The Sunday Spotlight – The ‘I Smell Mischief’ Edition
by Richard Bruton
Oh, the Sunday Spotlight, where you kick back and relax and read a few news bits for the week… just chill, it’s Sunday…
THOUGHT BUBBLE HAPPENS 15/16 NOVEMBER – PLAN YOUR WAY AROUND THE HUNDREDS OF EXHIBITORS FOR COMICS, COMICS, AND MORE COMICS…
If you didn’t need telling by now, Thought Bubble Comic Festival is a huge, huge, glorious celebration of all things comics. Happening every year in Harrogate, UK, this year’s festival kicks off in just a few weeks now for both a week-long festival and its two-day convention. Essential for any comics fan in the UK and beyond, it’s one of the biggest and best comics festivals in the world.
But if you’re headed there, how the heck do you even begin to navigate all the hundreds and hundreds of guests and exhibitors, not to mention the plentiful programme of events running across the festival?
Well, the answer is easy – you head here. Lists of guests and exhibitors? Yep, those are there. Programmes of events? Got that. Festival/Convention maps? Got those too. Everything you could need to make the best comics weekend of the year run smoothly.
DOG MAN DOMINATES AND JAMIE SMART SMASHES THE BESTSELLER CHARTS… GO ON, TELL ME THAT KIDS DON’T READ COMICS ANYMORE….
Another thing I find myself, in my dotage, banging on about, is how so many comics ‘fans’ spend way too much time bemoaning the fact that, 1, kids don’t read comics anymore, 2, comics just aren’t any good anymore, and/or, 3, Superhero comics are mainstream comics. All patently not true, obviously.
Comics aren’t any good now? Maybe try reading some? Because the ones I’m reading are incredible. I think what you actually mean is “Comics now aren’t the same as the comics I remember loving 40/50 years ago, and I’m too dumb to realise it, so I’ll just moan on social media.”
As for the kids aren’t reading comics thing. Well, that’s equally rot. There’s way too much to go into here, but have a look at this Bookseller article talking about sales of comics and graphic novels in the UK. 2024 sales of 2.6m books with total sales of £20.2m (volume up 25.7% and value up 24% on 2023.) 2025 looks even better, with sales of £8.9m up to the end of April – up 30.1% on comparative dates in 2024 – putting a figure of more than £26m for the calendar year if it carries on at this rate.
And of course, the big growth area? That would be kids comics. In the USA, it’s Dav Pilkey and Raina Telgemeier perennially dominating the kids bestseller lists, the graphic novel bestseller lists, and the general fiction lists. But, as the Bookseller points out, in the UK, it’s Dav Pilkey and Jamie Smart who dominate things. Pilkey accounts for almost 50% of of 2025’s numbers so far, with Pilkey and Smart making up some 71.6%. But outside of those two behemoths, there’s still a very healthy £2.5m in other author sales up to April 2025, more than the whole of 2024.
So, congratulations to all involved. And thank you, thank you so much, for getting so many millions of kids into comics. Seriously, take a look at those numbers of UK sales – tell me again how kids aren’t reading comics? And don’t even think about telling me that your cape-wearing comics are mainstream.
MANGA TAKES OVER PARIS’ MUSEE GUIMET – NOV 2025 TO MAR 2026…
Another fabulous looking exhibition to explore if you happen to be spending any time in France through November 25th to March 26th – Manga Tout Un Art! exhibition at the Musée Guimet, Paris.
Taking over all three floors of the museum, it promises to take visitors on a journey through the history of Japanese comics, looking at how Manga developed from its origins to become a major art form, including a floor dedicated to studying how ancient graphical techniques has contributed so much to the medium we know now. There will be a major section on the legendary godfather of Manga, Osamu Tezuka, and a major exhibit on how the counter-cultural influences of Japan in the ’60s and ’70s shaped Manga and propelled it towards global dominance. An entire room will be dedicated to Hokusai’s Under the Great Wave off Kanagawa, and how its iconic imagery has found its way into both Manga and comics worldwide.
