Molly Parkin cover gallery

A bit of a memorial to the late Molly Parkin, who died on January 5th at the age of 93.

Love All (London, Blond & Briggs, 1974; Nash Publishing, 1975)
Star 0352-30080-9, 1975, 190pp, 50p.
---- [2nd imp.] 1977; [3rd imp.] 1979; [4th imp.] 1979; [6th imp.] 1980; [7th imp.] 1984, £1.80.

Up Tight (London, Blond & Briggs, 1975)
Star 0352-29717-9, 1976, 207pp, 60p.
---- [2nd imp.] 1977; [3rd imp.] 1978, 60p.

Full Up (London, Michael Joseph; New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1976)
Sphere 0722-10433-2, 1977, 224pp, 75p. 
---- [2nd imp.] 1979; [3rd imp.] 1981; [4th imp.] 1983; [5th imp.] 1984
Sphere 0722-10576-2 [6th imp.] 1985
---- [7th imp.] 1985, 224pp, £2.25.

Write Up (London, Michael Joseph, 1977)
Sphere, 1978.

Good Golly Ms. Molly, edited by Richard Barber (London, Star, 1978)
Star 0352-30215-1, 1978, 154pp, £1.25. Cover photo by John Timbers

Switchback (London, W. H. Allen, 1978)
Star 0352-30263-1, 1979.
---- [2nd imp.] 1979
---- [3rd imp.] 1982, 154pp, £1.25. 

Fast and Loose (London, W. H. Allen, 1979)
Star 0352-30455-3, 1980, 171pp, 95p. 

Up & Coming (London, W. H. Allen, 1980)
Star 0352-30758-7, 1981.
---- [2nd] 1982
Star 978-0352-30758-3 [3rd] 1985, 159pp, £1.60.

A Bite of the Apple (London, W. H. Allen, 1981)
Star 0352-31035-9, 1982, 165pp, £1.35.

Love Bites (London, W. H. Allen, 1982)
Star 0352-31223-8, 1983

Breast Stroke (London, W. H. Allen, 1983)
Star 0352-31457-5, 1984
---- [2nd imp.] 1987
Star 978-0352-31457-4 [3rd imp.] 1989, 185pp, £2.25.

Comic Cuts — 20 February 2026

I'm writing this a little earlier than normal as I want to take a day off on Thursday, when I would normally be writing. It's only so I can head into nearby Colchester and pick up a few things—nothing exciting: I need a couple of new shirts and it'll be nice to potter around in the charity shops.

I did the layouts for the final pages of the main history for ACTION: THE SEVENPENNY NIGHTMARE on Friday and have spent the last few days working on the various checklists (Action 1st series, Action 2nd series, Summer Specials and Annuals), compiling a creators' index, and doing the layouts at the back end of the book. The final pagination total is 179, which is a little longer than I had planned for (I thought it would be about 160-170), but not so far out that it will make me change my plans to publish in full colour. Yes, an awful lot of pages will be black & white, but with printing its all or nothing. 

The book will be a bit more expensive to print, but I'll absorb the additional cost so the price will be about £25—not much more than the MYTEK books, which were b/w but for which I've had to pay a licence fee to Rebellion, who own the publishing rights. It's the same price as BEYOND THE VOID, the book about Badger Books that was published back in March 2024. I'll do the usual "early bird" discount. I'm aiming to have copies on sale at the Glasgow Comic Swapmeet on March 21st, after which I'll start selling as normal, firstly through Paypal and then through Ebay.

By the time you read this I will have ordered a couple of proof copies to make sure that the colour and printing works correctly as I don't want a repeat of what happened with the first MYTEK books! If I've used a font that's any way out of the normal, it has been converted into a jpg, so it will print properly.

A couple of people require thanks—indeed, they deserve THANKS!—because they have been responsible for the book getting off to the printers on time. Martin Baines is Bear Alley's ever-reliable cover artist. I do quite a few of the designs myself if there is existing artwork, as has been the case with quite a few of the indexes; anything that actually requires artistic talent and skills I pass over to Martin. And the reason the text was ready is because Richard Sheaf turned around the proofing incredibly fast, despite minor distractions like the Winter Olympics and major distractions like work and being away from home.

So, that's it for the moment. 70,000 words of comics' history finally about to see print.

What's next? As I mentioned last year, I'm looking at a couple of reprint titles before cracking on with more comics history. Probably the Valiant index or the War Picture Library Companion. That said, sometimes a piece of research will set me off on a surprising track—this is what happened with ROCKET: THE SPACE-AGE WEEKLY, which took me by surprise. And the book on RANGER wasn't a title I'd planned as the immediate follow-up to BOYS' WORLD. So there's a chance that something might get in the way of my carefully laid plans.

