Henry longs to learn to take a fall like Buster, “the human mop,” but Buster just wants to play ball with Henry and his friends. The show folk say Buster is indestructible his father throws him around as part of the act and the audience roars, while Buster never cracks a smile. They’re summering in nearby Bluffton, so Henry has a few months to ogle the elephant and the zebra, the tightrope walkers and - lo and behold - a slapstick actor his own age named Buster Keaton. In the summer of 1908, in Muskegon, Michigan, a visiting troupe of vaudeville performers is about the most exciting thing since baseball. There’s more good stuff here worth your attention and custom - see what tickles your fancy.

Another gem this July is Seagle & Kristiansen’s reunion on the compelling Einsteinian graphic novel Genius and Shannon O’Leary & Joan Reilly’s anthology The Big Feminist But (above). In a way, Loisel does for the original Peter Pan what the musical Wicked does for The Wizard of Oz. Barrie play, extrapolating Peter’s traumatic background in Victorian London and adding motivation to his need to escape to Neverland and never grow up. One major highlight is Soaring Penguin’s audacious release of the complete Peter Pan by Régis Loisel, a gripping expansion and enhancement of the J.M. Slightly slimmer pickings perhaps this time round, but my July 2013 PG Tips are all the better for being cherry-picked for their excellence, intelligence, humanity and wit, and their welcome dearth of spandex, chainmail bikinis, blokes with guns, dreary dystopias, franchise re-treads and blockbuster-itis.

Comics and Language by Hannah Miodrag