After a Christmas and New Year break, I'm finally back at work on the ACTION book. I'm way behind where I wanted to be, but I've managed to complete the text with a couple of last minute tweaks and sorting out some of the curious short-hand I'd used for references in the footnotes as I was writing. There are 257 footnotes, so it wasn't the easiest or quickest of jobs. The final bit of research was to find out what reaction there was to Stan Lee visiting the UK to promote Captain Britain, as that title was launched just as newspapers were getting their teeth into comics. 

I'm now starting on the layouts. I had an idea of how the book should open and spent Tuesday and Wednesday trying to make it work. I'm still not sure it does, so I may need to rethink the whole opening; I have one idea I need to try out before abandoning the pages and starting afresh.

I'm writing this Thursday morning while things are quiet. We've had a firm (Cadent) fitting new gas pipes in our road, delayed over two years since 2023, when they missed off the last section of houses (including ours) because—we were told at the time—they needed to set up traffic lights and it would take too long to organise that through the Highway Services... so they moved on elsewhere. 

Now they're back and they've simply shut the road down. Lots of digging which in the past were done by Irish navvies (Gen X) or Polish navvies (Gen Y) shoveling dirt around. Nowadays it's done by a big drill that breaks up the asphalt and a big truck that sucks up the broken surface and the dirt below. The first time I walked down to the Post Office, I was expecting Belle Vue Road to look like the Somme. But, no... the road was lined with neat hole and was rubble-free.

They have to dig down quite deep to expose the old pipes, which are rusting and becoming increasingly leaky. But, rather than simply replace them, they're pushing new plastic pipes through the old pipes, so that they can be easily connected to each house. I'm expecting to have the house supply turned off at some point in the next hour or two. Hopefully the new pipe will reach the meter in the kitchen; if not, there's a point just outside that they should be able to get it to.


The gas supply will also be turned off on Friday to put in the main pipeline and connect all the pipes that go into houses before they fill in the holes and move on. Gas will be off all day until 7.00 pm. 

I've made plans: if the gas is off, I've made myself a big saucepan of stew that I've divided up into meals that I can microwave. I'm making curry for dinner tonight that can also be done in the microwave and I have microwavable options for Friday, just in case. 

How this will affect my glycated haemoglobin levels, I don't know. I had a HbA1c test recently so I added to all the usual Christmas/New Year distractions by trying to find out what all this wizardry means. So... glucose in your blood will stick to the red blood cells and since they last for about three months, doctors can draw blood and see how your blood sugar levels average out over that time period. My previous figure had been 56 mmol/mol [millimoles per mole] and it's now down to 52, which is still in the diabetic range. I need to get below 48, which is thought of as "pre-diabetic" and, ideally, below 42, which is what it should be. 

We're cursed with food manufacturers who put too much sugar in everything to make it taste better. You should have no more than 30g a day; the curry tonight will have 5.4g, so that's fairly healthy. But I had a large apple earlier which alone has contributed about 20g of sugar. So whatever I have for lunch needs to be as sugar-free as possible. (Watch out if you have more fruit as part of your 5 fruit and veg a day A grape can have 16-23g of sugar; a medium-sized banana 14-15g; mangos, sweet cherries, pineapples, pears and kiwis should also be off the menu if you're trying to lose weight... I'm learning this for the first time as I write!)

(And you might take a mickey out of "kids today" and their eating habits, but what food is low in sugar? Avocado!)

Not to dwell on the subject, but my weight is down by a few pounds since my last check-up and my annual diabetic eye test is now every two years. So things are moving in the right direction.

Talking of which, I should get back to those layouts. They're not going to design themselves. Hopefully I'll be able to show off a few pages of my own "Work in Progress" once I get into them and you'll be able to see what I've been up to for the past couple of months.

So it's Tuesday morning and Christmas seems to be a distant memory already, although it was only yesterday that I found myself back at work—all the way across the living room to my little nest of computers. The sun is blinding and I can feel its heat on my back, making up for the past couple of days when a biting north-easterly meant we had to wrap up against the chill when we went for our walk.

It is still Christmas-y: the tree is still up, lights twinkling; we're still munching our way through left-overs and we even have a bit of Christmas pudding to eat. After yesterday's lunch of chicken and stuffing sandwiches, I really couldn't face anything quite so heavy; we had a mince pie instead.

I shouldn't because I have an appointment with the doctor tomorrow—a routine check-up, nothing to worry about, but I know they'll want to weigh me. I ought to be starving myself today because I've put on my usual Christmas three pounds, and that's pushing me towards weighing the same weight I was on my last visit. I'd managed to lose over half a stone during 2025, but it's now not looking quite so good!

Christmas was mostly eating and watching TV. We (in this case me and my Mum) usually make a good job of Christmas dinner, but this year seemed especially good because we got the amount just right; at the end of it we were comfortable rather than utterly stuffed. We managed to avoid almost every show that made up the Top 10 most watched shows over the Christmas period (although a couple, The Scarecrow's Wedding and Amandaland, I recorded, to be watched when I get a chance). Instead we watched Wallace & Gromit, a couple of quizzes, a couple of old Miss Marple episodes and (of course) The Great Escape.

I treated myself to a book, which arrived yesterday. In my early days of reading science fiction, the Sunday Times and Gollancz ran a competition. This was back in 1974 and the results were published in 1975. I borrowed the winners from Chelmsford library, Catchworld by Chris Boyce and Shipwreck by Charles Logan. I was particularly taken by the latter, but didn't bother to buy the paperback that came out in 1977 because my pocket money was already stretched to breaking point. 

The Panther edition went out of print and because Logan didn't write any further novels, the book sank into obscurity. I'd forgotten about it until I picked up a copy of The Martian by Andy Weir in 2014, and began thinking about this book from forty years before that also featured a spaceman trying to survive on an alien planet with no hope of rescue. 

Copies seemed to be particularly scarce, and were usually in the £50-80 range, which I certainly wasn't going to pay for a paperback. I promised myself that if I saw one for under £15 I'd pick it up and I've searched every now and then without seeing it drop in price. Cutting to the chase, I spied a copy on Ebay just before Christmas and thanks to a discount that was being offered, I managed to pick it up for under £14.92 (including postage). And I now have it: a bit creased and grubby, but a reading copy that I'll pop onto the top of my "to be read" pile. 

I managed to clear all the junk off the scanner this morning, so I've managed to Photoshop out many of the faults that were spoiling David Bergen's fantastic cover. 