The following day...

So my plans changed when I looked at the weather and discovered that it was going to be raining all morning. I'll go into town on Friday. Instead, I began sorting out a few books on the shelves of my former office (the garage!) in the hope that by using some sort of Escher magic, I can create space out of thin air.

The shelves I was working on had a random selection of paperbacks, mostly from the 1960s and 1970s. By coincidence, one of the first books I stumbled across was Shark Attack by H. David Baldridge, an officer-scientist with the U.S. Navy. It was published on 15 January 1976, almost exactly one month before Hook Jaw began to rip its way through the oceans of Action. 

I mention Gunnar Asch in the Action book as an example of war novels with German heroes that influenced Hellman of Hammer Force. And Linda Lovelace also gets a mention, specifically the book Inside Linda Lovelace. As I've run the cover of that book in The Sevenpenny Nightmare, I'll show off a different title from Lovelace here.

And then there's the Football Factory trilogy about football hooliganism—The Football Factory (1997), Headhunters (1997) and England Away (1998)—and his later novel Human Punk, which begins in 1977. Of course, back in the early 1970s we had Richard Allen writing about Skinheads and Boot Boys and, by 1977, about Mods and Punks in books that mythologised youth cultures. But that's another story entirely.

As you can see, even when I take a day off I can't escape ACTION: THE SEVENPENNY NIGHTMARE!

Rebellion Releases — 18 February 2026

The Thirteenth Floor’s evil AI Max goes worldwide in this anthology of thirteen horror stories set across the globe, featuring the work of James Lovegrove, Lavanya Lakshminarayan, James Goss, and MK Hardy!

Max goes worldwide!

London’s Maxwell Towers have long been under the control of Max – an all-seeing AI intent on punishing wrongdoers and wicked tenants by sending them to the Thirteenth Floor, where unspeakable horrors come to life. Now, Max’s coding has been embedded in computer systems all over the world, and there is no escape from his nightmarish reign.

Featuring thirteen brand-new stories by A. K. Benedict, Angela Slatter, Mason Cross, Una McCormack, Lavanya Lakshminarayan, Thana Niveau, James Lovegrove, Derek Farrell, MK Hardy, John Llewellyn Probert, Martyn Waites, Aubrey Wood, and James Goss.

The Thirteenth Floor Anthology is available to order now from the 2000 AD webshop and all good stockists! And Amazon.

And now, this week's releases...

2000AD Prog 2470
Cover: Clint Langley.

JUDGE DREDD // THE FINDER OF LOST THINGS by Ken Niemand (w) Rob Richardson (a) Annie Parkhouse (l)
HERNE & SHUCK // POWER TRIP by David Barnett (w) Lee Milmore (a) Gary Caldwell (c) Annie Parkhouse (l)
JUDGE DEE by Ben Wheatley (w) Simon Coleby (a) Jack Davies (c) Simon Bowland (l)
FUTURE SHOCKS // ONCE UPON A TIME ON HOLLYWORLD by Ed Whiting (w) Peter Clinton (a) Rob Steen (l)
THE DISCARDED by Peter Milligan (w) Kieran McKeown (a) Jim Boswell (c) Simon Bowland (l)

Judge Dredd Megazine 489
Cover: Dave Taylor.

JUDGE DREDD // HALFWAY HOUSE by Ken Niemand (w) Jake Lynch (a) Matt Soffe (c) Annie Parkhouse (l)
MEGATROPOLIS II by Ken Niemand (w) Dave Taylor (a) Jim Campbell (l)
ARMITAGE // DROKK THE RIPPER by Liam Johnson (w) Staz Johnson (a) Quinton Winter (c) Annie Parkhouse (l)
TALES FROM THE BLACK MUSEUM // HIS 'N HEARSE by Paul Starkey (w) Brett Parson (a) Simon Bowland (l)
DEPARTMENT K // ...NO MORE by Ned Hartley (w) Mike Walters (a) Simon Bowland (l) 
ROK THE WORLD by John Wagner (w) Dan Cornwell (a) Jim Boswell (c) Rob Steen (l)

Action: Before the Ban Volume 1 by Pat Mills, Geoff Kemp, Kelvin Gosnell, Chris Lowder, Gerry Finley-Day, John Wagner, Ron Carpenter, Ken Armstrong, Steve MacManus, Tom Tully (w) Horacio Altuna, Mike Dorey, Leopoldo Sanchez, Gustavo Trigo, Barrie Mitchell, Ramon Sola, Dudley L. Wynne, Angelo Todaro, Horacio Lalia, Massimo Belardinelli (a)
Rebellion  ‎ 978-183786669-4, 18 February 2026, 384pp, £44.49. Available via Amazon.

