Welp, this is a big one. Jaime Hernandez is coming to town to do a talk at Comica — about comics, inspiration, creative process and his punk rock girls, Maggie and Hopey and the rest of them, from the very excellent, much-loved Love & Rockets — and we at Gosh! are feeling pretty lucky right now because he’s coming to our shop too. For two hours on Wednesday the 29th of May (the day before the talk) Jaime will be signing comics at our signing table. And you are invited, obviously.

(This signing and the Comica talk are Jaime’s only two engagements in London so catch him at one or both or miss out entirely! The demand for the talk has been so huge that it’s been moved to a larger venue — you’ll now find him at the French Institute, hosted by BD & Comics Passion. Details for the talk this way. It’s only a tenner.)

Love & Rockets first turned up way back in 1981 as a self-published thing by Jaime and his brothers Gilbert and Mario, before Fantagraphics took it on board and still publish it to this day. There is so much Love & Rockets in the world now that Fantagraphics have provided us all with a much-needed reading guide (to which I point new readers at now). Three years ago Abrams published a beautiful hardcover called The Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets Of Life and Death, a must-have brick of a book full of family photos, gorgeous sketchbook work, childhood drawings and the story of Jaime to date. We have all of these things in stock and if you’ve never experienced Love & Rockets before, it is high time you did.

A little bit of admin to save our inbox and my own personal RSI: as yet we do not have a limit of how many things can be signed other than the usual ‘Please be polite to your fellow fans and do not bring a suitcase full of stuff’. We’ll have a look at the line on the day and see if we need to put a limit on – if we do it will probably be something like three items. Also! Because we’ve only got Jaime for a couple of hours we will not be able to take signed requests for this one, sorry. If you can’t make it just bribe your friend with beer or chocolate (those new Malteaser bars are pretty good) or owe them a dinner. If Jaime’s got a spare ten minutes before he’s whisked away to his own dinner we will ask him to sign some stock for us, and if that happens we will announce it. I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.

Jaime Hernandez Signing
Wednesday, 29th of May
5pm – 7pm

Gosh!
1 Berwick Street
Soho, London. W1F 0DR

2000AD alumni Robbie Morrison (Nikolai Dante) and Jim Murray (Batman/Judge Dredd) have embarked on a fully-painted epic set in a flooded futuristic London and we are launching the first volume here at Gosh with a party and art exhibition!

The world has changed forever, ravaged by climatic upheaval. The flooded metropolis of London has adapted to the rising sea levels, remaining a centre for international commerce and a magnet for environmental refugees. The elite gaze out over the ever-expanding Thames from their ivory towers, while the denizens of submerged pubs peer into the sunken streets like specimens in an aquarium.

Hired by notorious underworld figure Alexandra Bastet, Leo Noiret uncovers a terrifying conspiracy that stretches from the depths of Drowntown to the highest echelons of power and influence.

Struggling aqua-courier Gina Cassel learns that young love can be a dangerous game when she becomes romantically involved with the heir to the Drakenberg Corporation, which aims to control both the environment and the future of human evolution.

There’s a storm brewing in Drowntown, with Gina and Noiret at its heart…

Says Morrison: “Part of the idea behind Drowntown was to produce a story with an almost Dickensian-sized cast, featuring characters from every strata of society, top to bottom. Over-ambitious as usual, we’re nowhere near that so far, though it is only Book 1. ” You can see some preview stuff and other bits and pieces over on their blog.

It’s all happening on Friday the 21st of June, from 7pm until 9pm at which point everything will probably move on to the pub down the road. There’s no need to RSVP but if you’d like to reserve a book feel free to ask. Published by Jonathan Cape, the book is a £12.99 hardcover and if you can’t make it on the night but would like a signed/dedicated copy anyway, send us an email to info@goshlondon.com. We can do mailorders too, just let me know where you live and I’ll let you a postage quote (it’s a flat-rate of £5 within the UK).

Brill cartoonist and thoroughly nice dude Gary Northfield (Derek the Sheep) not only has a new book out, but he has a new book out about dinosaurs which is even better. You’ll know Gary’s work if you read Derek the Sheep back when he was in the Beano, or maybe you know his stuff from The Phoenix, or maybe you stared at him while he drew Rupert the Bear in our window on Free Comic Book Day. In any case, you are invited to drink beer (or juice if you’re wee) at the launch party of Gary Northfield’s Terrible Tales of the Teenytinysaurs!

