Author Archives
John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War" and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
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Comic Book Alliance launches logo competition
The Comic Book Alliance – a UK-based not-for-profit organisation – has just launched a competition for creators to come up with a logo, which runs until the end of January 2010. The competition, intended to find an iconic logo for… Read More ›
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Dan Dare Figures: Sneek Peek
Award-winning toy figure maker Day2Day Trading has just sent us these impressive shots of their new Dan Dare prototype figure, due for release next year (2010). The Dare figure is just the start of a full Dan Dare range from… Read More ›
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Seek and Strike out for the new Commandos…
The latest issues of DC Thomson’s Commando went on sale a day early this week as we bid goodbye to 2009. There’s also some advance news for the next round of issues on sale in January 2010. “We’ll be starting… Read More ›
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Merry Christmas
Well hopefully Santa arrived at your house last night and didn’t look too much like this. New Eagle’s most popular character was of course Dan Dare but its most popular new character was Doomlord.The alien Doomlord Vek from the planet… Read More ›
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Merry Christmas: 1 Day To Go
Our run of Christmas covers continue as we countdown to Christmas Day. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a good Look and Learn Santa cover and this one comes from issue 728 in 1975. With Santa speeding over the snow on… Read More ›
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New Sandman Collections Announced
DC Comics imprint Vertigo has announced new, re-mastered editions of Neil Gaiman’s critically-acclaimed series, Sandman. Beginning next year, Vertigo will publish new trade paperback editions of Sandman in ten volumes – remastered and corrected versions of the comic the Los… Read More ›
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Merry Christmas: 2 Days To Go
Our run of Christmas covers continue as we countdown to Christmas Day. There wasn’t much Christmas cheer on display on the Christmas cover for Bunty in 1987. Indeed it seemed to be all doom and gloom – a miserable Christmas… Read More ›
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Paul Cornell: Hanging with the Captain
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Tube Surfing: Wallace and Gromit, Insomnia on PSP, Free Digital Comics and Christmas Covers
• Titan Publishing’s Wallace & Gromit digital comic has taken the iPhone by storm with over half a million downloads of its first free app – and the company is surely hoping to repeat the success with its release on… Read More ›
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Merry Christmas: 3 Days To Go
Our run of Christmas covers continue as we countdown to Christmas Day. “Merry Christmas, Mortals!” Does anyone actually remember this short run, toy tie-in title from Christmas 1987? Ian Kennedy does his typically superlative full colour cover for the fifth… Read More ›
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In Review: Smart Bomb
(Our apologies to both reviewer Dave Hailwood and the Smart Bomb team for the delay posting this item) Smart Bomb is a brand new all ages anthology that fuses computer game geekiness with comic-style nerdiness. You can be forgiven for… Read More ›
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Striker Returns
Long-running football strip Striker is set to return – this time as a weekly strip in an as yet unnamed magazine. A Striker movie is also again in development. Announcing the return on the official Striker forum (membership required to… Read More ›
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Merry Christmas: 4 Days To Go
Our run of Christmas covers continue as we countdown to Christmas Day. By far the oldest of our Christmas covers for this year, the girl’s comic School Friend wished their readers “A Very Happy Christmas” in December 1962 with this… Read More ›
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Merry Christmas: 5 Days To Go
Our run of Christmas covers continue as we countdown to Christmas Day. DC Thomson’s humour comics can always be relied on to do Christmas issues. Christmas 1984 brought these offerings from the digest sized Beano Comic Library. Pup Parade are… Read More ›
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Merry Christmas: 6 Days To Go
As the 25th of December rapidly bears down on us, each day for the next week downthetubes will be taking a look at a selection of comics and magazines from past Christmases.Speed and Power was Look and Learn’s sibling, using… Read More ›
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Strip! – Cartoons in Classrooms
In the last of this month’s shows looking at the use of comics in education, the Strip! radio show, broadcast on Resonance FM and now available as a podcast, have interviews with a variety of practitioners and tutors with an… Read More ›
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Tube Surfing: Mike Collins Draws New Who, Harker, Alternative Press News…
Some quick, short items today, as I’m immersed in some research for Titan and other things… • A slew of updates from ever busy comics artist Mike Collins, which are mostly Doctor Who related, including an original graphic novel for… Read More ›
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Simon Mackie: Positively Christmas
downthetubes gets a lot of eCards, and we put all the artist contributuons here on Flickr, because we can’t think of anywhere else to display them. But this year Simon Mackie has again outdone others with a whole Christmas-inspired comic… Read More ›
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Eagle Times Warms Up Winter (Volume 22 Number 4, Winter 2009)
The latest issue of Eagle Times (Volume 22 Number 4, Winter 2009) is now available from the Eagle Society, wrapped in this cheery winter scene that illustrated an article titled ‘He wants to be a Postman’ from the Christmas issue… Read More ›
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Fractal Friction springs from love of 2000AD
A number of long-time fans of 2000AD have banded together to launch Fractal Friction, an online collaborative storytelling venture, a story that starts when a man turns up for a job interview only for it to lead to something altogether… Read More ›
