The Sunday Spotlight – The ‘I Should Have Gotten The Batteries’ Edition
by Richard Bruton
It’s Sunday, there’s comics news to round up, and thus, into the world comes the Sunday Spotlight…
Okay, we’re back. Did you miss me? Various non-comics related things and stuff and what-nots derailed any plans for getting the last week’s Sunday Spotlight out. Apologies. I’d say it won’t happen again, but who knows what life’s going to chuck at us, eh? So, without further ado…
THE RETURN OF HIGH VIS COMICS FESTIVAL – KING’S HEATH, BIRMINGHAM, UK, 19 SEPTEMBER 2026…
Organised by Olly MacNamee, one of the editors here at Comicon, High Vis Comics Festival has just announced its second year’s date – the 19th of September, 2026. Last year’s inaugural event was, from all reports, rather the success, so I can only recommend you head into the heart of one of Birmingham’s funky suburbs for more comics goodness once more this year.
It’s a welcome return to the city where I was raised (born in Dudley, but raised in comics at Nostalgia and Comics in Birmingham), a city that really does deserve a damn fine comics festival – and High Vis is indeed that damn fine comics festival. More info no doubt coming soon.
(Olly’s far too decent to abuse his position here to plug it – so I’ll have to do it for him!)
BOBBY JOSEPH, UK COMICS LAUREATE, ANNOUNCES HIS GRAPHIC NOVEL LIST FOR LIBRARIES…
Bobby Joseph, the UK comics laureate, has released his graphic novel list for libraries, a list that will be, through the Arts Council, distributed to their connected libraries. It’s a diverse and fascinating list, as you’d expect. It’s a vitally important part of getting the word out that comics are important, for kids and adults, especially to those who wouldn’t normally be heading into comic shops. Libraries have really taken up graphic novels in the last few years, and it’s a really great way to get new readers into the medium we all love.
John Freeman‘s always essential Down The Tubes has a look at the titles on the list here.
THE COMIX EXPERIENCE GRAPHIC NOVEL CLUB PICKS FOR FEBRUARY…
Comix Experience in San Francisco is a great store, and their graphic novel club is pretty much a guarantee of finding a couple of books that you might have overlooked. They’ve never let me down in either the adult or the kids club picks so far.
So, for February, the adult comic club pick is Fustuk by Robert Mgrdich Apelian.:
‘Weaving together multiple timelines in an inventive, fantastical story of Armenian family and food, speaking to diasporic culture and how those within it relate to their different worlds… this delectable graphic novel follows the youngest of three dysfunctional siblings who strike a magical deal to save their mother’s life.’
As for the Kids Club pick, that’s the new book from Judd Winick – Hilo Presents: The Mighty! The next book in this New York Times Bestseller series, Hilo, where we’re in the world of an alien boy who crash lands on Earth and has to navigate all the struggles of fitting in alongside alien threats and saving the world. This latest Hilo book features Miranda, just your average kid who happens to be the superhero known as The Mighty.
‘Welcome to Willow City—home to the one and only Miranda Luna! Miranda loves Willow City and her life…exactly as they are. But lately everything seems to be changing. Crime is up in the city. Bullying is up at school. Even Miranda’s family is acting weird. It feels like everything is out of her control…even her own body! (What’s with all this hair? And where did this super-strength come from?!) The world needs someone to fix things. There’s a local legend about a giant, furry, mythical creature who has always kept Willow City safe in times of need. But that doesn’t have anything to do with Miranda…right? Does Miranda have what it takes to be the hero that Willow City needs … and the person she was born to be?’
As is usual, Comix Experience will be talking to both Robert Apelian and Judd Winnick, with the interviews popping up on the Comix Experience YouTube channel.
TWO OF THE PERHAPS UNHERALDED COMICS PRO ANNOUNCEMENTS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED… TWO INCREDIBLE SERIES… PLUS SOME WELCOME 2000 AD NEWS…
Comics PRO is the Comics Professional Retailers Organisation, and they’re having their annual get-together this very weekend, complete with many new comics announcements from many publishers.
Of course, with all that noise, there’s bound to be a few things that perhaps fly under the radar. In amongst all the Marvel, DC, and Image announcements, I saw three that more appealed to my particular sensibilities.
First of all, there was the announcement by 2000 AD that they’ve finally sorted out a deal with Lunar Distributors to ship the weekly 2000 AD to American comic shops. Olly MacNamee, one of Comicon’s Senior Editors, already covered this, but, seeing as I tell you every single week how damn good 2000 AD is, I wanted to share it with you as well. This means that you lucky souls in the Americas will be able to share in all that 2000 AD goodness, every single week.
We also had the announcement that Terry Moore has done a deal with Dark Horse to partner for a new imprint to repackage and reprint all of his work – starting, of course, with Strangers In Paradise (SiP). Published from 1993, SiP was just one of those series that I used to push anyone who’d listen towards, exactly the sort of thing that was guaranteed to make comics readers of those who may have previously thought of comics as a place of super-capes and adolescent power fantasies. If you’ve never experienced the sheer joy and wonder of SiP, this new deal with Dark Horse is not to be missed.
And finally, in this triumvirate of announcements, we have Paul Chadwick bringing back Concrete for Stars Over Sand, a new series from Dark Horse, bringing back a most unusual hero, Ronald Lithgow, his mind trapped in that huge, stone-like body. Back in the day, from 1986, Chadwick’s Concrete was a most wonderfully different sort of series, a thoughtful, quiet, liminal sort of thing, that asked big questios in a series of comics that defied categorisation, taking in humanism, questions of identity, and environmentalism, all wrapped in a comic with truly beautiful artwork by Chadwick.
Stars Over Sand finds Concrete alone in the desert, with reports of him wandering, covered in blood, attacking people. Most unlike the Concrete we know. This new series has been taking up Chadwick’s artistic life for the past decade, making it an essential purchase for all of us who remember the original series, and, hopefully, a brand new set of readers as well.
COMICS FOR YOUR EARS – 2000 AD THRILL-CAST CONTINUES TO BE ESSENTIAL LISTENING…
The 2000 AD Thrill-Cast, in its new, expanded form, continues to give us plenty of listening pleasure (or viewing pleasure if you head to the 2000 AD YouTube channel). I’m a longstanding 2000 AD fan, so it’s essential listening for me, but it’s also a great way to get into the best sci-fi anthology. There’s the weekly In Orbit Every Wednesday podcast, or the longer, irregular series of interviews in The 2000 AD Creator Tapes, all well worth a listen.
Right now, you’ve got John Wagner in a multi-part interview, a perfect sign-off to his incredible career in comics as he announces his retirement, whilst the latest In Orbit takes a look at Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy’s wonderfully bizarre time-travelling thing of beautiful strangeness, 1986’s Sooner or Later. Of course, all the old episodes are there to listen to as well. I’d most definitely recommend it.
YouTube here. All the pod links and SoundCloud here.
