Crabbit auld girn

Just to complain a little bit more about the new Broons/Oor Wullie collection, because I can't read an extremely entertaining and enjoyable compilation of long-out-of-print comics without whining that I want more from it... This latest volume is larger than the fourteen previous ones, in the sense that the pages are physically bigger. I have no idea why - the reprinted comics are the same size as ever, there's just more white space around the edges. But the number of pages is sharply reduced again - the first one, back in 1996, had 126 reprinted Dudley-Watkins-drawn strips, then they settled into a pattern of roughly 120 every year until 2006, when it shrank down to around 100 per compilation. This year's has 83. Yes, I counted them.

I mean, are they trying to test just how little work they can put into these books and still get people to buy them? If so, I'm worried, because I'll continue to buy them however small they get, and I'm sure everyone else who buys the things will do the same. It's not like they're running short of comics to reprint, because Watkins drew a LOT of them - by my count there are about 1800 still to appear in these annual collections. Aren't they satisfied with another fifteen-to-eighteen years of income before they have to test the waters with a Watkins-themed Beano or Dandy compilation? Heck, by that time I'll be crying out for a Ken H Harrison tribute book...

Well, there'd better be more than a hundred in next year's book, or I'll have no alternative but to whine in my blog again. And I don't think anyone wants that!