The Sunday Spotlight: The ‘I Don’t Care What Mrs Claus Says, You Get A Lump Of Coal’ Edition
by Richard Bruton
The Sunday Spotlight, a weekly trip through the light fantastic that is this week’s comics news…
Well, I missed a week last week – let’s blame time, appointments, workloads, and numerous other life things that I just won’t go into. Not to mention Christmas. Bloody hell, it’s Christmas on Wednesday – how the hell did that happen?!?!
Anyway, apologies for missing a week. It won’t happen again. Well, it might, but I’ll try my hardest to avoid it. As way of an apology, a longer than usual spin around all things comics news…
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Comix Experience December Graphic Novel Picks…
Always worth taking a look at the San Francisco-located Comix Experience’s graphic novel picks for its graphic novel club – pretty much a guarantee of quality and two books you should be looking to buy. It’s a great comic shop and if you’re lucky enough to be local, get yer ass in there to buy things. If you’re not local… well, that’s what mail order is for.
This months adult graphic novel selection is one that’s sitting in my ‘read this’ pile, We Called Them Giants by Kieron Gillon and Stephanie Hans. It’s a one-off from Image, ‘a story of communication across a chasm at the end of the world,’ and it goes on to pitch it as this… ‘Lori wakes to find the streets empty. Everyone has gone. Or at least, nearly everyone. She’s thrown into a world where she has to scrape by in the ruins of civilization, nearly starving, hiding from gangs when … They arrive.’ Yep, along with The Power Fantasy, this is Gillen flexing his creator-owned muscles again after a rather successful run at Marvel.
Definitely one to get. And you can buy a signed copy of it here.
As with most of Comix Experience’ GN of the Month picks, Brian Hibbs will be talking to Kieron and Stephanie on Sunday 12/29 at 10am PST – livestreaming here. About a week after, it will be available as a podcast.
As for the Kids Club selection, it’s Detective Beans & the Case of the Missing Hat by Li Chen from Andrews McMeel, what looks like a perfect and perfectly charming book with Detective Beans, ‘the best kitten detective in town’, whose detective hat has gone missing!
Again, buy it here from Comix Experience, and the livestreamed conversation with Li Chen from New Zealand happens on Sunday 12/15 at 10am PST – here – with the podcast available a few days later.
Find out more at comixexperience.com/graphic-novel-club. And support your comic shops, wherever they are!
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Naples Comicon gets the Jamie Hewlett treatment…
Well, that’s a fabulous illustration by Jamie Hewlett for the Naples Comicon 2025 poster. So many references to identify! And of course, some muppet online has already accused it of being an AI-generated thing. Nope, not a chance…
Naples Comic Con happens 1-4 May 2025, with already announced guests including Tanino Liberatore, Boichi, Jon J. Muth, and Darick Robertson
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Go support Andi Watson on Patreon – get incredible new strips EVERY month…
$2 – that’s less than a cup of coffee – will get you access to Andi Watson‘s Patreon, meaning that you get strips like this every single month, plus plenty more.
Go look at his website, go buy his books – all essential for your shelf – Punycorn, Kerry and the Knight of the Forest, Princess Decomposia and Count Spatula, Gum Girl/Superhero Pink, and Glister for all ages, or The Book Tour, Dumped, Breakfast Afternoon, Slow News Day for adults – and of course there’s Paris and Sunburn with Simon Gane.
And then enjoy just one of the strips you could be getting monthly…
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Reported at Hyperallergic, Art Spiegelman revealed to a Q&Q audience following the premiere of Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse, a new documentary of his life and work, that he would be working with Joe Sacco on a comic/book about Gaza.
There were very few details given but Spiegelman’s seems both committed to getting the book done and fearful that it will get a US publisher
‘I’ll finish this thing or die trying. I’ve never had a bigger wrestling match inside my head. My superego says, “You must do this if you’re going to live with yourself,” and my id says, “Who wants the grief [of] being cancelled by everyone on the planet?”‘
Directed by Molly Bernstein and Philip Dolin, Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse is no Maus adaptation but obviously the book that made Spiegelman’s name and career features large in the mix. Hyperallergic report Spiegelman as saying this in the documentary:
‘I feel there’s a 5,000-pound mouse breathing down my neck. If I have a posterity, it’s through that work, and I am now proud of what I did, but I had no expectation while I was making it that it would be discovered while I was alive.’
