The folks across the water have come up with a pretty nifty idea – namely the UK Comics Wiki.

The Wiki covers everything from artist listings and a comprehensive list of comic titles, comic strips, newspaper and magazine strips as well as wanted pages. The pages are growing slowly – with pics of comics and new entries added as people have time.

An interesting place to lose an hour or two! (Impressively, the  most visited page so far is the DFC entry)

UPDATE: Yes of course – I totally managed to miss that there is an Irish Comics Wiki that has been up and running for years! [Thanks Bren] So much for being productive today – I’m off to read this for the day. (d)

The eclectic music/arts/culture/food festival Electric Picnic is just around the corner – and as the days tick by more names are confirmed on the weekend bill. If you haven’t been convinced to tag along – how about some literary incentive?

Mindfield – the spoken word wing of EP – presents comic book gurus Philip Barrett, Emma Vieceli, Pat Mills, Steve Bell and Dr Mel Gibson talking up a storm about what they know best.

Our intrepid and esteemed panel will cheerily dissect and debate the “sequential art” scene as it and was: offering thoughts, opinions and recollections on a wide range of topics, including: Classic British comics, Manga, Bande dessinée, Girls’ comics, John Major’s underpants, the Irish small presses, and much, much more. Masked and caped crusaders may also get an occasional mention…

If you find yourself in the middle of a field in Stradbally on Saturday 4 September (at 5pm) tag along to hear some of the most informed folk from all sides of the spectrum.

(Pic by IGI member Rodger O’Reilly – who brilliantly sketched last years picnic)

Uri Shulevitz’s Writing With Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children’s Books has long been respected as the bible of how-to’s for picturebooks – and now thanks to the magic of the internet and Mighty Art Demos you can read some of the tome online… namely How to Make a Storyboard.

This makes for essential reading – even if you can’t draw to save your life!
(found via the folks at FPI)

I’ve waxed lyrical about the octogenarian author/illustrator Shirley Hughes before - here – and now she’s back with another new book this year.

The folks at Walker Books caught up with her to have a natter about creating The Christmas Eve Ghost.

After being shamed by the iPad finger painting… Can you do this with your phone?

ljudbilden can! And does… with a new iPhone drawing everyday.

The CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Awards– the holy grails of UK children’s publishing – announced their winners last Thursday – with the Carnegie Medal going to Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (illustrated in dual editions by Dave McKean and Chris Riddell.)

And the Kate Greenaway winner – chosen from the mammoth shortlist of:

• Leon and the Place Between – Grahame Baker-Smith
• Harry & Hopper –  Freya Blackwood
• The Great Paper Caper – Oliver Jeffers
• Millie’s Marvellous Hat – Satoshi Kitamura
• Crazy Hair – Dave McKean
• The Graveyard Book – Chris Riddell
• The Dunderheads – David Roberts
• There are cats in this book – Viviane Schwarz

went to Freya Blackwood’s for her illustration in Harry & Hopper!

The Guardian have a slideshow of Blackwood’s work from the book – including:

The Observer/Cape Graphic Short Story Prize is back – and has fast wangled its way in as one of the more interesting prizes every year. (The prize is celebrating its fourth birthday)

Fancy putting yourself in the running for £1000, a story in print and as much media coverage as you can shake a stick at? This is probably a good place to start then!

The judges will be some hard nuts to break this year with Audrey Niffenegger, David Hughes, Rachel Cooke, Dan Franklin, Paul Gravett and Suzanne Dean all casting their critical eyes over each entry.

You can check out the winners from previous years – here and here.

Deadline for entries is 6th October 2010. Not to be missed!

Puffin Books turn 70 this year (and they’re making a lot of noise about it too!) The Guardian have invited some well known authors to choose their favourite books from the last 70 years – providing a great opportunity to see some great cover illustrations back in mainstream:

Nick Sharratt‘s cover for The Hundred-Mile-An-Hour-Dog or Quentin Blake‘s Chocolate Factory:

Neil Reed‘s re-cover of Goodnight Mr Tom and Edward Ardizzone‘s cover of Stig of the Dump:

Yesterday saw the announcement of The Bisto Book of the Year Awards – the national children’s book awards – with great rumpus, hoohah and othersuch celebrations!

The 2010 Bisto Honour Award for Illustration and the overall Bisto Book of the Year Award went to Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick for her picturebook There.

This alluring picturebook is one that will draw every reader, child and adult, into its charming spell. The little girl’s persistent self-questioning is a true and honest echo of the voice of a child as she comes to terms with what she knows and what she doesn’t. The harmonic interdependence of images and text is achieved with artistic brilliance and a disciplined pared-back writing style.

Anthony Browne fell foul of the angry volcanic gods at last weekends Children’s Books Ireland conference. His last minute flight was cancelled er… last minute, but the talented and early riser Niamh Sharkey with Sarah Webb were on hand to step in.

There are some notes on Niamh’s talk over here but I thought you might like to have a sneak peak at some of the slides from the session – just click on each image to make ‘em bigger: