Paul Cornell’s Friday Newsletter

The Death of Wolverine Put Back to December

As announced here on ICv2, now 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 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 on December 20th.

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 Re-Stocked!

As always after Thought Bubble, 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.

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 November episode (the last main episode!) being about Dr. Jekyll.

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!)

(After a slow start I ended up really liking that movie.)

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

My friend Sarah Miles the comics and book reviewer brought this to my attention: the great comics podcaster Bob Reyer is in dire need at the moment, and his friends have set up a fundraiser to tide him over. If you’re a comics fan, and particularly if you’ve ever enjoyed the Talking Comics podcast, do donate if you can, and please spread the word. You can find the fundraiser here.

The new crime novel by my friend Alex Segura, Alter Ego, a thriller set in the world of comic creators, is out next week.

“ALTER EGO is the standalone sequel to my LA Times Book Prize-winning novel, SECRET IDENTITY, and tells the story of former comic book artist Annie Bustamante, who finds herself adrift in Hollywood after her latest directorial effort is shelved for tax reasons. To pass the time - when not parenting her pre-teen daughter, Margot - Annie finds herself returning to her true love, comics, by drawing a story featuring the character that brought her into the world in the first place: The Legendary Lynx. But soon enough, her side hustle becomes reality, as a company purporting to own the rights to Annie's beloved character reaches out and offers her the chance to reimagine the Lynx for modern audiences. Annie leaps at the chance, but is immediately bombarded by messages from a mysterious, encrypted account named APPARITION - warning her that the deeper she gets into the Lynx, the more dangerous it will be. Can Annie navigate the twists and turns of the entertainment industry to tell the story she's been clamoring to share? Is the quest for IP and The Next Big Thing potentially deadly? A story that touches on the push and pull of art/commerce, parenthood, generational trauma, and more, ALTER EGO is first and foremost a thriller that will hopefully keep you turning pages.”

You can read more about the book and order a copy here at the publishers’ website, and if you’re in New York City on 4th December, you can see Alex being interviewed by Charles Soule.

And if you like original comics art, my friend Alison Sampson has put up her pages from Department of Truth at her website.

My Week

After last week’s excitement I’ve been just about cloistered this week, feverishly researching the non-fiction book I have on deadline in the New Year. (Though I did pop out midweek to join my local Festival committee in saying goodbye to one of our number as she flies home to Canada.) I’ve also been making plans for the weeks leading up to Christmas, because I like to go visit people during the festive season, even though doing that gets in the way of the book research. I’m a little annoyed that British radio stations have this year - for the first time - started playing Christmas music already. I like to make a big deal out of the moment on December 1st. I feel like my excitement has been pre-deflated. I wonder if there was just a greater pressure on media this year to join in with the commercial onslaught early, or if, with all the tension in the air right now, people just need Christmas to get here faster. At least my local coffee shop is holding off on their famous Festive Sandwich until December 1st. (And they’re opening specially on Sunday to provide it.)

With not a lot going on, I thought I’d mention something Thomas did. He used his words in a very organised sentence to ask for a precise sort of biscuit he liked, so Caroline duly brought home from the big shop a box of chocolate fingers. Once Thomas was sure we were out of the kitchen, we heard him narrating out loud. ‘Let’s take those biscuits and hide them in a secret place!’ And we heard the cake tin being opened and the biscuits placed in there. Thomas then acted very innocently, not answering when we asked about the biscuits. I feel that, since he doesn’t binge and is very good at knowing when he’s full, and the biscuits were bought for him, it’s fair enough if he wants to hide them in what he obviously thinks is a very devious way. I’ve asked him about it a couple of times, and he basically went ‘what biscuits?’ (Actually, none of them have been eaten, so he might have forgotten them.)

Christmas is very much up in the air, owing to Caroline’s family circumstances being a bit uncertain. Given that, my deadline, and my desire to have at least a little time off, I don’t think I’ll be doing a Ten Blogs of Christmas this year. But I might try to do something else special. And there’s the final Hammer House of Podcast Christmas Special on December 20th.

To Be Continued

More festive-ness next week! I hope to see you all then.