November 2009 Archives

CLICK ON Episode 3 of Seek & You Will Find below and it will expand to fill your screen.

For further information on the creators visit:

For Paul H Birch: www.myspace.com/paulhbirch

For Mats Engesten: www.go.to/engesten

For Donald Jackson: www.cognitivecomics.webs.com, www.freewebs.com/goldencomics & www.comicspace.com/dontec

For Andrew Dodd: www.timebombcomics.com

Make sure you don't miss out on next Sunday's episode of this Carter's Column saga and other Speech Balloons exclusives during the week by subscribing free via the RSS feed!

Giant-Sized Band-Thing the band formed by comic book personalities is readying itself for future live gigs.

The Giant-Sized Band-Thing features Charlie Adlard (The Walking Dead), Paul H Birch (Ivanhoe), Liam Sharp (Gears of War) and Phil Winslade (The Brave & The Bold).

The band will be playing the Horse & Groom in Derby on Friday November 27th where Giant-Sized Band-Thing will be playing a set featuring their own unique take on classic covers plus self-penned numbers.

The Horsed & Groom promises to be a full night of live entertainment, with several great bands and fine ale to boot, so if you can make it do come along!

The Horse & Groom is approximately a 25 minute walk from Derby Train Station, or a short ride by taxi or bus (the university bus drops you off at St Alkmunds on Kedleston Road.

For more information about Giant-Sized Band-Thing visit: www.myspace.com/giantsizedbandthing or visit the band's Fan Page on Facebook.
For more information about the Horse & Groom visit: www.horseandgroomderby.co.uk

CLICK ON Episode 2 of Seek & You Will Find below and it will expand to fill your screen.

For further information on the creators visit:

For Paul H Birch: www.myspace.com/paulhbirch

For Mats Engesten: www.go.to/engesten

For Donald Jackson: www.cognitivecomics.webs.com, www.freewebs.com/goldencomics & www.comicspace.com/dontec

For Andrew Dodd: www.timebombcomics.com

Make sure you don't miss out on next Sunday's episode of this Carter's Column saga and other Speech Balloons exclusives during the week by subscribing free via the RSS feed!

LOOK AND Learn is offering a bumper festive read for Christmas with its Best Of series.

"If you know an intelligent child (8-14) who is interested in history, legend, literature, art, philosophy, nature, science or geography, and also loves pictures, it is difficult to imagine a more wonderful Christmas present," said publisher Laurence Heyworth.

Complete sets of the forty-eight issues of the Best of Look and Learn are available for only £39.99p, including UK delivery. The magazines are numbered, but undated, and are in mint condition.

They can be ordered direct online at: www.lookandlearn.com

With a picture library of over 50,000 images, Look and Learn's website is beyond doubt fullfilling its mission: "To become the best site on the web for pictures for and by children."

GRAPHIC CLASSICS: Louisa May Allcott is the eighteenth volume in the Eureka Productions American series of comics adaptations of great literature.

The book features Little Women, adapted for comics by Trina Robbins and illustrated by Anne Timmons. Plus lesser-known gothic mysteries and horror stories including A Whisper in the Dark by Antonella Caputo and Arnold Arre, The Rival Prima Donnas by Rod Lott and Molly Crabapple, and Lost in a Pyramid by Alex Burrows and Pedro Lopez. Also two poems and two strange children's stories, Buzz and The Piggy Girl, illustrated by Mary Fleener, Shary Flenniken, Toni Pawlowsky and Lisa K. Weber.

Graphic Classics: Louisa May Allcott is 144 pages in full colour and is availalbe are available in US bookstores, all good comics shops, or direct from the publisher at: www.graphicclassics.com.

CLICK ON Episode 1 of Seek & You Will Find below and it will expand to fill your screen.

For further information on the creators visit:

For Paul H Birch: www.myspace.com/paulhbirch

For Mats Engesten: www.go.to/engesten

For Donald Jackson: www.cognitivecomics.webs.com, www.freewebs.com/goldencomics & www.comicspace.com/dontec

For Andrew Dodd: www.timebombcomics.com

Make sure you don't miss out on next Sunday's episode of this Carter's Column saga and other Speech Balloons exclusives during the week by subscribing free via the RSS feed!

CRIKEY! the great British comics magazine is now on its twelfth issue.

