geoff42 wrote:Hi, Phoenix, from recent posts, I gather you're chasing "Tracy" and "Bunty" story comics. I wish you luck on that mission. I would like to know your objective.
Rather than boil my cabbages twice, Geoff, can I refer you to my first post on Sunday February 9th 2014 on page 3 of the
Beginnings thread in the
General Comics Discussion forum. This was before you joined comics UK, so there is no real reason why you should, or might, have seen it already. That post only refers to my first objective, though. My main aim is to write a book on the history of the ten girls' titles I am collecting, the main focus being on the serial stories, and despite the fact that I haven't yet acquired all the issues, it can already be described as a work in progress. The quest continues. In fairness, I don't need absolutely all of them because in many cases I have issues either side of a missing issue, and I can therefore see immediately whether a serial finishes or a new one starts in the missing issue. I'm not doing too badly, though. I need 380 issues of
Judy (out of 1635), 282 of
Diana (out of 720), 204 of
Bunty (out of 2249), 142 of
Mandy (out of 1269), 79 of
Debbie (out of 518), 78 of
Tracy (out of 277), 60 of
M&J (out of 315), 3 of
Emma (out of 81), 1 of
Nikki (out of 237), and 0 of
Spellbound (out of 69) thanks to the kindness of Marionette, who went to the trouble of scanning every page of issue 65 and sending them all to me in digital form to read on my computer screen.
A quick update on the situation regarding the publication of the book
This Was The Wizard, which I have written with Ray Moore (Kashgar), the 54-page Introduction to which was thoroughly checked by our principal proof-reader, Phil Rushton. Everything has been ready for several weeks, including written permission from Thomsons to use their copyright material, and an arrangement with a printing firm in Stockport. The reason it hasn't already been printed is because I can't seem to convert my pages into a format that the printers can use. The printers have made several suggestions, and have been generally very helpful, but despite all the help I've had here from a computer-literate friend, who has certainly gone the extra mile or more over the last six weeks or so, it looks as though the latest plan that I will be working on tomorrow and Monday, a kind of technological cut-and-paste, is the last-chance saloon. It's very frustrating because I have used the same desktop publishing package that I used for my first book in 2005, although that was an earlier version, I converted those pages to PDF files, sent them to Thomsons, and they had no problem printing the book. It looks as though current printing technology has left my program behind. The worst-case scenario will be that I will have to buy a desktop publishing program that is compatible with the printing firm's technology, and then write the book out again, but even the thought of that is giving me the heebie-jeebies. This whole project should already be in the past. I need to move on to the next one.
But, still, quite happy. The comics are in good shape - the only bug bear is that they have the cursed "newsagent name" written on top of every copy. I knew this beforehand but, thankfully, the signature has been written in pencil. I will be very busy with my rubber in the foreseeable future 
