The Sunday Spotlight — The ‘I Want A Job Where I Can Flash My Charm’ Edition

Pull up a pew, folks, time for a quick shuftie around the comics news that my eyes alighted on this week. Well, that would be The Sunday Spotlight …

Thought Bubble Festival announces more guests, festival programme and mid-con party details…

Yes, the nights are drawing in, the days are getting colder, which means it’s time for the two big comic festivals in the UK.

First, we’ve already had LICAF, the Lakes International Comic Festival in Kendall, that took place 2nd-4th October, followed by Thought Bubble in Harrogate with its festival from 9th-15th November and its two-day convention on the weekend of 14th & 15th November at Harrogate Convention Centre. Always a great event, always a huge number of guests and exhibitors, always comics-focused.

Well, as things get closer, we have more guests, a festival programme announced, and portfolio review details all revealed, plus the famous mid-con party, this year brought to you by 2000 AD, and no doubt featuring comics makers turned DJs for the night.

Jordan Crane at TCJ talks to Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, ‘We’re a family of storytellers’…

Well, don’t really need to say much more about this — two of the greatest comic creators of all time, Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, interviewed by Jordan Crane over at the Comics Journal here.

And if you’re asking who that is, well, you need to go read yourself some Love and Rockets. You absolutely won’t regret it.

Todd Klein dissects the Watchmen covers …

Over at his blog, from a while back — hey, there’s only so many hours in the day and I can miss things, right? — one of comics’ greatest letterers, Todd Klein gives his analysis of the game-changing logo for Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons‘ Watchmen … so worth a read.

I never knew this was a thing — the 1987 Spirit TV show starring Flash Gordon …

Courtesy of ForgottenTV on Facebook, a bit of forgotten TV history, where ABC in the US brought Will Eisner‘s classic hero, The Spirit, to television, starring Sam J. Jones, just after his starring role in the Flash Gordon movie. The TV movie was a pilot for a proposed TV series, but it never happened.

Of course, The Spirit would eventually reappear as the 2008 written and directed Frank Miller movie, and the less said about that the better, frankly. Having looked at it, this TV movie does a lot more to bring the Eisner creation to life than Miller’s version ever did.

There’s a video on YouTube that looks further into it all, complete with plenty of excerpts from the TV movie …