2000 AD Online Forum

2000 AD => News => Topic started by: Tjm86 on 28 March, 2018, 11:46:35 AM

Title: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Tjm86 on 28 March, 2018, 11:46:35 AM
Just seen these listed and for a moment I was seriously tempted.  Then noticed that they were paperback.  Gah!

Guys, get a hardback edition of these out and you've got one confirmed double dipper straight off.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Colin YNWA on 28 March, 2018, 01:05:42 PM
My concern is the size. If you are to believe Amazon these are 19.8 by 12.8cm which would make them smaller than a standard trade even. If this is the case then I'm going to pass and stick with my hardcovers.

If this is wrong, which is very possibly the case with Amazon and these are the same dimensions as the hardcovers I might go for it as the improved printing quality makes it worth a rare double dip.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Dandontdare on 28 March, 2018, 02:09:05 PM
surely they mean inches rather than centimetres?
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: TordelBack on 28 March, 2018, 02:54:25 PM
Quote from: Colin YNWA on 28 March, 2018, 01:05:42 PM...the improved printing quality makes it worth a rare double dip.

Don't forget the lettering.  It looks like a major upgrade.  I for one am In.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: The Amstor Computer on 28 March, 2018, 03:02:44 PM
Quote from: Dandontdare on 28 March, 2018, 02:09:05 PM
surely they mean inches rather than centimetres?

20 inches would make them enormous editions, well over the Titan hardbacks. Either the figures are wrong entirely (not too unlikely with Amazon) and we should expect something like the typical Rebellion trade format, or they've chosen to produce something in a paperback/digest size which would be profoundly disappointing given the work that appears to have been put into restoration (colour pages, lettering, art etc.)

Given that there doesn't seem to have been any mention of the books being in a digest edition, I'd lean to the former.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: James Stacey on 28 March, 2018, 03:09:45 PM
Amazon seem to just make any old shit up if they dont have facts.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Tjm86 on 28 March, 2018, 03:47:30 PM
....not just Amazon.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 28 March, 2018, 04:02:24 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 28 March, 2018, 02:54:25 PM
Don't forget the lettering.  It looks like a major upgrade.  I for one am In.

My work here is done. :-)
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Proudhuff on 28 March, 2018, 04:05:00 PM
all I's cross and T's dotted... ;)
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 28 March, 2018, 04:56:46 PM
Quote from: Proudhuff on 28 March, 2018, 04:05:00 PM
all I's cross and T's dotted... ;)

I had to re-type the script from a copy of the equivalent Titan edition, so I hope Rebellion's proof-readers were on the ball! I used to have to type for a living, but that was 25 years ago so my 60+wpm, 99% accuracy days on typing tests are a long way behind me!
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Fungus on 28 March, 2018, 05:48:10 PM
What happened to Amazon's pointless-until-now image of books held up for size purposes? Gone? Would be shocked if these truly were digest format - especially at those page-counts.

*Love* that cover to vol 3, too.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: The Amstor Computer on 28 March, 2018, 06:12:32 PM
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 28 March, 2018, 04:56:46 PM
I had to re-type the script from a copy of the equivalent Titan edition, so I hope Rebellion's proof-readers were on the ball! I used to have to type for a living, but that was 25 years ago so my 60+wpm, 99% accuracy days on typing tests are a long way behind me!

"...and that, Mr Kingsley, is how we ended up with with a thousand copies of 'Charley's Wart Vol. 1: Boil Soldier'..."

;-)
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Bolt-01 on 29 March, 2018, 08:54:58 AM
--snigger--
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: The Amstor Computer on 29 March, 2018, 09:07:48 AM
Quote from: Bolt-01 on 29 March, 2018, 08:54:58 AM
--snigger--

"With with" was deliberate, honest...  :)
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Dandontdare on 29 March, 2018, 09:09:23 AM
Quote from: The Amstor Computer on 28 March, 2018, 03:02:44 PM
Quote from: Dandontdare on 28 March, 2018, 02:09:05 PM
surely they mean inches rather than centimetres?

