The Gosh! Authority 06/01/10

Theoretically this was going to be the week when everything went back to normal but thanks to the snow (thanks, snow!) it won’t be doing that. This week’s delivery will be delayed because the deliveryman doesn’t want to be stranded in Narnia and then forced to eat your comics in order to survive – and rightly so! So basically we don’t know when they’ll arrive. It’s possible they’ll be in tomorrow as long as nothing goes horribly wrong on the motorway. As soon as they arrive I’ll announce it on Facebook, Twitter and the blog so watch this space.

First up in our collection of books currently snowed in up north is a new one from indie star Dash Shaw, author of Bottomless Belly Button and numerous other bits and bobs you’ll have seen in MOME. In fact it’s mostly his MOME stuff that makes up the bulk of this collection along with a new 20-page story and other lesser-known stories from all over. Fantagraphics have a 10-page PDF preview for you and over at Comics Alliance Shaw talks manga, telepathy, artschool – the usual stuff and junk.

Then there’s the second hardcover instalment of Last Gasp’s Art of Herge: Inventor of Tintin series. The previous volume covered Herge’s first thirty years by reprinting schoolboy sketches, his first published drawings and his earliest comics. This one picks up where the last left off in 1937 when Herge was thirty years old and the world was on the brink of war. It’s loaded with high quality reproductions of illustrations which you’ll be happy to know are all presented in chronological order (top marks) and accompanied by various natterings by Tintinologists Phillipe Goddin and Michael Farr.


The Troublemakers is a hardcover graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez about greedy low-lifes chasing a pile of money. Comicbook Resources placed it in the L&R universe thusly: “The Troublemakers is billed as the second comic adaptation of a film starring Love and Rockets' Luba's half-sister, Rosalba “Fritz” Martinez, and the Dark Horse miniseries Speak of the Devil was an account of "actual events" that inspired a movie--although these events and all of Fritz's films, of course, only exist within the Love and Rockets universe.” You get the idea. Hernandez talks about it over here where you can also read a bunch of pages and there’s already a review kicking about over on iFanboy.

If you’re a fan of dinosaurs you’ll probably want to get your mitts on two new ones from William Stout, the illustrator whose name is in the credits of almost every film that’s got a dinosaur in it: The Land Before Time, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Walt Disney’s Dinosaur to name only a few. He’s got two new books out this week and this is them: Dinosaur Discoveries comes in both hardcover and soft and contains 65 full colour illustrations of new dinosaurs discovered within the last twenty years. Dinosaur Discoveries A-Z is the same stuff in a reduced-size kid-friendly format much like the Little Golden Book series. If you’ve not seen his stuff before go and look now.

Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms is a top notch manga by Fumiyo Kouno that has for whatever reason been unavailable for some time. It’s about the after effects of the Hiroshima bombing and there’s not a shred of cringe-worthy sentimentality to be found. Here’s a review. Highly recommended.

In comics we’ve got the second issue of Greg Rucka’s (Detective Comics, Queen & Country) Stumptown, previously mentioned back on the Gosh! Blog when the first bit arrived. If you head back to that post there’s an interview with Rucka about the series which is shaping up to be something rather special.

Jeff Parker (Agents of Atlas, Thunderbolts) looks back on one of Marvel’s first heroes in Marvel Boy: The Uranian #1 (of 3) which is all about Bob Grayson/Marvel Boy in his pre-Uranian days. There’s already a review of it as well as some promising preview pages over here.

And finally, here’s something kind of odd.

Remember that horrible/excellent Brian Yuzna film Society starring Days of Our Lives star Billy Warlock and a whole lot of gloopy alien sex? If not, skip this and I’ll see you in the next paragraph. Colin Barr, Shelby Robertson and Neill Cameron mark the 20th anniversary of the cult horror film by re-issuing their comics sequel Party Animal in lieu of an actual film sequel. There are two issues of it and I have no idea if they’re any good but if the line “I really am a butthead” means anything to you, you might want to pick this up.

Before I sign off there’s a few other bits of interest. F’rinstance, Image have put up a preview for the cover of Jonathan Ross’ new comic Turf. Just below that is the cover to upcoming Free Comic Book Day book Fractured Fairytales which I’m told has stuff in it by the lovely Christian Ward (Olympus). Also in my bag of blog-end delights is this two-day event in London called Tokyo Day (misleading, it’s two) during which you can experience the various faces of Tokyo. They’ll be screening anime such as Astro Boy so if you fancy it you can get all the details you need at their website.

In the potential absence on comics on Thursday you can console yourself with this week’s Strip! show on Resonance 104.4 FM. Just before Fred Van Lente signed comics for Gosh! customers last year (last year!) he sat out the back and recorded an interview with Alex Fitch. You can hear it at 5pm tomorrow but I’m sure the recording will turn up on the net soon so no tears if you miss it.

And that’s it! Again, NO COMICS TODAY, MAYBE COMICS TOMORROW if you’re lucky. Keep checking the Blog/Twitter/Facebook for updates because you’ll get ‘em as soon as we do.

-- Hayley