The all-consuming MCM expo appears to be getting bigger and more claustrophobia-inducing with each iteration, but a greater focus on movies and games doesn’t necessarily mean that the organisers have forgotten their roots.

The MCM Expo London Comic Con is apparently expanding its Comic Village by 50% area after tables for the October show sold out in record time. It’s encouraging news for the UK’s comic community, creators, and that ever-diminishing demographic who actually visit comic conventions for the comics.

“When all of the Comic Village tables were snapped up only a week after going on sale, we decided to expand the area so that some of those comic artists and writers who missed out can still come to MCM Expo London Comic Con,” commented show co-organiser Bryan Cooney.

“Attracting over a 100 top comic creators and 60,000 fans, London Comic Con is now one the most important weekends in the UK’s comics calendar, and the unprecedented demand for tables only goes to underline this.”

For further details and tickets visit www.mcmexpogroup.com/store

Nelson is no mere anthology, either, but something far more ambitious; a 250 page story of one woman’s life from her birth in 1968 to the present day. Presumably the range of artists, which includes such mainstream names as Duncan Fegredo and Sean Philips (see below for the full list of contributors), will each take on a stage in the protagonist’s life.

“When [editors] Rob [Davis] and Woodrow [Phoenix] came to me with their idea for Nelson, straight away it seemed to me that it should be a charity project” states Kenny Penman, Publisher at Blank Slate, “The British comic scene is more vibrant than ever before, and the opportunity to unite this diverse group of creators to aid the greatly important work that Shelter does in these difficult economic times seemed too good to miss.”

Here’s the full list of contributors:

Paul Grist, Rob Davis, Woodrow Phoenix, Ellen Lindner, Jamie Smart, Gary Northfield, Sarah McIntyre, Suzy Varty, Sean Longcroft, Warwick Johnson–Cadwell, Luke Pearson, Paul Harrison–Davies, Katie Green, Paul Peart–Smith, Glyn Dillon, I.N.J.Culbard, John Allison, Philip Bond,D’Israeli, Simone Lia, Darryl Cunningham, Jonathan Edwards, Ade Salmon, Kate Charlesworth,Warren Pleece, Kristyna Baczynski, HarveyJames, Rian Hughes, Sean Phillips & Pete Doree, Kate Brown, Simon Gane, Jon McNaught, Adam Cadwell, Faz Choudhury, JAKe, Jeremy Day, Dan McDaid, Roger Langridge, Will Morris, Dave Shelton, Carol Swain, Hunt Emerson, Duncan Fegredo, Philippa Rice, Josceline Fenton, Garen Ewing, Tom Humberstone , Dan Berry, Alice Duke, Posy Simmonds, Laura Howell, Andi Watson, Dave Taylor

ISBN 978-1-906653-23-1
252 pages
236 x 178mm softcover with flaps, full colour
£18.99 / $22.99
Facebook page: www.facebook.com/NelsonGraphicNovel

Nelson’s official launch event will take place on the 22nd November 2011 at The Cartoon Museum in London, with readers able to buy a special advance copy of the book at Leeds’ Thought Bubble Festival on the 19th and 20th November, where the majority of its artists will be signing copies for the public.

Bit of an eleventh hour news post, this one, but I thought it work mentioning that the Hong Kong Film Week kicks off in London this week. While hardly a film festival – it’s more a case of 5 movies showing in several different cinemas – the week is a great opportunity to see some of the Hong Kong film industry’s most celebrated recent output on the big screen.

As part of the ‘Think Asia, Think Hong Kong’ campaign, organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, Overheard 2 will receive an International Premiere at The May Fair Hotel on 12^th September, 7.45pm, introduced by writer/director Alan Mak.

The Prince Charles Cinema will also be showing the following:

IP Man (13^th September, 6.30pm)

Echoes of the Rainbow - followed by post screening Q&A session with director Alex Law and producer Mabel Cheung (14^th September, 6.15pm)

Love in a Puff (15^th September, 6.30pm)

The Beast Stalker (16^th September, 6.30pm)

The selection presents a movie for everyone, really, and while Ip Man has been available on DVD for some time, Donnie Yen’s kung fu gem begs to be seen on the big screen.

