Bear Alley: Comic Cuts — 19 September 2025

BEAR ALLEY BOOKS

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The Bill Kellaway Quartet by Gwyn Evans
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"The narrative is packed with action and I think readers will have a lot of fun with [Hercules, Esq.] and there are some genuine moments of laugh out loud humour. I can understand why the film rights for this book were snapped up and even today I could envisage it being a very enjoyable one-off TV series." — Cross Examining Crime.
"Although there’s some criminous stuff going on and Bill often finds himself vying against or working with various lawbreakers, the stakes are never really life and death in this book ... There is some slam-bang action, though, as well as a smart, really likable protagonist and a lot of really clever plot twists, but what really makes HERCULES ESQ. work is Evans’s style, which is consistently breezy, fast-paced, and funny." — James Reasoner, Rough Edges.

Friday, September 19, 2025

Comic Cuts — 19 September 2025

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!