If I'm going to make a new year's resolution, it will be to try and read more. I did fairly well last year, after years of reading under ten books annually. That's under ten books simply for pleasure, I should add: I read quite a lot for research, including 86 issues of Action comic during October/November for the book I'm working on. That's over 2,750 pages of tiny print. After a day of reading for work, it's so easy just to plant myself in front of the TV.

Which is where I'm heading now. Happy New Year to you all. 

This was a bit of an experiment, the first time I've shot the video on my phone rather than on the laptop, and using the new bluetooth microphone. I think it has worked out OK after a bit of tweaking. Maybe one day I'll get a proper camera and some lighting, but until then...

Merry Christmas to you all and I hope you have a Happy New Year! I'll be back in 2026!

This will be short and sweet as I'm still trying to finish off the ACTION book and I still have some writing to do. I think I'm on the final chapter, unless there's some sort of envoi needed. I have the checklists for the weekly, the summer/holiday specials and the annuals all written, but there's a creators index still to do. And then I have to design the whole book. And there's Christmas and New Year in between now and the anniversary in February.

Wish me luck!

There are other distractions, too. For instance, I met up with John Chisnall and George Coates and took a trip down to our local pub. Long-time readers will know they are both Bear Alley authors, as I wrote and published John's book about his days as a motorcycle racer (AND THE WHEELS WENT ROUND) and designed George's book (A Laverda Journey) about his trip by motorcycle around the world. I was involved with this because John (my uncle) was looking for someone to publish his book and the price asked for by vanity presses was enormous. Stupidly, I said I could do it for half the price... and both he and George took me up on it!

Something I learned from our get together is that there's apparently a reel-to-reel tape recording of me reciting Humpty Dumpty at a very young age and mispronouncing "all the klings horses and all the klings men". I'm guessing it was recorded about sixty years ago... so how come I'm hearing about it for the first time now?

We also took an evening off to wander around the village and look at the lights and, as always, there are some magnificent displays, and some a little less magnificent, and a few that look a bit weedy and wouldn't be spotted by a reindeer at 5 feet. There's one house that is just wonderful, with an "ooohh" and "aaaahh" factor that's off the top end of the scale. They light up the street every year and collect money for charity, so  hopefully they'll do well again this year. 

It's back to the "uh ho" and "AAARGH!" for me. I'm hoping to have the text finished by next week and to have read through it. If there aren't too many tweaks needed, I might be able to get started with designing the book this side of Christmas. Fingers crossed.

It's starting to feel a lot like Christmas. The tree is up, we've received a couple of cards, I've been given a 2026 calendar, and we had the Bear Alley Books Xmas Party on Wednesday.

The latter was basically dragging Mel and my Mum down to the pub for lunch, which we haven't had a chance to do since August — coordinating everyone can be tricky at times — when we took a trip out to Maldon. It was a beautiful sunny day and we were well fed and watered at the Horse and Groom; we then had a relaxing afternoon and evening and it was lovely just to have some time off.

I'm planning to do the same thing next week with two of Bear Alley's authors, John Chisnall and George Coates, whose books—AND THE WHEELS WENT ROUND and A LAVERDA JOURNEY—I designed. 

On the days I didn't take off, I've managed to crack on with the ACTION book and I'm heading towards the point where it merged with BATTLE. Another push and I might have it almost done by the end of next week, depending on how much I drink down the pub and what other distractions come along. Hopefully it'll be good news next week.

I'm reading—or, rather, re-reading—Dave Hutchinson's EUROPE IN AUTUMN, a fantastic SF/spy story set in a fractured Europe, split by a deadly pandemic (and various economic crises (this was published in 2014) and now broken down into little republics, polities and nations who no longer trust the internet; information, artefacts and even people are smuggled across borders by couriers trained in spy tradecraft.

I read the first book back in 2019 on a tablet that had all four of the books on it (a fifth was subsequently published). Then my tablet went belly-up and I never got to read the other three. I saw a mention of the series recently and decided to get the physical books. Four were easily available second-hand. The fourth (EUROPE AT DAWN) has been trickier to source. I have a copy on order.

Having a lousy memory, I've been enjoying the book afresh. At one or two points in the plot I've had a flash forward of what is about to happen, but it's really like I'm reading it for the first time... and I'm really enjoying it all over again.

Talking of memory, I was trying to remember what books I'd read over the past few months. I'm picking up the pace a little. I used to be able to read a book in a day when I was much younger and just discovering SF. When I was in work I often had a bus or train ride to fill, but nowadays I do more reading for whatever I'm working on than for pleasure. And books these days are often twice or three times the size of books I used to read. For many years I've been taking months to finish a book, a situation I'm now trying to resolve by making sure I read a chapter or two every evening before bed.

I dug out the last few books I've read: a ratio of 5:3 SF over crime. I love the Mick Herron Slough House books and have heard them all as audiobooks, but I'm reading physical copies ahead of each new series of the TV show. I was inspired to read TATIANA by the death of Martin Cruz Smith and the realisation that I had fallen behind on reading his Arkady Renko novels. I still have three to go. THE FLIGHT OF THE HORSE I re-read half of as it contained Niven's delightful Svetz fantasy stories and I was planning to read his RAINBOW MARS novel, which was a late addition to the series. But then they announced the coming release of the fifth season of SLOW HORSES, so Svetz is on hold. 

I picked up THE STARDROPPERS while I was wandering around ahead of Invasion Colchester and started reading it on the bus home. I have to say that it's minor Brunner, but I have shelves full of books I've never read, so I want to try and get through at least some in the hope of finding a gem. I will re-read books that I remember enjoying, so that will mean more Brunner at some point (THE SHEEP LOOK UP, THE JAGGED ORBIT, STAND ON ZANZIBAR, THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER... there are plenty!).

I'd had PROJECT HAIL MARY on the shelf for some while, but thought I'd treat myself after finishing the writing on the AIR ACE book. I loved THE MARTIAN and I think ARTEMIS was an OK follow-up. This was even better, if a little long; every time it jumped back in time I found myself wishing those bits were over so we could get back to the interaction between human and alien (I'm trying not to spoiler the book).

Talking of slow-moving... WORLDS. I may be imagining this, but I get the feeling that this and its sequel (WORLDS APART) were meant to be one book, with a slow build to something explosive happening at the halfway mark. Then someone said, "Why not turn it into two books, Joe?" and that left the first book as a travelogue and me sat there wishing that something would happen, which it did, eventually, right at the end. Now that the thing has happened, hopefully book two will pick up the pace.

