The Sunday Spotlight – The ‘One Of Our Rentmen Is Missing’ Edition

It’s Sunday, how’d you fancy taking a look through some of the comics news for the week? Yep, it’s The Sunday Spotlight:

 

Bluesky… The new home for Comics Twitter?

If you’ve been paying attention to comics social media this week you’ll have seen more and more comic creators saying farewell to the toxic waste ground of Xwitter, a place where we’d all made home for many years, and watched, horrified, as it filled up with trolls, bots, comicsgaters, and comics haters once the tinpot Tony Stark took over.

So, where are all these lovely comics people headed almost as one – Bluesky.

Sure, there have been supposed Xwitter replacements before, but Bluesky, right now at least, is where everyone’s headed, including comics Twitter. Will it be the same? Will it be the one-stop shop for all? Probably not. But right now it feels a damn site better than the old place.

And of course, Comicon’s on there, as are many of our writers… come look us up!

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Angouleme Festival 2025 award nominees announced…

The 44 award nominees for the most prestigious awards in Euro comics have been announced, with the full list here. But they do include a trio of books originally published in English – Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso’s Moonshine, Bryan Talbot’s Grandville Vol 5: Force Majeure and Alison by Lizzy Stewart.

If it works… the full list should be viewable through the video below…

Plus, we had the unveiling of Posy Simmond’s official Angouleme poster…

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Won’t somebody publish Darryl Cunningham’s Elon Musk biography?…

Darryl Cunningham’s a quite magnificent comics artist, who’s made his name with a series of really great books on such diverse topics as mental illness and the lives of the current billionaire class.

His latest graphic novel, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter has been published in France by Delcourt, giving us a look into the world of the man who’s currently cosying up to President-elect Trump and seems destined to become something akin to co-president, at least in his own mind.

But, as he wrote on his socials and Patreon, the high profile nature of his subject seems to be the thing that is currently impeding any further publication of Cunningham’s book. It seems the fear of litigation really does strike fear into the hearts of publishers these days.

‘My book on Elon Musk came out last year from Delcourt Editions in France, but it’s publication in other countries looks unlikely. I’m told that there was interest from various international publishers at the recent Frankfurt Book Fair, but there was concern over possible legal consequences. This shouldn’t be a problem as I was careful not to write anything that hadn’t already been published elsewhere and Delcourt’s lawyers examined every word and line for problems. Nevertheless, we live now in a climate of fear where the worst people have immense power, and because of this there’s going to be a tendency for individuals, institutions, businesses, and the state to run for cover. Big thanks to Delcourt for having the courage to publish the book. For those in the UK who want a copy of the French edition you can order one from OK Comics in Leeds.’

Hopefully the book, one that, based on Cunningham previous books that have done this sort of thing so well, is going to skewer the world’s richest man in perfect comic form, will find an English-language publisher soon.

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Maurice Vellekoop wins Toronto Book Award 2024 for I’m So Glad We Had This This Time Together…

Oh, I so love Maurice Vellekoop’s work, have done since I saw it in Drawn & Quarterly anthology, a fabulous thing, gorgeous artwork, queer-focused, beautifully done works that never fail to impress.

So it’s really good to see that he’s been awarded the Toronto Book Award for his excellent graphic memoir, I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together. He’s a really worthy winner of the $50k prize. (Full story at CBC)

If you haven’t already got it, it’s a beautiful, powerful memoir, described by publisher Random House as…

‘Meet little Maurice Vellekoop, the youngest of four children raised by Dutch immigrants in the 1970s in a blue-collar suburb of Toronto. Despite their working-class milieu, the Vellekoops are devoted to art, music, and film, and they instill a deep reverence for the arts in young Maurice—except for literature. He’d much rather watch Cher and Carol Burnett on TV than read a book. He also loves playing with his girlfriends’ Barbie dolls and helping his Mum in her hair salon, which she runs out of the basement of their house. In short, he is really, really gay. Which is a huge problem, because the family is part of the Christian Reformed Church, a strict Calvinist sect. They go to church twice on Sunday, and they send their kids to a private Christian school, catechism classes, and the Calvinist Cadet Corps. Needless to say, the church is intolerant of homosexuality. Though she loves her son deeply, Maurice’s mother, Ann, cannot accept him, setting the course for a long estrangement.’

