Still CROSS?

Tags

comics, nostalgia, politics, satire, swansea

Before the last General Election, we published CROSS, a comic anthology full of political satire, humour and a healthy dose of vitriol.

It turns out that another General Election has arrived before we had a chance to start on Volume 2…

So: here it is: CROSS. Exactly the same book we published two years ago!!

Featuring key political figures:

• Posh shed-dweller David Cameron
• Trainee journalist George Osborne
• Surprisingly leadership-py Ed Miliband
• Not irrelevant any more Nick Clegg
• And the floater who just won’t flush: Nigel Farage

What you won’t find in CROSS: strong and stable Theresa May, feisty and fabulous Nicola Sturgeon, Jezza, any hint of a thing called Brexit, or even the tiniest mention of The Donald.

Yes! Throw yourself back to the heady days of 2015 – and buy your copy now!

Seriously: why buy a book of satirical comics that’s out of date? Because some shit hasn’t changed. Austerity still has its jaws clamped around us all; food banks get more visitors than food courts; the old still vote while the young get shoved aside; and there may still be something out there to laugh about…

Buy your copy of CROSS now for just £5 plus P&P at http://www.comicsy.co.uk/disconnectedpress/store/products/cross-a-political-satire-anthology-2/

Alternatively, find us at Swansea Comic and Gaming Con on 27 May 2017 – http://scgcon.blogspot.co.uk/

Why 7 May is the start and not the end

Tags

comics, election, humour, politics, rawls, satire, vote

We’ve been writing about politics for six months now (thanks for sticking with us), in part to promote CROSS, but also because we’re real advocates of thinking about and participating in elections and politics more generally.

With the election just one day away, it seemed time for some final thoughts. So here we go:

Join us on Saturday at Birmingham Comics Festival!

Tags

birmingham, comics, election, humour, politics, satire

Delighted to be hitting the road again this weekend and heading to Lizzie‘s home city of Birmingham! Birmingham Comics Festival runs from 9am – 6pm this Saturday, 18 April, at Edgbaston Cricket Ground. And the line-up looks FANTASTIC!

We’ll be there with copies of political satire anthology CROSS, a brand new print run of Sentient Zombie Space Pigs 1 and 2, sketches, artwork and much more. We’re also happy to talk to writers and artists who are just starting out and want advice about, well, anything!

This is typically the point where I start to talk politics to draw attention to CROSS, so I won’t let you down.

Edinburgh Comic Convention – here we come!

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comics, convention, edinburgh, humour, satire, zombie

This weekend will see the Disconnected Press tour bus (um, well, us on a train) heading north of the border for Edinburgh Comic Convention.

The convention runs on Saturday and Sunday at Potterow, 5/2 Bristo Square, Edinburgh EH8 9AL. Tickets can be bought on the door and all the timings etc are available at www.heroconventions.com.

So, what are we looking forward to?

And so it begins…

Tags

comics, election, humour, MP, satire, vote

Today saw the dissolution of Parliament. We all know what that means, right? It’s the jumping off point for six weeks of bullshit and braggadocio from our political classes as they demonstrate their belief that the way to win an election is to be as rude as possible about everyone else who’s running in it… (Note: I may shortly be slightly rude about people running in the election.)

This weekend: Sci Fi South West!

Tags

comics. scifi, satire

Yes, this weekend, we’ll be at Sci Fi South West, and we are very much looking forward to it! Two days of monsters, mayhem, Thunderbirds, Dr Who, droids, androids, and general shenanigans!It is only fitting at this point to remind you that we are currently selling our political satire anthology CROSS, to mention the occurences of robots in said book, and to try and draw some connections between the world of satire and the world of sci fi….

Politics for sale – in your local comic shop!

Tags

anthology, comics, humour, politics, satire

Good news, comics fans! Our political satire anthology CROSS is now for sale at a number of great comics shops, with more to follow.

