Asterix auf der Manga Comic Con 2019

21. Jahrhundert bringt Augmentierte Bücher - Interview mit Tinx Verlag a...

BTC & B update

The Black Tower Face Book page has been updated and if you look in photos for the BTC&B Covers you will find 120 images added.

Each cover image has a link next to it so that you can visit the online store and look at the available preview pages.

Other covers included those books  that were offered on CBO as mail order only or intended for selling at comic events.

Enjoy

Words on a Friday

Published on the Black Tower Face Book page

From "World Mystery", early ballooning and wildlife prose featuring maps, sketches and photographs -fully referenced and containing rare and previously thought lost for well over a hundreds photographs.

Haiku from a Golden Belt Haiku Master

Illustrated text anthologies.

Horror

Super heroes

Slice-of-life

Hard boiled detective

Action and Adventure

Nine pages and 93 books -it goes on and on. It makes Black Tower Comics & Books the UK's BIGGEST Independent publisher. There are previews for each book on the online store. Prices are as cheap as they can be made.

Apart from the Adventure anthology every book is self-contained and there is no "You'll need to read this one first" or "To read the conclusion buy---"

Fair and honest fun and entertainment.

The books are black and white and if they were in colour you would be trebling the cover price. Comics started as black and white and some of the best art and styles are developed in black and white.

I have just had four new comics from Ben Dilworth in Japan -Ace Hart and Steve The Horse material. Excellent material. Ben gets these comics printed off in Japan and sends them to me. In the past I have offered them on CBO and one 'comic' event. I sold one at the intro £1 price to someone who raved about Dilworth's art style "big fan. BIG fan of the style!" So I show him the books by Dilworth -£5-8.00. No. Walks off.

How do you explain to someone like Dilworth that you have three boxes full of books you cannot sell at events (because you are blocked) or via CBO -where all the books and publicity has been seen by millions (NOT joking) and shared via Twitter and other social media- and that you have a huge heap of the comics he has sent to add to those boxes?

Obviously I never foresaw the health problems (the leg problem was on the cards since I was 11 and had "possibly" rheumatic fever. From 1984 onward every single event was work. Little fun just work, work, work. Going without a meal for a couple days due to the expense of travelling to London and back to try to get artists work wasn't too bad (hey, a can of cold baked beans tastes nicer than warmed up beans!). Of course, I had no idea that most of the creators I was working with were back-stabbing or how big a bunch of crooks some editors were -acknowledged by their bosses!

But I worked and promoted people, promoted UK comics and the small press in the United States (the "UK Invasion") as well as Europe.

When I opened the online store in 2009 I built things up. I was satisfied that with all the publicity and the quality of the books and contents at least I'd be sure of an income -no one else offered the variety Black Tower did.

It is 2019 and I am back to eating a cold tin of beans -

they still taste better cold so I like to see my career and diet as having been consistent at least!

At least there is one certainty: when I snuff it, with all my books and comics, the home cremation will be free!

At my age and with all my experience being in publishing I have no choice. I can't just quit.

Cinebook Ltd Newsletter 135 - March 2019

To display this email in a browser, please click here

Dear Reader, Do you like a good mystery? Strange events, hidden adversaries, games of cat and mouse? Good, because we have that in spade this month! Take Buck Danny, for example. Someone’s shot down a Japanese plane, and is trying to pass it off as an act of Chinese aggression. That’s the sort of stuff that could lead to war on a global scale, but our flyboy is smarter than that, and he smells a rat. Can he flush the puppet masters out in the open before things go catastrophically wrong? In Twenty Years Later, we meet again with the survivors of the plane crash from Story Without a Hero. Time has passed and they moved on with their lives, when suddenly they begin dropping dead at an alarming rate … What’s going on? Simple coincidence, or was there something sinister connected to the events of twenty years ago only now resurfacing? Finally, IAN is taking drastic measures to make sure he never again goes on a rampage like he did during the riots, but not only is he too resilient for suicide to work, someone – something? – is trying to keep him alive. Of course, there’s the small matter of a government that doesn’t feel the same way AT ALL … March with Cinebook – the game is afoot! Buck Danny 9  Formosa & Zumbiehl Flight of the Spectre When a Japanese patrol plane is shot down by a mysterious aggressor, the international community immediately suspects the Chinese — the attack took place off the Japanese Senkaku Islands, which China also claims as their own. The incident is extremely serious and could lead to all-out war ... Read more IAN 3  Meyer & Vehlmann Blietzkrieg Horrified at the memory of what he’s done during the Los Angeles riots, Ian tries to commit suicide. But his body turns out to be simply too durable. Injured but alive, he’s taken in by the inhabitants of the city’s slums ... Read more Twenty Years Later Dany & Van Hamme   Twenty years have passed since the survivors of the Corair crash emerged from the jungle. But suddenly they begin dropping like flies. Rafalowski, the cowardly pianist, vanishes. Miss Taylor, the nanny, drowns. Draillac, who was 12 at the time of the accident, is kidnapped and believed dead ... Read more Alone 10 The Machine for Undying Lucky Luke The Complete Collection 1 The Route 66 List 1 Illinois Thorgal 21 The Sacrifice North-American readers, to locate a comic book shop near you that stocks or can order these titles and many more, us this handy Read more   Or, if you're a retailer yourself, please go to: Read more Blake & Mortimer 25 The Valley of the Immortals Mermaid Project 2 Episode 2 Trent 6 The Sunless Country May 11 & 12, 2019: Cinebook will exhibit at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto, Canada http://www2.torontocomics.com/

