Paul Cornell's Friday Newsletter

Bristol Who Killed Nessie? Signing Tomorrow!

Who Killed Nessie?, the graphic novel by myself and the great Rachael Smith, is out now

You can read all about it, and see lots of sample pages, here.

And you can order it here, direct from the publishers, Avery Hill, from Amazon UK and Amazon US, and it’s in all good bookstores, physical and online!

Tomorrow, Saturday, 27th September at Noon I’ll be signing the book at Excelsior Comics in Bristol!

And on Friday, 10th October at 7pm, Rachael and I will be participating in the Avery Hill Publishing Triple Launch Party at Gosh! Comics in London!

“A cosy comedy murder mystery… with a monstrous twist! Lyndsay Grockle has just started her new job at an isolated hotel. She’s trying to get over heartbreak. She’s amazed to be left in sole charge just before a big convention. When the terrifying guests start to arrive, she realises why: this is a gathering of the fantastic beasts of myth and legend! The attendees ask her to stay in her room and let them be. But when the Loch Ness Monster is found dead, there’s nobody else they trust to solve the murder. She may not entirely believe in them… but they believe in her! Lyndsay is going to have to dig deep into her own fears and vulnerabilities to discover… WHO KILLED NESSIE?”

I’m a Guest at MCM!

At MCM Comic Con in London, on Friday, October 24th at Noon I’ll be interviewed onstage by Sarah Miles about my Marvel Age of Comics book, The Mighty Avengers vs. the 1970s! And that’ll be followed by a signing at the Forbidden Planet booth, where early copies will be available for MCM attendees! You can find all the details here.

New Cosmic Lighthouse Website!

Check out the new website for my comics company Cosmic Lighthouse, with a first glimpse at Sophie Aldred (Ace in Doctor Who) playing Adrian Tchaikovsky’s cloned soldiers The Partheni!

Cosmic Lighthouse is the brainchild of myself and Lee Harris, with Anthony Cronin helping out with the day to day business. I’m the Editor-in-Chief.

Our mission is to publish original graphic novels by bestselling SFF authors.

And here, via this news story at IGN, where you can see lots of preview pages, is our launch title!

Salvation’s Child is the digital graphic novel Prologue to Adrian Tchaikovsky’s best-selling SFF novel series The Final Architecture. (So new readers can start here!) It’s by Adrian himself, artist Mike Collins, colour artist Pippa Bowland and letterer Simon Bowland. We’re publishing it together with our partners ComiXology.

It’s 110 pages of comics, plus extras, at what we think is quite the wonderful price. (Under a fiver!)

Check out these pre-order links at Amazon US and Amazon UK.

You can read more about the company and the project, with biogs, blurbs and histories, in our press release here.

And you can find Cosmic Lighthouse at these links on BlueSky and Instagram.

Salvation’s Child will be released by ComiXology Originals on June 16th, 2026!

The Lychford Collection is Out Next Month!

Up for pre-order, and coming out on 14th October is The Lychford Collection, which contains my first three Lychford novellas.

The Mighty Avengers vs. the 1970s is Out in November! (Now with Video!)

On November 13th, I’ve got a book coming out from Bloomsbury that’s part of a new range of popular studies of Marvel Comics! The Mighty Avengers vs. the 1970s is fully illustrated with panels from the comics, and is my journey through how Marvel’s main super team navigated that difficult decade. You can read the announcement here at AP News. This is very much a labour of love for me, a book I’ve wanted to find a way to write for the longest time.

And you can now pre-order it from the publisher (and from all good booksellers), now with some preview pages at that link that really show off our full colour art!

I’m a guest at Thought Bubble!

Lizbeth Myles and I will once more be tabling at the wonderful Thought Bubble comic convention in Harrogate on November 15th and 16th.

And those lovely people have given me guest status!

And if you’re an aspiring comicker, and want a pro to check out your portfolio, I’m one of many at the show who’s signed up to do just that! Check out all the details at the link.

And Vision & Labour: Making Comics, The Art Of Avery Hill Publishing is an exhibition at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate which is going to be running between 18th October and 26th April. (Neatly over the weekend of Thought Bubble.) To quote from the press release:

‘Harrogate’s Mercer Art Gallery has teamed up with indie publisher Avery Hill Publishing to create an exhibition showcasing some of today’s most exciting comics creators. Opening in October in time for this year’s Thought Bubble Comic Art Festival, the exhibition offers a fascinating glimpse into the work of leading comic artists, and an important snapshot of the UK comics landscape over the past decade.’

And included in the exhibition will be a display case featuring the process of Rachael Smith and I making Who Killed Nessie?!

I’m really looking forward to it, and I very much want a copy of Kristyna Baczynski’s poster below.

Of Intrigue and Espionage

I have a story in this just-announced forthcoming volume from Stars and Sabers publishing, which is due out in October 2026. I’m in good company, as you can see from the full announcement here.

Telefantasy Time Jump

The new podcast from me and Lizbeth Myles covers the history of SFF on TV, from 1953 onward, with our regular episodes (on the 14th of every month) covering a show released that year in the UK, and the Patron Bonus episodes (on the 28th) covering a show from the rest of the world. The shows for September (covering 1961) are A from Andromeda/The Avengers and Way Out/Alcoa Premiere. The main episode is available free wherever you get your podcasts. To get the bonus episode, you need to follow us on Patreon at £3/$3 or above. (And you get access to seven years of Hammer House of Podcast bonus episodes!) You can find all the info here.