You can now pick up a copy of CROSS for £10 AND support your local comics retailer at:

Abstract Sprocket – 29 Saint Benedict’s Street, Norwich NR2 4PF

Politics, humour, robots and flying squirrels ahoy at Abstract Sprocket in Norwich, the first time this lovely shop has hosted a Disconnected publication (and the only one of the shops on this list that we haven’t yet visited!).

Area 51 – 230 Gloucester Road, Horfield, Bristol BS7 8NZ

We met Iain and Callum at Area 51 on Saturday and almost didn’t make it out of this real treasure trove of comics, sci fi books, board games, models and memorabilia.

Automattic Comics -17 Pickwick Road, Corsham, Wiltshire SN13 9BQ

Matt at Automattic has been a friend of Disconnected for a while so it’s great to have copies of CROSS in stock with him. (He also had a gorgeous hardback of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s Signal to Noise – we couldn’t leave that one behind…)

Komix – The Roundhouse, 25 Church Street, Melksham, Wiltshire SN12 6LS

Britain’s smallest comic shop in the home of Britain’s friendliest comic convention. Komix crams a great selection into a very small space, and it’s also a former gaol. Usually staffed by Brians…

Orbital Comics – 8 Great Newport Street, That London, WC2H 7JA

Head to the small press West Wing of Orbital for far too much choice in independent comics. Remember, you’re looking for CROSS, right?

We’ll also have news later in the week about another stockist in London, one in Devon and – we hope – some a bit further north too!

So no more excuses about not trusting internet shopping. Get out there and get your copy of CROSS. With two months to go to the election – only a comic can help!

PS. If we’re not in your area yet, don’t despair – we’ll be selling copies at Birmingham Comics Festival and Edinburgh Comic Con in April, and you can still order online at our trusted Comicsy shop.

Where to find us! Disconnected’s convention diary

Tags

birmingham, comics, convention, edinburgh, london, politics, satire

A quick update on our whereabouts – and where you can buy CROSS – in the coming weeks:

London Super Comic Con – 14-15 March, Excel London: we won’t have our own table at Excel this year, but the amazing Verity Glass – aka Anadapta Art – will be selling copies of CROSS at her table (D130). Verity first featured with us in Disconnected 3, with her jaw-dropping art for The Place The Big Boys Go, written by Owen Johnson. Seriously? You haven’t seen it? Get yourself over to our Comicsy shop right now and order yourself a copy! Verity also features in CROSS, illustrating It’s A Sh*t Life by 2000AD writer Tom Eglington, and is now working for Titan Comics. Go say hello – buy CROSS and ALL HER OTHER ART TOO!

[NB. You will find us at London Super Comic Con, but we’ll be wandering with the masses and enjoying a sherry or two in The Fox, no doubt!)

Edinburgh Comic Con – 11-12 April, Potterow, Edinburgh – we’ll be heading north of the border to Lizzie’s old stomping ground in April for Edinburgh Comic Con.

Delighted to see that Disconnected discovery Tom Foster is a guest – here’s a picture of him enjoying a very fine comic book indeed! From humble but obviously brilliant origins in Disconnected 1, Tom has graduated to drawing regularly for 2000AD, and appears as both writer and artist in CROSS.

I wonder if he’ll still talk to us…

Birmingham Comics Festival – 18 April, Edgbaston Cricket Ground – we’ll be in Brum mid April for the first Birmingham Comics Festival, which promises to be a great day out with an incredible array of guests, exhibitors and general mayhem. You’ll find Disconnected artist Conor Boyle‘s artwork on display in various places – very probably the FutureQuake, Accent UK and Markosia tables as well as ours!

We’ll be announcing more convention appearances soon. If you can’t make it to one of the above, you can find CROSS at Orbital Comics in London or order a copy directly from us via our online shop at Comicsy, the UK comics industry’s very lovely and trusted online retail hub.

See y’all soon!

Heading to the Land of the Black Cats (that’s Sunderland to you)!

