Paul Cornell’s Friday Newsletter

For 8th November. Thought Bubble approaching!

How to Find Us at Thought Bubble!

Lizbeth Myles and I will once more be running a table at the great Thought Bubble comics convention in Harrogate on 16th-17th November! I’m looking forward to meeting so many lovely comics fans. And this year I’ve once again got guest status, which is a lovely gesture.

We’re going to be at A14 in the DSTLRY Hall, next to Rachael Smith!

Do drop by to see us!

---

Eating the Fantastic

Scott Edelman’s long-running podcast in which he interviews SFF writers over a meal features two authors at Glasgow Worldcon in next month’s episodes, myself and Gareth L. Powell. My episode is out today, possibly already when you read this. If you fancy having some fish and chips with me, check out his, err, feed here.

---

The Death of Wolverine

As announced here on ICv2, on 27th November 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 Sequel to Hammer House of Podcast is… Telefantasy Time Jump!

Lizbeth Myles and I have just about completed our seven year journey as curators of the Hammer House of Podcast, with our final episode, a Christmas Special, coming out in December.

So, on January 13th, we’ll 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).

I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved in our seven year run, and I hope you’ll follow us to our new monthly home!

---

My Ko-fi and eBay Stores

I’ve re-stocked my Ko-fi store, where you can buy my books and comics, signed and personalised, and now I’ve set up shipping to a range of international destinations.

Similarly, I’ve now re-stocked my ebay store, full of Bronze Age Marvel comics at bargain prices. (These will also be coming along to Thought Bubble!)

---

The Current Hammer House of Podcast

Hammer House of Podcast, in which myself and Lizbeth Myles watch the Hammer horror movies in UK release order, is out on the 13th of every month, with our October episode being about The Lodge.

You can get these episodes free wherever you normally get your podcasts, as well as on our site, but if you sign up to our Patreon, for any sum of money from £1/$1, you get an extra episode every month too, on the 27th, in which we watch Patron requested movies and films from other horror studios of the same era. (But you now might want to sign up at the £3/$3 level to get the bonus episodes for our sequel podcast!)

(That particular incarnation of Hammer made some great movies.)

---

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!

---

The Work of Friends

You know I mentioned the great Joe Glass the other week? Well, he has a novel out too, A Con Affair, which you can find on Amazon here.

“From GLAAD Award-winning writer Joe Glass comes a funny, sweet and delightfully relatable story about spicy romance . . . and spandex! Arran Wilson is an aspiring comic writer wondering if he'll ever get a break. Cameron Perkins is an avid cosplayer who wears his Thunderman outfit extremely well. When they meet at a London comic con, the pair hit it off (in every sense). But after hooking up at events all over the country the young men wonder if their no-strings fun is becoming something more serious. That is until Arran is offered a major publishing contract. With everything he has worked towards within reach he’s forced to face a devastating choice: the man of his dreams . . . or his dream career?”

And with six days to go, it looks like the modern-day Dracula sequel podcast series, The Holmwood Foundation, from some Doctor Who alumni, is going to hit it’s Kickstarter target. You can listen to the first episode and check out all the details here.

---

My Week

I think for most of us that was a hell of a week. The night of the election, I slept badly, with my dreams imagining all sorts of different results. When I looked at the news in the morning I felt almost responsible for collapsing the quantum wavefront in the wrong direction. That day was tough, as I’m sure it was for many of you. Looking after Tom in the normal routine made it both harder and easier. Harder, in that he has no idea of global politics, and so one has to keep doing all the usual things without much enthusiasm in one’s heart. Easier, in that routines are a distraction. Whether that distraction gives one heart or lulls one into inaction is a hot topic on social media right now. I generally ease my mind by looking at major news sources rather than social media, because catastrophising is both what my brain does and what social media does, and it’s good to hear from some professionals who are trying for a certain distance. It’s still horrible, but in the mainstream one finds a lot of hope, a lot of caveats. (Notably, Trump’s followers will have to contend with all the states that voted pro-choice laws onto the books that same night.) In the end, as Bill Clinton noted in one of the wisest political thoughts of all time, ‘it’s the economy, stupid’. The vast majority of voters don’t think in terms of left and right. They look at what they’re able to afford in shops and how much they’re being paid and if they don’t feel good about that they’ll vote for the opposition, whoever it is. That happened all over the world in this round of elections, and in the UK it enormously favoured Labour. (The U.S. actually had one of the smallest swings away from the governing party.) Now, that principle may have left the U.S. and the world in a tough situation, but it at least saves us on the left from wondering what could have been done differently. Possibly nothing. (To offer another crumb of comfort, a lot of Biden’s green energy efforts were wisely placed in Republican areas, where they’ve created a lot of jobs. It’ll be tough to get boots on the ground to turn that around.)

But I know, these points are scant solace. I sometimes think people get me wrong, on two fronts. Firstly, I’m someone who loves Britain and Britishness (in all it’s wildly changing forms), from cricket to village greens, but that doesn’t mean I want to exclude anyone from joining in with that and changing it, it doesn’t mean I excuse the past, and it absolutely damn well doesn’t mean I’m into whatever jingoistic bullshit is often associated with all that. (Powell and Pressburger movies are probably the closest media to the mix I aspire to. And I love how Billy Bragg adores ‘Jerusalem’.) Secondly, I like to know my enemy. I want to hear every detail of the horrifying fascist plans, if possible from the actual fascist. I also want to hear expert analysis of those plans. Some friends of mine will have reacted to the paragraph above with ‘never mind that he won’t be able to destroy the windmills, he’s going to put people in concentration camps!’ I’d say knowing about the windmills helps us resist the camps. The panic of social media to react, react, react sometimes gets in the way of us preparing for the reality.

I think things might get very bad indeed for those who live in the U.S., particularly brown people, gay people, trans people, but absolutely not limited to those folk. I think going into the street and standing in the way of armoured vehicles might become a thing. (The administration will try very hard to make sure it never comes to that. I think my trans friends are pretty good at knowing when it’s time to start throwing bricks.) I intend to make my every appearance in the U.S. from now on a two-fingered salute to Trump’s gang of blackshirts and traitors. (Carrying on putting the groups he wants to hurt, visibly and meaningfully, in my panels, will be one way to do that. Also making sure that those people are still represented in the media I create. Some publishers will almost certainly start saying ‘it’ll be easier to sell if this character was-’ No.) I think white, straight people like me now need to always be standing up for that person across the street who’s not the same in every detail as us, to always say ‘you’ll have to get through me’. If all of us say that, all the time, we all might just get through this.

Here endeth the lesson. Phew. Bloody hell. I wish I didn’t have to get on my high horse like that. Thomas is doing great, work is going great. For those who need it, here’s Tom’s picture of Thomas the Tank Engine that he drew at school.

---

To Be Continued

I’m very much looking forward to Thought Bubble, do mention you’re a subscriber if you come and say hello to me and Liz. And because of that event, there won’t be a Newsletter next week.

So I hope to see you all again on November 22nd!