It’s BACK!

This is great news. I wrote about my love for all things Sleaze Castle back here. A magnificent book series by Dave McKinnon and Terry WileyDave McKinnon:

“…..it’s a real shame I’m not able to point you in the direction of somewhere to buy it. Three Volumes exist – Sleaze Castle Director’s Cut #0, containing issues 1-4 of Tales From Sleaze Castle, which confusingly actually were published after More Tales From Sleaze Castle, which is collected as Sleaze Castle Volumes 1 & 2. Terry? Dave? Please, please, somehow, find a way to get it out into the world again if only because my copies of it got lost years back in a bizarre bad plumbing meets comics incident (the comics lost).”

Since then Terry Wiley has been busy delighting me (and hopefully you as well dear reader) with Verity Fair. And whenever I chatted to him, he kept saying things were moving on the Sleaze Castle front.

Well, now it’s official. Markosia will be putting the books back into print. Digital editions at first, but promises of a print omnibus at some point.

“We are so please to be able to finally announce this. Dave McKinnon and Terry Wiley’s acclaimed series ‘Sleaze Castle’ is joining us here at Markosia!
‘Sleaze Castle: The Directors Cut #0′ is a 140-page blockbuster which will be going live on iBooks and other digital platforms in February, closely followed by books 1, 2 and 3! More news to follow soon!”

They’re also going to bring back Petra Etcetera by Terry, Dave and Adrian Kermode.

Great, great news.

here’s the start of the very strange, very gummy secret origin of the hero of the title…..

Science Tales by Darryl Cunningham (Myriad Editions April 2012)

First there’s the highly anticipated Science Tales, coming in April 2012 from Myriad Editions:

“…Cunningham turns his questioning mind and sharp intelligence to de-coding the myths and lies that have shaped some of the most fiercely-debated issues of the past fifty years. A graphic milestone of investigative reporting, Science Tales takes on controversies surrounding climate change, electro-convulsive therapy, the moon landing, the MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccine, homeopathy, evolution, the tobacco industry and science denialism”

Expect this to be despised by a lot of people, and just for them, here’s the first page of the homeopathy chapter:

Then there’s two very different books coming from Blank Slate Books…

Uncle Bob Adventures – May 2012

Uncle Bob Adventures is Darryl’s all-ages book, and from the strips we’ve seen on his blog, it looks a real weird and wonderful one (provisional cover below) :

And finally from Daryl – The Fist, online at Act-i-vate sometime later in 2012.

Mick Mcmahon posts up some Roy Of The Rovers pages and apologise for them (no need, no need). They’re from the monthly Roy Of The Rovers redo from the 90s- I wrote more on that here.

James Hance‘s Tank Girl/Star Wars mash-up. (Via Kardwell)

Shouldn’t really need to tell you who – Moebius (Lulu Bonanza)

I Can? You Can! Who Can? Iron Man! by drfaustusau (Via TT&RPC)

Dan McDaid – D-Man (Via Aw Yeah Comics)

“Tyrannosaurus Bats” by Dustin Harbin (Via Roast Unicorn):

Latest stuff from Ninjaink (we mentioned Timothy Lim last with his great Peter and Uncle Ben strip here) are these ace Peter and Venom pieces, as loving tributes to Bill Watterson…

Stupid superpower #3 from Sarah McIntyre, featuring studiomate Gary Northfield:

Daredevil by Chris Samnee (Aw Yeah Comics)

Phil Noto:

Why have I never seen this before? Or if I have seen it before, why is my memory so bad? Dustin Weaver and Paul Tobin: The Adventures of Thing Thing. Page 1 of 2. (Via Lulu Bonanza)

“This was mine and Paul Tobin’s homage to Tintin and Herge that was published in Fantastic Four Giant-Size Adventures #1.”

The Pod Delusion episode 122, Resonance FM at 11am on Sunday 12th February, podcast here

This week we explore UN reform with a former ambassador to the United Nations, get the latest on the Twitter Joke Trial, build a moon base and keep filibustering to pass the time. Correspondents include James O’Malley, Carl Gardner, Alex Fitch, Jessica Metheringham-Owlett, Craig Lucas, Tom Williamson and Sarah Angliss. The Pod Delusion is a weekly news magazine radio programme and podcast about interesting things. From politics, to science to culture and philosophy, it’s commentary from a secular, rationalist, skeptical, somewhat lefty-liberal, sort of perspective. A bit like From Our Own Correspondent but with more jokes.

