X-Amount of Comics 20 September 2023 Art For The Comics Journal a read of the suitably over-titled X-Amount of Comics: 1963 (WhenElse?!) Annual, Don Simpson’s aerated parody-roasting of Stan Lee 20 June 2023 Art For The Comics Journal an attempt to write sensibly about Stan Lee, which The Walt Disney Company of Burbank is framing as an official documentary I Am The Law: How Judge Dredd Predicted Our Future 2 March 2023 Art For The Comics Journal a read of I Am The Law: How Judge Dredd Predicted Our Future, which is 2000AD’s new non-fiction book of…well what exactly? Comics of the year 2022 5 January 2023 Art A reissue of Caza’s Kris Kool from 1970 was on my list of the year’s best comics for The Comics Journal. So was a big collection of Gerry Anderson The Legend of Luther Arkwright 18 October 2022 Art For The Comics Journal a read of The Legend of Luther Arkwright, only the third full length story Bryan Talbot has published in 46 years about the Luda and Grant Morrison 9 September 2022 Art For The Comics Journal a review of Grant Morrison’s novel Luda, about a Scottish pantomime dame tipped into a camp psychodrama and war with their Acting Class and Nick Drnaso 18 August 2022 Art For The Comics Journal a review of Nick Drnaso’s Acting Class. Praise for Drnaso’s last two books was so stratospheric it would have made some Project MK-Ultra 8 April 2022 Art For The Comics Journal a review of Project MK-Ultra: Sex, Drugs and the CIA Volume 1, a book on my radar ever since its creator Stewart K. Moore Comics of the year 2021 3 January 2022 Art Farewell, Brindavoine: early Jacques Tardi from 1972 but peering at it looking for unrefined skill is wasted effort. A fully formed cartoonist is at Judging Dredd 18 August 2021 Art At The Comics Journal a review of a new book of critical essays on the subject of Judge Dredd, which can’t really be tackled without a pop at the Celestia, Zig Zag 22 July 2021 Art For Tripwire a review of Manuele Fior’s Celestia, a major work by an artist with a few of those already on the shelf. Some of them contain bits of Dr Divinus and S Craig Zahler 12 May 2021 Art No point blaming Tarantino for everything (apart from Death Proof which is still criminal) but what is this if not a comic caught in the eternal Monsters 4 May 2021 Art Barry Windsor-Smith emerges from many years of silence with a style you recognise in a nanosecond and a book so intensely focused on the despair of Film directors writing comics 27 March 2021 Films & Art Madi: Once Upon a Time in the Future (2020) Duncan Jones with Alex De Campi and in this bit James Stokoe Noah (2011 Peter Milligan and Jamie Hewlett 17 March 2021 Art in The Warhol Dimension Hewligan’s Haircut in 2000AD #703 (1990) Revere, Mysterious Travelers 30 January 2021 Art In 1991 Revere was good news if you wanted 2000AD to look over the Channel at slick painted European things like Métal Hurlant and less great if you The Biologic Show 6 January 2021 Art The reissue of The Biologic Show, reviewed for The Comics Journal. When I first saw this book in 1995 and then later emerged from under the bed the Comics of the year 2020 20 December 2020 Art Some comics of the year: What We Mean By Yesterday by Benjamin Marra, who called it “Degrassi High on mescaline” but whose sympathetic skewering of Shintaro Kago 5 December 2020 Art Family Portrait (2019) Raqib Shaw 10 November 2020 Art Last Rites of Artist’s Ego (2016). Been there Judge Dredd America, Perramus 16 October 2020 Art For Tripwire some words about the latest reissue of Judge Dredd: America, the thirty-year-old story that’s become its own cottage industry; the most Crash Course, Mtsyry Octobriana 22 September 2020 Art For The Comics Journal a review of Crash Course, a righteous and angry activist comic by Woodrow Phoenix which starts off being about bad driving Candyman, Savage 18 September 2020 Art Candyman (1992) Bernard Rose/Clive Barker Savage from 2000AD (2016) Pat Mills/Patrick Goddard Grok by Will Sweeney 6 August 2020 Art Will Sweeney’s latest self-published retrospective art book Grok, reviewed by me for The Comics Journal. There’s some anti-establishment aggro in Portrait of a Drunk 7 July 2020 Art The 18th-century lush who stumbles around plastered in Portrait of a Drunk inflicting misery and death on everyone he meets is named Guy, so readers Tank Girl, Shaky Kane 26 May 2020 Art Idly re-reading 30 years of Tank Girl comics during a dire pandemic and political meltdown is to watch writer Alan Martin tend his holy flame Masters of British Comic Art, Jamie Hewlett 30 April 2020 Art At The Comics Journal: a review of David Roach’s Masters of British Comic Art book, which takes up a fair portion of any coffee table it sits on. Mitchum, So Long Silver Screen, LAAB 8 April 2020 art For The Comics Journal a review of Mitchum, a new edition of the French anthology by Christian “Blutch” Hincker which arrives now pretty much like a Florent Ruppert and Jérôme Mulot 13 March 2020 Art Bodies in motion with Florent Ruppert and Jérôme Mulot Assassin Child 6 March 2020 Art For The Comics Journal a review of Assassin