One of our long-time favourite Brit small press comic creators Paul Rainey drops us a line to say that the Milton Keynes Art Gallery is hosting an exhibition of Pushwagner art this summer. This will be the first solo exhibition of Norwegian artist and comics creator Hariton Pushwagner outside of his native land and will include work from his Soft City, a comics work created off an on between 1969 and 1976 and which  “provides an account of mechanical, daily life in a dehumanized, dystopian modern city “, as well as numerous other works and paintings. The exhibition runs from 28th of June to 2nd of September.

(Jobkill from Apokalypse, by and (c) Hariton Pushwagner)

And alongside it they will be holding a number of art events including MKcomics, a small press comics fair which Paul is organising. The event will take place inside the actual exhibition space and it is not only free to enter, Paul tells us if you are a small press creator it will be free to exhibit. As Paul puts it “Currently, small press comics are one of the most vibrant, creative and diverse artistic scenes taking place in the UK and MKomix is your opportunity to sample just some of what is going on.” Absolutely no argument from us on that point, we know just how incredibly bustling, diverse and vibrant the UK small press comics scene is (it really is a great time to be reading Brit comics). MKomix will be on July 19th from 6 to 9pm in the Milton Keynes Art Gallery; for more details or to contact Paul about taking part check out the MKomix blog or drop him a line at paul(at)pbrainey(dot)com.

Just how lovely are these illustrations? The films of the wonderful Studio Ghibli re-imagined as if they had been old school Penguin paperback editions. Smile inducing work by Jason K, who is selling them as postcard sets on Etsy. (via Live For Films)

Margaux Motin (author of the lovely looking, very funny sounding But I Really Wanted To Be An Anthropologist) cover for Fluide.G mag – from the SelfMadeHero blog:

The first thing he’s posted since October 2011…. Paul Pope’s Jedi from 2011:

Just one from a series of Chris Weston commissions over at 2000AD Online:

Mick McMahon commission pencils…

Tony Moore… Hellboy Versus Popeye….

I may be getting a little tired of Charles Paul Wilson‘s Pooh style stuff…. but this was too much fun to pass up (Via Ashcan All-Stars):

Having said that, a quick look at his Deviant art page sends me looking at “The Stuff Of Legend” comic that he provides pencils for. Looks very nice, another to go on the long, long list of stuff to look at!

Who Is Rupert Ray? – Luke Pearson: “A drawing I did for the exhibition ‘Who is Rupert Ray?’, an exhibition for the launch of ‘Rupert Ray’, a new agency founded by Alex Maclean and Caroline Matthews”

Colleen Coover – pre order sketch for Emerald City and one lucky punter:

A wonderful series, way back when…. ad from 1990, courtesy Mr Phil:

Tyranus: Krak:

Rafael Grampa (via Warren Ellis): “Rafael Grampa’s been producing some fine covers lately, but, for my money, none finer than this piece for Brian Wood & Kristian Donaldson’s new comics project at Dark Horse, THE MASSIVE.  Colours by Dave Stewart.”

Rian Hughes DC Merchandise work… from his FB:

The What Not collaborative blog is on a film kick right now…. Dave Johnson does Carrie:

Francesco Francavilla does something about a shark:

Seven artists involved: Waste, Cottonmouth (RichT) , Guy McKinley, Klingatron, Robert Ball, Smug, and WJC looking at the ideas of being someone else, hero, villain, whatever…. the artwork is over at the Alter Ego Facebook page. But I figured you could cope with a piece from each here….

Klingatron

Waste

Guy McKinley

Cottonmouth - RichT

Smug

WJC

… and finally Robert Ball, whose first foray into superhero comics has had immediate results…

“After all this mucking about with superheroes and the like, I was contacted by comic creator Raffaele Ienco about drawing a pin-up for his comic book ‘Epic Kill’ from Image comics. As the title suggests, this ain’t Emily Bronte – the female protagonist basically killing anything that moves in a variety of inventive ways. Thanks to Raffaele for chancing his arm on a complete unkown, this picture will appear in the July issue of Epic Kill, in all good comic shops etc etc…”

Here’s that pin-up, and you can get Epic Kill here.

