C R U M P E T | T I M E

What's the What, World Wide Web?

2011-12-09T13:10:00.000-08:00

Here's an uber-fast rundown of everything I've been up to since the last post:

1) A Christmas Special for Scream magazine with collaborator PM Buchan, of course
2) A meal and sip of scotch whisky with Anders Nilsen, don'tchuknow
3) A new issue of the Big Bang (available here)
4) A nice weekend at Thought Bubble comic con
5) A new print in the Etsy Store
6) A talk and stall lined up for tomorrow's Canny Comic Con

And here's a little bit of an expansion on these news items:

A Christmas Special for Scream Magazine

The third and, alas, final for now, submission to Scream Magazine that PM Buchan and I will be submitting, but what a corker. It's about the legend of Krampus in the modern age and is a gloriously blood-soaked festive treat. We're selling the three strips we've submitted as a limited numbered set, so if you run into either me or Bucky out and about in the comic world (or if you check my Etsy shop after this weekend) you'll be able to score yourself a copy for a mere £2 English. Here's a sneaky peak:

A Meal and a Sip of Scotch Whisky with Anders Nilsen

Due to being at a wedding, I wasn't able to make it to the recent Anders Nilsen signing for Big Questions at Travelling Man. But although I don't work there anymore, I still invivte myself to all of their social events. So naturally, when I found out they were wining and dining him the night before, I gatecrashed. I also brought with me an arsenal of comics that I knew he'd want to see by Angus McKie in a vain attempt to get a mention on his blog. And guess what, you guys? I (sort of) did! Here's some grainy photos of Anders looking uncomfortable and me looking happier than I've ever been in my sad little life, plus the awesome sketch he did for me:

The Big Bang Issue Three - A Comic for Dennis Brown (+ New Print)

Please welcome to the fold Issue Three of The Big Bang series. This issue is a mini comic, featuring 12 pages of delicious greyscale story all about the life of Dennis Brown, the bus driver who makes his first appearance at the beginning of The Big Bang Issue Two. The subheading is a reference to the song “A Song for Dennis Brown” by The Mountain Goats.

While this issue doesn't carry on from the previous one, it offers extra depth to the character and should enhance your reading of the issues yet to come. On the other hand, it can also work as a standalone story without any need to have read issues one and two. The story is broken up into three parts – Dennis’ childhood, his early adulthood and his midlife career choice to drive buses.

Go buy it! And while you're there, buy this too:

A Nice Weekend at Thought Bubble

It was a nice weekend, and too nice to possibly go into all of the details with the limited time I have. Great catching up with folks I don't get to catch up with otherwise, nice being at the mercy of Joe Public during my (now customary) "Draw Anything You Want For £5" social experiment and I also had the chance to make my peace for not bowing down in servitude to the wonderously talented Kristyna Baczynski the last couple of times I unwittingly spoke to her at the con.

Talk and Stall at Canny Comic Con

It's probably a bit late in the day to be informing you of this now, but my co-conspiritor on The Big Bang has organised an incredible schedule of talks, workshops, panels and seminars to take place in a hall full of comic stalls at Newcastle City Library tomorrow (10th December!) - in other words, he's finally filled the gap between Leeds and Inverness that the comic-convention-going people of the North needed! I'll be doing a 30minute talk starting at 10am called "What Comics Aren't" and I'll also be selling my wares all the live long day. Go to the CCC website and brace yourself to be punched in the face with awesome.

Hey You Guys

2011-09-11T07:26:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to give my usual apology for irregular updates or any empty promises to stay on top of things like usual. This is for two reasons: 1) I always say those things and never follow through, and 2) I'm going to have even less opportunity than before to do regular updates between now and June 2012 because I've just started a Primary PGCE and Hoo-Boy, is it going to be intense.

Instead, here's a massive information dump to read at your leisure. If anyone out there still follows my work, they may have noticed a big change to my main website. You might notice it isn't as fancy pants, but has been streamlined into a sleek little set of pages that a HTML dunce like me can manage without help from computer geniuses. That means more regular updates, more frequent page errors and generally more STUFF. What's more, you can view this blog as part of the site, so why not bookmark it? Why not, huh?

You may also remember me talking about some collaboration with the heathen known as Phillip M Buchan. Well, aside from the four page strip mentioned before, I've also done two one-pagers with Bucky that have landed in the sweet UK horror magazine Scream. One is about the grim reaper and being a drunk, and the other is about a teenage werewolf and being drunk. Thematic stuff, previews of which can be seen below.

I've also been chipping away at the third issue of The Big Bang and make a solemn promise to have printed versions at this year's Thought Bubble. Finally, I just finished designing a poster/flyer design for the forthcoming Jeffrey Lewis gig here in Newcastle. I was a little pushed for time, but skimped on no details when it came to drawing the guitar composed 90% of stickers, for which Jeff is so famously known (to creeps like me). Behold!

In other news, my good ol' buddy bud Andy Waugh has just launched a website, and I know for a fact that our two websites bookmarked side by side on your browser will be an incredible and beautiful sight to behold.

