British Comics

cross-posted from: https://radiation.party/post/124375

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BHP Comics publisher Sha Nazir has announced that he is to wind down BHP as a comic book publisher. Set up in 2011 as an underground comics collective Black Hearted Press, had grown by 2015 into a limited company rebranded as BHP Comics, becoming one of Scotland's premier indie publishing companies. It was shortlisted for publisher of the year multiple times and was a consistent presence on the List Hot 100.

In mid-2019, BHP successfully expanded into the US market. Volumes included Art & Sketches volumes from Frank Quitely and Charlie Adlard, as well as the series Killtopia, John Wagner and Alan Grant's Rok of the Reds, Clare Forrest's Mighty Women of Science, Gary Chudleigh and Tanya Robert's Plagued: The Miranda Chronicles, Jack Lothian and Garry Mac's Tomorrow, its Full Colour and Bold comics diversity projects, its women in politics anthology We Shall Fight Until We Win and its books found in every secondary school in Scotland.

However, Nazir stated that the challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit significantly impacted the business with shrinking profit margins and escalating costs, exacerbated by Brexit, had rendered international publishing less economically feasible for the company.

The comic book author and graphic novelist Bobby Joseph has become the first person of colour to be appointed the UK’s comics laureate.

Joseph, who was one of the first authors to create a British comic with black characters, was appointed to the role at the Lakes international comic art festival (LICAF) in Bowness-on-Windermere in the Lake District on Saturday.

He is the fifth person to hold the post, which was created in 2014 to raise awareness of the impact comics can have on increasing literacy and creativity. One of the laureate’s key focuses is to increase the acceptance of comics as a tool for learning in schools and libraries.

It's a lengthy interview about his book but I thought I'd focus in on his thoughts about comics from his novel-length "short" story "What We Can Know About Thunderman":

I mean, 'Thunder Man' was an odd story. I'd been trying to write something like that for a couple of years, and I'd even made a start on a story, but I threw it all out because it hadn't got any real life to it. I realised that this was because I was setting it in England, where I had my first experiences of the comics industry. But I kind of realised that no, England is not where the comics industry is really happening. You've got to go to the source.

And I'd also had other vague thoughts going through my head. I'd been thinking about superhero costumes and neurological addiction since reading some interesting articles in New Scientist that seemed to suggest that a logo can actually imprint itself upon a child's brain, which I suppose shouldn't be surprising, that's what logos are designed to do!

Most superheroes can be reduced to just a color combination and a chest emblem. I had a strange image that was like something from an old Superboy comic, and I had no idea what it meant. It was an image of a normally dressed person walking in from the left of a kind of an archetypal 1960s comic book panel with a sort of a bland Midwest landscape and, on the other side, a fantastically-costumed superhero, and they're just walking towards each other as if to shake hands. That became the seed for the final scene. It was a really interesting experience writing that story.

Let's ask the obvious question... 'What We Can Know About Thunderman' is a satire of the comics industry. How much of it is true?

Some of the most grotesque scenes I've embellished and in some of them I've flat out lied, but I think that it captures the character of the comics industry and a lot of the most physically appalling things in there are very close to actual reality.

That said, it isn't a roman a clef. Most of the people in it are composites or inventions. One of the things that I was most pleased with about it was all the names. I've no idea where they were coming from: Jerry Binkall. Brandon Chuff. Worsley Porlock. You know that you're on a roll if you've got names like that cropping up.

You're retired from comics and you've talked about your bad experiences with the industry before. So why return to the subject now? Is this an exorcism?

That's exactly the word. I've disowned most of my comics work, including stuff like Watchmen, V For Vendetta, all of the ABC stuff, everything that I don't own. The only active thing I could do was disown it, which was painful. I put an enormous amount of work and energy and a great deal of love into all of those projects and it felt like a bit of an amputation to disown them.

At the same time, that was the only way to cut out the poison. I don't have a copy of any of those works. I'll never be looking at them again. And even thinking about them, all I've got is memories of having my intellectual property rights stolen and then when I complained about that, being typified as a crazy angry guy; "Alan Moore says 'get off my lawn.'" And yes, alright, I was quite cross, but I don't think without reason and also to suggest that I'm angry about everything is an evasion. It's a means of going, "Oh well, if he's angry about everything then we don't have to worry about what he says about the way that people are treated in the comics industry, he's just angry about everything."

And once these things have been taken from my hands and made into franchises then they can be given to anybody to do what they want with and that will somehow still be associated with me.

The comics medium is perfect. It is sublime. The comics industry is a dysfunctional hellhole. So why did I want to return to it in this story? Like you say, it's exorcism. As one of the characters finds in 'Thunderman' it's one thing to quit comics, but quitting comics is a different thing to being able to stop thinking about them. Writing this got an awful lot out of my system. It said a lot of the things that I'd always wanted to say but I'd never really had the right context to say them in. But doing them in a Kafka-esque satire, that worked perfectly. And when I say a Kafka-esque satire, what I mean is that Franz Kafka, while he was reading his stories to his followers and appalled friends, he would be laughing almost too hard to get the lines out. It's horrible, hideous, appalling - but the author was probably giggling when he wrote it.

