Hewlett, Blake, Simmonds at British Library event

The Lords of Flatbush by Jamie Hewlett

The British Library in London is offering comic fans the opportunity to join a remarkable panel of artists and experts including Quentin Blake, designer and comic artist Jamie Hewlett, satirical cartoonist Martin Rowson and graphic storyteller Posy Simmonds.

Each will select and explain a personal choice of favourite illustrations, drawn from different genres, cultures and styles.

Presented in association with House of Illustration, The event will be chaired by Rachel Cooke, columnist and features writer, The Observer.

This event is part of the British Library’s Spring Festival, a five day celebration of creativity, fashion and design.


Tickets for this event include free entry to LATE at the Library ILLUMINATE! a Celebration of Illustration in the Entrance Hall, running from 19.00 to 22.30

• The Art of Illustration: Friday 2 Mar 2012, 18.30 - 20.00, the British Library; £10 / £7.50 concessions - Book now

Tube Surfing: 18 November 2008

• Happy Birthday, Alan Moore. The comics legend and mage, writer of Top Ten, Lost Girls, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Swamp Thing, Doctor Who, Maxwell the Magic Cat, Watchmen and much, much more is 55 today.

• (via Kasterborous): Would you blink if you saw a Weeping Angel? If the answer is yes, then be careful when you pick up this week’s copy of Doctor Who Adventures. There are a couple of dangerous Weeping Angels on the cover – plus a free spinning Angel and stickers for you to play with. Inside the magazine, you’ll find a fact file about these lonely creatures, so you will be completely prepared if you ever run into one...

• Comics writer David Bishop reports that the planned six-episode series of Phoo Action destined for BBC3 has been canned. "It's emerged that the six-part series has been cancelled," he reports of the show co-created by Jamie Hewlett, "not long before filming was due to start. Six figure sums have been spent building sets and costumes, hiring actors and production staff. Reading between the lines, it seems developing good scripts from the slight source material proved too great a challenge. Someone took the brave step of pulling the plug, before more money was spent."

• Tim Perkins wass among the first creators to offer a review of this weekend's Thought Bubble Comic Convention in Leeds. "It really was a fun event with lots going on," he reports. "I'm very much looking forward to attending next year’s event – maybe with a full-blown Wizards Keep stand. Nic Wilkinson from Insomnia also reports on the event here. "This is a fantastic show with a really great atmosphere," she feels. "It seemed more creator focussed than other cons and we met a lot of very talented people, all of whom had many unique and interesting ideas they wanted to talk to us about."
"Personally I thought it was an absolutely excellent convention," reports Richard Bruton on the Forbidden Planet International blog, adding to the accoladed for the event. "It had far fewer comic dealers and a much higher proportion of comic people there which helped to give it a fantastic buzz."

• Den of Geek has published a list of 75 comics-inspired films currently in one or other stage of development for film. Those with British connections include The Leading Man (slated for 2011 release), described as, effectively, a combination of The Saint, Jason King and The Persuaders from Wanted producer Mark Platt; Mark Millar's Kick Ass (2009); Warren Ellis's 2003 thriller Red (2010), the first DC property to leave the fold for other producers; Ocean (2010), also from Warren, described as an alien thriller with a fresh take on the origin of man; and Gamekeeper, which was written by former 2000AD editor Andy Diggle.
The site also reports that the planned Tin Tin trilogy based around Hergé's 1930s gee-whiz reporter is apparently having trouble getting started considering that Spielberg and Peter Jackson are involved.

• Comics artist Dave Taylor has completed the art for the mammoth Judge Dredd Christmas 2008 story and posted a few more tantalising panels on his blog. "It seems my days of not inking are over!" he notes. "I've really enjoyed inking this strip and have decided (for now) to continue to work in this way. I'm sure a job will come along at some point that I'll decide would look better just in pencil, but for now I'm sticking with my trusty Pilot Fineliner!

• Jason Kingsley, owner of 2000AD and its parent, games company Rebellion, was recently interviewed by GamesIndustry.biz about the future for the company. He notes the rise of console digital distribution is "a real challenge.
"It's fascinating - what do clients want?" he asked during an interview at Game Connection in Lyon."We've been looking at digitally distributing 2000AD, and that's worked quite well as an experiment. It's made us some money, and we want to do more around that."
Kingsley also discussed the possibility of a Massive Multyiplayer Game based on Mega City One. "It's not impossible," he mused. "The MMO market is really intriguing, and we keep looking at it and thinking, 'Bloody Hell, that's potentially fantastic.'
"And given that we've got quite a lot of intellectual property, an MMO of maybe Mega-City One might be fascinating, with Judges and Perps and all that sort of stuff - it might be a perfect opportunity," he opined. "But getting to grips with it, it's a fairly specialist area, and it's higher risk than making ordinary games. We're just not in the market for taking that kind of extreme risk yet. Yet... But who knows, stuff changes." Read the full interview

• Talking of interviews, John Freeman, keeper of downthetubes and writer of Ex Astris for Spaceship Away was recently interviewed by his local paper, the Morecambe Visitor, who did British comics proud with a two page spread that even included a plug for local comic shop, First Age. You can read the interview "Comic Book Heroes are Fighting Back" online. (We're aware that the sales figures for The Beano are wrong...)

