The Sunday Spotlight: The “Comics Will Break Your Heart” Edition

Welcome once more to The Sunday Spotlight, the weekly roundup of a few items of interest that have been spotted in the week…

A Kirby finally gets a residual for Fantastic Four?

On Valentines Day, we had the news of the casting for the July 2025 Marvel Universe Fantastic Four movie – Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm.

It came with a rather nice retro piece of art, making many hope that this will be, somehow, a movie set back in the ’60s…

But while it all looks good, let’s never forget just whose ideas the house of ideas is built on.

After all, as Kyle Baker points out…

Will Eisner Week 2024…

This year, Will Eisner Week takes place 1-7 March 2024, continuing the annual celebration of comics, Graphic Novel literacy, free speech, and the Legacy of Will Eisner.

Events and locations will vary, but in the past there have been events in both the USA and internationally, including workshops, exhibitions, talks, podcasts, and library events. Find out more here – Will Eisner Week 2024.

The return of Caption Comics Festival for 2025?

Caption was the longest-running UK comics festival between 1992 and 2017, focused on small press and independent comics and founded by Adrian Cox, Damian Cugley, Jeremy Dennis, and Jenni Scott. Usually taking place in Oxford, it was somewhere far more relaxed than your usual comics event, somewhere where creators and readers would mingle, talk, and make comics, all whilst having a damn fine time.

And now we have Andy Luke and Amy Letts talking about the prospect of bringing it back for 2025. A long way off and lots to be done before then of course, but it really would be a good thing to have it back.

Sign up for updates at the IndieGoGo page here. And read more about Caption here.

Sean Azzopardi’s The Return Of The Bubble People – new exhibition coming to Hull…

Sean Azzopardi, whose work I’ve covered several times here at Comicon, has a new exhibition – The Return of the Bubble People – at Brew in Hull.

The Bubble People, according to Sean, lived in a home on Prospect Street, only for those nasty property developers to kick them out. They lived on in comic books but now they’re back – on canvas, in frames, and with a whole load of new members of the family.

The Return of the Bubble People happens at Brew Cafe in Hull from 2-12 March 2024

Finally – RIP Enric Badia Romero, aged 94

Every week it seems we have more terrible losses to the comics medium. Now we can add the loss of Spanish comic artist Enric/Enrique Badia Romero, aged 94, to the list of those lost this year.

Best known for his work on the Modesty Blaise newspaper strips and his own creation, Axa, Romero’s career in comics through Europe and Britain was long-lived and full of beautiful artwork.

Born in Barcelona in 1939, he was a self-taught artist who sold his first comic strip at the age of 17. Like many of the Spanish artists, Romero found considerable work at Fleetway in the UK as well as plentiful work across Europe. In 1969, Romero was asked by Modesty Blaise‘s creator, Peter O’Donnell, to take over the art on the newspaper strip from Jim Holdaway. Romero would draw Modesty in two very long runs, firstly until 1978 and then once more from 1986 until its end in 2001. In the gap between his runs on Modesty, Romero worked on Axa, his own newspaper strip creator, with Donne Avenell hired as a scripter, and also as a colour version in Creepy magazine.