Comic Cuts — 11 July 2025

I've been kept busy with advance orders for MYTEK THE MIGHTY, which is going pretty well. I'm not measuring like for like precisely, but I think it will do better than PHANTOM PATROL but won't hit the dizzying heights of my COUNTDOWN index, which took off like a rocket. But it's going to wipe its face. 

Which is a relief, because with these licensed titles you have to pay the fees up front, there have been proofs to pay for and then a print run, which will be my sales stock for the next few months. Most of this is paid for before I see a penny, and I'm also going to be carrying quite a bit of stock because print prices are to rise in about three weeks. I'll absorb the increases where I can, but I might have to charge a little more for one or two of my books... I still need to sit down with a pen and the back of a fag packet to get my head around the implications.

The launch of MYTEK was a bit of a mad dash. I usually do a small printing of maybe 10 copies to make sure the books print consistently, and these had just arrived when my friend Jules Burt asked for some cover scans as he was launching a video review on Wednesday. I was thinking that I had until Friday and could amble through a few jobs that needed doing; this was not to be and I had to bring everything forward a day, writing up a column for the Bear Alley Books page, making sure I let people know through Facebook's Bear Alley Book page, and setting up various links from one to the other. It might not sound like much, but it all takes time — and I do have other things to do, too. (Write this blog being one of them.)

Once the news was let loose on the world, I had some fun filming a little video. I don't know if I'm getting any better at these, but I think the 13 minute video only took 20 minutes to film. I tend to do these off the cuff with only a broad idea of what I want to say. This time I got most of it right first time, remembered to have copies of the book next to me so I could show them on camera, made sure I could wear that t-shirt without causing the camera to go crazy. I had problems once during an interview and since then I've always worn a colour t-shirt for Comic Cuts videos and other video recordings.

Many years ago, I was asked to be part of a show called For Love or Money on, I think, Channel 4, to talk about old gangster paperbacks. I took up a hold-all full of them and hung around the office where we were to film but nobody was answering the door. After about 15 minutes of panic, someone arrived—I'll call her the runner as I can't recall her actual position—and said that the crew was running late, so we trotted around the corner to the pub. 

While I was relaxing into a pint, this girl asked: "Do you have a change of shirt?" This was unexpected, so I told her "No." My pale blue shirt might be a problem, she explained, because they wanted to blue-screen images of books behind me while I talked. "But don't worry, we'll sort something out."

The crew arrived and set up in the office, so there was now a couple of blokes (cameraman, sound engineer) and a couple of girls (the producer/director and the runner I'd been to the pub with). The shirt thing was still an issue as the only suitable clothing I could wear belonged to the director... but she had nothing on underneath (it was a warm summer evening). Some clothes juggling later, I'm in her t-shirt, she is in the blouse belonging to the runner, which was quite a tight fit, and the runner was in her bra, sat just to one side of the producer. 

I'm surprised I managed to answer any of their questions. Also, the t-shirt had a small, circular logo, which was cut out by the blue-screen effects, so it looked like I had been shot in the chest. That was my first ever TV interview. I don't think any since have matched it!

I'm sixty pages into the AIR ACE COMPANION and it's turning into a bit of a monster. I was aiming for under 100 pages, but it might creep over that. There are just too many brilliant artists who need illustrating! I've already increased the number of biographies from 10 to 15. The full list now includes F. Solano Lopez, Nino Caroselli, George Stokes, Aldo Di Gennaro, Ian Kennedy, Fernando Fernandez, Juan Zanotto, Pino Dell'Orco, Victor Hugo Arias, E.L. Blandford, Juan Abellan, Graham Coton, Marcello Ralli, Alan Willow, Luis Martinez Mira, Leopoldo Ortiz and Leopoldo Sanchez.

If you're wondering why Giorgio Di Gaspari or Alessandro Biffignandi, two of the chief cover artists, are missing... there will be plenty of room for them when I get around to the WAR AND BATTLE COMPANION. Oh, boy... I've just committed myself to yet another book!

Comic Cuts — 13 December 2024

I've picked up considerably this week despite still suffering from the long tail of a cold... I still have a few sniffles to contend with, but nowhere near as bad as it was. A cold normally lasts 7-10 days—the rule of thumb "three days coming, three days here, three days going" is usually accurate—but this one has hung around for a fortnight. But it's definitely on the way out.

