News from the New British Comics camp (review of issue 3 here) and another of their competitions, all connected with that rather good cover by Lawrence Elwick. There are 2 free copies to win, and winners will get a special drawn dedication from Lawrence, who’ll either draw the winner or one of the characters from the book.

All you need to do is take a look at the cover and answer one or both of these questions:

Contest #1: Name all the characters (animals too!) which appear on the cover of NBC #3. (The winner will be drawn from those who name all the characters, or the highest number if no one gets the lot.)

Contest #2: Take a look on the NBC #3 cover again. All of the characters there have British roots. All but one. Can you tell which? (Again, the winner will be drawn from all correct answers.)

All entries should be sent to Karol at NBC (karolwisnia@gmail.com) with “NBC #3 contest” as a subject. But you’ll have to be quick – the closing date is the 7th of February 2012.

Full details at the NBC Blog.

Josh Trank’s upcoming new movie Chronicle takes on of the well-known clichés of the superhero genre – the sudden granting of superpowers through contact with a strange source – but treats it a little differently than the usual spandex-fest, taking a cooler, more lo-fi approach. When a group of high school friends find themselves developing powers from a mysterious substance they’re not sure what to do about it – what would any of us do in that situation? Without training or discipline or focus it could be too easy to cause an accident with those new powers… As they develop they begin to experiment and have fun with them, playing pranks, but as they gain confidence and experience in their new abilities they start to push the boundaries of what they will do – but with those growing powers and confidence comes a sense of impunity and immortality, which may challenge their own sense of morality and just how far they might go…

Chronicle has opened in UK cinemas with preview screenings already, and opens fully on general release this weekend; our friends behind the film are helping us celebrate the film’s opening with a very generous competition. Social media and tech features in the film, with the movie gleefully playing with the conventions of the ‘found footage’ genre, and they have given us some cracking prizes: a dual core MacBook Air and a Canon EOS 550D camera. To be in with a chance of winning one of these brilliant prizes just send us your name and contact details to joe (dot) gordon (at) forbiddenplanet (dot) co (dot) uk and tell us the name of the director of Chronicle before February 15th (and if you could put ‘chronicle’ in the subject line, please). Good luck!

Josh Trank’s upcoming new movie Chronicle takes on of the well-known clichés of the superhero genre – the sudden granting of superpowers through contact with a strange source – but treats it a little differently than the usual spandex-fest, taking a cooler, more lo-fi approach.  When a group of high school friends find themselves developing powers from a mysterious substance they’re not sure what to do about it – what would any of us do in that situation? Without training or discipline or focus it could be too easy to cause an accident with those new powers… As they develop they begin to experiment and have fun with them, playing pranks, but as they gain confidence and experience in their new abilities they start to push the boundaries of what they will do – but with those growing powers and confidence comes a sense of impunity and immortality, which may challenge their own sense of morality and just how far they might go…

Chronicle opens in UK cinemas on February 1st and our friends behind the film are helping us celebrate the film’s opening with a very generous competition. Social media and tech features in the film, with the movie gleefully playing with the conventions of the ‘found footage’ genre, and they have given us some cracking prizes: a dual core MacBook Air and a Canon EOS 550D camera. To be in with a chance of winning one of these brilliant prizes just send us your name and contact details to joe (dot) gordon (at) forbiddenplanet (dot) co (dot) uk and tell us the name of the director of Chronicle before February 15th (and please put ‘chronicle’ in the subject line). Good luck!

Caricaturque has news of a call for entries from cartoonist for the 13th International Festival of aphorism & caricature in Strumica next year. There are two categories to enter, Aphorism and Caricature, and the them is Carnival-Erotica, with Gold, Silver and Bronze awards up for grabs; final date for any entries is January 16th 2012, check the Caricaturque site for more details.

And don’t forget you still have a few days remaining to try and win yourself a matched set of Art’s recently published MetaMaus, a fascinating work looking into the creation of the Pulitzer winning comic, and the new 25th anniversary hardback edition of the Complete Maus from Penguin. Just drop me a line – joe (dot) gordon (a) forbiddenplanet (dot) co (dot) uk – telling me the name of Art’s father whose memories most of Maus is built on before Monday 14th November to be in with a chance of winning a set of both handsome books.

