Ian Gibson at Gosh London today

The artist behind one of 2000AD’s most ground-breaking series will be signing at Gosh Comics today

Ian Gibson’s work with Alan Moore on The Ballad of Halo Jones is lauded as some of the legendary weekly comic book’s greatest.

And to celebrate the latest edition of Halo Jones, complete with a new introduction by Zoo City author Lauren Beukes, Gibson will be signing at Gosh Comics on Berwick Street in London from 2pm to 4pm on Saturday 27th April.

The new UK edition of The Ballad of Halo Jones, due for release in May 2013, will have a brand new design-led cover by 2000AD head designer Simon Parr.

Dubbed “possibly the first feminist heroine in comics” by The Observer, the ground-breaking series introduced readers to a poignant, fascinating, and at times heartbreaking story of an ordinary woman who lives an extraordinary life.

Set in a future where the unemployed are herded into the Hoop, a floating ghetto off the coast of Manhattan, Halo is a young woman who dreams of escaping her boring life. When she gets the chance to do so aboard a luxury space cruiser as a hostess, it catapults her into an uncaring galaxy that will take her from the lap of luxury to a time-bending war of atrocity.

 

Improper Books' Porcelain set for limited release

Improper Books' Porcelain: A Gothic Fairy Tale is having a limited, indie release on 27th February, and will be available from Page 45, Travelling Man, Gosh! and Orbital Comics stores in the UK.

A gorgeous-looking 96-page graphic novel, written by Benjamin Read, illustrated by Chris Wildgoose, coloured by André May, and lettered by Jim Campbell, Porcelain A Gothic Fairy Tale is set within a world that’s a darkly magical echo of our own. It follows the story of a street urchin, known as Child, who leaves the cold streets of a snowy city behind when she climbs the high wall into the Porcelain Maker’s secret garden in a bid to steal whatever she can.

The Porcelain Maker discovers Child trespassing but, amused by her audacity, he offers her the chance to stay. He’s a lonely man, kept company only by his alchemically-powered automata, and he and Child form an unlikely friendship.

Shut off from the world beyond the wall, Child wants or needs for nothing as the Porcelain Maker heaps affection and luxury upon her, indulging her like daughter. In return, she can do as she pleases, except for one command, one rule that must never be broken, she must not look behind the workshop door.

• A free digital promo of the first 12 pages of Porcelain is now available to view and download via: http://www.improperbooks.com/projects/porcelain/ - here's a few of the amazing pages...

Improper Books is a comic and graphic novel imprint focusing on creator owned stories that have atouch of the fairy tale, the Gothic or the macabre.

Benjamin Read writes comics and makes films including the True Grit and Super 8 comic adaptations, and also wrote and produced the films Warhouse and 500 Miles North.

Chris Wildgoose is an illustrator, and conceptual and storyboard artist. Northern born, but London based, Chris made his comic debut with the official True Grit and Super 8 comics.
Porcelain © Benjamin Read & Chris Wildgoose. Images courtesy Improper Books

Warren Pleece signing new book 25 years in the making

This coming Saturday, the 8th of December, British comics dude Warren Pleece (one half of the Pleece brothers) will be at Gosh! Comics in London, signing copies of his new book The Great Unwashed – a hardcover anthology 25 years in the making.

The Great Unwashed by Gary and Warren Pleece, published by Escape Books, brings together comically poignant and darkly sarcastic stories of washed-up comedians, prancing rock stars, obsessive compulsive collectors, terrible teenage poets, dead souls, dysfunctional double-acts and decaying sea-side splendour, all into one ‘bumper-packed’, ink laden graphic novel.

Featuring works originally seen in their very own comic mag Velocity, Escape, Crisis, Revolver and other anthologies, alongside previously unpublished and new work spanning over twenty years, the Pleece Brothers bring you their own slanted take on popular (and unpopular) culture, in glorious black and white and worn out watercolours.

Warren will also be painting a window that day at Gosh! based on The Great Unwashed.

• Warren Pleece will be at Gosh, 1 Berwick Street Londion, from 5 - 6.00pm on Saturday 8th December. There’s a preview over at Warren’s site and here is the Facebook event page. If you’d like to reserve a copy or want to arrange a signed book/mail order, send an email to info[at]goshlondon.com and they’ll sort one out for you.

Gosh London's 'Phoenix Activity Day' kicks off at 1.00pm today

Back on Free Comic Book Day, Gosh Comics in London got a bunch of artists to come in with their pencil cases, draw all over their windows then sit down at the big Gosh! table and drew cartoons with kids all day. Sarah McIntyre (Vern & Lettuce) was one of those amazing pen-wielders and has some pictures over at her blog.

If you missed it, then never fear, because today (Saturday 3rd November) Gosh are doing it again, this time to promote stellar weekly kids’ mag The Phoenix.

