Something that annoys me even though it's what I expect.
Something that annoys me even though it's what I expect.
I had Ben Dilworth's superb comic work and unfortunately, thanks to the process used by my printer, the cover that was sent could not be used. I was left with the option of not publishing, just adding the occasional strip to an existing anthology (The Clock did appear on the front cover of the final issue (vol. 2 no. 10) of Adventure which featured a Dilworth illo colourised by my brother, Mike.
I hate doing covers! But I suck it up and get to work. Apparently, I am told, the various book covers stand out and are "unique" in not just having fight scenes on them. So I tried one idea. Threw it out. Brilliant idea next and....threw it out. Another idea seemed to be perfect. Can you guess what happened? Yup, threw it out!
There I sat looking at a rough outline sketch (by "outline" I actually mean pencilled outline) and I thought keeping that clean white background would be nice. At that point my black and white artist brain kicked in and I left The Clock as a silhouette against a white background..with some bullet holes (we all knew it was heading that way).
(c)2025 BTCG
Completed I went away and made some coffee (NOT instant. NEVER instant!!!) came back to the image and threw it to one side. It wouldn't work. I tried another design. Nope. How about that silhouette in a darkened alleyway with trash cans over turned and bullets whizzing (giggle) by.
No.
I looked at that illo and again and said something rude and it became the final cover!
Still don't think it did justice to the interior art but if you have a book you need a cover -right?
all art (c)2025 Ben R. Dilworth (except the cover I did!)
One bit of fun I had in between bouts of "I'm dying!" when it came to drawing The Bat Triumphant was the way that "old foes" popped up. Being a rather central European and ancient duch with mountains and forests and many old ruined castles it was almost inevitable that the Frankenstein Monster would turn up in the 1930s.
It was a bit of a shock for The Bat to find he had not destroyed it decades earlier!
96 Pages
For decades there have been reports of “Big Cats” roaming the British countryside killing sheep and deer. Are all of the observers from naturalists,zoologists, zoo personnel, police and others all mistaken?
Terry Hooper-Scharf set up the Exotic Animals Register (EAR) in 1977 to disprove the claims before become a UK police forces exotic wildlife consultant and member of the Partnership Against Wildlife crime (PAWS). What he found out was almost unbelievable but with the gathered evidence including DNA results and bone analysis it seemed that there were exotic cats in the UK and that some had been here at least going back to the early 19th century.
The presented evidence saw the Department of Environment Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) force him off the PAWS scheme despite police protests.
Now read fact and not sensationalist press or fringe claims.
I was asked why my books are so expensive on Ebay/ Amazon? Well, I DO NOT sell via Ebay or Amazon. What you have there are people who buy the book from my online store and then re-price (hiking up the price) and sell on those sites.
The Ultimate British Comics Gold Collection is being sold for £37-75.00 or $49.97-101.17 or Euro 42.58 -86.32. The same thing is happening with other books including The Hooper Interviews which I have seen described as "rare" -it is not as it has never been out of print.
The Gold Collection is 400+pp £25.00 + 4.94 for priority mail so £29.94 so you work out whether it's simpler to buy from my online store or buy from someone who has to order and then send to your address at a much inflated price.
There is another side to this. You order from a third party seller then it is buyer beware. About 4 years ago I had an email out of the blue asking where a book ordered was. I asked what they were talking about and they told me the title, what they paid for it (£15 above cover price) and that after 3 weeks it had not turned up. I checked and no such order but a copy of the book had been purchased by Amazon to resell under their deal with the print on demand company (the Amazon sale got me 5o/50 cents on a £20 book sale).
I to9ld the buyer I needed his order number to sort out what was going on. He then told me that he had purchased 'post free' (no such thing) from a dealer. It seems the dealer bought the book cheap on Amazon to sell it on. I pointed out to the buyer that he had paid £15 over the cover price and that as he had not purchased from my online store but a third party it was out of my hands and "tough luck" for helping to cheat me out of a semi decent sale.
The book eventually turned up 4 weeks after he had ordered it and he showed me the invoice that was inside as the seller had bought the book on Amazon at a discount of £10 but sold it for £35. Why was he showing me the invoice? He wanted me to take action to get money back -seriously. I told him that he had been on the online store so saw the cost but had ordered at a higher cost thinking he had free postage without checking and so it had absolutely nothing to do with me.
If you are interested in a book on the online store then you can go through the ordering process and up to the Choose delivery method point which would show you total cost. If you decide against buying leave the page as you are NEVER charged unless you click "Pay Now". As shown below
This will all show in your local currency as books are printed and delivered by services within your region. NO international mailing. There are guarantees with ordering from an online store such as set prices and help if there is an order problem. What profit there is gets back to me to keep producing books and buy in more cans of baked beans for dinner!Buy smart!
Although there are some classic cases in these books the majority involve cases that are very rare, have never appeared in English before and unlike most "clump everything together to fill a book" efforts these look at aspects of cases as well as some very common but not reported on before entity and scenario types.
Someone who has been involved in Ufology since the 1980s noted: "Over half these cases I have never heard of before!"
