The Sunday Spotlight: The ‘I’d Hate To See The First Draft’ Edition

by Richard Bruton

Fire up the coffee, sit yer ass down, time to read some comics news… it’s The Sunday Spotlight…

Still one of my favourite books of all time – a guaranteed barrel of laffs – **Kyle Baker**‘s *Why I Hate Saturn*

Feel the fear once again – Uzamaki comes to Adult Swim – 28 September…

The animated series based on the Japanese horror manga series by Junji Ito comes to Adult Swim on 28 September… it looks as wonderfully creepy and downright disturbing as you’d expect…

UK National Literacy Trust’s World Of Graphic Novels launches to get schools and kids reading comics…

Another step forward in encouraging teachers (some of whom still have a reluctance to include comics) and kids ages 7-14 (who really don’t have any reluctance to read comics) to bring comics and graphic novels into the classroom with a brand-new reading challenge from the National Literacy Trust in the UK.

The program went live on 17th September, with a competition and resources that include teacher guidelines, age-appropriate reading lists, classroom-ready worksheets, and a lot more.

Full details here.

Steven Appleby’s ‘Nothing Is Real’ Exhibition opens 5 Oct, London…

The always fabulous Steven Appleby, writer, illustrator, comic maker, has a new exhibition that opens on 5 October at London’s Space Station Sixty-Five.

According to Space Station Sixty-Five, it’s going to be a chance to:

“Step into the head of Steven Appleby during our new exhibition Nothing is Real. Nothing is Real is about secrets, and things not being what they appear to be. It’s about what the next door neighbours are doing on the other side of the sitting room wall. It’s about private spaces and dark places behind closed curtains, beneath pavements, and down in basements…”

Exhibition opens 5 October and runs into 2025. Space Station Sixty-Five Kennington Road, SE11, opening times are Wed – Sat 12.00 – 18.00.

Join a political cartooning legend for If… Stands Up – Steve Bell at Gosh! Comics London – 5 October 2024…

One of the finest of Britain’s political cartoonists, Steve Bell, has a new If collection out, full of the sort of truth-telling through scathing cartooning of the political figures of the day that you’d expect.

He’s doing an essential signing at Gosh! Comics London on Saturday 5th October 2024 at 1-2pm with pre-orders for a signed copy for those who can’t make it available from the Gosh! shop.

Sparky draws… 23 glorious minutes of Charles M. Schulz drawing Peanuts…

Nothing more than that… 23 minutes of the master drawing… uploaded by Mark Barnett to YouTube, who says this…

“Until this year (2024), there has never been one all encompassing video of Charles Schulz drawing his Peanuts characters. I scoured many different sources to find and collect the many different clips. Some clips had only one half of Charles Schulz drawing a character, while another clip had the second half. I edited the two halves together to create one entire clip. This happened for several of the drawing videos.

This is a revision of my previous videos “17 Minutes of…” and “20 Minutes of…” I found a few more clips and I reordered a few others. It feels like a more complete version now. Technically this video is 22 3/4 minutes long, but I think the Famous WWI Flying Ace would approve of my rounding it up to 23 minutes.”

More record-breaking comic sales… The Beano number 1 goes for £30k+

Yep, someone’s sitting pretty on a nice cheque after putting up a comic of Beano #1 (and no, I still can’t get used to calling it Beano rather than my preferred The Beano) for auction and seeing it sold for £30,940 (including fees). But this one was a special one, the first time (I believe) one’s come up for auction complete with the whoopee mask free gift that was packaged with the first issue from 1938.

See, that’s real comics rarity there – and none of your ridiculous slabbing either.

Oh, and before you start spending the money, check out this handy guide from Beano to spotting an authentic original issue 1.