Continuing a month of shows looking at the presence of comics in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, on this week’s new podcast and radio show Panel Borders, Alex Fitch talks to Jan van der Wateren (former chief librarian and… Read More ›
Features
In Review: Resident Alien – The Suicide Blonde #1
Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse’s Resident Alien is back at Dark Horse Comics today (11th September), with Resident Alien: The Suicide Blond #1 on sale now in all good comic shops. A straightforward suicide . . . or a murder?… Read More ›
Think of a City storytelling project attracts Dave McKean, JH Williams III
The City is our story – but what is a city? That’s the question being posed by architect Alison Sampson and comics artist Ian MacEwan through Think of a City, a tumblr-based, mass storytelling project involving a huge range… Read More ›
Twelfth Doctor Who Art Challenge: The Winner Is…
These are my ‘finalists’ in the downthetubes Twelfth Doctor Art Challenge, after a lot of umming and ahhing confronted by such an amazing range of entries, including terrific ‘cartoon’ interpretations as well as the realistic. When you have a competition… Read More ›
Photo Review: Edinburgh International Book Festival’s Stripped
How to sum up Stripped, the comics and graphic novels strand of the 2013 Edinburgh International Book Festival? As one of the Stripped bloggers I had more access than most and attended almost half of the forty-odd Stripped events as… Read More ›
In Review: Grandville – Bête Noire
Writer/artist Bryan Talbot’s anthropomorphic steampunk saga, inspired by the humanoid animal illustrations of French artist JJ Grandville, reaches its third book with Grandville: Bête Noire published by Jonathan Cape. Detective Inspector Archie LeBrock is called from Scotland Yard to Grandville… Read More ›
Stripped Event Review: Joe Sacco – The Graphic Truth
Joe Sacco, writer and illustrator, born in Malta, raised in Australia and based in America, is a comics journalist who tends to document war from the other side – not the side of the soldiers who do the fighting but… Read More ›
In Review: The Scorpion – The Angel’s Shadow
Writer Stephen Desberg and artist Enrico Marini’s The Scorpion returns in The Angel’s Shadow, the second part of the latest on-going story of the swashbuckling 18th century rogue and his battles with the less-than-holy Pope Trebaldi. Trebaldi’s army of warrior… Read More ›
In Review: Blake & Mortimer – Secret Of The Swordfish 2
2013 sees Cinebook working their way through the three parts of Edgar P Jacob’s first Blake and Mortimer story The Secret Of The Swordfish and they have reached Book 2 with the spoiler-ish sub-title of Mortimer’s Escape. The cold war… Read More ›
Guest Post: VAT the Tat on children’s comics
Freelance cartoonist Alexander Matthews is published in Private Eye, The Phoenix, Prospect, The Week, The Dandy and RAC Magazine, among others. He’s also lectured in Graphic Design and illustration at Degree level and up until recently ran an Art and… Read More ›
In Review: Thorgal – Giants
Writer Jean Van Hamme and artist Gzegorz Rosinski’s tales of the Viking adventurer Thorgal continue in Giants. Picking up from where Ogotai’s Crown, the previous book, left off Giants moves away from the science fiction time traveling of that book… Read More ›
In Review: Jeremiah Jellyfish Flies High!
A highly illustrated children’s storybook, Jeremiah Jellyfish Flies High!, written and illustrated by John Fardell and published by Andersen Press is aimed at pre- and early primary school children. Jeremiah Jellyfish drifts in the oceans with his extended family getting… Read More ›
In Review: Blake & Mortimer – Secret Of The Swordfish 1
Edgar P Jacobs’ adventurers Professor Phillip Mortimer and British agent Captain Francis Blake first appeared in the first issue of the Belgian bilingual weekly Le Journal De Tintin (French printing)/Kuifje (Flemish printing) which was dated 26 September 1946. That first… Read More ›
Northern Ways: Julie Tait reveals Lakes Festival long term plans
Britain is buzzing with comics festivals and conventions up and down the land and throughout the year. Across the spectrum of scale and longevity, Oxford’s determinedly human-scale small press weekend Caption is the longest one still running, while the MCM… Read More ›
In Review: The Last Ever Dandy Summer Special
I finally received a copy of The Last Ever Dandy Summer Special, and thoroughly enjoyed it. As I’ve said before over on Wacky Comics, I’m not sure about the “Last Ever” part of the title: I can’t help but think… Read More ›
In Review: The Silver Darlings
The Silver Darlings is the debut graphic novel by writer/artist Will Morris and is published by Blank Slate Books. It is 1967 and in the port of Dunure on Scotland’s Firth Of Clyde the small family-owned fishing boat The Silver… Read More ›
Adapting Lovecraft: An Interview with Ian Culbard
Jon Turner caught up with him to talk about his latest project, the graphic adaptation of HP Lovecraft’s Shadow Our Of Time, released in June by SelfMadeHero, for the comic newspaper Your Days Are Numbered, which the title has kindly… Read More ›
In Review: 3 Seconds by Marc-Antoine Mathieu
by Marc-Antoine Mathieu Publisher: Jonathan Cape Out: 22nd August 2013 Reviewed by Steve Walsh The Book: This is a detective mystery. It lasts only 3 seconds. Which is enough time for a particle of light to travel 900,000 kilometres. And… Read More ›
Knitters go nuts for comics in Kendal
We love left field stuff here at downthetubes, and (apart from comics themselves) you probably can’t get more left field than the news that Kendal’s knitters and crochet enthusiasts are so enthused by the upcoming Lakes International Comic Art Festival,… Read More ›
In Review: Monkey Nuts
One of the humour comic strips in the weekly DFC comic in 2008 and 2009, Monkey Nuts Book 1: The Diamond Egg Of Wonders written by Robin Etherington and illustrated by brother Lorenzo Etherington, was originally released as a DFC… Read More ›