Where Eagles Dare

[rosanicus]

This week my mum has truly embraced semi retirement and begun pulling out boxes upon boxes of what she refers to as "Uncle Reg's Clart" alongside various things given to us by my (living) grandparents when they downsized last year. What this amounts to is that the living room is now chock full of both Lego and a lot of musty boxes which, in today's case, have disgorged about twelve dozen copies of The Eagle from the early fifties.

As it turns out, these Eagles include almost all of the numbers which serialised Biggles in the Blue, about a third of in the Gobi and the issue with the story which turned out to be plagiarised from the mammoth bit of Charter Pilot. All in all I feel very pleased about this, especially because I remembered there had been some Biggles in the Eagle moments before I glanced down and saw the front page header reading NEW BIGGLES STORY BEGINNING THIS ISSUE. Sometimes serendipity strikes.

Anyway Biggles in the Blue is already delivering in spades. What is it delivering? Hard to say. But von Stalhein seems very disappointed that Biggles won't drink wine with him.



Some of the illustrations in The Eagle are closer to how I imagine & Co. in my head but I can't say I'm convinced by this EvS.

Comments

[philomytha]

What a fantastic find! Please do share the illustrations, I'd love to see them. And that's not bad at all as far as drawings of EvS go - there are many much worse!

I love In the Blue, despite the regrettable parts, EvS going on about wine and snake-charmers is amazing, and there's another scene later on that's responsible for a fair number of fics...

[rosanicus]

I'm having a great time with it so far! Although I do keep coming up against roadblocks like missing pages and insane advertisements which distract me for a while, haha. The bit about wine and snake charmers has in fact done me in, why are they so WEIRD about each other.

I will absolutely post some of the illos once I've finished. There's a lovely one of Biggles from the serial of Gobi, which I probably won't read in this state since we've got, as I noted, about a third of the issues and none of them are consecutive.

I look forward to finding out what moment this is...

[sholio]

Honestly, considering what a lot of the illustrations of EvS look like, I like that one - at least the illustrator recognizes that he's supposed to be fine-featured and slim. (Although that is an ASTONISHINGLY dramatic pose for a man who just was caught snooping. Like maybe you're making yourself look more suspicious than you have to if you fling your entire body around like that, Erich ...)

Those are an amazing find and I look forward to more. :D

[philomytha]

The whole book can be found on Faded Page here, for obtaining the missing bits.

[rosanicus]

Thank you! I also have a copy coming in a Facebook Marketplace purchase but this is helpful, I can get so much more egg context :D

[rosanicus]

There's another good one in a later part actually, I was impressed! Even remembered dark hair and a monocle, which was nice because there's four people in the illustration I believe so distinguishing features were sorely needed.

I will hopefully make a post later tonight or tomorrow, there's also an ongoing serial based entirely in adverts for Colman's Mustard which I'm kind of obsessed with.

EDIT: Also the pose is indeed hilarious. I am becoming convinced he's actively self sabotaging in this mission, after getting the photos printed he seems to mostly be hanging around being unhappy.

[black_bentley]

A spectacular find! I look forward to seeing the rest of the illustrations. I see EvS continues to be The Most Dramatic Bitch in this particular one.

[rosanicus]

There's some good ones! I just got to one of Algy after he's landed the plane having been shot in the thigh, everyone looks very dishevelled and concerned.

[black_bentley]

Understandably so. I seem to remember that particular bit having a rare instance of Furious Bertie.