Girly Comic Website Returns

Via the Forbidden Planet blog, we're pleased to report that the Girly Comic website is once again back in business and being updated.

A hacker attack back in 2009 caused severe setbacks for the website, but now it's back in action and the Girly Comic team is going to concentrate on the site rather than the printed version for the time being.

Comic strips will be posted every Monday, a mixture of stories from the print version and brand new material. On Wednesdays there'll be reviews of comics of interest to Girly Comic readers and on Fridays, Selina Lock, the editor, will be blogging about the world of comics in general.

Further good news is that the Girly Comic is on the long list for the British Fantasy Award for Best Comic/Graphic Novel 2009

This is a welcome return for an old favourite.

In Memoriam: Adrian Kermode

Artist Terry Wiley and the late Adrian Kermode and partner. Photo courtesy of Terry.
"I'm sorry this picture is a bit gormless," says Terry. "It's just that he was the sort of chap who would always
pull a funny face in pictures; believe me, this is the least gormless one I could find..."

downthetubes regrets to report the death of British journalist and comics writer Adrian Kermode who was found dead at his home on Saturday morning, cause of death at present unknown. He was 45.

As a journalist, Adrian contributed to independent titles Vicious and Borderline Magazine and was co-creator with Terry Wiley on the much-loved Petra Etcetera, which won the National Comics Award for Best Independent British Comic in 2001, and was nominated again in 2002, and Deadman & Hyde (the latter reviewed here on comics bulletin) and writer of Doctor Sorrow, drawn by Mike Juniper.

He also contributed a number of strips to The Girly Comic such as Doctor Lovemonkey.

"We've lost someone great," notes Andrew Luke, previously saying of an issue of Petra Etcetra, drawn by Terry Wiley, "Adrian Kermode’s script captures the minute, commonly visible social and accompanying appliances with links galore. It’s quite physically facilitating, Any sweetly-sickly personal turmoil is coated with an edge from a laughter production manufacturing, which has a dual smart infection option... delicious."

"Sadly, in the last few years the demands of Ady's civil service career effectively put an end to his writing," notes 'Israeli in his tribute. "He'll be sorely missed by his many friends."

"It's going to take a long time to figure out what we're going to do without him is all I can say," says Terry Wiley.

Girly Comic Collected

The first collection of stories culled from the pages of British indie press title The Girly Comic, has just been published, featuring the talents of British comic industry professionals such as John Stokes, Mike Collins and Simon Fraser, veteran indy creators such as Lee “Inner City Pagan” Kennedy, Terry “Sleaze Castle” Wiley and Jeremy Dennis, alongside exciting new talents from the British Small Press scene and beyond.

The Girly Comic features self-contained comic strips across all genres with female protagonists, from the autobiographical tales of Lee Kennedy to the Two Fat Ladies meets Ghostbusters of Oddcases by Alistair Pulling and Bevis Musson; from Terry Wiley's Surreal School Stories to Martin Millar's Good Fairies of New York with Simon Fraser.

The title, published by Factor Fiction (who are also publishers of webcomic Violent!) has already earned high praise with the Comic Creators Guild describing it as “An absolute gem of a publication” and Savantmag describing the comic as “One of the undisputed stars of the small press”.

“Make them rich, and hopefully they'll keep on doing what they do for a long, long time!” says Mike Carey in his introduction.

• The 280-page The Girly Comic Book 1, which will be officially launched at the Thought Bubble conventiion in Leeds on 15th November, is available in hardback priced 15 from Factor Fiction. For more information, visit our website: www.factorfictionpress.co.uk.

• Girly webcomics at: www.factorfictionpress.co.uk/webcomic
• Violent! webcomics at: www.factorfictionpress.co.uk/violentwebcomic