If you’re yet to pick up a copy of The Phoenix, Gosh urge you do so so forthwith for the benefit of your wee one, especially if you’re still mourning the loss of the much-loved DFC. "As they say on their website, it’s aimed at 8 to 11 year olds but they’ve got fans as young as three and I’ve seen dudes in suits buying it for themselves," a Gosh spokesperson declares on the fab shop's blog. It’s full of weekly strips, long-running stories, one-off strips, competitions and all sorts, by the likes of Jamie Smart, Dave Shelton, Nick Abadzis, Kate Brown, Simone Lia, Chris Riddell and more, for £2.99 a pop."

this afternoon frm 1.00pm, Gosh Londn play host to three Phoenix artists – Neill Cameron, Lorenzo Etherington and Gary Northfield who will be there to agan plaster the shop's windows in cartoons and ink.

If you’re aged between 6 and 13, come on down and draw some stuff with people who get to draw stuff as their actual job. It’s free! And you can ask them how to be a cartoonist. They’re captive and have to be nice to you.

• Gosh London is at www.goshlndon.com online

 

Comix Reader event to open International Alternative Press Festival

This Friday (3rd August) sees the launch of The Comix Reader Issue #4 at Gosh! London. 

The free event, which starts at 7.00pm, includes an exhibition of original artwork from the issue and you can chat with some of the many talented artists involved. The exhibition will run from the night the of the launch until August 9th, giving you plenty of time to see some original work.

The Comix Reader (www.thecomixreader.com) is an alternative comics newspaper that attempts to reignite the free spirit of the underground press. It presents a unique blend of established talent, new discoveries, outsider art and unsung heroes of the art form. 

Its contributors are a rogues gallery of the UK’s funniest, edgiest and weirdest cartoonists.

The event will also be the opening party for the International Alternative Press Festival, a weekend comics festival happening here in London! 

• Gosh! is at 1 Berwick Street, London W1F 0DR, Open Daily from 10.30am - 7.00pm and online at: www.goshlondon.com

• Find out all the details at: http://www.alternativepress.org.uk/

International Alternative Press Festival returns to London

A quick reminder that the 2nd International Alternative Press Festival begins on 20th July, featuring an inspired assortment of creative events in London. The festival events lead up to the 4th-5th August weekend Small Press Fair in Holborn’s Conway Hall.

Alternative Press is a group of artists concerned with promoting creativity through the mediums of comix, zines, book arts, screen printing, poetry and other forms of self publishing. Organising events since 2008, last year, produced the first International Alternative Press Festival, which attracted over 1,000 visitors. Alternative Press is building upon the success of last year’s festival to establish an annual programme.

From the 22nd July - 5th August, a parade of 11 venues on Lambs Conduit St and Great Ormond Street will host artwork by a broad and exciting selection of international comic artists.

GOSH! Comics and Orbital Comics stores are hosting related exhibitions as part of the festival. This includes the work of Private Eye cartoonist Dave Ziggy Greene at Orbital Comics and the launch of the new issue of The Comix Reader, an alternative comics newspaper that attempts to reignite the free spirit of the underground press, at Gosh!

- The 2nd International Alternative Press Festival, 21st July 2012 at 6.00pm to 5th August 2012, London. More info: www.alternativepress.org.uk


 

GOSH Comics host Tom Gauld 'Goliath' book launch

Tom Gauld is a firm favourite at GOSH Comics in London, so they’re properly chuffed to be hosting the launch of his new graphic novel Goliath, a stripped-down, reworking of the David and Goliath myth, published by Drawn & Quarterly.

Goliath tells the story of the famous giant from the Bible from his side, and is not what you’d expect at all. Far from being the towering, bloodthirsty killer we remember, this Goliath is a gentle giant, who has been unwillingly conscripted into the army, and would rather be doing paperwork than fighting.

You may be familiar with Tom Gault’s work in The Guardian, and this book brings to life a melancholy, sad, earnest, bewildered character, in sparse and striking images and prose that reworks this story in any manner of ways: from the futility of warfare, how we judge others wrongly on their appearance, the macabre humour of cumbersome bureaucracy that takes over even on the front line of a battlefield, questioning whether a power structure is a good thing if orders have to obeyed unthinkingly, and more.


We've seen an advance pages of the book, and it's tremendous fun - well worth tracking down.

On Friday 9th March, Gauld will be at Gosh to sign copies of the book from 6.30pm, then at 7pm they’ll get down to the important business of wetting the baby’s head. Get along and shake his hand! 

"Not only is he one of the finest cartoonists in Britain, he’s a thoroughly lovely chap too," say the GOSH team.

Gosh will even have an exclusive Gosh! Bookplate Edition available on the night.

The Rest of the Tom Gauld Goliath Tour so far...

