Writer and director John Hughes sadly passed away this week at a far too young 59 (BBC story and links). He was responsible for some of the most memorable and era-defining movies of the 80s, particularly for those of us growing up at the time. It doesn’t really matter whether you like them or not – they’re guaranteed to evoke memories of the time.

Artist Cliff Chiang has made this very nice DC Teen Titans tribute piece over on his blog as part of his 12 inch remixes series. If you don’t recognise the image see here but I’m positive a lot of you will be raising a knowing smile right now.

(via Blog @ Newsarama)

You may have realised by now after 3 glowing reviews (here, here and here), that I’m pretty keen on Harker, the refreshingly good crime procedural produced by Roger Gibson and Vince Danks.

The good news is that more and more comic retailers are picking up on this fact and there’s a long list at the Harker & Critchley blog that tells you all of the places you can go and buy it.

Issue 6 is out now(ish) and the first issue of Harker Volume 2 (issue 7) is due out in September. And, as you can see from the cover above, these two York residents have decided it’s time to set the book in Whitby, beloved of Dracula fans and Goths around the country, complete with those ever so famous 199 steps.

(Harker Volume 1 Collection: The Book Of Solomon – available at all good comic shops – in the UK at least – in early October)

But the bad news that I found out during writing this is that the Harker Collected Volume 1 has hit problems. This from Vince Danks:

“As we’ve just been told by Diamond that they’ve changed their mind about soliciting the collected edition we’re going to have to keep self-distributing, so we’ll need all the retailers’ help we can get! (not to mention an extra couple of days in the week).

We’ll be publishing the collected edition anyway and we’ll have copies in time for the Birmingham con and issue 7 is still due for release 1st of next month.”

A real blow for such a great comic. However, it’s very pleasing that the boys are bravely pressing on and plan to have Volume 1 out by BICS in October. There’s an update to the situation over at the Harker blog here.

To be honest it’s rather a sad reflection on the state of the comic industry that something this enjoyable can’t find the bigger readership it’s capable of. So now it falls to us to do our bit. Go and find Harker in those great shops that carry it. If your shop isn’t stocking it and you’re interested ask them why not. And if all that fails, get it from the Harker webstore.