The Gosh! Authority 09/12/09

We were already looking forward to the second instalment of Ian Edginton and Ian Culbard’s Sherlock Holmes series but its arrival is even more exciting because we’re the only ones* who have it. Well, until January at least when it gets a general release. In the meantime, if you want to read A Study in Scarlet over your Christmas break you’ll find it here in Gosh! right next to the Hound of the Baskervilles Bookplate Edition. They’re lovely looking books and you can see bits and pieces of art over at Culbard’s blog.


*Sort of. Just us and the Sherlock Holmes Museum on Baker Street.

The enigmatic Steve Ditko’s rarest stories and original art are presented in one neat package this week called The Art of Steve Ditko. It’s an oversized hardcover featuring little-known full colour stories and unpublished work, plus essays by the likes of P. Craig Russell (Sandman: The Dream Hunters), John Romita (who took on Amazing Spider-Man after Ditko abruptly left Marvel), and Jerry Robinson, along with an introduction by Stan Lee. Head over to editor Craig Yoe’s site for a few preview pages and whatnot. Looks like it’ll be a good’un.

James Kochalka (whose American Elf daily strip is astonishingly still going, free every day over at his site, bookmark it!) is not only a comicbook artist he’s a rock ‘n’ roll superstar too – which means that for the second week in a row we’re going to have something that isn’t a book on our new release shelf.

His previous albums – James Kochalka Superstar, Monkey Vs Robot, Don’t Trust Whitey, and more – would always find their way into the five-disc rotation on my family home’s CD player and stay there for months. They’re funny and rude and absurd and his new one probably even more so. All fifteen songs on Digital Elf are in an 8-bit chiptune style composed on his GameBoy Advance. You can hear some of it over here.

The second issue of No Brow has arrived. You remember #1: Gods & Monsters, don’t you?. The East London based publication chose the jungle as their theme this time round and it’s once again limited to a print run of only 3000. The line-up include the likes of Marc Boutavent, Henning Wagenbreth, Blexbolex, Pietari Posti, Paul Blow, Eda Akaltun, Jon Boam, Jack Teagle, Martin Ontiveros and Sroop Sunar. Preview pages and all sorts are over at No Brow’s new website because unlike us, they’ve outgrown Blogger. Fancy that.

Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption is a limited edition comic book anthology that hopes to awake a new generation of political activists with their tales of social injustice by big name folk like Dave McKean.

They had an art exhibition recently as part of Comica (I mentioned it back when it was about to start) and interviewed Joe Sacco as part of their project too. Other creators in the book include Peter Kuper, Lee O'Connor, Pat Mills, V V Brown, Dan Goldman, Aleksandar Zograf, Bryan Talbot, Asia Alfasi, Dylan Horrocks and Marcus Bleasdale. It’s probably very limited so grab one while it’s here. Previews over at the Comica site.

A fancy-looking manga came in this week that we reckon is going to be pretty popular:

GoGo Monster by Taiyō Matsumoto (otherwise known as the bloke who did Tekkon Kinkreet) is about a young kid who can see and talk to the supernatural beings who are bringing chaos to the world around him – but no one believes him when he talks about it. Here’s a review of the book by someone who is as impressed with the presentation of it as we are: it’s a glorious slipcased hardcover thing with the pages dyed red on the edges just like those Twilight books everyone’s got their noses in on the tube.

There’s more magic, monsters and gods in Michael Avon Oeming’s God Complex #1 about a guy called Paul who’s actually Apollo, son of Zeus and god of all sorts of things. Oeming, who co-writes the series with Dan Berman and provides the cover art (innards illustrated by newbie John Broglia), is interviewed by CbR and says…

"Apollo, now calling himself Paul, has stepped down from the board of gods who run a giant corporation called KRONOS and he ends up washing dishes in Little Italy. Our plan is to complement traditional mythology but with new twists. Apollo/Paul is a great hero and, like Walker from Powers, has lived for a very, very long time, so defining this kind of hero will be lots of fun. The gods get pretty pissed at him for leaving the Pantheon and send a crap-load of curses at him, hoping he will revert to his godliness to save himself and those he loves."

Preview here.

There’s a new ten-part series starting this Thursday by the Eisner award-winning twins Gabriel Bá (Umbrella Academy) and Fábio Moon (Casanova) that’s shaping up to be something rather special:

Set in their native Brazil, it’s a comic about quiet moments and big questions. Moon says the central theme of the whole thing is that “…Any day can be the most important day of your life. Any given day, something can happen that will change your life. Any given day, you can meet someone and your life will never be the same. This is your life, one day at a time. Make it count.” More of that and preview pages over at CbR.

Tank Girl fans are in for a treat this week too. Tank Girl: Dark Nuggets is a one-shot collection of short stories that artist Rufus Dayglo says are slightly darker in tone than Visions of Booga or Tank Girl: Skidmarks. There’s an interview with him and preview pages galore over at the ever reliable CbR.

And last of all, if you’ve been following B.P.R.D War on Frogs you’ll get your conclusion in the fourth and final issue (preview) . And if you’re a Fred Van Lente fan make sure you grab yourself a copy of the new X-Men Noir series Mark of Cain #1, a four-parter illustrated by Dennis Calero. Preview’s this way.

That’s it for another week. Don’t forget about the Duncan Fegredo exhibition in the shop – it won’t be around for much longer so if you were thinking of bagging yourself some original Hellboy art do it now, fer chrissakes.

-- Hayley