Comic Cuts — 3 April 2026

I do a quarterly update for Bear Alley Books and I'm very happy with the way 2026 is shaping up, thanks to the early release of the ACTION book. I struggled last year because I didn't get the MYTEK books out until July and had to draw on my savings to see me through the spring quarter. The second half of last year was better, but things have been fairly slow since Christmas. They've picked up considerably during March, and the ACTION book seems to be a hit with people who have now seen it.

That's a huge relief as it was about eight month's solid work, roughly four months back in 2020-21 and four months in 2025-26. The long gap was due to having to earn some money — but that's a whole other story that I don't want to go into here. It's impossible to predict whether a book will do well or do badly and while I pick projects on the basis that it's something that I want to do, I'm still a little disappointed when they don't always appeal to everyone. All my books have had their enthusiasts, I'm pleased to say, but some have broader appeal than others. 

And while I love all my babies, I do have favourites... and the ACTION book is definitely one of them.

I have been trying to read more since Christmas. I was reading about a dozen books a year for the past decade and barely making a scratch on the vast number of books I want to read but haven't got around to. I think that's partly down to books being longer than they used to be (and very few benefit from the extra length). The average paperback book used to be 160 or 192 pages, while the pulpier end of the market was 128 pages. Margins are often more generous nowadays, admittedly, but a book isn't improved by being spread over 279 pages rather than 191. (I'm using my old Panther and the more recent SF Masterworks editions of Pavane by Keith Roberts as the example here.)

I haven't been deliberately picking slimmer books, but I've read six in the last three months, so I've doubled the amount I'm reading. I started the year off with a Christmas present, Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky, on which I spent much time trying to figure out the mysterious titles for each part. So, part 1 is KR15-T, part 2 is K4FK-R, part 3 is 4W-L, part 4 8ORH-5, etc. 

I quickly twigged that K4FK-R was a reference to Kafka and 8ORH-5 was Borges, which meant 4W-L was Orwell... but I mistook the first for Christ and started wondering if our robot hero would emerge later in the book as some sort of Christ figure... and while I was wondering what it all meant I missed the fact that the first part was "Chris-T". As in Agatha Christie. Because it involved a robot detective.

And when I finished reading the book, I listened to an interview with Tchaikovsky in which he said he'd just put the part titles in for fun and they didn't really mean anything. Just when I was thinking "How smart am I to know that 8ORH-5 is referring to the Library of Babel," the rug was pulled.

Frontera, meanwhile, did have an underlying structure and meaning, because Lewis Shiner deliberately gave one of his main characters the Hero's Journey as set out by Joseph Campbell (the same journey that George Lucas gave Luke Skywalker in Star Wars). I missed that completely, although I recognised other elements, such as the I Ching, as it was used in The Man in the High Castle and by the late Steve Moore. I read Frontera as a straightforward thriller set on Mars, and enjoyed it despite not looking any deeper than the plot.

I think I mentioned a couple of months ago that I didn't have a copy of Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room, a gap in my collection that I've now filled. I planned to read it when it arrived, but then I remembered that I'd started reading Bill, the Galactic Hero some while back (on a trip to Stoke last June) and had left it in my bag. I decided to finish it and found it not as hilarious as its reputation promises. I've no experience of the military, so it mostly left me cold. Mind you, I can watch Carry On Sergeant and find that funny. Maybe it's just not for me.

I love Tom Gauld's literary-based cartoons in The Guardian and he also does science-based cartoons in New Scientist. The collection Department of Mind-Blowing Theories is hilarious and I will be buying his latest collection, Physics for Cats. 

I also love Dave Hutchinson's Fractured Europe series. I've just read the second volume Europe at Midnight and it's mind-bending. I don't want to say anything about the plot because the basis is set up in the second half of the first book (Europe in Autumn). I'll just say that I had high expectations of this book and it did not disappoint.

I had lower expectations of Worlds Apart by Joe Haldeman, which is not my usual position with Haldeman (I love his work dearly); I did find Worlds a bit of a drag, with little happening until the final chapters. I'm glad I've persevered with the series (a trilogy) as the pace has picked up and I enjoyed the twin storylines that continue the adventures of Marianne O'Hara as she revisits Earth following a nuclear and biological war and also prepares for the departure of a generation ship to the stars; there is also news of Jeff, left behind when O'Hara made it off-planet, and who has become one of the few men to survive into older age. I'm now looking forward to reading Worlds Enough and Time to see how the whole saga ends.

I may be reading a little more, but I'm not retired yet. I've just started working on the next book from Bear Alley — as long as the licensing can be sorted out. I'm also looking at a small pile of comics that I'm looking forward to writing about. When I have news, you'll be the first to know.