Return from the Thing!

I had a fun ol’ time at the London Thing last Saturday. After the agonizingly slow start me, Gould, and Joel (who appeared to be cosplaying as a luchadore bank manager) got into the groove. We were also sharing the table with theses awesome Sugar Skull badges Joel’s sister makes, I love those things. If we’re back next year we should totally have a Mexican Day of Dead theme on the table!

It’s nice to be able to pick up comics from the cartoonists themselves without having to wade through a shambling group of slack jawed Joker nurses. I didn’t take any photos because I prefer to save space on my camera memory card for more important London sights like the filled in crack at the Tate Modern (which I find strangely hilarious) but there’s a nice con report with pics on The Super Comics Adventure Squad Blog.

And now here’s links to some of the cool stuff I bought.




Roger Langridge

Knuckles The Malevolent Nun: Special 1
Mugwhump The Great: The Show Must Go On
(I hope my local comic place gets some copies of the Muppet book through the grey market soon…)

Caroline Parkinson

Do Not Feed the Bear

Kate Beaton

Bigger Ruffs for Everyone
(Yes, I was one of the lucky few to get one before they ran out.)

David O’Connel

Man and Troll

Meredith Gran

Octopus Pie Vol.1

Nicola Stuart

Thank Goodness for Herald Owlett Vol.1
(came in an awesome handpainted envelope with a free colour sketch inside!)

Mark Ellerby

Chloe Noonan: Monster Hunter

James Turner

Beaver and Steve Vol.2: The Owl of Regret

Daniel Merlin Goodbrey

All Knowledge is strange

Sarah McIntyre and David O’Connel

Airship

Kelly Hernandez

Daytripper No.1
Lowborn No.1

Luke Toomey

The Secret Origin of Shark Attack Three
(a free comic and CD!)

Woodrow Phoenix

Count Milkula

R. Stevens

How I Blew my Thursday Night
(I gave R. Stevens a bacon scented Mini-Comic, this fullfils a long held ambition of mine.)

And now Osamu Tezuka's Cleopatra: Queen of sex

Because I've had a weird day...



Does anyone remember the time before Vertical's recent releases when everyone thought of Tezuka as that nice old man who created Astro Boy? Now it's all dog fucking and giant sperm attacks...

SDSTRTC(k)C News!

Yes, The San Diego Still Tangentially Related to Comics (kinda') Convention is done and dusted for another year. Bully
has the most adorable, and therefore best, coverage of the Con itself, but what news releases got me excited you ask oh hypothetical reader? Well I'll tell you.

There's some Darwyn Cooke noir adaptations coming. Not that I've ever heard of the originals but, y'know, Cooke.

Viz is putting out Naoki Urasawa's Pluto which is essentially Ultimate Astroboy except far better than the term I just used to describe it.

The Batman: The Brave and The Bold cartoon Trailer the target demographic of which is apparently Chris Sims aged 10.

The Ba/Moon twins deservedly sweep the Eisners. Also a new Vertigo book.

There will be new Pixar and Muppets comics from BOOM! The Muppets book will have artwork from Roger Lagridge which sounds like good stuff but they haven't announced any creative teams for the Pixar books (*cough* email in the sidebar*cough*).

Neil Gaiman will write a Batman story Which I'm not that excited about to be honest as his recent comics work hasn't done much for me (also my annoyance at novelists only working on licensed characters instead of original stories when they do comics work, but that's a rant for another day).


And that looks like it's about it in the news that gets me vaguely excited department. Apparently the buzz book this year was Watchmen which is only 2 years younger than I am, make of that what you will.

Defective Fish Colon?

I was a bit apprehensive about subscribing to The DFC, the brand new British weekly kids comic, as it sounded like one of those things I appreciate rather than enjoy and anthologies always have their ups and downs.

But it's great, thoroughly enjoyable. The strips are of excellent quality and it actually felt like something kids would enjoy (unlike so make comics which are aimed at adults who want to read kids comics).

