Meeting The Author

It was great fun to meet up with author David Ashford recently when he popped into Book Palace Books World Headquarters to sign copies of the deluxe edition of his magnum opus The Art of Denis Mcloughlin. David regaled us with many tall tales about his own career and reminiced fondly about Denis and his work.

Copies of the deluxe edition signed and numbered by David Ashford complete with a numbered limited edition print and a 12 page facsimile edition Roy Carson comic, as drawn by Denis McLoughlin back in the 1950's.. are now ready to ship and are available here. Remember there are only 120 copies of this fine tome available!

Best Regards

Dave

Ship Ahoy

Long term readers of our blogs will know of the fun we have in tracking the progress of our books from the printers in Hong Kong to their delivery in the UK. On this occasion the good vessel Xin Shanghai has been given the grave duty of safely transporting The Art of Denis McLoughlin and Illustrators Quarterly #1.

 Here she is with our container six rows from the back three down from the top in the area reserved for V.I.P.s - that's Very Important Publications as if you have to ask. As I type these immortal words the ship is just approaching that bastion of Britishness Gibraltar. If you'd like to join in the fun there is a link here. Let's hope the ship doesn't get Shanghaied by jealous Pirate Publishers.

More update Soon, Best Dave

Heros - A First Glimpse of the Cover Art

Dave, over at Book Palace HQ has been doing a magnificent job of releasing tit-bits of information on our forthcoming Heros project and as we have been emailing contributors, restoring scans and devising the overall layout, none of which could have happened without the negotiations with various interested parties to achieve copyright clearance, dotting of Is, crossing of Ts etc, etc, we have been aware of a build up of speculation to the point where we just know that we have to start showing you something more substantial than verbatim scans of old Heros spreads.

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.

Heros - A Quick Update

Before I head out of the office for a weekend spent camping in a field with a bunch of Dead Heads (no giggling at the back please) I'm very pleased to be able to announce that comics legends John Byrne, Dave Gibbons and Walt Simonson have all graciously offered to contribute their memories and appreciation of Frank Bellamy's legendary Heros the Spartan comic strip. The three gentlemen  explain a little of what Bellamy's famous creation means to them and the influence it has had on their own outstanding and award winning work.

These two images come from the rarely seen Eagle Annual from 1966, the very last work by Frank Bellamy on this series to be published in Eagle. Note particularly the use of dramatic contrast in the inking, unusual in artwork of this period designed to be coloured where simple blocking usually sufficed. Also of course the circular panel used to highlight and suspend a moment of dramatic action.

I think this second example really shows Bellamy's layout design and colouring to great advantage.

We are honoured to receive Messrs Byrne, Gibbons and Simonson's contributions for our Heros project and we hope that their insights will enable readers far and wide to more fully appreciate the genius of Frank Bellamy's creation.

Please note scans above are from a copy of the Eagle annual in rough and not our finished work destined for the Book Palace Books edition, thus the bend in the centre of the page where it isn't quite flat.

Right off to camp it up in the mud. See you soon I hope!

Best
Dave