Paul Cornell's Friday Newsletter

‘The Longest War’

That’s the title of the issue of Commando I’ve written, which is tentatively due to be released in August. The artist is the great Steve Yeowell, and it’s amazing work. I’m delighted to have contributed to this very exacting classic format. More news nearer the time! Below are the rough cover and some of Steve’s gorgeous interior pages.

Signing in Bristol this Sunday!

I’ll be signing, alongside so many other great creators (12 of us in all!), at Excelsior Comics, 51-53 Merchant Street, Broadmead, Bristol, BS1 3EE, this Sunday 16th March, from 2pm. If you’re in the area, do come along and say hello!

The Mighty Avengers Vs. the 1970s

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. (Release date, etc., TBA.) 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.

L.A. Strong is Out On Wednesday!

I have a strip, with art from the great Dennis Calero, in L.A. Strong, a charity comics anthology in support of the victims of the L.A. fires, out from Mad Cave this coming Wednesday, March 19th. The line up of comicker talent is extraordinary, as you can see below. You can order a copy, and read all about it, here and you can see an exclusive preview, including many finished pages, at The Beat, here.

And if you’re in the UK, you can order a copy from Forbidden Planet mail order here. 

There will be a launch event for the book on Saturday, March 22nd, from 7pm, at the Revenge Of comic store in Los Angeles. You can find all the details here.

Ace Jacket

I’ve contributed a short story to this anthology in aid of autism charities, edited by Sophie Aldred and Shawn J. Levy. It’s out on June 17th. You can read all about it and pre-order a copy here.

Award Longlisting for ‘The English Astronaut’!

My three-part comics serial for 2000AD with artist Laura Helsby, ‘The English Astronaut’ has been longlisted for in the category of Best Shorter Fiction in the British Science Fiction Association Awards! You can see the full listings here, and, if you’re a BSFA member, vote!

Gnomes of Lychford and The Lychford Collection

On 9th September, Tor.com Publishing is releasing the sixth book in my Lychford series of rural fantasy novellas, Gnomes of Lychford. It’s a re-editing of the serial I ran on this newsletter, and I’ve taken the opportunity to sort out a couple of little plot problems. I think it’s my best Lychford book, and, weirdly, it’s a great jumping-on point, because everything about the series is explained at the start. You can read all about it here.

“An unlikely group of supernatural creatures terrorizes the sleepy village of Lychford. Okay, they're gnomes. That's not a spoiler: you worked it out it from the title. When an ancient prophecy clashes with an unfortunate modern design aesthetic, the people of Lychford must band together to put out fires (both literal and metaphorical) to save their town before the king of the Gnomes (King Greg, and it's dangerous to laugh at a gnome) calls in the terms of an old promise. Trouble is: no one knows what the promise is, nor how to fulfil it. It's going to be a long night.”

And out on the same day is The Lychford Collection, which contains my first three Lychford novellas.

Telefantasy Time Jump (new episode out today!)

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 March (covering 1955) will be Quatermass 2 and Science Fiction Theatre. 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.

For Your Awards Consideration (Hugo Awards Close Midnight Tonight!)

The project I’ve had out in 2024 that I’d like to put forward for any award nominations you might be considering this year is The Complete(d) Saucer Country by myself and artist Ryan Kelly, published by Image. Thanks very much for considering it. And for Best Fancast in the Hugos, I’d like to mention Hammer House of Podcast! Thanks!

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 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

My friend the writer Adam Christopher has had a new Doctor Who audio announced! What Still Remains is a Seventh Doctor Audio Original coming from BBC Audio on August 7th. It will be available as an audio download, audiobook at Audible, and as a physical audio CD.

That’s all the info that’s available as yet, but you can find lots of pre-order links here. More news closer to the time, I expect.

My Week

I had a nice chat and lunch with the great Geoff Ryman last Friday, and that led to a pretty good week. My team (‘Resitance Is Futile’) won the Cricket Club pub quiz that night. And on the Saturday I went on a lovely drive, meandering down as far as Salibsury, where I popped into the amazing My Comic Heroes shop. You know I’m not one for nostalgia - I think it’s dangerous - but I deliberately went past my old family home (it’s looking happier) and to the town of Devizes (where the comic stall in the market seems to have vanished), somewhere I loved visiting when I was a kid. Devizes had two excellent newsagents where American comics were sold, one of which is still going, with the same slightly wonky door and layout. The other has now become a charity shop, but as I walked into it, the guy entering behind me said ‘this was an enormous newsagent when I was young’. It was one of those places, usually found in British seaside resorts, that sold everything, and there I used to find Treasury Editions, digests and issues of Starlog that wouldn’t show up anywhere else. The smell of the place, unfortunately, had changed. Being in Devizes, I felt the pull of distant Salisbury, the fabled destination of my youth, all the way across Salisbury Plain. So being grown up now and free to do so, I went there. The Plain is an empty (by British standards) stretch of farmlands and military practice ranges, with signs saying ‘Tank Crossing’ and rough tracks leading across the road and red flags fluttering on the horizon. When I was young, we would hear the artillery firing up there all the way from my house, like distant thunder. The journey is still quite extraordinary. I didn’t see a tank. I remember once doing so in my childhood, but that memory may be fiction.

Thomas has had an excellent week. One of his autistic quirks is that he’s incredibly annoyed at traffic issues keeping him waiting, and makes his anxiousness known with a continual tirade from the back seat of the car. (He’s going to make a terrifying driver. He may try to go over other cars.) This can become tiresome, especially when he directs his ire at the driver (usually in the language of children’s television, which softens it to some extent but the intent remains clear). Traffic and roadworks are a chaotic factor in days which he’d prefer to be utterly predictable. Last Sunday, our usual Sunday visit to the Arboretum was first disrupted by a fence across our usual path at the forest, and then by roadworks on the way to McDonalds afterwards, at which he can only get his weekly breakfast treat before 11am. I was very proud that he devised a plan to deal with the former next time (to go a different way) and then reacted to the latter by calling out to me ‘it’s not you, it’s them!’ (Which is probably a line from Supertato, but which clearly indicated that he didn’t want me to feel I was the target of his wrath.) And on Monday, in his drum lesson, I got to hear him learn every drum pattern of ‘Seven Nation Army’ perfectly in half an hour, leaving his teacher amazed. Caroline and I are now thinking about getting him a home kit.

To Be Continued

I co-wrote a press release this week! So you’ll be hearing about one of those two big announcements soon!

If you come along to Bristol, do mention you’re a subscriber, and I hope to see you all here again next week!