I love Murderbot, but this wasn't quite up to the scratch of earlier novellas and novel. Too many characters and a plot that would have made a sprightly novella rather than a slightly disappointing novel. Maybe, just maybe, part of my frustration was down to Tor forcing me to buy a hardback as, after two years in print, there is still no sign of a paperback. There's a new Murderbot novel out next year which I'm excited about because you shouldn't let one dip in quality ruin a whole series for you. SYSTEM COLLAPSE was still very readable.

I've rambled on for too long. Better get some work done.

My self-imposed deadline of finishing the writing on the new book by the end of the month has come and will go over the weekend. I forgot how much I still need to re-read and the fact that the re-tooled Action ran for fifty issues, so that's 150 pages of tiny printed text for all of the longer-running strips (Spinball, Hellman, Lefty, Dredger, Hook Jaw). I have a suggestion for Rebellion, who are planning to reprint the first ten issues next year: Make 'em Apex Edition size so that old geezers like me can read the darn thing.

Other than not finishing it, I'm pleased with the way the book is coming together. Over the past few days I've had to take a look at everything from the history of punk rock to the plot of Lord of the Flies; eagle-eyed David Roach has also just added the name of another artist who contributed to the paper, one I recognise from his having worked with F. Solano Lopez's studio and as an assistant to Hugo Pratt.

Various disruptions (some welcome, some not so) have kept me busy in other areas than what I'm meant to be doing. Vistors on Saturday; a problem with storage on Sunday that involved a whole morning shuffling files between external hard drives; another morning spent researching the aforementioned Tibor Horvath (there isn't anything about him in English); an afternoon experimenting with AI text-to-sound programmes to help a friend "read" a book that he wouldn't otherwise be able to read; lugging a box of envelopes down to the post office to return them to a new supplier... they were meant to be like the envelopes that I send out my books, but these were incredibly flimsy and no better than a standard A4 envelope (the card was that flexible!). I've just put in an order with my previous supplier, and damn the expense.

Tuesday saw the funeral of my friend David Slinn. I learned a few things about David's background (he was a fiercely private man) and his love for—and career in—comics was a big part of the wonderful humanist ceremony his family organised. When something I had written about him was read out by the celebrant, some dust must have got in my eye as I'm usually pretty stoic. Unfortunately, I'm of an age where there will be more and more family funerals in my future.

Let's not end on a sad note. There's a good chance that I will be going to Glasgow in March for what's known as the Commando and British Comics Swapmeet, to be held at Cameron Halls, 147 Mossgiel Road G43 2BY. These swapmeets have been held in Stoke, Glasgow and Colchester for a couple of years now, and I've attended four (three in Colchester, one in Stoke) and I've always managed to do OK. So the offer of a ride to Glasgow seems too good to turn down. Hopefully it'll get some of my books in front of a new audience who might not have seen them before. 

I'd love to do more shows, but frankly the costs are too high. A table at most shows is five times (or more) the price and transport for me (I don't drive) is always going to be a problem; when I took books up to the London Paperback & Pulp Bookfare in March last year I knackered my arm and, eighteen months on, it's still less mobile and more painful to this day, but nowhere near as bad as it was last year.

OK, so I've just spent most of the afternoon looking into the work of Tibor Horvath and it looks like he was Solano Lopez's assistant on over 50 episodes of 'El Eternauta' in 1958-59. Amazing! Even after forty years of digging around in comics, I'm still stunned by how much there's still to learn.

I've had a somewhat chaotic week processing orders—thankfully there are lots of names I remember from previous orders, which makes me think the first three books must have been OK; there's nothing quite like a returning customer to gladden the heart!

I'm also trying to get on with the next one, as I have a deadline to hit. I finished writing notes on some of the latter-day stories and I'm now re-reading the whole thing from the beginning so that I can try to match the tone of the early parts, the level of detail, make sure I'm not repeating myself, filling in a couple of places where I'd left myself notes, etc., etc. I need to do this because some of the book was written five years ago, when I was looking at the 45th anniversary. Then my money ran out. 

In a way that has worked to the book's advantage, as I'm now aiming for the 50th anniversary, which means—working backwards—I need to be getting proofs in January, designing the book in December and finishing the writing in November. So things are a little tight, especially as I like to take a few days off around Christmas.

I don't want to sound smug, but I'm going to... I have all my Christmas presents and cards sorted out already, as I was ordering things in such a way that I benefited from free postage each time. It also helps that everyone gets books from me (not written by me, I hasten to add), so I find it quite easy to shop for people. I find that "What book do you want" helps focus people who might need to think forever if the question is "What do you want". 

I, too, like to receive books. I'll sometimes pick a reference book that I might not otherwise buy, but my wants list this year has been all fiction. I won't say what. I'll save that for my new TikTok channel and my latest #bookhaul video. See, I can talk like the young people.

One of the reasons I go for books is that if I need something, it often can't wait, so I go out and buy it. So my new toy this week is a wireless microphone. During the recording of my last couple of videos, I noticed that my old microphone was recording very poorly on one of the stereo channels, and doing the microphone equivalent of "turning it off and on again"—i.e. taking the wire out of the microphone and then putting it back in—didn't improve matters. It's an old microphone that I bought twenty years ago second hand, so I have no idea how old it actually is.

The new microphone is small, you clip it onto your clothing, it connects up to a receiver and that plugs into my laptop; I then record using my usual audio programme, GoldWave. I've only tried it once, but it seemed to work OK. 

I had hoped to be able to use it out of the office, but have run into a technical problem... my phone is too old. And not too smart, I'll add. It doesn't have the right kind of socket for me to plug in the receiver. Curses! My plans are foiled again by my natural thriftiness and sticking to outdated technology until it stops working.

Too late to ask for a new phone for Christmas. Maybe next year.

 The launch day video... only one day late!

I usually try to do a little video Comic Cuts whenever I release a book, but the sun and the sky have conspired against me. Yes, the weather is too nice! 

When I moved into the living room from my old (ex-garage) office—it had no insulation, so winters were bitterly cold; also, the concrete floors were better for taking the weight of so many books and magazines—I hadn't anticipated the problem of sunshine. I'm right next to the French windows, which is fantastic during the summer, but a nightmare if I'm trying to use the laptop to shoot a little video. The curtains to my right are so thin they can't stop even a photon, and there's a door to my left that's little more than a window that the sunlight streams through.

