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.

Wulf The Briton's Galley Arrives Sunday!!!

Steve Holland has been mapping the progress of the container vessel carrying the three eagerly awaited books; Don Lawrence's Wells Fargo, Volume 2 of The Fleetway Index and ...

Ron Embleton's Wulf the Briton The Complete Adventures. So allowing for a few days to clear customs and then a day for us to sit down and carefully number (or letter) each book, they will be going out to all the people that have been ever so patiently waiting for these books to arrive.

I think we are as excited at the thought of you guys finally getting your hands on these babies as you will be when the postman comes hauling what is a truly humungous package up to your front door.

So just to torment you for a few days more here are some more promo pics from Wulf.

To briefly remind you there are three editions.

The regular clocking in at 352 pages, the leather slipcased edition at 376 pages and including 24 reproductions of original Wulf artwork - most of it never seen before and a lettered edition which comes with a huge print of the famous siege of Cartamandua's. The size of the print is the same size as the Embleton original.


It has to be said that the quality of repro from the original editions of Express Weekly in this book is second to none. Each page is reproduced to the same dimensions as the large format (11"x14" / 270mm x 360mm) as the original comic and no effort has been spared to ensure that every last detail of Embleton's astonishing brushwork is preserved.



The book with the pages open showing the additional pages of reproductions from original Wulf artworks is the leather edition and the regular edition (which reprints all the strips but not the additional originals) can be seen in it's handsome red cover in pictures 1 and 6.

Pictures 9 and 12 show copies of the original comics alongside the equivalent pages in the book to give you a further feeling for the overall fidelity of the color and tonal balance we managed to achieve. Our aim and intention was to give the collector a book where the repro of Embleton's Wulf the Briton was every bit as good as the original Express Weekly. 



More details of this giant sized and exquisitely reproduced book can be read on earlier postings on this blog (use the blog search engine by typing in Wulf the Briton) and directly from the publisher BookPalaceBooks.

Wulf The Briton - A Book in the Making

As I hinted somewhat obliquely a couple or so weeks ago, there is a very exciting publishing project which I'm currently engaged in with the good people at BookPalace Books. To cut to the chase as a result of my weekly blog postings earlier in the year I had an approach from Geoff West CEO of Book Palace Books to enquire whether I would be interested in editing a collection of all Ron Embleton's Wulf the Briton stories. As this was the comic above all others that totally captured my imagination as a child and as no one has ever attempted to do this before, I jumped at the chance.

The intervening months have been a whirlwind of Wulf activity, involving meetings with the people at Express Newspapers, talking to people who were close to Ron, seeking out material which would help shed light on the creation of this epic strip and uncovering hitherto unseen by all but a few, original Wulf boards.

And then there's been the scanning and careful and lightly applied restoration of the comic page we're sourcing this epic story from. It sounds like a gargantuan project and it really is a gargantuan project. We're talking 300 plus pages of Wulf the Briton, plus all the annuals, plus any other piece of Wulf artwork generated by Ron - epic!

The book will come in two different editions, a regular edition and a very limited (100 copies leather bound and slip cased edition). The slipcased edition will feature some absolutely stonking pages shot from the original artwork, much of it only recently unearthed and not having done the rounds of the collector' s circuit and in absolutely pristine condition. The pages will be printed at the same size the comic was published so there has been very careful work done to ensure that there is no loss of Embleton's brushwork, we want owning this book to be as pleasurable as having an entire run of  the original comics but with the added convenience of being all bound together in a durable format.


All in all something to get very excited about if you're in any way a fan of Ron Embleton's artwork and much of this work represents him at the top of his game. A word of warning though and that is the book is going to be expensive as even the regular edition is going to be limited to 400 copies.

But everyone concerned is working long hours to ensure that we get this right, down to paper type and weight in relation to the scans that we supply to the printers - no effort is being spared to ensure that this book is something that everyone involved with can feel proud of putting into the hands of you the reader.

So here as an appetizer are some scans of the work in progress. We'll keep you posted on the book's progress, but we're getting there much quicker than I had originally anticipated.