Please consider checking out the online store. Thank you.

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/hoopercomicsuk

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A Few Words

Posted on the Black Tower Face Book page today:

"Why don't you get some of your comic buddies to mention your books on their blogs?"

ahem

I apologise if my mind has totally forgotten you but as far as I am aware I do not have any "comic buddies"....not in the UK. The people I know in comics in Europe or the US i do mention and share posts from.

Even people who are comic fans I share their posts. As I see it the problem is that you cannot make someone mention you. I would NEVER guilt trip people into doing anything. Also...I think 95% of those people don't even read my FB posts let alone CBO posts -"social media" is about self not your "friends".

CBO has had around 7 million views and some Black Tower posts are seen or checked out hundreds of times and some times thousands of times. That is a world wide audience -apart from Antarctica and the Arctic views come from everywhere. The POD (Print On Demand) store does not operate simply out of the UK -there are printers for most countries and so the postal costs are local to you. You are NOT buying from the UK and having to pay huge postal charges (I keep pointing this out).

The problem is that if you have had over 7 million views of your blog and about 5 million on the now going Google Plus -and there are many many more views that could be added to these but you get the point. 12 million views of CBO and from that -no questions, VERY rare comments and no sales.

I sold far, far more small press zines with only occasional mentions and word of mouth in the old days than I am selling top quality books in the internet age. Of course, the UK has a 'vibrant and very strong comic industry'!

Selling books is essential since that means I then have the money to go to events (small ones) in Europe Belgium, Netherlands and Germany (let's not mention Brexit here).

I see pretty poor art and books selling well (or so we are told) but I am not here to criticise others or their skills or publications. My books tend to be far cheaper, though! So all I can ask is that if any of you have blogs PLEASE mention BTC&Bs and pass the word around.

For 2019, even though it is only March, there is no possibility of getting out to events (unless local and, believe it or not, I don't even get invited to them) is zero. 2020 -if I am still here- is what I need to plan for so.....

You never know.

http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/hoopercomicsuk

Nerdzig auf der Manga Comic Con 2019 - Tag 1

Super7 Vintage Style Masters of the Universe SHE-RA - Filmation Retro Co...

D-Gruppe -Germany's Premier Super Team

Just re-posting this material as some are finding them hard to locate.  Believe me, in the past I have searched CBO using the exact post title but "no such post" appears.

I get off CBO and Google it...voila!

Enjoy und haben sie alles eine gutes ComicCon Deutschland!

Listen very carefully -I shall only say this once!

I fell asleep at 0430 hours and woke at 0625 hours and realised that Theresa May really is the Prime Minister this country needs.  Like Robert the Bruce and that bloody spider it seems the Brexit Plan rejected twice is going for a third vote.  I then checked all the other news and decided that escaping into a world of comics and figure painting was  best.

Comic drawing has been non-existent, however. This is the position my hand/fingers are currently in.

Yes, my stiff little chubby sausages are stuck like that so I have been trying to see whether I can get them to hold pens and pencils again by painting miniature figures.  Imagine someone stamping on your hand continuously after you've drawn a panel on a page -you'll be getting there. My increasing difficulty in walking means I am perfectly suited to sitting on my arse drawing though.

Hopefully this answers two questions; why haven't I produced any new art and why do  I keep pushing Black Tower books (I am the publisher for one thing) it is my only income -and having sold one book in February it's nothing to survive on.

So you now know a little more.  That and $200,000,000 will make you rich!!

Invasion Earth Trilogy I-The Return Of The Gods:Twilight of the Super Heroes

 

I -The Return Of The Gods:Twilight of the Super Heroes

Paperback,
A4
Black & White
331 Pages
Price: Reduced to £20.00 (excl. VAT) That's 331 pages for £20!!!Prints in 3-5 business days
http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper-scharf/the-return-of-the-godstwilight-of-the-super-heroes/paperback/product-22076337.html

It begins slowly.  It always does. It's a deception that everything in the world is as it should be and that never changes.