I tried filming this (Thursday) morning, as there was plenty of cloud cover, yet it was still too bright. Even with the curtains shut, I knew I was fighting a losing battle. That left me with a choice: option A is to relocate to the middle of the room (which I've done before); unfortunately that would involve clearing the dining table and shifting a load of boxes, so it's not my preferred option. Option B is to wait until this afternoon and let the sun move to the other side of the house and see if I race against time to edit the video down before I collapse into bed. There's also an Option C, which is to film it this afternoon and finish the edit tomorrow (Friday) and put it up when I can.

Hence me writing this on Thursday morning as a back-up just in case the video is unusable or just late. I'm happy to make the announcement, but the video will be nice so that you can actually see what I'm nattering on about. [Thursday night update: I'm partway through the edit, so it'll be tomorrow or Saturday before I post the video, depending on what crops up work-wise tomorrow.]


So, I've been busy: MYTEK THE MIGHTY Volume 4 is ready to go. As a few of you will know, I did all four of the books earlier this year so that I could get them out on a regular schedule, with the first two released in July, the third in September and the fourth in November. During the interim I've been working on another book, THE AIR ACE PICTURE LIBRARY COMPANION, which revamps and vastly expands one element of the now out of print book THE WAR LIBRARIES. 

If you're thinking "Well, I've got the War Libraries book, so I won't need this new one," think again. The only element from the old book (the list of titles) takes up 12 pages of the new book, and even that has been revised with whatever new information that has been unearthed since the earlier book was written twenty years ago. Everything else is new, including two introductions, a dozen biographies of important creators who worked on the library, and an artist and author index for the first time, with brief biographies of everyone we know to have written and drawn on AIR ACE. 

And it's in full colour, which is handy because it features a lot of original cover artwork by the likes of Georgio De Garpari, Nino Caroselli, Pino Dell'Orco, Alessandro Biffignandi, and not forgetting the Brits: Graham Coton, Alan Willow and Ian Kennedy.

The MYTEK THE MIGHTY book this time around features half a dozen stories rather than the long yarn that featured in volume 3. There's an introduction about artist Bill Lacey and almost 200 pages of his fantastic artwork. It's worth noting that MYTEK is still going: there was a story in the Smash! Special a couple of years back, and that's continued in this year's Treasury of British Comics Annual 2026. There's juice in the old robot yet! 

Release info. I will start taking orders today and I'm offering discounts on both that will be available for the next two weeks, after which the books will be available on my Ebay store or directly at full price.

I spent longer than I anticipated on last week's video, and it was only by the skin of my teeth that I managed to post it Thursday night, in time for Friday's regular Comic Cuts column. I thought I'd start putting part two together a bit earlier this week, only to discover that the scans I thought I had a good run of were incomplete. Thankfully, the ever-helpful community of comic collectors came to my rescue (a big THANK YOU to Dave Hayward) and you'll see the results above.

I should also add that those issues helped solve a little mystery and confirm that there was a small error in the Lion: King of Picture Story Papers book where, on page 129, I say that Joe Colquhoun was the artist on Paddy Payne except for Gino D'Antonio between 24-10 and 21-11-59. That should be 28-11. Gino did six issues, not five. It's always good to make sure these little errors are corrected.

While I was waiting to finish off the video, I cracked on with the Action Index, which is now mostly written. I've still to tidy up the details on the second run of the title, but I've now re-read almost all the stories (I'm halfway through '"Jinx" Jackson', which is the last series I need to read). Next up, I'll be going through issue-by-issue to see if there were any interesting features that need to be mentioned. Then I've got to go through the whole thing from word one to make sure it all makes sense. It'll be interesting to see what I wrote, as I started this five years ago and I've slept since then.

I've now had the contract for MYTEK THE MIGHTY Volume 4, so I'll be gearing production on that title next week, alongside the AIR ACE PICTURE LIBRARY COMPANION, which I'm now waiting on. They could be on sale as early as next week if I risk having them sent directly again. I'm tempted, as it means I can offer a discount for everyone who picks up the book(s) ahead of Christmas. Yes, Christmas. Apologies if this comes as a shock, but we're only six, seven (geddit?) weeks away from Christmas Day.

Question is, what should I do for the Bear Alley Christmas Party, and will I let myself go to the pub for lunch, or will I force myself to work through until Christmas Eve? Never work for yourself is my advice: the hours are good but the individual minutes can be grueling.

 A short video tribute to the late David Slinn. There were some problems with the glare of sunlight through the curtains which caused the colour to appear streaky and bleached out, so I turned the whole introduction into black & white. Hopefully the next one will see some improvements.

Running repairs might have been a theme of this week. I bought 200 polypropylene bags recently, so I've started cleaning, repairing and bagging some of my paperbacks. They are 5 x 7 3⁄8 inches, so good for, say, old Penguin crime novels, but not for a lot of the 1950s digest-sized paperbacks, which is what I actually want to protect. Not that they'll go to waste, as I have hundreds (maybe thousands) of books that will comfortably fit. 

I've bagged up some of the books on nearby shelves, although I've had to skip some—I bagged my Raymond Chandlers, but couldn't do Killer in the Rain because the spine is too wide and my Hamish Hamilton edition of Pearls Are a Nuisance, which is digest size. I bagged all my Hal Clement books, bar The Best of..., which (again) had a too-wide spine. Hopefully I can buy some slightly larger bags next year.

And one of my shelves was looking slightly drunk and was listing badly; the top shelf began 8 inches to the right of the bottom shelf because the backboard that keeps it upright had bowed because I had stacked too many books on the shelves, some magazines, and a couple of dozen hefty reference books. The nails that held the board in place had mostly come loose, so it was a case of emptying the shelf (thanks Mel!) lugging it out into the kitchen and hammering two dozen nails into it. The lower shelf is permanently warped, but I managed to get a few nails in to hold it steady and even managed to get the two boards to fit back into the bit of plastic that runs from top to bottom down the centre.

It is now back in place, looking good, and I have a small stack of books that I will sell off one way or another that are no longer causing the shelves to bow. 

Tuesday and Wednesday was my weekend—it tends to move around as Mel never has the same days off one week to the next—as I'd spent Saturday and Sunday going through the proof copy of the AIR ACE PICTURE LIBRARY COMPANION and ironing out some textual anomalies and tidying up a couple of bits that needed clarifying. I was back on the same text on Monday when proofreader extraordinaire (stand up and take a bow) Richard Sheaf sent me an embarrassingly long list of corrections and queries.

