How’s this for some breaking news? We’ve just confirmed a signing with the screaming-fangirl-worthy Bryan Lee O’Malley! He’ll be in town for the premiere of the hotly anticipated Scott Pilgrim film which just so happens to coincide with the release of the final volume and finest hour of the ridiculously popular series.
It's finally here... six years and almost one thousand pages have all led to this epic finale! With six of Ramona's seven evil exes dispatched, it should be time for Scott Pilgrim to face Gideon Graves, the biggest and baddest of her former beaus. But didn't Ramona take off at the end of Book 5? Shouldn't that let Scott off the hook? Maybe it should, maybe it shouldn't, but one thing is for certain -- all of this has been building to Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour!
If you’ve not yet jumped on board we’ve got all five previous volumes in the shop right this very second. The sixth volume will be in our (and your) hot little hands very, very soon.
'Funny, clever, sad, stupid, fantastic, heartbreaking, surreal, confusing and brilliant, just like real life.'
- Eddie Argos
O’Malley will be shooting off to be famous on the red carpet as soon as the bell strikes 6:30pm. We can’t keep him any longer and no matter how hard we try we can’t make time bendy. Please get there early, folks!
(This also means we won’t be able to take signed book requests, alas.)
In the unlikely event you’re doing something better or more important on Wednesday the 18th you’ll be delighted to know you’ve got a second option. Our friends in the (further) North, the esteemed Page 45, get their turn with Mr O’Malley on Monday the 16th of August. You’re advised not to bring along evil ex-boyfriends or girlfriends because Page 45 don’t want no fightin’ in their joint.
Whatever you do, don’t get these dates mixed up. We’re bad with tears and we won’t be able to make it better. So once more with feeling:
Wednesday, 18th August, 4:30pm – 6:30pm
Monday, 16th August, 5pm – 7pm.
All clear? See you there!
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Get out your diaries out, folks!
The very first Saturday in June the very stylish and excellent trio of Becky Cloonan (Demo, PIXU, American Virgin), Kieron Gillen (Phonogram, Thor) and Jamie McKelvie (Phonogram, Suburban Glamour) will be in the Gosh! basement signing books just for you. And as if that wasn’t enough the first 100 people through the door will get a special jam print by Cloonan and McKelvie! It’s a doozy. Check it out:
And that’s not even the finished product. After the signing we’ll have a very limited quantity for sale but this is the only time you’ll be able to get it for free.
Cloonan began in minicomics and was part of the art school anthology Meathaus Collective along with James Jean (Fables covers). Since then she has gone on to collaborate with Brian Wood on Channel Zero: Jennie One and the Eisner-nominated Demo which Wizard dubbed its Indie Comic of the Year in 2004, and with Steven T. Seagle (The Amazon) on the Vertigo title American Virgin. She’s currently finishing up the second volume of her own solo graphic novel East Coast Rising as well as a new series of the hugely popular Demo. In amongst all that she managed a bit of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and PIXU with Vasilis Lolos and the brothers Moon and Ba. Busy bee!
Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s magical “love letter to music” Phonogram never sits on our shelves at Gosh! for long, and Warren Ellis described it as “one of the few truly essential comics of 2006.” Since then they’ve completed a second volume of the series which is now available at Gosh! as an exclusive signed Bookplate Edition.
All three will be here on Saturday the 5th of June at 2pm and so should you! We’ll have them signing ‘til 4pm but if you want to get your mitts on the exclusive McKelvie/Cloonan jam print you’d best get here early.
See you there!
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A rare and delicious treat is in store for indie comics fans this May! Of course there’s the usual late-May ritual of casting aside our cardigans and dreary Winter coats to look forward to – all full of old sweet wrappers and forgotten pennies to surprise ourselves with next year – but there’s also a Gosh! basement signing to bring joy to your freshly Spring-cleaned lives. Why not dampen a sunny Tuesday lunchtime by getting some classic graphic novels signed by two masters of misanthropic misery? I’ll be there. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Dan Clowes is an award-winning cartoonist, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, New Yorker illustrator and all-round over-achiever most famous for his cult classic graphic novel Ghost World, a tale of two best friends just out of high school. Enid Coleslaw and Becky Doppelmeyer are two cynical, pseudo-intellectual and occasionally witty teenage girls who wander aimlessly in the urban sprawl of an unnamed American town criticising pop culture and pretty much everyone they encounter, wallowing in their angst like a latter day Catcher in the Rye.
(Panel from Ghost World. Points awarded for anyone who can spot the film quote.)
Clowes’ work is properly weird and absurd (I’m looking at you Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron) and everything he’s done – especially David Boring – fits snugly in the unwieldy bag of Gosh! favourites right next to those of the remarkable Chris Ware. Conveniently they’ll be right next to each other for their Gosh! signing too. How’s that for a segue?