CELEBRATING FIFTY YEARS OF BRITAIN'S MOST CONTROVERSIAL COMIC!
Violent, gritty and unrelenting, Action comic was the brainchild of Pat Mills and Geoff Kemp. The pair rapidly developed a winning formula: reimagining existing story ideas from fresh perspectives and infusing them with a healthy dose of modern realism. With strips such as Hookjaw, Dredger, Look Out For Lefty and Blackjack, success was instantaneous - but so was the criticism. Press including, The London Evening Standard, The Sun and the Daily Mail were quick to denounce the comic, while Mary Whitehouse piled pressure on the publisher to do something about it.

Comic Cuts — 13 February 2026

I've just this moment realised that this will be posted on Friday the 13th. Fortunately, I don't suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia – indeed, I was born on a Friday the 13th so I don't think of it as the slightest bit unlucky. I'm not a believer in such hokum. Touch wood.

There's good news on the ACTION front: I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was on page 142 when I turned the computer off last night; a PDF copy of those pages was sent winging its way to someone who had agreed to do some proofing for me, and I've already had the first set of comments & corrections back. The pace has kicked up as I'm fast approaching the deadline for getting the book out by the time I get to the Glasgow Comic Mart on March 21st. I need to have the book finished and with the printer by the end of next week if I'm to squeeze in two proofs before doing a print run so I have books on sale at Glasgow on that day.

I will say now that I'm very pleased with the way things have gone with the layouts. I was a little worried that the choices I made early on would limit what I could do with the pages. There were design problems that needed to be considered. The book has a lot of footnotes, for instance, and a three-column format would mean a lot of thenm continuing in other columns and potentially on other pages. The practical solution was a two-column layout, avoiding putting pictures at the bottom of the page, as it would mean lifting any footnotes up above the illustration. Well, I've done that a couple of times, but for the most part I've taken advantage of pages/columns without footnotes. 

I'm also trying to make good use of the colour printing by including every cover from the original run (February to October 1976) and a lot of covers from the second run (December 1976 to November 1977). The black & white pages are almost all same size as they were originally printed because the typesetting was so tiny that the captions and balloons would be unreadable. I've shrunk a few pages, but usually only where two different versions are printed for comparison.

I may not be the world's greatest designer, but I'm thoroughly enjoying my work now that I've got into it. I'm dipping into strips that I loved when I was a kid. I have hugely fond memories of Dredger and The Running Man – I have always loved action thrillers with crime or spy backgrounds. I was also coming down from the loss of Top Secret Picture Library, which folded in February 1976, just as Action was launching. Nobody feels the loss of a comic they love more than a 13-year-old!

I mentioned last week that I was filling some gaps in my science fiction collection. I was reading sf seriously the year Action launched. I'd read a few things prior to that: the first two John Carter novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, some of the James Blish Star Trek novelisations, and quite a few Dr Palfrey novels by John Creasey, which I never thought of as sf as they were set on Earth. In March 1974, Speed & Power began reprinting stories by Arthur C Clarke and I was hooked. I think it was the summer of 1975 that I read everything in the library by Clarke and Asimov, was picking up Science Fiction Monthly, the poster magazine, and began learning about other writers and that sf magazines had a fifty year history.

I remember Clarke's book shop had a huge selection of sf titles and I was guided somewhat by mention of exotic-sounding writers from the pulps. One of the earliest books I bought (maybe the very first) was The Best of A E van Vogt (Sphere, 1974), with an introduction by Van Vogt from just as exotic Hollywood, CA, and one of the greatest opening of a story ever written: "The creature crept. It whimpered from fear and pain, a thin, slobbering sound horrible to hear. Shapeless, formless thing yet changing shape and form with every jerky movement. It crept along the corridor of the space freighter..." ('Vault of the Beast')

Fifty years later, I still have that book on my shelves. There's a bit of wear on the front cover and at some time over the past five decades I've creased the back cover, but it's the same copy I bought in 1975.

Now I need to read the rest of the story!

Commando 5931-5934

Our next set of Commandos contains two new stories from Dominic Teague, featuring art from Marco Bianchini, Alberto Saichann and Esteve Polls. Issues 5931-5934, go on sale from today, Thursday, 12th February 2026. 

