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Happy New Year everyone!
As I've been promising over on some of the Marvel Facebook groups, a much over-due update on the progress of From Cents to Pence! This isn't going to be the longest post, but when you've got news this exciting, it doesn't need to be!
Okay, so I didn't quite hit my target of wrapping everything up by the end of 2021, but we're now very close (adopting the editorial 'we' there)!
The big news is that things are now moving up a gear at last!
I'm very pleased to announce that tonight I'm going to be sending across the final drafts of the Preface and Chapter 1 to Dez to kick-start proofing. Over the next weeks ye Ed will then start working his way carefully chapter-by-chapter through the following 24 chapters up to the halfway point in the book (coincidentally also half way through Dez's era too), which I've almost finished doing final passes through now.
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| The Uncanny X-Men join Rampage Monthly... so the US imports stop (1979 advert) |
Should you want a reminder of what Dez will be reading through, that revised chapter breakdown we featured in one of last year's posts has remained the same, which you'll find here: A Distant Beacon: From Cents to Pence! - Celebrating 70 years of Marvel in the UK: 2021 update 1.
While Dez is working his way through all of those chapters I'll be able to return to finishing off work on the indices at the rear of the book. They're the main reason why I ended up over-running last year, as I had a lot of gap-filling information to go into them (The Real Ghostbusters and foreign reprinted strips in particular) and they also needed to brought up to the end of last year, having been parked at 2002 since the focus shifted on to the history and then stayed there over the past decade or so. A few interesting discoveries came out of this process too... which is nice!
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| The Real Ghostbusters Monthly #1, with its free gift of a clothes patch |
After this I can return to resolving the Doctor Who Magazine sections of the book and close-out the final four chapters at last - as much a process of adding things in as pruning them back, in this instance. At which point I'll be able to do a final pass on the final 25 chapters before starting to send those over to Dez too!
With the scope of the book having long-since expanded from just being about Marvel UK and Panini, to take in the whole panoply of British comics featuring Marvel strips going right back to 1951, one of the nice additions to the Gazetteer section is a full set of indices to all the Marvel/Atlas content in TV21 as well. So yes, Homer the Happy Ghost will be haunting there too :)
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| TV21 #76 - the arrival of the Marvel Heroes... mixing it up with such oddities as Harry Hobo and several British adventures serials |
But before you cry "more, please", yes I would have liked to have featured all the Power comics too, but I'm only half way through that, as I have incomplete runs of Pow!, Smash! and Wham!. If anyone can help out with the contents of the missing issues, let me know, and it'll definitely be a firm addition for any future updated edition. Ideally I'd like to see scans of the full issues, which is how I was able to index Fantastic and Terrific in full, but that'll be a job-and-a-half for another time, as I say.
I think what we do have for you will be more than enough to be going on with in the meantime ;) I hope so, anyway!
More soon!
Happy new year to you too. Glad to hear you're finally getting there. Any idea what the price might be, approximately speaking?
ReplyDeleteHa ha ha - ask me the easy questions :-)
ReplyDeleteI've no idea at present, as there are so many production factors that could change things yet. I could guess, but then I'd rather not put a figure out there that's wide of how it costs up when we get to the print stage. Hostages to fortune and all that!
We'll certainly let everyone know the minute we're that far down the line as to format and cost.
Good news on the progress Rob. Do you have any thoughts as to when it might be published? Sounds unlikely for this year but early next?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mike
Hi Mike, not as yet - too early to say, although, yes, 2023 would be nice now I've overshot the 70th anniversary year of the first Marvel incursion into Britain.
ReplyDeleteThere are certain factors that will influence how quickly we can get cracking on the page layouts once all the text is in, and obviously I'm still working on this whole project around a full-time job, plus family commitments, so they'll always be spurts of activity in-between slower periods... unless that elusive lottery win happens, of course :)
Keep checking out right here, and on FB, for future updates, anyway.
So, it's been One year...
ReplyDeleteYes, lots of the remaining work done on it, but I needed to take a break to deal with another long standing commitment that needed sorting - reactivating re:VOX magazine - so will be returning to what's left by early spring. Family commitments mean my time is much more limited than it was a few years back, so its a good job I got through what I did while I had the time to do it :)
ReplyDeleteI'll definitely post another update the minute there's news to tell!
Rob - As a fan of Ultravox, I can hardly complain, so take your time. Out of interest is Cents to Pence a hardback? I hope so - I’m more than happy to pay a premium and opted for The Book Palace ones, when available. Again happy to pay more for very solid packaging, when the time comes. Just an added thought but have you thought of adding a website or forum address to the end of the book so that there’s a ready made pointer to future interviews, gaps filled, or anything that turns up out of the blue that you would have included? I’ve seen your past appeals for images etc but you could carry those over into there.
ReplyDeleteHi Christopher, apologies its taken awhile to pin your message here. Hardback is certainly a possibility, costs permitting - perhaps for an 'early bird' initial run. I'll definitely be putting contact info in - the first book to have a letters page too, perhaps :)
ReplyDeleteDo sign up for a short sub to re:VOX - it has its own FB page. I think you'lll find some things of interest across its first 21 issues (as shown in the gallery, and latest two editions posts not yet added to that).
Thanks for your support, anyway - we are reaching a conclusion, I can assure you.