UK Simpsons Comics reaches 200th issue

Next Thursday is something of a milestone for British Simpsons fans as the UK edition of Simpsons Comics reaches its milestone 200th issue.

Based on the world’s favourite family, Simpsons Comics is the official magazine of the cartoon, published by Titan Magazines, and comes packed with adventures featuring Homer, Bart, Marge, Lisa, Maggie and all the residents of Springfield.

Fans of the show will want to grab a copy of this landmark issue, wrapped in a specially drawn cover by the show's creator Matt Groening and his creative team - and the issue comes with another hilarious Homer Simpson comic strip story. In a panic about missing ‘Free Pizza Day’ due to the flu, Homer ingests the entire contents of the medicine bottle! However, if he thought a world without pizza would be bad, his subconscious (flu-syrup addled) mind takes him to a world without beer!

“In this year of celebrations and anniversaries, it is time for the first family of Springfield to join the party!", notes distributor Comag.

This special issue also reveals the best covers of the last 15 years – as chosen by the discerning readers and includes a competition to win one of a 100 great Simpsons prizes.

Simpsons Comics No.200 features a free squirting umbrella gift, available in three fantastic designs, including the super-rare, highly collectable Radioactive Man!

“We are all so excited about hitting this milestone issue of Simpsons Comics," commented loingtime editor Martin Eden. "And we're still going strong - just wait ‘til you see some of the amazing covers and strips we've got coming up over the next few months!”

Happy Fifth Birthday, Panel Borders!

We plugged the latest Panel Borders show earlier today, but presenter and producer Alex Fitch has just let us know that yesterday marked his 5th anniversary of making programmes for Resonance FM in London, so here's a look back at just some of the people he's talked to since 2006, with links to the podcasts...

Actors include Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead), Philip Glenister (Life on Mars / Ashes to Ashes), Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange / Never Apologise), Brent Spiner (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Susannah York (They shoot horses don't they? / The Struggles for Poland)

Artists: Ray Harryhausen (Animator: Jason and the Argonauts / Clash of the Titans), Raymond Briggs (The Snowman / When the Wind Blows), Dave Gibbons (Watchmen / Give me Liberty), David Lloyd (V for Vendetta / Kickback), Gilbert Shelton (The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers)

Writers: Chris Carter (The X-Files), Paul Cornell (Doctor Who), Chris Claremont (X-Men/Captain Britain), Cory Doctorow (Little Brother / Overclocked), Dev Hynes (Lightspeed Champion / Ctrl Alt Shift Unmasks Corruption), Charlie Higson (The Fast Show / The Enemy / Young Bond), Charlie Kaufman (Synecdoche, New York / Being John Malkovich), Alan Moore (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen / From Hell), Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials / The DFC) /

Directors: Gerry Anderson (Thunderbirds / UFO), Dario Argento (Suspiria / Tenebre), Marc Caro (The City of Lost Children / Dante 01), Joe Dante (Gremlins / The Movie Orgy), Peter Greenaway (Nightwatching / The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover), Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre / Eggshells), Park Chan-Wook (Oldboy / I'm a Cyborg, but it's okay) and Michael Winterbottom (Code 46 / 24 hour party people)

It's an impressive list, so I think a round of applause is hereby in order. Here's to five more, Alex - at least!

• Full alphabetical list at http://panelborders.wordpress.com/index with a handful of videos at http://www.youtube.com/panelborders

Nick Abadzis: Apollo Remembered

Here's a fab image from Nick Abadzis he's sent us for our Moon Landing Comics Celebration album.

Nick should need no introduction here: his comics and contributions to British comics are legendary, with strips featured in The Times and elsewhere.

"I did this portrait of the Apollo 11 crew for a strip that ran in a DK book," he says, "but then later tweaked it just for my own satisfaction."

Nick is of course no stranger to using space travel as a story theme. His superb graphic novel, Laika, a wonderful story inspired by the first dog in space, was released in 2007, and is highly recommended...

He's also written two Torchwood strips for Titan's official magazine, coming out next month and the month after, drawn by the excellent Paul Grist.

