Satirical anthology Blackout is created by Starburst Magazine columnist P M Buchan, The Big Bang creator Jack Fallows and Kerrang! illustrator Phillip Marsden, with guest contributions by Andrew Waugh (Dodgem Logic), Mike Barnes (Cornelius Blow) and Harley Poe frontman Joe Whiteford.

Buchan, Fallows and Marsden met while working together at Travelling Man in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, bonding over their black humour, shared love of independent comics and an inability to show restraint at the bar. Collectively they’ve had comic-strips serialised in the NME, Starburst and SCREAM: The Horror Magazine.

Guest contributor Andrew Waugh has had strips published in Alan Moore’s Dodgem Logic, Solipsistic Pop and ink + PAPER, while star guest Joe Whiteford is the frontman for notorious horror-folk-punk band Harley Poe. Joe was signed to a Christian punk label as a teenager, but that was clearly a relationship doomed to failure. Harley Poe’s last album was called Satan, Sex and No Regrets.

Speaking of the anthology, P M Buchan said: “Have you ever had one drink too many and woken up the next day to find that everybody hates you for something you don’t remember doing? Have you ever cried yourself to sleep over somebody that hasn’t even noticed that you exist? Do you feel like everything you touch is doomed to failure, leading towards a futile and inevitable death? If the answer is yes to any of these questions then we created Blackout with you in mind.”

For further information please contact phillip.buchan@starburstmagazine.com

Starburst Magazine

Based on the poem of the same name by John Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci is a four-part series that drags The Beautiful Lady out of the forest and screaming into the modern world.

Writer P M Buchan has had comics serialised in Starburst Magazine and SCREAM: The Horror Magazine. He is also a columnist for Panel Nine’s INFINITY, and has written for Rue Morgue magazine online and Lionsgate’s Fright Club e-magazine. His short stories have been published in The Bleed magazine and his short horror films have screened at festivals around the UK.

Artist Karen Yumi Lusted is the creator of Final Blossom and Tommi C. and the Cat Burglar. She collaborated with P M Buchan in Non Repro’s J-Cult anthology, and Karen’s art appeared in 1000 Ideas by 100 Manga Artists. In 2008 she won the 16+ premade art prize at the Manga Shakespeare / Sweatdrop MCM Expo art competition. Karen currently lives and teaches English in Japan.

With a cover coloured by Kate Brown (Fish + Chocolate, Freakangels), pin-ups by Kate Ashwin (Widdershins) and Kate Holden (Fan Dan Go), a back-up essay about the feminism of Keats by Bad Reputation blog editor Miranda Brennan, additional lettering and design by Mike Stock (Afterlife Inc., Dead Roots) and a downloadable soundtrack composed by Brendan Ratliff (aka Syphus) this is a haunting story that you can’t afford to miss.

Speaking of the new series, P M Buchan said: “So many modern stories draw from the same well of inspiration, but I’ve always felt that the Romantics had more to say about love and loss than anybody that followed them. Nothing fascinates me so much as the femme fatale, and there is no femme fatale in the history of English literature more beloved than La Belle Dame Sans Merci.”

David Hine (The Darkness, Detective Comics, Storm Dogs) had this to say after reading an advance preview: “P M Buchan’s loose interpretation of Keats’s poem is as enigmatic and disturbing as the source material. Opening with a deceptively familiar domestic scene, Karen Yumi Lusted conspires with Buchan to subvert the reader’s expectations with a ‘cute’ manga drawing style that makes the subsequent revelations even more shocking. Like all the best horror, La Belle Dame Sans Merci compels me to keep looking no matter how much I may want to turn away. I’ll be back for the next chapter.”

Remember Remember The 30th of September…

David Lloyd (V for Vendetta, Kickback) empowered the world with his iconoclastic Guy Fawkes mask in V for Vendetta. Today, comic conspirator Lloyd is changing the world with his publishing launch of an ambitious new online magazine called Aces Weekly.

