ARCHIVED NEWS - JANUARY 2005

MAJOR GERRY ANDERSON COMICS SITE RE-LAUNCHED
25/1/05: The Gerry Anderson Complete Comic History site has just had its second major upload -- and a brilliant site it is, too.
This incredibly detailed site charts the entire history of Gerry Anderson's shows in comic strip, show by show, from his earliest ventures right through to the present day.
"Now the site is starting to take shape and I don't feel
so embarrassed about broken links and missing features," site creator and major contributor Shaqui La Vesconte says. "We've managed to take flight on this Upload, with contributions from David Jefferis and Martin Bower for Starcruiser, writer/editor Nick Cuti for the US Space:1999 Charlton magazines, and several artists and writers, including editor Cefn Ridout, for the Manga Space Precinct feature."
This is a beautifully constructed site with plenty of well-researched features, interviews and plenty more.
This is simply one of the best themed comic strip sites on the web and if you're a Gerry Anderson fan, it should not be missed.

GOOD START FOR MY HERO
18/1/05: The first two shows of the new My Hero season, which has just begun airing in the UK, both got a 27 per cent share of the potential audience, and were the highest rated Friday show on any channel apart from the soaps.
This is good news for the show if the ratings keep up and bodes well in any negotiations between Big Bear and the BBC for a sixth season.
In addition to the usual competition the show is up against a celebrity version of Big Brother on Channel Four, which continues to pull about 4 million viewers.
In comparison, the second part of the new comedy The World According to Bex from the creator of My Family starring Jessica Stevenson lost 700,000 viewers from its opening show the previous Friday to average just 4 million (17%) over 30-minutes. BBC2 actually achieved marginally better ratings for its new history programme, The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon, showing newly discovered film shot in the early 20th Century, which Broadcast magazine describes as "an instant hit for BBC2" on Friday (14 January) with a peak audience of 4.4 million (19%) at 9.25pm.
Little Britain ended its run with 5.2 million (21%) at 9.30pm.
• My Hero on Downthetubes.net: Go

EISNER DOCUMENTARY IN THE PIPELINE
14/1/05: A documentary about the late Will Eisner is being made by Montilla Pictures. You view a ten minute teaser online: www.montillapictures.com

DAVE GIBBONS TEACHES COMICS
13/1/05: Comics artist Dave Gibbons provides the cover feature for the latest issue of the UK magazine Digital Creative Arts, on sale now. The issue includes a guide to creating comics art on a computer from initial art to final lettered and coloured page by Dave himself, plus a competion to win a copy of Titan Books' edition of The Originals, his latest graphic novel.

JOHN STROUD INTERVIEWED
12/1/05: Producer and director John Stroud has just been interviewed about his work for the BBC comedy series My Hero and his past work on shows such as Bugs and Rainbow. Read the interview here

DANDY FEATURED ON BBCi
12/1/05: DC Thomson's weekly comic The Dandy has apparently doubled its circulation since its recent revamp. Read more in this article on the BBC web site

NEW EAGLE TIMES PUBLISHED
12/1/05: The new issue of Eagle Times (dedicated to the memory of the original Eagle) came out just before Christmas.
This 52 page edition (22 are in full colour including the cover) includes an interview with prolific Eagle/Girl/TV21 artist Gerry Haylock, articles on 'The Guinea Pig' strip, Derek Lord remembered, Phantom Fleet, sci-fi music and a PC49 radio story adaptation.
Annual subscriptions (4 issues per year) cost £18 for UK subscribers (overseas - £22 seamail or £26 airmail). Please send cheques made payable to Eagle Society to Keith Howard, 25a Station Road, Harrow, Middlesex, HA1 2UA.

SUPERHERO IN MANCHESTER?
11/1/05: Is a superhero patrolling the streets of Manchester? Check out www.thesuperhero.co.uk and decide for yourself... (Thanks to Barry Renshaw from Engine Comics for this link)

COMIC BOOK ARTIST MAGAZINE TO HONOUR WILL EISNER
10/1/05: In honour of the late Will Einser and as a means of celebrating Will's impact on the art of comics, Comic Book Artist magazine will be devoting its next issue (due in Spring) to the man's life, career, and influence.
The entire edition of the three-time Eisner Award-winning magazine will spotlight the creator by featuring a major tribute section contributed by many of the comic world's reigning talents. A portion of the proceeds from this issue will be donated to the American Cancer Society and to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in Will's honour.
Cartoonists and industry professionals willing to contribute to and share anecdotes with Comic Book Artist are encouraged to contact Jon B. Cooke, the magazine editor, as soon as possible (email: jonbcooke@aol.com.
• Read my tribute -- plus links and further information