Is it possible to fly to the moon in a bubble of snot? Can you really have an argument with a cloud? Are there bogey monsters at the bottom of the garden? All these questions and more are explored in an hysterical and charming collection of comic strip adventures, following a teeny tiny gang of dinosaurs as they wind each other up and muddle their way through the myths and mysteries of prehistoric life.

It’s all happening on Friday the 31st of May from 7pm until 9pm, with drinks and books and a shop full of people. Gary will be here to sign copies just for you. The new book is for ages 7+ so kids are most welcome to come along — fans of The Phoenix might want to stay up past their bedtime for this one. Come meet Gary and marvel at the natural phenomenon that is cartoonists looking just like their own drawings!

(As ever, if you can’t make it on the night but would like a signed and/or dedicated copy then send us an email to info@goshlondon.com and we’ll sort you out with one. Mail orders are doable, just let me know where you live and I will get you a quote for postage. Terrible Tales of the Teenytinysaurs is £8.99, 80 pages, paperback.)

Stephen Collins is the Guardian’s excellent cartoonist (and winner of 2010’s Comica/Observer/Jonathan Cape Graphic Short Story Prize) who has finally gone and done a book. Jonathan Cape have done a stellar job on the design. It looks nice, it smells nice (you know this is important to us), and oh my goodness you should see the insides. Here’s what they’re like:

The job of the skin is to keep things in…

On the buttoned-down island of Here, all is well. By which we mean: orderly, neat, contained and, moreover, beardless.

Or at least it is until one famous day, when Dave, bald but for a single hair, finds himself assailed by a terrifying, unstoppable…monster*!

Where did it come from? How should the islanders deal with it? And what, most importantly, are they going to do with Dave?

The first book from a new leading light of UK comics, The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil is an off-beat fable worthy of Roald Dahl. It is about life, death and the meaning of beards.

(*We mean a gigantic beard, basically.)

Over at the FPI Blog Stephen Collins did a guest-post talking about making Gigantic Beard. It’s a must read.

On Friday the 10th of May we are launching this book into space, or onto your bookshelves, or wherever the gigantic thing wants to go. We’ll be here with booze and pens and Stephen Collins from 7pm until 9pm when we’ll turf you out and, if past launch parties are anything to go by, you end up in the pub well past your bedtime clutching a signed book.

But! Not only are we throwing Collins and his book a well-deserved party, we will have an EXCLUSIVE Gosh! Bookplate Edition, signed and numbered and limited to 200 copies for no more than the cover price of £16.99. If you’d like to reserve a copy or organise a mail order, send us an email to info@goshlondon.com and we’ll sort you out with one.

Stephen Collins’ The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil Launch Party

Friday, May 10th, 7pm-9pm

Gosh! 1 Berwick Street, Soho. W1F 0DR

Hey, kids! Remember last year how we had piles of free comics and also got a bunch of nice cartoonists to draw at a table ALL DAY LONG while you pinched their pencils and such? Sure you do. Or if you don’t, here are the pictures: proof it happened, that we decided to do that thing. Well, we had such fun during the chaos that we’ve gone and decided to do it again. Crazy? Probably. On Saturday the 4th of May between 12pm and 4pm we’ll have people painting on windows and an all-new cast of cartoonists on the live drawing table. Come meet Isabel Greenberg, Dan White, Gary Northfield, Mark Buckingham, Laurence Campbell, David O’Connell, Viviane Schwarz, Warwick Johnson Cadwell and Adrian Salmon — in short, a bunch of people we like and whose work we thoroughly approve of.

Roger Langridge and Kermit last year

(It’s not just for kids: on top of the regular list of Free Comic Book Day comics we’ve also got a box of small-press giveaways. If you’re a small press person with some old comics taking up space in your bedroom and you want them out of life feel free to bring them down!)

Sarah McIntyre and Vern & Lettuce

It’s going to be busy probably, it’s going to be chaotic maybe, but man, it’s going to be fun and what else are you supposed to do on Free Comic Book Day? It comes round once a year. Don’t miss it.

Saturday, May 4th: 12pm – 4pm

Isabel Greenberg
Dan White
Gary Northfield
Mark Buckingham (Miracleman, Fables, Death)
Laurence Campbell
David O’Connell
Viviane Schwarz
Warwick Johnson Cadwell
Adrian Salmon

Alan Moore and Ian Gibson’s classic 2000 AD saga Halo Jones is coming out in a brand new edition complete with a swanky new cover! We thought we’d welcome her back to our shelves by hosting a signing with the man who drew Halo and her universe for the very first time back in 1984. British comics legend Gibson will be at our hallowed table signing for two whole hours on Saturday the 27th of April from 2pm until 4pm so now’s your chance to get your new Halo scribbled in, or even your battered old ones (although you’ll be missing out on the new introduction by Fairest writer, Lauren Beukes).

