Bear Alley: Comic Cuts —2 October 2026

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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, October 02, 2026

Comic Cuts —2 October 2026

At last! After trailing the publication of SEXTON BLAKE VOLUME 1 for the past two weeks, I can now say... contracts were signed yesterday and the book will be officially launched at the Colchester Swap Meet on Saturday, October 10th.

In the meantime, the order page is up and running and if you want to take advantage of our early-bird discount, please go visit the page. You can pay by Paypal. For those of you who don't have money in your Paypal account, you can still use them to pay by credit card.

I should have some copies available at the Swap Meet, and if any are left I'll have the book up on my Ebay store a day or two after, so it will be available there if that's how you prefer to order. I'm only doing a very short initial run to make sure the book gets on the press and printed copies arrive in time! I'll do a longer print run later in the month, ahead of getting SEXTON BLAKE VOLUME 2 out in about six weeks.

That volume is awaiting a second proof, but the first one looked pretty good, aside from a little glitch on the spine where I forgot to change volume 1 to volume 2. D'oh!

In the meantime, I have been back working on the PIRATES project, about the little independent publishers that popped up like mushrooms after the Second World War. As I've previously mentioned, a lot of this was written back in the 1990s when I was editing a collecting magazine, so I've thirty years of additional research to incorporate—some of it extensive, some of it a line here and there.

This week I have been tackling the back story of Captain Marvel, but also looking at a couple of British publishers of superheroes, including Cartoon Art and Scion Ltd. who find themselves woven into the fabric of that chapter as publishers of early British superhero characters—characters with names like Powerman and Litening. Once I've finished on this section of the book, I'll probably get going on the next index.

I'm keeping this short as it's late and I need to get some sleep as launch day usually starts early and there are lots of things to do that will keep my brain racing. Unfortunately, I'm of an age now where it's not the excitement that gets me up so early but my bladder. If you don't know what I mean, just wait a few years.