I was very happy to learn that BEYOND THE VOID: THE REMARKABLE HISTORY OF BADGER BOOKS was named as the 2024 Book of the Year by Jules Burt on his YouTube channel. Bizarrely this is the second time Steve Holland has won (and I chose my words carefully) because last year's winner was the art book Steve Holland: Paperback Hero edited by Michael Stradford. Third time if you count the introduction I wrote for Rayguns and Rocketships by Rian Hughes, the 2022 winner.

BEYOND was up against some stiff competition, including issues of Bare Bones, Men's Adventure Quarterly, Phantasmagoria and The Paperback Fanatic, the art book Dangerous Dames and Cover Dolls: The Art of Ron Lesser Vol. 2 edited by Robert Deis, Bill Cunningham and Daniel Zimmer, the updated biography/bibliography  Basil Copper: A Life in Books, edited by Stephen Jones, and the anthology Weasels Ripped My Flesh! edited by Robert Deis & Wyatt Doyle, with Josh Alan Friedman.

I thought maybe the art book, Dangerous Dames, or the anthology, Weasels, might beat out my Badger Books history... but in the last few minutes of Jules' video BEYOND pipped everyone at the post. Here's the announcement and I'll put in the full video below...



I'm back to work for the next two weeks, although I've been quite lazy this week, spending some time putting together the John Brunner cover gallery that went up Thursday morning, tidying up some of the books that I'd needed while I was writing and designing DREAMING OF UTOPIA, battling the new online reception area set up by our local surgery so I could sort out a repeat prescription while on the phone to the human receptionist at the same surgery, putting up the Christmas tree, and a hundred and one other odds and ends I'd been putting off until after the book was written/out and after the cold had abated.

I've put in a little time on the next batch of books, but I've also pulled together a piece for someone else's magazine and written up a blog post for another site, although I'm waiting on seeing a scan of a book before I can finish it off. There's another article about an old author that I need to finish off, too.

And I'm looking ahead to future projects, including another index, and, floating around in the background, is yet another project that I suspect I'll have to give away, but it needs to be done for 2026 in order to celebrate an anniversary. This particular project has been waiting in the wings since 1979, so it will only be 47 years late... I really need to get going with that!

Hope you're all looking forward to Christmas as much as I am.

Comic Cuts — 15 November 2024

I'm now taking orders for DREAMING OF UTOPIA, the new book about Utopian Publications and the history of Lloyd Cole and Benson Herbert. The proof I was talking about last week finally turned up and was pretty close to what I wanted, so with a couple of very small tweaks I decided to have the printer run off some copies so I'll have some at the Paperback & Pulp Book Fair in Bloomsbury on the Sunday, November 24th.

The book won't be available on eBay or Amazon until after the Book Fair as I want to take the small print run up to London with me. I won't be taking as many copies as I did the Badger book (BEYOND THE VOID) as I'm going to be carrying the damn things in a bag rather than try to get the trolley on and off the train again, which has given me eight months of problems with the tendons in my right arm. So I'll be bringing fewer copies, only a couple of the Badger book and maybe a couple of THE TRIALS OF HANK JANSON, unless you've asked (as one person has) for a copy of one of our other books.

As usual, I'll offer a bit of a discount to anyone ordering in the next couple of weeks. I take these advance orders through Paypal — just go to the Bear Alley Books page for price info. and where to send it. Make sure you let me know your address!

While I'm waiting for that order to go through — I'm also waiting on restocks of THE PHANTOM PATROL, which is why I haven't been able to put in a bigger order for the new books — I've put my nose to the grindstone of getting the next book started. A quick Thank You to everyone who has joined in trying to decipher my cryptic crossword-style clue to what it is — a couple of early entries were mentioned in the comments last week, but I've also had correct answers from Kid Robson, Mike Williams, Mike Hall and Ronald McNeil over the last few days.

The new books won't be out for a little while yet as I have introductions to write, pages to lay out and covers to sort out. There are four volumes and I want to get the first two out together with the others following a couple of months apart, as that will help spread my costs a little. It isn't cheap doing these books and the more I publish, the more stock I need to carry.

