This week over at the Alby Figgs site, Alby put’s to rest the oft questioned origin of one of pop cultures eternal mysteries, namely The Shadows ‘funny walk’.
Who’d have thought it, eh? But wait! Who’s that bronzed, shaded stranger in the Bentley? Find out more (?) @ http://wp.me/2xlpi
Just out today @ http://albyfiggs.wordpress.com/ Alby Figgs in Gravy! Straight up. This time, everybody’s favourite street sage spills the, er, gravy on the innermost workings of one of our best loved (?!) celebrity chefs and his part in his success/ downfall. You be the judge…
Snowgoose, part two in the ongoing saga of Alby Figgs @ http://albyfiggs.wordpress.com/ is now up online, people. This time, Alby shatters the myth of a much loved national treasure.
It’s the latest publishing sensation to sweep the nation; a septuagenarian with a talent for tall tales and constant banter. No doubt, some Hollywood studio will latch on within weeks to the adventures of one Alby Figgs, but right now, you can say you were there first at the birth of a comic legend. Either that, or just pass a minute of your time reading his latest conversational run-ins every Friday tea-time on the train home at albyfiggs.wordpress.com
Back a few weeks now from a great ‘return’ trip to Russia with the lovely people at Respect Comics, this time in Moscow. The artists from the first trip and our Yekaterinburg jaunt all met up for the Kommissia Comics Festival, gave talks and workshops and saw the fruits of our labours printed up and on display.
Also paid impromptu visits to the mini-Bulgakov museum, walked around Gorky’s art nouveau house in felt slippers, saw Lenin and Stalin extolling the free market in Red Square and ate Kasha on the Arbat (just missing Vladdy P doing walkabout and mixing it up with the common people) by a day or so.
Big bear hug thanks to Anna, Olga, Heehus, Nastia, Sergei, Wolf and all other fellow Russian and European Respect artists and organisers who made it such a great trip. Большое спасибо!
Here’s a few random photos…
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I’m very chuffed that DC Vertigo has finally brought together all 16 episodes of Deadenders into one big collected graphic novel, 11 years after it finished its monthly run. The first 4 issues were originally collected in “Deadenders: Stealing the Sun” some years back and there’s been a couple of foreign language compilations, particularly in Spanish, that have collected the whole run, but thanks to some persistence from Ed Brubaker, it’s finally made it into one big bumper edition in time for summer fun reading on the out of bounds beach.
It comes complete with all of Philip Bond‘s originally luverly covers and also includes the Vertigo Winters Edge short not originally part of the monthly series.
On sale May 16th!
Heralding the imminent arrival on bookshop shelves the world over, former drinking companion (one night down the Escape bar in the late 80s), ex-NME reviewer, and once disciple of the old Velocity mag (he quite liked it a bit), nice guy Andrew Collins (BBC 6 Music, Radio Times, et cetera) has penned a very favourable review of our eagerly awaited (over a year) anthology, The Great Unwashed from Escape Books in this month’s Word magazine (actually came out last month, but in the great scheme of Pleece scheduling, that was way ahead of time!)
Indie-trousered comic strip siblings get all anthologisedEmerging from a revitalised small-press UK comics scene 25 years ago, their doleful, monochrome strips found in magazines like Crisis, A1 and Escape (now a book publishing imprint), Brighton-based Gary and Warren Pleece chimed with the Oxfam-tailored, fanzines-in-Tesco-bags, C86 Indie culture. The Great Unwashed collects early, parochially low-key triumphs from under their 80s, Enterprise Allowance Scheme-funded Velocity umbrella with fighting-fit new collaborations. Warren’s fluid, minimalist inkmanship and geometric panelling give life to Gary’s understated, arch scripts (“several frames of inconsequentiality pass”), absorbing pop culture like a dual sponge with titles like Native New Yorkers, the wordless Dead Souls, Bertrand de Plastique and family saga The Higsons. Mixing seafront sleaze, the American nightmare and post-modern voyages into period drama, this one-stop shop is a joy, inducing dewy-eyed nostalgia in the grown-up comix fan who still pines for Los Bros Hernandez. With Warren now very much overground, it’s pleasing he and Gary have not “done a Gallaghers”. ANDREW COLLINS
I’ll be attending the Illuminate opening evening at The British Library from 7 p.m. on Friday night, March 2nd exhibiting work from the newly polished up version of Oscar Zarate’s “It’s Dark in London” published by Self Made Hero. I illustrated short story The Court written by Neil Gaiman and there’ll be pages from the original and re-edited versions on show.
There’ll be lots of contemporary illustrators, comic artists and cartoonists doing drawy things and showing their ‘stuff’ amongst the illuminated texts and Mr. Scruff on the diskette, apparently. Should be, er, illuminating?
I’ll be signing copies the excellent new book, Nelson at Forbidden Planet, 179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8JR tomorrow, Thursday 24 from 6-7pm. For anyone that doesn’t know by now (where have you been?!?), Nelson is the brand new book edited by Rob Davis and Woodrow Phoenix, featuring over 50 artists telling the story of Nel, from birth to the present day, published by the excellent Blank Slate Books.
There’s a whole host of great artists (too numerous and great to list here) and, er, me, as well as great storytelling and all profits from the first 4000 books sold are going to the homeless charity, Shelter.
It’s had really good reviews from The Guardian and The Observer and is now on sale through the Blank Slate site and at all good comic and book shops.
There’s a load of events lined up to launch the book this week, details here, including a celebratory do at Gosh comics in London, on Friday night from 6. See you, who (?), there?
