The Gosh! Authority 22/09/10

It’s a pretty cracking week all round. The sun is shining, the tea is hot, and we’re welcoming back our ol’ pal Cages to the Gosh! shelves. Many of you have probably already heard about our exclusive bookplate edition via the magic of twitter but if you haven’t go read this. I neglected to mention what is clearly the most important detail regarding the bookplates and that is that they were carefully couriered by Dave McKean’s recent houseguest and obliging smuggler, Neil Gaiman. If they hadn’t been we’d probably still be waiting for the postman to kick them all the way back from Kent.

On the subject of bookplates, we’ll soon have a brand new book by my incredibly talented fellow giant Sarah McIntyre complete with Gosh! bookplate and all. Vern & Lettuce is a story that originally appeared in the (now sadly defunct) DFC, along with other Gosh! Favourites like Mezolith. Everything you need to know is here.

Love & Rockets New Stories Volume 3 is the latest from the Hernandez Brothers and sees Jaime return to the cast of Locas after his superheroic two-parter. Gilbert’s offering is a somewhat weirder tale of alien terrain and a furry mating season. Alien mating season. Not the dress-up-as-squirrels kind of furry. Or something. I think. Anyway, here’s a PDF preview and all I’ve got to go on right now plus a video of the Fantagraphics dude flipping through the book.

Fingerprints is another strange one – an oddball debut graphic novel from Will Dinski who’s best known for his beautifully handmade mini-comics and typically bleak endings. Last year he won the Isotope Award for Excellence in Mini-Comics previously awarded to the likes of Danica Novgorodoff of Slow Storm and Refresh Refresh fame (mentioned on the Gosh! Blog this time last year). It’s an absurdist sci-fi comedy poking fun at an image-obsessed culture through the story of Dr Fingers, a previously successful cosmetic surgeon on his way down. Avoid the Future have a great review and Things From Another World nabbed an exclusive interview with the man himself.

It’s Tubby’s turn in the latest of Drawn & Quarterly’s exquisitely reproduced John Stanley stuff. This volume collects issues #9 to #12 of the Little Lulu offshoot, full of all the mischief and shenanigans you’ve come to expect. D&Q have put up a full classic story about Tubby’s moustache as a teaser. As usual it’s designed by the reliably brilliant Seth (It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken) just like the previous volumes so not only will it look great, it’ll also line-up perfectly with the other volumes on your shelf. Real nice and kentucky.

Drew Friedman’s been beavering away painting portraits of the famous and the infamous for the likes of The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, Business Week, Mojo and a bunch of other folk so it’s about time someone collected the last fifteen years’ worth. Too Soon? is a hardcover full of familiar, grotesque faces including this one, Schlitzie, who I’ve selected out of all the actors, singers, presidents and first ladies to go on the Gosh! Blog because I’m a fan of Tod Browning’s Freaks. That’s the way it goes around here. Here’s a preview of the rest of ‘em.

Joe Casey’s Wildcats Version 3.0 Year One TP collects the first 12 issues of the pivotal Joe Casey (Gødland) run on the series, illustrated by Dustin Nguyen (Batman: Streets of Gotham). Our own Andrew Salmond likes it and reckons you will too. It ended after 24 issues due to a cancellation after increasingly low sales rather than an actual planned ending. Fans weren’t happy.

“I’ve been more like a “cult writer” in the mainstream for most of my career and it’s been a relatively comfortable place to be. I hate playing it safe, and I don’t want other creators playing it safe either. Guys like Chaykin and Miller and Moore showed me that you can make demands on the reader in the mainstream and it can pay off, because they essentially created a new mainstream. Maybe Wildcats was a “book out of time”. Either we were ahead of the curve or too far behind it. I don’t really know. I just know I loved it.”

Casey talks about where the series would have gone after the final issue in this old interview with Newsarama.

In comics you’ve got The Example, a one-shot illustrated by Colin Wilson (2000AD) and adapted by Tom Taylor (The Authority) from his own award-winning play about terrorism and paranoia. It’s not a new comic but it’s the first time it’s seen print outside of Australia. It’s because of The Example that Taylor landed a writing gig on Dark Horse’s Star Wars, or so he tells Comicbook Resources.

Then there’s Kodiak, a one-shot by Joe Hill (Locke & Key), Jason Ciaramella and Nat Jones, about three men and a bear locked in a basement together. Hill said on his blog he wanted to do something in the style of the gruesome faux-folk tales seen in Tales from the Crypt, Creepy and Eerie and this is what happened. CbR have a preview for you. Rhoor.

Halloween’s on the way so you probably knew this one was in the post too. Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror #16 features a story written by Evan Dorkin (Beasts of Burden) called I Screwed Up Big-Time and Unleashed The Glavin on an Unsuspecting World! about an intergalactic monster out destroying distant planets when he intercepts a space broadcast from Professor Frink. Dorkin talks about it on the Bongo Blog. There’s also a bit by the great Kelley Jones in which Flanders gets his revenge on Homer but Jones doesn’t seem to be talking about it anywhere on the internet. How rude.

You’ve undoubtedly seen the work of Japanese art superstar Yoshitomo Nara before, even if it was just by idly flipping through those Oh My God! I Miss You! Postcards that hung around the Gosh! counter some time ago. Nobody’s Fool is the name of his first major New York retrospective exhibition, showcasing stuff from his early career in the 1980s right up ‘til the shiny new stuff of now. As you can see in these photographs from the gallery, there are paintings, sculptures, drawings, enormous installations, ceramics, the lot. And they’re all in the lovely slip-cased hardcover I can see on the shelf already.

AX is Japan’s greatest magazine for alternative comics and has been published bi-monthly since 1998. The stuff you find in AX is innovative, experimental, personal, and entirely in Japanese. This week Top Shelf give you a 400-page collection of selected stories that have appeared over the last ten years, all translated for the very first time. Editor Sean Michael Wilson talks to Things From Another World about what to expect here, and there’s a preview here. It even features an introduction by Paul “Man at the Crossroads” Gravett who is, incidentally, appearing tonight in conversation with Flemish author Judith Vanistendael. If you’re anywhere in the vicinity of Curtain Road you’d best go say hello.

-- Hayley