Invasion Colchester 2026 (5 September 2026)

If this is the first weekend in September, it must be time for Colchester to be invaded by cars, celebrities and cos-players of all ages. It grows every year, raising money for charity and adding a few tens of thousands of feet to the streets of the town centre, which has, frankly, been suffering for years, with some big names (Woolworths, Debenhams, Marks & Spencers, et al) disappearing and small businesses being driven out of business by out-of-town shopping parks. For one day a year that trend is reversed — and hopefully shoppers will remember how many good stores, charity shops, pubs, restaurants and coffee houses there are in the town alongside bigger attractions like the Castle. The shops that remain know how good Invasion Colchester is for business — you only have to look at the support they give on the day.

We arrived nice and early as I wanted to get around the charity shops and buy some socks (life as a high-flying author/publisher is incredibly glamorous). I didn't find much in the way of second-hand books, but at least my footwear isn't so holey now that it could start its own religion.

Starting at 11, by 11.30 trying to get through the crowds was like wading through a tar pit. But between Mel and myself we managed to get a few fun photos. Enjoy!

A huge thanks to Kerrie Williams, who organises this event every year. Here she is, being interviewed ...

Also spotted on the mean streets of Colchester , friend of Bear Alley Books Keith Burns was painting live, with the finished artwork to be auctioned and the money donated to charity.

This was taken just as he was starting. Thankfully, Karl Kennedy (another Invasion Colchester organiser) snapped this shot of the artwork later in the day. He tells me that this is not the finished piece, but Keith will complete it once he gets home.

There were, as always, dozens of cars on display, but you will have seen most of them before. Click on the label below and it will take you back in time to Invasions of years past.

Comic Cuts — 4 September 2026

Again, the imaginary progress bar showing how the next book is going took another jump towards being filled, although it did stutter, fall back a tiny amount, pause... before moving forward again. The stutter was caused by a logo that we wanted to use that I couldn't open on my old PC because the version of the programme I had was so ancient.

I'm not likely to be updating it any time soon because said programme is part of a suite that was purchased back in the early 2000s; the people who make it have now stopped selling their product and now only allow subscriptions. Since I don't use it for months at a time while I'm writing books, I don't want to subscribe. I'd prefer to buy it outright. Or buy the bits that I use outright.

My old PC is air-gapped, to make sure that it doesn't receive any unwanted updates or viruses. Microsoft stopped sending virus updates for Windows 10 some while back, so it might be vulnerable to attack. As I only use it for design work on my books and nothing else, I'm hoping that it will last for many years to come.

The old PC does have about 20gb of emails on it. And earlier this week I had 10gb of emails on my laptop, half of them unwanted.

The sorry saga began last Wednesday when I went online to read my emails and found one from my email provider which said "7-Day Alert" and told me to "Make sure you're all set for the switch." Well, that was the first I was aware that there was a switch due, and there were all kinds of scary bullet-points: 

• Before your migration, please download any folders of documents you want to keep.
• When you open your email client after moving to Professional Email powered by Titan, you may see your email redownload.

Um... I didn't have an "email client". For years I've gone online to read my mail. Online I had all my mails neatly moved to folders so I could track down book orders from people, book orders I had processed and book orders that had been completed; there was various folders of correspondence and payments; there was work related stuff and loads more. There were almost 10,000 messages — 5.1gb of mail.

So on Saturday, a friend came around and put Thunderbird on my laptop. This is actually the same email "client" that I had on my old PC, so at least I knew what to expect and how to use it. We went down the pub and left it downloading a few thousand emails.

It was only the next day that I realised it had only downloaded the inbox and none of the folders, so I spent the next couple of days moving messages in folders on the webmail server to the webmail inbox, so that Thunderbird downloaded them. I then had to go through the downloaded messages and move them into newly created folders. I moved the last of them on Monday — so much for having a day off!

On Tuesday I received a "24-Hour Alert", which told me pretty much the same thing as the earlier message. And on Wednesday a "10-Minute Alert" telling me to close or send any open emails I was working on. "If you're using an email client on your phone or computer, you won't need to reconfigure your settings."

Remember the warning about "you may see your email redownload"? That's precisely what happened. 9,494 messages re-downloaded, landing on the 3,350 messages I had still to move into folders. The 6,000+ messages I had carefully moved into folders were now duplicated in my inbox, leaving me with 13,000 messages that needed to be sorted out.

As you can imagine, I wasn't best pleased. I have managed to get that down to 7,104 messages, so I've about 3,750 more to find and delete. And every time I open Thunderbird, I get four or five random old messages download, not all of which I can immediately trace and delete. Mostly they're from 2022 for some reason.

