The world’s longest running sci-fi series began in late 1963 and the Doctor first appeared in cartoon form in TV Comic in the following year.

A new exhibition, Doctor Who in Comics: 1964-2011 brings together artwork featuring all eleven Doctors from publications including TV Comic, TV Century 21 and Doctor Who Magazine. Comic-strips were famously one of the mediums that kept the Doctor alive for the fans when the TV show was off the air for 16 years — yes, excepting Paul McGann’s one-off TV film, don’t write in! — between 1989 and 2005.

The show, which materialises at the Cartoon Museum in London on Wednesday, features work by many writers and artists including Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Dicky Howett, Roger Langridge, David Lloyd, Pat Mills, Alan Moore and John Wagner. It looks set to be a family hit for all generations over the summer. Catch it before it dematerialises on October 30.

Artwork above by Paul Grist and James Offredi

It is more acceptable in the cultures of Japan, the US and across Europe to consider the narrative techniques and visual artistry employed by commercial artists as a powerful form for  business and personal communication as well as entertainment and teaching.

The best single piece of evidence we offer is the attitude of the UK arts funding body – The Arts Council –  towards the national Cartoon Museum* which despite its popularity, and the long history of the form in the UK , receives no central funding. We wrote about this here.

Of course, there are some exceptions in this country – political cartooning, for example, tends to receive grudging respect for its obviously satirical and “real-world” relevance. But all too often, the “cartoon” and “comic” are used here as catch-all terms for anything that is unsophisticated, childish or tacky.

Dundee University is launching a degree in comic books. That'll show those who say degrees are being dumbed down!

6th June 2011 10:32 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@TomHarrisMP

Tom Harris

Another political figure, the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, did exactly that last week. Criticising the Daily Mail, he described the paper as a “sexist, racist, bigoted comic cartoon strip”(Bloghorn is only interested in the second half of that assertion, which we feel is a little unfair).

Academic appreciation of cartooning is, in fact, not new: since 1973, the University of Kent has hosted the British Cartoon Archive, a collection of more than 150,000 pieces intended to encourage the study and appreciation of cartoon art, including comic strips. The Cartoon Archive is freely open to those wishing to carry out research, and is actively involved in promoting the art form – often in collaboration with the national Cartoon Museum, the PCO and its fellow cartoonists organisations, the BCA and the CCGB.

Bloghorn is made by Matthew Buck, Royston Robertson, Alex Hughes and Rob Murray on behalf of the UK Professional Cartoonists’ Organisation

* We say please consider becoming a member to help fund them

Photo by Sarah McIntyre

Unofficially a replacement for the UK Web and Mini Comix Thing , the organisers picked an impressive venue to debut the Expo, in a bright, spacious hall big enough to accommodate all 91 sold-out tables and a vast throng of eager punters.

The variety of work on show was excellent, and visitors could spend several hours going from table to table and still not see everything.

Talks also ran throughout the day, ranging from “The History of Comics on Film and TV” to a discussion of the term “small press” and what it means for creators. Unfortunately attendance for the Expo was low and it wasn’t until late afternoon that things picked up, by which time we had to pack up! It’s a new event though, so I’m sure there will be bigger and better plans for getting visitors next year.

Some excellent suggestions have already been made to this end, and hopefully the organisers will work with exhibitors to improve an event that already has good potential.

Personally, I enjoyed my first time as an exhibitor at one of these events. I debuted some new books, made pretty good sales and got to meet a lot of friendly comic creators and readers. Can’t ask for much more than that really, so I’m already looking forward to future conventions.

When PCOer Wilbur Dawbarn opened the current issue of The Dandy, he was slightly confused by one of the frames in his strip “Mr Meecher, the Uncool Teacher”, above.

It seems that a Mr Meecher from a previous issue, the one on the left, made an unscheduled appearance, along with two speech bubbles from the old strip. There must have been a few confused young readers.

No-one at The Dandy seems to know exactly how this happened. But a solution can be found at Wilbur’s blog. Just as you can download “patches” to fix errant computers, so he has created a Mr Meecher patch, which is available to download.

