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Chrissie

London Comic Mart August 2026

So, on August 16th, I visited the almost-legendary London Comic Mart at the Royal National Hotel for the first time since the autumn of 2008.

Why so long?!

I don’t know. I hadn’t been to London at all since December 2018, when Steve and I had lunch with the late movie director Norman J Warren. Norman was a very nice guy, BTW. But as to the marts… this was something I did go to semi-regularly for a number of years… the habit just lapsed, I suppose.

I met Paul G at Euston around 1pm, All the trains were running a bit late on this particular day. In spite of rumours to the contrary, London seemed about the same as the last time I saw it. The mart venue itself was not greatly changed from 18 years ago—the outdoor seating area was corralled, and I believe that wasn’t the case in ’08 (do I remember wrongly?!), but otherwise no notable changes. I had not done anything the least bit comicsy for so long, I found the mart a little disorientating for a while.

London Comic Mart August 16 2026
Blurry shot of the first room of the mart. Sorry, screwed this up a bit.

Glad to say, most of the mart prices were not unpardonably steep and I picked up a copy of the recent facsimile of the 1978 Superman vs. Muhammad Ali treasury special for £12.50. Strange but true: I have never previously owned a copy of this book, which in spite of the absurd concept happens to carry one of Neal Adams’s best art jobs. This was a good score, I think.
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Lots Of Tom

Yeah, so we’re gonna be revisiting the whole Magnum, P.I. run!

Tom Selleck as Magnum
Tom Selleck as MAGNUM.

Last couple of years or so, we have indeed watched a lot of Tom Selleck material. Including, ultimately, the whole run of Blue Bloods. In which he was great, BTW. Obviously we also saw the two episodes of The Rockford Files he did—which cemented a lasting friendship with star James Garner.

This one will bring back a lot of early ’80s memories, for sure…
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Hard Luck City Promo 2026

Hard Luck City is a seemingly ill-fated project I first created way back in 1993. Every so often, I will dust it off and fiddle around with it, but nothing much ever culminates. Maybe someday?!

This time I did a simple page summarising some of the basic themes. For fun, mostly. Who knows. I guess the pinnacle of the idea was getting Gene Colan to draw one of the demonic characters back in 2006 (see below!), for the cover art of a comics anthology project (with Paul Gravett), which would have featured HLC amongst other things.

Hard Luck City Promo 2026
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Bald Captains Not Allowed

Dare I risk venturing into one of those boring Viewings posts no one likes?

We just finished season one of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s gonna be a full rewatch, although I saw at least half of them on the Horror Channel (RIP) about eight years ago. Anyhow, a troubled season one—it only gets better after this. To be fair, it does build towards a pretty strong final few episodes.

So do I like TNG as much as TOS? Probably not. How much of that is sentiment for the show I watched lots as a kid? Hard to say… but definitely a factor.

A short documentary on the final season one disc gave me a chuckle. Gene Roddenberry recalled Patrick Stewart first being suggested as the new Enterprise Captain, and he had his doubts. He wasn’t sure he could cast a bald man in the role!!

I see exactly what you mean, Gene.

Desilu Memo 1968
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Club Comicana-Vamporama at 20

NOTE: After you’ve read all the posting below (and I hope you do!), please go look at the 2021 posting “The Last Club Vamporama”—I had sadly accidentally deleted the original version of this posting, rather than making it private, forcing me to recreate it—and it’d be really cool if you could leave some new feedback & comments there! Thanks.

While on the theme of 20th anniversaries… I did my first Club Comicana strip around October 2006. To celebrate, let’s have a bit of history and rare art!

That first strip was going to be dropped into my regular “Networks” column for Comics International #201—however, Dez abruptly sold the magazine, and I didn’t get along with the bumbling fool who was tasked with killing it off taking it over… so I didn’t continue working for the mag.

Club Comicana 1 2006

But in actual fact, the very first (unfinished) strip was started in the summer of 2006. And I recently realised, I had never posted it on here. So here it is…
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Mom: 20 Years On

I can’t believe I’m writing down that it’s TWENTY YEARS since my mother died. In all kinds of ways it seems surreal, improbable and deeply perplexing to try to process this apparent fact of chronology.

And yet, there it is. I have lately been rebuilding/restoring the old archives on this blog, dating back to December 7th 2000 (how naïve it all seemed back then), more than half of which are now back online, with much more to come… and there’s no doubting that these events happened a full two decades ago. The same day Alex Toth died; the birthday of both Vincent Price and Christopher Lee—what is it about May 27th?!

Mom August 1956
This is mom in August 1956, aged 13. She was a cool teen.

If you haven’t already, I hope you go and read the blog I wrote back on May 27th 2006 (and indeed my contribution in the comments thread). These posts say it all, with much more clarity and raw immediacy than I can hope to summon today. I was curiously impressed, looking back, at how articulate I was. I’m not sure I’d handle it as well today. I know I wasn’t, in fact, handling it well at all at that time (who does?)—but I was expressing myself extremely well.

I would like to use the second half of this post to… go deeper. But first, the positive stuff. I have a photo album page, fully restored and updated, dedicated to mom—which I will update over time, as I continue to scan more of the best old photos I have. You can view the page as it stands here:

In Memory of Mom.
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Me & Mom & Horror (and More)

Some memories of mom as we approach the 20th anniversary of her death…

I got my love of horror from mom. Where mom got it from, who knows. But she was hooked on weird stuff fairly early on. One of my favourite stories that she liked to tell also explains her approach to me and horror movies when I was a kid.

In the summer of 1958, the UK was buzzing with the release of Hammer’s first entry in their Dracula series. Starring Christopher Lee as the Count and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, the word was that this movie was seriously, hard-core scary and maybe, too, a little bit (GASP!) sexy!

Dracula Poster 1958

Mom was 15 years old on August 13th 1958. Dracula was an “X” certificate—she was too young to see it.
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