12 Drawings a Day – 12 Dessins par Jour from Denis Chapon on Vimeo.

Craig Thompson does a little of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (Via Aw Yeah Comics)

Jonathan Edwards has this “Happy Hour” print for sale.

David Hitchcock‘s Batman from many years ago: “Way back when (around 12 years ago I reckon) I did this victorian Batman, if was a for an idea I was going to submit to DC, it was rejected by Bob Wayne who I met at a show. Anyhow, I gave the original art to the show’s charity auction…and lo and behold it sold for about £200, think it was one of the highest single peices that sold in the auction… wish I kept it myself now ;)” (Via Hitchcock’s FB)

There’s a Thor of this as well, but Coulson’s the best … Matt Kaufenberg:

Francesco Francavilla – Avengers, the Earth’s First Heroes:

Dan McDaid (Via Aw Yeah Comics)

Power Man by Toby Cypress: (Via, and more at, Aw Yeah Comics)

Matt Kindt’s Covered version of X-Men #1:

Ashley Wood’s Joker & Harley (Via Aw Yeah Comics)

Noelle Stevenson… Avengers:

Tom at The Comics Reporter had an excellent roundup, but here’s just a little of the pictures I’ve seen this week:

(Paul Harrison Davies – part of a collection of tributes at The Mooks Tumblr)

(Dan Hipp)

(Evan Doc Shaner)

(Sarah McIntyre)

(Fred Blunt)

(Mike Maihack)

And Maihack’s piece pointed me in the direction of the Terrible Yellow Eyes blog, a tribute to Sendak that ended in 2012, with added poignancy now….. here’s just a sampling, but really, get over there and look at more:

(Josh Holland)

(Harris Hammersmith)

(Aurian Redson)

(Alan Cook)

In addition, The Comics Journal has a series of tribute here, including these pics:

(Megan Kelso)

(Michael Deforge)

…. and finally… Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are meets The Avengers:

(Agarthan Guide, via Buzzfeed)

The Nao Of Brown by Glyn Dillon is out in September 2012 from SelfMadeHero. It looks rather special

“Things aren’t so black and white after all.”

“Nao Brown is ‘Hafu’: half Japanese, half English. She’s 28 and suffers with OCD, but not the hand-washing, overly tidy type that people joke about. Nao suffers from violent morbid obsessions and a racing, unruly mind. She works part time in a ‘designer’ vinyl toy shop, whilst struggling to get her own design and illustration career off the ground. She’s looking for love – the perfect love. But in meeting the man of her dreams, she realises that… dreams can be quite weird. Nao meditates in an attempt to quieten her mind and open her heart and it’s through this that she comes to realise that things aren’t so black and white after all. In fact, they’re much more… brown.”

Following a link from somewhere completely unrelated I stumbled across Dillon’s yFrog page, which just happens to have a lot of preview images, panels, preliminary art and sketches from Nao.

Here’s a few collected images from Dillon’s Twitter yfrog set…. and this is why we’re all excited:

I know I posted on the sad passing of the great Maurice Sendak yesterday, but Charles Santoso’s tribute art is simply too lovely not to share on here. And on a related note Neil Gaiman asked the New Yorker very nicely if they could unlock a couple of pages of comics by Sendak and Art Spiegelman showing the pair of them in conversation, which the New Yorker has nicely done as a tribute.

Many of us never forgot that early influence he had, opening young eyes to the sheer sense of wonder of a good story and beautiful artwork and even as adults many of us still happily go back to pore over that art again and again. How many of us as little boys and girls were given one of his books? How many of us can now look back from adulthood to that happy time sitting in a corner of the library eagerly devouring a Sendak tale? And how many of us can look back at that time now and think that he was one of the creators who helped set me on the path to a lifelong love of books, art and opening the mind to wonders? The news is still breaking – I only heard via Mike Lynch on Twitter moments ago and see that the Twitter responses to Sendak’s passing are mounting rapidly as the sad news spreads. It’s a blow and it feels like a little of our collective childhood has been chiseled away from us. But he leaves a legacy of millions of children who went on magical adventures, who had their young brains rewired to love beautiful art and to grow up to adore books and storytelling. And that is a magnificent legacy for anyone to leave behind. More children will be born and will be brought up on thos books; Sendak is gone, but he is not lost.

Maurice looking back on his work fairly recently: