The Sunday Spotlight: The “Mind The Oranges, Marlon” Edition

Welcome once more to The Sunday Spotlight, wherein I (invariably at a rush to get it ready before Sunday) assemble some of the comics news of the week for you lovely lot…

 

 

The Cloak Returns! – Finally…

In the great world of British comics, there’s always going to be some that get lost in the mists of time. Never mind the huge number of archival editions that we should be seeing from DC Thomson – Beano, Dandy, and all the rest, and even with the enormous number of incredible quality reprints we have from Rebellion and their Treasury of British Comics, there’s plenty more titles that fans would love to see reprinted and just haven’t been yet.

Well, one that’s frequently mentioned as one that’s slipped through the cracks is finally getting the collection it deserves – Mike Higgs’ The Cloak.

Just this week, after a bit of teasing and hinting recently, Nat Karmichael announced that he’s signed contracts with Rebellion to bring The Complete Cloak into print.

It’s something I want to share! Last night, I signed an international contract with Rebellion on behalf of British cartoonist Mike Higgs to publish the complete series of his creation, The Cloak.

This includes all of Mike Higgs’ strips from the 1960s, and works from elsewhere, plus probably some new material, and definitely a new cover by Mike. Nat says that Mike and he have been discussing this reprint collection for some time. The hardcover volume will be limited to 1000 copies and will be released before September 2025.

As for who The Cloak was, there’s no better description of his origins than this from Lew Stringer, who worked as Mike’s assistant for a time…

“With issue 18 of Pow! (on sale 13th May 1967) The Cloak replaced the adventure strip Jack Magic strip in the weekly comic. The Cloak was the creation of Birmingham-based cartoonist Mike Higgs, a lifelong fan of comics and pulp magazines. In 1964 Mike had produced a fanzine entitled The Shudder, a parody of pulp magazine legend The Shadow, and with a few tweaks this character became the inspiration for The Cloak strip that he submitted to Odhams.’

‘The editors of Pow! liked what they saw… clearly they saw that The Cloak was something unique. The other strips were in the Leo Baxendale mold (more or less the closest thing Odhams had to a house style) but Mike Higgs’ work had none of that, being more influenced by Peter Maddocks, Chester Gould, and Elzie Segar. More importantly, his style looked very contemporary, very Sixties… and the one thing that set Odhams above their competitors was how much they reflected the “swinging sixties”.’

‘The basic set up was that The Cloak, whose real name and origin remained a mystery, was an agent working for the “Special Squad”, assisted by his partners Mole and Shortstuff. (Later, The Cloak would also acquire a partner/girlfriend by the name of Lady Shady, without a doubt the sexiest woman ever allowed into British humour comics.) The Cloak and his team battled against bizarre villains (influenced by the fact that Mike was a big fan of Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy) and each serial ran for around six weeks, with cliffhanger death-trap style endings at the end of each instalment.”

It’s excellent news. I was fortunate enough to know Mike when I worked in Birmingham’s Nostalgia & Comics. A lovely man, great artist, and The Cloak is a fine creation.

You can find more on The Cloak here at Crazed Chimp, plus the always excellent Lew Stringer had this 2007 write-up on Mike and The Cloak here at his old Blimey! site.

 

More congratulations to Jamie Smart and David Fickling Books – shortlisted for The British Book Awards…

Well, the title says it all really. But I’d like to extend congratulations to Jamie Smart on being shortlisted for the British Book Awards (otherwise known as the Nibbies).

Jamie’s work is, and always has been, just the best. Whether it’s Bunny Vs Monkey or Looshkin in The Phoenix Comic, or work including Battlesuit Bea, Fish Head Steve, Flember, Mega-Lo Maniacs, Ubu Bubu, Chaffy, Moose Kid Comics, Superhero Bunny League, Whubble, or the somewhat more adult (very – very adult) Bear, Corporate Skull, or Kochi Wanaba, Jamie’s been doing this a long, long time and all the success he’s getting is so well deserved.

 

Fantagraphics Bookstore’s Sunday Fundays…

Absolutely no news other than the image and this…

“Mark your calendars for Sunday March 24th when we’ll debut a new series, Sunday Funnies. The first installment features Lauren Armstrong, Brett Hamil, Sarah Romano Diehl, and Brandon Lehmann presenting new work. Free fun for all ages.”

But that looks like Fantagraphics doing a regular Sunday event at their Seattle bookstore and gallery with a load of great names.

