The Sunday Spotlight: The ‘Until Betty Lost The Key To The Handcuffs’ Edition

Well, the nights are drawing in, and it won’t be long until Halloween, Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then another year … oh, they go by so fast. But wait, tarry a while, slow your horses, and settle in for a little comics news. Why, it’s The Sunday Spotlight …

Your regular reminder to subscribe to the Mindless Ones newsletter — Deadline is summer …

The Mindless Ones newsletter is just packed with brilliance. Writing about comics and many other things, but always writing just so well. Do yourself a favour and subscribe at the link.

Anyway, this one resonated particularly hard – their Brief History of British Comics reaches Deadline, published 1988-1995, 71 issues of comic wonders. And in just over 1000 words, they absolutely nail what it was all about.

Here’s just a taster to get you interested…

“Deadline is summer. Fucking up your final A-Level and getting the train to Glastonbury the same day, travelling with ebulliently drunk, euphoric strangers.

“Wired World — Philip Bond’s cool and chunky artwork depicting the whimsical magical realist dole adventures of Pippa and Liz. Girls like the older sisters, or friends’ flat-mates you wanted to hang out with, secretly fall in love with.

‘Lying in the grass, tripping on microdots, hiding from aliens and watching shooting stars criss-cross the firmament.

‘Fireball’ – Jamie Hewlett’s insane paean to Hannah Barbera’s Wacky Races, shot through with lysergic frenzy and tin-pot surrealism. Confident, flaky, fucking gorgeous.

‘Walking home from the pub via the back lanes, drunk and crying that she didn’t want you, but secretly exhilarated that you knew what lust and longing was for the first time.”

It goes on, keeping the narrative as evocative as you could ever want, and then ending, sublimely, with this …

“Comics made by people doing the same things as you; schoolbook doodling taken to an elite level. Band-names scrawled in panels; mixtape comics.

‘Fucking Tank Girl.

‘Deadline is summer. It always will be.”

Now That Is Writing About Comics.

Broken Frontier’s Andy Oliver interviews Roberta Gregory on all things Bitchy Bitch… ‘There’s Nothing More Tedious than a Predictable Protagonist’ …

Over at the always-a-great-read Broken Frontier, EIC Andy Oliver interviews Roberta Gregory as part of the site’s Fantagraphics at 50 series, talking to Gregory about “the curatorial aspects of the collection, her place in the underground comix scene, and the origins of Midge McCracken …”

The book, The Exasperating Existence of Midge McCracken: Bitchy!, collects pretty much all of Gregory’s essential Naughty Bits comic, the longest-running alternative comic by a woman, a frankly wonderful series of misadventures of Bitchy Bitch navigating her way through life. Go read the interview and then, please, do yourselves a favour and go buy the book.

Tegan O’Neil at the Comics Journal on DC’s Vertigo line, past, present and future …

Excellent piece over at The Comics Journal by Tegan O’Neil on the long history of DC’s Vertigo imprint, from earliest days to current reincarnation.

“The story of Vertigo at its inception and for its first decade would be, improbably, that of a life raft. No one knew it back in the winter of 1993 but everything built over the previous half-decade of growth was about to go away, and take with it a significant chunk of the direct market retail environment and a little thing called the American newsstand. As it turned out, the idea of Vertigo as a creator-forward publisher of genre material aimed at a slightly older cohort — and consequently of material designed to sell well in collection — was quite timely. It may very well have saved the North American comics industry from absolute desolation in the decades that followed. Berger blazed that trail by consolidating and codifying the company’s late ’80s inroads into conventional bookstores.”

Comix Experience’s September Graphic Novel Picks …

As is usual, the Comix Experience graphic novel club comes with the highest recommendation. They’re rarely wrong in their picks, as befits one of the best comic shops there is, with owner Brian Hibbs running a great place. So, that’s why I will continue to flag up their graphic novel picks.

This month’s adult graphic novel club pick, Salvage, comes with the club-exclusive bookplate hand-drawn by author Renée Nault, promised as ‘an unforgettable coming of age story.’ Here’s the blurb…

“In this heartwarming graphic novel romance from the adaptor and illustrator of The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel, two young artists’ paths intertwine as they navigate the complexities of love in a world where sea levels have risen and society is sharply divided. Paolo lives in the Flats, a dangerous, water-logged community where families survive by salvaging materials from skyscrapers hidden just beneath the ocean’s surface—remnants of a world before sea levels rose. Scavenging the depths comes with its risks, but when Paolo discovers a suitcase of designer clothes, he decides to fulfill his dream: To spend one night in the Uplands, a place of privilege, excess, and freedom. There he meets Jules and her friends, and what begins as a single night of reckless adventure turns into a secret double life—and a seemingly impossible romance that forces Paolo to reckon with who he is, where he belongs, and the importance of being true to himself.”

As for the Kids Club pick, it’s something that will be familiar to many of you, the stand-alone sequel to the Newbery Honor-winning Mexikid, as Pedro Martin gives us Mexikid Dreams. Mexikid was quite wonderful, and I’d expect Mexikid Dreams to be just as good.

“In this extraordinary graphic memoir companion to Newbery Honor winner Mexikid, hilarious family hijinks, immigration patrols, and musical daydreams shape a year of growth and change for a Mexican American boy and his family. Pedro Martín is sick of strawberries. Since he was seven, he’s spent every weekend and summer picking berries with his family under the hot sun. Sometimes it’s not so bad — Pedro’s an ace at “strawberry wars” with his siblings, and when a good song comes on the radio, the fields can come alive with music. But mostly, Pedro wishes he could just stay home watching Saturday cartoons, head to the beach like other kids, and not worry about immigration patrols. When his older brother gets a job away from the farm, freedom suddenly seems within arm’s reach: Pedro just has to prove to his dad that he’s ready to follow a different path! Maybe he can be a trombone player, or a cartoonist — if that’s even a real job. But as Pedro learns more about his parents’ and abuelito’s past, and the choices they made in order to open up more choices for him, he starts to understand that freedom isn’t just about leaving the fields — it’s about knowing where you came from and having the courage to draw your own life.”

As is usual, both Renée Nault and Pedri Martin will be interviewed by Comix Experience in a few weeks, with the interviews appearing on their socials shortly after.

John Chalmers and Sandra Marrs (Metaphrog) touring and launching their brand new book Wilomina: The Land of Dreams and Nightmares …

After making books together for so many years now as Metaphrog, John Chalmers and Sandra Marrs are about to release their brand-new spooky fantasy adventure through Scholastic. All of their past work has been an absolute delight, and this one is their best yet.

They’re already off on an extensive book tour around the UK, taking place from August through November. It takes in a school tour with indie bookshops. They’ve already had two book launches, in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and have their third at Gosh! Comics, London, on 24 September. After that, more book stores and three festivals – The Lakes International Comic Art Festival, Thought Bubble and Books Alive! in Southport. Busy, busy, busy!

Well worth taking a look at the book, described as “Studio Ghibli meets Wednesday in this action-packed, fantastical full-colour graphic novel for readers aged 8-12, full of wild imagination, enchanting characters and hair-raising adventure.”