Acesweekly.co.uk is a sequential art magazine, available exclusively through on-line subscription which will be released as seven weekly issues which form a volume. Each issue will have 3 landscape pages from 6 teams of contributors, plus many pages of extras such as artists sketches etc. Readers subscribe to volumes which cost £6.99/$9.99 per seven issue volume. Aces Weekly will be available exclusively on-line and feature all-new material. Stored online, readers have access to their magazine wherever they have web access. The website goes live September 30, 2012. What makes Aces Weekly special? The creators have more control then ever before.

Lloyd explained the origin of the magazine, “The aim was to create something very much like a traditional weekly comic but without limiting the subject matter. We asked a range of creators who we knew to be excellent – the reason for the ‘ aces ‘ of our name – to do whatever they liked within certain bounds of taste, and they just came up with a great mix of stories. Creators in this business rarely get asked to do whatever they like, so that’s part of the pull of the project for them. And they’re enthused by the newness of the project and its potential for growth.”

Bambos Georgiou is the managing editor; “Most comic companies use creators to make money for the company, this company has been set up to make money for the creators. This time readers will know their money is going direct to the creators.” All strips are creator owned.

Lloyd, who along with writer Dave Jackson has created Valley Of Shadows for Acesweekly.co.uk, has gathered together some of the top names in the comic industry such as Kyle Baker, Steve Bissette, Colleen Doran, Bill Sienkiewicz, Billy Tucci and Herb Trimpe to appear alongside him in the first volume. Phil Hester & John McCrea (Progenitor), JC Vaughn & Mark Wheatley (Return Of The Human) Alain Mauricet & Alexandre Tefenkgi (Shoot For The Moon) and David Hitchcock (Paradise Mechanism) all contribute twenty-one page stories serialized over the first seven issue run. Also included in the first volume are stand alone three page strips by Lew Stringer (Combat Colin), Carl Critchlow (Thrud The Barbarian), David Leach (Psycho Gran), Esteban Hernández(Harmony), Phil Elliott (Gimbley)Rory Walker (Chloroform) and Mychailo Kazybrid & Bambos (Dr Queer).

Check out www.acesweekly.co.uk or email info@acesweekly.co.uk for more details.

Course information:
“If a picture paints a thousand words, then the hybrid comics medium has the best of both worlds. Call them graphic novels, funny-books, bande dessinee or manga, we’re talking about comics.Through group discussion, we will examine the ways the medium can be used to tell stories in different genres, and some of the tricks of the trade. Students will learn the basics of comic script writing through a series of exercises, and receive feedback on their own scripts. Other topics include collaborating with artists, submitting to publishers, and alternative publishing options.”

Length: 5 sessions from 20 September 2012
When: Thursdays 7pm – 9pm
Price: £60
For booking information go HERE

In 1976, he founded the Kubert School with his wife. Through this academy, he helped train a generation of comic-book artists. As the USA’s only accredited trade school for comic-book artists, it enrolls students from around the world.

Read the New York Times obituary HERE

Tributes have been paid to Kubert on numerous comic-book sites including ComicVine and Newsarama and the Forbidden Planet blog

Dark Horse

There will be further volumes in the Crime Does Not Pay Archives series, with forewords from Greg Rucka and Howard Chaykin. Adventures into the Unknown Archives will feature a series of essays by Bruce Jones, focusing on the long-running horror anthology and the climate that led to the Comics Code Authority.

Historian Dan Nadel will provide introductions for Forbidden Worlds Archives—an anthology where anything strange, fantastic, or horrific can happen—and writer/artist/historian Michael T. Gilbert will write a series of information-packed foreword pieces for Silver Streak Archives featuring the original Daredevil.

Full details HERE

Reviewed by Matthew Johns

The Vessel of Terror is a graphic novel in the style of HP Lovecraft, which tells of a whale research ship that discovers and captures a mysterious Magnapinna squid. The first of these squid ever to be captured, it is examined closely by members of the crew, while the superstitious captain wants it to be thrown back overboard.