20 inches would make them enormous editions, well over the Titan hardbacks.

ah, I was thinking of those huge "artists editions" - What exactly is a "bookplate edition"?
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: The Amstor Computer on 29 March, 2018, 09:16:53 AM
The "bookplate" editions come with a numbered (often signed, in this case by Pat Mills) bookplate which you then stick in the front of the book. It's a neat little way of personalising the book.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Colin YNWA on 04 April, 2018, 10:14:01 AM
For those of us for whom size does indeed matter I asked the question via Facedabookie and was told the books are

27.5cm by 21cm, which I think is pretty much the size of the original comics? Anyway probably big enough to satisfy me.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: ManParrish on 28 April, 2018, 01:20:25 PM
Has anyone brought the 1st of these "definitive editions", and are they worth double dipping if you already have the hardcover collection?
Cheers
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Southstreeter on 29 April, 2018, 07:29:25 PM
Quote from: ManParrish on 28 April, 2018, 01:20:25 PM
Has anyone brought the 1st of these "definitive editions", and are they worth double dipping if you already have the hardcover collection?
Cheers
I've got vol 1 - it looks great! Slightly larger than the normal paperbacks, colour pages reproduced, commentary by Pat on each story. Don't know if I'd double dip, but as this is meant to be definitive, I'd have been tempted even if I had the hardbacks.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: CalHab on 30 April, 2018, 11:39:09 AM
The first volume is beautiful. It's very well scanned printed and the replacement of the original lettering is a vast improvement over the Titan editions.

My only criticism is that I would probably have paid a bit extra for a hardback edition, but there's nothing wrong with the way this edition is bound.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: glassstanley on 30 April, 2018, 06:02:08 PM
It is a very good repro. The new letter balloons cover more of the image although the lettering itself doesn't seem to be much larger. I can see it looks better for a new reader but it does feel odd when you're familiar with the original. The colour pages are in colour but I'm not convinced the coloured are original - there's something about it that feels like a recolourisation. If it is it's an authentic one though.

I'll be keeping my hardbacks but will buy a set of the reprints for my (Primary)school's library.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 30 April, 2018, 06:37:36 PM
Quote from: glassstanley on 30 April, 2018, 06:02:08 PM
The new letter balloons cover more of the image although the lettering itself doesn't seem to be much larger. I can see it looks better for a new reader but it does feel odd when you're familiar with the original.

I don't think they do, for the most part.

The size of the text was matched to that of the John Aldrich hand-lettering for that part of the book. The balloons were more-or-less lined up with the old ones, but a lot of the new ones didn't completely cover the originals (ie: they were smaller than the existing ones) and I had to white out any of the old lettering that showed around the edges and create new linework to fill in the space.

One of the approaches we tried and rejected was simply making balloons that completely covered the old ones, but we rejected this because the text size was fixed and made the balloons much too 'airy', and precisely because it covered up more of the art. We also tried dropping new lettering into the existing balloons, but decided against it because it looked awful.

QuoteThe colour pages are in colour but I'm not convinced the coloured are original - there's something about it that feels like a recolourisation. If it is it's an authentic one though.

I'm pretty sure that's just an artefact of printing colours that were intended for newsprint on much better paper.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 30 April, 2018, 06:54:55 PM
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 30 April, 2018, 06:37:36 PM
One of the approaches we tried and rejected was simply making balloons that completely covered the old ones, but we rejected this because the text size was fixed and made the balloons much too 'airy', and precisely because it covered up more of the art. We also tried dropping new lettering into the existing balloons, but decided against it because it looked awful.

In case anyone's interested, here are the very tests we did...