When I'm not wasting my time, I have been making some small progress with the next set of books, sorting out cover images and thinking about what I can do with the internal pages. While pondering, I've taken the opportunity to clean up a few old book covers that will be used when I do my next book about old paperbacks, although quite when that will be I don't know.

Talking of book covers, here are a few SF books I've picked up in the wild recently. Nothing too exciting, although I was very pleased to find the John Sladek with its Chris Foss cover. This was picked up from a local second-hand bookshop. The final two were Ebay purchases, but the rest I found around town.

Commando Presents… Braddock volume 2

Bomber Braddock Blasts Back Into Action on 15th September, 2026.

The legendary RAF hero returns in this thrilling second volume collecting the adventures of Matt Braddock, Bomber Pilot VC.

First introduced in The Rover story papers in 1952, Braddock became one of DC Thomson’s most enduring war heroes. Now, readers can follow his exploits as he takes to the skies once more in a gripping graphic novel featuring Commando issue “Braddock’s Demons”, alongside a treasure trove of classic stories and artwork from The Rover, Red Dagger and Victor.

As the Second World War intensifies and Nazi forces continue their advance, Braddock faces some of the greatest challenges of his career. With a new crew, mounting losses and the ever-present dangers of Bomber Command operations, he must confront his own fears and inner demons to keep his Blenheim crew alive. But with the relentless Suddaby determined to make life difficult, the pressure may prove too much even for the RAF’s finest bomber pilot.

Packed with more than 180 pages of classic comic-strip action, rare archive material, iconic covers and fascinating behind-the-scenes features, this handsome collection celebrates one of British comics’ most beloved wartime heroes and offers a unique glimpse into DC Thomson’s rich publishing heritage.

Featuring artwork from Jeff Bevan, Ian Kennedy, Mario Morhain and award-winning aviation artist Keith Burns, this collection includes the epic conclusion to the prose story ‘I Flew With Braddock’, as well as Red Dagger’s ‘Braddock of the Rocket Squadron’ and more ‘Braddock VC’. 

Perfect for fans of war comics, military history and classic British adventure storytelling.

Get yours from Amazon, TJ Jones and the DC Thomson Shop.

Rebellion Releases — 2 September 2026

UPDATE: Rebellion are now saying that there will be no delay in this week's 2000AD arriving on newsstands or in comic shops. I''ll leave the original announcement below the image of the new announcement:

Here's the original (26 August) announcement:

2000AD Prog 2498, which was meant to be published this week, has been delayed until next week. Here's the official announcement from Rebellion:

We’re sorry to inform all loyal Squaxx dek Thargo that the September 2nd issue of 2000 AD — #2498 — will be delayed getting to shelves by one week. We have been informed that the company that prints 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine has gone into administration and we have had to secure new printers. This has been sudden and we have been working around the clock to rectify the situation. Digital subscriptions will remain unaffected.

We apologise for this unfortunate outcome – our loyal readership is the bedrock of 2000 AD and we deeply regret the inconvenience of this unexpected disruption.

We want to reassure you that the supply of Thrill-power will be resumed and steps taken to bring us back onto our normal schedule as soon as possible.

So... NEXT week's releases will include...

2000AD Prog 2498
Cover: Patrick Goddard, with Peter Doherty

JUDGE DREDD // THE OUBLIETTE by Ken Niemand (w) Dan Cornwell (a) Chris Blythe (c) Annie Parkhouse (l)
BRINK // THE CALL OF THE VOID by Dan Abnett (w) INJ Culbard (a) Simon Bowland (l)
THE FALL OF DEADWORLD // JUSTICE by Kek-W (w) Dave Kendall (a) Simon Bowland (l)
ROGUE TROOPER // RUN AMOK by Andi Ewington (w) Nicolo Assirelli (a) John Charles (c) Rob Steen (l)