You’ll be able to see the film in select movie theatres early in 2025, and it will come to PBS later in the year.
And Spiegelman’s no stranger to fighting against those who’d ban books, as this CNN interview from a few years back shows…
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Another must buy collection on the list for 2025 – Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy adaptation by Karasik, Mazzucchelli, and Mattotti…
Announced by Paul Karasik recently and available for pre-order from Pantheon… The graphic novel adaptation Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy will be published next spring by Pantheon.
This from Karasik:
‘The 3-in-1 volume reprints the now-classic “City of Glass” (adapted by myself and drawn by David Mazzucchelli), along with the brand-new adaptation of “Ghosts” (adapted by myself and drawn by Lorenzo Mattotti), and “The Locked Room” (adapted and drawn by me). Front and back cover here, designed by me and Chip Kidd (whom I cannot thank enough for immediately and enthusiastically embracing this project)’
Wow. I still have that first volume, City Of Glass, by Karasik and Mazzucchelli, published back in 1994, on the shelf – an incredible thing. But I never thought I’d see the rest of the trilogy. Fabulous news and a must buy for the new year – publishing on 8 April 2025.
This from Pantheon…
‘From award-winning novelist Paul Auster comes the graphic adaptation of his deeply beloved series, The New York Trilogy, a postmodern take on detective and noir fiction.
‘The New York Trilogy is post-modern literature disguised as Noir fiction where language is the prime suspect. An interpration of detective and mystery fiction, each book explores various philosophical themes. In City of Glass, an author of detective fiction investigates a murder and descends into madness. Ghosts features a private eye named Blue, trailing a man named Black, for a client called White. This too ends with the protagonist’s downfall. And in The Locked Room, another author is experiencing writer’s block, and hopes to brake it by solving the disappearance of his childhood friend. The second two parts of this trilogy will be appearing in this volume for the very first time as a graphic novel.
‘Paul Karasik, the mastermind behind the three adaptations, art directed all three books. City of Glass is illustrated by the award-winning cartoonist David Mazzucchielli, the second volume, Ghosts, is illustrated by New Yorker cover artist, Lorenzo Mattotti, and The Locked Room is adapted and drawn by Karasik himself. These adaptations take Auster’s sophisticated wordplay and translate it into comicsplay: both highbrow and lowbrow and immensely fun reading.’
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Shelly Bond and Philip Bond interviewed at The Comics Journal…
‘Screw the industry, we’re in it for the art form’ is a new interview by Aug Stone with Shelly Bond and Philip Bond. A great interview with a pair of comics greats. Shelly’s the editor extraordinaire, of Vertigo (you know, back in the difficult days), the much-loved here at Comicon Black Crown imprint at IDW, and their latest joint project Off Register Press, whilst Philip is a fabulous artist (and designer it turns out) behind the incadescantly good (and never reprinted – yet) Wired World at Deadline, Kill Your Boyfriend, Shade, The Invisibles, Hellblazer, Angel and the Ape, Vertigo Pop! London, Vimanarama, and a hell of a lot more. Their latest comic is the excellent fake Brit Pop band recollections of Geezer with writer and genuine pop-star Will Potter.
A great interview – go read.
Here’s just a snippet…
PB: I think half of making what you do enjoyable to read is having fun making it. We’ve re-tapped into that. For me it goes back to like the old Deadline days, or pre-Deadline days, of making stuff. Just laying stuff out on your bedroom floor and slapping stuff together in the best way you know how. Like a sandpit of creativity. I saw that again when we did Black Crown and I got to dabble in getting back into production and seeing how enjoyable that could be if you took this kind of punk cut-up aesthetic. I feel we’ve come back to our roots again, of making stuff purely – well, not purely for ourselves – but primarily, for me, I’m making the book that I wanted to see in the world.
