At the Comics & Zines Event in the Plough pub yesterday I made a couple of discoveries: Gareth Brookes’ Woman woman and Martlar’s Eyetopus! - both simply drawn collections of humour that made me chuckle. Jimi is planning more London area small press events which is great news as London (surprisingly) lacks much of an S.P. scene.

If you’re in the London area, there’s a comics and zines event at the Plough pub (the pub near the Cartoon Museum) on Saturday 19th July, organised by Jimi Gherkhin. It looks like there will be a good mixture of comics people and zinesters making for an event with a bit of diversity. More information can be found here.

Recommended reading: I’m always interested when comics deal with political or social stories, even if I might not necessarily agree with the politics - it’s just refreshing to see comics doing something (overused word alert) relevant. Bulkhead by Ciaran Cross is a short story based around a photographer sent to a Latin American country to produce positive publicity for a United Fruit Company-style banana multinational. There he comes into contact with an insurgent group who wish to end to the company’s dominance of their homeland. Cross’ scratchy, ink-splattered art style creates a dark oppressive atmosphere as the melancholic story unfolds.

Available from Acibox.com. 36pp b/w £3 (+ shipping if outside the UK)

If you have a LiveJournal account, feel free to ‘friend’ me (LJ link at the top of the page). I post the strip on my LJ every week, as well as non-Tozo comics and drawings.

Tozo at the Holy Bank. Coincidentally, this week was the anniversary of the death in 1982 of Roberto Calvi in circumstances that partly inspired this very storyline.

Tozo and Klikker have caught the waterbus, a standard form of Nova Venezian transport.

Recommended reading: I recently picked up a printed preview of Necessary Monsters, a new webcomic from Sean Azzopardi and Daniel Merlin Goodbrey. If Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol had been drawn by Eddie Campbell it might have looked something like this. Can’t wait to see how it develops.

This time last year Tozo had a two week summer break - and this year he’s doing the same (I’m actually moving house amongst other things). The next update will be Sunday 15th June when we start the wind down to the end of Chapter 2.

If you’re missing Tozo in the meantime, why not buy a poster to display on your wall and you’ll be able to see him every day…?

Tozo posters (and badges) are available for sale from the Mutantman Press shop:

Click here for a bigger view. It’s a scene of Tozo wandering down one of the major thoroughfares of Nova Venezia, though at the slightly scruffier end, I’d say. Klikker’s there too, dodging the good citizens of the city. It’s also available as a desktop wallpaper from the Extras page. If you buy a poster you get a set of badges free, or you can order badges separately too.

Recommended reading: Gipi’s Garage Band from First Second Books. Beautifully energetic and expressively painted panels illustrate the gritty tale of a group of lads and their attempt to set up a band.

And so ends my tribute to the Alien films.