THE DALEKS HAVE LANDED...

 At least, they have in MY house...

Copyright BBC TV and the Estate of TERRY NATION

By all accounts this has proved a tricky publication for a lot of people to get their hands on, with it not having appeared in many (if any) WHS shops that I've heard of.  Thankfully, a few Sainsbury's stores have had them, but there must be thousands of readers looking to add this great mag to their collections who have thus far been disappointed.  So popular was the demand for it, it sold out within hours (or was it minutes?) of it appearing on Panini's online comics shop on the 11th, though apparently it will be available from other online outlets on the 18th.

Anyway, what's all the hoo-hah about and is it worth its £9.99 cover price?  You're darn tootin' it is - and then some!  All 104 back page Daleks strips from TV Century 21, the majority being sourced from the original art boards and the remainder being scanned from good quality issues of TV21 itself, all digitally cleaned up and restored where necessary.  The result is the best presentation of these strips ever - possibly even better than their original appearance back in the '60s.  (You can read the interesting article about their restoration for yourselves to see how such a thing is possible when you finally track down a copy.  There's also a feature on the strips' background, as well as an interview with Ron Turner.)

However, that doesn't mean you'll be seeing these strips exactly as they were originally presented in the pages of TV21.  Why?  Let me explain.  Having worked on some Marvel Masterworks volumes back in the '90s, where I utilised black and white UK '60s reprints to re-create and restore pages, one of the things I noticed was this:  Perhaps because of the roller method used to print them at the time, or maybe because of the photostat technology by which images were copied to supply foreign publishers - pages were stretched either height-wise or width-ways - and sometimes even both, but never proportionately.

This meant that, years later, when I reduced an image to its original page width, the height was out of proportion to it - and vice versa.  So, taking the cover of Fantastic Four Annual #3 as an example, my finished re-creation was either slightly taller or wider than its original presentation.  Nowadays I'd be able to compensate for that particular problem and bypass it, but I didn't have the necessary digital-manipulation technology at the time.

So what's that got to do with The Daleks Special?  I'll tell you.  Because original art was being used in most cases, the Daleks opening panel containing the logo, as well as the 'stop press' box in the final panel, had to be copied from printed issues (as the originals had been removed or gone missing over the years), then cleaned up and replaced onto the art, either digitally or physically (not sure which).  This has resulted in the gutters around those panels not being of exactly the same width as they were originally, meaning that not all of those particular panels precisely fill the space they occupied back in the day.  Consider the following examples above.

The higher panel is from my own copy of TV21 #1, and the lower one is from the Special.  Note that the gutter is slightly wider on the latter example.  That said, the width is more in accord with the other panels, as in the original printing it was perhaps a bit tight.  Whether the new gutter width is by accident or design I couldn't say, but on some other pages, it's a bit more noticeable, and in some cases it's an improvement, on others it isn't.  (Though not a detriment either.)  Admittedly, had this one been reproduced slightly larger, it would've filled the original space more precisely, but the same can't be said of other instances, where they're too high in relation to their width for the space provided, or vice versa.

But of course, that's a very minor quibble, and overall the magazine is a sterling accomplishment.  A few pages seem to be marred by slight colour 'splurges' and 'blotches' in places, but this is a printing flaw and not as a result of the restoration process, and I'm sure it won't spoil your overall enjoyment.  One eBay seller is currently asking around £125 for the 1994 publication of the same material (unrestored, with page ripples and other defects), but I can't see him getting that price for it now, as this new edition effectively renders it obsolete.  Grab a copy (if you find one) while you can.

So let's give thanks to Panini/Marvel for publishing this magnificent Bookazine, and also praise all those individuals involved in its production.  All we want now is a hardback edition the same size as the TV21 pages, with every strip sourced from the original art boards - and the few scuffs and flakes which are evident in places digitally repaired.  That's not too much to ask, is it?  Get cracking boys and girls - but don't take another 26 years!

 

 

And in case any of you are even remotely interested, below is the wraparound cover of the 26 year old predecessor to the above publication.