Comic Cuts — 5 June 2026

I've spent most of the week doing a deep dive into independent comic publishers outside of London, as the paper restrictions that gripped the UK during and after WWII meant that publishers could produce only limited print runs of titles, and these could sometimes be sold entirely in London and the counties around the capital. Little wonder that enterprising artists, publishers and printers in the provinces began publishing their own comics. Manchester and Glasgow had a number of different publishing houses, but they spread to Newcastle, Stoke, Liverpool, Ilford and elsewhere.

I've also been exploring further afield, as a loophole made it possible to import comics from Canada for a while in 1946-47 before being closed down. Thankfully I found some good reference books on the subject of Canada's wartime publishing and they have helped fill in some gaps in my knowledge. 

On the reprint front, I've now received an excellent foreword for the next book—yes, I'm getting lazy in my old age and letting someone else write something! I'm actually waiting on a second piece and still have to sort out a cover, but the contract is signed so it's definitely happening!

I mentioned last week that we were going out to see Tiff Stevenson. This was at a monthly comedy event known as the Funny Farm, a stick and string set-up at the back of a local pub: hand-made backdrop, no stage, an amplifier/speaker on a table nearby... but it works. We have a beer garden, a gazebo and a marquee seating. One day I'll count how many people squeeze in.

So we had three acts (Hazel, who runs the Funny Farm, says she accidentally overbooked the show!) with two putting on full roughly hour-long shows. Glenn Wool I'd heard of but had never seen. Surprising as he lives not far over the border in Ipswich. Canadian, personable and relaxed, even when he was talking about his divorce, makes him easy to like. Maybe I'm biased, as we had friends over from Canada for a meal on Saturday... they were over for a week, not just for one pub meal. Nice meal, actually. One of our local pubs reopened recently with a new landlady.

Meanwhile, back at a different pub two days earlier... Holly Ludlow did a dry, self-effacing, slightly neurotic routine with a surprise twist (it's a tattoo and where that tattoo is). Thoroughly enjoyed her set and the tattoo is real—she showed it to me after the show.

Tiff Stevenson we've followed for ages and she was a "bucket list" comedian for us. So pleased that she not only came to Wivenhoe (we would have travelled to see her, honest) but was as brilliant as we'd hoped. This was a work in progress ahead of the Fringe, but hopefully we will get to see the finished show next year when it is toured.

About the photo. I'm not usually keen on selfies. Mine is not a face that enhances photographs, so I actively avoid getting into them. But someone offered to take a photo and I took them up on it and it turned out not so bad. Good enough for me to put on Facebook and to repeat here.

I'm still managing to keep up a schedule of reading two books a month... or, rather, finishing two books a month. I'd promised myself that I would read more short stories this year, so I picked up a Brian Aldiss collection that included the Nebula Award-winning title story, The Saliva Tree & Other Strange Growths. All good, some psychological thrillers, some bizarre science fantasy. I haven't read Aldiss for years and I really need to re-read some of his novels. 

Reading Aldiss made me think of Harry Harrison and I finally read Make Room! Make Room! which was a brilliant evocation of an overpopulated New York revealed through the investigation of a murder and the approaching millennium. The city's 35 million citizens struggle for housing, welfare and sustenance. It wasn't quite that bad in 1999, but Harrison writes superbly of heat and despair of having water and food shortages, no work and no hope. My copy is a film tie-in, but the novel doesn't make much of Soylent Green. I'll also add that this was so much better than Bill the Galactic Hero and I think I'll stick to Harrison's more serious books in future.

From near future to far future. I had an urge to go back to something really pulpy, and I was tempted to re-read The Voyage of the Space Beagle by A.E. van Vogt. But that was the last book of his I'd re-read, so I dug a little deeper and pulled out The Weapon Shops of Isher, which is as crazy as I remember. The Weapon Shops help keep a check on the powerful rule of Isher, Empress in the year 4784. A vast new building contains an energy gun powerful enough to destroy the Weapon Shops.... but if the building can be moved in time, that will give the men behind the Weapon Shops a chance. Chris McAllister, a reporter, visits a mysterious shop that appears in his city in the 20th century, is transported into the future and then sent back into the past—this see-saw action building up enough energy to shift the new building further and further into the future.

It's wildly imaginative, vastly conceptual but also has Van Vogt's fascination with human psychology at its centre. I must get to the sequel soon. Incidentally, that rather battered copy is the same one I picked up second-hand in around 1975, so it has been fifty years since I read it. Looking through the cover gallery I put together (part 1, part 2) reminds me how much I loved his novels and short stories (many of which were fixed-up into novels) when I started reading SF in the 1970s. 

The other book I finished was almost finished a few years ago, but has since sat on a shelf with about 50 pages of stories left to read. I love Larry Niven and The Draco Tavern was his last full collection of new stories, dating back to 2006. (I'm pretty sure subsequent collections have been a mix of stories and extract from novels or collections gathering together previously collected stories with maybe one extra story.) The premise is simple: the tavern has been set up in Siberia for various species of visiting aliens. The stories are generally short (there's 27 of them in 316 pages), and some are slight, but for the most part enjoyable. You get to meet a wide range of visitors—and Niven is great at creating aliens—and I have been inspired to go find some more stories with lots of weird aliens, namely James White's Sector General series, the first of which I started the other day. I'm rather enjoying letting one book inspire what I'll read next, rather than having a formal "to be read" pile. That said, I bought three new books this past week, so I really ought to get some new books read amongst the re-reads.