CREATE JUST 1 PAGE OF COMICS ART FOR CHARITY
7/1/04: Donate a page of comic art to benefit a charity! J1P3 launches at the Comic Expo in Bristol in May 2005 and contributions are invited -- just one page of comic art, which can be a one-page strip, a convention sketch or a pin-up page ­ whatever you can spare the time for. It does not even have to be new art done for this project.
As with its first two issues, the final Just One Page collection will have at least 80 pages of comic art, interviews and articles related to the theme, Best Battles and Greatest Team Ups.
Editor Adrian Brown wants art featuring such team ups or battles such as Hulk vs. Thing (Marvel), Dennis and Walter (The Beano), Batman vs. Transformers or perhaps even Sid the Sexist (Viz) vs. the Four Marys (DC Thomson's girls titles).
"The theme is crossovers, and characters chosen can be from any comic books," says Adrian, "Classic team-ups such as Namor and Human Torch or Batman and Superman, or unusual pairings such as Archie the Robot and Archie & Jughead.
"The crossover is a staple of the comics industry (more common than staples, come to think of it) and fans love to see hero versus villain or hero versus hero -- usually due to a misunderstanding … and they end up fighting together !
"For Just 1 Page 3, we want to see classic or bizarre pairings -- or even bigger team-ups," Adrian continues. "Do what you want with that theme, but please let me know which characters you plan to use, because we don't want 100 pages of X Men versus The Bash Street Kids!"
Although computer art is welcome, pencil, inks or paints on paper will be prioritised for a place in the magazine.
All profits from sales of the magazine and all proceeds of the auctions of the original art will go to Childline www.childline.org.uk. In 2004, Just 1 Page 2 raised £800 for The Trinity Hospice. In 2001, the first Just 1 Page comic raised around £500 ($800) for CBLDF and Comic Relief.
• For more info on how to contribute art, buy a copy, or keep informed of the auctions, contact Adrian Brown via just1page@aol.com
• Web Link: http://members.aol.com/just1page/J1P3.htm

CREATE-A-COMIC
7/1/05: We all have our favourite comic characters, but have you ever tried creating one? Publisher Digital Jesters is giving the nation's gamers a chance to create their very own comic and win some fantastic prizes at the same time.
In anticipation of the release of Freedom Force Vs The Third Reich in April 2005, Digital Jesters & Focus Home Interactive are asking fans to devise their very own comic strips and win some amazing prizes at the same time.
What do you have to do? Simply take your favourite Freedom Force character, or even your own hero, and create a comic strip. If drawing isn't your thing fear not, as comic strips can be created with photos of your friends to make a photo story. You can add speech bubbles to devise the plot. Take a look at characters in the game for inspiration by going to www.freedomforcegame.com
In the new release, the follow up to 2002's critically acclaimed game sees Minute Man and his heroic Freedom Force fighting to save the day against a horde of new villains hellbent on world domination. This fast-paced tactical roleplay game takes players on a journey to the golden age of comics on a computer screen.
Entrants must ensure that each page of their strip is no bigger than 3MB, that it is all in jpg format, and that characters used must be either Freedom Force characters or their own individual creations.
Competitions will be split into three categories: Comic Art, Objects, and People. Winners will be picked from each category and be given a top of the range graphics card worth €400 as well as a copy of Freedom Force vs The Third Reich upon release.
The winner will also bags a selection of games from Digital Jesters and Irrational Games alongside their graphics card. Runners up in each category will win a copy of Freedom Force vs The Third Reich, and a selection of DJ and Irrational's games.
Once your comic strip is ready, simply email your competition details and your comic strip to info@digitaljesters.com, complete with your name, address, email address and stating which category/categories you are entering.
The closing date for the competition is 25 March 2005. Entries will be picked by a panel of judges from Digital Jesters, Focus Home Interactive and Irrational Games. Winners will be announced by email and winning entries will be posted up on www.freedomforcegame.com
• For competition rules head over to the competition page: Go

A SALUTE TO WILL EISNER, 1917 - 2005
5/1/05, updated 7/1/05, image sourced from denniskitchen.com: I am very sorry to report the death of one of my favourite comics talents, cartoonist and graphic novelist Will Eisner, who has died after a quadruple heart bypass surgery. He was 87.
Eisner, who had apparently been ill for a while but seemed to be on the mend, was a constantly ground-breaking creator. In the 1930s, he was the first to use "silent" balloonless panels to emphasize characters' emotions by focusing attention on finely wrought facial expressions. He taught generations of US soldiers how to maintain their equipment with the Joe Dope series. He was the brains behind The Spirit comic strip syupplement in 1940, probably one of the best newspaper strips ever -- at its height, it had a circulation of five million in 20 US Sunday newspapers. The supplement consisted of a comic book with three self-contained stories, and The Spirit became the most popular.

