All set for the festival...

Lancaster's Ashton Memorial will be filled with comics fans tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to the event.

Local artist Ant Mercer has done a top job of PRing the thing, so I hope all his hard work pays off in terms of punters. That said, there's enough small press people coming to more than make it a great day, we've got the final issue of Eagle Flies Again on sale and I'm sure I'll have chance to read the latest Spaceship Away, the spooky Misty Comic tribute I got in the post earlier this week, and catch up with some friends. Fab!

Pingu for Number One!

While I was working at Marvel UK, Paul Neary once foolishly confessed admiration for the animation Pingu. Once the laughter had died away he made me watch the show with a view to a potential pitch for a comic and for this reason, this wonderful animated show - perhaps the best-known Swiss export after clocks and chocolate - always strikes a chord when I read some news about it.

Now, Pingu is making a bid for Christmas Number One chart success with a new single, 7-11, from indie-disco group Eskimo Dance. It was produced by Hot Animation for children's entertainment producers Hit Entertainment, who now own UK rights to Pingu - as well as owning Bob the Builder, Thomas & Friends and Fireman Sam - and made 52 new episodes of the five-minute show in 2004, currently airing on kids channel CBeebies.

Digital Spy reports the promo has already become one of the most downloaded videos on YouTube racking up 27,000 views in less than a week.

So, without further ado, let me just say: Pingu Rocks!!

Mistaken Identity

Working on the virtual-lancaster.net web site as now only sometimes I do, just occasionally we get information from people in one of America's Lancasters rather than Lancaster, England.

Case in point is a very courteous note we had from the band Ivy Hill wanting to know our press deadlines top promote a new tour in Massachusetts USA, but hey, I'm not going to hold it aginst them because I'd probably never heard of them, ever, otherwise (well, unless they make it big and I wish them luck with that) and I really like what I hear on their official web site - a powerful compilation of r&b, funk, jazz, pop, blues and reggae.

Well worth checking out, in my limited musical opinion...

Eagle Flies Again 14

All being well, printers permitting, Eagle Flies Again #14 is on course to be on sale at this weekend's Lancaster Comics Festival.

Wrapped in a smashing Scream!-inspired cover by Graeme Neil Reid, the 36-page final issue includes an all-time British Comics Characters top ten, with suggestions from Ricard Starkings, Tim Perkins, Hunt Emerson and others; a print version of the John Wagner interview which recently ran on the FPI web blog; plus a host of features on Scream, Warlord, girls in boys comics, a Dan Bartton strip drawn by Andrew Chiu, and more.