Child, the latest of Tatsunori Tawaraya’s comics to appear in English from Hollow Press, and another of Fanzine culture 23 February 2020 Films & Art Accidentally admitting you’re dubious about video-essay film criticism is a quick route into an argument, but let’s at least agree that the field is Dan Brereton and Nocturnals 20 February 2020 Art If horror comics have to chill the blood or be disqualified from the club, then Dan Brereton’s Nocturnals stories might not count. They do have Stuart Davis 18 February 2020 Art Robert Hughes, as close to a house deity as this blog has, stuck some 24-carat quotes from artist Stuart Davis into The Shock of the New and Jacques Tardi and Adèle Blanc-Sec 12 February 2020 Art For the Solrad site, an article about The Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec, or at least those first four of Jacques Tardi’s stories that Fantagraphics Tatsunori Tawaraya, Will Sweeney 22 January 2020 Art Tetsunori Tawaraya Fuzzy Cat 7 November 2019 Art Studying the scratchwork of Tetsunori Tawaraya Erik Davis High Weirdness 12 September 2019 Art Erik Davis wrote TechGnosis which should be read by all pop-culture critics before they process the nature of pop-culture or anything else. His new Rebellion and the Treasury Of British Comics, TCJ 11 September 2019 Art For The Comics Journal I wrote about Rebellion’s republishing of old British comics and the overlap with 2000AD, which follows up on things I’ve Jack Kirby, George Bellows 28 August 2019 Art John Wick 3 and John Wick minicomic 13 July 2019 Films & Art John Wick 3: Obey the rules, swear your loyalty, pay for your transgressions, beg others for redemption, peace through suffering, mutilation as Raqib Shaw 22 June 2019 Art Godzilla In Hell 15 June 2019 Films & Art Godzilla: King of the Monsters does that sequel thing where no one is ever outdoors, and the director has to treat characters in corridors as the Brendan McCarthy, Counterfeit Girl 5 June 2019 Art Dark Horse recently put out a chunky archive of comics drawn by Brendan McCarthy and written by Pete Milligan, which made a lot of current British Octobriana Hammer 10 May 2019 Art Octobriana rides again, again, in Octobriana: Hammer, John A Short and Andrew Richmond’s Kickstarter project which has the eternally The Comics Journal, Breaking The Frames, Neon Visions 11 March 2019 Art & Films The Comics Journal resurrected its print version in January, if not quite Back By Popular Demand then maybe a recognition that TCJ had a presence Raqib Shaw 9 March 2019 Art I lost a few hours last summer in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art staring at its exhibition of Raqib Shaw, since adjusting to the Elliot S Maggin Last Son of Krypton 22 February 2019 Art The Superman film came out in 1978 and birthed a bunch of future creatives all at once like Midwich Cuckoos—just a year after the similar population Fran of the Floods, Caballistics Inc 16 February 2019 Art The electricity went off forever. In Pat Mills’s book about his writing career he calls Alan Davidson, who wrote this panel and the rest of the 1976 Mort Cinder 4 February 2019 Art Reprints show the roots of things you run into again elsewhere—it’s one thing to hear that Frank Miller and Jim Steranko were influenced by Guido Total Jazz 1 December 2018 Art The only meetings between cartooning and jazz that I used to see were the jokes in Jazz at Ronnie Scott’s, so the French strips by Blutch reprinted Turbo Jones, Zombo 25 November 2018 Art Not long after I sighed at the things Rebellion was doing with those vintage British comics properties it acquired by buying half of the old Dan Brereton 18 November 2018 Art I was late to Dan Brereton’s comics, thinking that his Nocturnals series two decades ago was a straightforward horror comic. In fact it was Charles Goldtiger, Hope For The Future 31 October 2018 Art A good pastiche should just keep going when you get to the end of the runway. Goldtiger arrives as a mock Swinging Sixties newspaper strip about Jacques Tardi comics 23 October 2018 Art The December-dated issue of Comic Scene magazine focuses on war comics and includes me praising Jacques Tardi’s It Was The War of the Trenches and Paul Grist comics, Yellow Submarine 16 September 2018 Art I’m in the current November-dated issue of Comic Scene magazine with a piece about Paul Grist’s comic Jack Staff, a strip which grabs British humour Von Hoffman's Invasion, Xerxes 19 August 2018 Art Rebellion didn’t say how much it spent buying up the output of the old IPC Youth Group and having half of the UK’s entire comics output for the Octobriana comics 1 August 2018 Art The August issue of Comic Scene UK magazine has an article by me about Octobriana, a cult character not so much out-of-copyright as The Prisoner comic 25 July 2018 Art The Prisoner landed on British TV in 1967, but I was oblivious until some mid-1970s repeats and an article in Comics Unlimited which made the show Steve Ditko and Harlan Ellison 8 July 2018 Art Steve Ditko died without ever changing his opinion about the immoral wickedness of anyone setting themselves