Unlike computer patches though, this one requires a pair of scissors and a Pritt stick …

There’s an exhibition of the cartoons Ronald Searle drew for his wife, Les Très Riches Heures de Mrs. Mole, while she was undergoing chemotherapy, accompanied by a talk on Searle’s life by Valerie Grove on Tuesday, 15 February 2011 at The Foundling Museum, 40 Brunswick Square, London, WC1N 1AZ. Tickets are £20, books and signed prints will be on sale, with proceeds going to Macmillan Cancer Support and The Foundling Museum. (Thanks to the Ronald Searle Tribute blog for the tip)

There’s free comic workshops on offer for 16-20 year olds at londonprintstudio, 425 Harrow Road, London W10 4RE on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from the 18th January. There’s a £5 booking fee, but this will be reimbursed on arrival. Visit www.londonprintstudio.org.uk for more information or call 020 8969 3247 to book. (thanks to downthetubes.net for the tip)

And finally, the Comix Reader, is having a launch party upstairs at the Crown, 51 New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1BL on the 2nd February. The publication, described as “Underground Alternative Independent Satirical Carnivalesque Comix Entertainment” is already on sale for £1 at a number of stockists.

We  are sure there are many other events across the country and we would welcome news of them as readers see them. You can contact us here or using our social media outlets.

Thought Bubble, the Leeds Sequential Art Festival, returns this weekend. As in previous years (2008, 2009) there will be the usual mix of workshops, talks and exhibitions, including a one-day Comic Convention.

Cartoonists exhibiting include Sarah McIntyre (Vern and Lettuce), Hugh ‘Shug’ Raine (Reet Comic), Gary Northfield (Derek the Sheep), John Allison (Scary Go Round and Bad Machinery) and Poot! comic.

The winner of the Northern Sequential Art competition will be announced at the convention, but you can see the entries here.

The Festival runs from Thursday 18 November to Sunday 21 November at various locations around Leeds (see here for the full programme), with the convention being held on the Saturday at Saviles Hall  from 10am to 5pm, tickets £10 and the under 12s get in free.

The comic artists Sean Azzopardi, Joe Decie, John Cei Douglas, Ellen Lindner, Douglas Noble and Paul O’Connell drew eight different short comic strips about a fictional 1974 rock concert in the park. These have been enlarged and pasted on to the shelter and can be read in any order.

Cartoons outside the printed page do have to compete with some “real world” factors though. And in this case it’s not graffiti, as you might expect, but a staggeringly large colony of spiders!

The boating shelter strips accompany the Hypercomics exhibition which is at the nearby Pump House Gallery.

The show features four rooms by four artists, Adam Dant, Warren Pleece, Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, and Dave McKean, above.

It’s very much an experimental exhibition, with comic strip narratives spiralling off in all kinds of directions and intersecting with the building itself.

Like any experiment it’s not wholly successful, some of the strips are far to wordy to be exhibited on walls. But McKean’s room worked brilliantly and was the stand-out for me, telling a compelling story with beautifully drawn comic frames alongside sculptures, photography and masks.

Hurry if you want to see this show though: it finishes on Sunday, September 26: Hypercomics: The Shapes of Comics to Come.

The show, we are told, “will explode the narratives in their work from the printed page into the gallery space and beyond”. We’re also told that it “uses the building’s unusual architecture to weave a story whose outcome depends upon how visitors interact and move through the space”.

If any of that sounds confusing, it probably indicates that the show should be experienced, rather than written about. And as the curator of the show is the comics expert Paul Gravett, who usually has his finger on the pulse, it’s sure to be nothing less than intriguing.

Accompanying the exhibition will be a programme of screenings, talks, workshops and events. The newly refurbished Pump House Gallery is in the rather marvellous Battersea Park, so make a day of it and take a picnic! For more information, visit the Pump House Gallery website.

A new British adult comic, CLiNT, launches on the 2nd September. Featuring writers including TV’s Jonathan Ross and contraversial comedian Frankie Boyle, the magazine is a collaboration between Kick Ass artist Mark Millar and Titan Publishing. The comic, that Millar describes as “The Eagle for the 21st Century,” is aimed at men aged 16-30. You can find out more information about CLiNT via twitter.com/clintmag or Facebook.

In case you’re wondering why the magazine is titled CLiNT, Bloghorn suspects it has more to do with a piece of US comic folklore than a certain Mr Eastwood.

CLiNT number 1 is on sale 2nd September in the UK from all good retailers and specialist comic stores.

The first outlets, Nostalgia & Comics in Birmingham, World’s Apart in Liverpool and Forbidden Planet in Manchester, are to have special racks to house works by independent comic makers from the UK and overseas.

What’s more, they’re offering the service for free on a sale or return basis, and will take no commission. In combination with small-run and self-publishing services such as Lulu, Bloghorn thinks this represents an excellent way for independent cartoonists to get their work in front of prospective buyers without having to go through large third-party publishers and distributors.

There are more details for small press comic producers at the Forbidden Planet International blog.