And yet it wasn’t ever sure Maus would become this iconic book – as Art explains in the forthcoming MetaMaus many publishers rejected the concept when his agent pitched the book to them. It may seem a little like the infamous man who turned down the Beatles, but to be fair to most English language book publishers back then a full length graphic novel was an unusual item most wouldn’t be familiar with, or know how to deal with (some probably didn’t even know exactly how to read it, I suspect – being able to read a comics page is a learned skill). But eventually it was accepted, with neither the publisher or artist having any idea that it would go on to become such a literary landmark.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a read at an advance copy of MetaMaus, a fascinating look by Art back into how Maus came into being, from the original short three pager in Funny Animals through his talks with his father for his personal recollections, years of research, struggling to decide how to portray some characters and scenes, trying to secure a publisher and, even after the book is published and had become a huge success, the effect this had had on him and his life – something he likens to being akin to Heller with Catch-22, wondering if anything else you create afterwards will be judged fairly on its own merits or held up against Maus as the standard, not an easy shadow to live in. The book also talks about how it has affected his own family, asking some questions I hadn’t considered about Maus before (and I’ve re-read it a number of times over the years). Packed with rarely seen work, sketches and other pieces of Maus history, the lovely hardback also comes with a DVD packed with various multimedia items to supplement it. It’s pretty much essential reading for anyone interested in the artform of serious comics and a fascinating (and sometimes personal and touching) insight into the creation of one of the most important comics works of the last quarter century, all built around a series of talks by Art with Hillary Chute of the University of Chicago.

In addition to MetaMaus, Penguin Viking are also publishing a gorgeous 25th anniversary hardback edition of the Complete Maus, in the same matching format as MetaMaus (quite lovely hardbacks with cloth spines), which is also published this week. And thanks to the generosity of our friends at Penguin we have 5 sets of MetaMaus and the Complete Maus 25th Anniversary Hardcover just waiting for 5 lucky readers to give a good home to. To be in with a chance of winning a copy of both books email in the answer to one simple question – what is the name of Art’s father? Send your answer (and contact details) to joe (dot) gordon (at) forbiddenplanet (dot) co (dot) uk before Monday 14th of November to be in with a chance of winning this gorgeous set of books.

I’m rather late posting this, since the competitions been running since early September. Ooops.

Anyway, The Etherington Brothers, whose Baggage graphic novel was released a few weeks ago (my review here, the children at school are working hard on their reviews as I write), have teamed up with the National Literacy Trust and Renaissance Learning for a country wide comic creating competition, open to all primary and secondary schools.

You can find full details here on the Etherington Brothers’ blog. But here’s a quick summary….

The Etheringtons have produced a completely new character called “Dorko“, who they describe as “a boy who possesses a wild imagination but none of your typical super hero powers … and he desperately needs a side-kick!”

So the first competition, for Primary School pupils, is to design a sidekick for Dorko, and write about their first meeting. And for secondary school pupils the task is to complete a single page of a Dorko story, using that pic above as the opening panel. The winners will receive a visit from the Etherington Brothers for one of their great comic-creating workshops. And the secondary school winner will see their page turned into a professional comic page drawn by Lorenzo.

The deadline for the competition is Monday November 28th! Now, I have to get back into school and start our children drawing their sidekick!

The Bristol Comics Expo, long a major fixture on the UK comics event calendar, is returning to its spiritual home of Brunel’s Passenger Shed at the Temple Meads rail station (a very handy venue for out of towners as the train station is literally next to it and the shuttle bus from the airport goes directly there too). The dates for the 2012 BCE have been announced as taking place over the weekend of May 12th and 13th, with the first guests also added to the BCE site -the guest of honour will be the legendary Denny O’Neill, while the first crop of other guests, including Boo Cook, Simon Bisley, David Hine and Paul Cornell, have been added to the site.

With the new and much anticipated Rise of the Planet of the Apes movie hitting UK screens this very weekend our friends at 20th Century Fox have been kind enough to offer us up a couple of terrific swag bags of movie-related goodies that two of our readers could be lucky enough to score, with a watch, t-shirt, metallic notepad, blackberry case, keychain and pen. Just drop me a line -Joe (dot) gordon (at) forbiddenplanet (dot) co (dot) uk – or leave your answer and contact details in the comments section, telling me the name of the writer whose novel inspired all the Planet of the Apes movies to be in with a chance of winning and get those answers in before Thursday 1st of September.