Christmas 2016 has now come and gone which for us this year was a very quite affair with just our family of four but I did acquire for myself an interesting present. Due to unforeseen circumstances Johnny Mains is currently unable to continue his work on ‘The PAN Book of Horror Stories Scrapbook’ Johnny kindly offered me his archives as he knew I’d keep them safe which of course I will in the hope that one day he may feel up to finishing it. Les Edwards is also holding onto the cover he painted hoping it may be used in the future.

Along with many signed books, photos, manuscripts and contracts etc. I also got a couple of pieces of artwork for books 3 (William Francis Phillipps) and 16 (Alan Lee) I’ll be putting together some pages about the collection in the New Year but HERE is one with the covers. Book 3 is the later 1974 edition but uses the same artwork as X161 from 1962 which I’ll add later as it needs a new scan.

Here’s to many more happy finds in the future so I’ll wish all PAN Fans everywhere a healthy and prosperous New Year 2017

Finally got around to scanning in the original three Terry Oakes artworks I recently purchased but my scanner now seems to have fallen out with my computer and is having a sulk! I’ve ended up photographing them and luckily I’d already scanned in the covers to go with them. I will add more when the connectivity problem is sorted.

I managed to get the covers for two of the three titles in the ‘Borribles’ series by Michael de Larrabeiti. They are the first and third titles as I missed out on the second which was used by Savatage for their ‘Sirens’ LP cover and was bought by a fan. Terry also did vignettes for the backs and I have these for the first and second but not the third as this was of a character called Treld who was named after Treld Pelkey Bicknell who worked at PAN. She begged Terry for it and he gave it to her and apparently it hangs on her toilet wall

The third piece of artwork is for ‘The Death Rays of Ardilla’ by W E Johns one of the six titles in his space series. The other five covers will be added when the scanner is back in action, hopefully this week.

As Xmas will have come and gone by next Monday it just remains for me to wish all our faithfully PAN Fans out there a very ‘Happy Christmas.

Back from Germany where the Christmas markets were very much the same as the ones here in the UK apart from the Striezelmarkt in Dresden, the oldest Christmas market in Germany running since 1434. It was so good we actually bought bits and pieces as presents, had Bratwurst and got merry on Gluhwein. We also got a free hotel room upgrade as my wife didn’t notice the shower tray was leaking and literally flooded the room. Must try that again next time we go.

Only a couple of things to report on the books front. Relating to another of my interests, Ian Fleming’s from around the world, I picked up 3 in German with the alternative Michael Gillette covers already having a set of the others in hardback.

I also found a copy of the Marvel Comics version of ‘Return of the Jedi’ but I didn’t know they jointly published it with Piccolo in this country. Click HERE to see my rather tatty UK edition and below is the US cover. It’s interesting to note how the UK pound has fallen against the US dollar looking at the prices on the covers from 1983. Then you got two dollars to the pound but now it’s only one and a quarter.

Sorry didn’t have time so Terry Oakes will feature next week.

Nearly forgot, this site will be 17 years old in four days on the 16th of December.

UPDATE: Only just found out today (16th) that the site shares its Birthday with a PAN favourite, Philip Kindred Dick, who was born this day in 1928 in Chicago and died all too soon on March 2, 1982 in Santa Ana, California.Just counting up how many titles has surprised me as I’ve only found four: ‘A Maze of Death’, ‘Galactic Pot-Healer’, ‘The Preserving Machine’ and ‘Nick and the Glimmung’ It may seem like more because there are so many cover variants on at least three of the titles.

Very recently I managed to pick up some original artwork by Terry Oakes and I am putting together a page of some of his paintings for PAN/Piccolo. Terry now likes to stay out of the limelight and declined my request for a photo of him with the artwork but he did mention the photo below was on a website where it also had a brief biography.Terry was born – and still lives – in Merthyr Tydfil, a relatively small post- industrial town in South Wales. Naively deciding that his love of drawing could help him escape from a factory job, and driven by a love of Horror and Fantasy, he executed a series of sketches and paintings and sent photographs of them to various publishers.

A kind art editor at Sphere Books got him in touch with the late John Spencer, who had just founded an artists’ agency called ‘Young Artists’

From back cover of ‘La Derniere Syllabe Du Temps’

He saw potential in Terry’s work, and eventually got him commissions – which in time were sufficient in number for Terry to become a full time freelance illustrator. “From then on it was like a dream come true: to step inside bookshops and see my stuff on the shelves alongside the likes of Jim (Burns), Les (Edwards), and the inimitable Frank Frazetta – and to get paid, too! was as satisfying and self-affirming as anything that had happened in my life.”

Well-known in the 1980s for his SF/F, and “grand guignol” gothic horror illustrations and covers for Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone “Fighting Fantasy” gamebooks, “classic” British horror covers for books by Guy N. Smith, Richard Laymon, and many others, plus SF for major authors. Others from the ‘Young Artist’s’ agency, in the late 1970s,  were Jim Burns, Chris Foss, Bob Fowke, Angus McKie, and many others.

If all had gone according to plan I am currently in Berlin and hopefully this blog had launched itself. I’ll add the artwork next time.

In the meantime here are two books with the same Terry Oakes cover, I don’t have the artwork for this but it’s interesting that they are different titles but Terry is only credited on the French one (see above)

With two of the book covers I managed to get two back covers with vignettes but only one set is a matching pair. If anyone wants to guess the book titles they are very welcome but I show them all next week.