Out now, Crikey #12 includes interviews with Pat Mills, Frank McDiarmid, Leah Moore and John Reppion, plus features on Dr Who and The Persuaders.

There are also some exclusive comic strip excerts. Among them Birmingham's own Peter Maddocks whose work appeared in several national newspapers before he retired.

Crikey is available in all good book stores and comic shops or you can subscribe via: www.crikeyuk.co.uk

OUR friends at Nostalgia and Comics are hosting a signing session by American cartoonist and underground comix artist Gilbert Shelton on Friday.

Knockabout Comics have just published The Fat Freddy's Cat Omnibus and they also have The Freak Brothers Omnibus available.

On Friday November 13th Nostalgia & Comics is proud to welcome Gilbert as a guest to sign both books between 4.00 & 5.30

Gilbert was born on May 31, 1940 in Houston, Texas. In the mid 60's he became art director for the Vulcan Gas Company, a rock music venue in Austin, Texas, where he created a number of posters in the style of contemporary California poster artists such as Victor Moscoso and Rick Griffin.

After a year of this, he moved to San Francisco in the summer of 1968, hopeful that being closer to the action would enable him to do more poster work; as it turned out, he finally got his break in the alternative comix business. It was here in 1968 that he created

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers (which is being made into a stop motion film), and a year later came the spin off series Fat Freddy's Cat. He has also contributed to Wonder Wart-Hog, Not Quite Dead, and is also well known in some circles for his cover art to The Grateful Dead's 1978 album Shakedown Street.

For further details call 0121 643 0143 or e-mail noscomic@noscomic.plus.com

SEEK & YOU Will Find is the title of the new Carter's Column series debuting exclusively next Sunday at Speech Balloons.

It is a short six part story but it has taken a long time for it to see the light of day, for alas, the original artist, Joe Ahern, passed away a few years ago.

Joe was an extremely talented individual, intelligent too, but he never boasted about either fact. Certainly in the art area he should have done, because he would have had a career that left us with more published work. The trouble was, he didn't push himself or put himself forward.

He also had a problem with time - He could never understand why you might be screaming blue murder when you'd got him some small freelance commission or set him an appointment with someone to get some work and he strolled up an hour or even a day late! It wasn't because he was slow; he could churn the work out and it still looked good. I blame it on him being left-handed; the brain apparently works differently and left-handed people have no concept of time.

I know an awful lot of left-handed people, and they're either all like that or over-compensate by being obsessively punctual. I fall into the latter category, because I'm left-handed too, and that's probably why I understood Joe's psyche pretty well. However, those of you who saw me interview Howard Chaykin at BICS 2009 last month, might recall me asking his opinion on it, because he's a left-hander too, and he thought it was a crock of *%!& or symbols to that affect, he did agree that statistically we did younger than you right-handers though.

I don't know why, as if there's a rhyme or reason to these things, but Joe left this mortal coil. It's not fair, but that's the ways the cards got dealt.

It happened just as things were looking good for him. Typically.

He had been assisting James Hodgkins on work for both Marvel and DC, and had been securing a number of prestigious freelance art commissions for himself; the results of which could be seen advertised over the West Midlands, and it really seemed he was gearing up to talk to some major comics publishers on his own.

But it didn't happen. His heart packed in.

We went to the funeral following the hearse with his coffin in. James and I laughed that he'd actually made it somewhere ahead of us. Then we probably shed a tear. We certainly shed some memories and continue to do so.

What's more, on his mother's request, I got to take care of all his art. At times it has proved more intimate than a diary as one looks at the many worlds he imagined in his head and had the talent to put down on paper. One day, I'll make sure more people see them.

Among the art I found the incomplete pencils for the first episode of Carter's Column: Seek & You Will Find. He'd gone suitably retro sci-fi in style for me but typically left it unfinished, as you can see above.

From time to time I would look at it, and a little voice in the back of my head would say: "Get someone else in to finish it off". I wasn't sure for a long time, but then I realised that Joe always loved the collaborative idea of various people pitching in to complete something. It's how he'd come to be involved in previous Carter's Column strips. He was never precious about his own work.

So I asked Mats Engesten if he would step up to the plate, draw the last pencilled panel of Episode 1 (as you can see here), ink it all, and then illustrate the remaining storyline.

