The Sunday Spotlight – The ‘Who … Did This … To Me?’ Edition
by Richard Bruton
Welcome to your regular weekly perusal over a few bits of comics news seen this week. Yes, you guessed it, it’s The Sunday Spotlight …
Gosh!Fest 2026 — Gosh! Comics London celebrates the UK comics-making community with 50 comics creators …
Gosh! Comics London celebrates its 40th year of being a damn fine comic shop in 2026. Since the beginning, they’ve been a big supporter of all things self-published and independent in comics. As part of this, they’re having a day to show some love for the comic-creating community — Gosh!Fest.
Taking place on 29th August from 11am, they’ll be hosting 50 great comics talents, future stars and established names, and it would be very much worth your while to be there on the day.
Details here.
Paul Gravett’s PG Tips for August — 12 excellent picks for your further reading…
Every month, Man at the Crossroads, Paul Gravett, publishes his top picks for the month, his PG Tips (it’s an English thing, a tea thing).
This month, he leads off with two debuts, Racquelle Jac‘s Agitprop and Emil Wilson‘s The Nightingales, describing them as “these two debuts stand out to me for confronting the realities of AIDS in the 1980s and atomisation in the 21st century in all their complexes and complexities. Emil Wilson and Raquelle Jac show how the play between pictures and words in comics can pinpoint and dissect.”
Paul then goes on to recommend books from Mirion Malle; Rodney Barnes & Elia Bonetti; Lucy Williams; Campbell Whyte; Marina Lisa Komiya; Sergio Rossi & Giovanni Scarduelli; Vinita Ramani, Wayne Rée Andeasyand, Griselda Gabriele & Nurjannah Suhaimi; plus the Count Binface Comic Book, as featured here at Comicon.
Knowing Paul and his tastes and how he can pick great books every time, I can absolutely tell you that every book on the list is well worth a look.
London Cartoon Museum presents Let’s Draw with Marc Jackson — Tuesday 25 August…
Great cartoonist, the man responsible for organising the Macc-Pow! Comics Festival, Marc Jackson is headed down to that there London for a family workshop at London’s Cartoon Museum. Guaranteed to be an excellent day-out.
Time Bomb Comics celebrates its 20th anniversary… a great Brummie comics company…
Steve Tanner‘s Time Bomb Comics is officially 20 years old in September 2026. I have a lot of time for Tanner’s comic publishing company, not because it comes from the city of my youth, Birmingham, UK, but, of course because it’s published a hell of a lot of great comics across those 20 years. Celebrations of this milestone include a raft of new titles along with a series of definitive editions of older titles. Go check them all out.
New comics include Amnesia Agents – The Collected Edition, the full colour graphic novel by writer Jason Cobley and artist James Gray, collecting the 2018 graphic novella, along with the strips from Time Bomb’s anthology Brawler, plus new strips exclusive to this collection. The new Amnesia Agents collection will be launched at the High Vis Kings Heath Comic Con taking place in King’s Heath, Birmingham on 19th September — that’s our own Olly MacNamee‘s very own comics festival.
In addition, Time Bomb will also be publishing The Patrolman Book One, from writer Nick Twyord and artist Will Chetwynd, launching at Thought Bubble.
Alongside this, Time Bomb will be publishing plenty more over the coming year. Personally, I’m very much hoping for more Harker from Roger Gibson and Vincent Danks, a fabulously good cop procedural that I’ve championed from its beginnings — you can read more of my love for Harker here.
A little light listening for you … Comic Book Couples Counselling interviews Rogue Trooper’s Duncan Jones at SDCC …
Over at the Comic Book Couples Counselling podcast, they’re chatting to writer/director Duncan Jones about the upcoming animated movie Rogue Trooper, currently, as far as we know, wrapped and looking for distributors for release.
Oh, FFS, New York Times, is it so difficult? Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s Spider-Man …
Guest essay in the New York Times recently, talking about Spider-Man: Brand New Day, where David Colman, ironically right below a properly credited and rather attractive illustration of Spider-Man by Kimberly Elliott, writes a whole piece on Spider-Man: Brand New Day without mentioning Steve Ditko once. Nope, everything is down to Stan Lee, it would appear, which indeed is rather the way ol’ Stan would have wanted it. Ho hum, always the way, but really, shouldn’t we be getting this right by now?