Tags

comic con, comics, farage, satire, sunderland, zombie

This weekend, we’ll be packing up the Disconnected suitcase and heading north. To Sunderland, to be precise, for Sunderland Comic Con.

The con’s on both Saturday and Sunday, at the Seaburn Centre. It’s not in the city centre, but looks very accessible and is by the seaside, which always works for at least one of us! There are some amazing guests listed for this weekend: 2000AD superstars John Wagner and John Higgins, force of nature Bryan Talbot and CROSS creators Mary Talbot and Nigel Auchterlounie among them.

We’ve already featured Mary’s story Preparation for Leadership, but it’s worth reflecting on again. Drawing on the psychohistorical analysis of Nick Duffell, Mary’s story tracks the psychological development (or lack thereof) of some of our political classes. It’s beautifully illustrated by Alwyn Talbot and worth the purchase price of CROSS alone (I would say that, wouldn’t !?). Here, because, I can’t resist this image, are Messrs Cameron and Johnson, just for you:

Nigel Auchterlounie gave us a wonderful page in CROSS, featuring a great lampoon of Nigel Farage and, yes, satire of Ed Miliband too. We tried with CROSS to be even-handed with our satirical targeting, and Nigel’s willingness to lampoon both right and left mean that he was balance personified. Here’s Mr Farage having a mild panic at the direction of questions in a TV interview….

We’re very much looking forward to Sunderland Comic Con – come and find us at Table 37 at the Seaburn Centre, from 10am – 5pm on Saturday and 10am – 5pm Sunday. As well as CROSS, we’ll be selling serious tome Sentient Zombie Space Pigs, our small town anthology Disconnected and perhaps a treat or two…

Tweet us @DisconnectedPrs and let us know if you’re coming!

And if you can’t make it, head on over to our Comicsy shop to place your order for one or more of our lovely comic books 🙂

 

Are you watching, Cheltenham?

Tags

comics, humour, politics, satire, security, surveillance

Saturday 7 February will see Disconnected Press – and many others – descending on Cheltenham Racecourse for The True Believers Comic Festival.

We’ll have copies of CROSS, our anthology of political satire in comic form, which is going great guns as we head towards the General Election and we decide that sometimes it’s much better for your soul to laugh at politicians than to listen to them…

In honour of our trip to the home of GCHQ – and my discovery of a new Cheltenham related fact about old-school spies Burgess and Maclean –  we turn our attention away from politics and towards the world of surveillance. This makes an appearance in CROSS, courtesy of Owen Michael Johnson and Conor Boyle‘s story Security.

Owen‘s one of the busiest and most versatile comic writers emerging in the UK today. His work ranges from the surreal, post-punk-pop fest of Raygun Roads (more colours than you have ever seen), to the muted melancholy of Reel Love (a nostalgic trip to the cinema of your childhood). His latest project Beast Wagon is described as “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with talking animals”…. His story Security, featured in CROSS, is a little less experimental but does point a very precise finger at the fine balance between living in a surveillance society and maintaining our rights to privacy and freedom of expression. It also features a fat arse and a pot plant…

Conor Boyle‘s artwork brings Security to life. Conor turned his hand to matters historic in drawing On Dangerous Ground, the National Trust for Scotland’s graphic novel of the Battle of Bannockburn (see Down the Tubes’ article here). This followed Pirates of the Lost World, and Who On Earth Was Thaddeus Mist?, both from UK publishers and both set in the 19th century, making him very excited to draw anything that has modern technology in it.

You can find Disconnected Press and pick up your copy of CROSS at Table #F13 at The True Believers Comic Festival at Cheltenham Racecourse this Saturday. Conor will be there with some original artwork on display and I’m sure he can be persuaded to do a sketch or two…

If you can’t make it to Cheltenham, follow this handy link to our Comicsy shop, and you can buy your copy there. CROSS features the work of some of the finest established and emerging UK comics talent including Rob Williams, Mary Talbot, David Baillie and Emma Beeby.

Don’t get mad: get CROSS!