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.
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