Articles on creating comics, how tos, reference information and more
A new Graphic Shakespeare Competition has just been launched as part of the activities surrounding the Elsinore Conference: Shakespeare the Next 400 Years in Denmark this April. The competition is open to comics creators worldwide and challenges creators to bring their own… Read More ›
The Globe at Hay will be picking the mind of cartoonist Dix later this month, whose dark humour is often found in his cartoon work, and will make for a fascinating desert island picks night. Dix, vicar’s son from deepest darkest Wales, is a freelance illustrator,… Read More ›
Marvel UK published a huge number of anthology titles down the years, starting with Mighty World of Marvel in the early 1970s through to Overkill in the 1990s – but one that got away in the company’s final years was Zip,… Read More ›
It’s been a fantastic year for the world of small press comics, and what would the last Awesome Comics Podcast of the year be if there wasn’t a talk about some of the highlights of the year that was 2015? There are… Read More ›
Can you laugh out loud while someone drones on for hours and hours about bloomin’ comic books? If so, Bay TV Liverpool want you to be part of the audience at Liverpool’s Central Library on Saturday 30th January 2016. You will witness the… Read More ›
In Drawing The Beano, the latest Panel Borders podcast, Alex Fitch talks to writers / artists Laura Howell and Hunt Emerson who have contributed a number of strips to The Beano since 2002, including “Little Plum”, “Ratz”, “Minnie the Minx”… Read More ›
DC Thomson’s 1970’s Starblazer – “Science Fiction Adventure in Pictures” – is remembered by Enrique “Quique” Alcatena in a new Spanish-language documentary titled, simply, Alacatena, directed by Diego Arandojo. Enrique “Quique” Alcatena is regarded as one of Argentina’s most prestigious cartoonists who also drew several… Read More ›
A comics company lives or dies by its catalogue, and back in the 1980s and 1990s Marvel UK, like others, was always considering new ideas from editors. Some fell at outline stage, such as my proposed roleplaying game magazine (suggested following… Read More ›
My first article regarding the work of Ron Smith acted as a introduction, to remind us how great this veteran artist, now retired, has been over the course of his career. This next pair of articles will focus on one aspect of Ron’s… Read More ›
Hachette, the British publisher of titles such as Doctor Who: The Complete History and Judge Dredd: The Mega Collection is to launch How To Draw The Marvel Way on 6th January in all good newsagents. The part work – evocative… Read More ›
Leonard Matthews, General Managing Editor of Fleetway and the Eagle Group of Comics, was a “Creative Visionary”… but that, Roger Perry argues in his extensive biography of the man which continues here on downthetubes, is only due to him having utilised… Read More ›
With the festive season upon us and 2015 racing to a close, over on Comic Book Resources, staff writer and comics retailer Brian Hibbs, in an article titled “Tilting at Windmills: Trouble on the Horizon?“notes we’re in an extremely odd… Read More ›
A Marvel UK character that fell foul of the company’s implosion in the 1990s
Veteran US artist Don Perlin – perhaps best known for his work on Marvel’s Ghost Rider, The Defenders and Transformers – recently had surgery to stop bleeding in his head. Writer and editor Clifford Meth, who has previously led successful… Read More ›
Over on this always-entertaining blog about British comics, cartoonist Lew Stringer has posted a number of terrific Christmas strips drawn by the wonderful Ken Reid. You’ll have seen some of the pages before on Lew’s blog over the years but others… Read More ›
As Tony Esmond couldn’t make it this week (he’s busy helping Santa’s elves, apparently), it’s just Vince Hunt and Dan Butcher holding the fort on this week’s Amazing Comics Podcast, and they spend it cooking up a storm with lots of… Read More ›
The legendary late artist Al Williamson’s Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back stories have been collected in the award-winning Artist’s Edition format by US publisher IDW, to be released in April 2016. Al Williamson is an artist much admired by comic creators worldwide and, back… Read More ›
The latest episode of Jeremy Bement’s Doctor Who Panel to Panel podcast features an interview with Road to Perdition and Doctor Who artist Richard Piers Rayner, along with its usual selection of news items and a review of Titan Comics 2015 Doctor Who Holiday Special, a… Read More ›
Available now on BBC iPlayer for about a month is the Radio 4 documentary Eagle: The Space Age Weekly, hosted by Sir Tim Rice and includes author Philip Pullman amongst the guests, as well as the voices of Marcus Morris… Read More ›
Leonard Matthews, General Managing Editor of Fleetway and the Eagle Group of Comics, was a “Creative Visionary”… but that, Roger Perry argues in his extensive biography of the man which continues here on downthetubes (Part One here), is only due to… Read More ›