A small clutch of emails asking for news on the Rainbow Orchid book is prompting this post. I have been working practically every minute of the past two weeks going over part one with a fine-tooth comb, re-lettering, dialogue editing, and in some cases re-drawing entire panels (as in the sword story and Sir Alfred's house). I don't think I've been to bed before 3 am most nights, and a couple of days ago I did a 38-hour stint, with just a 2-hour mid-morning snooze. But I think it's been well-worth it.

Volume one has two new pages in the form of extended scenes. These are the chase along the dock from the banana warehouse, and the take-off of the Breguet that ends the chapter. As soon as I had finished that take-off scene originally (back in September 2003), I knew it needed to be longer, but it was a case of having to get the comic off to the printer in time for the London comic show that year, and I was just about to shoot off for a holiday in France. It's great to finally get what I actually wanted down on paper. Here's a couple of small panels from each of those scenes to whet your appetite.

To answer the main question, The Rainbow Orchid (volume one) should be out in August 2009, and I will confirm that as soon as I'm able. Having now completed the 're-mastering' (for want of a better term), today and tomorrow I will be conjuring up some artwork for the extra pages in the book - it should be a very nice little package when all put together.

Going back to the Breguet, you may remember that my good friend Harvey put his considerable skills into making a balsa wood model of this scarce aircraft, which made the new drawings I had to do far less of a technical challenge (though drawing cars, boats and planes will never be easy!). This, in turn, inspired long-time Rainbow Orchid supporter, Linda Wada, to have a go at making her own out of cardboard (see below). Note the fact that Linda included the characters in the plane! I'm really impressed with the detail she put into these - fabulous work. Linda is the author of a wonderful book on Edna Purviance, and you can see some of her Orchid drawings in the Readers' Corner.

I will end here with the panel that closes volume one - same as the original, except now in the form of a half page splash rather than the single-tier panel it was before.

Joe has just posted the final three pages of Darryl Cunningham's Super Sam strip that has run on the Forbidden Planet International blog over the last year.

I've absolutely loved it - it started out jokey and a bit zany, and then grew darker and zanier. It's been a treasure trove of imagination, style and story. It needs to be a book! See the full archive here, and thanks for a wonderful story, Darryl.

Eighty years ago today, Hergé's Tintin made his first appearance in Le Petit Vingtième, the weekly children's supplement of Le XXe Siècle.

Tintin is © Hergé / Moulinsart 2009

Here's a lovely spread of comics in and around the ligne claire family. Click on the image to see a bigger version (these only include ones I'm fairly well aware of... there are more, of course. Vive le style!)

Here are a couple of sketches of Evelyn Crow done in the front of books earlier this year.

Over Christmas I'll be re-working some of the first part of The Rainbow Orchid to get it ready for Egmont. Ideally, I'd like to re-draw it all as it's old work to me now, but I'm successfully keeping that impulse at bay (got to be realistic!) and am just attending to bits that really niggle every time I see them. One of these is Sir Alfred's headquarters, a scene that opens the story...

Of course that means re-drawing it in four or five other scenes as it appears elsewhere too, but it's such an improvement that I feel it's worth it. I'm also adding two new pages, and I did the cover a few weeks ago - but you'll have to wait to see that. (If you're a member of the Rainbow Orchid Facebook group, you'll have seen this new version previewed last week).

I've been doing some more late-night font development. Still some tweaking to do over the coming weeks, but they're getting there...

It has long been the intention to use my own lettering font for my comics, rather than one 'off the shelf'. With this in mind, I have developed GarenHand.

It's perhaps not quite as slick as WhizBang, which is what I have been using so far in The Rainbow Orchid, but it does have a slightly more hand-lettered look, which I prefer, and, more importantly, it is my own style of lettering. It's also slightly clearer and a little bigger. I'll probably be tweaking it further over the next few weeks, but here it is for now.

Well what an exciting Sunday it's been. I'm feeling rather tired from a karate weekend (seven hours on Saturday, three hours today), but then a friend, Harvey, came round, and brought this...

Harvey is a model aviator and agreed to make a model of the scarce Breguet 280T that appears in The Rainbow Orchid. It's going to be very useful indeed, as for the Egmont book (part one) I will be slightly expanding the scene where the plane takes off from Cherbourg (and one other scene is getting some extra material too). It's so skilfully made, I'm totally delighted with it - massive thanks to Harvey for such super work.

I was up in London on Wednesday for three appointments, two of which I will share (along with a bag full of links).

Mid-morning I met up with Sarah McIntyre (of Vern and Lettuce fame, for one thing) and also with Ellen Lindner (of Whores of Mensa and Little Rock Nine fame, for two things). So I had tea with two very distinguished London-based American comic creators, at a distinguished, if over-priced, café - Maison Bertaux. And then we marched off to the Wallace Collection in Manchester Square for a quick look round - a wondrous place, and one to which I must return when I've more than an hour to spare. Below is a very quick sketch I did in answer to Sarah's marvellous Teapod drawing of a few weeks ago.

In the evening, having now met up with Elyssa, I went to the French Institute in Kensington for one of Paul Gravett's terrific Comica events, in this case a talk and interview with two of France's most interesting auteurs: Ted Benoit, who has just seen his 1996 Blake & Mortimer adventure (in collaboration with Jean Van Hamme) published in English, and Emmanuel Guibert, who's work I know from the sublime The Professor's Daughter, and he has just had his book, Alan's War, published in English too. It was an excellent couple of hours, and I may just cheat and point you to Sarah's far more observant report right here. With Elyssa on a magazine deadline, we had to rush away to catch the train home, but I had a lovely day away from the drawing board, and in most excellent company.