You called comics "sublime" just then and it really does feel like, despite everything, you still have a love for the medium. Is that fair?"

Absolutely. I hope that my love of it comes across; my love of Jack Kirby and many of the other artists and a couple of the writers of his generation. The descriptions of a six-year-old kid glimpsing a comic book rack could not have been written without being able to tap into my memories of what that was like, a first exposure to comics.

The medium can do anything. Its potential is still almost completely untapped. So it was attempting to express my love of the medium, some of the wonderful people who worked in it, and to also express my horror at the fact that this this little offshoot, the superhero genre, has become a monoculture that's in danger of taking down at least a considerable part of the comics medium with it when superhero movies finally aren't interesting. When that happens, my worry is that a lot of the comic shops won't be able to continue and a lot of interesting independent comics would perhaps not have outlets.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/2785199 (!lemmings@lemmings.world)

From Max Overload, issue 2.

Millar was not alone in expressing derision at the advert, part of the “Made in the UK, sold to the world” campaign run by the Department for Business and Trade.

It depicts Dennis and Gnasher alongside the headline “Created in London. Unleashed in more than 100 countries” and in smaller print clarifies that it is referring to the animated television series produced from DC Thomson’s Fleet Street office.

But this distinction did not lessen the ire of many Beano fans, who on X described the advert variously as “insulting”, “disrespectful” and “predictable”.

Chris Law, the Scottish National party MP for Dundee West, called the campaign “cultural appropriation” and “utter garbage”. “Perhaps before the UK government start appropriating local Dundee created characters in the Beano they ought to do a bit of basic research,” he said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/5523686

Annotation Index - This page accesses all the annotations of Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows H.P. Lovecraft comics issue by issue, including covers – as well other Moore/Lovecraftian works in collaboration with other artists, and related items.

After more than 46 years, the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic — that’s 2000 AD for those not in the know — keeps on going strong, offering up groundbreaking sci-fi comics on a weekly basis from some of the best creators from the UK and beyond. If that sounds a little daunting for a newcomer, don’t worry; the long-running series’ upcoming issue, it’s 2351st (yes, really), is specifically intended to act as a perfect place for new readers to start… and also for some old fans to get an unexpected thrill, as well…!

"2000 AD has always strived to publish at least a couple of jumping-on issues per year for those readers looking for the best place to climb aboard. Prog 2351 on September 27th is our latest chance for people to get into 2000 AD - with a great line-up of new stories in Judge Dredd, Feral & Foe and Helium to grab new and returning readers, with handy recaps to get you up to speed," editor Matt Smith told Popverse. "Plus Garth Ennis and Henry Flint have cooked up an epic face-off between two classic 2000 AD characters – an idea that was all Garth’s – that will certainly please long-term readers as well!"

Those two classic 2000 AD characters Smith is talking about? Well, one is the iconic Judge Dredd, as might be expected — he is, after all, the most well-known 2000 AD character by far. The other, however, might come as much more of a surprise, as Sam Spade Robo-Hunter comes out of retirement to take on the Mega-City One lawman on his own turf.

2000AD have these jump-on issues a few times a year where all the stories sync-up and start in the same issue. It looks like this one has a big hook too.

There's quite a bit of publicity for it including:

• Rob Williams and PJ Holden talk their Judge Dredd story in ‘2000 AD’ new “jump on” issue
• 2000 AD Jump On Issue Features All New Stories, Including Return of Abnett and Elson's Feral & Foe

When the war comic was at the height of its popularity, titles included Battle, Warlord, Valiant, the Hotspur and the pocket-sized Commando, which is still published today.

Many of the stories published in the 1950s and 1960s relayed the gung-ho heroics of plucky British troops, often up against the odds, fighting two-dimensional German foes who routinely barked phrases such as “Schnell!” or “Gott in Himmel!” from their limited vocabulary.

But most of the original artwork for those comics – now worth hundreds and sometimes thousands of pounds – was seen as of little value at the time, and was binned, burned or used to mop up floods in the basement of the publisher. Now a dedicated platoon of comic collectors and researchers has tracked down the surviving pieces and the results are to be shown in an exhibition telling the story of the British war comic.

Predominantly featuring original pages from the likes of the War Picture Library or the Battle and Action comics of the 1960s and 1970s, the exhibition, at the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock from next month, will showcase the gritty artwork that made war comics so popular.

