Rob from Tozzer has written a useful little report on having a table at the massive and seemingly non-SP-friendly Memorabilia show at the NEC in Birmingham. I asked him for some specifics and he added...

You can get a table for £110 for the weekend, which doesn't compare too badly to comics festivals I've been to. And there's loads of people, but getting their money can be very difficult (sales are maybe half of what you'd expect at Bristol). Still, it's a good chance to broaden the appeal of comics and the demographics are - in theory - ideal. It might be an idea for several publishers to be represented under one table?

My take - If, as Rob says, you're doing a comic that would appeal to the Memorabilia demographic then this is definitely a keen idea. Folk there are probably going to be more open to your work than traditional mainstream comic geeks, plus they tend to be in the spending-lots-of-money frame of mind so a £3 comic isn't going to break the bank. However, for the more arty, experimental minis I'd be cautious.

The BBC report on Persepolis 2 in their story, Satrapi follows up Iran picture book

Ian Samson reviews Jaime Hernandez's Locas for The Guardian: Punk Rocket

The Guardian also round up The Bradleys, Us & Them, My New Filing Technique Is Unstoppable and 5 Is the Perfect Number, courtesy of Craig Taylor: Keeping It In The Family

Courtesy of Thought Ballons, The Independent responds to the DC IPC deal with this story:

British comic-book superheroes who have languished unseen for decades are about be called back into action.

Sean Michael Wilson writes with new of his Manga anthology...

Our new Japanese anthology book Manga Mover is available right now in Diamond distributors November Previews magazine, page 242 – please get a copy, ta.

Manga mover will showcase new manga ka to a western audience. This will be a distinctive effort in comparison to many manga translations as most of these creators will be new and upcoming manga ka – but very talented!

We wanted to emphasise the more mature side of manga. As i think that there is a huge amount of the more adolescent manga around. Which is fine in itself, but it doesn't show the full range of manga that is being made in Japan. On the other hand we want Manga Mover to have some commercial success. Therefore it is not a completely alternative book - its a mixture of alternative and mainstream style stories.

The format is also unusual - as it is a split format book. Two stories read from the back in Japanese reading direction, and two from the front in western reading direction. One of these Western format stories will normally be by non Japanese creators in a manga style or Japanese influence. This format may confuse some, but I think it lends a pleasing symmetry to the book. And its certainly a unique selling point.

First issue features Sakura Mizuki, of recent hot Manga ‘The Spiral’ in a new story not even seen in Japan yet! Plus Misako Rocks of ‘The Onion’ newspaper. Female creator Tomoko Amemiya for the first time in English. Plus a story by Sean Michael Wilson of ‘Angel of the Woods’ GN, art by Juan Chavarriga who has recently signed to do some books for Platinum studios.

Issue one of Manga Mover is £4 UK, $5.99 in the USA, 68 pages, perfect bound. Available in shops via Diamond distributors November Previews Catalogue, page 242. Redroute distribution or Smallzone in the UK, or direct from boychild productions.

Check out the Manga Mover page on the website and an interview with me about the book is at Popimage.

Sequential Tart considers Mini-Comics as Objects d'Art

Egon reports of a London-based publisher, Typocrat, entering the market.

"We will be publishing around three or four books a year by the best European artists, as well as a regular anthology series featuring a host of outstanding talents from across the continent."

Lindsay Duff looks at the non-existent British comics scene over at ninth art.

Daryl Falyrymple's great website has loads of archived comics including his updated Supermundane strip. Beautiful stuff, makes you want to go and draw comics yourself, immediately!

It appears that Highwater Books have ceased operations, according to Spurgeon's blog, which is a shame. Tom Devlin was one of the key figures in pushing a new aesthetic of American cartooning, not only by publishing but by producing beautifully designed books and pushing the boundaries of how comics could be published.

Time moves on, of course, and whatever his reasons for stopping they're understandable. The US art-comics scene seems to be in a pretty healthy state at the moment and I hope Devlin will continue to be a presence on it.

The Comics Journal #256, published in 2003, was one of my favourite issues ever containing a massive overview of the curious and inspirational Fort Thunder collective by Tom Spurgeon. Now a suitable time period has elapsed, Spurgeon has archived a chunk of the articles and interviews on his site. Yay!

Start off with Fort Thunder Forever to get your head around the "movement" along with the sidebar footnotes. Should you need more, there's the interview with Brian Ralph and Ralph's bibliography. Finally there's an interview with Gary Panter, often named as a key influence on the group.

Also in Spurgeon's growing archive is an interview with Kevin Huizenga which I hadn't seen before.