"Everything else I'm doing is long-term stuff," he reveals, "the follow-up to Laika for First Second, etc..." Whatever he's doing it will be worth the wait and we're delighted he found time to join in with our Moon Landing comics project.

• View Moon Landing 40th Anniversary: A Comics Celebration" - a gallery of illustrations and comic art inspired by space exploration.
Contributions are still very welcome: latest additions include an illustration by Chris Wood, who runs the British Horror Films website, and a humour strip by Paul Eldridge.

If you don't want to join our forum and upload art but would like to join in with the celebrations, simply send your work to johnfreeman6-moonlandinganniversaryart@yahoo.co.uk. Please ensure images are no larger than 2MB in size and include a brief bio and web link so we can give you deserved credit. Thanks!

Panel Borders Goes SciFi Mad!

We don't often cover every podcast or radio show Alex Fitch and his team are about to broadcast, but he's got plenty lined up we think downthetubes fans will want to check out, so hold on to your hats...


• This week's Strip! show is titled Doctor Who comics now... in which Alex Fitch talks to the creators of a couple of recent innovative Doctor Who comics about bringing a new angle to the popular franchise. Leah Moore and John Reppion wrote the recent one off comic The Whispering Gallery for IDW, which saw the Doctor and Martha exploring a terrifying museum on an alien planet.

Alex also talks to Richard Morris, creator of the popular and unauthorised web comic, The Ten Doctors - an epic serialised graphic novel which celebrates almost every aspect you can think of from 46 years of the Time Lord's adventures.
 
Strip! Doctor Who comics now airs at 5.00pm on Thursday 16the July, repeated 11.30pm Sunday 19th July on Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com / podcast soon after transmission at www.panelborders.wordpress.com
 
Alex is also celebrating the Moon Landing anniversary with I'm ready for my close-up: Fly me to the Moon, featuring interviews with astronomer and broadcaster Sir Patrick Moore and Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson.
 
Sir Patrick Moore was one of many who covered the events of the Apollo 11 mission live on TV and discusses the events of that day with Alex as well as the highlights of his six decades presenting The Sky at Night.

Alex also talks to Gerry Anderson about how the space race and technological innovations of the 1960s inspired such shows as Fireball XL5 and Thunderbirds.

Network DVD recently released a special collector's edition of the entire Fireball XL5 series, which is well worth tracking down, since in addition to all the show's episodes - including a specially colourized episode - it features a new, exclusive documentary, Drawn in Supermarionation chronicling the comic strip adaptations of the early AP Films series and features contributions from director of merchandising Keith Shackleton and artists Bill Mevin, Mike Noble and Colin Page (See full news story).
 
The interview with Sir Patrick is available to download now from www.sci-fi-london.com/audio and the interview with Gerry Anderson will be broadcast on Thursday 16th July at 10.30pm Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com
 
Online from 19th July (also at www.sci-fi-london.com/audio) is Reality Check: Torchwood in Print. In a panel discussion recorded live at a meeting of the British Fantasy Society, late 1980s Doctor Who script editor Andrew Cartmel talks to a quartet of Torchwood novelists - Mark Morris, Sarah Pinborough, Guy Adams and Joe Lidster - about bringing the show to the printed page and expanding the adventures of Captain Jack, Ianto and Gwen to the length of a hardback novel.

Finally, if your interest in science fiction and fantasy goes wider than stories inspired by TV shows, then check out Panel Borders: Small press Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Continuing the podcaster's Sci-Fi comics month on the show, this features a couple of interviews recorded at comic book conventions with small press creators who are working in the SF and Fantasy genres.

In an interview recorded at this year's Bristol Comics Expo, Dickon Harris talks to comic book creator and musician Dave Lander who contributes to the anthology comic Decadence which in the last couple of instalments has been heavily SF themed. Dave also produced a CD soundtrack to go with recent issues and there are extracts in the podcast.

Also, Alex Fitch talks to Rob Jackson about his fantasy comics, Random Journeys and Bog Wizards, which combine unreliable narrators, humour and magical landscapes, in an interview recorded at a pub in the East End after the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing.
 