Earth’s heroes and crime-fighters are going about their daily tasks –fighting a giant robot controlled by a mad scientist’s brain, attackers both human and mystical -even alien high priests of some mysterious cult and their zombie followers and, of course, a ghost and a young genius lost in time. 

Pretty mundane. 

But psychics around the world have been sensing something.  A "something" that sends feelings of sheer terror through their psyches.

There is a huge alien Mother-ship near the Moon. Undetected by deep-space radar and other instruments, only a few on Earth have sensed it and they cannot penetrate the hull but only feel psychic screams and....worse.

And then it begins: strange orange spheres isolate and chase some of Earth’s heroes who then vanish into thin air –are they dead?  An attack by an old foe or foes -?

Black, impenetrable domes cover cities world-wide. 

Then it becomes clear to those within the domes what is going on: Alien invasion of Earth!
A war between the Dark Old Gods and the pantheons that followed! 

Warriors from Earth’s past having to battle each day and whether they die or not they are back the next day! 

No one suspects the driving force behind the events.  One single evil guiding events.  Events that could cause destruction and chaos throughout the multiverse.

Assaulted on all fronts can Earth’s defenders succeed or will they fail...is this truly the end? 

The following postal rates apply on all books for the UK. Postalrates in other countries vary

Delivery Options:

• Standard Royal Mail£2.99Delivers 1 to 3 business days after printing.Note: This option does not allow tracking
• Standard Traceable£6.99Delivers 1 to 2 business days after printing.
• Express Traceable£12.99Delivers 1 business day after printing.

Tom Elmes' TRUE STORIES - Offer

60pp
A4
Black & White

List Price: £8.00

Price: £7.60 (excl. VAT)

You Save: £0.40 ( 5% )

http://www.lulu.com/shop/terry-hooper/tom-elmes-true-stories/paperback/product-22638739.html

Another of Tom Elmes’ classic self published comics was TRUE STORIES.  However, it was never completed -until now!


Tom Elmes, legendary “King of the Zine Nasties” is back! One of the most under-rated British comic creators returns with True Stories –a continuation of his 1980s comic. If you wondered what happened -waiting is over! Over 50+ pages of new art and a 1990 interview with the man himself-the only one ever.

This 59 page book now only contains the sensational appearance of the Blue Cephalopod Man but an interview with Tom from 1990!

I just Cannot Take All of This Seriously. But It Is Serious

"Hi. Would you like to join in on a round robin discussion today?"

Never heard of the fella inviting me so I asked what the discussion was about and WHO was involved. Makes sense, right?

As it turns out it was a group of US Indie comic publishers (NO, Image, Dark Horse and IDW are NOT Independent comic publishers. Grow up) and they wanted some UK input but "Seems everyone over there is arguing with each other so you not..."

Twice I sent links to posts from 10 years ago when I predicted exactly what was being discussed. There was a lot of ego going on but I get the feeling that was due to the situation they are in. There were five people involved and all seem to publish good material in black and white and colour. It seems they all agreed that DC and Marvel had set comics back  because of the constant reboots, multiple variant covers and so on.

Quote: "Two guys looked over the comics at the table and both asked the same question:how many variant covers do my books have. I told them there were no variant covers just cover and self contained stories.  Both said the same thing: 'If you don't have variant covers the books can't be that good!' and I tried explaining the comic and art and story were the important part..."

He failed.

So I was asked what they could do to try and fight back against all the fake comic fans -buying as many variant covers as you can is not being a fan just showing OCD.  I put some ideas out there and even suggested they all combine into one company -each selling their books as an imprint (doing what Image did when it started).  No. That would mean they'd....well, basically each feared that they would lose control of their own creations which is not how it works.

Each one of those involved stated that 2019 was their final year -unless sales picked up they were quitting.

Hour plus wasted.

I do wonder how many small Indie publishers there will be by the end of 2019. In the UK, of course, we have a very strong comics industry and sales are constant and high -I've heard people on the fringe of comics say so.

Until people realise "The Big Five" are just using them as cash cows and realise there are great Indie comics out there....

we are fecked

Black Tower comics & Books is a good place to start!

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Here You Go -Now Send In The Review Items!

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I Would Like To Offer An Unequivocable Apology

Under Section 24(A), Para 5 of amended contract dated 12/3/1989 I have no choice but to let the little fellow out at least once a year and there is no censorship.

I am sorry.

Sorry.

Very sorry.

He is right though.