For more details visit www.thinkasiathinkhk.com/en/filmweek.htm

If the term “fotonovela” has you thinking of teen magazines, 70s football albums and tabloid cartoon strips, think again; Stavit looks to bring an attention to detail to the technique that might just change your mind about photographic comics. For Isness, which chronicles the last 24 hours in the lives of mankind’s sole surviving family, she’d already comprised over 40,000 images to work from before the project was fully funded.

Stavit was attempting to raise funds for the book via Kickstarter, and successfully attracted 102 backers and over $7,000 to make the project a reality. Not bad at all.

Images and progress reports on the project can be followed over at www.countercomics.com. There’s a hell of a lot of work going into this unique and macabre title, as you can see from the preview (or, if you will, “trailer”) below.

The site is currently taking pitches for a 2 minute film, under the criteria that it is based on the bible – though how you use the good book as your inspiration is entirely up to you. Entrants have until 14 October 2011 to pitch their film, which will be judged by actors David Oyelowo and David Suchet, animator Nick Park, editor of Empire magazine Nev Pierce and BBC producer Anna Cox.

The Pitch previously ran in 2009; winner Simeon Lumgair got to meet X-Men producer Ralph Winter and see his effort in numerous international film festivals.

Project Director Luke Walton apparently wants “… people from all over the UK to enter The Pitch. It doesn’t matter if you’ve just turned 18 or 65 – all you need is imagination and drive.” Imagination and drive, eh? Dammit, I’m currently high on the former yet running empty on the latter… Shame.

Turns out Jonathan couldn’t agree more; over at John Scalzi’s Whatever he argues the strengths of such a format in an insightful piece on the thought process behind his and Dan Hallett’s illustrated tome:

Bastardry has its advantages too … In an illustrated novel, the pictures are not part of the narrative continuity in the way that successive frames in a comic book are. They do not have to carry the burden of explaining what is happening, since that information is provided in the text; and because they are freed from this obligation, it’s possible to use them to do other things.

In couldn’t recommend Five Wounds: An Illuminated Novel more. An accomplished, multifaceted work that follows the twisted fates of five sympathetic freaks in what is essentially an alternate-history Venice, its synthesis of words and images is effective enough to change anyone’s preconceptions about them thar picture books.

Five Wounds - Jonathan Walker, Dan Hallett

A chapter from the novel can be downloaded here.

Press release: In the age of the internet when most artists rely on online sales to promote, or a rare decent paying, steady gig at a big company to pay the bills, Sean Dietrich is going against the grain with a six month, 10,000 mile U.S. Live Art Tour starting Aug 1st to promote several new books, including a brand new kid’s book ‘The Fruits of Our Labor’, and introduce thousands of new people to his own special brand of live art. With all the art programs being ripped out of California schools, Dietrich insists on a public tour de force to promote his books, art, and a way of life he’s spent the last 30 years developing since he first put crayon to paper. And he’s doing it all with his wife, and co-author of ‘Fruits’, and 3-year-old daughter out of the back of his Volvo and tent trailer.

Sean Dietrich’s Catalepsy

Sure, you can see artists at galleries and at comic cons every so often, but Dietrich is driving across the U.S. hitting comic stores, comic conventions, galleries, nightclubs, festivals and more to promote, in person, his books and art. While you will be able to sample the darker art Dietrich is known for, the tour itself is focusing on a new kid’s book ‘The Fruits of Our Labor’, illustrated by Dietrich and written by Rachel Dietrich and Lexi Sadler. The book itself, simply put, is AWESOME! We always tell our kids, “Eat your fruits and veggies, and you’ll grow up big and strong!”, but what do you do when you DO grow up big and strong? Well, our cast of garden grown characters will show you. By coupling fruits and veggies with occupations in an alphabet style book, such as the ‘Artistic Artichoke’, ‘Stay at Home Strawberry’, and ‘Onion the Optometrist’, we are able to teach children about different and unique things to eat, and allow them to learn about a multitude of cool job possibilities they can strive for as they grow up.

