The Eagle Annual of the Cutaways takes the same look and format as last year’s Eagle Annual - The best of the 1950s comic, with an identical page-count (176 pages), but is priced at £14.99 (£2 more than the earlier book). Rather than the dark green spine with yellow lettering previously used, though, this book has a dark blue spine with cream lettering. Both books have a "distressed" look and feel. The Editor is again Daniel Tatarsky, and the book has a Preface by Colin Frewin, Chief Executive of the Dan Dare Corporation Limited, and an Introduction by Jonathan Glancey, Architecture Critic, the Guardian.
The Eagle Annual of the Cutaways collects together, in (what seems to this reader's mind) a less than systematic manner, around 142 of the 946 cutaway drawings that appeared in Eagle throughout its life from 1950 until the penultimate issue in 1969. For anyone who fondly remembers Eagle and its cutaways, but who doesn’t still have their collection, this will be a “must buy”. But the market for this book is clearly “nostalgia” rather than serious appreciation or study. This book will sell, and deserves to, but it will also disappoint the more serious collector or student.
There is much to commend this book. Eagle Society member Steve Winders has already written an excellent review, posted at Steve Holland's Bear Alley blog. Any more detailed comments I might make would inevitably repeat much of what he has said there, so I will leave my comments to those above. There is also a review by
Further related links:
- eagle-times initial post (May 2008) on the Eagle Annual of the Cutaways
- more from eagle-times on Eagle's cutaway drawings with a list of artists
- Jeremy Briggs follow-up post to his review at Down the Tubes: Eagle cutaway art.
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