But very few original pieces survive, and Oxford-based Rebellion – the comics company that publishes science fiction weekly 2000AD and which has collaborated with the museum on the show – has been on a mission to gather up those that have.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/1761706

• Helena Bonham Carter
• Simon Pegg
• Bella Ramsey
• Jensen Ackles
• Gwendoline Christie
• Cary Elwes

Now solicited:

The influence of the comic book has never been greater, from movies to streaming and beyond, but the journey comics took from little-regarded kids' magazines to literary prize-winning books and global franchises turned on a highly unusual group of writers and artists. Few would have expected a small gathering of British comic book fans and creators in the early 'seventies to be a global cultural pivot-point, but this was the start of a disparate movement of punks, dropouts and disaffected youths who reinvented a medium and became the imaginative heart of a global success story. Based on years of interviews with a generation of leading writers, artists and editors, Karl Stock reveals the true story of the wild times, passion and determination that helped, hindered and saw the reinvention of comics.

In Shops: Nov 22, 2023

SRP: 29.99

And from an earlier press release:

Based on years of interviews with a generation of leading writers, artists and editors, Comic Book Punks: How a Generation of Brits Reinvented Pop Culture examines and celebrates how comics grew from little-regarded kids’ magazines to global franchises.

Exploring the early careers of the likes of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison and more, Stock tells the story of the triumphs and disasters that rewrote the rulebook on what comics could be and who they should be for.

...

Karl Stock on the acquisition: “The creative revolution which occurred in British comics and spread across the Atlantic at the end of the 20th century had the same kind of pop cultural impact as Britain’s great record labels or city-based music scenes, yet until now it hasn’t been recorded in-depth on the same terms as these other hugely influential movements. Writing this history of an era, a stack of great comics and a group of visionary creators which crackled with genre-redefining invention has been an honour and a great pleasure, and hopefully reading it’s as entertaining and revealing as the research process.”

Acquiring editor Ben Smith: “Stock has written the definitive account of a generation of comic book creators that turned the entire medium on its head, as important for the graphic novel as the New Hollywood filmmakers of the ’60s and ’70s were for cinema. Stock’s meticulous research, breadth of reading and one-to-one interviews make this group biography unmissable. Peeling back the layers of influence, collaboration and inspiration that saw ever-lasting works of importance created, Stock also finds the lost and overlooked narratives that opened the doors to the escalating ambition of these artists and writers. As we have sadly lost too many creators from that era in recent years, the timing of this book couldn’t be more important in explaining and marking their legacy.”

Amazon

I've previously mentioned the runaway success of the Good Omens graphic novel adaptation and that has got people thinking about Discworld:

Good Omens' Kickstarter has broken all records for comics on the platform and shows that Terry Pratchett's Discworld is due a rebirth. Discworld is beloved by millions, and despite a spotty history with adaptations, Good Omens shows that it can and should be given the opportunity to flourish.

...

Discworld has had comic adaptations before, including The Color of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Guards! Guards! and Mort. However, these adaptations start at the beginning of Discworld canon, which is significantly weaker than mid and later novels, leaning more heavily into outright fantasy parody than the dense and inviting world that quickly forms. The Discworld books are broken up into both one-off adventures and series following unconnected main characters, most famously the upright Watch Commander Vimes, the powerful and petty witch Granny Weatherwax, and Death, who has a cameo in almost every Discworld novel. At the same time, Discworld's settings evolve as the stories progress, with the city of Ankh-Morpork undergoing social and technological evolution. This kind of true growth and progress is perfect for a serial comic story, as is the ensemble way in which Pratchett structures each book's cast.

One of the major disadvantages with adapting Pratchett's Discworld novels for screen - as seen in pretty much every TV-movie and series - is the huge budget needed to create living, breathing locations shaped by an army of colorful characters, including trolls, werewolves, and orangutans. However, this is far less of an issue in comics, where talented artists can realize Pratchett's vision without breaking the bank. At the same time, Discworld is famous for its witty dialog and strong narrative voice - elements which comics can bring across, especially by drawing on devices like caption boxes and thought balloons.

Comic fans might be interested to know what I'm finding kids to be enthusing about these days. I've just been doing a few weeks of summer classes, which have a higher proportion of comics enthusiasts, in comparison to my usual classes in schools. So, here's what seems to be hot and not:

Bunny Vs Monkey – Hot. A kid today was wearing the t shirt, lots of kids know them from the books. Way more than ever talked about The Phoenix (though one kid today, in Larne, was telling about this comic he gets as well as The Beano. "It's called The Poe-nicks" he said).

Dog Man – Hot. Followed by Cat Kid. Captain Underpants is a distant third.

Manga various – Hot. All the kids recognise Naruto. And 11+ kids will regularly ask me to draw someone I'm only vaguely familiar with. Today is was Deku from (checks notes) My Hero Academia.

