Wednesday, July 11, 2012

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.

4 comments:

  1. I will be buying this book, no matter what the cost.
    At last this amazing story in one book.
    Can't wait.
    Cheers, Peter

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  2. This is a book I have been waiting many years to see, and never thought it would be done. Thanks to all who have made it possible. Now, has Wrath of the Gods ever been collected??
    Mike

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  3. Like "sulpete" I will be buying the book no matter the cost, I know that BP will be making every effort to make the book a treasure for the ages.

    That said, sorry, I'm not wild about the cover. If it were up to me, I'd move the figure of Heros more to the center and down a little. I'd also lose the silver tone in Heros' figure and have it in color. The silver for a background would probably be nice, though, matching the logo's dropshadow.

    I do like matching the Wulf volume in overall design a great deal, with "THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES" banner along the bottom. From what I can tell, I like the spine's layout as well.

    Well, that's my two cents. I'm eagerly awaiting this one, needless to say, even more than the Wulf because of my growing up with Bellamy's work on Thunderbirds. All I have ever seen of Heros was a few pages here and there.

    I would LOVE it if you could produce some prints of some of the more epic doublepage spreads, any plans for that? Since you're forced by economics to print the spreads across a gutter (and I am disappointed by your decision even though I know you had no choice), printing some of the more gorgeous double-page spreads as posters would be a nice alternative.

    Thanks for listening. All the best! And thank you!

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  4. I must say I'm also very excited at the prospect of this latest book of Bellamy reprints, but I'm sorry, I have to agree with Steve, I found the cover art disappointing. It HAS to be in colour in keeping with the strip and I would have preferred to see an action frame, which is what Bellamy's Heros was all about. Could you reveal please how much you will be charging for this masterpiece?

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