(© Lucy Knisley)

This has been all over the net this week, but I got it from Wim.

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(Madeleine Flores’ Girl And The Gorilla. Coming in 2010 from Blank Slate.)

Meanwhile, Darryl Cunningham’s Psychiatric Tales has been getting a huge amount of pre-publication press, all of it phenomenally good. It’s not going to be a light read, far from it. But it will be something wonderfully affecting. And you can find out exactly how good it is – it’s online at Darryl’s website.We’ve been longtime fans of Darryl’s work and his Super-Sam And John Of The Night time strip is still here, complete, on the site. So to see him in print this way will be a treat for us as well as you.

(Page from Darryl Cunningham’s Psychiatric Tales, coming in February 2010 from Blank Slate. Art ©2008 Darryl Cunningham)

In addition to that, we have the latest book, Berlin and That by Oliver East this January, My Skateboard Life by Ed Syder in March and the long awaited Lichen by Stuart Kolakovic later in the year. The Blank Slate website has had a major refurb and more details on these forthcoming books here. Go look.

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(“Badger & Friend” by Nick Abadzis. © Nick Abadzis and Howard Hardiman)

Seems Nick Abadzis is a big fan of Howard’s work, so he sent Howard a email with this sketch. Like Howard says:

Nick Abadzis, who is the creator of Laika, which is the best comic book in the universe, just sent me this in an email.  I actually squeaked with surprise and joy.  It’s the most incredible thing.

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One, two, Freddy’s coming for you, three four, better lock your door... Yes, folks, we have horror icon Robert Englund coming soon. Englund has been well known and beloved of SF and horror genre fans for many years, appearing in a large number of productions from playing the good alien in the original V mini-series to the knowing nods and winks of the silly and highly enjoyable Zombie Strippers and voice acting for some great superhero animations like The Spectacular Spider-Man and The Batman. Of course to legions of fans, especially those of us who grew up on the 80s horror boom, Robert will always be forever linked with the razor fingered Freddy Kreuger, the monstrous slaughterer of teens who strikes in their dreams who has gone on to become a huge icon of the genre, taking his place alongside the venerable array of famous monsters of filmland (to borrow a phrase from the late Forry Ackerman), thanks in no small part to Robert treating the role with respect to deliver such a memorable monster (not least in the clever and disturbing New Nightmare where he played both himself as the actor playing Freddy and Freddy as ‘real’ too).

Robert will be appearing in the Manchester Forbidden Planet (65 Oldham Street, Piccadilly) on Thursday November 26th from 4 to 6pm, then at our Nostalgia & Comics store in Birmignham on Monday November 30th from 4 to 6pm, so please do come along and enjoy a rare chance to meet one of the genre’s truly iconic stars (we accept no responsibility for cuts sustained if shaking hands). Please note that there will be a fee for autographs.

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Thought Bubble, The Leeds Sequential Art Festival has been going on for a couple of days now, featuring some wonderful events across the city of Leeds. And tomorrow sees the centrepiece of the festival; the Thought Bubble comic convention. It features a host of comic creators with the complete list here and a lot of small press creators – as featured on Hugh “Shug” Raine’s poster:

The things that most marked out Thought Bubble 2008 were the huge number of non-traditional customers and visitors that seemed to be wandering the halls, clearly enjoying the vast variety of material available – material that had a far greater breadth and variety than usually seen at comic conventions. In fact the overwhelming experience of Thought Bubble seems to be that it’s a very different sort of show, with a feel somewhere between a comic convention and a handmade crafts show. It also seemed to be a much younger crowd from the usual conventions – and that has to be a great thing for comics.

Last year’s convention was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, (read my report here) and I’m looking forward to repeating the experience tomorrow.

Matthew Badham’s interview with one of Thought Bubble’s organisers, Lisa Wood went up on the blog earlier this week.

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This weekend sees not one, but two great comic events. First up it’s the Comica 2009 final week – which looks rather good with a trio of conversations happening at the ICA:

First up on Sunday 22 November; Reinhard Kleist, author of the great I see A Darkness, the biography of Johnny Cash, published recently by Self Made Hero is in conversation with Charles Shaar Murray. I See A Darkness was much loved by both myself and Joe – see Joe’s review for more details.

On Monday 23 November, Comica welcome Flemish cartoonist, Willy Linthout in conversation with Michael Rosen. Linthout’s  autobiographical Years Of The Elephant, has been much acclaimed for it’s difficult and emotional tale of the author’s grief following his son’s suicide.