 

 

 

New from Kieron Gillen, Caspar Wijngaard, & Clayton Cowles – The Power Fantasy…

Announced at Emerald City Comic Con, there’s a new series coming in August from Gillen & Wijngaard. This is a very good thing as Gillen’s writing is always, has always, hopefully will always be worth reading. Here’s just a little from the press release to give you a taste…

Gillen has this to say:

‘The Power Fantasy emerged in a similar way to The Wicked + The Divine. I was doing a book at Marvel, and became aware of exactly the sort of things I could do with the reins taken off. As The Wicked + the Divine was to Young Avengers, this is to Immortal X-men. It’s a comic informed by superheroes, but one where a fight is the absolute lose state, for everyone. It’s set from 1945-1999, and so is a chance to really have fun with an alternate cultural history too. I think you can see it as an extension of my best work: WicDivian alternate-pop culture, a cold-war take on Uber’s realpolitik, Die’s social group drama hyper-charged by genre…”

Wijngaard adds:

‘Once Kieron had pitched the basic outline for The Power Fantasy I knew this was the story I felt comfortable most telling. We’ve been able to create some incredible characters, each with their own vibrant personalities and worlds in which they inhabit. If you are a fan of my most recent image titles Home Sick Pilots and All Against All, you’ll see a lot of its DNA here. I’m truly putting everything I’ve learned into this series, and The Power Fantasy is a large and beautiful canvas for me to operate on.”

You can find a lot more at Gillen’s newsletter here.  But here’s one great quote from the newsletter to leave you with:

‘”t’s not a “if superheroes were real” book – it’s a book about what if 6 people had an unimaginable level of power. One of the shorthands I’m using is “Watchmen, if there were 6 Dr Manhattans” – but the thing there is “how on earth do six world-ending people come to terms with one another?”

Finally, here’s the work in progress playlist from Gillen – good tunes!

 

Congratulations to Nirvana Comics, Knoxville – winner of the inaugural Image Comics Retailer Appreciation Award…

People of Tennessee, you had a great comic shop amongst you! Nirvana Comics of Knoxville scooped the first Image Comics Retailer Appreciation Award recently.

As I’ve banged on about before, comic shops are the lifeblood of a huge part of the comics industry and the comics medium. I worked in one of the greats (and the oldest) in Britain, Nostalgia & Comics, Birmingham, for many, many years, and love it when we hear success stories of comic shops getting it right. And it appears Nirvana Comics is one of the ones that’s getting it right,

The Image Select Retailer Award is a new initiative from Image to galvanize recognition of members of the Comic Book Direct Market retail community that are going above and beyond to serve their customers, expand readership, and grow a healthier marketplace.

 

More great comic shop stuff – OK Comics’ graphic novel book club…

OK Comics Graphic Novel Club is on Monday 25th March at The White Swan in Leeds. Start time from 4pm to 6pm, until 9pm, for an informal, social chat about their chosen book, The Gulf by Adam De Souza.

If you’re around Leeds, pop along and support another great comic shop.

 

Neil Gaiman has auctioned off his comic and comic art collection…

Heritage held an auction this week from Neil Gaiman’s personal collection. There’s a video walk through below with Gaiman and his friend Geoff Notkin, plus Heritage’s Robert Wilonsky taken in the Heritage gallery in Texas.

The auction includes art from many of Gaiman’s comics, along with various pieces gifted to Gaiman over the years, plus signed comics, limited edition sculptures, Coraline puppets, and a lot more. A portion of the proceeds goes towards The Hero Initiative, the Authors League Fund, and the artists involved.

The auction comes from the inspiration of Notkin, star of TV’s Meterorite Men, who was asked by Gaiman why he had auctioned off so many things that were dear to him, including many of the meterorites he collected. Notkin told Gaiman that these things may had been making him happy for decades but now it was time for someone else to gain pleasure from them.

“Yes, you are selling the artwork, the collectibles, but you’re also giving them the story,” Gaiman was reported as saying from the Sandman set. “Each of those pieces of art is, for me, a story. It’s a story of how I got it. It’s the story of what it meant to me. And I want to try and pass some of those stories on as well.”

 

Happy Birthday Dennis The Menace – both of them…

12 March 1951 is the date that marks Dennis The Menace’s first appearance in comics. Actually, 12 March is the date that marks the first appearance of TWO Dennis the Menaces – there’s the American one created by Hank Ketcham and also the British one created by David ‘Davey’ Law.

Although technically, Brit Dennis first appeared in Beano No. 452 dated March 17th, 1951, the on sale dates on Brit comics are always a bit weird, so 12 March 1951 is, at least to my knowledge, the first time they both appeared to cause mischief and mayhem to this day.

It’s one of those magnificent bits of coincidence – two great, long-running strips debuting on the same day. Of course, the two characters are totally different, US Dennis was adorable, the sort of mischief-making all-American kid, whereas Brit Dennis was a far more chaotic thing, definitely more deserving of the Menace tag, more of a bully than anything, especially through the early years.

Obviously, my allegiances, no matter where I am in the world, lie with the Brit Dennis, friend to Gnasher, persecutor of softies everywhere, a red and black-jumpered maker of trouble, but let’s wish happy birthday to them both…