New balloons that were sufficiently large to completely cover the old ones:

(https://i.imgur.com/LN3byUl.jpg)

New text dropped into the existing balloons:

(https://i.imgur.com/eGSIIHf.jpg)

Custom balloons with the art retouched:

(https://i.imgur.com/2vhvLta.jpg)

We now return you to your scheduled programme.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: The Amstor Computer on 30 April, 2018, 07:32:33 PM
Great stuff, Jim - thanks for sharing those. It looks like an evolution of your approach on the Hookjaw Strip reprint, and it works very well here. Glad to see Rebellion/you went the extra mile on this, though I suspect it just wouldn't be viable on some lower-profile reprints with machine lettering - Charley's War strikes me as a bit of a perennial seller, and it has a particularly high profile in this particular year, so the extra time and expense involved in re-lettering would be justifiable.

re: colours. I've done a fair bit of experimenting with restoring scanned colour pages. On one project, I took the colour pages, stripped down to the linework and recoloured from scratch with colours that matched the original printed comic. On others, I've worked on restoring the colours already there. Both approaches have their issues, IMO:

-- Recolouring scanned art. You have to be fortunate enough with this to have a couple of things - a good-quality source with a clean original print, and an artist with reasonably strong linework. With that, I would scan at high-resolution, convert to CMYK and pull out the K channel to give me what is essentially a page of inks. Cleaning those up will give a reasonably good base for recolouring, which would follow the typical computer colouring process (whichever one you particularly use). Unfortunately, what you normally have is a poor-quality source - misaligned printing plates causing artifacts, bleed-through etc. - and when you pull out the K channel you discover half of the linework is actually on C, or the linework is patchy in general. Then you have a lot of reconstruction to do, which is painstaking and frustrating, before you can even think about recolouring. On top of that, I found that even the closest approximation didn't look quite right for reasons which I'll get to in a minute.

-- The alternative is to scan and clean up the page as is, with the existing colours. Again, if you get a fantastic source - flat, clean, decent original print - this should be relatively straightforward. However, most extant available comic copies are damaged, worn, aged or have original printing artifacts. With this approach, the most common issue I find is patchy colour or misaligned printing. With the first approach, you can do some correction for misalignment (or you can dodge the misalignment issue entirely if you're lucky) but with this, it's far harder to deal with. Patchy colours can be corrected by use of various tools - cloning/healing brushes in PS don't work brilliantly for me, as they tend to "muddy" the process dots in a way I find quite noticeable on the finished piece, so I often resort to simply cutting and pasting patches of colour and carefully blending around the edges to cover up things like staple holes, paper damage, poor ink distribution etc. Again, quite time-consuming.

At the end of the above, you can get a clean page with relatively accurate colour reproduction, but I always find the colours end up looking slightly off. Often, they end up a little over-bright/over-saturated as you compensate for the washing-out effect of clean-up (and I've seen some that just look plain washed-out compared to the original).

I've gone back and forth on this quite a bit, but I've started to come down on the side of people who have restored US comics of an earlier vintage: the colours were picked by artists who knew the process and were anticipating that their work was going to be printed on newsprint, and if you're wanting to get as close as possible to the "genuine" look you have to consider either printing on a suitable stock or you have to consider something like using a filtering layer on the restored art (which seems crazy and counter-intuitive!) I'm unsure of which option would be best, though I've seen some good examples of both, and to be honest, I'm unsure of whether it would even be received well by the intended audience - would they appreciate the extra lengths taken, or would they turn their noses up at this kind of restoration? I think most modern readers are conditioned to see clean, white (often glossy) stock as "correct" and uncoated, cream paper (or a flat, cream newsprint filter) would look wrong to them.

Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Woolly on 30 April, 2018, 07:34:24 PM
Call me a heathen, but I think I prefer the text dropped into the original balloons....  :-X
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 30 April, 2018, 07:50:57 PM
Quote from: Woolly on 30 April, 2018, 07:34:24 PM
Call me a heathen, but I think I prefer the text dropped into the original balloons....  :-X

Would have made my life a lot easier, but they didn't sit well side-by-side with the pages that Aldrich re-lettered (some of which were in the same episode).
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Colin YNWA on 30 April, 2018, 08:00:52 PM
Wow that's really interesting Jim thanks for sharing.

