It’s been a while since we finished Volume II of West with Autumn Dusk. In the meantime, I have been keenly plotting the final Volume III (six issues, four of which comprise our first ongoing storyline) and working quietly on a short West strip called The Train Leaves at Noon, which picks up directly from the end of the Warwick Johnson-Cadwell illustrated Stray Bullets story Fort Eyrie and plunges Jerusalem West and Wilton Frohickie into something completely new - the first West newspaper strip.
The Train Leaves at Noon will appear in a new comic called The Newspaper Strip Collection of Oscar Charles Drayton (debuting at Thought Bubble this month), conceived by Space Babe 113 creator John Maybury. From John’s website:
“As Oscar Charles Drayton, an obsessive newspaper strip collector, descends into psychotic depression he becomes convinced that the strips in the Daily Inspector are mirroring his life… Presented as a facsimile of one of Oscar’s scrapbooks from 1975, the comic features established small-press comics in newspaper strip form. Each strip tells its own story whilst contributing to the overall meta-story.”
West is joined by other strips Favourite Crayon by Arthur Goodman, Catgirl Crisis Comics by David Goodman, Space Babe 113 by John Maybury (who also scripted the meta-story), and Run Pussy by Colin Stanford; special contributions by Siobhan Hillman and Paul B Rainey round out the package.