The Sunday Spotlight: The ‘Cuties Sound Asleep’ Edition

Welcome to a cornucopia of comic delights. Or, if we’re being honest, just a few things I noticed this week in the world of comics — yep, it’s the Sunday Spotlight…

GREAT READ – GREG KETTER, ICE PROTESTER AND COMIC SHOP OWNER…

The Comics Journal has another well worth reading interview by Zach Rabiroff, this one with Greg Ketter of Dreamhaven Books. You may have seen the photo by Theia Chatelle, of Ketter striding through the tear gas, just after giving a quote to the TV folks – ‘I’m 70 years old, and I’m fucking angry.’

Ketter’s interview covers the current fallout from the ICE operations in Minneapolis, following the deaths of Renee Nicole Good and then Alex Pretti, but does it with a comics and comics retail angle that makes for fascinating reading.

Christ, it’s horrible in the USA right now. Has been for quite some time, but feels like it’s getting worse. And all in the knowledge that, in this new regime, down is up, up is down, lies are truth, and those in power and those billionaire pals of those in power will do just what they damn well please. Grim times.

But, old comic shop lag that I am, I still find myself fascinated by reading about comic shops, particularly forward-thinking shops like Dreamhaven Books. So, whether you’re reading for the social commentary and wondering how the USA came to this, or reading it for the comic shop insights, or both, go read it.

GREAT READ #2 – ELIZABETH SANDIFER’S THE LAST WAR IN ALBION GETS TO FROM HELL…

I’ve banged on about Elizabeth Sandifer‘s Last War in Albion before, something best described by Sandifer as:

“An ongoing critical history of the British comics industry focused primarily on the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Its primary narrative runs from the publication of Grant Morrison’s earliest professional comics work in 1978 through to the present day, although its style is characterized by frequent digressions both forwards and backwards in history.”

Which does nothing to get over the sheer amount of great writing that Sandifer does here, chronicling comics history through a very particular lens of the lives and works of Moore and Morrison. The latest chapter brings us to Moore’s other magnum opus, the collaboration with Eddie Campbell, From Hell.

Here’s just a little of a hell of a big read, but a damn good read…

“It is at this point that Alan Moore comes to write what would prove arguably the most consequential line of dialogue in his entire career… In a real sense, it could serve as a statement on his whole career—his life’s work summarized in a single sentence the import of which he could not possibly have understood as he scripted it … And then he explains. “I made it all up, and it all came true anyway.”

There’s a handy index of all things Last War in Albion here.

COMICS ASYLUM CHAT TO PETER BAGGE…

Over on YouTube, The Creative Asylum have an hour long interview with Peter Bagge, best known as the creator of Hate, a classic series that defined so much of the ’90s and thealt-comics and alt-culture of the time.

Topics covered include Robert Crumb, the Undergrounds, Weirdo Magazine, Hate, and a hell of a lot more. If you fancy an hour of fascinating comics chat, it’s well worth your time.

SEX CRIMINALS BY MATT FRACTION & CHIP ZDARSKY HEADED TO AMAZON PRIME FOR A TV ADAPTATION…

Published between 2013 and 2020, Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky‘s Sex Criminals from Image Comics was one of those great series that you should have been reading, all about a couple of people who, when they have sex, are able to stop time. So, as you’d expect, they use these newfound powers to make theworld a better place… nah, they go out and rob banks.

A damn fine series indeed. And now Universal have signed Fraction and his collaborator and wife Kelly Sue DeConnick to a two-year TV development deal, with the first being Sex Criminals.

An eight-episode series is now in development with Prime Video, with Fraction and Zdarsky executive producing alongside Kumail Nanjiani, Emily V. Gordon, Tze Chun, Dani Melia and Dani Gorin, with Nanjiani acting in the show.

ROMAN MURADOV AT GOSH COMICS FOR THE LAUNCH OF ALL THE LIVING – 26 FEBRUARY…

Roman Muradov is one of those artists I’ve loved for a long, long time. He’s also one of those artists who’s, frankly, criminally underrated. His latest release is All The Living, described as “a melancholic ghost story”, is coming out from Fantagraphics. And it looks, just like all his works, rather superb indeed.

Gosh Comics has Muradov in store on the 26th of February, part of their 40th anniversary celebrations, not to mention the 50th anniversary of Fantagraphics. Well worth heading along to if you can. And if you can’t, then you really, really need to pick up this book.

Here’s what Fantagraphics have to say about it:

“A captivating mediation on existence by acclaimed artist and graphic novelist Roman Muradov. Waking up in Purgatory, a young woman is forced to take part in a lottery, which she wins. Unfortunately for her, since she has had enough of life, the prize is to return to the world of the living and continue her life from where she had left it, with one significant difference: this time, she can see and communicate with ghosts—her own included. Her dull, monotonous life carries on, though her profound solitude is now mitigated by the presence of the ghosts of the dead, most notably her own. She discovers that living with her ghost has its advantages, until this relationship suddenly turns into a spectral triangle…

By turns compassionate and cruel, All the Living is a quiet, melancholy story full of delicate details, and unexpected humor. It’s a slow and subtle meditation on loneliness, rendered in Muradov’s shifting style, full of finesse and sensuality. A parable — at the same time gentle, penetrating, and occasionally profane — that marks the return of a master of the modern graphic novel.”