Bear Alley: Comic Clippings

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The Bill Kellaway Quartet by Gwyn Evans
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"The narrative is packed with action and I think readers will have a lot of fun with [Hercules, Esq.] and there are some genuine moments of laugh out loud humour. I can understand why the film rights for this book were snapped up and even today I could envisage it being a very enjoyable one-off TV series." — Cross Examining Crime.
"Although there’s some criminous stuff going on and Bill often finds himself vying against or working with various lawbreakers, the stakes are never really life and death in this book ... There is some slam-bang action, though, as well as a smart, really likable protagonist and a lot of really clever plot twists, but what really makes HERCULES ESQ. work is Evans’s style, which is consistently breezy, fast-paced, and funny." — James Reasoner, Rough Edges.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Comic Clippings - 25 August

The circulations for a number of British children's magazines have recently been released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations so it's charts time again.

Just to show you how volatile the market is, sales for Toybox rose 1.5% against the previous six months but was down 22.4% year-on-year. Fun to Learn-- Friends, down 7.9% is actually up 4% on sales for the same period last year. The biggest success story has been BBC's Doctor Who Adventures Magazine which first registered a year ago with sales of 77,852 and has added 30,000 and 50,000 sales with each six-monthly figure until it is now the best-selling comic in the UK, outstripping The Simpsons Comics which was the best-selling title of 2006.

Some figures in the chart below are for 2006, the latest available from some publishers, and some are estimates, as indicated.

(I've had to scan a print-out as I've yet to figure out how to do neatly tabulated data on Blogger.)

Other bits of news...

* 'Mon Dieu! Poirot gets a makeover'. Ben Hoyle reveals (The Times, 25 August) how HarperCollins is publishing Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot in a series of graphic novels. Eight titles will appear this year, including Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express, followed by eight more next year. A more general piece on crime fiction ('The genre that just won't die') at the BBC News (21 August) site includes a few images from the adaptations.

I believe these Christie adapatations have previously appeared: according to 'Comic Christie: Murder or reincarnation?' by Arati Menon Carroll (Business Standard, 5 August), "Euro Books, the publishing division of Euro Kids India, has just launched 13 titles ... that are English adaptations of comics strips that originated in France a few years ago."

Titles include Death on the Nile (adapted by Francois Riviere, illustrated by Solidor), Murder on the Links (Riviere & Marc Piskic), Murder on the Orient Express (Riviere & Solidor), The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (adapted/illustrated by Bruno Lachard) and The Secret of Chimneys (Riviere & Laurence Suhner).

* Inspired by the above news, Tara Mulholland reveals 'More than words: Britain Embraces the graphic novel' (International Herald News, 22 August). Link via Steve Flanagan's Gad, Sir! Comics!

* Uninspired by the above news, Ned Beauman argues that adaptations are a waste of time unless they add something new in 'Comic versions of books need novel angle' (Guardian Unlimited, 23 August).

* Bryan Talbot is interviewed about his new book, The Naked Artist, by Tim O'Shea at Silver Bullet Comics in 'The Many Layers of Bryan Talbot' (21 August). Link via Journalista.