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Colin Smith @colinsmith.bsky.social · 20h

George Orwell: an illustration by Peter Brookes for a 1980 article in The Listener about Orwell’s biographers.

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Chris Samnee & David Baron’s charming cover for 2024’s Superman #19. I do love a smiling Supes.

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Colin Smith @colinsmith.bsky.social · 21h

Which is a rather splendid way of reading it, I must say 👍

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Colin Smith @colinsmith.bsky.social · 21h

I am not hyper-cultured enough to know. >sigh<

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Colin Smith @colinsmith.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Released this very month in 1985, just in time for Halloween, four horror-themed comicbook covers by, in turn, Brian Bolland, Dave Stevens, Stephen R. Bissette, John Totleben, Al Milgrom, Joe Sinnott & all their many collaborators, known & sadly unknown.

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Colin Smith @colinsmith.bsky.social · 22h

Man balanced on a rail-mounted crane in a steel stockyard, Norwich, 1947-8, by Walter & Rita Nurnberg.

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Colin Smith @colinsmith.bsky.social · 23h

I just love me the Anastasia!

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Colin Smith @colinsmith.bsky.social · 23h

It’s coincidence. Mind you, Vincent Price Space Adventurer would go down very well with me.

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I know they were trying to make sure the new DD wasn’t the DD of reader’s fathers, but I do regret the absence of the Eagle comic aesthetic, and not just for Hampson’s brilliant designs. There was some lovely work afterwards too. It seems a shame to have junked nearly all of that.

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I mean, Dan speaking just like Tharg? That’s not cricket.

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That’s from my battered old copy of the Annual, which I keep basically for the Kevin O’Neill cover & a short tale with Cam Kennedy art inside. 2000AD Annuals would soon become value for money classics, but not soon enough for poor old Dan.)

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From 1979’s Dan Dare Annual, a cutaway of DD’s Space Fort by Adrian Beeton. (It had been printed earlier in 2000AD #36, but at least was recoloured for its second, cost-cutting appearance in the Annual.)

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I can only sympathise when comics creators talk about how hard it is to create short stories. I’m sure that’s true. And it only makes Stan Sakai all the more impressive, because this 3 page Usagi Yojimbo story from 1999 - coloured by Tom Luth - is absolutely & utterly brilliant.

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George Orwell: an illustration by Peter Brookes for a 1980 article in The Listener about Orwell’s biographers.

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New art/synth/politics super-group looking very enticing indeed.

At London’s Design Museum, Oct 2026, as posted on PSB’s Instagram account: Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran, Sadiq Khan, Es Devlin, whose exhibition it is, and Neil Tennant.

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On June 10th 1940, Benito Mussolini declared war on France & Great Britain. The next day, this David Low cartoon appeared in response to the news in the Evening Standard. It would prove to be profoundly prescient. “Mussolini, the ghastly flop” it would be.

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I still have that book, and I can still feel the comics culture-shock from it even today :)

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Florian Bertmer’s 2011 Mondo alt-movie posters for 1982’s Swamp Thing.

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George Harrison, wearing a “Fab Four Fun Club” t-shirt, and Stevie Nicks, Acapulco, Mexico, 1977, by Sam Emerson.

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(That was published in Sept 1999’s Wizard magazine.)

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That’s what I thought. I’m afraid the Photography Annual 1953, from which it came, offered no more info. However I read that at least 3 of the tests in that year were airbursts, and 1 in 1952 was actually televised live. So, quite possibly.

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An A-Bomb test at Nevada’s Yucca Flats testing ground, c.1953, by Captain A. D. Bruce.

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Long-distance runner Brendan Foster training for the then-upcoming 1978 Commonwealth Games on the streets of Tyneside, by Tony Duffy. A quite wonderful snapshot of Seventies Britain.

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I still recall the comics-culture shock I felt when I saw this Jim Starlin & Joe Rubinstein take on The Legion Of Super-Heroes in 1978. It was so totally unlike anything I’d seen from DC in the period,being very much the style Starlin had developed at Marvel. It felt dynamic & futuristic & exciting.

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Indeed! Splendid single with period Rough Trade cred. :)

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George Harrison, wearing a “Fab Four Fun Club” t-shirt, and Stevie Nicks, Acapulco, Mexico, 1977, by Sam Emerson.

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I’d say 1980 was one of very best years for pop music if I hadn’t been 17/18 back then. Objectivity flies out the window.I mean, I hated the year, but that only meant the music was all the more important. But I’d venture it was still a darn fine time for music & here’s 12 fav tracks to “prove” it.

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It was a belter of a year vinyl wise.

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Colin Smith @colinsmith.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

My favourite albums from 1980. Every year is a great year when you boil it down to 9 terrific LPs.

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Pedestrian crossing, London, 1935, by John H. Ahern.

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Bob Larkin’s cover to 1980’s Crazy #60 featuring Spock & Kirk from Star Trek and, from The Muppets, the Pigs In Space. It’s a great tragedy that nobody in power saw this & thought, this is exactly the kind of movie we ought to be making.

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And to this day, for my coin, no one else has ever made Colossal Boy look as formidable and, quite frankly, awesome as he looks here. What’s the point of a giant if he isn’t one of the team’s biggest hitters?

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“Chuck! Chuck, it's Marvin. Your cousin, Marvin Berry. You know that new sound you're looking for? Well, listen to this!” Matt Taylor’s splendid 2014 alt-movie poster for 1985’s Back to the Future.

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