Mats lives in Sweden. Viking blood runs in his veins: He's prepared to meet challenges head-on and he is also an honourable being; and so he understood implicitly what it meant for all concerned to have a little piece of Joe's work see the light of day worldwide over the internet.

Frankly, Mats has been invaluable on so many levels with the remastered series of Carter's Column appearing at Speech Balloons.

To continue our international flavour we invited Donald Jackson from the USA to letter the series, and closer to home Andrew Dodd has digitally coloured the forthcoming story.

My thanks go out to all those who've been involved in putting Seek & You Will Find together.

But enough of these maudlin feelings, I know Joe Ahern would have no truck with them, he never wanted to draw po-faced serious stuff - Something that had adventure and was a bit of a laugh was much more his cup of tea - and so that's what you'll be getting next week!

For more information on the creators visit:

For Paul H Birch: www.myspace.com/paulhbirch

For Mats Engesten: www.go.to/engesten

Make sure you don't miss out next Sunday as we feature some behind-the-scenes information on our new Carter's Column saga and other Speech Balloons exclusives during the week by subscribing free via the RSS feed!

Lady S: Here's to Suzie!
By Jean Van Hamme
& Phillipe Aymonde
Cinebook

ESPIONAGE THRILLER and broken-hearted schoolgirl crushes? Only Jean Van Hamme could make such a book work!

Lady S. is an intriguing comic book to present to an English speaking readership.

On the one hand its lead character has an origin akin to Peter O'Donnell's classic Modesty Blaise newspaper strip re-engineered for the modern era.

Whereas, on the other there's curious feeling that if British publishers hadn't preferred to profit to by producing cheap magazine fodder and hadn't given up on producing comics for girls that they might of evolved into something similar to this.

Suzanne is the adopted daughter of American diplomat James Fitzroy - She has a gift for languages and a way of helping her father out of assorted crises, minor and otherwise. But there's a lot more to her than meets the eye.

In the early 90s the Russsian KGB's power is at its lowest ebb, and to stave those who will rise to power pointing the finger at their misdeeds they kill them before they can talk.

A young Jewess is witness to her own parents' brutal murder but she escapes, saved by a youth hardly much older than her. Anton Sergeyevich escaped from an orphanage, in the two years he's been free he's learned to become a thief, and he's become rather good at his chosen profession.

The girl joins him and for a time all goes well until the man who ordered her parents' death finds them, and sees them as his new personal gravy train to getting by now that the lower echelons of the KGB are out on their ear. His plan doesn't work and Anton manages to kill him, but the young pair decide they have no choice but to flee the former USSR. In so doing, the pair part company.

Using a stolen passport the girl takes on the identity of a New Zealander known as Susan McKenzie, and works her way around Europe becoming an international thief and cat burglar.

Into her life, on a speeding train, arrive the Fitzroys, or rather she enters their live, for she steals from them, later feeling remorse and returning what was taken. Likewise, their compassion for her partly revealed past history is genuine and in time there is true love between them all and she becomes part of their lives.

That is until Helen Fitzroy dies at far too young an age of 41. Suzie aware what people says decides she must leave, but Fitzroy decides to put such idle gossip suitably in the trashcan where it belongs by formerly adopting her. Thus she becomes his Girl Friday throughout his subsequent diplomatic activities. And all goes well, for a time.

All these past events are weaved in and out of more contemporary events as figures move from the shadows to take a foothold in the present and Anton reappears preparing to blow her cover, for in revealing her true identity it will bring disgrace to her adopted father and a diplomatic faux pas that won't be hushed up. That is unless he helps her break into an embassy safe during a party.

From there on in danger and excitement never leave the page, with each shifting scenes offering new threats or allegiances, and an emotional rollercoaster caught up in the middle of it as Susie and Anton's affections turn from brother and sister in all but name to lovers who will never quite be.

I really hope a large number of the female teenagers onwards take a look at this; I believe it will appeal to them. It's a more mature version of the tense adventure strips that were prevalent in British girls comics so a worthy read.

I also trust such a statement will not prevents lads and grown-ups picking this up; it's a carefully plotted adventure filled with human drama from Jean Van Hamme and features studious but not over-posed figure drawing from Phillipe Aymonde who also draws some great car and motorbike scenes throughout.

For more about Lady S. visit: www.cinebook.com