British 'Showcase Comic' preps for October launch

A new title highlighting British comics talent is currently in pre-production, and set to launch later this year.

Announced last November, the British Showcase Comic from Markosia, dedicated to promoting the best indie British Talent working in Comics and Graphic Novels, will launch in Cardiff in October

The line up will include the work by creators such as Cy Dethan, Amrit Birdi, Graeme Howard, Russ Leach, Peter Mason, Cheuk Po, Pete Rogers, Matthew Soffe and Nic Wilkinson.

• The official page for the British Showcase comic book anthology is on facebook here

 

•  Visit Markosia's website to see the great titles they already have on offer. www.markosia.com

Cancertown creeps back to scare readers again

We can no longer protect you. Cancertown 2: Blasphemous Tumours is coming... and the creative tram is now accepting pre-orders for the book before its official launch in November.

If you order now, you're also in with a chance to win a framed piece of art by the book's artist, Graeme Howard.

 

Set six months after the events of the indie comics horror hit Cancertown: An Inconvenient Tooth, Vince Morley is a dangerously sick man. Bugf**k is in a psychiatric hospital, sticky fingers picking through the darkest corners of the mind that brought Cancertown into existence. The crossing points between Morley’s two realities are wearing thin and all the rules are changing. 

 

Within Cancertown, something new has appeared – a creature of horrific violence and limitless rage. The foundations are shaking and the old powers are falling, one by one. Papercut, deadliest of the Cancertown players, seeks out Morley to claim the favour he owes her – a favour that could cost him more than just his life.

Written by Cy Dethan, with pencils by Graeme Howard, colour by Peter Mason and lettered by Nic Wilkinson, Cancertown 2: Blasphemous Tumours is set for a November 2012 from Markosia - so get one ordered now before it gets drowned in the latest Marvel/DC crossover melee and never makes it to your local comic shop.

In May 2009, an unknown team unleashed their first creator-owned work, Cancertown, on an unsuspecting world. As the scrappy indie outsider flew off the stands at Bristol Con at its astounding launch weekend, it earned high praise from the likes of comic book legend Bryan Talbot and others, including myself.

Suitably encouraged, Cy and company are now back with a second helping of Cancertown and if the art they've shown off on their blog and via MyEBook is anything to go by, this sequel is even more disturbing but enthralling as the first, and it's likely to be a smash hit when it launches at the Thought Bubble Sequential Arts Festival in Leeds in November.

The Cancer Cell has grown and mutated to include the talents of Graeme (Dick Turpin and the Crimson Plague) Howard on pencils and amazing new discovery Peter Mason on colours.

 

The book is the focus of a Pre-order Offer prior to its Thought Bubble debut:

• £12 Cancertown 2 (prepaid, pre-order for posting or collection)
• £15 Cancertown 2 (buy from the table at Thought Bubble Launch) 
• £20 Cancertown 1 and 2 (pre-order or from the table for posting or collection)

Everybody who pre-orders will be entered into a draw to win a framed original sketch of the Cancertown characters by Graeme Howard.

Every pre-order will also have a DVD containing the following:

• Scripts for all six chapters 
• Script for a previously unseen Crosshair origin short story 
• Cover concepts 
• Full chapter in inks Full chapter in colours 

Postage: £2.50 UK, £4.00 Rest of World. Payment must be received for pre-orders by 1st November 2012 to qualify for pre-order price, competition and extras DVD. Normal cover price of the book is £16.99 (180 pages, colour). You can pay by cheque or Paypal.

• Please visit http://theraggedman.blogspot.co.uk/p/special-offers-and-pre-orders.html or email cy@cydethan.com for more details, to place your order or for payment information.

• Read a free 11-page preview: http://www.myebook.com/index.php?option=ebook&id=128757

Markosia's mind-bending comic releases!

It’s not often you get to release a book that causes people to worry about reality and feel unstable after reading it - which is how I felt after reading one of them. It’s almost unthinkable, dangerous even, that you might release two such subversive creations at once. That, however, is just what Markosia Enterprises is planning to do this November. Stay tuned to find out what will be left standing when these monsters collide.

Broadcast: The TV Doodles of Henry Flint

“The mind of Henry Flint is a galaxy of beautiful atrocities – a nightmare factory where the bestial becomes benign, the mundane magical. Henry Flint is at once a full-service doodling savant and a one-man alien zoo, and this never-before-seen collection of his personal work is an attempt to chart a single, crooked leg of the artistic journey he takes daily. Welcome to the best of the bestiary.”

Broadcast offers something very different from Henry Flint’s narrative artwork, familiar to fans worldwide from his books for 2000AD, Vertigo and Dark Horse. With writer Cy Dethan acting as guide to the reader, the book is at once a treasure map and an open invitation to explore Henry’s personal work and zen-like experiments in art.

The Indifference Engine: A Holographic Novel 

“Responding to a strangely specific job advertisement, Alan Blake, a distinctly ordinary twenty-something suburban slacker finds himself in the middle of an inter-dimensional task force staffed entirely by superhuman alternate versions of himself. Struggling to fit in, he uncovers a conspiracy that strikes at the very heart of the organisation – a conspiracy that only he can stop.”