Panel Borders: Exhibiting Comics, Resonance FM at 8pm on Sunday 12th February, podcast on Panel Borders afterwards

Continuing our month of shows about about non practitioners’ love of comics, Alex Fitch talks to Lord Baker of Dorking about his contributions as lender and patron of The Cartoon Museum to their latest exhibition ‘Her Maj: Sixty years of unofficial portraits of the Queen’ and to John Huddy, founder and curator of The Illustration Cupboard about the gallery’s history of exhibiting art from picture books and graphic novels. Also, from last week’s Manga Jiman awards ceremony at the Embassy of Japan in London, Cultural Officer Simon Wright and Minister Hiroshi Suzuki, the director of the Japan Information and Culture Centre, introduce this year’s winning entries to the comic book competition.

Recent podcasts

Panel Borders: Searching for comics with DJ Food

Starting a month of shows about non practitioners’ love of comics, guest presenter Robin Warren talks to musician Strictly Kev about collaborating with Henry Flint on the artwork for his new LP The Search Engine and the three EPs that make up the release. Robin and Kev talk about the latter’s interest in British anthologies, especially 2000AD, and how a love of comics in his formative years compliments his music production as DJ Food and with The Cinematic Orchestra.

Comics and Conflicts podcast: Pat Mills on Charley’s War

Imperial War Museum educator Grant Rogers talks to Pat Mills about his seminal wartime strip Charley’s War, serialised in Battle Action comic in the 1970s and 80s. Grant and Pat Mills discuss the history of the strip, working with Joe Colquhoun and the real life events that influenced the comic. (Recorded in front of an audience at the 2011 Comics and Conflicts conference at the Imperial War Museum, London.)

Online magazine:

ELECTRIC SHEEP ISSUE SIXTY – FEMMES FATALES: Deadly dames and murderous man-eaters

To mark the restoration of Otto Preminger’s magnificentLaura, we celebrate femmes fatales, including Peggy Cummins’s gutsy bank robber in Gun Crazy and Barbara Stanwyck’s sassy social climber inBaby Face. We have a feature on female action heroines and a terrific Comic Strip on Twin Peaks temptresses by Richy K. Chandler, while Reel Sounds is enthused by a wild jazz scene in The Phantom Lady and in Alter Ego Katy Darby is Bridget Gregory in The Last Seduction.

New cinema releases include the intelligent, creepy cult victim tale Martha Marcy May Marlene, the excellent James Ellroy-scripted LA crime thriller Rampart, Polanski’s ferociously funny middle-class satire Carnage, and Cronenberg’s disastrous A Dangerous Method. And we have a feature on doyenne of queer cinema Barbara Hammer, who is the subject of a retrospective at Tate Modern.

In the DVDs, we review 70s Vietnam vet vigilante drama Rolling Thunder and Bulgarian neo-noir Zift, and to give context to the latter’s interest in bodily waste, we have an article on toilet scenes in cinema.

In Short Cuts, we review the screening of Swedish feminist porn shorts Dirty Diaries at the London Short Film Festival while Cine Lit peruses the latest film books. In the Film Jukebox, soulful, dreamy chamber popsters The Tindersticks pick their favourite films.

Dates are estimated, but here’s what they’re hoping will be delighting your eyes this year….

Kochi Wanaba by Jamie Smart – March 2012

Announced a loooong time ago – back in May 2011 on Jamie’s blog in fact.

“Kochi Wanaba is a quiet kid who loves nothing more than to draw secrets in his sketchbook. When the day of the annual Bee Festival falls upon his town, Kochi’s loud, hyperactive girlfriend Lhys can barely contain herself. Unfortunately for Kochi, tolerating Lhys’ excitement becomes the least of his problems as supernatural chaos breaks out all around them, threatening to change their lives forever. Rendered in Jamie Smart’s characteristic illustration style that straddles the cute and the grotesque, Kochi Wanaba is a pencil-drawn graphic novel that combines all-out comedy with genuine, captivating emotional range.”

And if you’re after an idea of what it’s going to look like…. you can still read it online, although as always these things are so much better when you get them in your hands aren’t they?

The Complete Hugo Tate by Nick Abadzis – April 2012

To describe the complete collection of Abadzis’ Hugo Tate as much anticipated is a big, big understatement… there genuinely were squeals of pleasure all the way round the Internet when this one was announced (some from me – here’s me in May 2011 practically begging for a collection)

For those who don’t know, Hugo Tate was one of the most well received strips in Deadline magazine, the magazine created in the late 80s by Brett Ewins and Steve Dillon, that perfectly caught the mood of the times. Or at least it did if you were me, aged 17, deeply in love with Tank Girl, with my ridiculous hair, and an affection for Carter USM that remains to this day. (In fact, all of those things – except, sadly, the hair, remain true today, 23 years later.)

But aside from Tank Girl Deadline gave us some beautifully done strips – Tank Girl being the most high profile of course. But others in the mag were better:

Timulo by D’Israeli – impossibly and deliciously surreal  (collected and self-published in 2011 – but really, really in need of another printing). Wired World by Philip Bond – utterly, absolutely magnificently gorgeous, with a cast that everyone, absolutely everyone (maybe) loved. And it’s NEVER been reprinted. Insanity!