If you’ve not read Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth yet, get thee to the Gosh! basement immediately and grab yourself a copy. Winner of The Guardian First Book Award in 2001, it’s a long, interconnected story about a boy’s relationship with his father but it’s about pretty much everything else too. It’s a gloriously innovative experiment in graphic design full of compacted plots, subplots and tiny, tiny panels; skim read it and you’ll miss a postage-stamp of genius.
From Jonathan Cape:
Chris Ware lives in Oak Park, Illinois, and is the author of Jimmy Corrigan – the Smartest Kid on Earth. He is currently serializing two new graphic novels in his ongoing periodical The ACME Novelty Library, the 20th issue of which will be released in fall 2010. He has guest-edited McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and Houghton-Mifflin’s Best American Comics, and was the first cartoonist chosen to regularly serialize an ongoing story in The New York Times Magazine. A semi-regular contributor to the New Yorker, his work was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, was favored with an exhibit of its own at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2006, and will be exhibited at the Gävle Konstcentrum in Gävle, Sweden, in 2010.
His ongoing Acme Novelty Library collections are always quickly snapped up by fans hankering for more stuff on Rusty Brown, Chalky White and the life of a building somewhere in Chicago. It is entirely down to this man that I now need glasses, a fact I fully intend to make known to Mr Ware himself.
By the time these two chaps arrive on our doorstep Clowes’ brand new original graphic novel – the first in years – will be on our shelves. Wilson is about an opinionated, divorced middle-aged loner who loves his dog and quite possibly no one else. After repeated attempts to engage with life he invariably falls back into his own pessimistic hell. According to the Comics Reporter “It's Clowes being Clowes, and Wilson all by itself makes 2010 a pretty good year for comics no matter what happens from here on out.”
So if that sounds like your cup of tea make sure you’re in the Gosh! basement between 12pm and 2pm on Tuesday the 25th of May.
This would never have been possible were it not for the Comica Festival in association with Komiks.dk The Copenhagen Comics Festival, Offset 2010 Dublin, and Jonathan Cape so send your thanks their way! I should also mention that Comica have two events with the artists that are bound to sell out so get in fast while you still can. If you're in Brighton you can catch them at the Brighton Dome on the 25th (post Gosh! signing) and us London folk can see them in conversation on the 24th with the utterly lovely Audrey Niffenegger, writer of The Time Traveler's Wife and The Three Incestuous Sisters.
These logos are clickable so go say hello:
If you can’t make it on the day and would like a signed book let us know and we’ll see what we can do. We’ve only got Ware and Clowes for a very limited couple of hours before their publisher whisks them away so whether or not it happens depends entirely on how many people turn up on the day and how much time they’ll have spare at the end of it. But we’ll do our best.
ADDENDUM!
Due to the phenomenal response we've had on this one and the strictly limited time we've got them for, it looks like we'll be unable to take signed book requests. Sorry!
See you there!
-- Hayley
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Just a quick reminder that we currently have a lovely display of Duncan Fegredo artwork on our walls in the upstairs area for one more week only. All the pages are available for purchase, some coming with additional pencils and layouts. In addition, we've actually acquired another six pages of art, all of which are also for sale.
Feast your eyes on these!
(Click for a bigger image)
Hellboy The Wild Hunt #5
Page 7. £350 (includes pencils)
Hellboy The Wild Hunt #6
Page 3. £275 (includes pencils)
Page 6. £190
Hellboy The Wild Hunt #8
Page 1.
SOLD
Page 2. £300
Page 3. £350
Aren't they beautiful?
If there’s a particular page you’re after that you can’t see here or in our previous post, we don’t have it. However, there is hope: everything before #5 is with art dealer Mark Hay and everything after that is at home with Fegredo himself (who would like to hold on to some of it). If you’d like to enquire about a specific page we can always send him your details and see what he says. Come in and have a look, while there's still time!
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This weekend sees the launch of one of the world's most exciting comics festivals in the form of Comica, the London International Comics Festival. It's a London arts calendar highlight with a plethora of guests, many of whom rarely grace these shores.
Paul Gravett's Comica festival, presented in association with the Institute of Contemporary Arts, is in its sixth triumphant year. Its trans-continental line-up of talent - along with workshops, exhibitions, screenings and performances - have fast made it one of the most prestigious of shows to celebrate comics. It's fun, it's informative, it's inspirational, and it's an absolute must-do. Full details on the festival, with timetables and ticketing information can be found here. Don't miss the opportunity to meet the likes of Eddie Campbell, James Jean, David Lloyd, Tara McPherson, Will Linthout, Bryan Talbot, Cameron Stewart, Reinhard Kleist, Kevin O'Neill and many more!
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The latest signing to mark in your diary none other than counter-culture legend and all-round Gosh! Favourite, Gilbert Shelton. He’s no stranger to the hallowed Gosh! basement but hasn’t been here in well over a year. In that time we’ve seen hundreds of copies of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers Omnibus fly off the shelf and the brand new Fat Freddy’s Cat Omnibus promises to do much the same thing.
