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.