B&W
350 pp
Fully illustrated containing photographs and maps
£20.00
Beyond UFO Contact i the fourth book in the groundbreaking series looking at reports of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien-Entity reports from around the world and reassessing these. In addition there is a look at the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligences (SETI) and its relevance to the UFO phenomenon.
contents list:
Introduction: The Path of Counter-Actuality
1. Dionisio Llanca: Truck Driver, UFO Abductee and Human Guinea Pig
2. Aliens -What Can We Expect?
3. The Moreland Incident
4. It Is All Fake: Ufology Needs To Be Reassessed
5. Warminster UFOs and Entity Reports
6. Have Things Changed Since 1977?
7. The Beausoleil Cas -Even Aliens Like Theatre
8. The Pwca
9. Contact...with the Vegetable Alien
10. The Casitas Dam UFO Photograph and Entity
11. The Crystal Lake Encounter
12. The Humanoids at South Riverand the Luczkowich Encounter
13. Harrison Bailey
14. Sonny DesVerger
15. The UFO "Borderline"-The Imjarvi Skiers
16. Some Interesting Reports to Note
17. Dead Aliens in Photographs
18. Ufology, Government Cover Ups and Disclosure
19. The Reports That You Might Not Want To Look Into
20. Conil de la Frontera -a Credible Report?
21. Eighteenth Century Aliens?
22. Clearview Ranch
23. The Pat McGuire Case
24. Piero Fortunato Franzetta
25. The Silbury Hill Encounter
26. The Bridge Abduction
27. The Bagshot Heath UFO Incident
28. Lurkers and Alien Disinterest
29. What If YOU See Aliens Land?
30. So What Would YOU Do If You Encountered A Landed UFO?
____________________________________________________________
Johnny Neg -future detective in a dystopian Nu London where double speek, fist, gun and corruption are every day things Neg has to deal with. Join him Down in the Burn Pitts. Along for this journey are stories involving Wilberforce of the Yard, Corporal Religion Horror Tales and...a cat.
"I read the original quote from that German blogger and thought it was a lot of hot air. When Return of the Gods: Twilight of the Super Heroes arrived I thought "thick book" and knew you'd taken it from 96 pages to 360+...it looked impressive. I read through it in two days and -robots, aliens, "gods", super heroes, sorcerers, alien invasions and more and world-wide. And you tell me this was done without a script?! It's the only one I can think of so, yeah, the greatest British super hero graphic novel fits as a description." Pete Clark
"You say this is your final big story? The Green Skies was fantastic and everything laid out into chapters was a great touch!"
David Stephens, Comic Reviews
" 'Holy ******* ****!' was all I could say. I even tried counting the number of characters and how the **** you produced all of this without a script beats me. Return of the Gods: Twilight of the Super Heroes and The Green Skies could only have been better if George Perez had drawn it!"
Dan's Comics
"I have no idea why you are not pushing this even harder. The books Return of the Gods: Twilight of the Super Heroes and The Green Skies I would love to see in German or at least get German fans to read since it has a good number of German heroes in it. Next big comic event over here send me copies and I'll sell them on my table!"
Gerd Hammer, German comics historian and trader
Selected comic readers were also chosen to review copies and, obviously, two of these were people from Hong Kong who I corresponded with on Manhua over the years.
"I just wish someone like Tong Li would publish this in Chinese -I mean there are Chinese heroes in this so why not?"
Wang Xiuying
"There HAS to have been a script and more than one person working on this! Brilliant!"
Mike Wayne, Australian comic dealer
Generally, these comments were all similar and I only quote these as any more would be very egotistical. The books should speak for themselves.


A4
B&W
124pp
£15.00
It all began in 1987 and the Black Tower Universe has seen alien attacks, heroes kidnapped to be put into the middle of a war of the gods.
Despite the deaths and losses the heroes -crime fighters, super powered and members of the magical union have come back but now unaware that alien races are escaping through the Sol system and that a mysterious space fleet is heading towards the inner planets, they find themselves trapped or distracted.
The Many Eyed One is finally coming.
The Multiversal Council has quarantined Earth and forbidden any to help.
The evil has spread and there is treachery striking at the very core of Earth's defenders
A4
B&W
126pp
£15.00
Following on from events in Green Skies V. 3 Part I the Clone Zone Boyz are increasing in number while those who created them, the Vampirons, continue to plot and await the arrival of their 'God' -The Many Eyed One.
The Druid finds that his physical and mental state are deteriorating and even the Rev. Merriwether cannot help him.
Shockingly, the Clone Zone Boyz claims someone close to Merriwether and this leads him to team up with two 'unsavoury' characters.
In space Krii and Tyn hrrn face a seemingly unstoppable enemy.
On The Moon the Selenites and representatives of other worlds meet and decide that Johnny Apollo, the Z-Man, is the only one who can lead the counter invasion fleet.
With the enemy striking Mars and then the Moon things look grim
A4
B&W
208pp
£16.00
The gathered Sol Defence fleet is prepared to make its final stand led by Johnny Apollo the Z Man. If it fails to halt the invaders then the doomsday weapon will be detonated and destroy the entire Sol System.
Meanwhile, unaware of the threat in space, Jack Flash, the Avenger and others prepare for a final show down with the Many Eyed One; a final confrontation they know they do not have the power to win.
Is this Humanity...the Earths...final day?
woven into The Green Skies is the story of the harbinger of destruction: the story of Varik Dann -The Man Who Walked Through a Door and Into Another World