Short and Dolphin Unfriendly

Midnight Quatermass 32: Thin, but with a free (old) comic

Oct 31, 2024

So the first thing to note is that tonight’s MQ is a) too long to fit in your email and b) shorter than usual. Weird.

It’s because there are a lot more images than usual and Substack via email has a size cut off point that we’re way over. But instead of the usual prose story I’ve thrown in an old comic strip. So yeah, bit of a weird one.

We have house guests this week and while I’m usually pretty good at being able to write from anywhere despite any distraction (I once finished writing an action scene outside a cafe in LA as two unmarked police cars blocked a fleeing car before dragging the suspects out at gunpoint while Blue Thunder hovered overhead directing in the black and whites that turned up sirens blazing) but I’m waving the white flag here and the whole week has been fucked.

So at some point in your email this thing will just stop. But there should be a link at the top to read it in your browser in full. That’s the theory anyway. So this week is more of an experiment like way back when we started this thing and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

I don’t think Substack is the best way to share comic work, although I do know some comic book creators that use it. I’ll have to have a dig around and do a little research before I do this again. We do have an archive of older published comic book work, but it needs its own online home really. I’ll add that to the never-ending list.

Next week we’ll be back to good old, long-winded, stupidly violent prose.

Another thing to note about the comic story below is that its pretty old now from back when Dave and I were still working out how to make sequential art work. It’s pretty raw, limited by the format we were originally publishing in (for the now defunct Sleepydog book, Dog House) and there’s a lot we’d do different today. The dialogue doesn’t quite flow correctly in places and there’s at least one glaring typo that made it to print too. But it’s not the worst idea we had and I’m still quite fond of it. Some nice lines in there too.

This oddly unfolding week also means that not a lot has happened. Cooper got walked a lot though so he’s happy. I watched a bunch of Wanted Dead or Alive (1958-61) with a young Steve McQueen (his grandson turned out to be Rutger Haur who blew up the bass player from KISS with a hand grenade).

I did find time to rewatch a favourite, slightly obscure, movie and write the first piece for the new movie newsletter. Once we have a few issues stockpiled we’ll look to launching the thing.

I did get some good news on a couple of ongoing projects, one newsletter related, but I can’t talk about that just yet. And that’s about it. I did consider skipping Midnight Quatermass this week, but I figured a free comic and less waffle from me won’t be the worst email you get this week.

Oh. After talking here about the letter my dad got from the Glaswegian police back in the 60s I posted it to Reddit where it got some 44,000 likes.

And I just did an interview with Newsweek about it.

Weird.

But a short newsletter means I can get it out just after midnight, so...

Storytime.