Beautifully inked and well written, the tale flicks back and forth between the ship and its crew, and a doctor facing the black death in 1349. As members of the crew succumb to fear, possession and madness, in 1349, Doctor Virchow watches helplessly as his village gradually dies from the plague.

The artwork effectively portrays the confusion and fear of the protagonists, and the Lovecraftian tale captures the imagination well. An enjoyable read, well worth picking up if you have the opportunity.

Reviewed by Jay Eales

From the man behind some of the very best Batman animated stories, Paul Dini, comes the lead-in to one of the biggest computer games of the year: Batman: Arkham City.  Dini has to walk a similar path to Jeph Loeb with his various Batman miniseries projects, and find a way to incorporate all the heavy hitters of the Batman rogues gallery. That he does this in a way that manages to remain fresh is testament to his skill.

Artwise, Carlos D’Anda puts in a workmanlike job, with occasional high points. There’s nothing to particularly dislike about his work, but there are plenty of artists I’d rather see here, such as Ted Naifeh, who illustrates one of several short related pieces at the end of the book.

The only real problem is that it relies on the reader being familiar with the previous Arkham game, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and its job is to move the pieces around to set up the new Arkham City game, so it was always doomed to be the middle bit of a sandwich. Although I don’t know about you, but my favourite bit is the filling. I don’t have a games console capable of playing the Arkham games, so this is the only bite of the sandwich I have to go on.

Storywise, it takes up in the aftermath of Arkham Asylum, where an augmented version of Bane’s venom was used to power up a bunch of other Bat-villains, who run riot. Now, the Asylum’s Chief Warden becomes Gotham’s Mayor, and instigates a new rehabilitation programme where certain sections of Gotham are walled off, Escape from New York style, and criminals are thrown over the wall to fight for supremacy. Sounds like an insane plan? Certainly, but there’s a power behind the throne, and the Mayor is being manipulated by another of Batman’s foes, for reasons that won’t be made clear until the finale in the Arkham City game.

Prelude to Arkham City does exactly what it sets out to do, which is to explain how you get from A to B in a breezy entertaining manner, whetting the appetite for the feast to come. But that’s all there is to it. For fans of the games, that’s mission accomplished. If you’ve no intention of buying the games, you’ll feel as though you’ve had the prawn cocktail and gone home while everyone else tucks into the main course.

Reviewed by Jay Eales

Well, I’m sorry to say that I didn’t like that at all. A heavily fictionalised biography of a Kraftwerk-inspired German electro-pop/rock band during the height of Krautrock, against a backdrop of the Baader-Meinhof Gang’s terrorist activities. Definitely a promising and original scenario, and one I was interested in exploring. It’s an era I have some fondness for, but one I’ve always been meaning to investigate in more depth, so I was hoping that One Model Nation would fill in some of those blanks for me. Unfortunately, the script by Courtney Taylor-Taylor, better known as the lead singer of the Dandy Warhols, takes a lot of liberties with the facts in order to bolster the fiction, but doesn’t serve either well. I found the whole thing muddied and inconsistent, with the characterisation of the band members other than Sebastian as uniform as their stage costumes. I don’t have any clear idea as to what sort of band One Model Nation are. There’s the synthesisers and neat uniformity of Kraftwerk, but coupled with ponytails and shaggy hair, and a frontman who screams and throws himself around like a Damo Suzuki or Iggy Pop. Comics are already at a distinct disadvantage when depicting the music scene, but I have no idea what they sound like, even in my head. In a couple of scenes, just before gigs, they discuss whether one band member or another will show up, but there is not even a hint of panic that they won’t be able to go on with the show, so interchangeable are they! On one hand, Taylor-Taylor is to be applauded for not just trotting out the old tropes of a band biography, but in telling me his truth, I think he skipped a few too many details in the telling.