Originally broadcast on 9th July check it out vial this link. (And don't forget Alex has also interviewed the brilliant Paul Rainey as part of this thread - check that out here)

• For a full list of all Panel Borders comics podcasts to date, visit: www.tinyurl.com/panelborders
 
• Follow Panel Borders on twitter: http://twitter.com/panelborders and facebook: http://tinyurl.com/facebookborders

Tube Surfing: Cursitor Doom, Nitro!, More Moon Stuff and Comics in Limbo...

• Bear Alley Books has just published the first inked and colour 'rough' for their upcoming Cursitor Doom collection. "I've put this together from a low-res scan e-mailed by artist John Ridgway, so this isn't the final version," says publisher Steve Holland, "But I probably won't change much. I was going to try and do something clever with the original logo but it's not something I ever particularly liked and I do like the elegant simplicity of the type."
You can now pre-order both Phantom Patrol (which features a cover by Chris Weston) and Cursitor Doom, due for relase in August, from the Bear Alley Books web site.

• UK publisher Future is to re-launch its UK boys 5-13 targeted Official Jetix Magazine as Nitro! in September. The first issue will feature kid-related news, toys, comic strips and features, covering characters from TV, movies and games. It's expected to have a 45,000 copy launch run and will offer at least four 'covermounted' gifts per foil-bagged issue.

• More Moon stuff: The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum has created a website that allows visitors to relive the flight of Apollo 11 and the Moon landing. Called We Choose the Moon, you can follow the mission from pre-launch to blast-off to the actual Moon landing on Monday.

• BleedingCool has a another feature on Comics We Just Can't Wait For – But Have To, including Warren Ellis and Colleen Doran’s Stealth Tribes – a sci-fi cloudsourcing cyberpunk original graphic novel Collen is still apparently drawing it for Vertigo - but has been for five years; and Warchild by Alan Moore, a series script bought by Rob Liefeld, he hasn’t progressed publication because he says he hasn’t found an artists who is up to the script.

• The Forbidden Planet International blog reports that comics creator Simon Gurr, who collaborated with Eugene Byrne on the special (and well received) Darwin graphic biography for the great scientist’s 200th anniversary earlier this year, has been chosen for a high profile public artwork celebrating famous Bristolians.
Bristol Festival of Ideas and Bristol Cultural Development Partnership recently announced that Simon Gurr, Bristol artist and illustrator, has been chosen to create a new permanent artwork on the theme of Some Who Have Made Bristol Famous, following a citywide call for ideas and submission of proposals. The commission, worth £10,000, is funded by donations from two Bristol patrons. Read the full FPI piece here

• Good news for Futurama fans. Not only is it be returning to our small screens, but more toys are on the way. io9 reports KidRobot is coming out with this cute line of Futurama dolls, due for release next month.

• Gaming news site Kaoktu reports that 2000AD owners Rebellion have been picking through the remains of games company Vivendi’s old portfolio of intellectual property, discarded amidst the company’s merger with Activision, and have found a number of bargains. Among the unwanted, unloved IPs now obtained are Ground Control, Evil Genius, Empire Earth, Lords of the Realm and Lords of Magic. They just can't seem to stop buying stuff, can they? But surely they must now have enough cool properties to launch a game title-based comic as well as 2000AD?

Moon Landing Comics Celebration: Andrew Cheverton

This is Andrew Cheverton's contribution to the downthetubes "Moon Landing 40th Anniversary: A Comics Celebration" - a gallery of illustrations and comic art inspired by the Apollo expedition and space exploration which is being published on the downthetubes forum.

It sums up perfectly how I felt about the Moon Landing back in 1969 (yes, I know I'm showing my age!), so I have no hesitation in giving it wider exposure this morning.

Andrew creates small press comics under the Angry Candy name, ranging in genre from westerns to science fiction to horror and all those odd little spaces in between. Check out his work at angrycandy.co.uk

More contributions to our Moon Landing celebrations are very welcome: if you don't want to join our forum and upload art but would like to join in with the celebrations, simply send your work to johnfreeman6-moonlandinganniversaryart@yahoo.co.uk. Please ensure images are no larger than 2MB in size and include a brief bio and web link so we can give you deserved credit.