10th March: Signing at Forbidden Planet, Cambridge. Details
15th March: Signing at Here, Bristol. Details
29th March: Signing at NoBrow HQ, London. Details

4th April: Signing and talk at Analogue, Edinburgh. Website
5th April: Signing and talk at Travelling Man, Leeds. Website
21st April: Comica Comiket, London. Details

Tom then hops across the ond for events there...

28th and 29th April: Signing at MOCCA, New York. Details
5th and 6th May: Signing at TCAF, Toronto. Details

More US and Canada dates coming soon. 

• Check Tom's web site for signings info at: www.tomgauld.com

Panel Borders: Gosh! It’s Electric Man!

Concluding radio show Panel Borders month of shows looking at comic book shops, later today Alex Fitch talks to Josh Palmano and Andrew Salmond, the proprietors of Gosh! Comics in London which, after 25 years, has relocated from Great Russell Street to the heart of Soho; and to Dave Barras, director, and Scott Mackay, co-writer, of the new UK comedy film Electric Man about a rare stolen comic, set in the Edinburgh independent shop, Deadhead comics...

• Panel Borders: Gosh! It’s Electric Man! airs at 5.00pm, Thursday 25th August, Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com / podcast after broadcast at www.panelborders.wordpress.com

Gosh! Comics Moves home - but not before one mega Alan Moore signing

Top London comics store Gosh! Comics have outgrown their happy home of 25 years close to the British Museum and are moving to new, bigger premises in Soho. But, before they go, they’re saying goodbye to 39 Great Russell Street with a huge signing on the 30th July with Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill celebrating the release of their highly-anticipated League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1969, published by Knockabout Comics.

Century 1969 takes place almost sixty years later than the previous story, in the psychedelic daze of Swinging London during 1968, a place where Tadukic Acid Diethylamide 26 is the drug of choice, and where different underworlds are starting to overlap dangerously to an accompaniment of sit-ins and sitars. 

The vicious gangster bosses of London’s East End find themselves brought into contact with a counter-culture underground of mystical and medicated flower-children, or amoral pop-stars on the edge of psychological disintegration and developing a taste for Satanism. Alerted to a threat concerning the same magic order that she and her colleagues were investigating during 1910, a thoroughly modern Mina Murray and her dwindling league of comrades attempt to navigate the perilous rapids of London’s hippy and criminal subculture, as well as the twilight world of its occultists. Starting to buckle from the pressures of the twentieth century and the weight of their own endless lives, Mina and her companions must nevertheless prevent the making of a Moonchild that might well turn out to be the antichrist.

Joining Moore and O’Neill on the day is British comics mainstay Gary Spencer Millidge, known for his award-winning self-published series Strangehaven. Millidge will be signing copies of his new book, Alan Moore: Storyteller, the most comprehensive and accurate biography of one of Britain’s most creative minds ever published. It’s a lavishly designed 320-page illustrated hardback with a cover by Chip Kidd, a wealth of unpublished material, a foreword by the great Michael Moorcock and even an audio CD. You can catch a sneak preview over at Millidge’s blog.

Get your pre-orders in now for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Gosh! Exclusive Bookplate Editions and you can pick them up on the day. 

Gary Spencer Millidge, author of the astonishing and highly recommended Alan Moore: Storyteller (on sale now in all good bookshops - review soon!) will be signing from 12pm until 1.00pm, with Moore and O’Neill to follow at 2.00pm until 6.00pm. 

Visit the hallowed Gosh! basement and fall down the infamous spiral staircase for the very last time!


• More information at: http://www.goshlondon.com/​events/

Azzopardi launches "Sightings"

I caught up with enthusiastic and inventive indy press creator Sean Azzopardi on Free Comics Book Day at Orbital Comics, London, where, among others, Kieron Gillen was tapping out a script and Tom Humberstone was busy sketching along with enthusiastic fans, copies of the brilliant Solipsistic Pop #2 on sale nearby.

Sean recently finished The Sightings of Wallace Sendek, a collaboration with Douglas Noble, whose work includes Complex, Unfriendly Romance and Robotnik.

"Douglas is a man of infinite patience, as this 22-page comic took over three years to complete," Sean says.

It's a creepy tale, centring on the apparent disappearance of a famous, but fading musician, and one woman's seeming encounters with him after his death. Has she seen him or not?

Drawn in an appropriate, haunting style, this is a book well worth tracking down and is on sale in shops well known for supporting the indy press, such as Orbital Comics and Gosh in London, as well as online.

Not resting on his laurels, Sean's now busy working on a new story, Black Leather, featuring "Teeny rockers, hells angels, freaks, booze drugs and music." He's hoping to have the first chapter ready for the Leeds Thought Bubble convention in November.

• Check out The Sightings of Wallace Sendek via phatcatz.org.uk