The Graphic Novel Review site is proving a regular gold mine of intelligent comics-related writing. I suspect it'll be appearing on this blog on a regular basis. In the November issue you'll find Joey Manley's long and comprehensive review of Seth's Clyde Fans book 1 and Tom Spurgeon interviewing Peter Kuper amongst other gems.

John Robbins has done a nice one page strip in the style of and about getting a copy of Chris Reyonold's The Dial

Dave Hughes writes to say his new comic, The immeasurable adventures of Gorky Park
is out and that samples are on his site.

Dave Goodman sent out a call for submissions for his Zip Gun anthology. Two issues are in progress, Ninja Biscuits, shoprt, funny stories about Ninja, and Horribal Animle, funny animal strips preferably by people who don't usually do funny animal strips. The latter I'm keen to see!

Tom Spurgeon of the Comics Journal has his own blog-cum-site now.

BugPowder been silent for the last fortnight thanks to tedious technical issues which have meant we're having to rebuild everything. This is turning out to not be as bad as I'd feared so it all should be up and running quite soon.

Currently only this weblog is working but TRS2 and StripBlogJam should be updating by the end of the week (real world stuff allowing).

If you've sent through news recently and it doesn't appear here soon, feel free to send it again.

(I'll try and contact the contributors to the blogs personally but if any are having problems they should email me. The main thing is that the login page has slightly changed and your password might be different. Plus you'll need to update your profiles so they display your website.)

Flickr is a really neat and generally fantastic photo sharing service that I and a few other small press types have gotten kinda hooked on.

I've set up a group there to collect photos of small press comics folk out and about. If you're on Flickr and have taken photos of such creatures, stick them in the UKSP Nation group.

I've also noticed a few cartoonists using Flickr to host their images which they then use on their stripblogs, which works because Flickr don't put those stupid stamps on them that some photo sites do. Americas Most Hated being a case in point

A small selection of things from my inbox, RSS reader, the mailing list and conventioning...

I notice Cape are publishing David B's excellent Epileptic in January as one fat 368 page volume. While this might be slightly annoying for those of us who bought volume one when Fantagraphics put it out a couple of years back it's priced at only £16.99 (30% off at certain online stores) and should put this masterful work into many more deserving hands.

Garen Ewing's "How To Be An Illustrator": "Having a cup of tea means you don't have to start work just yet. Play 'You Are My Sunshine' on the banjo. Twice. Ponder bookshelf in search of inspiration to kick off work. After twenty minutes of Rider Haggard's 'Diary of an African Journey' having no effect in firing up the creative juices for today's job - drawings for a training course on the Freedom of Information Act - realise the horrible truth and sit down at the drawing desk, pencil hovering above paper."

Apogee magazine has new comics up by Patrick Findlay and Derek Ballard.

Rob Dunlop of Tozzer has written a report of last weeks comcis festival. I think he was stuck behind a table for too long...

Imagination Cubed is a collaborative drawing flash application. If anyone gets anything interesting going with this let us know.

Shane Chesby wrote that Incoming #2, his SmallZone newsletter-zine, is out: "There's an interview with OK COMIC''s Jared Myland, in which he reveals some tips for getting your comics into the shops. There's also some great comics art from Tony McGee, Darren Worrow, Marc Olivent and many more."

The Anarchists Bookfair is on November 27th in London and I notice the Paper Tiger Comix folk from Brighton will be there.

James Morris' Jampot weblog has some nice comics of his on there.

It's always good for the soul to read Paul Rainey's Book fo Lists and he's posted a couple of new lists on there recently along with the first commissioned one.

I also noticed on Paul's site that John Welding's Awakefield Diary issue #5 is out featuring his sketches from Caption 2004. I saw some of them at the time and they're very nice. £3.95 from 36 Grosvenor Street, Wakefield WF1 5BG.

Robert Wells thrust into my hands recently a copy of Colin Comics #1 collecting in print strips from his Modern Tales webcomic. Lots of diarrhetic rhino action.

Commercial Suicide is a big anthology of bad taste comics that did a brisk trade at the recent comics fest in London. My sources tell me it's come out of one of those message board thingies ("the V" I believe) which accounts for all the in jokes. Fun stuff, though, especially the From Hell photostrip.

RedEye #3 is out from Engine Comics with the usual news and many reviews. Barry Renshaw is trying to twist my arm into doing the news section. I'm still unsure. Watch this space.

(There were a lots of other really good comics at the festival, too many to mention here. Maybe later.)

That'll do for now. Did I miss anything?

Comic artist P. J. Holden (2000AD, Warhammer etc etc) has started a Wiki for UK comic creators. It needs people to help build it, and looks like becoming an excellent resource.

Visit it at www.pencilmonkey.net/wiki/

Discovered this gorgeous website featuring the comics of the UK/NY based Ellen Lindner. How pretty can you get?