I'm hoping that, in between, I can work on a couple of other projects. In no particular order, I want to get the War, Battle and Air Ace libraries back in print, but in a different format, and I'd love to get back to two books I started ages ago, indexing Valiant and Action. There's another comic strip I have my eye on for reprinting, too. And I'd like to do another book about old paperbacks and already have some of the next one written... and, of course, another Forgotten Authors volume.

That should keep me busy in 2025... only six weeks away as I type this and with a lot of mince pies to be eaten before the clock strikes and the fireworks go off.

Comic Cuts — 12 January 2024

Because of an error on the last pair of proofs I had printed, I'm still waiting on a copy of Beyond the Void that I'm happy with. Hence no news of when the book will be available. (But it will be soon, I promise.)

I'm told that the corrected version will be with me in a couple of days, after which I will print off two more copies, just to make sure that the book is printing correctly, so there is still a couple of weeks to go. I should add that the problem with recent proofs wasn't the colour or anything like that. The printer had a problem with the trimming of the book, which meant that they cut about a milimeter off the top of the header (the text that often runs along the top of the book); I made the header smaller, but the trim was still very close, so I have since dispensed with it entirely. It's partly my own fault for trying to make the most of every page and not losing space to wide margins — the only way to keep the pagination down on what is quite a big (and expensive to print) full-colour book.

Not that I'm unhappy with the end product, and it has now been seen by one more person (I think outside of Mel and me, only two people have seen copies)... and they now have a printed copy to take home and read. That lucky (?) person is my book collecting pal Steve Chibnall, who was visiting the University of Essex to do some research. We spent an enjoyable evening at a local pub chatting about books old and new, catching up on our latest projects and enjoying what turned out to be some nice pub grub.

It was actually our second choice of pub, but the first (The Greyhound) was packed, with no tables available for eating. So we headed down to the Rose & Crown on the river front, and it was almost empty. By the time food arrived it was filling up quite dramatically and we realised why others had avoided it... there was a poker tournament planned for the evening which took over most of the tables. Mystery solved.

While I won't mention the project that brought Steve to the University (that's up to him to reveal), I can say that he is working on another book about books, and, more specifically, a book about book jackets. I suspect this is going to take some time to complete, but I'm already thinking of how I can guarentee getting the first copy off the presses. Maybe start bribing the author and praising him outrageously. So that's a book coming out from Steve "Mr Cool" Chibnall.

About five columns back I mentioned that I'd had to change a number of passwords that might have been compromised thanks to the ransomeware hack of the British Libraries databases. Well, part two of that fallout is that I might not see any PLR for a while, as the BL is in charge of paying out Public Lending Rights.

Now, I have to admit that this is not a big deal for me as very few of my books make it into the lending library system. The last books that did in any meaningful way were the large War, Battle and Air Ace reprints I did for Prion 15-20 years ago. I did reasonably well out of them in the period 2009-18, although not the thousands that JK Rowling or Richard Osman would expect to receive.

My best year earned me £81.26. Most years I don't get anything because I don't achieve the minimum of £1, although I had a surprise in 2021 when I was paid £4.78 — and all thanks to one book being taken out just before the Covid lockdown. With libraries closed, all books already on loan were automatically renewed, and that one copy of Aces High clocked up 100 loans! Thanks, whoever borrowed the book... it was a very pleasant surprise and would be just enough for a pint in 2024! (Seriously, the Office of National Statistics has worked out that the average price of a pint of lager is £4.58, up from £1 in 1987.)

It was bitterly cold on our trip out to the pub, but at least it wasn't snowing. We had snow earlier in the week, and, content provider that I am, I filmed it. Twenty seconds it took before I came to my senses and realised that most people have seen snow and didn't really need to see that latest snowfall in my back garden. But I'm putting it up anyway.

What is surprising is that a couple of trees are in bloom and I can only think that it is down to the mild weather we have been having. That's the mild weather we were having just before the snow. Things have gotten a lot chillier over the past week, and I'm going to end this seemingly ceaseless chatter because it's damned cold in my office and bed is warm and welcoming.

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