SB: Philip and I are both honest about what he can achieve in a finite amount of time. He is drawing around the clock because with a book like Geezer, he has to have that freedom to put 16 different pairs of trousers and different concert t-shirts in the background of every club scene if he wants to. We are investing in him for the long haul on this book. Even if it doesn’t pay off financially, we know that this is the book that both of us love to pieces. It was written in 2020, edited in 2020 and 2021, it’s being drawn now and he’s able to get an issue out a year and that’s okay with us because we have big ideas for the collections.
PB: Financially we’re in a complete hole but creatively we’re very rich.
SB: On fire, some would say.
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The new Superman movie – it’s all about Krypto, isn’t it?…
So, we all know the new James Gunn Superman trailers dropped, right? And yes, it looks good – but don’t most trailers?
Of course, there was one character that leaped out from the screen, the one great hero that we’re going to need in 2025, and we all know it’s Krypto the superdog, don’t we?
Good boy, very good boy.
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Gosh best of year lists are here…
We’re busy prepping our best of year lists here at Comicon – you’ll be seeing them probably before you see this on fact. But the always great Gosh Comics, London, has released its own best of lists for adults and kids/YA. As you’d expect, there’s a load of great books that deserve your attention…
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Stephen Jewell’s Best of 2024 Comics at Games Radar…
Another really strong best of year list from Stephen Jewell at Games Radar. The likes of Ice Cream Man, Absolute Batman, TMNT, Space Ghost, Somna, The Power Fantasy, Ultimate Spider-Man, Absolute Wonder Woman, Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees, and Fantastic Four in the Top 10. But plenty more besides.
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John Allison’s Holiday Harliquinade running now…
A festive bit of John Allison, a great comics writer/artist behind Bad Machinery, Bobbins, Scary Go Round, Giant Days, Steeple, and The Great British Bump-Off.
This is A Holiday Harliquinade and it goes a little something like this:
“I wrote this story when all the windows in my house were being replaced. It was -3°C outside and I had to keep warm, so I did it by writing and drawing 12 pages in 2 days. It’s difficult to describe how I felt after I finished.”
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A long, long watch to answer a simple question – Is this the GREATEST Unfinished Comic of all time?…
Interesting video, one and a quarter hours of it, the first of two such videos – below – talking about Big Numbers by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz. And the answer, if you ask me, is yes. Absolutely, profoundly yes.
I became aware of it after seeing Sienkiewicz mention it on his socials, saying this:
‘It’s part one of a two-part, roughly four hour examination of Alan Moore and my unfinished creator-owned series, Big Numbers. Some folks might remember it. Or rather remember all the conjecture and rumors and ruminating about what led to its ultimate collapse. I don’t have many career regrets(I’m a learn from your mistakes and from those of others-and move forward sort of guy) BUT if I had a top three list, Big Numbers would certainly be #1.’
Now, if you don’t know, it’s a truly beautiful thing, published in 1990 by Moore’s own very short-lived Mad Love imprint as a 10×10-inch comic, a planned 500-page story across 12 issues where Sienkiewicz would gradually introduce colour into his unbelievably detailed and complex pages. Two issues were published before it was meant to go to Kevin Eastman‘s Tundra Publishing (and if you know your comics history, you’ll know what a glorious disaster and money hole that was). A third issue was completed by Sienkiewicz before he walked away from the book for many reasons, mostly it seems because of the insane workload every issue took (that third issue eventually made its way online though many sources, ). His art assistant, Al Columbia, was meant to take over and worked on the fourth issue, only to end up destroying the artwork and walking away.
As for the story… it’s a look at one small English town and its people, overshadowed by the prospect of a US company looking to build a huge shopping mall in the town. It’s got chaos theory maths – it was originally meant to be titled The Mandelbrot Set – threading through a story where the intricacies of the human experience in 1980’s Great Britain and the incredibly beautiful and challenging art from Sienkiewicz really do make this one that got away.
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And finally… it’s Christmas… have my favourite Christmas song… Merry Christmas one and all, see you on the other side…