“Being a science fiction fan,” says Wayne Hall of Sci-Fi Pulse, “I sometimes ache for a comic that will challenge my perceptions of the world, of the universe, of my way of thinking... The Indifference Engine scratches that itch spectacularly!"

This is Cy Dethan’s third original graphic novel from Markosia and he is joined this time around by hot-shot new artist Rob Carey, along with colourist Mel Cook and letterer Nic Wilkinson. Following the convention-busting performance of the horror-noir Cancertown and the surreal gangland thriller Slaughterman’s Creed, it already looks as if Dethan’s first creator-owned sci-fi story, which I'm happy to declare a gripping, nihilist alternate reality adventure, so let's hope it will be enjoying the same levels of success.

Dethan first explored the genre for Markosia as writer of their Starship Troopers line.

The digital version of the book has already been incredibly popular. Cy Dethan's script is superb, and this is a tightly-written multi-universe-spanning adventure tale and it's...definitely a book to look out for.

• A free preview of The Indifference Engine can be read at http://www.cydethan.com/index.php?page=free-online-preview. 

• Pre-order Broadcast through the Markosia website: http://www.markosia.com/wordpress/titles/broadcast-the-tv-doodles-of-henry-flint/

• Pre-order The Indifference Engine through the Markosia website: http://www.markosia.com/wordpress/titles/The-Indifference-Engine/

Simon Wyatt's Unbelievable gets New Publisher

Writer and artist Simon Wyatt has signed aboard with UK publisher Markosia Enterprises who will publish his story Unbelievable - The Man Who Ate Daffodils.

The story was orignally destined for release by the now defunct Insomnia Publishing.

"I'm thrilled that my beastly tale will finally be unleashed," Simon, whose projects also include Danick and the Dragon for Orang Utan, told downthetubes.

"The first chapter of Volume 1 will be available for digital download sometime in the first quarter of 2011."

The story opens in the remote mining village of Bryn Boncath has its share of stories, of local legends, of half believed histories. It is a close knit community, with closely guarded secrets and home to the orphaned Ben Ellis and his grandfather, Emrys, and it has become the scene of a series of bizarre and mysterious deaths.

A new neighbour has moved in. A man long thought dead has returned. Livestock are missing. There are noises in the night. People are afraid to go into out after dark and sightings of a giant hound, or maybe a big cat are on the increase once again.

Suddenly it seems to Ben that what he took to be the tall tales of his grandfather may be more than just stories. It seems that something is stirring in the forests and the mountains around Bryn Boncath. It seems that ancient history is repeating and this time round Ben has an important part to play.

Unbelievable is a dark masterpiece that weaves strands of Welsh legend, modern murder mystery and horror with a dash of crytozoology that wonders: What if seeing isn’t always believing, but believing will allow you to see?

Unbelievable - The Man Who Ate Daffodils  is written and drawn by Simon Wyatt, lettered by Nic Wilkinson, with forewords by monster hunters/authors Nick Redfern (There's Something In The Woods, Three Men Seeking Monsters) and Neil Arnold (MONSTER - The A-Z of Zooform Phenomena and Paranormal London).

• Check out a preview of Unbelievable on myEbook

• Check out Simon's work at http://simonwyatt.blogspot.com and http://swyattart.deviantart.com/


• The Monstrous Art of Simon Wyatt (myEbook)


• Danick and the Dragon (myEbook)

Preview: Markosia's The Indifference Engine by Dethan, Carey

Cy Dethan and Robert Carey's new project, The Indifference Engine, is set to be released soon by publishers Markosia. The team on the book have kindly sent us a review copy of this tightly-written multi-universe-spanning adventure tale -- and it's definitely a book to look out for if you're a fan of alternate timelines and other such SF themes.

Responding to a strangely specific job advertisement, Alan Blake, a distinctly ordinary 20-something suburban slacker finds himself in the middle of an inter-dimensional task force staffed entirely by superhuman alternate versions of himself. Struggling to fit in, he uncovers a conspiracy that strikes at the very heart of the organisation – a conspiracy that only he can stop.

Alan, by any credible standard, is a waste of good skin - a directionless and ambitionless slacker whose single most notable characteristic is that he makes other people feel good about themselves in comparison to him.

Alan considers himself a good listener, but it’s more complex than that. It’s almost like he absorbs other people’s problems and somehow unburdens them. If he weren’t such a loser, that one character trait alone could have made him immensely popular. Still, at least he serves a purpose of sorts. Whatever your own personal flaws or failings, hey – it could be worse. You could be Alan Blake.

Cy Dethan's script is superb on this book, with Robert Carey bringing what the team describe as "just the right combination of subtlety and power that the book needs in the art", with Mel Cook on colours and Nic Wilkinson on lettering.

Speaking at the British International Comic Show last weekend, Markosia's head honcho Harry Markos told the audience of a panel about British comics that he had some 60-plus books in development at present. The Indifference Engine looks set to be one to look out for.

• Visit Markosia's official site for release information: www.markosia.com
• More info on Cy Dethan's blog: www.cydethan.com/index.php?page=the-indifference-engine 
•  Previews of The Indifference Engine Pages 1-4 (Pencils)
•  Read Free Online Preview of The Indifference Engine