The Sunday Spotlight: What? No! Hell No!

Time once more for The Sunday Spotlight, my weekly take on some of the comics news that’s passed my eyeballs and I thought might be at least a tiny bit interesting for your good selves…

 

Hourly Comics Day happened…

Every year, a host of brilliant comics makers do something called Hourly Comics Day, where they make comics every single hour of the day.

Every year, Hourly Comics Day happens on 1st February. And every year, every single year, I am surprised by this fact.

Apologies, must get something together to commemorate this years’ event as there’s so much great art going on, including the always incredible Lucy Knisley’s work as seen above. You can find more by searching down the hastags #hourcomicday or #hourlycomics day on the socials.

And just because it’s always worth a laugh, here’s Evan Dorkin’s always classic response to the very idea of the thing…

 

The 70th anniversary of the Bash Street Kids…

Created by the genius that was Leo Baxendale, Britain’s most unruly class of kids celebrate 70 years of mayhem and anarchy and laughs, so many incredible laughs. And this weeks Beano is a celebration of those brilliant Bash Street Kids…

 

Brian Bolland had a great idea for a panel at this year’s Lawless…

Lawless Comic Con celebrates its 10th anniversary this year with a host of 2000 AD creators from across the years coming together for the fans in Bristol on 25 & 26 May 2024.

As for the panels on offer, well, as you can see from the image below, Brian Bolland had a great idea:

Could you get Wagner, McMahon and me on a panel together please? I’d like to be reminded how, exactly, we created Judge Death (etc) and other characters together.

Well, there’s only one answer to that question from Bolland, and Su Haddrell, Lawless organiser, agreed straight away, as you would – so there’s one excellent panel to head for!

 

Chris Weston’s first crowdfunder – Time Breakers…

Artist Chris Weston announced his very first crowdfunding campaign – the collection of Time Breakers, a comic he did with the late Rachel Pollack. You can sign up to be notified of the campaign starting on Zoop here.

Time Breakers was originally a five-issue series from Helix in 1997. Helix was DC Comics sci-fi-tinged imprint that lasted almost no time at all before being merged into Vertigo. And as such, things like Time Breakers were easily missed. Well, now’s your chance to catch up with it…

From the Zoop PR…

“Angela Attenborough is a young, bored housewife of the 1950s… but her life is about to change beyond her wildest dreams! She’s about to be recruited by a future version of herself to a secret society of time-travellers known as The Time Breakers. Comprised of members drawn from the past, present and future, The Time Breakers are dedicated to the creation of time paradoxes, which they believe are instrumental to the creation of life itself. Their efforts bring them into a deadly conflict with The Knowers, a rival time-travelling cult who zealousy resist all forms of meddling in historical events.”

 

New colour edition of Tim Sale’s Billi 99 coming to Kickstarter soon…

It was the legendary and gone far too soon artist Tim Sale’s full-length comic debut and it’s finally getting the reprint it deserves in a full-colour hardcover coming from Clover Press to Kickstarter sometime soon.

Written by Sarah Byam and newly coloured by José Villarrubia, Billi 99 was originally published by Dark Horse in 1991 and collected in b&w in 20002.

If you’re wondering, it’s best summed up by its tagline – ‘It’s 1999… Do You Know Where Your Civil Rights Are?’ The story tells of a world where the American Dream has vanished, replaced by a world of the haves and the have-nots. One of the haves, Billi Chadam is the daughter of one of the last of the honest industrialists and heiress to the multi-billion dollar empire. But she’s framed for her father’s death and soon becomes embroiled in murder and corporate espionage with her night-time vigilante actions as the Sword of Toleado.

No mention of when the Kickstarter is beginning yet, but sign up here to get notified.

 

2000 AD Thrill-Cast returns for 2024!

It’s been away for a while, but now 2000 AD‘s award-winning podcast series, the Thrill-Cast, is returning in 2024.

“Beamed direct from the Nerve Centre of the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic… publicity droid Molch-R brings you the lowdown on the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic, interviewing some of the world’s greatest comics creators, welcoming special guests, giving you exclusive announcements.”

Details below in the image and links to the podcast sites here…

 

First they came for kids and YA fiction, now they’re coming for the graphic novels…

We had the announcement this week that David Walliams, TV celebrity and writer of many, many kids prose novels, was launching his first graphic novel. Or, as The Bookseller and Harper Collins would have it:

HarperCollins Children’s Books launches David Walliams’ debut comic strip fiction, Astrochimp.

Okay, first… what the hell is ‘comic strip fiction’? Because it makes zero sense with what I think of as a comic strip. I think they mean graphic novel. Or simply comic.

Second, the description goes on to say this about it:

“wildly funny, action-packed” space adventure from David Walliams, marking the author’s debut into comic strip fiction. The book features full-colour illustrations by Adam Stower, and will publish on 23rd May 2024 in hardback, with simultaneous e-book and audio editions.”

So there we have our second problem – ‘illustrations by Adam Stower.’ Stower is, of course, a phenomenally talented artist and illustrator of children’s books as well as being a great comics maker. But Astrochimp, being a graphic novel, is of course by David Walliams AND Adam Stower, NOT illustrated by Stower. “Illustrated by” is a world away from an artist being on an equal footing with the writer, as are all comics and graphic novels.

And let’s not even start on the cover where it’s quite obvious this isn’t anywhere near equal billing.

Thing is, we’ve had the celebrity children’s fiction writer phenomenon in kids fiction for many years now. And whilst there’s nothing against it per se, the issue is how these big, big names choke out the lesser-known, possibly far better writers who haven’t made their names on TV or wherever. And now it’s happening in comics – and the sole reason it’s happening in comics is because the literary agents, the publishers, the celebs themselves are seeing the successes of Dav Pilkey and Jamie Smart and thinking they could get in on that.