• 17 Sep. The Gordan Knot that is the history of Marvelman / Miracleman has another twist added to it as David Colton has been introduced in Avengers@ Armadeddon #4 as the new Miracleman. Previously he had appeared in Captain America as the titular character, but the new tale by Chip Zdarsky, Delio Diaz and Frank Alpzar reveals that the source of Colton's mysterious powers was Miracleman.
• 26 Aug. Garth Ennis and John McCrea are re-teaming on a horror one-shot, The Snail. "It might be said that a talking snail is not the best source of life guidance, but given the scum and villainy people are taking advice from nowadays, perhaps it’s no worse than any of the other options?"
• Smash Pages interview Darryl Cunningham's change of pace with his latest graphic novel, John of the Night. "I got tired of the constraints of non-fiction. I’ve always been an imaginative person, and I found that fact-based books didn’t allow me to run with my imagination the way I wanted to."
• 20 Aug. The personal comic collection of Marvelman artist, the late Garry Leach, has been put up for sale through Book Palace, including many silver age Marvel and DC gems.
• 14 Aug. Roger Langridge discusses his career and early years of cartooning in New Zealand. "I arranged an appointment to bring in my portfolio and show [Peter Hogan] my work, which was a thing you could do then – but, on the day of the appointment, I showed up at the office only to be told that Peter had just been fired. But Steve MacManus, editor of the Judge Dredd Megazine at that point, very kindly agreed to see me instead."
• 12 Aug. Nick Abadzis discusses his and Angela Watson's autobiographical graphic novel My Beloved Other. "I got into comics professionally when I began working in comics retail in London when I was nineteen, and eventually this led to me hearing about a job through a friend as a color separator at Marvel Comics UK (back when Marvel had a British office, which dates me. This was 1987.). Marvel UK was a kind of university of comics where they taught you the House of M way of making comics."
• 12 Aug. Image have announced that they will be publishing Ghost Drive Station by Warren Ellis, five years after promising not to publish a new Ellis comic until he made amends with victims of his sexual misconduct. The supernatural story is drawn by Lordess Foudre. Ellis has admitted that he hurt people deeply and has said that he is "ashamed of these mistakes." However, Katie West of So Many of Us has said "I’m grateful to everyone who was wondered if Warren has ‘made amends to the satisfaction of all involved.’ It shows me solidarity and care are widespread within comics. I wouldn’t say I’m satisfied, but I also would say I am no longer personally invested in Warren’s transformation.” Ellis has responded with a further statement.
• 31 Jul. Alan Moore crouches in the long grass. "In the Long London Quintet, I decided to investigate the last 50 years of the 20th century as a way of finding out how we got here in the 21st century. So I thought it would be good to set a book in each of the decades. I set the first book in 1949 —that seemed like a good place to start, because London had been obliterated; it was a tabula rasa, a blank slate, nobody knew what was going to happen."
• 30 Jul. Interview: Garth Ennis. "Comic book legend Garth Ennis joins Collectors Confessions to discuss his newest AHOY Comics series, BABS: The Black Road South! We dive into creating Babs, balancing fantasy and satire, working with artist Jacen Burrows, and why this world was worth revisiting. We also explore Garth's incredible career, including Preacher, The Boys, Punisher, Hitman, Hellblazer, war comics, horror, comedy, and what continues to inspire one of the most influential writers in modern comics." (video, 54m)
• 21 Jul. "Without A1 and Deadline, we might be in an entirely different place in comics." Two legendary publications combine. "Bringing together two legendary comics titles from the late 20th century in one package, A1 Deadline is an anthology that both builds on the past and looks to the future." Coincidentally — because, like A1, it was also edited by Dave Elliott — Penthouse Comix is also being relaunched.
• 13 Jul. Liam Sharp is among the winners of this year's Inkwell Awards Sharp won the All-In-One Award (Favorite artist known for inking his/her own pencils) and said on Facebook "Huge thanks to Bob Almond for creating and organizing these awards, and all those who voted for me - I had some incredibly stiff competition from people I truly admire!"
• 5 Jul. Alan Davis looks back on the anniversary of Frank Bellamy's death and offers some fascinating insights into Bellamy's use of photographs and his mastery of storytelling.
• 1 Jul. Scientific study shows that your brain prefers that you read comics on paper rather than on screens. "Regions at the front of the brain associated with language processing, narrative integration, and difficult mental tasks lit up less in the on-paper contingent. This suggests their brains were working less hard to recall events from the first half of the story and mentally connect them with what they read later."
• 1 Jul. The suit againt Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer filed by Scarlett Pavlovich that was dismissed last October, a motion upheld by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Pavlovich's allegations occurred in New Zealand, and the court decided NZ was the more appropriate venue for any dispute.

The Art of Renato Fratini by Timothy R. Smith

After a hugely successful Kickstarter, The Art of Renato Fratini has become a reality. It was, truth be told, already written and designed, edited and ready to go because this has "labour of love"  permeating every page like a subtle but inescapable perfume. If the Kickstarter hadn't worked, the book would have appeared some time, somehow, because it needs to exist.

My first encounter with Fratini was on the covers of Mickey Spillane and Alistair MacLean novels that my dad kept in a cupboard next to his chair in our family home. These would be turfed out regularly as he completed a pile, taken to work and left for anyone to pick up for free. 

