The Sunday Spotlight – The ‘I’m Gonna Keep Flattening Faces Till I Get The Information I’m After’ Edition
by Richard Bruton
Well, here we are again, it’s Sunday, time to stop your doomscrolling through a world where things look increasingly bad, just take a moment, chill out, make yourself a drink of your choice, and enjoy a little of the comics news I fancy bringing to your attention this week… it’s the Sunday Spotlight:
COMIX EXPERIENCE’S GN CLUB PICKS FOR JUNE – A SCI-FI ROM-COM & A MYTHICAL BEINGS HOSPITAL…
A great comic shop, Comix Experience San Franscisco does a monthly GN club for adults and kids. We keep telling you about them because they have a habit of picking some really great comics.
So, it’s June, and here’s their picks…
The Adult Club Pick in Mary Shyne‘s You And Me On Repeat, a time travel rom-com – and I do love a good bit of rom-com. Here’s the bumff for this one…
‘In this swoony and hilarious debut rom-com graphic novel, two former friends are trapped in a time loop together, repeating their high school graduation day over and over and over. Chris O’Brien has a genius plan: If he can share the perfect first kiss with his crush, Andy, then of course he’ll break free from the time loop that has him repeating graduation day over and over… and over. Alicia Ochoa thinks Chris’s plan is doomed. Valedictorian and a total nerd, she knows it’ll take more than a kiss to escape the loop they’re trapped in together. Besides, Chris may be a hopeless romantic, but Alicia doesn’t think he has a real shot with Andy. Once close friends, Alicia and Chris have history-lots of it. As they got older, the pair fell out after Chris ditched her for the “cool kids” and left her in the dust. But when you’re looping side by side, you never know if friendship might rekindle or what new feelings could spark along the way.’
Creator Mary Shyne will appear live at Comix Experience on Sunday, 6th July at 10 am. As usual, CE will tape the event and put it out on their YouTube shortly after.
The Kids Club pick for June is Gavin Aung Than‘s Creature Clinic –
‘Nurse, bring that healing potion-STAT! Welcome to Creature Clinic, the world’s finest-and only-hospital for mythical beings. Here, everyone from trolls and unicorns to tooth fairies and giants can expect the very best treatment. Well, with one exception. Humans are absolutely, 100 percent not welcome. Doctor-in-training Kara Orc has worked hard and followed the rules her entire life to get where she is now. But when a human in need shows up at the hospital, her obedience is put to the test. Sure, most humans are dangerous, destructive beasts, but Kara took an oath to help all creatures. Even humans deserve care and compassion. How long can she keep such a big secret from her boss… who also happens to be her mother? And will her decision to do what’s right cause a rift between Kara and her mom that no medicine can cure?’
Again, CE will chat with Gavin Aung Than in June in a video conversation, with the whole thing going up online shortly after.
PAUL CORNELL & RACHAEL SMITH SIGNING AT WATERSTONES PICCADILLY, LONDON – 20 SEPTEMBER…
Who Killed Nessie? by Paul Cornell and Rachael Smith was funded on Zoop, and well-funded. But now it’s out in the wild, this cryptozoological whodunnit about finding out just who killed Scotland’s most elusive beastie.
We featured it here, and it’s well worth taking a look for more details of the story and plenty of Smith’s always great artwork. Basically, it’s poor Lindsay Grockle’s first day as the manager of the Lakeview Hotel, just as the annual Cryptid convention rolls into her hotel. Worse yet, Nessie’s been deaded and it falls to Lindsay to solve the crime.
It’s funny and clever and really good reading. So, get yourselves down to that there London on 25th September for a signing. Details here.
ADD THIS TO YOUR MUST BUY LISTS – DARWYN COOKE’S THE COMPLETE SPIRIT CONNOISSEUR EDITION, OUT OCTOBER 2025…
Scott Dunbier‘s Act 4 Publishing has a real treat for you this October, the complete collection of Darwyn Cooke‘s sublime work on Will Eisner‘s Spirit as a The Complete Spirit Connoisseur Edition.
It’s published by Act 4 through Skybound and Image Comics, and comes suitably oversized and slipcased. Scott Dunbier had this to say:
‘This volume showcases one of Darwyn Cooke’s seminal works, and presented in the format it so richly deserves.’
It’s the complete run of Cooke’s Spirit work at DC Comics, including the Spirit/Batman crossover. Designed by Sean Phillips and including an introduction by Cooke’s inker on the series J. Bone, it collects The Spirit #1-6, #8-12, and the Batman/The Spirit one-shot. Darwyn Cooke’s The Complete Spirit Connoisseur Edition is released on 8th October 2025.
ANOTHER FOR YOUR MUST BUY LISTS – ROBERTA GREGORY’S BITCHY BITCH GETS A MAJOR COLLECTION IN 2026…
The brilliantly outspoken (although so much of what she says makes absolute sense) Bitchy Bitch by Roberta Gregory gets a near complete collection from Fantagraphics in 2026.
Starring in Naughty Bits and running to 40 issues from 1991 to 2004, Midge McCracken is Bitchy Bitch, and now she getting this well deserved big collection, 450+ pages of the best of her tales, told in her chronological order (not order of publication), from school days to menopause, it’s all here in the yet untilted book. Roberta suggests a few titles – A Bitch’s Life or The Big Bitchy Book, but encourages you to come up with more.
AND FINALLY… MARGAUX MOTIN FOR DARJEELING…
Darjeeling, the French lingerie brand created by Chantelle, celebrates 30 years and has brought artist Margaux Motin onboard to illustrate the moment.
I missed this when it appeared in May, but it’s well worth showing you here. Motin’s a great, great artist whose work is criminally little translated into English. There was But I Really Wanted to be an Anthropologist from SelfMadeHero in 2012 and Plate Tectonics: An Illustrated Memoir from Boom!/Archaia in 2019. Sadly, no more than that. But I still love seeing everything she does and really wish my rudimentary French was up to being able to translate things properly.