up as an opinion-shaper, or about the Guido Crepax, Valentina on the phone 15 April 2018 Art A while ago I called the ten-volume project to bring all of Guido Crepax’ comics output into the English language a cultural intervention, and that Batman Mask of the Phantasm 12 April 2018 Art I’m going to be at the inaugural Portsmouth Comic Con on Saturday 5th May to chair a couple of panels. One of them will be about the art of Star MACH 1, Judge Dredd Case Files 21 March 2018 Art All three recent books about the birth of 2000AD point out that MACH 1 was a blatant attempt to make readers think of The Six Million Dollar Man, Paul Grist, ABC Warriors 11 February 2018 Art Tom Spurgeon asked for stand-out issues in favourite runs of serial comics, and inevitably most of mine were from old Marvels by Steve Englehart, Dan Brereton, The Beatles Story 28 January 2018 Art Dan Brereton’s new portfolio book In The Night Studio arrived just as Tom Spurgeon asked for suggestions of great cover artists and also just as I Philip Jose Farmer 26 January 2018 Art Philip José Farmer centenary Brink, Grey Area, Shaky Kane Deadline 10 October 2017 Art For Tripwire I read Brink Book One, Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard’s sci-fi crime story now collected from 2000AD, which dresses an old-fashioned 1980s Nocturnals The Sinister Path 18 August 2017 Art Kickstarter poses problematic questions about the making of art for both ends of the production line — it fudges the role of risk-taker and the One-Eyed Jack, Leopard From Lime Street 16 June 2017 Art Surfacing from the oceans of 1970s British comics as part of Rebellion’s current salvage operation comes police detective Jack McBane, curing New The Last American 27 April 2017 Art Each era’s flavour of imminent extinction is different, but the sour taste of 1980s nuclear anxiety comes back pretty quickly while reading The Last Thrill Power Overload, We Told You So 30 January 2017 Art No amount of arm-waving can link the appearance of 2000AD and the creation of Fantagraphics too directly, even though they appeared at almost the Cadet Anderson, Scarlet Traces, Judge Dredd Case Files 7 January 2017 Art Carlos Ezquerra’s art is essentially caricature, which made me lose my bearings when I first saw it, back while obsessed with the slanty panels and The Mechanic, The Oliver Stone Experience, Dan Dare, Doctor Strange, Logan 4 November 2016 Films & Art Even by the juggernaut logic of remake culture, picking Michael Winner’s very 1970s and Charles Bronson-shaped The Mechanic out of the hat for a Encounters Short Film Festival 2016, Hunt For The Wilderpeople, 2000AD #2000 28 September 2016 Films & Art For Sight & Sound, a preview of the live-action end of this year’s Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival. The knotty issue of whether films The Daily Dreads Volume Two, The Mighty One, 28 August 2016 Art Alan Grant and Cliff Robinson did a Judge Dredd story in 1990 with the characters turned into versions of the Carry On team, but it was such a Doctor Strange foresees Twitter 12 August 2016 Art 1975: Doctor Strange meets early twitter adopter, detects trouble ahead The Cursed Earth Uncensored, Ro-Busters, Judge Anderson Psi Files 21 July 2016 Art Whether or not Judge Dredd kicking Colonel Sanders in the face and stabbing the Michelin Man with a scalpel was really the best part of 2000AD’s Sexcastle 1 June 2016 Art came out ages ago but I couldn’t face it while I was still raging over John Wick. The question of whether you can pastiche something which Judge Dredd Case Files 27, Judge Dredd Titan, Bad Company 24 May 2016 Art Rebellion’s commitment to reprinting the entirety of Judge Dredd in thick chronological slabs means the odd historical barb pops into view long 2000AD trade paperbacks round-up 1 January 2016 Art For Tripwire: four quick reviews of new 2000AD trade paperbacks, one of which finds Pat Mills gripping the forces of conformity and oppression as Jamie Hewlett tarot 1 January 2016 Art Elliot S Maggin from Last Son of Krypton 6 April 2013 Art “Let me give you a hypothetical case, Miss Lane. You, it is well known, have a sort of personal relationship with Superman. I take it he has Roy Thomas predicts the future 7 March 2013 Art Fortunately, despite the Superman movies and other projected films, superheroes aren’t likely to become a major part of movie fare, and that means Stanley Kubrick vs Steve Ditko 17 December 2012 Art Sam Smith poster for Eyes Wide Shut, 2012. Marie Severin art from Strange Tales 158, 1967 Paul Grist interview 19 September 2012 Art (This interview with Paul Grist was originally destined for another venue and presented here as-is, house style and chronology intact.) The first Robert Hughes 6 August 2012 Art “Guernica was the last great history painting. It was also the last modern painting of major importance that took its subject from politics with the Slaine The Horned God 6 July 2011 Art 2000AD and I were through by 1989, so I missed the moment when Pat Mills and Simon Bisley began Slaine: The Horned God and jointly shifted the orbit