The main themes the creators are surrounding the promoting of the book with are raising awareness of healthy living, creativity with food, supplementing children’s knowledge of art, and teaching them how to apply creative thinking in their day-to-day life; a concept and commitment of the creators that hits close to home as they watch art, music and drama being taken out of the California schools because of budget cuts. In San Diego, the creators are teaming up with chefs and fitness experts to throw events that will offer demos to children, covering everything from how to make food fun, to simple exercises they can do, to discussions on how to enhance their lives creatively.

Also available on this tour will be the full line of the artist’s art prints, original art, and his new books ‘Bubbles from Atlantis’ written by Richard A. Webster, and Dietrich’s 10 yr. anniversary live art book ‘I Brought the Gutter’. Both books are also available from Colosseum Publishing online at Amazon.com and at BarnesandNoble.com.

Current tour dates are as follows with many, many more dates to follow including club dates and store signings in most of the cities:

5/31 – Poster Show @ Bar Basic (San Diego)
6/4 – Dragonfly (Hollywood, CA)
6/5 – Happenin’ Harry @ The Cat Club (Hollywood, CA)
6/23 – NOHO Studios Show (North Hollywood, CA)
6/24 – Beer and Sake Festival (San Diego, CA)
7/19 – Poems, Rhymes and Tales @ Bar Basic (San Diego, CA)
7/21 – 24th – San Diego Comic Con (San Diego, CA)
8/11 – 8/14 – Wizard World Chicago (Chicago, IL)
8/20 – 8/21 – Baltimore Comic Con (Baltimore, MD)
9/24 – Jet City Comic Con (Seattle, WA)
10/29 – 10/30 – Long Beach Comic Con (Long Beach, CA)
11/11 – 11/13 – Wizard World Austin (Austin, TX)
1/28 – 1/29 – Wizard World New Orleans (New Orleans, LA)5/31 – Poster Show @ Bar Basic (San Diego)

Sean Dietrich currently lives in San Diego (at least for the next 2 months!) and has been published since he was 15. He used his live art as a marketing tool when his first book ‘industriacide’ came out because he was too broke to buy ad space to promote, and it’s since become a successful career. Dietrich has painted at the lowliest dive bars on up to celebrity filled clubs in Beverly Hills, and has been able to maintain his status in the underground art scene in San Diego, helping new artists break into live art and make a living off of their craft. The artist has also been apart of numerous charity events raising thousands of dollars through donated paintings that are auctioned off.

Help fund the tour on Kickstarter.com: http://kck.st/lsrexT

For more information on the tour, the books, tour blog and more, log to www.industriacide.com or follow Dietrich at www.facebook.com/seandietrich.

“I wanted the website to be more user friendly and inviting,” explained Ave Rose creator of Ink Pen Mutations. “Our subject matter runs a huge gamut from Apocalypse Nair to women’s issues. We needed to make sure that our website reflected the scope of the line”.

httpv://youtu.be/x6FwXYJRXJY

About Ink Pen Mutations: In 2005, founder of Ink Pen Mutations Ave Rose searched for an outlet that reflected her unique, no holds barred vision and found the world lacking and thus Ink Pen was born. Her business model was to partner with the best unconventional West Coast artists to create products that brought new ideas to established genres, formats and themes. In 2008, a permanent installation in the renowned Hive Gallery in Los Angeles was secured to give all Ink Pen artists a place to display their work. Primarily a West Coast business, Ink Pen is making the moves to go nationwide and put their avant-garde creations to the mainstream. Ink Pen Mutations:-Your underground storybook generator.

Interestingly, whereas the Xbox 360 and PS3 editions feature a computer-generated Ryan Reynolds on the cover, the Wii edition is adorned with what appears to be Hal Jordan on vacation in the same universe as The Incredibles. Which, admittedly, sounds like a lot of fun; far more than the conventionally “realistic” art direction that movie-to-game adaptations are constrained by.