• Along with the latest sales figure for British graphic novels on amazon.co.uk, Steve Holland has just posted a super collection of book covers that have graced the work of EE Doc Smith on Bear Alley. "Starting with The Skylark of Space, I lapped these up when I was 14 and 15," he notes. "Along with novels and stories by Jack Williamson and A. E. Van Vogt, these were my first real exposure to American pulp fiction, which led to reading about the old pulps and, in particular, a fantastic set of books called The History of the Science Fiction Magazine by Mike Ashley." Steve is currently working on Sci-Fi Art: a Graphic History, due for release in January 2009.

Tube Surfing: 20 July 2008

• Tank Girl co-creator Jamie Hewlett has been interviewed by The Guardian. "His is the pen behind Eighties comic-strip heroine Tank Girl, virtual band Gorillaz and the opera Monkey," the article opens, "and soon you'll be seeing his animated title sequence for the Olympics on TV. He tells Mark Kermode how a shy boy turned into a great graphic art rebel...

• Over on Bear Alley, Steve Holland has posted a galley of book covers that have graced the work of the brilliant SF author Eric Frank Russell. Like Steve, I have devoured much of his work, thanks to being introduced to him by peter pinto of Lancaster's Interstellar Master Traders (no offence to perte by the way, but the shop, contrary to the bigger-on-the-inside appearance given by photos on its web site is actually much smaller-on-the-inside!). Older British comics fans may remember peter as one of the people behind Dark They Were and Golden Eyed, one of the first comic shops in the UK back in the 1970s. The founder of that fondly-remembered shop, Derek 'Bram' Stokes, also lives in Lancaster and can be found working behind the till of one of its charity book stores.
He chose some odd titles, did Eric - the Space Willies surely one of the strangest...

• Empire magazine has an online listing for its pick of the 50 greatest comic book characters, starting with Todd MacFarlane's Spawn at Number 50 and Superman at Number One. Good to see British and European characters included such as Tin Tin's Captain Haddock (No. 49), , the Mekon (No. 39), Johnny Alpha (No. 27), Obelix (No. 23), Halo Jones (No. 18) and Judge Dredd (No. 7). Not forgetting, of course, characters created by British writers such as Warren Ellis' Jenny Sparks (No. 44) and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Rorsharch from Watchmen.

• Talking of Watchmen, Entertainment Weekly has an interview with Alan Moore online and Empire has posted a trailer for the movie, set to debut in 2009. Moore continues to remain scathing of film adaptations of comics. "I increasingly fear that nothing good can come of almost any adaptation, and obviously that's sweeping," he says. "There are a couple of adaptations that are perhaps as good or better than the original work. But the vast majority of them are pointless." Moore also talks about The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Vol. III): Century and his upcoming novel, Jerusalem, and also reveals what he currently rates as one of the best TV shows ever: US TV cop series The Wire. (Older readers will recall how Alan Moore and Jamie Delano used to race off from Westminster Comic Mart drinking sessions to watch the latest episode of Hill Street Blues back in the 1980s...).

Round up gathered with thanks to Matthew Badham and the team at Forbidden Planet International

Hewlett's Olympian Task

Comic artist Jamie Hewlett and Blur band member Damon Albarn are to provide visuals for BBC Sport's marketing campaign and titles for the forthcoming Olympic Games, based on the traditional Chinese folklore Journey To The West.

The campaign, which will air in late July, will include animations and music especially produced by Hewlett and Albarn. with BBC Sport Executive Producer Jonathan Bramley describing the project as "a really exciting collaboration.

"To work with such renowned artists as Jamie and Damon is a real plus for BBC Sport," he said. "Their treatment of the trail and titles will kick start our Olympic coverage in a really different, energetic way."

London-based Hewlett (perhaps best known to comics fans as the co-creator of Tank Girl and the band, Gorillaz) worked with Albarn alongside the BBC to adapt Journey To The West, an epic quest for enlightenment, into the Olympic trail and titles, developing the animation and music especially for the BBC.

The BBC says campaign will feature the characters of Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy using Olympic sports on their journey to Beijing and the Bird's Nest stadium. The sports represented include gymnastics, hammer, sprinting and diving.

"The idea is that you tell the entire story of Journey To The West in a two-minute opening sequence," expalined Hewlett, "which is basically them on their way to the Olympic stadium, the Birds' Nest stadium."

The Beijing Olympics marketing campaign will feature promotional activity across TV, radio, online, mobile and interactive, and will also play throughout the Beijing Olympics programming via title sequences, in programme graphics and set design.

BBC Sport Marketing worked with retained agency RKCR to develop the strategic direction and creative realisation of the idea while Red Bee Media produced the trails and title sequence with Zombie Flesheaters (you've got to love that company name!) and Passion Pictures.

The aim is to target younger audiences through high profile websites such as Facebook, Bebo, MSN and social networking sites as well as mobile activity.

• The Journey to the West folklore is based on characters taken from the story of Monkey King, one of the four classic novels written by Wu Chen-en during the Ming Dynasty (1500–1584). The story has many layers of meaning and may be read on many different levels such as a quest, fantasy, personal search for self-cultivation, or a political/social satire.

The myths have also inspired comics, manga, anime and games. but in the West, its best known modern interpretation is probably the 1970s TV series Monkey, translated into English by the BBC. You have to wonder if they'll repeat it. (The complete series was released on DVD in 2004).

In 1986 Chinese Central Televsion made Journey to the West, noted for its faithfulness to the original novel and considered by many as a classic. The SciFiChannel made The Monkey King in 2001, also called The Lost Empire.





The story is an account of a monk, Xuan Zang (602-664), who went to India in the 7th Century to seek Buddhist scriptures to bring back to China.