Anyway, should you care to read Neill Cameron’s thoughts on the matter, Cameron being, as you should know, a damn fine comics maker of Mega Robo Bros, he wrote a very well-measured piece for The Bookseller here, with the byline (most likely not by Cameron) of “Is David Walliams’ new graphic novel a cynical landgrab, or a welcome tribute to the genre’s success?” (The Bookseller has a two free articles a month policy)

Likewise, Sarah McIntyre, another great children’s book illustrator and comics maker, has a very important thread beginning here that talks about the vital importance of the data – where, if and when Astrochimp sells a million plus, the way the data is recorded means that Walliams gets that million-selling to his name but Stower misses out on it – and that’s very, very wrong as well.

As McIntyre and Cameron have said, there’s nothing inherently wrong in celebs coming in and doing graphic novels – we just need equal footing for the artists they’re paired with, and those artists need to share, equally, in the sales, the credit, and the acclaim.

 

 

Colin Wilson’s long-standing question gets an answer…

Reported on this when the news dropped that Duncan Jones‘ long-awaited Rogue Trooper film got a release date of 2025, with the cast announced and the word that principal photography had wrapped. But then I saw this great 10-year-old piece from the legendary Colin Wilson with Dredd enquiring of Rogue and had to share it here…

 

Dear Eisners… Thanks so much, yours, Comics Journalists…

Back in January, the Eisner Awards, pretty much the most prestigious North American awards for comics, announced that they were binning the ‘Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism’ category. Instead, they have combined the Periodical/Journalism category with Comics-Related Book. Because of course those things are absolutely the damn same, right?

Seriously, there’s been plenty of folks up in arms about this already, but there’s a real important message being sent out by the Eisners here – that comics journalism just ain’t worth its own category. Combining it with comics-related book simply doesn’t work. For example, there’s a world of difference between a great comics journalism regular print publication or a website and a book like Michael Molcher’s I am the Law: How Judge Dredd Predicted Our Future, something quite magnificently done, incisive, eminently readable, and something that took Molcher years to put together. Now compare that with a great comics website, you know, like this one, or perhaps Broken Frontier, or The Beat, who produce material for your reading interest and entertainment across so many different subjects – news, advance previews, reviews, regular features, commentary, opinion pieces, and so much more. Ridiculous to compare the two in one category.

Now obviously, I’ve got skin in this particular game, as have all the other comics journalists who’ve written about this, but there’s something way, way more important than the fragile egos of a few comics journos at stake here. A healthy comics medium has to include a healthy and vibrant, and let’s not forget a sustainable and paid, element of comics journalism – it really is as simple as that. And taking away the category in the most prestigious North American awards for comics just doesn’t support that at all.

 

Do your Local Comics Shop a HUGE, potentially business-saving favour…

Saw this on Excelsior Comics Bristol‘s page, a reminder that the single biggest threat to comic shops surviving is when you order books and don’t pick them up.

The standing order service pretty much every single comic shop offers is an invaluable service but it’s one that you should be aware of can really hurt comic shops if it’s not used properly. Seriously, look at the pic below – $1,481.20 worth of comics not picked up in the last three months. That is a potentially shop closing loss of profit right there.

You love your comic shops, right? Well, a simple way they can have way more financial security is if you ensure that you don’t treat their standing order service as a service you don’t need to pay for regularly. Treat it like you do your mobile contract, your energy contract – go in regularly, weekly is great of course, but monthly is the minimum surely – and buy what you asked them to put to one side for you. Don’t do that thing of saying things are tight right now and you’ll have to put stuff back. Instead, tell your shop, let them know you can’t afford the comics going forwards but you will pay for what you had them put away. And whatever you do, don’t just stop going in and ignore them when they email you asking about the huge pile of comics they’ve got on hold for you.

Play fair with the shops we all love people.

 

Why thank you ComicScene… we try our best…

And nearly finally, in the trying not to bang our own drum too much… Comicon scooped the ComicScene award for best comic media, beating out plenty of other great sites in the bargain. Thanks to all who voted. We do try to do good things here for comics and it’s always lovely to get something like this. Full results right here.

Thank you!

 

And finally – RIP John Miller…

Another great of comics left us in January, as underground cartoonist John Miller passed away. Many have written online since his death about what made Miller’s comics so unique and effective. I liked Craig Collins‘ short and to the point bit of ‘A truly unique talent, his pages are like nothing else.’ That sums Miller up perfectly.

Rob Miller and Adam Smith had put out collections of Miller’s work through Braw Books, saying this:

Devastated at the passing of John Miller, a great friend and a defiantly underground character dedicated to his craft and a love of comics in general. Rest assured his story is not finished.

Tom Baker, at Broken Frontier, had this to say in a review of the Braw Books collections of Miller’s work back in 2023:

“A Genre Unto Himself: The Dizzyingly Brilliant Collected John G. Miller,’ and ‘a one-man cosmic gumbo of reference points, a historian of comics from newspaper funnies through King Cat, and never anything other than John G. Miller.”

Ed Pinsent points us to his tribute to Miller’s work here – from which this…

“There are numerous reasons why I like John Miller’s unusual and imaginative work. First of all the visual energy that sparks off the page is remarkable. I suppose you’d have to be blind not to notice this the second you pick up the book. Stars, circles, zigzags, flames and other dazzling shapes leap about the panels and cause astonishing op-art effects. If you weren’t blind before, you will be soon. These visuals create near-hallucinogenic sensations in the reader. Miller draws everything using this hard-edged, heavily stylised method; figures, faces, backgrounds and visual effects are all as one to him, resulting in dense, hermetic panels that yield their secrets as obstinately as a rusty cold water tap.”