Comic Clippings - 17 December

This week's annuals best-sellers: Doctor Who Annual (29,838), Beano Annual (22,359), Bratz Annual (15,405), Match Annual (14,982). That puts Doctor Who at #8 (same as last week) in the top-sellers of the week, Beano at #14 (up from 18), Bratz at 19 (up from 47) and Match at 23 (up from 31).

• Alan Moore has an essay on pornography in the latest issue of Arthur (#25, Winter 2006) which can be downloaded as a pdf. The essay is spread over parts 1 and 2, starting on the last page of the former. The new Albion trade paperback from WildStorm -- for which I got roped into writing a little introduction (oddly not mentioned whereas Neil Gaiman's intro. gets a mention on the cover) -- is out now. It arrived the same day as Model & Collectors Mart which has an interview with Leah Moore.

• Peter Woolcock has a new collection of editorial cartoons out, originally published in The Royal Gazette (Bermuda) where he moved many years ago. Peter was one of the best of the nursery comics artists for thirty years. I had a letter from him only recently about his career which I'll cobble together with some images at some point. In the meantime, below is an example of his adaptation of Wind in the Willows.

(* It has been a hectic week, hence the lack of blogging; I've been dipping in and out of a little essay on Hugh McNeill which will appear when I have a chance to finish it.

(Also went to see Marcus Brigstocke at the Colchester Arts Centre -- if you've ever heard his weekly rants on The Now Show or The Late Edition you'll have a good idea of the kind of material he does live: he's angry, cynical and very, very funny. I thought the audience was a bit hesitant for once -- the Colchester Arts Centre crowd is usually right behind this kind of thing although I noticed the same thing happening when Jeremy Hardy performed here a year or so ago. Maybe we're a little too middle-class liberal here: you could see people starting to laugh and then thinking 'Hang on a sec., that's me he's talking about!' (the classic example being when Marcus began attacking 4x4 owners who don't need to drive 4x4s which has to be half the population of Colchester). Caroline Quinlan, the support act, was a nice surprise, too, although when she walked on, the lack of corduroy obviously had a few people confused.

(The rest of the weekend was taken up in part with typing up the text for the next (eighth) Trigan Empire volume from DLC which is due next February; the seventh volume is just out and can be picked up (along with the Worlds of Don Lawrence: Pandarve collection and The Legacy: Vol.2) via the Worlds of Don Lawrence website.)