Tim Smith has pieced together a biography of Fratini's life, career and influence like a jigsaw puzzle from a handful of written sources and some revealing interviews with friends and family. He charts  Fratini's rise, from an impoverished household in Civitavecchia, near Rome, where he was encouraged to draw and earned himself a place at Rome's Accademia di Belle Arti, aged 17.

Two years drawing comics for Studio Guerri helped prepare him to join Studio Favalli,  the most famous Italian studio producing cinema posters where Fratini worked for seven years; he then moved to London and worked for Rank and Downton Advertising. His work included cinema posters (famously From Russia With Love), advertising brochures, illustrations, book covers and paintings. Typical of many of Soho's denizens, he would do paintings for credit in fashionable trattorias and exhibited abstracts at La Terrazza.

His studio in Kensington was a hubbub of activity, Fratini working hard and enjoying Swinging London late into the night. Unhappy when he discovered that his artwork was being sold abroad without further payment, he tried to take control of his work, and when British publishers moving into photographic covers, began selling to American publishers in the late 1960s. 

The late '60s also saw him divorced, remarried and, for the first time, a father. Friends tempted him to move to Mexico where he quickly established himself with commissions and advertising keeping him busy. Too busy, as, in 1973, he suffered a fatal heart attack, aged 40.

The bulk of the book is a visual bibliography of Frantini's work, from his often richly coloured Italian and British cinema posters—everything from Lawrence of Arabia, Barbarella and Cape Fear to Norman Wisdom and Eric & Ernie movies—through magazine illustrations (including a few comic covers) to book covers for Ace, Consul, Arrow, Corgi, Hodder/Coronet, Fontana, Four Square, Pan, Panther and Penguin, as well as dust jackets for Heinemann, Macmillan and others.

This visual feast runs to 448 pages. The introductory matter is heavily illustrated and the gallery sections run to roughly 380 pages, packed with beautiful images, neatly laid out with the occasional bonus of an original art board. The research that has gone into it is astonishing, the artwork is astounding and the results are one of the best studies of the career and work of an artist in print.

The Art of Renato Fratini by Timothy R. Smith
Ink Forge Press, 2026, 448pp. Available from Ink Forge Press.

Comic Cuts — 28 August 2026

If there was a progress bar attached to the latest Bear Alley books, it would take a little jump forward for the work that has been completed this week. I finally managed to get through all the artwork for what will be two volumes and did a little bit of rewriting on one of the introductions. The marvellous Martin Baines has a PDF of the artwork and I'm sure he will be doing his usual bang-up job with the covers; I'm writing this Thursday morning because I'm planning to get the artwork together this afternoon to illustrate the introductions and that may involve some scanning and/or cleaning.

I think I'm still on target to get the first volume out in September, and I'll probably do the second in November — I'm aware that people are likely to be paying off their credit card bills following family holidays at the moment, and that they'll also be thinking of Christmas by November, but splitting the cost seems the right thing to do. It also means I can split my costs across a couple of months.

With up-front licensing costs and up-front printing costs and various other associated costs, it takes a while for a book to go into profit. Not a precise figure, but a rule of thumb is that the first thirty or forty books pay off the various fees and costs, depending on the size of the book and whether it is in colour. I'm pleased to say that THE SHRINKER is officially in profit, although not by much. Now, hopefully, over the next few years it will pay off the time I spent making the book that will eventually add up to a liveable wage. 

My books (thankfully) have a long tail and even the oldest title still in print has sold two (count 'em!) copies this year. Books published in the past two years make up about three-quarters of my annual sales, with older books making up that last quarter. It would be lovely to instantly sell a few hundred copies of a book, but that's unlikely to happen. The ACTION: THE SEVENPENNY NIGHTMARE was the closest I got to an instant seller for many years, although even that has slowed considerably.

Enough of this... I'm rambling. As usual. It has been a bit of a dull week, and I don't mean that in a negative way. We've had cloud cover, keeping the heat down to very comfortable levels, and today (Thursday, remember) we've had a half hour of slow and steady rain. I went outside and just stood in it to remind myself what it felt like.

I hacked back some more of the trees at the front of the house, a task I have been doing in fits and spurts for the past month — neither Mel nor I drive, so we have to rely on the fortnightly council green waste pick-ups, and chopping back trees fills up the bin very quickly, especially as we still have bags of hedge cuttings left over from early July and pond sludge from last week that might take until October to dispose of.

There's more still to do. The ivy needs to be destroyed with fire tamed and the path needs to be cleared of grass and weeds before winter as the drive is steep and can get dangerously slippery if we get any snow. You have to think of these things way in advance if you only get the bins collected twice a month. Only eight more collections 'till Christmas!

When THE SHRINKER came out, I treated myself to a couple of books that I had been eyeing up on eBay. And so, from the remarkable Zardoz Books came three old Fifties paperbacks, two 'gangsters' and a salacious tale of "love, luxury and lust in Latin America". The two gangsters were early Ben Sarto crime novels with HW Perl covers, the third a copy of Ladies of the Red Lamp with a gorgeous Heade cover. I will say I got a very good deal on them because I don't mind a few chips and creases — I will be reading these at some point when I do a study of Modern Fiction, Archer Press and other paperback publishers of the era. 

I haven't abandoned paperbacks, but books can take some time to put together. I have a notion to do one on Scion Ltd. in the same style of the Badger book (BEYOND THE VOID), but that means sourcing cover images and then cleaning them up. I have a couple of hundred cleaned (not always high quality, but good enough to reproduce small), and only a dozen or so more to go (I did a couple yesterday). However, that's only a small fraction of the total output of Scion and related companies (Milestone, Chariot, Dragon, Gannet Press, et al) so I need a plan of action so that I can illustrate the book to the same degree that I did with the Badger and Utopian (DREAMING OF UTOPIA).

Back in the olden times when I was a kid, the library was filled with the Hardy Boys novels by Franklin W. Dixon, which I loved; I also read the Nancy Drew novels by Caroline Keene. I read over 40 of the novels — I know this because at some point I totted up how many I'd read and it came to 41, equal to the number of John Creasey novels I had read, and one ahead of the Enid Blytons. I read more after that from all three authors; there can't be many modern authors where you can read 50+ novels, unless you're a fan of James Patterson (over 300 novels in 50 years, although he's now a writing factory) or Nora Roberts (225 novels in 45 years). 

There are always writers who can knock out a novel, but the market is very different nowadays and most writers aren't doing more than one a year (unless you're Adrian Tchaikovsky). I put out four books a year maybe, but I'm not writing all of them (then again, Tchaikovsky isn't designing his books and packing them and running them down to the post office.) I've also slowed down considerably from the days when I was writing a quarter of a million words a year for magazines (early 1990s). 

While that sounds a lot, old Ben Sarto (F. Dubrez Fawcett) was writing four times that amount, as were many others during the 1950s paperback boom. John William Jennison was writing a novel every week (they were about 40,000 words, so 2 million words a year). Probably the most prolific paperback author of the mushroom jungle era.

What prompted this was not just that I bought a couple of Ben Sarto novels, but that I found four Hardy Boys novels out in the wild. Should I read them and rediscover some lost gems that used to light up my life, or will I discover that they were actually not very good and no wonder I moved onto reading science fiction at the age of 13. I might risk dipping into one before moving them on...

Commando 5987-5990

This week's Commando set sees the return of Sergeant Rayker and his team as they continue their journey through war-torn Europe, and tells us the story of a French Resistance cell struggling to know who to trust as the Gestapo closes in. Issues 5987-5990 are on sale today. Thursday August 27th. 

5987: Sergeant Rayker: Retribution

Sergeant Rayker is back! As the Americans advance, Rayker’s mind is on victory, but also on revenge for his friend Clancy Davis, who was murdered by the SS. 
    As his unit moves further into Germany, the horrors of the Nazi regime are revealed, but will Rayker be able to exact his personal retribution or will Wolfgang Viessmann of the SS evade justice?

Story: Simon Topping
Internal Art: Mike Dorey
Cover Art: Mike Dorey & Grant Wood

5988: Flash-Point!

Sergeant Judd Hawke reckoned he’d seen the lot. He knew every weapon of war, and he’d handled them in battle after battle. 
    But now he was seeing something different, something terrifying… a secret weapon that melted tanks into useless lumps of metal! 

Story: E Hebden
Internal Art: Aguilar
Cover Art: Penalva
First published 1972 as No.624

5989: Resistance!

Occupied France, 1942. After her cell of French Resistance fighters is betrayed and their intel destroyed, Eleanor Moraux finds herself unsure who to trust, and on the run from a fearsome Gestapo officer. But Eleanor has memorised vital intel that could assist the British and free her homeland — she must resist capture and she must escape.

Story: Robbie MacNiven
Internal Art: Vicente Alcazar
Cover Art: Marco Bianchini

5990: Flight of No Return
 
The Fairey Battle bomber was hopelessly out of date by the start of the Second World War. Yet many brave crews still flew them into action, taking on the might of the Luftwaffe — even though they knew their chances of survival were poor. 
    Some pilots even volunteered to tackle missions that they knew were going to be one-way trips...

Story: RA Montague
Internal Art: Gordon C Livingstone
Cover Art: Ian Kennedy
First published 1985 as No. 1895