Manga Tout Un Art! runs from 19th November 2025 to 9th March 2026 at the Musee Guimet in Paris.
MARK YOUR BUYING DIARIES – NERD INFERNO: THE ESSENTIAL EVAN DORKIN – APRIL 2026…
Evan Dorkin makes great comics. Really, really great comics. Go see his and Jill Thompson‘s Beasts of Burden for a recent example of that. But now Dark Horse are collecting together almost everything creator-owned he’s ever done in a 656-page behemoth of an omnibus – Nerd Inferno: The Essential Evan Dorkin.
So, that means all the chronicles of the gin-fuelled lactose intolerant as hell Milk and Cheese. It means all the fugly face of fandom as we check in to every episode of The Eltingville Club. And then there’s all that glorious funny, but increasingly dark descent into absurdity featuring Dorkin and his cast of characters in Dork – expect “black humor stories about a living voodoo doll, a serial killer sitcom, truly real live sex, a disco skinhead, an urbane devil puppet, classic works of literature acted out by Fisher-Price toys, and more absurdity.”
Sadly, at least for me, no Pirate Corp$/Hectic Planet – oh, I used to love the ridiculous misadventures of this ska-infused space slackers book. But I may have been the ony one! However, despite that, having all the Milk & Cheese, all the Eltingville, all the Dork stuff in one place – absolutely essential buy for anyone who loves your comics with a bit of cutting edge comedy.
It’s all out on 21st April 2026 from Dark Horse Comics, under a new cover by Dorkin and Sarah Dyer.
MORE TO ADD TO YOUR MUST BUY LISTS – NEILL CAMERON’S DONUT SQUAD 2: MAKE A MESS – OUT JAN 2026…
Yep, add this to your must-buy lists right now. Perfect for the doughnut-loving comics fan in your life! You all should know Neill Cameron from his excellent work in The Phoenix Comic with Mega Robo Bros (and if you don’t – see here), and now there’s a brand-new Cameron series to get your teeth into (sorry). Yep, it’s Donut Squad, where the donuts have plans for world domination. No, seriously. It’s funny, it’s silly, it’s just perfect for kids of all ages.
Well, in January, you get to pick up the second book in the series, Make A Mess. So, time to join Sprinkles, Jammyboi, Dadnut, Lil’ Timmy and Spronky once more. Pre-order everywhere you get your books, and check out the Phoenix site for exclusive bundles.
SOMETHING GOOD FOR THE EARS – PANEL BORDERS…
Fancy a good comics podcast covering all manner of fascinating parts of the medium? Tired of angry ‘fans’ shouting about things at you? Well, might I suggest Alex Fitch‘s Panel Borders?
It’s well past 500 episodes by now, featuring as a pod and a regular Resonance FM radio show, with Alex producing and presenting, along with some guest hosts and covers everything you could possibly imagine in comics. I could list the subjects, but just take a look at the last two pods to get a flavour of what he does – and he does it very, very well.
Comic Book Team-Ups: Matt Wakeham discusses writing and compiling the new coffee table book of Phoo Action, a cult comic by Jamie Hewlett that Wakeham wrote the second series of and adapted for television, which was originally serialised in The Face magazine. In a panel discussion recorded at Thought Bubble festival, Alex chats to Blake and Tini Howard about working together on such comics as Punchline and Batman: Urban Legends.
Inspired by the Twentieth Century: Alex Fitch looks at the work of cartoonists influenced by the culture of the Twentieth Century. In a Q and A recorded at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, artist Juanjo Guarnido discusses his much loved anthropormophic graphic novel series Blacksad, and in a conversation recorded at Cartoon County, Digital Archivist Clair Waller discusses the British Cartoon Archive in Templeman Library, University of Kent and their current exhibition Laughter in the Long Twentieth Century.
