downthetubes News Round Up - Friday 31st January 2025

News items you may have missed, and a badly-drawn cartoon...

As announced last week, experimenting with different newsletter options on downthetubes, the British comics news site (and more), recently, we’re now aiming to publish a weekly digest of recent news items here on our Crucible Comic Press Substack. Please subscribe for future updates. You can also subscribe to our newsfeed on follow.it, which enables you to get news catch ups automatically.

Ahead of the round up, though a couple of Crucible Comic Press creative announcements. The next issue of Doctor Who Magazine, Issue 614, on sale next month, will feature a comic strip by myself, Jason Quinn and Mike Collins, the culmination of the Doctor Who Monster Competition for children I initiated and help organised for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival last year, in part a celebration of sixty years of Doctor Who comic strip. I hope you enjoy it.

I’m currently working on the script for the SF thriller series Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies #4, for B7 Media - the amazing Neil Edwards (Fantastic Four, X-Men) is working on some artwork changes on #3 and then they will be heading to colourings and lettering. There’s more information on that project here on pilgrim2121.com, but here’s some teaser art… Back issues are available here from B7 Media

Also in the works, at an early stage, is a new project with Brazilian artist Wamberto Nicomedes (aka Wam Nick), which we’re probably going to release here on Substack, once we have a sufficient number of pages “in the can”. It’s another SF strip, title to be revealed. I’ve worked with Wam previously, on a “King Cobra” reboot for STRIP Magazine, illustrations for Star Trek Explorer, and more. He’s an amazingly versatile artist and writer.

And now to those downthetubes items you may have missed… don’t forget you can find all our latest news items here

NEW COMICS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS

• Orders open for third high-end “Carol Day” newspaper strip collection, “Last of the Line”
A new must have newspaper strip collection from Slingsby Bros, Ink! Orders must be made by 16th March…

• Coming Soon from SelfMadeHero: Polka Dots, Bowie, Butterflies, and “The Compleat Angler”
Butterflies always beat the January blues – and Bowie, too!

• New Doctor Who Magazine features new strip from Martin Geraghty, and much more

• It’s not Rocket Science – new Commando comics are set to thrill
Spies, traitors – and V2 rockets, too!

CREATING COMICS

• Creating Comics: Christopher Fenn talks about “Seron”, his Sci-Fi Noir comic series
We go behind the scenes of this new comic project

• Cambridge University collaborates with comic organisations on research into Comics and Autism
Important research needs the help of autistic comic fans and creators

• TASQ Art, Ireland’s first Academy dedicated solely towards the Sequential Arts, launches “Creator In Conversation” podcast
Take a deep dive into comic creation thanks to the Tallaght Academy of Sequential Art

EVENTS NEWS

• Thought Bubble Festival returns in November, exhibitor applications opened
It’s baaaaaaaaack!

• Gosh! hosts Michael D. Kennedy signing next month to mark launch of new “Milk White Steed” collection
New story collection from Drawn and Quarterly out soon

THIS WEEK’S MOST POPULAR POST…

• WHSmith confirms planned sell off of high street stores – Modella Capital, Alteri, Hilco vying to buy?

There’s been much discussion online about the future of WHSmith High Street Operations and I was informed last night that comic and magazine distributors are meeting with the company this week to discuss what kind of impact a change in ownership might have. It’s a very uncertain time for specialist publishers in particular. I’ve been updating the post with new information over the week.

AND FINALLY…

Oh, and I did promise you a badly-drawn cartoon, didn’t I? Here’s the latest “Zoiks”, a one panel strip I drew daily for several months, until RSI started impacting my drawing. Plundering from the best, David Lynch for example, much of the panel remains the same each episode, but I vary things like the newspaper headlines, cat and aliens. There’s an archive here on Flickr if you’re very, very bored…

See you in the funny pages! Thank you for reading this far. You can go now. No, really, there’s nothing else!