For the whole of July, Manchester’s award-winning pub The Lass O’Gowrie (conveniently well within easy stumbling distance of  Manchester Oxford Road train station) becomes a one venue fringe festival, hosting an amazing 100+ events.

Pub Fiction is a week (and a bit) long literature event running from Monday the 18th featuring talks, Q&As and readings with a some of the region’s best and brightest writing talents.

Full programme:

• Monday 18th – Ramsey Campbell
• Tuesday 19th -  John Reppion
• Wednesday 20th – Tom Fletcher
• Thursday 21st – Nicholas Royle
• Friday 22nd – Al Ewing
• Saturday 23rd -  Bryan Talbot
• Sunday 24th – Steven Gallagher
• Monday 25th – Paul Magrs  and George Mann

The Lass is a lovely pub with great ale and is well worth a visit even when the Lass Fest isn’t running. As well as being there for my own talk on the 19th  (which I really hope you can join me for), Leah and I will definitley be doing our best to attend at least three of the other talks next week. Hopefully we’ll see you there.

he gift giving season is well and truly upon us once more and it’s entirely possible that you’re desperately looking for the perfect present, or maybe even that you’re still not sure what to ask for yourself.  Perhaps you’re reading this post Yule and have some book tokens burning a hole in your pocket. In any case, the truth of the matter is, we went to Thought Bubble last month (had such a good time that we pulled this face) and picked up some comics which we haven’t had time to write about. So, it being the season of giving and all, what better time could there be to catch up on a bit of blogging and recommend some comics to your good selves?

FALL OF THE WOLFMEN is the follow up to 2008′s supernatural noir crime thriller WOLFMEN. This second  volume is once again penned by Dave West with wonderful, stylish black and white artwork from Andy Bloor. FALL picks up where book one left off but definitely takes things to a new level. Our (anti) hero Jack Grey is hellbent on the destruction of The Wolfmen – the toughest gang south east of the Thames – but it’s not just his own life he’s risking.

Order now at www.accentukcomics.com

GRANDVILLE MON AMOUR - Bryan Talbot’s Detective Inspector LeBrock returns in another gorgeously realised action packed art nouveau anthropomorphic steampunk adventure.

This time the badger is on the trail of Edward “Mad Dog” Mastock – an escaped serial killer with an intriguing past.

Order now from Amazon

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS is Ian J. Culbard’s stunningly good adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s classic novella.

The tale concerns an scientific expedition to Antarctica headed by geologist, and Miskatonic University professor, William Dyer. There they find strange fossils of unheard-of creatures, carved stones tens of millions of years old and, finally, the unspeakable, mind-twisting terror of the City of the Old Ones.

Order now from Amazon

HOKUSAI: DEMONS AND OTHER TALES OF THE FOX MOTHER – ‘Kitsune’, the Japanese term for ‘Fox’ is most often used to represent the mythical shape-changing trickster of Japanese folklore. This fox confuses, seduces, and bewitches. Sometimes it has good intentions, other times it just wants your blood. The dreams transcribed in this volume all have a common thread, the Kitsune appears in one form or another, for better or worse. Al Davison first dreamed of the Kitsune when he was only three years old, and has been dreaming of her on and off ever since. Why? A question he often asks himself, and a question he now throws open to you…

Order now from www.astralgypsy.com

MADAM SAMURAI is actually a book we picked up many months ago but that we didn’t have time to write about previously.

It’s  a hard-hitting historical adventure story that tells the tale of a young female samurai warrior who travels from feudal Japan to Victorian London on a mission of vengeance. Witten by Gary Young (Harry Brown) and drawn by our old mate Dave Hitchcock at the very, very top of his game this is an absolutely fantastic book.

Order now from www.scarcomics.com

The legendary Bryan Talbot will be launching his new book Grandville Mon Amour (the follow up to 2009′s steampunk badger cop masterpiece Grandville), the likes of  John “Kick Ass” Romita Jr., Adi “Iron Man” Granov, Paul “Action Comics” Cornell, Leigh “Defoe” Gallagher, Emma “Manga Shakespeare” Vieceli, Ian “Sherlock Holmes” Culbard, and lots, lots, lots more will be signing, sketching, selling and giving talks, workshops and (again) lots more.

We will also be there signing and (hopefully) selling copies of The Complete Dracula, The Trial of Sherlock Holmes, The Complete Alice in Wonderland and anything else of ours we can lay our hands on in time (if any nice, kind hearted, retailers attending the event would be willing to flog us some books on the day at trade price that would be very handy and very much appreciated – please do shoot us an email if you can help we now have loads of books thanks to the lovely peeps at Travelling Man – bring money!!!).

This will be our only con appearance this year so, if you’ve got any Moore & Reppion bits and bobs you’d like us to sign, then Thought Bubble is the place to catch us.

Sadly, we won’t be hanging round for the after-party so we’ll be running round and round all day trying to catch up with as many people as possible and grab as many comics as we can. We will, however, do our very best to keep our twitter feeds updated throughout the day so, if we’re not sat behind our table, you should be able to find out exactly where we are by checking http://twitter.com/leahmoore and (probably to a significantly lesser extent due to my phone being crap) http://twitter.com/johnreppion

Thought Bubble is always a brilliant day – probably our favourite convention, actually – and we’re looking forward to seeing you there.

More info at http://www.thoughtbubblefestival.com/

From www.bryan-talbot.com/news.html:

Bryan is being awarded an honorary doctorate for his “outstanding contribution to the Arts as writer and graphic artist” by Sunderland University. He says: “I’ve been saying that working on Alice in Sunderland was being like doing a Phd – not something I said lightly as my wife is a Phd and I saw first hand the sheer amount of work involved – it turns out now I was virtually doing one! The graphic novel did take a lot of time and one hell of a lot of research. I’m sure that the doctorate is mainly for producing this book, though they are going to cite the whole canon at the ceremony.”

The honour is well deserved and we wish him all the very best!

Some of you may remember that, back in the mists of time (well, June last year), I interviewed Bryan about his forthcoming graphic novel Grandville (amongst other things).

Well, now there’s a spangly trailer for the book on You Tube.

Personally, I really can’t wait to get my hands on this!

For more info visit www.bryan-talbot.com/grandville/

NARRATIVE

Doppler and the Madness Engine (part two) …….36 by John Reppion
Funny Thing About Horizons ……….58 by Jimmy T. Hand

INTERVIEWS

The Chronabelle ………………….16 by Libby Bulloff
Voltaire ………………………..45 by Margaret Killjoy

FEATURES

Knights of the Road ……………….8 By Charles Eberhardt
Steampunk Ad-Libs ……………….45 By Margaret Killjoy & Usul of the Blackfoot
On Progress, On Airships …………..26 By Carolyn Dougherty
The User’s Guide To Steampunk ……..30 By Bruce Sterling
On The “Validity” of Steampunk ……..34 By Heather Pund
Selected Timeline of Steampunk Events, Past & Future .34 By Margaret Killjoy
An Introduction to Casting …………48 By David Dowling
Emergency Welding Machine ……….62 By Zac Zunin
Reviews ………………………..64
Steampunk Funnies ……………….68 By Geof & Alex

Order a paper copy online

Download PDF for free

Readers might also be interested in the interview I conducted with Bryan Talbot for SPM a while back, wonderfully illustrated by my lady wife.