Following on from our review of The Eagle Annual Of The Cutaways we present a little more information on the cutaways themselves.
It was not uncommon for some Eagle artists to change their art as they worked on it and some would go to the the length of painting new sections, cutting them out and gluing them onto the original board to cover the sections that they were not pleased with. There are many examples of Dan Dare art boards with entire panels replaced in this way.
On pages 62 and 63 the book reprints Ashwell-Wood’s painting of a Thornycroft 31 foot cabin cruiser crewed by a family of four in which the father relaxes at the stern of the boat overseeing his son’s steering of it. This illustration is one of the eighteen that the book also reproduces at the front and back from the original art boards. The original art board of this cutaway shows the figure of the father incomplete and presumably the final version of the figure was an additional piece glued down to the board which has since separated again.
The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: British Comics
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Some of your comments about the book are valid but many of them fall into the category of “I wanted this type of book and I got something else”. A good and useful review should review the book for what it is not for what you want it to be. Comments about the ‘juvenile’ section on Men of the Cutaways are an example of this. I may be wrong but Eagle was aimed at juveniles so using that term as a criticism is a bit rich.