The text is now done and the book will be out next month. Quite when I don't know as I need also to sort out the contract for MYTEK THE MIGHTY Volume 4. This should be sorted out shortly, hopefully next week. Once I've coughed up some money to Rebellion I should be able to get a decent print run sorted by (hopefully) mid-November. Then it's full steam ahead with the ACTION Index. 

As well as the bagging and repairing of books and shelves, I'm also trying to clear the shelves of some book I no longer need, so you might find a few things turning up on Ebay. 

Ships of the Sky (extract), unpublished strip by David Slinn

Sad news arrived on Wednesday. My good friend and occasional collaborator David Slinn passed away at the age of 88. David worked for a variety of comics, including Eagle and Express Weekly. He was an amazing source of information as he had contacts with most of the comic publishers of the 1950s and 1960s and had an amazing memory for names and incidents. 

He was a delight to chat with, and a conversation could veer sideways into all sorts of areas: it might start with a focus on Cowboy Picture Library (to which he contributed) but could end up with a discussion about Bob Geldof's opinion on teenage girls' magazines. Email took over from phone calls, which meant scans, lists and research could be bounced around—often between David, myself and David Roach—hoping for a consensus of opinion on who an artist might be. Sometimes he could be elliptical with an answer: there is still a Cowboy Comics artist he identified but never got around to naming. "Think so-and-so" [I forget the name] he said, implying that I would recognise the similarities and then make the mental leap that he had. I hadn't a clue and still to this day those issues remain unidentified. (My particular skill when it comes to indexing comics has always been to listen to people smarter than myself and write down what they say.)

David had helped so much with the Ranger index that I thought he deserved a co-writing credit; that's not to say that his contributions to all the other indexes was any less welcome. David and I had launched into a new project, an index and history of (Junior / TV) Express Weekly and the first results were bounced between us in January of this year. I mentioned in my blog for 10 January that I had been writing an article on why newspapers were rationed for so long after the war, full rationing only ending in 1956. Yet new publications were allowed from 1950. Well, that's all part of the Junior Express story and the first thing I sent over to David. I wrote up a second part in April while I was waiting on paperwork for the first two Mytek books. Once that arrived I dived straight back into getting them ready for publication, unaware that David was not well, having been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

He spent his last few months in a hospice, where he was well cared for by staff and family. We chatted a couple of times on the phone and I sent him the second section of the Express Weekly history. Sadly, his condition deteriorated and he passed away on Wednesday morning.

His family will still be processing the news themselves, so it's too soon to write more. Hopefully I'll be able to share more in a week or two. 

It's always nice to begin with some good news. On Tuesday I received three boxes filled with about 60 books, restocking a few titles that I was running low on but also the second proof for THE AIR  ACE PICTURE LIBRARY COMPANION, which is now being re-read yet again. I've also called upon the services of a second pair of eyes to make sure I haven't made any particularly egregious gaffs.

Proofing is a necessary evil. I'm not a fan... I'd rather get on with something new, but I also know I make a lot of mistakes. Not factual—I put a lot of time into research and double-checking facts wherever possible, but that can lead to glitches in the text. A lot of writers will belt out a first draft as ideas bubble up and, once that's written, will go back and revise. For the most part I revise as I go along, as I find new information or correct things that turn out to be wrong. I've been writing a lot of biographical sketches lately and nailing down dates is always a nightmare, especially on foreign strips which may have been published across Europe and South America at various times under various titles. I found myself constantly moving chunks of text around. 

Similarly working on the introductions for the new book, I was constantly moving information around to make it flow better and tell the story more clearly. This can be as simple as altering a couple of sentences, shifting a couple of paragraphs to an earlier or later place in the narrative, or cutting out a whole section and reworking it for elsewhere in the book. 


What this means is that, once I'm finished, I only rarely need to make any changes. I'll tinker with the text, but once it's done it's done. But it's vital to proof carefully because moving text around can lead to unexpected problems. A particular bugbear with writing about comics is describing what people do: they work, they illustrate, they paint, they draw... remove text and you can find that now you have adjoining sentences using the same word or phrase, and you don't want to describe someone as "illustrating an illustration" or say "he drew" followed by "he then drew" and "later he drew"—it might be factually right, but it reads like an unfortunate stutter on paper.

Proofing for me usually consists of weeding out these little artifacts left by shifting things around or adding / changing details as I come upon them. And typos. For a writer, my spelling isn't always what it should be. And I know what I meant to write, so I don't always see what I actually wrote. That's why a second set of eyes is necessary when it comes to proofing.


Getting this book and the fourth volume of MYTEK THE MIGHTY sorted has meant that my work on the ACTION INDEX has been a bit stop-start, although I have now got a list of the contents of the Summer Specials and Annuals sorted and I've scanned a whole bunch of covers. The next step is to read some of the later stories that I didn't read at the time as I was one of the readers who deserted the comic when it returned to the newsstands after a two month gap in publication.  You could instantly tell that something had happened and the stories were somehow less Action and more tale-end Valiant (which I had also given up on a year or two earlier). Anyway, that's a whole other story... which I'm sure will be told when I get the ACTION INDEX into publishable form.

My trip to Specsavers to see if I needed new glasses was last week's cliffhanger. Well, the (more) good news is that my prescription has barely changed, so my old glasses will do me for another two years. Phew! That money is better spent on books. As there is no Paperback & Pulp Book Fair this month, I've treated myself to a bit of retail therapy and bought a few odds and ends that I've spotted on Ebay and some polypropylene bags to put them in. I'll have to wait until next year before I can get bags that will fit digest-sized paperbacks, but I can get started cleaning some of my older paperbacks, doing little bits of repair work to stop them disintegrating, and bag them up to keep them safe—something I've been meaning to do for years but never gotten around to.

Time to get back to the grindstone...

Just in case you missed it, I posted an extra Comic Cuts column on Sunday about my exploits at the Colchester Comic Mart. Scroll down, or follow this link if you want to find out what happened.

You can probably guess how I spent the day after the Mart. Proofing and snoozing and watching the new Shane Black movie, Play Dirty. I've been looking forward to seeing this since it was announced because it's based on the Parker novels by Richard Stark (Donald E Westlake), which I like, and it was co-written and directed by Black, whose previous crime noir movies (The Long Kiss Goodnight, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys) have been excellent. 

This one, not so much. It was good enough for passing a Sunday afternoon, but no more than that. Too many car chases/train chases and not enough sparkling dialogue, some pretty ropy special effects and a John Wick level body count don't add to making this a Parker movie of note. I still rate Point Blank with Lee Marvin and the Director's Cut of Payback with Mel Gibson as the best Parker adaptations. The Jason Statham Parker wasn't bad, but I haven't felt the need to rewatch it. That probably puts it on a par with this new version.