Halo was one of the first feminist heroines of comics, a 50th-century everywoman whose story was not the testosterone-fueled story that 2000 AD readers were used to but something else altogether. Says Beukes: “She’s remarkable for being just a girl caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Halo is working class, she doesn’t have any superpowers, in her own words, she was ‘just there’… It’s a story about choices and compromises, about defying expectations, about poverty, society, celebrity, identity, the toll of war, and also love, ambition, ambivalence and the places restless curiosity will take you.” Our pals at Forbidden Planet International have put the whole first chapter online. Head to their excellent blog and have a read.

Gibson is not only known for Halo Jones but Robo-Hunter, Judge Dredd, Ace Trucking Co. and more (and we’re not putting any restrictions on this signing so feel free to bring along your favourites). The new edition of Halo Jones is £13.99 and we’ll have plenty of copies available on the day. However! If reserving a copy will help you sleep at night, send us an email to info@goshlondon.com. We can also sort you out with a signed copy if you can’t make it on the day or happen to live on the other side of the world.

Here’s the Facebook event page if you’d like to be electronically prodded closer to the date.

Ian Gibson signing copies of Halo Jones

Gosh! Comics: 1 Berwick Street, Soho. W1F 0DR

Saturday, 27th of April. 2pm – 4pm.

It’s been a long time coming, this one. Since it began in 1987 Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill’s superhero satire Marshal Law has been through a string of publishers before finally finding a home at DC Comics. And for the last few years the Marshal Law omnibus has been promised, denied, and now that it’s finally coming out there are still some sad voices on the internet who don’t believe it. It’s happening, dudes. Marshal Law: The Deluxe Edition – collecting the original series plus Fear and Loathing, Takes Manhattan, Kingdom of the Blind, The Hateful Dead, Super Babylon and Secret Tribunal – is coming! And as soon as it gets here we are having a signing with Mills and O’Neill to celebrate.

Here’s the cover:

It’s happening here at Gosh! on Saturday the 20th of April from 2pm until 4pm. The whopping 480-page Marshal Law: Deluxe Edition hardcover is £37.99 and we’ll have plenty of copies on the day. If you’d like to reserve one or can’t make it and would like us to set you up with a signed copy or mail order, drop us a line at info@goshlondon.com.

Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill Signing Copies of Marshal Law
Saturday, 20th April
2pm – 4pm

Tom Gauld is a favourite round these parts. It’s not just because of his stellar cartooning skills (see Hunter & Painter and The Gigantic Robot) but also because he’s a thoroughly nice dude. We threw him a launch party last year for Goliath and we’re doing it all over again for his new Drawn & Quarterly book You’re All Just Jealous Of My Jetpack whose existence now means that people outside of UK Guardian readers can see the stuff that we get on a weekly basis because we are oh so spoiled. Eight years worth of strips are collected in this handsome hardcover and it’s about bloody time someone put them in a book. Here’s a preview.

Come and get a copy signed and doodled in by Tom himself while standing around in a comic shop trying not get get beer on the merchandise. It’s all happening on Wednesday the 24^th of April, from 7.30 to 9pm at which point we’ll kick you out and you can move on to The Endurance up the road like you did last time. Just don’t leave your signed book tucked behind the cistern like some cartoon Meryl Streep. What larks, pip.

UPDATE! We’re also doing an exclusive Gosh! bookplate edition. Details here.

Gosh!

1 Berwick Street, Soho. W1F 0DR

Tom Gauld Launch Party And Signing

You’re All Just Jealous Of My Jetpack

Wednesday, 24^th April. 7.30pm – 9pm

************SOLD OUT************

To mark the arrival of the new edition of Alan Moore and Mitch Jenkins’ Unearthing we’re having them both round for a visit. They’ll be here at Gosh! in conversation on Tuesday the 26th of February, talking about what originally began as a piece for Iain Sinclair’s London: City of Disappearances and grew from there into a series of live performances and eventually this 184-page full-colour photographic book.

