King Solomon's Mines

One of the upcoming titles from Book Palace Books is Adventure Stories of H. Rider Haggard, a collection of three of Haggard's most famous tales. One of the three tales that we have yet to feature here is C. L. Doughty's "King Solomon's Mines".

Doughty has just been the subject of a new book, Pages from History, which will shortly be available to buy directly from The Book Palace. Whilst this concentrates on Doughty's historical illustrations and strips, "King Solomon's Mines" is a superb example of one of his later literary adaptations. A follower in the footsteps of the classic adventure illustrators like H. M. Brock, Doughty proved himself a worthy successor when he became one of the chief adaptors of classic novels for Look and Learn in the 1970s.

The strip has been scanned from original artwork and the lettering restored for this reprint and, as a tease, here is the opening episode of the 32-page adaptation, one of the best adaptations of the story I have seen.

(* artwork © Look and Learn Ltd.)

H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quartermain

A book that has been waiting in the wings for some time at Book Palace Books is the collection of H. Rider Haggard stories - King Solomon's Mines, Allan Quatermain and Montezuma's Daughter - which should be amongst the next set of releases.

Above you'll see the opening page of Mike Hubbard's superb adaptation of Allan Quatermain, both the original processed scan and the finished, cleaned-up artwork which has also been relettered in the style of the original as it appeared in Ranger. The only change I made was to lower the lettering on the final panel, which began over the picture on the printed version.

It's a fantastic strip... and one that's going to look great when the book appears. We'll be running a few more teasers over the coming months, just to whet your appetite.