‘Vellekoop struggles through all of this until he graduates from high school and is accepted into the Ontario College of Art in the early 1980s. Here he finds a welcoming community of bohemians, including a brilliant, flamboyantly gay professor who encourages him to come out. But just as he’s dipping his toes into the waters of gay sex and love, a series of romantic disasters, followed by a violent attack, sets him back severely. And then the shadow of the AIDS era descends. Maurice reacts by retreating to the safety of childhood obsessions, and seeks to satisfy his emotional needs with film- and theatre-going, music, boozy self-medication, and prolific art-making. When these tactics inevitably fail, Vellekoop at last embarks on a journey towards his heart’s true desire. In psychotherapy, the spiderweb of family, faith, guilt, sexuality, mental health, the intergenerational fallout of World War II, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, French Formula Hairspray, and much more at last begins to untangle. But it’s going to be a long, messy, and occasionally hilarious process.’

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Sad Comics news – Farewell to Monster Fun…

The news hit this week that the Christmas Issue of Monster Fun, the all-ages monthly from Rebellion/Treasury of British Comics, will be the last issue, with subscribers getting a letter in the week telling them that this was the end.

This is sad news indeed. I’d been singing the praises of the issues when I got them, a real grab-bag of delights with a mix of reworked humour strips from the Treasury Archive and plenty of new strips. They were doing great things, really excellent comedy comics from plenty of talented folks, and seemed to have a dedicated fan base of kids and adults. Sadly, it seems not a big enough fan base. It will be missed.

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The cutest cosplay you’ll see anywhere, thanks to Neill Cameron and Thought Bubble…

Last weekend the entirety of Brit comics decamped to Harrogate for the annual Thought Bubble festival.

From all the reports it was the usual fabulous time for one and all, an event that’s grown bigger and bigger and bigger over time yet still an event hyper focused on comics of all shapes and sizes – no tv/film ‘celebs hawking autographs here, just every possible flavour of comics you could want.

Mega-Robo Bros creator Neill Cameron was there and had this to say about it in his latest newsletter…

‘I spent this last weekend at Thought Bubble, the rightly-world-famous comics convention in Harrogate, where I was attending with the fine people of the Phoenix and doing workshops and panels and signings and stuff. As I’ve mentioned on here before it’s a few years since I’ve attended (becausereasons), but I thought it was time to get back on the horse, and I suppose I hoped that going up kind of mob-handed with all the Phoenix guys would be such a different prospect that it would feel different, and new, and not just make me sad. And I am happy to report that this was 100% THE CASE. The whole genuinely brilliant and life-affirming and wonderful, and also so exhausting that it is now four days later and my brain is just starting to flicker back into some semblance of sentience.’

And it came complete with this adorable squad of epic cosplayers who came as Neill’s Donut Squad…

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First Look at Mechanical Cake and Scott Free Modville, Hyde, and Nick graphic novels…

More from TBubs… as we first caught sight of Mechanical Cake’s comics and line-up, the new company headed by editor in chief and publisher Dave Elliott.

Elliott and Mechanical Cake are working with filmmaker Ridley Scott and top comic book artists with their first wave of three books, Modville, Hyde, and Nick, with an impressive list of talent attached to these and more books including Bill Sienkiewicz, Chris Weston, Dan Panosian, Brian Rood, and Hendry Prasetya.

Dave Elliott’s got form for heading up great publishing ventures, including Atomeka Press with Garry Leach to produce the fondly remembered A1 anthology, as well as work at Deadline, Heavy Metal, and more, so Mechanical Cake is definitely one we’ll be keeping an eye on.

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Finally finally, happy 71st birthday to Alan Moore, England’s finest…

The Magus had his 71st birthday last week (18 November). Perhaps you young whippersnappers might not know too much of him, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that he’s the greatest comics writer we’ve ever seen. The writer of Watchmen, V For Vendetta, From Hell, Swamp Thing, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Halo Jones, DR & Quinch, Marvelman, Captain Britain, The Bojeffries Saga, The Killing Joke, Skizz, Promethea, A Small Killing, Top 10, and so much more, he revolutionized what comics could be, brought a sensibility to the English-speaking and reading medium that would be transformative and would lead to a whole new world of comics that we all live and breath today.

Personally, I grew up on his works and I’m looking forward to Christmas this year when I get to open my pressies that I know include his latest novel, The Great When, and his long promised collaboration with Steve Moore and many great artists, The Bumper Book of Magic.

So, happy birthday to a comics legend. The one and only Alan Moore.

Now, a few perfectly wonderful videos of the great man…

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