5931: V For Vengeance: The Art Of Death 
 
Paris, 1940. The Nazis have occupied the city, hope lies tattered under their oppression, and light and art have fled — or so the Germans thought. The Parisians cried aloud for vengeance and the Deathless Men — masked assassins clad in grey — answered, bringing their bloody retribution to the City of Light. 
It was now the turn of the tyrants, the murderers, the torturers and the collaborators to tremble. They could not escape vengeance, their time was coming!

Story: Dominic Teague
Internal Art: Alberto Saichann
Cover Art: Marco Bianchini

5932: Vengeance Squad  
 
Jim Bryant, an Englishman working in Burma, had turned traitor and gone over to the enemy. Every night he broadcast to the Allied troops in the jungle, telling them how hopeless the situation was. At first they just laughed, but soon the treacherous voice made the men angry and afraid.
    There was only one answer to the problem — silence Bryant. And that’s where The Vengeance Squad came in... 

Story: C. G. Walker  
Internal Art: Ibanez   
Cover Art: Penalva
First published 1971 as No. 601

5933: All For Nothing

While advancing on Berlin in the wake of Germany’s surrender, British Captain Roderick Churchill contends with remaining pockets of German resistance that have yet to acknowledge their nation’s defeat. Along the way, he learns the story of two young German soldiers who, while fighting in the Battle of Berlin, became disillusioned about the righteousness of their nation’s cause. But while one of these young soldiers surrenders to Churchill peacefully, his friend proves more difficult to pacify…

Story: Dominic Teague
Internal Art: Esteve Polls
Cover Art: Marco Bianchini

5934: Escape From France
 
With resistance to the German advance in France crumbling rapidly, every Allied unit had to flee the country as best they could. Andy Blake’s lads thought they’d managed okay until their boat ran aground. The only lot who could help was a French platoon — but Andy’s squad had double-crossed them earlier.
     Would the French save them now? 

Story: McDevitt  
Internal Art: Ruiz  
Cover Art: Philpott  
First published 1984 as No. 1856

Rebellion Releases — 11 February 2026

In the first part of a brand new three-part interview with the comic book legend, John Wagner discusses his “last” Judge Dredd story, his dislike of the Trump administration, why he’d love a robot butler, and reflects on a comic book career spanning more than half a century.

Please note: this is an audio-only interview. There is also occasional microphone static.

Hosted by 2000 AD Brand Manager Michael Molcher, The 2000 AD Creator Tapes brings you fascinating in-depth interviews with many of the biggest names in comics. Perfect for weekend listening, when you’re burning through your chores, or if you’re looking to learn more about the artists who make 2000 AD the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic! Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast app!

And now, this week's releases...

2000AD Prog 2469
Cover: Mike Perkins.

JUDGE DREDD // DEATH OF A JUDGE by John Wagner (w) Mike Perkins (a) Chris Blythe (c) Annie Parkhouse (l)
HERNE & SHUCK // POWER TRIP by David Barnett (w) Lee Milmore (a) Gary Caldwell (c) Annie Parkhouse (l)
JUDGE DEE by Ben Wheatley (w) Simon Coleby (a) Jack Davies (c) Simon Bowland (l)
THARG'S 3RILLERS // MONEY SHOT: HIGH STAKES by Kek-W (w) Rob Richardson (a) Rob Steen (l)
THE DISCARDED by Peter Milligan (w) Kieran McKeown (a) Jim Boswell (c) Simon Bowland (l)

Strontium Dog: Search & Destroy Book 5 by John Wagner and Alan Grant (w) Carlos Ezquerra (a)
Rebellion, 11 February 2026, 250pp, £29.99. Available via Amazon.

CROSSING THE STIX
In the far future Strontium-90 fallout has created a race of mutants, outcasts from society, despised by the ‘norms’ and given only the dirtiest job – bounty hunting. Johnny Alpha is one such mutant, working for the Search/Destroy Agency, hunting down criminals for the Galactic Crime Commission.
    In this fifth volume, the inhabitants of Jock’s Landing on the water world of Och-Eleven have been slaughtered and everyone thinks Johnny Alpha and his partner Wulf are the murderers! Alongside "Outlaw" this volume also contains "Big Bust of 49", "Slavers of Drule" and "The Beast of Milton Keynes".
    Johnny's story continues in this fifth volume written by John Wagner (A History of Violence) and Alan Grant (Batman), with art by Carlos Ezquerra (Preacher).