Fat Freddy’s Cat originally began as a footnote to the now iconic Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers misadventures but very quickly became enormously popular in his own right. Bringing feline logic to the tie-dyed, drug-flushin’ world of the Freak Brothers, the Cat can be seen sleeping on Fat Freddy’s head, battling endless armies of roaches, travelling to Mexico, saving the world from an alien invasion and (of course) the Hee Hee Hee drug.
“Gilbert Shelton is as near as comics have come to producing a natural comedic genius of the same stature as a Chaplin or a Tati. With the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers he has created a hilarious and unlikely sibling trio as timeless in their appeal as the Marx Brothers. He is truly one of the greatest and most sublimely funny talents that the comic medium has to offer.”
– Alan Moore
If you can’t make it in for the signing on Saturday the 14th of November 3pm – 5pm, don’t get burned! Let us know and we’ll score you a signed copy. Keed spills!
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These days Eddie Campbell successfully avoids the grim greyness of London despite having been stuck drawing the bloody place for ten long years (see the burglar-stunning brick that is From Hell). Instead he can be found in his sunny house in Australia with a cat asleep on each foot, spouting opinions on the internet and most recently finishing off the behemoth that is Alec: The Years Have Pants - A Life-Sized Omnibus. He told CbR all about it last week.
Campbell’s a well known Scottish raconteur whose work has been likened to Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller. He’s probably best known for his Eisner-award winning collaboration with Big Hairy Alan Moore on the enormous From Hell I mentioned above, and also his own wine-drenched Bacchus. Pants collects his groundbreaking autobiographical work (a list of all the books included can be found on the Top Shelf website) plus a whole new book: thirty-five pages you haven’t seen before (check his blog for teaser panels). Moore turns up in it, as does Neil Gaiman and various other comics folk so it’s probably just as well they like it:
"Alec is magic, and even if I knew how all of it was done I'd be doing you a disservice if I pointed out the wires and mirrors. ... It is written by someone who obviously finds being alive an endless source of novelty and conundrum."
– Alan Moore
"Do you need me to tell you how good Eddie Campbell is? Or that Alec is probably the best book-length comic about art and wine and midlife crises and families and friends and wine and love and art and saying goodbye and terror there is?"
– Neil Gaiman
Campbell will be in the Gosh! basement signing and sketching from 2pm to 4pm on November the 7th. Printing delays have meant that his new Pants aren’t going to be out in time – but fear not, we’re having them shipped in especially for the event. Weighing in at a whopping 640 pages at least one thing can be said about it: it’s big and it’s thick.
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In what’s becoming something of a routine these days we’ve got another signing in our lovely wee Gosh! basement. This time it’s Fred Van Lente in a rare UK appearance on Saturday 24th October, from 3pm-5pm, and we’re very excited to have him.
Van Lente, the award-winning writer of Action Philosophers!, Comic Book Comics, Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel Zombies and Incredible Hercules, among numerous other excellent titles, is one of the most exciting writing talents to emerge in the last five years. This will be his only London signing, so take advantage of this rare opportunity to chat with him about his experiences, from making his name on the wonderful Action Philosophers!, through to his current work at Marvel, including his position as one the “Spidey Brain Trust”.
Maybe Andrew will even wear his Plato Smash! T-shirt and we can all look on in quiet envy.
If you can’t make it down, but would like to get a copy of something signed, drop us a line or let someone in the store know.
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Over the weekend our wall of glorious Golden and Silver Age comics came down to make way for 17 stunning pages of original Duncan Fegredo artwork. All pages are from the recent Hellboy: The Wild Hunt series issues #5, 6 and 7 – and they’re for sale!
Here’s what we’ve got: (Click for a bigger image)
Hellboy The Wild Hunt #5
Page 2. £190 (includes pencils)
Page 4. £220.
SOLD.
Page 6. £375 (includes pencils)
Page 12. £375 (includes pencils)
Page 14. £285 (includes pencils)
SOLD.Hellboy The Wild Hunt #6
Page 4. £250 (includes pencils)
Page 8. £325
Page 9. £325
Page 12. £325
Page 14. £375 (includes pencils)
SOLD.
Page 15. £375
SOLD.
Page 16. £475 (includes pencils)
SOLD.
Page 17. £450
SOLD.
Page 18. £350
Hellboy The Wild Hunt #7
Page 9. £325
Page 10. £375
SOLD.
Page 11. £475
If there’s a particular page you’re after that you can’t see here we don’t have it. However, there is hope: according to Fegredo, everything before #5 is with art dealer Mark Hay and everything after that is at home with Fegredo himself (who would like to hold on to some of it). If you’d like to enquire about a specific page we can always send him your details and see what he says. Come in and have a look!
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