Monday and Tuesday were madcap. I needed to get the proofing on the AIR ACE COMPANION finished and I still had quite a way to go. The rush was because I wanted to get a second proof ordered alongside my restocks—now you know what the takings from the weekend went on! More books!

I'd gone through the book by Monday evening and fired up my old PC on Tuesday morning to make all the required corrections. There was only one major gaff, where I'd managed to put some pictures over the text on one of the biographies. The only way to fix the problem was to drop a couple of pictures. That still leaves about 320 pictures, so the book is still a visual treat. 

I managed to get the new book order placed before midnight on Tuesday, so I should have some restocks, and the second proof with me before the month is out. Any further corrections needed can be done quickly and that puts me on course to get this out alongside MYTEK THE MIGHTY Volume 4 in November, in plenty of time for Christmas as promised.

The Post Office delivered their twice-annual present on 6 October, increasing the price of postage for all "large letter" parcels both domestic and international. I'm going to have to sit down and seriously look at my costs, because my print costs also increased in August and I ended up with an order that came through Amazon actually costing me money—once you totted up the cost of production, postage to get the book to me, then the international postage and packaging to get the book to the customer, it added up to more than what Amazon sent me after taking their large cut.

Talking of postage... Our local post box was found wrapped up in a mysterious move by the Post Office last Monday. Like most villages, we have a village shop that has a post office counter just down the road. The post box sits just outside. There are also a couple of other traditional tall round and smaller square boxes dotted around the place. I use the one nearest for convenience and the fact that it is the most likely to be emptied daily.

I know the people in the shop well (I'm posting stuff most days) and there was confusion and anger. Apparently this was done without warning and not even the Post Office employees sent out in their vans to pick up the post knew anything about it. All the staff were told was that the post box was going to be replaced with an automatic postbox of a kind that scans a parcel as it was posted and opens a drop-down drawer. They're solar powered (so no more knitted postbox toppers) and I might need a "Royal Mail app" to post things. And it might be three months before the new box arrives.

The staff in the shop were already having to face the ire of customers who wanted to post stuff out to North America (Royal Mail suspended shipments recently until a new duty system could be implemented) and  Canada (where postal staff are on strike). Now you can't post anything out of hours at that box, probably the most convenient one for the most people.

Visiting the shop yesterday, I learned that the box would soon be back to normal as it is in a conservation area and the Post Office aren't allowed to put in a new box; in other words, it now looks like the box has been dressed up in a Hallowe'en costume just for October.

I'm writing this Thursday morning as I have an appointment in town to have an eye check-up to see if I need new glasses. I'll leave that as this week's cliffhanger. Come back next week to find out... 

Saturday's Colchester Comic Mart began on a bright note—Storm Amy had blown through on Friday and it had rained most of the day, but, fortunately, she cleared off into the North Sea overnight and the morning sun broke through the clouds as I was waiting for the bus.

I arrived at the show's home, the Presbyterian Church in Eld Lane around 8:45 and wandered in to find most of the tables already stacked with comics (I think the venue opened at 7:30) and organisers Karl Kennedy and Andy Yates (Stephen Hume having been unavoidably detained in Glasgow) had sorted out a table for me, generously paid for by Bear Alley Books... oh. hang on...


Karl had picked up some boxes of books from me on Monday, along with some artwork for the art show. (I don't drive, never have, as I've always worked close to home—close to the train station when I worked on London—or at home.) These I unpacked and spread out and, learning that one of the guests had fallen ill, managed to spread my wares onto the spare table. Then a new guest was announced and I had to unspread everything. But then we found a smaller table that wasn't being used, so I lugged that over to where I was stationed and once again spread out, as can be seen in the photo at the head of this column. Thankfully, nobody thought to charge me or I'd have had to try and recoup the costs from the publisher.

Doors opened at 10:00 and we were busy for the next couple of hours. I had a chance to chat to other guests, to my right, author Jim Swallow, and to my left, author Roy Rivett, both on the select list of people who have written for Commando. Jim is shortly to begin writing a new Commando based on an old Warlord strip from the early 1980s. I'd better not say what, as I don't think it has been announced. Roy had some of his old issues on sale along with the original scripts, which are always fun to compare, and see how an artist has interpreted a description of a scene.

Keith Burns has been a regular at these shows for at least the past three years. He always has some gorgeous art and prints to show off. There might even be a book cover for Bear Alley in the future... I'm saying nothing!

Other guests included Christian Hauth (who has posted some photos of the event on Facebook), and actors Chris Bunn and Ross Sambridge, who were signing photos. 

Always fascinating, Stuart and Ed set up a fantastic gallery with a little help from Karl Seaman and me. I said this on the day, but it's a shame the gallery was in a back room, where we used to have it at the back of the hall. I understand there were space considerations, but that doesn't alter the basic fact that some might have missed the chance to see an amazing selection of original artwork.


There were 62 people through the door, which might not sound like many, but they were came with full wallets and were prepared to spend. I'm never sure what to take. I think I took some of everything on my first show and sold only the comic strip collections; last year was exceptional as it was launch day for THE PHANTOM PATROL so that book sold especially well. Thanks to Karl's van, I decided to take a wider selection this year compared to last year, and thank goodness I did, because the indexes sold well... a couple of them actually sold out. I mean, I only had three copies of each on the table, but they sold as well as some of the comic collections.

With no new book to flog, and many of the regulars having already bought MYTEK VOLUME 3, I think the day went very well. I was about £100 down on last year, but still took a respectable amount. Costs are minimal (the table was £15) and I even won something in the raffle.

All told, a very good day for sales and an even better day for just chatting to people. 

By the time you read this I will be shot full of vaccine to protect me from the flu and Covid over the coming winter months. Although I spend most of my life in front of a computer, Mel has a customer-facing job and I'm in and out of the local shops. While it's impossible to protect yourself 100% from catching something, you can reduce the risk of getting a bad dose. An ounce of prevention and all that.

Yes, the Seasonal Vaccine Programme began on Wednesday October 1st and I was booked in for Thursday morning. Just good luck, really; I knew it was coming and managed to book myself an early slot at a pharmacy in Colchester. If you're eligible, it's worth sorting out an appointment thought the NHS website as it's easy (must be if I can manage it), quick, and gives you some choice of when and where you get your jab(s).

