One of the things I promised myself

This editorial, “Strange Maven’s Diary,” originally appeared in Strangehaven issue #4, June 1996.

Being only quarterly, so much tends to happen between issues, it’s difficult to know what to write about. In fact so much has occurred since issue three, this issue has suffered all sorts of delays and problems, and it’s tempting to list everything out as an expense of being late – but that’s one of the things I promised myself I wouldn’t do (not anymore, anyway). so I won’t – suffice to say that i could never have envisaged so many different things conspiring to keep me away from the drawing board in the space of a few short months.

One of the nicest problems I’ve had is that shortly after Christmas, I completely sold out of all three previous issues of Strangehaven. Now, this may not sound like a problem to you, but although it’s very gratifying to sell out (and believe me, I thought I overprinted enough of each to last me a couple of years), they all need to be reprinted. This causes cash flow difficulties, and distributors, retailers and individuals all have to be kept informed while I’m out of stock.

It also meant that this years trip to UKCAC (brought forward to the spring) was a little odd, sitting behind a empty stand, promoting a comic book which I already sold out of – although it was still nice to meet existing Strangehaven followers, including Caliber’s Joe Pruett and Capital’s Wayne Markley, both visiting from the United States.

Arrangements have now been made for the reprinting of Strangehaven #1, 2, & 3 thanks to the understanding of my local branch of Barclay’s Bank (although I had to submit my projected cash flow forecast for the forthcoming year – a feat of imagination surpassing that of writing the scripts for Strangehaven itself). These should be available around June 1996 and you should be able to order them through you local comics’ retailer.

Failing that, you can of course order directly from me here in the UK, and for you in the USA & Canada, I can announce that I have a new stateside agent, Mr. Chris Staros. He will be dealing with all my reorders and subscriptions on that side of the Atlantic, as he already does for Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus. Hopefully this will mean a speedier service for all my American readers, and for the second time I’ve been able to lower the price of my back issues and subscriptions. You can check out ordering details on page 33. I’d like to thank Glen Folland at Diamond for putting me in touch with Chris, and everyone else who made similar offers, which I eventually declined. Most of all a big Thank You to Chris himself.

Thanks also to Dave McKinnon (he of Sleaze Castle fame) who is currently setting up an unofficial “home page” for Strangehaven on the Internet thingy, called Alien Retina which will be located at [redacted]. I don’t know exactly when it’ll be up and running, but it should be fairly shortly. I’ve personally steered clear of getting involved with the wonders of digital communication, as I don’t want to get side-tracked into spending hours surfing the web or whatever it’s called, but I’m sure it’ll happen eventually. For any of you who are to lazy to pop down to the post office or fax bureau, you can now email me your comments via my chum Steve Bishop at [redacted], although I’ll only be picking up the messages once a week or so.

I would like to sincerely apologise to anybody who turned up to see me at my scheduled appearances at Comics Unlimited on Saturday 11 May and Fantasy Fair Six on Sunday 12 May, both of which I had to cancel a week beforehand due to circumstances beyond my control. My apologies also to the organizers of those events. I do however fully expect to be at Page 45’s second annual Independents Day, which has a star-studded bill already – check out page 34.

Finally, I hope you enjoy this issue. It’s a little different in content this time, but I’ve always intended that Strangehaven should be a surprise package – you won’t really know what to expect from each issue. If you’re a little disappointed this time. maybe you’ll love what I’ve got in store for number five. Whatever, please do send me your comments – by mail, fax or email, you don’t really have any excuses now.

Ciao for now.