Particular highlights for me were Spider Moon by Kate Brown, which I'm not just saying to stop her beating me up (though she totally could), Vern and Lettuce by Sarah McIntyre which is beautifully done and features a rabbit, Monkey Nuts by The Etherington Brothers which has plenty of laughs and the usual quality art work, and a special mention must go to Super Animal Adventure Squad by James Turner for featuring a unicorn secret service director with an eyepatch -

It's Nick Fury as a unicorn! That's gold.

My only quibbles are the matt paper which stopped it feeling like a real magazine to me, and that everything seemed to be printed a little dark which hurt the art in a few strips.

With a subscription it doesn't work out much more expensive than a regular American comic (and several times the quantity and quality), so I'd suggest that if it sounds like your kind of thing you should give it a go. If you don't like it you can always just give it to a kid.

I wish in motion.

Upon rembering to put Vera Brosgol's Live journal on my feedreader I saw that a student film maker had produced a live action version of the I wish story from the first volume of Flight.




I think it's pretty awesome for a student short.

Mathew Alan Smith's Bristol adventures

Bristol was hot this year, stupid hot, like a jungle.

This probably contributed to my enjoying it less than last year, not that it wasn't fun, just a bit, well, less fun. The table wasn't in quite so sweet a spot opposite the Tokypop honeypot and lost in the mini-comic table line up (at just the point when you lose attention), we are men of modest means and can't compete against anyone who could afford to spring out for a banner. We lacked a quick and direct selling point for the comics as well, I would have been tempted to sell it as the only comic in Bristol without a zombie in it but I'm too nice. Still Zak did well with his full colour book, but that's no surprise as he's Zak and we all cower before his might and glory.

Meh, what are you going to do. I sold enough to pay for the photocopying, called Chris an 'effeminate pimp', was pulled into a horrifying conversation about 'come to bed eyes' Wolverine, and listened to Jamie McKelvie's Alice in Sunderland like knowledge of Malvern.

The cosplayers seemed to be growing in number. The best by a huge margin was the lady who dressed as (or so I was told later) a Warhammer Terminator, a costume which looked like it weighed the same amount as the entire contents of the room I'm currently sitting in. The worst costume was the almost non existent one worn by an underage girl who decided to stand in my eyeline all day, making me feel like I was going to be arrested every time I gazed up from the table. Are there no anime characters who wear burkas?

Here I am in D'Israei's wall of Fame this was the only sketch I got (I even have my eyes open for the photo!).

Sketches I drew for people -

An angry Squirrel
A girl with large nipples
Zombie Jimmie Olsen
The Phantom
A penguin startled by a broken dog

Books I picked up -

2001 issue 3 by Jack Kirby - A strange whim I had.
Jack Staff by Paul Grist - A comic I really like but always forget to buy.
Fred the Clown by Roger Langridge - I heart Roger Langridge!
Toad Hunt by Will Kirkby - The best free mini comic I ever pulled out of somebody's oversized head.
The innocents by Gipi - I picked up Notes for a War Story a little while back and was blown away, so these huge slabs of Gipi were a must.
Phonogram by Gillen & McKelvie - "Worcester's shit" said McKelvie, I couldn't disagree.
Polar Opposites Mini by Marc Ellerby - Foul mouthed penguin are pretty much an instant sell for me.
Day at the Beach and The Monster in the Well Mini By Kate Brown -Which doesn't feature any boy on dragon sex, for better or worse.
Manga Midsummer Nights Dream By Kate again - The special variant badly drawn arrow edition.
The Pin-Up art of Dan DeCarlo 2 - Which has pretty much everything I could have ever wanted from anything.

Bond covers

Despite having no great love for Ian Fleming's Bond novels (because you could be reading Modesty Blaise instead) The new Hardback covers by Michael Gillette are pretty sweet.

The current paperback covers are nice as well.

RedBearDead

http://www.redbeardead.com/

Much funner than your average portfolio website.

Also on DeviantArt

Artists who are awesome - Emmy Cicierega

I need to spend more time showing the artists who make me utterly irrelevent -

This is Emmy Cicierega who I found on DeviantArt, she's about 12 or something...

On DeviantArt
On the LiveJournal