Beano – Luke Warm. If they know it, they're fans. In inner-city schools, 75% of kids have never heard of it. In these summer schools, most recognise Minnie The Minx, and a couple have brought issues and annuals – with my work in, would you believe – to be signed.

Marvel – Luke Warm. Two years ago they were all over it. Now, the primary school kids seem almost unfamiliar with Marvel (Endgame was 5 years ago, which is pre-history to them, so Iron Man and Captain America have been dead as long as they can remember), and the teenagers have moved on since the movies stopped being any good. Everyone had, however, seen Guardians Of The Galaxy 3.

DC – Luke Warm. They are as likely to name a DC character as a Marvel one, when asked, but with no great fan enthusiasm.

Star Wars – Luke Warm. There are some leftover Baby Yoda t shirts around, and occasional kids want to know how to draw Darth Vader.

Stranger Things & Wednesday Addams – Cold. They have very quickly become last year's thing. They'll revive as fast, I'm sure.

Doctor Who – Cold. It's a rare child, always a geek, who has any interest in this particular franchise.

2000AD – Heat death of the universe. No child has ever mentioned 2000AD.

A new edition of one of the most influential graphic novels ever – in incredible detail and at a scale never before seen! Sláine: The Horned God Anniversary Edition is coming in 2024.

Timed to coincide with the 35th anniversary of its first publication in 2000 AD in 1989, this new edition of Pat Mills and Simon Bisley’s groundbreaking and best-selling collection will feature brand new scans – meaning readers will be able to see its fully-painted art in unprecedented new detail.

Measuring 355mm by 270mm, the 208-page paperback Sláine: The Horned God Anniversary Edition will arrive in stores in May 2024.

Rebellion is also delighted to announce the Sláine: The Horned God Anniversary Edition Slipcase. Available exclusively through the 2000 AD webshop and also measuring 355mm by 270mm, this boxset will feature the three books of ‘The Horned God’ in separate hardcovers, housed in a stunning slipcase covered with Celtic motifs and the ’S’ from the original Sláine logo that featured in Pat Mills and artist Angie Kincaid’s first story in 1983.

Currently on Kickstarter with the GN priced at £25.plus an estimated £10 P&P. As it is currently on £1.4M raised it is crashing through the stretch goals. With such a talented team and coming from the publishing arm of the Terry Pratchett Estate, it couldn't have a better pedigree.

edit: fixed link

In a forgotten and overlooked corner of the sprawling BBC website is BBC Cult and it includes a section on British comics including history of various parts of the field and example comics, including a DR and Quinch story from Alans Moore and Davis.

Whizzer and Chips was my favourite comic, but which side were you on?

Originally running from 1966 through 1971, Smash! was a weekly comic book anthology with a special place in British comics history — it was the original UK home for Marvel comics, with the American publisher licensing out characters like the Hulk and the Fantastic Four to Oldhams Press before establishing its own UK publishing arm in the 1970s. (DC did something similar; early issues of Smash! actually included both the Hulk and Batman reprints, as unlikely as that might seem now.)

This new incarnation of Smash! sees writer Paul Grist create a storyline that draws together some classic British adventure comics characters — including The Steel Claw, Janus Stark, and Jane Bond (yes, Jane Bond: she’s a British spy from '60s anthology Tina) to deal with the threat of the Syndicate of Crime, and its leader the King of Crooks.

The Beano, the world's longest-running comic, has marked its 85th anniversary with guest appearances from Adele, Stormzy and Harry Styles.

The commemorative issue, out on Wednesday, also includes depictions of King Charles III and Queen Camilla.

The guests were drawn after 3,000 children - aged seven to 14 - were asked in a poll which celebrities they would like to see in cartoon form.

Sir David Attenborough, Lewis Hamilton and Jill Scott all appear too.

Footballer Marcus Rashford is in there as well after being voted as the most inspirational celebrity, while TV presenting duo Ant and Dec topped the list of famous people that youngsters would invite to their birthday party.

Spider-Man actor Tom Holland and Manchester City player Phil Foden also figured highly on the list of celebrities that they would like to be best friends with.

Since the Beano launched in Dundee in 1938, more than 4,000 issues have been printed featuring around 700 characters, such as Dennis [the Menace] and Gnasher, the Bash Street Kids and Billy Whizz.

Colin Maxwell, 51, has been awarded a Scots Language Publication Grant from the Scottish Book Trust after successfully pitching 'The Dunfermline Story'.

...

A big aspect of the book is that it will be written in Scots with an English translation and perhaps even a glossary so that readers can expand their knowledge of the language.

Got any interest comics, graphic novels, trade paperbacks, etc on the go? Then let us know.

From Broken Frontier:

A 2-part miniseries where 31 British-associated comics creators, editors, publishers, shop owners, academics, journalists, and community organizers discuss British comics and its community from the past and present.

• Part 1
• Part 2

Makes sense to start with a documentary (or two) about British comics and this is a great one.

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3