Why all this talk of flu jabs? Frankly, it's for my selfish benefit, as I know that my audience here, and for the books I publish, skews towards the older gentleman. I have two books coming out in November and I'm hoping to have another one out not long after Christmas. Basically, I can't afford to lose anyone: a lot of you are repeat customers and I need every one of you to stay healthy.

And, yes, you didn't mis-read me. Two books coming out in November! I have a proof copy of THE AIR ACE PICTURE LIBRARY COMPANION in my hands, and I've had good feedback from the few people who have seen it. I've started proofing and should have a second proof before the end of the month, which will mean I can print the book alongside MYTEK Volume 4.

The other bit of good news is that I've borrowed a stack of copies of the second series of Action, post-ban, which means that I can hopefully finish writing, scanning and designing the ACTION INDEX over the next few months.

The folks who had to wait weeks for the delivery of the first MYTEK volumes might find it amusing to hear that I'm possibly in the same boat with a book I ordered recently. I have been looking out for an affordable copy of Mike Ashley's Rise of the Cyberzines, volume five of his history of science fiction magazines, which came out from the Liverpool University Press in hardback for £95 in 2022 and appeared in paperback in 2024 priced £40, which is too rich for my wallet.

So when I saw a copy on sale for £25 plus £2.95 postage, I jumped on it. The order confirmation stated clearly that the order was from a British company and would ship from the UK. Well, it would at that price. The next day I get a message from the seller saying that there was a delay on the order and it would not arrive until November 12th. No other explanation.


I contacted Biblio, the platform through which I bought the book. 24 hours later, they contact the seller asking for further information. Four hours later, I'm told that the book will be with me some time between the 3rd and the 8th of October. Whether it arrives or not... well, we will just have to wait and see. At least there's now a paper trail that should allow me to get my money refunded if the book doesn't turn up.

At the same time, I've now had two Evri packages go astray since Ebay introduced their "Simple Delivery" system, which is anything but. Back in the day, everything went out 48 hour tracked post and it worked. Now I have to use prepaid postage labels which cost the customer more and there's a fee added to the price of the books, plus VAT (yes, I know there's no VAT on books in the UK, but there are some VATable costs incurred through Ebay).

An order that arrived yesterday was for Myteks 1 and 2. Same buyer, same address, same price for the books. But when I downloaded the postage labels, they were for different services, one charging £2.75, the other £2.94, neither of which actually cover the cost of postage and packing: £2.70 for postage, 35p for the envelope and 4p for the label, bringing the total p&p to £3.09. Not a huge difference in the big scheme of things, but it will mount up over time. So the two books went off in different directions, one down to the Post Office in the village, the other around the corner to the Co-op, our local Evri pick-up point. I had to cue up twice! (First world problems, eh?)


The Colchester Comic Mart is on Saturday (4 October); the books have already been dispatched (thanks, Karl!) and copies of MYTEK and all the other titles from Bear Alley will be available. I'll even knock the cost of postage off.

The venue is the Colchester Baptist Church, which is right in the town centre—see map (click for a bigger version)—and easily accessible. There are car parks nearby, plenty of tea rooms, eateries and pubs within easy walking distance, and lots of see and do. We have a castle and it's just off the High Street. There are 12 charity shops and one good second-hand book shop.

Hopefully I'll see you there.

I'm pleased to write that it has been a busy and productive week. In fact, the weekend was somewhat manic as some information I was waiting on for the AIR ACE COMPANION arrived from my partner in comics list-making, David Roach. It meant a little bit of tinkering to the main checklist and dealing with the ripples that made in the artist and writer indexes, but by the weekend I had a book that could be sent off for proofing.

Well, almost. Some stupid fool decided to bold up a bunch of titles, which I worked on until past midnight on Sunday and was back on at 6:30 on Monday morning. And that same fool had also decided to make some alterations to the captions throughout the book, which meant going through all 120 pages again. OK, so both will improve the book in the end, but if I ever catch that fool, I'm going to have words.

All I needed now was a cover, which I have to confess came together rather smoothly and without much fuss on Monday, which meant that I was able to order up a proof alongside a bit of a restock of various other titles. 

The restock is necessary as the sale of the first three MYTEK THE MIGHTY books has sparked interest in some of the other books I've published. I had already ordered some restocks earlier this month, planning ahead for the Comic Mart that's now only eight days away, but I've had a nice little run of sales, which has meant I'm out of a couple of books and running low on a couple of others. Now all I've got to do is keep my fingers crossed that the first batch arrives in time and that I'm left with enough stock to keep people supplied while I wait for the second batch.


I've mentioned previously that keeping sensible levels of stock is becoming more and more problematic. I've now published 46 books over the past 14 years and 36 are still in print (some licensed books have dropped off the Bear Alley list, and a couple of early titles have been taken out of print—the three volume version of Eagles Over the Western Front, for instance, now replaced by The Complete Eagles Over the Western Front). Trying to keep 36 titles in print without bankrupting myself isn't always easy as there can be some big calls on my bank account on occasions—such as now, where I've paid for a fairly large (for me) first print run of MYTEK volume 3, the associated license fee for that book and additional copies of PHANTOM PATROL, two restock print runs, plus the usual sundries like envelopes, book wraps and sticky labels.

There's also the simple matter of space. I just don't have the space to hold too many boxes of unsold stock. I've said before, the house is starting to bulge around the middle and that makes our landlady nervous.

Thanks to family visits, we've had a couple of days where we've managed to get out of the house, which has been nice, given how busy I've been. We paid a visit to one of the local pubs with my Mum on Tuesday and to a restaurant with Mel's parents on Thursday. We also passed on a couple of pounds of unripened tomatoes for turning into chutney as it doesn't seem likely that they will ripen. We've had a good year for cucumbers — we've had a dozen from the one plant — but we've probably only had maybe two dozen ripened tomatoes; some are sitting on the window sill in the kitchen, still looking a little green around the gills. But the few that ripened turned a rich red and they've tasted fine.

I've picked up a couple of old paperbacks by someone I'd like to write up, although it'll be a relatively short piece as these are the only two books I have by this particular author. But I dipped into one and there are a couple of turns of phrase that seem familiar. I'm sure I've read something by this guy before under a different name. Some further investigation is needed.

That's all for now. I'm exhausted!

Only a few weeks late—I'd originally planned for this to be released mid-August—MYTEK THE MIGHTY Volume 3 has arrived. Two hundred pages of magnificent robot ape action, penned by the insanely imaginative Tom Tully and drawn by Bill Lacey, whose glorious graphics illustrate the thrilling story of the return of Gogra!

