Tony Hancock, Star Trek and Festivals, oh my...

Goodness me, how much can I jam into a working day?

Feb 24, 2023

Acknowledging my admiration of the real writers who are far more regular in their Substack newsletters than me, thank you for your forbearance as I bring you up to speed on recent activities here at Crucible Comic Press.

My main reason for this latest newsletter, is, of course, to promote the new graphic novel I’ve edited for B7 Media, Hancock: The Lad Himself, a wonderful telling of the comedian’s difficult life story, often with interjections from Tony Hancock himself. We're currently seeking support for this on Kickstarter, and I do hope you'll take a look and give it your consideration.

While the project has earned a welcome #ProjectWeLove from Kickstarter, I rather suspect a more, shall we say, American-skewed audience on the platform might be rather bemused about a graphic novel centred on a dead British comedian. But this graphic novel is about much more than Tony's woes - I think it reaches out to many a creator who constantly doubts their obvious ability, concerns many a comic writer, artist and other engager in the creation of our favoured medium.

Stephen Walsh and Keith Page have created a wonderful story around an icon of British radio and television. I hope you can be persuaded to back the book.

Strange New Worlds

In complete contrast, away from maintaining the downthetubes comic news site - winner of another award, recently, thank you so much for your votes over on ComicScene! - I think I've found my feet stepping back into the "Captain's Chair" on Titan's Star Trek Explorer, the official magazine dedicated to the popular SFTV and film franchise. My third tour of duty on the official Trek title, the team at Titan and CBS, and the title's freelancers, have been incredibly supportive as we try to keep our fingers on the pulse of a sprawling, entertaining franchise. There's so much happening, not least the new Star Trek: Picard season, to keep track of, trying to accommodate coverage of the many new shows, games, books, comics and more is quite a challenge. But an enjoyable one.

Festival Outing

I was up in Windermere last week for our first round table meeting proper of the year, planning events and hearing about the guest line up for this year’s Lakes International Comic Art Festival. It’s too early to reveal names, but I think the line-up will please both those looking at challenging comics creativity as well as offering some great mainstream appeal, too. I certainly think 2000AD fans will be happy.

Game On

Something that’s been bubbling under for me for over two years is an excursion into the world of games and writing game scripts. The pandemic put the kibosh on this for a while, but this week, I finally started thinking about what motivates a zombie for a interesting new project. And if that isn’t a new challenge, I don’t know what is!

Rather than risk losing your attention now, since Substack currently advises reading this far took you three minutes of your valuable time, I’ll leave you with a a few items on downthetubes you may be interested in reading, below…

Best wishes

John Freeman

• The downthetubes British and Irish Comics Events Listing

My regularly updated guide to things a-happening that should interest most comic fans - including exhibitions

• The downethetubes British and Irish Comic Shop Map

Updates always welcome - while comic shops are happy to tell us they have opened, they don’t always tell us they are, unfortunately, no longer in operation…

• The “Charley’s War” Micro Site

If you’re a fan of the famous anti war strip by Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun, first published in Battle, this resource may be up your street