London MCM Expo prepares for comics invasion

The Comic Village at the upcoming London MCM Expo is looking more like a metropolis, with hundreds of fantastic creators already signed up for the 29-30 May show - including a visit from former Marvel UK editor in chief Richard Starkings, currently and rightly revelling in his film deal for Elephantmen.

Stars returning to Excel this May include Ben Templesmith, Svetlana Chmakova, Jamie McKelvie and Kieron Gillen, and the event will also be seeing a host of new faces such as Action Comics and Captain Britain writer Paul Cornell, Robin Furth and lettering-legend and Active Images president and first tiger, Richard Starkings.

Home-grown independent creators will be out in force too, with the London MCM Expo welcoming the likes of Marc Ellerby, OrangUtan Comics, Adam Cadwell, Sweatdrop Studios... far too many to list here, but you can check out the full list of attendees over at www.londonexpo.com/show_features/comic_village__expo.html

The Comic Village will also sport something of an international flavour this time around, with comic circles, writers and artists making the trip to London’s Excel Centre from Spain, Germany, USA and Japan.

And speaking of Japan, the anime presence at the Expo is set to be as strong as ever, with the latest releases and top deals from all of the major UK distributors, not to mention leading voice artist Kyle Hebert (Gurren Lagaan, Naruto, Full Metal Alchemist, Bleach) attending as a special guest.

• To find out about the London MCM Expo in general, please visit www.londonexpo.com

Into the Whispering Gallery

US publisher IDW release a special one-shot Doctor Who title later this month. Titled The Whispering Gallery, superstar artist Ben Templesmith tackles his first full Who project, alongside comic book writers Leah Moore & John Reppion.

In The Whispering Gallery, the TARDIS lands in a maze-like gallery filled with thousands of talking pictures, and the Doctor and Martha discover they’ve come across a planet where showing emotion has been outlawed. The inhabitants have good reason for their supression, but it wouldn’t be like the Doctor to leave them in fear of truly living.

Leah and John have been fans of Doctor Who for nearly as long as they can remember, and pitched IDW Publishing on their story idea for the after Leah had a dream about a two-page spread one night.

While that may prompt riotous laughter from those who get the answer to "Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?" as "It Came to Me in a Vision," Leah says the couple had a hard time initially thinking up an original storyline.

“Everything we could think up had already been done, or was not the right kind of story. We went off to bed one night after brainstorming fruitlessly for hours, and I went to sleep worrying that we’d not be able to think of anything and miss out on writing it altogether.”

After the dream, Leah says she woke up knowing clearing what they would do for Doctor Who, and got the story turned around very quickly after that.

Moore and Reppion became involved in the project after being approached by artist Ben Templesmith, an admirer of their work and whose credits include Star Wars and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

“Ben actually approached Leah via the modern miracle of Twitter and asked her if we’d be interested in pitching for a Doctor Who one-shot with him as the artist,” explains John. “Naturally, we were thrilled and said yes immediately. Ben is a fantastic artist and we both really admire his work, so it’s great to be able to work with him on such a brilliant little project."

John has some strange memories of Doctor Who from his youth. In an interview about The Whispering gallery project for Comic Book Resources, he revealed his earliest Who memory was an inflatable version of the TARDIS. “It may even have belonged to one of my Uncles before me, I'm not sure,” Reppion said. “Doctor Who is just part of the fabric of UK mainstream culture, really; it's like being asked when you were first exposed to cowboys or something like that. Doctor Who has always been there so far as I remember. The Doctor of my youth was Sylvester McCoy.”

John also has fond memories of the Marvel UK Doctor Who comic book crossovers with the likes of Death’s Head, which as we recently reported, is to feature in a new collection of Seventh Doctor adventures from Panini UK, A Cold Day in Hell.

