The Enid Blyton Society

One of the highlights of the latest journal for me was the centre spread showing past covers and it made me wonder if The Secret Seven had ever featured?

Do you mean as a cover, Nick, as all the covers were inside the centre fold of the latest journal. If you mean inside as an article, then if you look on the home page and press the button that says Fireside Journal. You can see all the featured articles of the past journals.

I always have a quick look inside past journals that way, to make sure any article I want to put to Tony, hasn't been mentioned before.

I've been getting the Journal since No:40 and every time I have commented on the fantastic pictures on the front cover. I don't know about there being a Secret Seven themed cover, and nor if theres been any articles about the Seven, but as Julie said, you are bound to find out on the society index of journals.

Julie2owlsdene wrote:Do you mean as a cover, Nick, as all the covers were inside the centre fold of the latest journal. If you mean inside as an article, then if you look on the home page and press the button that says Fireside Journal. You can see all the featured articles of the past journals.

It was the covers I was looking at. I couldn't make any SS from the centre spread but have limited knowledge of EC artwork pre TV style covers of the last 70's.

You can see all the covers in the Fireside Journal area too, just click on any of them to see them bigger.

Thanks Fiona, a quick look and I've answered my own question - the SS have never had a cover C'mon Tony, you know it makes sense

One of these days I'll be updating the index that I do ( sort of unofficially) and adding journal 50.
It's another way of looking for articles in one document, word or pdf format.

I look forward to your updated index, Lenoir. Many thanks for doing a great job. I find the index extremely useful.

You have got some new Secret Seven covers to look forward to soon Nick as they are about to be re-released.



A couple for you to look at here, but there are more sitting in the Cave. They have actually been there for a few weeks but I don't suppose that anyone has noticed them! The illustrator is Tony Ross (better known for Horrid Henry) and as well as the covers he has also done some internal illustrations.

Never assume that your cave-work goes unnoticed, Tony. I saw them and thought the Tony Ross covers were a great improvement over the previous (2006) ones. My apologies for not remarking on them sooner.

Kate

Tony Summerfield wrote:You have got some new Secret Seven covers to look forward to soon Nick as they are about to be re-released.



A couple for you to look at here, but there are more sitting in the Cave. They have actually been there for a few weeks but I don't suppose that anyone has noticed them! The illustrator is Tony Ross (better known for Horrid Henry) and as well as the covers he has also done some internal illustrations.

Thanks for the heads up, thre are some neat additions there, I particularly like Win Through and Fireworks. Will the new internal illustrations end up in the cave?

I'm a bit of a kill joy with the new covers, as they're not really to my taste. I've looked at the ones in the Cave, up to the first 12, that's there, and I'm not really all that keen. I know they will appeal to the youngsters of today, but they look a bit too cartoony for me. I'm afraid I love the original jackets much better.

I agree with Kate Mary that the new covers are an improvement on the last lot as they give an impression of fun, liveliness and activity. Although like Julie, I prefer the beautifully drawn, more realistic covers of the early days. Of the twelve Tony Ross covers shown so far, my favourites are The Secret Seven (conveys a feeling of togetherness and feasting), Secret Seven Adventure (dramatic, with a touch of humour) and Go Ahead, Secret Seven (interesting perspective).

I must admit I like the covers myself. As Kate says, an infinite improvement on the previous issue which had a set of covers that must have been high up on the ranking list of the worst Blyton covers ever. I also approve of the move to bring back internal illustrations. The recent trend by all publishers other than Award has been to issue Blyton novels with no illustrations. I don't think they will be heavily illustrated, but any are better than none!

The cover illustrations are a little like Quentin Blake's work. The last two sets of covers were pretty awful, IMHO!