Taylor-Taylor seems in a rush to leap from event to event, skirting so lightly over everything that I did not feel the importance of anything that was going on, apart from a couple of stand-out scenes. One Model Nation appear on Top of the Pops, and are ushered into the presence of David Bowie, whose likeness is depicted by artist Jim Rugg as though channelling Madman and iZombie artist Mike Allred, who coincidentally wrote the foreword to the book. The other scene which stayed with me was the fictionalised escape of Baader.

This Titan Books edition is a revised new edition of a book previously published by Image. Tayor-Taylor has taken the opportunity to revise some parts of the strip, and there is a fair amount of back matter where he describes the genesis of the project, and we see cover designs, thumbnails and pages from Jim Rugg’s sketchbook. I have to say that I found more power in Rugg’s sketches than in many of the finished pages, but some of that may be down to the odd reproduction, with colouring that gives the impression that it has been photocopied a few times before going to print. This may have been a deliberate choice, to reflect the lo-fi retro zines of the period it depicts, but that may just be me reading too much into things. In the background notes, Taylor-Taylor says that the Image edition also featured a prologue and epilogue by another artist, which does not appear in this version. I wonder whether those scenes would have given me a better grip on the narrative.

Overall, I think that One Model Nation is an example of a celebrity from another medium whose talents do not translate well to comics. Compare and contrast with A Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, with his Umbrella Academy series, for someone who, arguably, turns out to be a better writer than rock star.

Reviewed by Jay Eales

You can get a pretty good idea as to whether or not Crossed is for you by mulling over the following question: Do you want to read a comic where the antagonists think nothing of lopping off one of your legs and fucking it? If the answer comes back as no, then you’re best to move along now. Nothing to see here for you.

There’s a real 28 Days Later/The Walking Dead vibe here, with Ennis cranking his sickest ideas up to at least eleven, maybe twelve, and published by Avatar, possibly the only high profile American publisher who would consider publishing it. The concept is simple enough: A band of ordinary folks band together after some unknown event happens, causing some folks to become ‘Crossed’, recognisable by an angry red skin condition, looking as though someone has burned a cross across their faces. That, and the sheer insanity on display, tends to give them away.

As Ennis makes clear, the Crossed, for all their blasphemously inventive atrocities, don’t do anything that humans have never thought to do before, without the excuse of some imaginary zombie virus. They’re just the worst of us. And unlike the infected from 28 Days Later, who are rage personified, or your common or garden Romero zombie, semi-braindead but relentless, the Crossed are a varied bunch. Delayed gratification is not something that occurs to any of them. In fact, if they can’t find any normal people to play with, they’re just as likely to attack each other. Hmm… Crossed may just be an exploration of the mindset of the EDL… What makes them particularly dangerous is the way that some are sneaky, and able to plan some outrageous vileness upon our band of intrepid survivors. And then, some of them like nothing more than to beat you with a horse’s cock. As survivalist horror goes, there’s not much bleaker, and yet, Ennis leavens it with some of the trademark gallows humour that used to punctuate his Punisher and Preacher stories. You’ve met The Russian and Arseface. Prepare to meet Horsecock!

Reviewed by Mike Chinn

Moore brings his saga of a re-imagined 20^th century into the Swinging Sixties. Mina, Allan and Orlando (now going by the much hipper Lando) are dropped off at Dover by the Nautilus and arrive in a psychedelic London populated by more 60s icons than you can shake a bong at. The Saint, James Bond, Thunderbirds, Adam Adamant, Callan, Steptoe & Son… The Deep Fix is playing at the very club where The Rutles had their first gig; just round the corner there’s a certain Jerry Cornelius (The Cure for Cancer incarnation: white hair, black skin and teeth, panda skin coat); in Hyde Park there’s going to be a free open air concert fronted by the Purple Orchestra.

The plot’s pretty slight, once again centring on the pursuit of a certain Crowleyesque magician who has gone by many names over the decades – Carswell, Mocato, Haddo – but it’s the ride that matters. O’Neill’s artwork is complex but stark, filled with cameos and jokes – this is one comic where each panel rewards close scrutiny. Even before Mina goes off on a bad trip there’s a vaguely nightmarish aspect that the garish, neon-lit capital can’t outshine.

