On Target

Finally made it to the Cartoon Museum on Little Russell Street, London, this afternoon for the Target book art exhibition.
I no longer own any of the old Target novels - they got sold off when I was an impoverished student many years ago - but I do have the coffee-table Target book, and pore over the illustrations on a regular basis.
Seeing the original artworks up close and personal was a joy.

The exhibit only takes up one corner of the upper floor, but there are over one hundred pieces to look at. By far my favourites were the Chris Achilleos ones. Highlights have to be the covers for two of the very first books - The Daleks and The Zarbi. Other Achilleos covers included The Cybermen, Revenge of the Cybermen, The Web of Fear, Ark in Space, Genesis of the Daleks, The Ice Warriors, Curse of Peladon and The Dinosaur Invasion. His Day of the Daleks is also there - along with a later version. Sadly, some of the paintings were of the later, somewhat inferior, editions - e.g. The Daemons, The Three Doctors and The Doomsday Weapon.

The other artist whose work I love is Roy Knipe. His painting for The Face of Evil is a little thing of beauty. It surprised me at how small some of the images were, as I had always assumed that the covers for a book range would have come in standard size.
Beside each image was a small picture of the actual book cover, giving the artist's name, and year of production.

On one wall there were the new additions to the Target range, as three of the books have just been reissued with Chris Achilleos covers - The Visitation, Vengeance on Varos, and Battlefield. Am afraid to say the one for VoV is not terribly good - it is a poor representation of Colin Baker.
Beside these was a page from the original 1960's Dalek comic strips - the one about the space rust - so not just Target material on view.

You may have noticed a "No Photography" sign in the topmost image here. No, I didn't ignore it. The text stated that you could not photograph specific paintings up close, for copyright reasons, but were permitted to take wider shots of the exhibition.
The exhibition only has a couple more days to go. Having a copy of DWM 499 gets you £2 off the usual £7 entry fee.
Who knows when these works will be collected together again? Perhaps the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff should think about having a small permanent exhibit.