My Ko-fi and eBay Stores

Here’s my Ko-fi store, where you can buy my books and comics, signed and personalised, for shipping worldwide. And here’s my ebay store, full of Bronze Age Marvel comics at bargain prices.

My Linktrees

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! And here’s the one for Cosmic Lighthouse!

The Work of Friends (Avery Hill Special!)

Avery Hill, the publishers of Who Killed Nessie? have been wonderful to work for, and they’ve been kind enough to share with me their whole list of graphic novels published this year, so I thought I’d give each one a quick mention. That they’re all very different to each other and to Nessie shows the variety of titles that AH publish.

Second Shift by Kit Anderson is a hard SF exploration of isolation and reality on a harsh colony world. It’s deeply humane and fiercely intelligent, the ideal graphic novel for SF fans. “But when Birdie discovers another abandoned station just within walking distance of her own, she begins to question her isolation, and her own memories of what her job-and her life—really is. And at every turn, she starts finding the things the station has been hiding from her.”

Acid Box by Sara Kenney, Emma Vieceli, Ria Grix & James Devlin is a hectic adventure as club culture turns into an odyssey through space and time in order to save the world. It’s as if Doctor Who was all about the music, but it’s also all about the relationships. Enormous, heartfelt, fun! “Jade Nyo just wants to listen to some music and to get wasted. Then, while out clubbing with her brother, she meets a trio of women who control portals through space and time, and give her an Acid Box, which controls geological features on earth. Now it's all up to her to travel through time and avert global disaster.”

The Witch’s Egg by Donya Todd is proper psychedelia, but underneath the trippy, cutting edge imagery is a warm, uplifting story about motherhood, family and security. “A gorgeous intergenerational family story of promises made, promises kept, and a mother who would do anything to protect her daughters.”

And The Corus Wave by Karenza Sparks is an archaeological treasure hunt of the sort where the cat comes along for the ride, a friendship-driven ode to the joys of academic discovery! “Lorelei is just trying to finish her BA thesis. Then her research into an obscure star-shaped Devonian-era cephalopod fossil drags her into a scavenger hunt that indicates her subject may be hiding some of the central secrets of the universe.”

I commend them all to you! And I’ve also got a couple of other projects by friends to mention…

The Lost Films of Hollywood is a Kickstarter for a 2026 calendar creating film posters from previous eras for current movies! “From the 1973 version of THE MATRIX to Abbott and Costello’s MEN IN BLACK - discover the greatest movies never made! Imagine if SHAUN OF THE DEAD was actually a remake of a saucy Confessions film starring Robin Askwith, GOODFELLAS was an MGM musical – and THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL had been a 1970s disaster movie…With words by David Quantick (VEEP, THE THICK OF IT) and art by Chris Barker (SGT PEPPER DEAD CELEBRITY MONTAGES, THE NEW EUROPEAN) , THE LOST FILMS OF HOLLYWOOD is a tribute to the imagined original versions of your favourite movies.”

I’ve already backed it! Take a look!

And Cavan Scott has been having fun writing about a ‘lost’ toy line of the 1980s… the Monster Mechas!  

My Week

The signing with me and Rachael Smith at Waterstones Piccadilly in London last week went very well. We met a lot of readers and attracted some new ones, in the lovely second floor comics section presided over by Danie Ware. There are now signed copies of Who Killed Nessie? and a few of our other works on sale there.

It was just me and Thomas for most of this week, as Caroline had to go to a clerical conference (where she performed ‘I Want to Break Free’ on the bass guitar with a scratch band by the fire pit, so it wasn’t all theology). During that time, the school emailed to say that Tom had been the subject of verbal abuse from another pupil. (He hadn’t shown any sign of anything being wrong, but that’s his stoic nature.) I asked him what had happened, and he’d said a girl had called him ‘weird’ but then (teacher) Emma had told him he was ‘a nice boy’. (‘Weird’ is quite the reach at a special needs school.) The school had already said it was unprovoked, a kid losing control, that it was quickly dealt with and that the other kids had been kind to Thomas afterwards. I reassured him that it was just someone being mean, that I was weird and many of the best people were, and told him he was loved and everything was okay. He didn’t ‘yeah, okay, okay!’ me, so I think he wanted to hear that. A storm in a teacup, but I was proud that he was secure enough to have shrugged it off and that I’d been able to be there for him. We had a couple of rough moments during the three days (mostly to do with Thomas’ autistic need to follow precise timekeeping and my need to make sure the house is locked up before we leave) but all in all I was pleased to have put my shift in. It also helps to even out the childcare hours counter that Caroline and I keep going to make sure we both do the same amount.

Work-wise this week, it’s all been word count on the as-yet-unannounced official sequel novel, plus lots of Cosmic Lighthouse stuff, prepping for our next titles. Wednesday was a day with every moment full, either of Tom or work. Caroline came back yesterday. Today I’m looking forward to leaving the house.

(Oh, and the Patrons-only episode of Telefantasy Time Jump coming out this Sunday, covering the SFF TV of 1961, is a particularly good one. We’ve unearthed a hidden gem, I think! )

To Be Continued

I hope to see some of you at Excelsior Comics tomorrow!

And I hope to see all of you here again next week!