Roll on the next instalment.

Reviewed by Jay Eales

A deluxe reissue of the 2002 collaboration between Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee, emphasising the artistic side of the partnership. Storywise, it’s very much in the same mould as Loeb’s earlier volumes with Tim Sale: The Long Halloween and Dark Victory. The formula is that of a mystery, conveniently bringing Batman into conflict with most of his rogues gallery. In this case, the character pulling the strings calls himself Hush. A new foe… or is it? Even though Hush is nearly a decade old, I won’t spoil the reveal, as without it, the story would be robbed of its raison d’être.

Why bring out this version? Someone discovered Jim Lee’s original pencil art for the series, and had the idea of putting out a collection stripped of both inks and colouring, to show off Lee’s tight pencil art. So that it can still be read as a comic, they retain Richard Starkings’ lettering, but to be honest, the colour text boxes and special effects look garish on top of line art.

If you want to read Hush, I’d recommend one of the more traditional editions. This one is strictly for the Jim Lee fans, or wannabe artists who can learn from looking at pencil originals, and compare against the finished pages. An oddity rather than an essential purchase.

Reviewed by Selina Lock

Agatha Clay is a lab assistant at Transylvania Polygnostic University, but dreams of being a top scientist and is brimming with ideas for new machines. Unfortunately none of her ideas work and her luck takes a turn for the worse when she’s mugged and her mentor is blown-up. Through a series of mishaps she finds herself in Airship City under the rule of the megalomaniac Baron Wulfenbach, and working alongside his son Gilgamesh.

Girl Genius gives us mad scientists, talking cats, dashing gentlemen, budding romances, Jaeger Monsters, heads in jars, robots and a feisty heroine with a hidden past. It’s an interesting take on a steampunk world, as it’s set during the industrial revolution, but one where only inventors with the Spark can make working machines and the Spark tends to send them mad. There is a huge streak of humour running through the book, but underneath lie dark themes and violence giving it more depth.

The artwork tends towards the cartoony, but is wonderfully detailed and bursting with an energy that reflects the characters and the plot. The machine designs and the double-page spread (on page 116) of Airship City will certainly appeal to those who like the steampunk aesthetic.

I was surprised by the bright colour scheme when flicking through the book, but it soon became clear that the colours reflected Agatha’s development through the book. Starting out with a traditionally bronze steampunk palette with flashes of colour when Agatha shows signs of the Spark, it morphs into bright colours when her powers come to the fore. Flashbacks and stories within the main plot use appropriate colour schemes.

My main criticism would be that the Jaeger Monster dialect pulled me out of the story until I got the hang of how they were pronouncing words.

Overall, Girl Genius is a fun, fast paced story, now presented in a lovely hardback omnibus edition, demonstrating why the series has won several Hugo Awards.

Mike Carey‘s The Unwritten has received two nominations in the categories Best Writer and Best Single Issue.

Voting will take place over a total of 27 categories, and ballots will be going out in mid-April to comics creators, editors, publishers, and retailers. The results in all categories will be announced in a gala awards ceremony on the evening of Friday 13 July 2012 at Comic-Con International, San Diego, USA.

As well as in his homeland and across Europe, Giraud was popular in the US and Japan, having worked alongside Stan Lee and several manga artists amongst others. He helped launch, and contributed to, Metal Hurlant (and, later, its English language version Heavy Metal) in the 1970s, creating characters such as Arzach, the silent figure who glides above alien canyons astride a giant bird.

Giraud won many admirers in the film world too, and contributed designs to films such as Alien, Tron, Willow, Masters of the Universe, The Abyss and The Fifth Element.

Launching in May 2012, the comic will feature the Borg and the Cybermen as they create an unholy alliance resulting in potential disaster for all humanity. Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the USS Enterprise find themselves joining forces with the Doctor and his companions, with the fate of the galaxy hanging in the balance.

