Over at the Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog we see a collection of "Worlds of IF" covers from the 1950’s and the 1960′s, by a smorgasbord of illustrators including a few by Virgil Finlay, and what seems to be a posthumously published cover by Hannes Bok.

In fact I wasn’t positive that the publication date was, you know, after Bok’s expiration date, and when I went looking to verify that I ran across this small archive of his work. It includes the one I’ve reproduced below.

Frederik Pohl posted some of his reminiscences about Bok last year. You can read those here and here.

The 50’s and 60’s are actually a little too modern for me, for the most part, but I’m always ready for a little Finlay or a bit of Bok. I’m often bemused by the fact that the long, odd trip I’ve taken with my own work has led me back – by a route that’s anything but direct, and which couldn’t be called intentional – to illustrators like these, whose work I enjoyed so very much when I was young. It’s all a bit like a joke that I wasn’t in on, or the end result of a convoluted plan by some cackling archvillain.

As I mentioned back in December, I’ve produced a series of illustrations for the cover and 32 page booklet of Leslie Fish’s new CD, Avalon is Risen. After quite awhile in production that recording is now available for pre-order from Prometheus Music.

The CD’s priced at $15.97 and includes an MP3 download in addition to the physical CD in its packaging: you can also place an MP3 only order for $9.97. The CD’s are scheduled to ship shortly after June 15, but the MP3s are available immediately, as is the booklet in PDF form. They’re all available right here.

This is a sort of a bookend project for me, since ‘way back in the late 1980’s I illustrated the tape cover and the full sized songbook for Ms. Fish’s Cold Iron. That came very near the end of my days in traditional media and it’s nice to be back, with the set of digital tools I use all these years later. Though I did sneak in two pen and ink illustrations from the1980’s, just because.

So this week marks my return to the new, improved Thrilling Tales schedule. My schedule, I mean: not yours.

This follows my frantic scrambling to set up the current Intermission for the Thrilling Tales site, which in its turn was followed by a couple of weeks of much needed website work, new merchandise design, and, um, house cleaning. Yeah, even in the Secret Laboratory, I’ve got dust. And then data backup and some other important things that have been delayed.

But this week! This week, I’ve returned to Part Two of The Toaster With TWO BRAINS in the mornings, while in the afternoons I’m working on a new serial for the site. Which involves writing (quite a lot of it) which is something I can now do on the porch when I feel like it. Which I do.

The TWO BRAINS work has kicked off in an unexpected way. Back in the Summer or Fall I applied my new character system to Gwen, who’s an important character in Part Two; last weekend I did something very similar with Nat Gonella. But when I paged through the illustrations I’ve completed for that story, I decided that I didn’t like everything I’d done with Zeno.

With a few of his scenes remaining to go I decided to redo some of the finished illustrations where Zeno already appears. So I spent a couple of days working on a new head for him which, as we see above, is nicely expressive. I’ve now redone one of his illustrations and I should be able to work through about three others before I get down to something entirely new.

There are some serious questions about how ready the new serial will be when the Intermission concludes. This is a longer form story and it’ll be an unusual amount of work, not to mention the possibility that I’ll need to make many revisions as I go along. I’ve always been reluctant to start publishing one of these stories before the manuscript is really done. Dickens did it, but, you know, he was Dickens. So I may be as surprised as anyone else to see how things work out by Summer’s end.

For now, though, it’s nice to be back!

The universal leisure we enjoy in Retropolis makes it possible for us to join all sorts of book clubs, civic organizations, charities, and secret societies.

One group that manages to be a combination of all of the above is the Retropolis Ladies’ World Domination Society.

You know them: you grew up surrounded by them. They may have invited you to tea. Their motto is Don’t MAKE Me Come Down There.

‘Down There’, of course, refers to anything below, and within range of, their Orbiting Tea Room and Global Obliteration Platform. Armed with lethal, color coordinated ray guns, these determined ladies are an unstoppable force for order, style, and niceness.

Membership is for life, and is by invitation only.

Thats about all I’m comfortable saying on the subject. I spent six years in a camouflaged dome, after that other time.

So here’s the new, improved version of one of my older T-Shirt designs for The Retropolis Transit Authority. I’m gradually working my way through some of those older ones. I started this redo sometime last year, but the Thrilling Tales schedule wouldn’t cooperate and so I’ve just now finished it on, of course, T-shirts, a poster, an archival print, a coffee mug and mousepad, all at Retropolis.

Curiously, the Ladies’ World Domination Society is Inspired by Actual Events.