And finally, after his appearance at Thought Bubble Leeds on Saturday 21st , Ben Templesmith will be appearing at the ICA on Tuesday 24 November. Templesmith’s particularly graphic artwork has featured on 30 Days Of Night, Fell, Wormwood and Welcome To Hoxford. He’ll be tlking with writer/director Philip Ridley who will then go on to introduce a preview screening of Heartless, his “dark, horror-tinged urban fantasy starring Jim Sturgess as a young photographer who feels as if his life has been blighted by the birthmark that covers half of his face”.

Comica certainly looks and sounds like it’s been a huge success. Congratulations to Paul Gravett and everyone else involved with Comic 2009.

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When King Cupcake is kidnapped by hungry aliens, it’s up to his feisty daughter, Princess Spaghetti, to save him from becoming their dinner. She blasts off into space to show those naughty aliens who’s boss – and introduces them to a delicious alternative to people: chocolate! This hilarious romp will delight chocolate lovers everywhere! (From Scholastic’s PR)

There, doesn’t that make you feel better? It’s out in March 2010. Her current book, Morris The Mankiest Monster is still available (and a perfect Christmas present). Meanwhile you really should pop along to Sarah’s blog, which frequently delights and lightens a day.

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by David Hughes

Tabella Publishing

Back in March 2009 I reviewed Thomas Wogan Is Dead as a self published comic (right here in fact). This Tabella version is effectively just a very nice re-packaging of the small press self published comic with a few extra pages and a general neatening up. So everything I said there applies here including this:

Thomas Wogan has had a  rather miserable and empty life. He’s a lonely soul whose days seem to consist of working a nothing job at Perriman Plastics in Chudley, perfecting his favourite meal of beans on toast (the perfect combination of sensation and nutrition, butter and Marmite, follow with fruit cocktail, tea and Baywatch before bed) and obsessively editing Delia Smith’s wikipedia entry. It’s not much of a life but it’s the only one he knows.

He finds himself sharing a waiting room with a cuckoo, a toad, an egg, a sea urchin, a bat, a fish and an LCD display with an incredibly large number that’s gradually counting up to the number on the ticket in Thomas’ hand. And since the book’s called Thomas Wogan Is Dead, we can assume that we know the answer to Thomas’ questions. But the far more interesting question, the one they all spend the rest of this the only question they all want to know is: what happened to you to get you here?

In the pages that follow every animal has their moment to reveal the manner of their demise ….. And in between it all, we get to find out a little more about Thomas’ life and the manner of his death. Just as pointless, tragic and faintly ridiculous as the rest of the creatures in the waiting room.

(The pertinant question and two nice examples of the art & snazzy new commercial font from Thomas Wogan Is Dead by David Hughes, Tabella Publishing)

This Tabella Publishing edition is a step up for Thomas Wogan – a spine and commercial lettering add a nice professional touch to the book. The art sits well in a more professional format, with all the grotesques of the original still there, and all of the sad, lonely existence of Thomas’ life portrayed just as well. The extra pages flesh out a little more of his life, and add to the sense of poignancy of the tale.

Thomas Wogan is still dead, but this new edition shows that there’s life in the comic still. I like it just as much as I did the first time around, except now, this better dressed, better presented Thomas Wogan is something I can sit on the shelf where it belongs.

Richard Bruton.

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Orbit has this little teaser video for what I can only describe as one of the most unusual fantasy novels I’ve read in recent years, Jesse Bullington’s The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart, which they’ve just released this month. I’d never come across anything by Bullington before but there are times when you pick up a book and just know right away that you’re going to love it before you’ve even read a word; I’ve never been sure exactly how that works,  presumably its an Awesome Power booksellers and heavy readers acquire and we should not enquire too deeply into it but simply accept it (for my part I think it comes from a papercut from a radioactive book as a child).

All I know is when I get that tingle about a new book its rarely steered me wrong. Then in SFX recently they lavished some attention on Bullington and mentioned how one of our smartest writers, Jeff VanderMeer, had been mightily impressed with the Brothers Grossbart. Regular readers will know I hold Jeff’s writing in high esteem and he’s equally respected for his reviews and championing of good new SF&F books and comics, so when he recommends a new author, we should pay attention (on a related note Jeff informs us that his new work Finch will be coming out in the UK next summer from Grove Atlantic). Yep, seems that tingle was once more leading me true.