Judge Dredd: Rend & Tear With Tooth & Claw by Rob Williams (w) RM Guera (a) Giulia Brusco
Rebellion, 11 February 2026, 128pp, £19.99. Available via Amazon.

After an aerial attack, Dredd and a judge squad find themselves stranded deep into the Northern Radlands, a hundred miles from the nearest city and with no way of contacting help.
    But fending off attacks from mountain gangs becomes the least of their problems: a great, murderous bear is on their trail, and Dredd and Cadet Moon will have to brave the elements and join forces with an unlikely ally to escape the frozen woods alive.

Comic Cuts — 6 February 2026

Not much news is good news in the case of the ACTION: THE SEVENPENNY NIGHTMARE book. It means that I've been working fairly solidly on the layouts without huge interruptions. Last week I was about 70 pages in, and this week I've gone over the 100 page mark, about two-thirds of the way through the text. I'm still looking at a finished book of around 160-170 pages. Full colour. Expensive, but hopefully worth the cost.

I haven't been up to much else. Eating, sleeping and buying a few books. I sold a few books recently—mostly modern crime and romance that I pick up for my Mum—and thought I'd put the £30 or so towards buying a few things I wanted. 

I've been looking over my collection these past few months to see what I think is missing. There are some gaps in my reading over the years that I'll try to fill over the next few years because at some point I'm going to have to start getting rid of books and not just trying to squeeze more onto already overburdened shelves. 

My focus has always been on British paperbacks and I've built up collections a number of times. I've had to sell occasionally: once when I was skint, and once for space when I sold about 400 SF books and magazines to a dealer. Over the years I have refilled many of those gaps, sadly not always with books in the best of condition. I try to keep my books looking mint, so no spine or cover creases. The books have lived in boxes or on shelves, so I don't roll the spines, I don't put cups of coffee on them, and I don't dog-ear the pages.

Over the years I've had a scattergun approach to buying, and have picked up all sorts of books that some more sensible folks would choose as their core collection. So I have some Pan Books, some Penguin Books, some Corgi Books, some Digit Books, some Badger Books (lots of Badger Books, in fact), I have crime novels, war novels, mainstream novels, TV tie-ins (quite a few of them), a smattering of SF magazines, reference books, graphic novels, books for kids, etc., etc. 

Between those and the comics and the DVDs, what little spare money I've had over the years has been spread thin, so I've never been a completist. What I have been over the past fifty years is persistent, so there are authors whose works I have completed. I have one copy of every Agatha Christie crime novel, for instance, but they're a mixture of Penguin, Pan, Fontana (yellow spines), Fontana (Tom Adams covers) and whatever else I could lay my hands on to complete a run. Once completed, I haven't felt the urge to go back to upgrade or to specialise (i.e. get all the books with Adams covers or collect the "Penguin Tens" editions). I might pick up a cheap pre-decimal edition I like the look of, but for the most part I'm happy to say I'm done with collecting Christie. 

I need to do this in other areas. 

I've also started looking at a few authors and figuring out what I'm missing that I should have. I was watching Pluribus when Rhea Seehorn was wandering around in a frozen food warehouse and I jokingly said to Mel: "Soylent Green is people!" Which reminded me of the movie... which reminded me that I'd never read Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room!, which is the basis for the movie Soylent Green. Not only have I never read the book, I've never owned a copy.

This is precisely the kind of book that I need for my collection. Fortunately, I managed to track down a reasonably priced copy, imperfect but acceptable, for a couple of quid. The same deal also brought me a copy (NEL SF Master Series, 1976) of A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!, another Harry Harrison novel missing from my collection since the days of the "great sell-off" three decades ago.

The only negative to all this is that my Wants lists are growing bigger by the day.

Talking of books from the 1970s, I was sad to see that Bob Layzell died on Thursday, January 29th, aged 85. Robert G. Layzell was born in Brighton in 1940 and grew up on Eagle, Flash Gordon and Journey Into Space, although it was as a hippy in the 1960s, while producing watercolours on fantasy subjects, that he was inspired to draw a spaceship while listening to Pink Floyd's 'Interstellar Overdrive'.

He studied the works of Chris Foss and Bruce Pennington and eventually found favour with Pan's David Larkin, who said his work required tightening up and more detail. His first work was published in Science Fiction Monthly but I first remember him from a run of Mike Ashley's books: The History of the Science Fiction Magazine Volume 3, The Best of British SF volumes 1 & 2, and SF Choice '77. 

I've dug out a few covers that were close to hand. Typically, the Ashley anthologies are nowhere to be found! But I hope you'll enjoy these...