“When Iain Sinclair, who at least in my opinion is the boss of psychogeography, asked me to contribute to his anthology, the brief was that I should write about something that had disappeared, is disappearing or would disappear, somewhere within the confines of London,” said Alan in a great, long interview over at Wired. “And I started to think about [author, orientalist and occultist] Steve Moore, who is a unique individual, the last of his line — although he is still in fine health, to be realistic, although none of us are going to live forever. And I thought that when Steve had disappeared it was important that a record of his very unusual life should be left behind by one of the people who knew him well enough to tell it. Because Steve has lived all of his life in the same house on top of a hill overlooking London, and in fact to this day sleeps five or six paces away from the spot where he was born, then the place that Steve has lived all of his life became as much of a character in the story as Steve himself. So I started to research Shooter’s Hill, the environment in which he has always lived … which is a very unusual hill. Millions of years ago, a chalk fault [on] the north side of the hill collapsed, and formed the entire Thames Valley, without which there would be no river Thames, without which there would be no London.”

We’ll also be screening their short film, Jimmy’s End and its prequel, Act of Faith. Details on those at their website.

It’s all happening on Tuesday the 26th of February at 7:30pm. Tickets are £5 and will go on sale at wegottickets.com on Friday the 1st of February at 9:30am. Make sure you get in as soon as humanly possible — there aren’t many places and this one will sell out fast. We’ll have plenty of copies of Unearthing on the night in both a double-sized hardcover for £49.99 and a softcover for £19.99 but feel free to email us if reserving one will help you sleep better at night.

And just a little note just because I know people will ask: if there’s enough time at the end of the evening and Alan and Mitch aren’t growling like unfed beasts, we will ask them to sign a stack of Unearthing for the shop. But they’re human and they will need feeding and we don’t want to push our luck, so here is my point: if you can’t make it on the night and would like a signed copy of Unearthing anyway, the answer to that email you’re about to send is ‘Maybe.’ We will try. I’ll announce on the blog if we managed to get some signed copies but it might not happen. Hold tight. Watch this space.

Don’t forget, if you miss you’ll have a second chance to catch Alan when he signs copies of Nemo: Heart of Ice with Kevin O’Neill in March.

Alan Moore and Mitch Jenkins in conversation

Gosh! 1 Berwick Street, Soho. W1F 0DR

Tuesday, 26th February. 7.30pm

Tickets £5, on sale Friday, 1st February. 9.30am

wegottickets.com

In the grim cold of March surfaces a thrilling new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen book — Nemo: Heart of Ice, a full-colour 56-page adventure in the classic pulp tradition by the inestimable Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill. In that same grim cold we are inviting you to stand in a backstreet of Soho clutching your League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics to be signed by the guys who made them. Ordinarily we’d save it for the summer so you could bring your deckchairs and beers instead of duvets and every cardigan you own but this simply can’t wait: it’s the launch day of Nemo: Heart of Ice and nobody will care about the weather because there’s a new League comic on the shelves.

It’s 1925, fifteen long years since Janni Dakkar first tried to escape the legacy of her dying science-pirate father, only to accept her destiny as the new Nemo, captain of the legendary Nautilus. Now, tired of her unending spree of plunder and destruction, Janni launches a grand expedition to surpass her father’s greatest failure: the exploration of Antarctica. Hot on her frozen trail are a trio of genius inventors, hired by an influential publishing tycoon to retrieve the plundered valuables of an African queen. It’s a deadly race to the bottom of the world — an uncharted land of wonder and horror where time is broken and the mountains bring madness. Jules Verne meets H.P. Lovecraft in the unforgettable final showdown, lost in the living, beating and appallingly inhuman HEART OF ICE.

Nemo: Heart of Ice. Hardcover. £9.99.

It’s all happening on Saturday the 9th of March from 2pm until 6pm. Given the size of previous Moore/O’Neill signings it’s a good idea to get there early so you don’t miss out.

Just a quick note on the rules for the day: because of time constraints Moore and Kevin will only signing copies of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910, 1969 and 2009, the Black Dossier and the new Nemo book — with a limit of 3 items per person (any combination of those mentioned is fine, but only three things. No suitcases full of Swamp Thing backissues, please). We’ll have plenty of copies on the day but if you’d like to reserve anything drop us a line at info@goshlondon.com and we can sort you out.

Sadly, Alan & Kevin won’t have time to sign any extra stock, so if you can’t make it we recommend you find someone London-based (and very patient) to sit in the queue for you.

Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill Signing — Nemo: Heart of Ice
Saturday, 9th March. 2pm – 6pm
Gosh! 1 Berwick Street, Soho. W1F 0DR