The story itself is a gritty take… No, strike that, not gritty -- dirty; deliciously so. Its rude and vulgar and nasty in places, but for appropriate effect, not just shock (it suits the historical period and characters  perfectly), as it plays brilliantly with Medieval mores, foklore and the old fairy tales before they were cleaned up and sweetened for the delight of children. The brothers are an ugly pair, both physically and ethically, drawn from a line of grave-robbers and the tale starts with vicious, brutal, almost casual murders before more fantastical elements flutter in, from the darkened woods which every child knows is home to other worldly creatures and to be avoided, to bizarre creatures in a snowed in village and more. Its not for the easily offended but for those who do pick it up its one of the most original fantasy novels I’ve read in years (if you loved SF writer Richard Morgan’s hardboiled, noir take on fantasy the other year then this is for you) and, much as I love the genre, it’s fair to say  it has more than its share of interchangeable generic series, so its immensely refreshing when someone comes along and kicks the genre up its leather britches-covered behind like this. The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart will be making my list of best books of the year; highly recommended.

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Strip! – Ctrl Alt Shift: Lightspeed Champion and Savage Messiah, tonight at 5pm on Resonance FM, podcast afterwards at Panel Borders

Continuing ‘British Mavericks’ month on the show, Alex Fitch looks at the new charity anthology: “Ctrl Alt Shift unmasks corruption”, a collection of short comic strips that mixes seasoned professionals with the work of small press artists and creators from other media who are less well known for working in comics. From the latter group, Alex is talking to Dev Hynes*, better known as the musician Lightspeed Champion, who has a sincere interest in comics that led to the creation of two strips in the anthology. Alex also talks to the cover illustrator Laura Oldfield Ford, whose work can normally be found in fine art galleries in the fields of collage and traditional illustration, but also creates sequential art ‘zines under the name of Savage Messiah…

*(If you want to quibble, Dev was born in Texas but raised in Essex since the age of 2, so he’s an honorary British Maverick)

I’m ready for my close-up: The films of Joseph Strick, Firday 20th at 5pm on Resonance FM

To coincide with the ‘Directorspective’ of the work of Joseph Strick, currently at The Barbican centre in London, Alex Fitch talks to the Oscar Winning director about his career from working as a U.S. Airforce photographer during the Second World War to directing adaptations of challenging texts such as James Joyce’s Ulysses and Portrait of the artist as a young man, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and Jean Genet’s The Balcony. A selection of six of Strick’s films will be screened on consecutive days at The Barbican from 19/11/09 and there is also an additional daily screening of a new print of Ulysses (1967) until 26/11/09.

Recent podcasts:

Panel Borders: Doctor Who and The Spiral Cage

Continuing our month look long at ‘British Mavericks’ – interviews with artists whose work brings aspects of the avant-garde to mainstream comics – Alex Fitch talks to artist Al Davison about his career so far, from early graphic novels based on autobiography such as The Spiral Cage and The Minotaur’s Tale which depict Al’s struggle with his identity as an artist with spina bifida to his most recent book Hokusai: Demons which explores Japanese erotic art and bestiaries based on the artist’s dreams; and also writer Tony Lee joins Alex and Al to discuss the latter’s collaboration with the artist on the American Doctor Who comic which depicts David Tennant’s alter-ego having adventures in 1920s Hollywood. Interviews recorded last month at the British International Comics Show in Birmingham.

Panel Borders: Lost gloves, types of women and a (comic) Book of lists

In the first of two episodes recorded at this summer’s Alternative Press week, ‘zine creator Dickon Harris talks to a couple of small press creators about their work: writer / artist Paul Rainey, whose comic book paperback The Book of Lists sees the cartoonist collating events from his life into thematic order and poet Ceri May who self publishes her writing at alt. press events. The podcast includes Ceri’s reading of the poems: “All the lost gloves of London”, “There are two types of women” and “When I grow up” and was recorded at The Miller pub on Snowsfield, Borough during Collaborama!… (Edited by Alex Fitch)

Panel Borders: The art of Paul Ashley Brown

In the second of two interviews recorded during the Alternative Press Fair, Dickon Harris talks to comic book writer and artist Paul Ashley Brown about his work outside the St. Aloysius Social Club in Somers Town, London. Dickon and Paul discuss the latter’s latest small press comic – Browner Knowle – and the small press scene in London from Fast Fiction in the 1980s to the present day.

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