It’s been a long time since I mentioned this project, so it’s probably time for an update. Essentially the situation is this: we’ve sold enough copies of Fantastikal Diabolikal Supermen to finance the publication of our second book, provisionally called Giorgio Ardisson – The Italian James Bond. This will be a complete career retrospective, along the lines of Fantastikal (ie crammed with reviews of all of his work, featuring a good amount of interview material in English for the first time and lots and lots of cool images). I’ve just about finished the main text, and it comes to over 100 A4 pages (using a quite small font). In other words: it’s long! But researching Ardisson has been fascinating, the guy had one of the most interesting careers imaginable, from working with Bava and Margheriti to making spy films with Sergio Sollima, appearing in Pasquale Squitieri’s curious spaghetti western Django and Sartana, ogling semi-naked women in countless sexy comedies and eventually working with obscure auteurs like Sergio Pastore and Carlo Ausino (both of whose work deserves a book of their own, even if their films are generally rubbish!)
The format will be pretty much the same, the only difference from Fantastikal Diabolikal Supermen being that I might print the main content on slightly thinner paper (which means that hopefully postage costs will remain about the same even if the page count rises).
So over the next few months I’ll be doing further proofing and design work. I’m currently doing restoration work on loads of images and photographs, and am still aiming for a summer publication date. Before that, though, I’m finally going to sort out a Kindle version of Fantastikal Diabolikal Supermen…
Anyway, more news to follow.
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