I got a few things completed this week, which is satisfying. Though it did mean I, of course, didn't get the most important thing started.
I coloured
Space Elain, and on Friday got it uploaded to Lulu. Until now it's been available as a black and white book, which has been selling rather well in relation to my other books (71 copies sold this year, compared to 78 colour Richards and 72 Findlay Macbeths). But of course the material that kickstarted the book, the two original Space Elain strips that I drew for Wallop magazine in 2021 and resized for my paperback, were already in colour. That gave us 18 pages of material. Now all I had to do was colour the other 80 and...
Yes, of course it was a silly time-wasting project, colouring the newest Elain story (drawn last year as Lois In Space), as well as the five Hot Rod Cow strips and the four Meanwhiles. But by golly it's satisfying to have got it done. And why did I bother? Because, since I introduced the colour version of Richard The Third earlier this year, it has far outsold the black and white version whenever I'm at live events (black and white Richard has sold a deceptive 565 copies, but that's cos I only offer the bw version to schools, and they have bought, as I've noted,
as many as 80 in one day!). If the kids are choosing but the parents are paying, they'll go for the colour book every time. Let us see how that plays out.
If that wasn't time-wastey enough, check this out. Having completed Findlay Macbeth entirely in greyscale, and printed those copies ready to send to the Kickstarter supporters, I've looked at it again and tweaked the last page.
I was always frustrated by the final page of the story and never felt it gave a satisfying close to the book, so now I've redrawn what was the final panel, at the end of page 125, and I've added a completely new page 126. That's more like it. I'm happy now. And so should the Kickstarter supporters be, because they'll be getting an even more limited edition of the book, with the halftone but without the new ending. There'll only ever have been twenty of those printed.
And to complete a week of distractedly not getting on with Romeo And Juliet, which is my main priority, I had to make some amends to the
Socks Do Shakespeare book, to satisfy D2D. At first I thought it was just an AI replying to me, telling me the ink density was too much for their printing standards and that there'd be a bleed through on some pages. But when I protested, because they'd blocked me from uploading a reworked version, a very helpful real person (I assume) called Leah replied and sent me examples of the pages that were problematic.
Responding to this I made some darker tartan lighter, and some black areas grey. But I went further, changing the backgrounds for The Porter scene and Othello, which had formerly been performed against a plain tartan backdrop, and giving them actual scenery. I was particularly pleased with Othello's Rialto bridge, which didn't take long and vastly improved the finished result.
My Books And Where To Find Them...
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Richard The Third (Colour) | Doctors Who? Colouring | Socks Do Shakespeare | Kids Comics Annual 2026 |
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Richard The Third (bw) | Findlay Macbeth | Prince of Denmark Street | Midsummer Night's Dream Team |
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Shakespeare Omnibus
| Comic Tales From The Bible
| Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories
| Space Elain
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Colouring Books: Doctors Who, Hollywood Legends, Punk, Cult TV, Eurovision Vol 1, Eurovision Vol 2, Eurovision Best Of British & Irish, 1960s Pop, 1970s Pop, 1980s Pop, 1990s Pop, 2020s Pop, Bowie, Scottish Pop, Royalty, Rom Coms