" He was absolutely the greatest innovator the industry ever saw." Dennis Kitchen, Eisner's agent for 20 years

He was also probably the first comic creator to publish a grpahic novel, A Contract with God, in 1978. The book featured stories of his childhood and the immigrant Jewish experience in a poor Brooklyn tenement.
"Will was a multi-faceted treasure," said Paul Levitz, the President & Publisher of DC Comics. "He was a pioneer as a cartoonist as well as a young entrepreneur at the dawn of comic books. He taught generations of creators in the studio, the classroom and by example. Best of all, to our delight as students and readers, he returned to the board to develop the nascent form of the graphic novel and establish himself as the cartoonist laureate of the immigrant Jewish experience in America. Any one of his accomplishments would be enough to honour a lesser lifetime; the sum of them, done by one man is astonishing. He was a friend, an advisor and an inspiration."
"Will Eisner didn't create Superman, Batman, Spider-Man or even Archie and Jughead," says Eisner's biographer, Bob Andelman. "Some comic book fans may scratch their heads when asked to describe his work. But every artist and writer in comic books, as well as graphic artists across the entire spectrum of modern illustration, television and film, owes a debt to him."
"This is heart wrenching news," says Dynamic Forces' Nick Barrucci. "Our industry has lost one of our great leaders. Will Eisner was a pillar of the comics community, and one of the greatest men to have graced our industry. The man created work that will be forever unmatched, but that we will all be able to enjoy forever. He is the bar that we should all shoot for, not just in this industry of ours, but as people. His career speaks for itself. "He was very funny, witty, prodigiously intelligent, receptive and,
above all, generous," recalls former UK comics festival organiser Kev Sutherland. "Generous with his time and with his
comments. Seemingly bereft of ego or self-importace Will only had good words to say about every creator we discussed, and on meeting new creators was more interested in them than in giving his own opinions." Will has been one of my favourite -- if not all time favourite -- creators for many years, from the day I discovered a numbered hardback copy of a A Contract with God at a Comics Fair in Liverpool, England sometime in the early 1980s.
His storytelling has influenced my own, I hope, and I was delighted to finally meet and chat with Will at the Raptus Comics Festival in Norway two years ago. I played a small part in getting him to the event and must say that as a comics and magazines editor for 20 years, this was the first time I was at first overawed at the prospect of meeting such a talent. When he phoned me just before the Festival, to talk about some issues he had, I was gob-smacked.

I needn't have been so shy.

Will kindly fronted a comic creator session to discuss comics with fellow professionals, with writers, artists and comic sellers from all over Europe present.
Throughout the talk, he treated everyone as equals, even though many of us could make no such claim, suggesting ideas, responding to new ideas for comics distribution, and following up on some thoughts raised. We discussed ideas for getting comics on mobile phones later in the day, and it was clear he was still open to new ways of storytelling and comics distribution even after so long in the often chaotic comics business.
I will miss waiting eagerly for Will's latest work. I will never forget this unassuming man who made even the youngest comics creator in the room at that festival feel valued and listened to.
Will was an enormous talent whose creative energy will be much missed by many of us in the comics industry he did so much to help create.

If you want to pay tribute...
There will be no funeral service, per Will's wishes. "Will and I hated funerals," his wife, Ann, said the morning after his death. "We made plans long ago to avoid having them ourselves." He will be buried next to his late daughter, Alice, who died in 1969. Surviving Will are his wife, Ann, and his son, John.

Cards may be sent to:
Will Eisner Studios
8333 W. McNab Road
Tamarac, FL 33321

Unofficially, in lieu of flowers, you might consider a donation in Will's name to the American Cancer Society - his daughter died of cancer - or the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which Will was known to have supported.

Links
• Biography of Will Eisner on Kitchen Sink Press web site:
http://deniskitchen.com/docs/bios/bio_will_eisner.html
• Official web site: www.willeisner.com
• 2000 interview on Comic Book Resources: Go

Obituaries
• Asscociated Press: Go
• The Daily Telegraph (Registration required. Unfortunately, no credit for the writer of this, which is a shame as it's quite detailed):
http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/

news/2005/01/06/db0601.xml
• New York Times (registration required):
www.nytimes.com/2005/01/05/books/05eisner.html
• Washington Post: Will Eisner Made Fighting Bigotry An Art Form (registration required, I think):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48718-2005Jan4.html
• MSN Obituary: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6786632/
• Reuters