Can’t wait to see Hal clobber things with a comically oversized green mallet? There’s also a Facebook page over at www.facebook.com/GreenLanternVideoGame, which features an intriguingly titled ’3-D Energy Viewer’ and a ‘Power Ring Battle’ game.

From the press release:

Inspired by the upcoming Warner Bros. Pictures’ superhero feature film Green Lantern, Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters soars onto game consoles this summer, extending the theatrical experience of one of DC Entertainment’s most popular superheroes.  Players will use the most powerful weapon in the universe, the Green Lantern Power Ring, to build an array of weapons from green energy to defeat the Manhunters – an evil android race bent on destroying the Green Lantern Corps.

Packed with intergalactic missions, alien androids and out-of-this-world combat, Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters is an action-adventure videogame that delivers the Green Lantern experience right into the hands of gamers.

This Sunday, Kim Newman will be introducing the 1974 cult classic The Beast Must Die, and celebrating the new edition of Nightmare Movies, his comprehensive guide to everything gruesome, ghastly and gory.

The epitome of cult cinema, The Beast Must Die will include the original theatrical release’s ‘Werewolf Break,’ in which the audience were encouraged to guess the lupine murderer from a suspect list that includes Charles Gray, Michael Gambon and genre stalwart Peter Cushing.

The Beast Must Die - poster

The show/event will include ’70s tunes, drinks and canapés from 10pm, as well as another Short in the Dark entry courtesy of the London Short Film Festival. Attendees are advised to ‘dress for dinner’.

Tickets are £7.00 (plus booking fee) and available here.

From the press release:

‘The Beast Must Die’ comes from the legendary Amicus, the studio that dripped blood and stars Calvin Lockhart, Peter Cushing and Michael Gambon. A wealthy businessman and skilled huntsman summons a handful of guests to his home for the weekend, one of whom has a taste for blood. It’s up to the others to seek out the monster before the full moon fades…

“super sweet dose of 70’s werewolf camp with a top-notch cast and music” – Eat My Brains

“The Beast Must Die is a horror classic in every sense of the word. It has it all: horn heavy bow-chica-bow-wow Seventies theme music, a badass soul brother as the lead character, some surprising gore… and one of the true masters of our genre; Peter Cushing” – Dread Central

Midnight Movies

Curated by event programmers MMX Associates, Midnight Movies have taken place across London every month since February 2008 at venues such as Curzon Soho, Rio Cinema in Dalston and Ritzy Cinema in Brixton plus The End of the Road and Green Man music festivals. Offering London film-goers an array of cult films in a late night setting, the screenings include a pre-party with live music, themed cocktails, fancy dress and decor.  Featured recently on BBC’s Film 2011, Midnight Movies has welcomed cult legends John Landis, Edgar Wright, Dario Argento, Roger Corman and Bruce Campbell to present their work, held the English premiere of Lars Von Trier’s controversial Antichrist and partnered with the BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Sci-Fi London and the London International Animation Festival. For more information, visit: www.midnight-movies.co.uk or www.facebook.com/midmov.

Nightmare Movies by Kim Newman, published by Bloomsbury

Now over twenty years old, the original edition of Nightmare Movies has retained its place as a true classic of cult film criticism. In this new edition, Kim Newman brings his seminal work completely up to date, both reassessing his earlier evaluations and adding a second part that analyses the last two decades of horror films with all the wit, intelligence and insight for which he is known. Since the publication of the first edition, horror has been on a gradual upswing and has gained a new and stronger hold over the film industry. Newman negotiates his way through a vast back catalogue of horror and charts the on-screen progress of our collective fears and bogeymen, from the low-budget slasher movies of the 1960s, through to the slick releases of the 2000s. Nightmare Movies is an invaluable companion that not only provides a newly updated history of the darker side of film but also acts as a truly entertaining guide with which to explore the less well-trodden paths of horror and rediscover the classics with a newly instructed eye.