The Art of Denis McLoughlin

Peter Richardson recently revealed some of the behind-the-scenes details for the upcoming Book Palace Books publication The Art of Denis McLoughlin. Written by David Ashford, one of McLoughlin's close friends, the book celebrates every aspect of the artist's career, from examples of his earliest work whilst still in uniform to his lengthy association with T.V. Boardman, for whom he produced hundreds of dust jackets for their Bloodhound crime series and the yearly best-selling Buffalo Bill Annual.

The Boardman covers are almost unique in British publishing history as no major publisher relied on a single artist to produce so many of their jackets. But tracking down useable examples has proved to be a long and gruelling process. As Peter says: "We needed high quality scans of all the covers we sought and the logistics of having to carry a scanner and computer to spend a day getting under the feet of a McLoughlin devotee, which would have secured us a reasonable number of scans but by no means all the ones I craved gave us pause for thought. Photographing the books would have been quicker, but the results are light years away from a scan. It simply wasn't an option."

Hooking up with San Francisco-based collector Mark Terry gave fresh impetus to the book as Mark already had a network of contacts with collectors through his facsimile dustjacket business; the finished book will now contain dozens of examples, carefully restored.

The book will also contain many examples of McLoughlin's comic strips and a biography by David Ashford, as well as behind-the-scenes photos and examples of his original artwork.

McLoughlin had a unique style to his work that deserves to be preserved... and this will be a fitting tribute to his talents and seventy-year career as an artist.

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.)

Treats for 2012

Well, the cat has been well and truly let out of the bag. Book Palace Books are to publish Heros the Spartan in 2012. The book will collect together all of the Frank Bellamy episodes of the strip in a deluxe hardback... and if you've seen the Book Palace's Wulf the Briton you'll have some clue as to what we mean by deluxe.

Price and publication date are still to be worked out — the pages have to be carefully restored and every effort is being put into tracking down as much of Bellamy's original artwork as possible. We will, of course, keep you up to date with any news as it arrives.

In the meantime, let's not forget that we have a few other projects up our collective sleeves, not least of which is Illustrators magazine, which should debut in the Spring of 2012. Each issue will be a gorgeous collection of some of the best artwork you'll ever see, with extensive features on the likes of Fortunino Matania, John Millar Watt, Chris Foss, Giorgio De Garpari, Denis McLoughlin and Ian Kennedy, to name just a tiny handful.

And then there are books. David Ashford was kept busy in 2011 penning The Art Noir of Denis McLoughlin, which will be the ultimate collection of McLoughlin's gorgeous covers for T. V. Boardman. And my own humble contribution to these upcoming treats is Adventure Stories of H. Rider Haggard, a collection of three strips by Jesus Blasco, Mike Hubbard and C. L. Doughty.

Something, we hope, for everyone.

Happy New Year!

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