Comic Industry Tributes
• The Beat:
http://www.comicon.com/thebeat/archives/2005/01/will_eisner_dea.html
• Comic Book Resources:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=4627
• DC Comics eulogises Will Eisner:
http://newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24589
• ICV2 Comics Industry site tribute: Click Here
• Neil Gaiman:
On explaining who Eisner was to a journalist: "'It's as if Orson Welles had made Citizen Kane and redefined what you could do in film, and then carried on making movies until now,' I said, wishing I could come up with a better analogy, and knowing that that didn't explain it. And I didn't mention how proud he was of any of us who did good comics -- how much he cared about the medium -- or how glad I am that I got to tell him that I wouldn't have written comics if it wasn't for him."
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/01/will-eisner-1917-2005.asp
• Newsarama: Celebrating Will Eisner:
• Tributes from fans and creators on Newsarama:
www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24561

Some of Will Eisner's Books
• A Contract with God
The first graphic novel ever, probably, published in 1978
• Comics and Sequential Art
An invaluable guide to comics storytelling technique
• Graphic Storytelling
Another creator's guide
• The Spirit Casebook
Just one of many collections of this superb strip
• His latest graphic novel, The Plot is due to be released later this year by publishers W.W. Norton.

LIAM SHARP LAUNCHES MAM TOR & EVENT HORIZON
British comics artist Liam Sharp has launched a new web site for Mam Tor (www.mamtor.com), a publishing initiative that was established last year by Sharp and his wife, Christina McCormack-Sharp to publish Sharpenings: The Art of Liam Sharp.
Liam, whose early work included Death's Head II for Marvel UK and has gone on to draw he Possessed, Black Panther, Man-Thing and Spawn: The Dark Ages, says Mam Tor is dedicated to producing creator-driven works that might not ordinarily find a home on the bookshelf. "Works that are either too niche, radical or unquantifiable," he told comics news site Newsarama, "despite the evident quality and commitment they display.
Sharp and other creators -- professionals and amateurs -- will be launching Event Horizon at the UK's Comic Expo in May. Previously called Mam Tor Gems, the 120-page stand-alone creator showcase that will feature "some of the finest talent in comics and other subculture art forms. Contributors to the book include Michael Kaluta (Books of Magic), Brian Holguin (Spawn, Kiss: Psycho Circus), Chris Weston (Ministry of Space) and Ashley Wood (Popbot).
"What's really important is that everybody who contributes is on the same page," says Liam. "This isn't going to make anybody much money. We don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot by printing thousands of copies and selling ten, thereby going under before we even got off the ground.
" There's a simple premise behind it, and that's what have you got that you'd like to see published just to see it published. Stuff people have got lying about that's too weird or dark or whatever to sell to the big guys, but that for some reason you just can't put to rest."
• Read the full Newsarama story: Click here
• For more information about Mam Tor and Event Horizon, check out www.mamtor.com

Interested creators, be it pro or otherwise, are invited to contact Sharp at the following address:

Mam Tor Publishing
P.O. Box 6785
Derby
DE22 1XT
United Kingdom
Or email him at: info@mamtor.com

MUTINY FROM THE BUNTY
4/1/04: Why have all the great children’s comics of yesteryear vanished, asks the Times' Brandon Robshaw? The writer recently stumbled across a cache of old annuals in a cupboard in his Dad’s spare room and was struck by the fact that they represented a kind of comic which no longer exists.
• Read the full article (registration required): Click here

KELLY FREAS DIES
4/1/04: 11-time Hugo Award-winning illustrator Frank Kelly Freas has died. His much acclaimed work included book and magazine cover and interior art for science fiction, fantasy, the NASA space program, record albums, advertising, and MAD Magazine.

MY HERO RETURNS TO BBC1 FOR FINAL SEASON
2/1/05: The superhero comedy My Hero returns to BBC1 this week -- but according to actor Lou Hirsch, it's the final season for the show.
My Hero stars Ardal O'Hanlon as Thermoman, a superhero living in suburban Northolt who struggles with balancing saving the planet with keeping his family together. The fifth season sees the return of all past regulars, plus another baby.
Actor Lou Hirsch, who plays Thermoman's cousin Arnie, the failed superhero Polarman, has revealed this will be the final season for the show on his official web site www.louhirsch.com. "It has saddened me, but there isn't any point in going into the reasons for this," says Lou. "We've had five good years, and many happy memories, so I really can't complain. It's time to move on. I'm going to miss all the wonderful people I've worked with, but I'm sure our paths will cross again."
• Click for My Hero section

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EAGLE FLIES AGAIN #11 RELEASED
2/1/05: Eagle Flies Again #11, the latest issue of the fanzine devoted to British comics, is now available.
This latest issue includes interviews with writers John Wagner and Dan Abnett, plus an overview of the first Dan Dare strips that appeared in the 1980s Eagle comic.
• You can order EFA by post for £2.00 including postage and packing from editor Ian Wheeler, 54 Hartwith Drive, Harrogate HG3 2UY. Cheques payable to Ian Wheeler.