But those all disappeared with the contents of his house when his relatives settled his estate.


So what we are left with is printed sources and in the case of the paperback covers, these can be particularly problematic. The covers even if they aren't creased, can still be affected by even the slightest hint of damp which means that certain areas of the covers appear sharply in focus, whilst other areas are blurred. With the covers I was working on last night, I discovered "quelle horreur" that the focused areas had nasty jaggedy scanning artifacts, which presented a double jeopardy.

It's really like being a picture restorer in the old sense, and even with executing weird manoeuvres like converting from RGB mode to Lab colors and working in each channel separately, you still need a bit of artistic experience, combined with knowledge and study of the techniques employed by the illustrator concerned and the way his work was printed.

The processes I am using with these McLoughlin artworks are completely different to those used on the Wulf book. Each new project makes it own demands in regard to getting the degree of digital reconstruction to achieve the right balance between drawing the artist's original intent back out of the murk without completely over-riding his work with intrusive reworking.

Do here are two of the covers I was occupied with last night. They are really interesting insofar as they show not only McLoughlin's sheer inventiveness at it's best but also his reference points. Midsummer Nightmare with it's hen scratching penmanship shows more than a passing homage to that legendary illustrator and Fitzrovian John Minton. In much the same way that McLoughlin's work has suffered at the hands of good old Anglo Saxon snobbery, so to did Minton's. Although it has to be said that while much of McLoughlin's work was destroyed, Minton's illustrations were cherished from the get go, it was Minton's ambition to be welcomed into the world of fine art that were subject to rebuff. As many have since speculated, precisely because he devoted too much time to the "comparatively inferior" world of illustration.

McLoughlin's cover for Theodora Du Bois' High Tension on the other hand, shows influences which if not geographically are thematically at least, much closer to home. As a collector and reader of Pulps, he would have been more than aware of the work of such legendary illustrators as Norman Saunders and Rafael De La Soto.


With McLoughlin's covers his reference points are as tantalizing as his ever inventive mind.

Book Palace Books Wulf - First Reactions

We're starting to receive feedback on all three of the Book Palace Books new releases. Steve Holland has been keeping readers of Bear Alley posted on some of the responses as well as plans for his own Bear Alley Books for which he is now taking pre-orders. As Steve says on his blog, none of these books are exactly going to be gathering the kind of readership that the late Stieg Larsson's books attract, but then the whole beauty of niche market publishing is that you know your readership and you share their enthusiasms. In doing so you make a contract of good faith with them to deliver the kind of book worthy of their time and money.

Never is this requirement more pressing than when publisher and editor go out on a limb to produce a book whose production specs are such that the cost of the book itself will make significant demands on the purse strings of it's target audience.

And never did a book more embody this principle than does Ron Embleton's Wulf the Briton - The Complete Adventures. This book was a joy to work on and was a huge learning curve in terms of all aspects of the production but there comes a moment when you have looked at the last set of proofs, made the final small adjustments and then comes the time to give the red light to the guys in Shenzhen Province to set the presses rolling. Which when one thinks about it for more than a moment is a truly alarming prospect because at this stage there is no going back.

My relief when I finally got to hold one of those very few copies that were air freighted over in early March was palpable, but as I said to Geoff West, who is in many ways the creative force behind BPB, "It doesn't matter really what we think. It's the reaction of the people who have stumped up the readies to buy this book that is really going to count. It's a small world and the opinion of our readership is crucial in this regard."

Well I am pleased, well delighted would be more apt, to say that the reaction we have had has been overwhelming. Despite the high price, people love this book and have been emailing and phoning us up as well as sharing their enthusiasm on discussion groups where it was described on the UK Comics Forum as "The Book of the Century". A slight exaggeration perhaps but very flattering nonetheless.

Here's some of the emails we have received so far:

Dave Gibbons:

Just received the Wulf volume. I'm stunned: I was expecting something wonderful and it exceeded all my expectations!

The repro, the production and the features are all beyond excellent. You should all be very proud of a job very, very well done.

Thanks so much for letting me be a small part of it!

Best

-- Dave


Andrew Skilleter (illustrator and long time friend of Ron Embleton)

Hello Peter,

I meant to mail you yesterday but what with things and going out today it hadn't been done. Just wanted to say my special edition of Wulf has arrived and I am speechless - I am going to reply properly and blog on it  - I never expected anything so original and sumptuous and BIG!  To own this book is a privilege and I know you've worked so hard ...will reply and comment further in a day or two...

Best,

Andrew


David Slinn:

The book itself, Peter, is not only a triumph that does live up to Alan’s (Vince) assessment, and sits very comfortably with your own thoughts on what Alastair achieved with Tomorrow Revisited, but puts the efforts of a particular bête noire well and truly in the shade.  Like Phil Rushton, I’m a bit lost for the right words – but trust you’ll get the picture... ... ...
Will follow this up, when I have absorbed the overall effect of reading it as intended – like a really good book?  For the moment, again many thanks.

David Simpson:

Hi Peter
I'm one of the people who bought your Wulf The Briton book, and I thought that you'd like to know that I'm one very happy customer.  I've read a lot of comic books in my time, plus a lot of collections of old comics, and Wulf is right up there with the best I've read both in content and in the superlative packaging.
I'm not (quite) old enough to have read Wulf first time around (I was born in 1957) but I do have a handful of back issues of Express Weekly, plus a long time liking for Ron Embleton's work.  That's one reason why I bought the book but, truth be told, what prompted me to actually shell out for it were the enthusiasm of a friend of mine, who is just old enough to have read at least the later episodes of Wulf when they came out, and the coverage you gave to it on the Cloud 109 blogsite.  that coverage made it clear that you were going the extra mile (mile?  More like a whole Marathon) to make this a great book.
It is a great book, and I'm so glad I bought it.
Thank you
David Simpson

Alan Stephen:

Received your e-mail from a friend just wanted to thank you for the hard work and dedication put into a book that I'll  enjoy and treasure for a long time - the wonderful Wulf the Briton


Steve Taylor:

Hello Peter,

Just to let you know that today I have received: The Thriller Libraries, Don Lawrence's Westerns AND Wulf the Briton. I will send Geoff a separate Thank You, but I am totally impressed with Wulf - you did great work (which gives me a warm feeling about the McLoughlin venture). The reproduction is super - did you use original artwork?

Andoni from Spain:

Yesterday I have receive my copy of RON EMBLETON'S WULF THE BRITON. It's amazing! Extraordinary beautiful! Big size. Wonderful job with the restoration of the Technicolor. The best comic book of the year.
Now I can rest in peace.
Andoni



In addition to these generous and heart warming emails, we had many phone callers including  David Ashford, Alan Vince and the artist Oliver Frey who all described the book as sumptuous and made particular mention of the sheer size and amazing production values of the book.

But perhaps the most amazing call of all came from Ron Embleton's widow Elizabeth, who was just over the moon with the book and so pleased that Ron's artistry hadn't been forgotten. I think all of us are very firmly of the opinion that artist's of the stature of Ron Embleton will never be forgotten.

 Wulf the Briton © Express Newspapers 2011.