Based on that page alone I'm glad you went for the slog. I think the dropping texted on exisiting balloons exposes how wonky the original balloons were. I don't mind if you have to work harder for our entertainment!
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: broodblik on 30 April, 2018, 08:14:05 PM
Thanks for the detailed feedback. I really enjoyed the new version and will certainly get the rest as well.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Bolt-01 on 01 May, 2018, 11:35:14 AM
I've been lucky enough to see quite a few of the pages as Jim was working with them- There really is a lot of work done in there.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Jim_Campbell on 01 May, 2018, 12:32:38 PM
Quote from: Bolt-01 on 01 May, 2018, 11:35:14 AM
I've been lucky enough to see quite a few of the pages as Jim was working with them- There really is a lot of work done in there.

That's been very remiss of me. The indefatigable Bolt-01's contribution of an extra pair of eyes to spot my fuck-ups was absolutely invaluable during a fairly nerve-wracking process. Many thanks, Bolt!
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Bolt-01 on 02 May, 2018, 09:23:10 AM
Ah- it was a pleasure to see those glorious pages at such a whopping size. Makes me miss Joe Colquhoun all the more now.

Tweaked as I'm a fool...
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Southstreeter on 21 May, 2018, 04:35:07 PM
Well issue 2 has just arrived (went for the discount bulk buy) and it's got a bookplate! Thanks Tharg/Pat. Didn't expect that, maybe a wee mistake somewhere?
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Eamonn Clarke on 21 May, 2018, 06:01:36 PM
Quote from: Southstreeter on 21 May, 2018, 04:35:07 PM
Well issue 2 has just arrived (went for the discount bulk buy) and it's got a bookplate! Thanks Tharg/Pat. Didn't expect that, maybe a wee mistake somewhere?
Same here. I hope the peeps who ordered the bookplates don't get the plain ones.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: TordelBack on 26 July, 2018, 12:54:28 PM
Finally got my act together and bought Volume 1. What a product!

This must be my third or fourth time through Charley's War, first being in Battle itself (though not from the start), and it has never looked better.  I usually heartily dislike tampering with old comics for collected editions, I'd much rather see them as close to how they originally appeared as possible, "Next week!", half-page Weetabix adverts and all - but this refresh is a bonafide exception to the rule.  I applaud our very-own Jim and everyone else involved - the lettering upgrade is completely seamless, retouched surrounding art or not, wonderfully legible and entirely appropriate.  I  don't know how these things work at a technical level, but the apparent variety within the font makes the whole thing feel hand-lettered, and it sits easily against Colquhoun's incredible inks.

The inclusion of full-colour covers in the back, the coloured action scene on the front, all situate the material correctly, as a serialised boys' war comic of the 70s, rather than some illustrated historical treatise, and as such it shows just how incredibly far Mills and Colquohon have taken the medium and the milieu.

As with every re-read, I seem to get punched in the gut every couple of pages: it's an impact that never ceases to surprise, and never seems to fade. The power of this comic to move and inform has been gently moved into the current decade, and I couldn't be more impressed. 
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: TordelBack on 26 July, 2018, 12:58:39 PM
Apologies for the misspelling of Colquhoun in the third paragraph above.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: broodblik on 26 July, 2018, 01:15:08 PM
I brought all 3 volumes digitally and every time I read it it feels like completely new. Everything about Charley's War oozes brilliance. Hopefully they will release the non-Mills story-line as well.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Tjm86 on 26 July, 2018, 01:42:25 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 26 July, 2018, 12:54:28 PM
Finally got my act together and bought Volume 1. What a product!


TBH, having leafed through the volumes released so far in FP etc I've thought the same.  It's just a shame they were paperback.  If they'd done hardbacks I'd have been in in a flash.  Hey ho.
Title: Re: Charley's War Bookplates
Post by: Southstreeter on 29 July, 2018, 12:37:38 PM
Quote from: broodblik on 26 July, 2018, 01:15:08 PM
Hopefully they will release the non-Mills story-line as well.
In Pat's commentary he says something to the effect that he regards his 1933 ending as the proper one and has no interest in seeing the rest collected, unless some one wanted to publish a Joe Colqhoun showcase or similar.