COMMANDO 50th ANNIVERSARY - and Doctor Who in Comics.

The University of Dundee has an exhibition on of artwork from Commando comics, currently in its 50th year of publication.





Ian Kennedy gets his own frame with four covers.



The covers are certainly impressive. So are the pages themselves.



There are also scripts on show.



A piece that struck me was Jordi Penalva's "Noose for a Hero" cover. I already liked it, but to see those vivid red clouds in the original painting was impressive.



The exhibition runs until 19th November and is well worth a visit.

There's another on at the National Army Museum in London too, which has huge Ian Kennedy banners outside.

I also recently visited the Doctor Who in Comics 1964-2011 exhibition at London's Cartoon Museum. They have terrific John Ridgway and Roger Langridge pages. John Ross' work was interesting - he doesn't use any black space at all on the artwork itself. I was especially impressed by a fully painted Ron Turner page. I love his Journey to the Stars stories from Speed comic.

I haven't been to the Museum before so the regular material on show was all new to me too. Highlights for me were pages of Frank Hampson Dan Dare, David Lloyd V For Vendetta and Joe Colquhoun Charley's War. It was also interesting to see the Charles Schulz original, with all its erased pencils under the inks. He really worked hard at making Peanuts look effortless.

HOW TO READ A GRAPHIC NOVEL

Here is a preface to Troublemaker by Janet and Alex Evanovich. Like comics work from novelists such as Denise Mina, James Patterson and Ian Rankine, Dark Horse Comics (or Dark Horse Books as they refer to themselves on the spine of this work) publish work by these authors in an understandable and laudable attempt to attract readers who would usually not read comics. It's the first such crossover book to include an instruction manual on how to follow a comics page though.

It does seem kind of ridiculous, especially to someone such as I who has read comics all my days, but I think they may be onto something. I have seen people look at comics pages and just think "No, I don't want to deal with this". This "comics are too difficult for people to read" argument has rumbled along for at least a couple of decades, and I've heard plenty of skeptical views towards it from learned comics individuals.

But consider this: I think it may be similar the disconnect felt when Yoof TV show Network 7 started putting words running along the screen in one or more places while a presenter was talking. The mix of looking and reading was confusing! It's now the norm and difficult to remember what was so jarring about it.

SCOTLAND IN COMICS 10: THE JOCKS AND THE GEORDIES

This story is from #1929 of The Dandy, published in November 1978. It's one of the oldest comics I have. More specifically, it's one of the oldest I have that I got when it actually came out.


I liked The Jocks and The Geordies at the time, along with all the other strips in the comic. My enjoyment was very innocent - I had no idea what a Jock or a Geordie was at the time of reading.

I don't know who wrote or drew this, due to D.C.Thomson's policy of giving no credits.

The Dandy continues to come out after 74 years. The latest issue is #3539.

Click on images for larger versions.

STAR WARS BLU-RAY

There's another release of the Star Wars movies imminent, this time on Blu-ray. There have been more changes made to the films and also included is a selection of deleted scenes. Posted online is an alternative take of Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher on Hoth. Watch it here. I checked it out and realised that I was familiar with the deleted dialogue. A lot of it was in the comic adaptation from 1980. These comics took a long time to do, and so the writer Archie Goodwin and artist Al Williamson would work from scripts and reference photos, so as to have the comic ready at the same time as the movie was released. By this time, dialogue had changed and scenes had been cut, but they were still in the comics. I remember there was much more to Luke's training with Yoda in the comic, for instance. This black and white artwork really shows up Williamson's work nicely. The writing at the bottom, "Next week! Re-Enter: Obi-Wan Kenobi! Miss it not!" is there because this page is from the UK weekly reprint comic. As six pages had gone by, it was time for a break until the next issue. I can still remember the anticipation for the next instalment. The arm bursting through the wall at the end is a wampa monster, in a scene that was cut from the movie but is also in the deleted scenes now offered.

THE SIXPENNY MURDER

The Sixpenny Murder is a new British comic written by John A. Short and drawn by David Hitchcock. Originally part of a project named Changing Places+ devised by a psychologist, it's now available from John's own comics company, Kult Kreations and in comic stores nationwide.



I recently interviewed John and it’s now been published over at the Down the Tubes UK comics website. Have a read here.

JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL

In amongst all the revamped DC Comics, there is a series of one-shots called Retroactive, giving popular creators of the past another bash at the characters they've previously worked on.
I was delighted to see that Keith Giffen, J.M.DeMatties and Kevin Maguire have done another issue of Justice League International.
I really liked this series during its 1987-1992 run, and also the follow-ups Formerly Known as The Justice League in 2003, and I Can't Believe it's not the Justice League in 2005.
Unlike those latter two series which updated the storyline to the present day, this new issue takes place during the original storyline. It's a blast.
Personally I never tire of this trio's work. I was gutted when it finished in 1992, and have lapped up every revamp since. This issue was good too. Giffen's plots and situations are imaginative, clever and quite ludicrous at times. DeMatteis is very witty and keeps all the individuals in character. Maguire is a classy superhero artist.
The funny thing this go around is the computer colouring (as with the recent Ditko Hulk book). It just swamps the line art in my opinion. I guess I'm old fashioned and I want flat colours!

SUPERHERO MOVIE EXCITEMENT

I'm looking forward to seeing the new Superman film when it's on Channel 4 Sunday night in four years.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMIC ART: MOORE/O'NEILL


The new edition of The International Journal of Comic Art is out now. It has an article by myself in it. A report on a talk given by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, discussing their careers and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

More details can be found here.

GET THEE TO A LIBRARY: GORGO

This is the BIG one!

Another great thing to do at your local library is have a dig through the newspaper collections. On a recent look through local press I found this 1962 advertising strip for the monster movie "Gorgo"



Quite nice actually. I wonder who drew it? I remember strips like this advertising movies 20 years later for things like "Clash of the Titans".

This paper had another delighful feature. Design Gorgo's head.



Looks like the same artist. I got curious and a referral to Phil Hardy's Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies got me a look at a photo of the big monster.



Comics were used a lot more in the past to advertise anything and everything. I'm looking forward to chancing upon more of them.

SCOTLAND IN COMICS 9



A new documentary aired Monday past. Have a look here.