Morning Folks!
Sunday was the London Comic Mart. I’m mostly a regular, missing the odd one here and there. For those who have never dabbled it’s a lot of old dudes and the occasional old lady selling comics and similar from boxes, tables and even the chairs. Every alternate Mart it fits in some FUNKO nonsense but I just blank that out. A pretty successful day for me. Not only did I get a load of comics that I may or may not already have I also hung out with some chums.
I’m still not sure if I have those Moorcock adaptions….
In recent years I feel like the start of a comic series gets spoken about more than the end. Get Fury ended this week and not in any way I expected. It could be described as a ‘sudden’ end if it wasn’t for the text transcript of a conversation for four pages. It then rushes through an almost-montage with some platitudes. I expected more, especially from Garth Ennis. But I also fully expect/suspect the dainty hand of a millennial editor. Maybe that editor emailed with some bland order to end it ‘…less violently’ or with his thoughts attached to the banality of the more recent Punisher replacement. ‘Please don’t show the new writer up.’ (Was the plea.)
Stories finish, and they are of course out of my control. But it has played a little on my mind since I read it on Saturday and we were promised more! And I feel like Ennis and Burrows were too.
Let’s give a big cheer from the terraces for the recent episode of The Mega City Book Club. This one had me digging in the garage for some old UK annuals. Host Eamonn Clarke and his guest this week David Nolan talked about the always brilliant Roy of the Rovers.
For those too young to remember or outside of the United Kingdom, Roy Race was the footballer we all wanted to be. His time at Melchester Rovers is both legendary and fictional. All but almost forgotten these days it took this podcast to bring back so many memories. Like when Roy (not unlike an oil Baron in Dallas) got shot or when two brothers from Spandau Ballet gave up music to play for The Rovers. Decades of last minute goals, argumentative players and loyal fans were picked up weekly at your local newsagent. Great episode gents!
Over at the ACP this week we started off Halloween month with an old buddy. Joey Olivera from Afterlight Comics has been producing pretty ruddy dark horror comics for a few years now and all are worth your money! He sat down with us for a fireside chat about how he has grown the business and loves the genre. A top dude.
Small Press of the Week.
An old school fanzine this week that made me remember the days of waiting for BEM, Speakeasy and Arkensword landing through my letterbox.
Saw that the second issue was out and it had a couple of pieces on the formative days/origins/issues of Warrior Magazine. It’s a Print-On-Demand magazine that you can get right here.
Tops.
It was a tough week. Not everything new was great. Nothing really got my attention. So, I asked myself, what did its job? Told a story that was interesting and had good art.
Ghost machine is a bunch of comics creators who know their job is to entertain. They understand the dynamics of a comic page and tell you a gripping story. Hyde Street is a little bit of a departure from their more action adventure/pulpy output. Perhaps more of a Vertigo book in many ways. But well made and I’m on board.
Bottoms.
If you are lucky enough to have a gig at Marvel writing some all-time horror icons. (See cover above). then try to at least use them a little in the three issue series?
Or you could ignore them for the first ten pages of a twenty page book and write about other people? Not just other people, characters so boring that when one of them wakes up you feel like tucking her back in and sending her back to sleep! (That sounded creepy!) Or maybe that exciting culmination to a page where one hands the other a notebook. LOOK! A Hand! What is it with Marvel and new writers. They often don’t write the title character but instead write about someone else who encounters the title character/s. I’m guessing it’s a lack of confidence in their knowledge of back story? Every so often this technique works as a twist/alternative issue but not all the time!
Please do get a clue Marvel.
Many thanks for reading. And, tip of the week – don’t be a massive cunt all your life!
I’m off to put the kettle on and read Absolute Batman 1.
See you next week.
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