Volume 3 is one massive story as Gogra builds his own huge robot in his own image—but he needs Mytek's learning brain to power the metal monster. If you thought Gogra's plans were the epitome of evil in previous volumes, here he is literally pulling the Earth off its axis to blackmail every country on the planet.

Phew!

By the time you read this, I should have everything in place so you can order MYTEK Volume 3. I should have had this ready by the tail end of last week, but there was a bit of a family crisis when my uncle went into hospital following a stroke and, frankly, I didn't want to face launching a book with that hanging over my head. A week on, and with visible improvements being made, it's time to fire up the Bear Alley Books web page and add the latest offering. It will also be available via Ebay, although I think it will work out a little cheaper if you pay via PayPal. If you're in Europe or North America, I'd suggest you pay by PayPal as Ebay's Global Shipping can prove expensive.


I'm still trying to figure out what to do about Amazon. I had an order this week from Singapore and it cost me money to fulfill the order, which came in from Amazon. A £16 book cost me £19 to post and Amazon charged the customer £7. I thought I'd be able to get a good deal posting internationally through Amazon themselves, but the only option they offered was DHL—who wanted £37. Call me cynical, but I think they're trying to drive people towards the Amazon fulfillment programme... but how much that would cost me on every book sold I don't know. Also, they've recently announced that their charges for the programme will go up when they're busy (Christmas, for instance). It's a cynical money-grab that I don't want to be part of, but, unfortunately, Amazon are a part of our lives now and such a big part of the book retail business that sometimes you have to find ways to deal with them. I'll figure out something eventually, but until I do, new books won't be available through Amazon.

I'll keep this short as I have the inevitable launch video to record. Actually there isn't much in the way of news. I'm gearing up for the Colchester Comic Mart on October 4th. Not long to go now! I wrote up the last of the biographical essays I needed, and that leaves one that requires some revision which I'll hopefully get to next week. I have family commitments that will slow me down over the next seven days and I might have to write the next Comic Cuts column on Wednesday, so it might also be very short on news. I'm never sure if "no news is good news" applies to a news column, but at least the news this week is good news not bad!

I had hoped to have the next MYTEK book ready for release this week, but I'm going to delay it until next week as a couple of things have come up which might mean I can't get books out of the house as promptly as I would want to, especially given the problems I had with timely deliveries with the first two volumes. There's a family matter causing some concern and a couple of ongoing projects that I want to focus on for another week before all hell breaks loose (a slight exaggeration) and I spend a couple of days packing books.

It hasn't been all bad news, as I was planning to take things a little easier ahead of the book launch and I've managed to finish one book and start another, and I've caught up on some movies. 

The book, which I shot through in about ten days (quick for me) was Tatiana by Martin Cruz Smith, the eighth in his Arkady Renko series (the first was Gorky Park, which was filmed). The story has plenty of engaging elements, the murder of a translator, a journalist and a Russian gang boss, an unsolvable cipher in a notebook, a very expensive bike that has gone missing... Smith often deliberately obscured any clues to solving a mystery, but this one is fairly straightforward, but whodunnit isn't nearly as important as what were they doing and why.

There's also a progression in Arkady Renko's personal life that has been building up in the last book or three, his relationship with Anya and his adopted son, the chess prodigy Zehenya. Their presence is strongly felt and I look forward to seeing how things develop in the next book. (Sadly, I only have three more to read as Smith died earlier this year. I recently updated a cover gallery I put up some years ago.)

The films have been a mixed bag. At the end of most I've thought, "Well, I've watched it now and I never have to do that again." F1 had Brad Pitt and some high speed action, but a hackneyed plot about an old-timer teaching a youngster how to win—mostly by putting other drivers' lives in danger at every turn. The selling point of Nobody is that you believed Bob Odenkirk was just a regular guy and the pleasure in the film was discovering that he was extraordinary. Nobody 2 held no surprises and 90 minutes of Odenkirk punching his way through a family vacation wasn't as fun as I'd hoped. Exterritorial, or Die Hard in the US Consulate in Frankfurt, sees Jeanne Goursaud kicking the butts of every trained soldier she meets in search of her missing son. There weren't any surprises except that I thoroughly enjoyed it!


Pixar's Elio was disappointing. They've done the same kind of thing before and better and while it's a perfectly serviceable movie I spent quite a lot of it wishing I was watching The Incredibles. The Naked Gun also had me wanting to watch the originals, but while comparisons are inevitable, this wasn't as bad as some have painted. It had the same kind of silly jokes you'd expect of a Frank Drebin movie (and, best of all, the original Police Squad! TV series) and some laugh-out-loud moments. Liam Neeson plays it straight, unaware of the chaos around him.

And, finally, the film that kept me up until one o'clock this morning, Kansas City Confidential, a 1952 crime-noir about a bank heist that's blamed on an ex-con. The crooks are masked whenever they meet, so cannot identify each other or the Mr Big behind the job. The crooks are the usual bunch of cowards, tough guys and a sweaty sex-pest played by Lee Van Cleef; the hero isn't just in it for revenge—he wants some of the money, too. And Mr Big has his own plans to sell everybody out. I put this on planning to watch for ten minutes and then doze off, only to be sucked in for the full 95 minutes.

In between, I've been working hard on some biographies of artists. Having written up a British artist last week, I was back to Google Translate for the latest batch: two Italians and an Argentinian who went to live in Italy. I'm enjoying writing these little essays as it is exposing me to a huge amount of European and South American work that I wouldn't otherwise know about. It's a shame that I don't have three lives to live so that I could really indulge myself in reading these strips.

I began writing little biographical essays in the BEYOND THE VOID book and I've continued ever since; they're a feature in the AIR ACE COMPANION and will be a feature in this new index that I'm working on, which will similarly romp through the lives of a dozen or so key artists. 

Mind you, back in 2012 I did a book called NOT FORGOTTEN, which was a collection of 34 essays on comic creators who had died in 2009-10, and it bombed. In the ten years I kept it in print it sold two dozen copies. I kid you not. That's 2.4 copies a year! In the end I thought I'd pull it and one day I'll figure out where I went wrong. All I can say is, if I hadn't written it, I'd have bought a copy.

Maybe I should gather them all together with all the other essays and call it WHO'S WHO IN BRITISH COMICS (Volume 1). Or maybe set up a Patreon or a Substack so that I can earn a bit while I'm writing entries. Something else I need to think about.