• Doctor Who: The Whispering Gallery goes on sale in the US and Canada on 29 February from IDW Publishing. Diamond order code: DEC084084. The title is not officially available in the UK

• Ben Templesmith's Blog
• Leah Moore & John Reppion's New and Improved Web Site

Tube Surfing: 20 January 2009

• On the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration as 44th president of the United States, surely only a warped mind like The Guardian's Steve Bell could come up with a cartoon like this, published in yesterday's paper. Well, it made me laugh out loud... Art © Steve Bell, More Cartoons by Steve here

• downthetubes' Jeremy Briggs has been doing a little digging into the mysterious trailers for the upcoming activities of London Underground Comics. "I searched on the 176 that LUC are referencing," he informs us. "There's a gallery space called 176 very close to Camden Market, were LUC used to be, which is open at weekends and has a cafe. It looks like the sort of place that would go for a zine fair style event..." Could this be what LUC are planning?

• Beano and Fortean Times cartoonist Hunt Emerson has been in touch to let us know about some updates to his web site (www.largecow.com), including five new Phil Stamp Covers and two new Beano Poems in the Gallery and information about New Products he has for sale including Ancient Mariner Mugs, t-shirts and tea towels and his classic t-shirt design for that great band The Beat. You're invited to take a look!

• The DFC's Faz Choudhury, creator of Dead Pets for the comic (and one of the artists involved in the web comic jam Huzzah along with Paul Harrison-Davies and others), has posted some early samples of the strip on his blog. "Before being given the go ahead to start, I did a sample piece to give a general idea of how the strip might look," he explains. "The characters changed a little from this initial piece, Frazzle the cat, in particular." Dead Pets is also being serialized in The Guardian - read episode two and three.

• (via Warren Ellis): Ben Templesmith is drawing a new Doctor Who strip, scripted by Leah Moore and John Reppion. "It's a one-shot comic from IDW," says Ben, who has posted some sample pages on Flickr. "It would make a cool tv episode if it weren't a comic."

• There's a new podcast interview with 2000AD and DC Comics artist Steve Pugh online via ComicBookPage. "It's the first time I've been interviewed over the phone, and I seem to have developed a charming girlish giggle," he notes on his blog.

• Talking of interviews, Forbidden Planet International has just posted one with Super Sam creator Darryl Cunningham (it's more than a year since FPI posted the very first Super-Sam and John-of-the-Night on the FPI blog), while Adam Cadwell, the main man behind the Manchester Comix Collective, has been interviewed by Bugpowder.

• Time for Werewolves! Part 3 of Frontier is now appearing in issue 33 of The DFC, available by subscription. Just as things were getting weird they now get… scary as werewolves threaten our heroes, Mitch and Daisy in this new strip by Andrew Wildman and Jason Cobley. More info at www.weirdwildwest.com

• And finally... here at downthetubes we were very sad to hear about the death of artist Tony Hart (read obituaries from The Telegraph, Guardian and Indpendent), an artist who inspired thousands down the years to pick up a pen or pencil and start drawing thanks to his appearances on shows such as Vision On and Take Hart. Many comics creators have paid tribute to him over the past few days. "He had a gentleness and kindness that you just don't see any more on TV," noted Jon Haward, while Gary Erskine says "He made drawing and painting and sculpting fun and encouraged a whole generation to explore their potential. Even cutting up paper was a marvel to watch and what he did with simple coloured chalk shapes still surprises and warms me."
"I loved Morph, and the Professor, but for me, it was always about Tony," says Rufus Dayglo. "He truly inspired generations of artists..and I'm certainly one of them."
"Hart managed to get a generation of kids picking up materials and making things, which gets you halfway towards being an artist," commented artist Michael Landy in The Guardian. "Who could replace him? None of the artists I know. Not one of us can draw like he could."
Lew Stringer noting that in addition to his many TV credits Hart was himself a comics artist, drawing strips for TV Comic in the 1950s, including Sooty and Packi the Elephant.

• You can send your own tributes to Tony's family via his official web site