And then there was Hugo Tate… which was… well, it was Hugo Tate. It was brilliant, it was incredible, angry, literate, and really pretty much anything else descriptive you want to throw at it. It was good. Really, really good.

And thank god, it’s taken a while but here…. coming in April (hopefully):

Departures – Pierre Maurel – April 2012

In his English-language debut, Pierre Maurel explores the effects of the global recession through three tales of twenty and thirty-somethings struggling at the bottom of the social ladder. Taking place in an unspecified city, these stories overlay to create a narrative of low-income, low-expectation McJobs; unemployment; benefit meetings; homelessness; isolation; violent riots and urban decay. Maurels stories perfectly exemplify the feelings of betrayal and alienation many feel over the broken promises of the new millennium.

Cover rough below and Joe features some interior art here on the FPI Blog.

Uncle Bob Adventures – Darryl Cunningham – May 2012

Darryl’s all-ages book – weird and wonderful is expected.

The Silver Darlings – Will Morris – June 2012

“Of all the superstitions held by the crew of Dunure fishing boat The Silver Darling, the most perilous of all is that under no circumstances should a white-handled knife ever be carried on board. Ignoring this generation-long tradition, Danny—the latest to help out the family business—steps onto the boat with a mop top, oil-skinned jacket and an ivory-handled knife. Determined to bring an ‘enlightened attitude’ aboard, Danny is biding his time until he moves on to college in Glasgow.”

Will Morris looks sure to be a major talent, and The Silver Darlings, his first published work, of fishing and the trip from boy to man, is going to be talked about a lot on release.

Playing Out by Jim Medway – August 2012

Jim Medway’s rather gorgeous looking Playing Out was a special treat the Bruton family were lucky enough to see pages from when Jim came up to do the comic course at school – more on that here and a panel from Playing Out below;

According to Medway, the comic will be broken up by full page linocuts, just like this one:

The Suitcase by Dan Berry – August 2012

“It’s going to be a Chalk Marks book, and is a trilogy of connected stories. It’s probably appropriate to call it a dark comedy. The working title is The Suitcase.”

Death And The Girls by Donya Todd – August 2012

Hunch Parsons by Warwick Johnson Cadwell – second half of the year

Also planned, but not scheduled as yet…. maybe 2012, maybe 2013….

Darryl Cunningham – Psychiatric Tales II, Joe Decie, Luke Astorigin – Pablo Apple Tree, and quite a few more!

That few more will include Oliver East: The artist of Trains Are … Mint should have a couple of new things out in 2012, including a couple things from Blank Slate: new book Swear Down (two images below – gorgeous new style to Oli’s artwork), and a new self-published 16 page mini Somerford Heath.

Things are looking hopeful though:

“So yeah, a post on the Ellerbisms site, that’s a bit weird, right? I guess a comic about me belongs on here but I also wanted to mention the Ellerbisms book that I’m working on. It is totally happening, I’ve drawn 30 pages of new strips for it and I’m just editing/finishing stuff off at the moment. I have a bit more to tie the narrative up, but it should be out this year. I really hope it will.”

But seeing Ellerby’s hourly comic included this finale…

…. I thought you’d all like to see what he’s weeping over: Lucy Knisley’s hourly comic. Oh, yes, rather impressive….

This and this from Dave Sim’s Glamourpuss #2 (2008)

Said it before, will say it again, one of the finest artists out there, even when, as here, deconstructing and copying someone else’s style for his own purpose.

On the one hand:

Variant covers are a stupid, ridiculous, destructive thing, responsible for no end of torment and financial troubles in the comics industry through the years (oh, alright, they may not have been the ONLY reason).

Marvel’s obsession with variant covers is now past even a sickness, we’re into obsessive compulsive behaviour here. The idea of putting variant covers onto comics seemingly at random, regardless of who is on the cover or inside the comic – that’s just sheer, absolute insanity. In the old days, DC used to do these sort of things as gallery comics, most often as I recall with the Vertigo stuff, in particular Gaiman’s Sandman. Marvel meanwhile just went straight for their readerships pubescent crotch with a swimsuit special. Now Marvel just slap them randomly on any comic they can find, regardless of any connection.

On the other:

These are VERY pretty. There are more, of course there are more – see Heidi for those,  But these are my favourites):

(Charles Paul Wilson III, after E.H. Shepard.)

(Steffi Schutzee, in the style of Al Hirschfeld)

(John Tyler Christopher – after Erté, I think, but can’t get the exact piece – anyone help out?)

(Michael Kaluta in the style of Winsor McCay)