Paul Cornell's Festive Friday Newsletter
For 13th December. The Death of Wolverine is out this week, you can follow along with the final HHoP and I've been out doing festive visits!
The Death of Wolverine is Out on Tuesday!
As announced here on ICv2, on 17th December Marvel will be releasing an omnibus edition of the Death of Wolverine storyline, featuring not only the miniseries of that name, but also my entire run on the comic. I’m very pleased that all this material will now be available in one volume.
There are going to be two covers, this regular one from Alex Ross…
And this direct market exclusive version from Joe Quesada.
It’s available to pre-order on Amazon, and at all good bookstores and comic shops.
The Final Hammer House of Podcast!
The 7th, and last, Hammer House of Podcast Christmas Special will be out this time next week, on December 20th. (Though 97 listeners saw it by accident early this morning!) Indeed, it’s our final episode of any kind, unless Hammer make a new horror movie, in which case we’ll pop back to make a new episode!
In the Special, Lizbeth Myles and I will be watching Peter Cushing’s appearances on The Morecambe and Wise Show across eleven years and two channels. We also have a chat about all the Hammer movies, in genres other than horror, that we didn’t watch, and sum up how we feel about the whole seven year journey.
You’ll be able to find it here, and if you want to see the material first, here’s the Peter Cushing Appreciation Society page on YouTube, which has a playlist of the sketches.
Of Shadows, Stars and Sabers
I have a new short story in a new original anthology, Of Shadows, Stars and Sabers, edited by Jendia Gammon and Gareth L. Powell, and I’m alongside a stellar group of authors, including Adrian Tchaikovsky, David Quantick, Stark Holborn and Lizbeth Myles! The book is out on February 11th, and is available for pre-order now!
The Sequel to Hammer House of Podcast is… Telefantasy Time Jump!
On January 13th, Lizbeth Myles and I will be starting our new podcast, Telefantasy Time Jump. It’s going to be about the history of fantastic television in the UK, going year by year, starting with 1953. (But we’ll be talking in the first episode about all the shows that came out before that date.) Each episode one of us will pick a UK series from that year for us to watch two examples of, and the other one of us will select a show from the rest of the world in that year to talk about on our extra monthly episode for Patreon supporters. (Everyone who’s at the £3/$3 level or above.)
If you’re a current Patron of HHoP, you don’t have to do anything (except set your patronage to the £3/$3 level if you want the extra episode). The HHoP Patreon site will simply turn into the TTJ site and memberships will be carried over. If you get HHoP through a podcast app, you may have to re-subscribe, but we’ll get into that as 2025 approaches.
HHoP will be leaving Twitter/X as soon as the podcast is finished. (I envisage our team of weirdies leaping on an ancient carriage driven by Christopher Lee that gallops off out of there.)
You can now find the new podcast at these links on Instagram (where it’s /telefantasytimejump/) and Bluesky (where it’s TelefantasyTJ.bsky.social).
My Ko-fi and eBay Stores Re-Stocked!
I’ve re-stocked my Ko-fi store, where you can buy my books and comics, signed and personalised, for shipping worldwide.
Similarly, I’ve now re-stocked my ebay store, full of Bronze Age Marvel comics at bargain prices.
Find my Books at Bookshop.Org and Help Out Indie Booksellers!
Bookshop.org is a collective selling tool that sets up a marketplace for all indie bookstores in the UK, functioning exactly like Amazon, except you’re supporting your local bookshop. You can find a selection of my books here, and I get a little cut of the proceeds too if you order from here!
My Linktree
You can now find all my social media links, my website/blog and links to where you can buy my books, in one place here, thanks to Linktree!
My Week
The Festive Market in my little town last week was joyous as ever, the shelter of the Market Place protecting us from the storms. Foot traffic being down, however, we didn’t quite sell out of the 700 wrapped soft toys at £2 a go, but we still raised a big chunk for the local Festival. The team went afterwards to the Cricket Club to take part in their quiz, where we came… I think it was third? The next morning I didn’t prove as lucky with the weather, with trains being cancelled, so I was unable to get to Emma Vieceli’s Breaks launch in London. I hear it went great, but I was sorry to let her down.
Midweek I did a spot of visiting, going to see Kieron Gillen in Bath and Meredith Glynn and Steven Moffat (for tea and dinner respectively) in London. Both were heartening trips. I used to live in Bath, but hadn’t been back in quite a while. I visited the American Dream comic shop, which was nooklike and cosy and smelled exactly as a back issue store should. I was pleased to find that the essence of the city hadn’t changed, indeed it had become amplified, more Bath than ever. But the snack bar that had served those rubbish pasties that being back there made me crave… it was now an empty shell. When in London, I went in to Mega City Comics for news of its possible closure, only to hear from the retiring owner that good news may be on the horizon. (It’s still a thriving business, he’s only seeking to sell because he’s retiring.) There’s something about the quality of light around Christmas in London that I find very heartening. Such enormous, bustling civilisation with such twinkling beauty everywhere inside it. I get the same vibe from New York. They fool one into thinking the human race is indominitable. These days I could do with a bit of fooling.
With a January deadline, my time having been budgeted to allow for those visits, I’ve been working hard on the non-fiction book. The new fiction book has moved to the contract stage. And there was an exciting meeting with PR people about my biggest project. I like being busy at this time of year, but when Liz comes down to visit next week I’m going to have some proper time off.
To Be Continued
Tonight is the Vicarage Christmas Party and as we speak two engineers are busy fixing full fibre telephone cables, so you’ll forgive me if this is short this week. I hope to see you all next Friday! Happy holidays to you all, and Merry Christmas from me!