The eight-issue series will be written by Scott and David Tipton, the authors of critically acclaimed Star Trek: Infestation, with a helping hand from longtime Doctor Who writer Tony Lee, and will feature fully painted artwork by J.K. Woodward (Fallen Angel).

Doctor Who and Star Trek are two hugely successful franchises that began as television series, and have expanded into a number of other media. Nearly five decades and 1,500 episodes in the making, this is the moment that both Trekkers and Whovians have been waiting for!

Full information from IDW Publishing HERE

The full BBC story can be read HERE

Titan Books h/b £17.99

Reviewed by Mike Chinn

This timely book reminds us that the late Joe Simon (died 14^th December 2011) is definitely one of the greats of the comics world – even if his name isn’t as familiar as Bob Kane, Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, or Stan Lee. Throughout his decades-spanning career Simon created dozens of comic book characters – some more lasting than others – usually alongside his sparring partner Jack Kirby: Manhunter, the Fighting American, the Boy Commandos, Stuntman, Lancelot Strong, and, of course, Captain America. As well as working on company-owned titles such as Blue Beetle, The Sandman and The Fly he even wrote and drew romance, crime, westerns and espionage comics. Well, when he started it was the time of the Great Depression and habits like chasing any work going aren’t easily forgotten.

The book’s title is too modest, it’s not just about Simon’s work in comics but the man’s life: from the day he was born as Hymie Simon to exalted old age with a family of his own. His friends, colleagues (those he got on with, and others not so much); as well as the evolution of comic books themselves. His style is chatty, relaxed, and very easy to read. It’s almost like he’s in the room with you. He’s also remarkably sanguine about the prejudice that was so common in the 1930s and 40s it could pass unnoticed. “It happened.” Even in the big melting pot ofNew York- where Jew, Irish and Italian might work side by side – at the end of the day they still went home to their own neighbourhoods. And if you were Black…

Working both as biography and a history of US comics, this book is a must-read for anyone with a real interest in how the industry began – when it was little more than a cottage industry run from tiny offices inNew York; and the people who drove it.

A perfect companion-piece to The Simon and Kirby Superheroes, also published by Titan Books.

Read an obituary HERE

Photo of Jerry Robinson (c) Jesse Angelo

Read the full article HERE

Featuring: workshops, competitions, film screenings, signings, panels, book launches, 2000AD artwork critique competition, and much more!

The festival takes place at venues around Clarence Dock, Leeds from 14 – 20 November 2011.  It also includes Comic Con on 19 and 20 November.

Guests include:
Posy Simmonds, Adam Hughes, Tim Sale, Jeff Lemire, Bryan and Mary Talbot, Dave Shelton, Ian Edginton, Cameron Stewart, Curtis Jobling, Al Ewing, Gary Erskine, Bary Kitson, Paul Gravett, Leah Moore and John Reppion, Ian Culbard, Marie O’Regan, Paul Kane, Dave Gibbons, Tony Lee, Mike Carey, Charlie Adlard, Simon Spurrier and many others.

Throttle, the first collaboration between father and son King and Hill, was not only inspired by Matheson’s Duel, it also only appeared in print in a limited-edition anthology honouring Matheson’s works, He is Legend. Throttle and Duel were subsequently released as an audiobook called Road Rage, which is the banner title the comics will also carry.”

At last year’s FantasyCon panel on ebooks, Lee Harris of Angry Robot was asked why ebooks in the UK are so expensive (sometimes, bizarrely, costing more than print copies), and one reason, he explained, was that VAT is charged on ebooks, but not paper ones. He wasn’t asked about this, but perhaps another factor is that selling ebooks through Waterstone’s or Amazon requires publishers to offer the same deep discounts they must offer on paper books.

Those reasons don’t seem to apply to comics: the comics on comiXology are discounted at the kind of level you might have hoped for from ebooks, and Dark Horse’s first releases to comiXology include the graphic novel Grandville, by FantasyCon guest of honour Bryan Talbot, for just £2.99. A bargain price for a steampunk classic.