Tube Surfing, 11 July 2009: Starblazer Sculptures, Moon Landings and an Oxfam ComicFest

• Dundee-based artist Trevor Gordon has been in touch, to let you us of a collaborative art project going ahead in Dundee at the Mills Observatory. "I am working with archival material from DC Thomsons and creating sculptural pieces influenced by the work," he reveals. "There will a number of original Starblazer works on display and a number of strange sculptural pieces in a range of mediums.
"[DC Thomson staffer and former Starblazer editor] Bill McLoughlin has been extremely friendly and supportive throughout the process and it has been a joy to get my hands on these cherished images," Trevor reveals, " and [artist] Enrique Alcatena has also been a delight and there will be a wee note on his thoughts on Starblazer also." More details as soon as we get them: meanwhle, check out Trevor's work at www.trevoragordon.com

• Jeremy Briggs has completed a series of Moon Landing Anniversary posts for downthetubes, which will be published daily starting on Wednesday (15th July). The posts feature art and comics work published during or after the first Moon Landing. Meanwhile, our Comics Celebration of the 40th Anniversary gathers pace, with our album of art now featuring work by Adam Grose, Martin Baines, Ian Duerden and others. The album can be embedded on any web site to help celebrate this major endeavour of human exploration. Further art - illustration, strip, cartoons is welcome: If you don't want to join our forum and upload art but would like to join in with the celebrations, simply send your work to johnfreeman6-moonlandinganniversaryart@yahoo.co.uk. Please ensure images are no larger than 2MB in size.

• Talking of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, we spotted a reprint of the Daily Mirror for 21 July or thereabouts in WH Smiths today, complete with DVD of footage of the Apollo landing: it will be interesting to see what Garth was up to (and The Perishers!) on that momentous day in 1969...

• The British Film Institute's "One Giant Leap" season in London continues this coming week with screenings of the films 2001: A Space Odyssey, Countdown and Moonwalk One, the premiere of newly remastered Director's Cut in high definition of Theo Kamecke's film, commissioned by NASA to cover their historic Apollo 11 moonshot. With an atmospheric original score by Charles Morrow and a moody narration by Laurence Luckinbill, Kamecke's documentary has been described as perhaps the most significant time-capsule record of Apollo 11 ever made.

• Our thanks to comic creator Emma Vieceli, who kindly gave downthtubes a positive plug on her blog (despite Jeremy Briggs saying that she looked like a Manga character...) - view her comments here. Emma was recently interviewed for BBC Blast, revealing How To Get Creative!

• Graeme Neil Reid has announced he will be joining a huge number of comic creators at the Thought Bubble in Leeds at the end of November, so if you are thinking of going to any comic cons this year that would be one to consider.

• Talking of events, Insomnia Publications will be part of the line up at the Oxfam Comics Fest on 18th July at Macdonald Road, Edinburgh from 12 noon to 3.00pm. We've given this a plug recently, but Oxfam has been in touch with an update, reporting there will be discussion panels on Comics In Scotland and The Ups And Downs Of Small Press Publishing, featuring writers Ferg Handley (Marvel Heroes, Commando) and David Bishop (2000AD, Doctor Who) and other guests.
"We'll be holding a silent auction of some great comic book related merchandise, including a piece of original artwork from Spectacular Spider-Man," reveals organiser James McConnell, "signed by the artist, presented with a page of the script, signed by the writer, and other excellent items.
"There will also be an exclusive sneak peek at some never before seen pages from the upcoming Burke & Hare graphic novel from Insomnia Publications, and a stall selling comics and graphic novels."
•Tickets are £3.00 at all Oxfam Bookshops in Edinburgh, on sale now!

Ex Astris Artist Celebrates Moon Landings

Mike Nicoll, the creator of CGI comic Ex Astris featured in Spaceship Away, has sent us this fab piece of art to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first human moon landing, which forms part of a gallery of art marking the event over on thedownthetubes forum.

Several artists have contributed images so far for our celebration, including Doctor Who illustrator Colin Howard, Space Age Magazine editor Bob Bello and the Etherington Brothers.

More contributions are welcome. More details on how to contribute here