Demonville

2011-06-17T01:25:00.001-07:00

Paul Regan, writer and co-creator of the immensely popular small press comic book series Trenchfoot and vice chairman of OG Comics Enterprises has written a novel. Although it has a few stages left before it's unleashed on the general public, Mr. Regan asked me to produce a cover for this bold leap into the non-panel-based literary arts. And here, according to his original doodle, is the finished piece:

What's Up?

2011-06-10T00:06:00.000-07:00

Whatever small percentage of this blog's readership that still remains may be wondering why I haven't posted recently (or regularly) on here in a while and in explaining that reason, I'm also going to be producing one big post of updates to make up for it!

Make Do & Mend Fair
My last post was giving people the heads up about the recent craft fair at Heaton Perk and, as anticipated, it was jolly good fun. I met lots of nice people, including Katie Chappell, who as well as working in Newcastle's (and indeed the world's!) finest cosmetics shop Lush, is also apparently a really good artist! Sally was dishing out plenty of Tunnocks goodies to stall owners and visitors alike, and even snapped this silly and rather horrendous picture of me endorsing the procedure.

A Bit Crack and Chris Bostock's Starlight
The infinitely talented traditional storytellers of A Bit Crack, a group who perform on the first Friday of every month at the Star and Shadow Cinema in Newcastle, hired me to re-vamp their promotional material. This was a long collaboration but we all came out of it happy with the results I think! Following that I was then hired by the group's own Chris Bostock to put together some promotional material for his younger years performance "Starlight"

Below are some of the mock-ups I designed:

This design made use of one of the main props from the show but we agreed the colours weren't quite right for a younger years show and decided to incorporate the characters from the story into the design.

This is one of a series of very small (10cm x 15cm, I think) ink drawings of various compositions that I scanned into Photoshop to play around with more pastel-ly colours. Once I found a colour scheme I was happy with, I tried to stick with the same pallette.

It was a conscious decision on Chris' part not to show too much of the faces of the characters as the show is geared by the young people's imagination and he didn't want to ascribe too much detail. Chris was happiest with the original sky-gazing mock-up so I worked on a bigger, tidier version with clearer text and ended up with this:

This acts as the cover to an A5 booklet with show details and contact information and I referred back to some of these original mock-ups when designing the interior pages too.

Workshops Galore!
Jack & Daniel's Comic Book Workshops had their busiest month to date in May and in addition to all of the projects we lead during that time, we've also been working on getting an anthology of work together by a group we spent 12 lunchtime sessions with at Holystone Primary School near Northumberland Park. There's a touch of scanning left to do and I'm going to design a cover similar to our Seven Stories anthology, which will feature my renderings of the kids' characters - I can't wait! I'll post the finished piece when it's done.

Window Murals
This is a slight aside, but a strange creative endeavour I've recently undertaken so it might be of interest! Travelling Man, the aforementioned comic shop where I work, have actually encouraged its more creative hoodlums to paint stuff onto the shop window to promote our events! My first attempt was a straight-up robot to promote Free Comic Book Day:

Following that we had a signing with Richard Starkings and Doug Braithwaite to promote their forthcoming collaboration on Richard's series Elephantmen. First off, I set about getting the information on the window before it started to rain one day. This was supposed to read as "Elephantmen signing 21st May with Richard Starkings and Doug Braithwaite"

I took a photo of it, pondered it for a couple of days until I was back at work and decided that it didn't read right and probably needed a "This Saturday" because your average Joe doesn't conjure up the day based on "21st". I took quite a bit of care with the lettering knowing what a connoseur Mr Starking's is, and once I was happy with the tweaks I got to work painting a big scary elephant head.

And here's the finished thing in all of its temporary, wash-off glory:

As mentioned before, Travelling Man is going to be having a slew of awesome celebratory events for its 20th birthday soon, and I just found a chunky Posca pen in my collection so I'm very excited to get busy with that for the next mural. If you scroll back a bit you'll see the robot design I created for posters/t-shirts/flyers for the celebration, and when the flyers landed in the shop I was very excited to see that on the reverse side was Becky Cloonan's awwwesome design for this year's Thought Bubble comic convention. Which brings me nicely to the next point of business!

Thought Bubble S.O.S.
I will be stalling it out at both days of this years new and improved mega convention in Leeds, selling wares, meeting the good people of pen and ink and running a workshop on the Sunday. I'd like to make a call-out for anyone who might be so kind as to hop on my stall every now and then so I can eat, use the bathroom and more crucially, run a workshop on Sunday.

Here's Becky's design. I know, awwwesome.

My table is a well-oiled machine now and you won't be expected to drive the hard bargain or to know anything about my work so long as you are willing to smite those who aim to steal things from me with your mighty fists! If you think you can help out please get in touch: jack@jackfallows.com

If you've got a comic you wanna sell but no stall I'll probably have room for one or two titles so I'd be happy to sell it for you in exchange for your help.

Big Bang Issue Three
It exists in corporeal form now! After much set-back, deliberation and redrafting of scripts, it has four pages to call its own and a final script as well as thumbnails for every page. What's even more exciting is that I'm working on 1/4 of the size I usually would so I'm going to blaze through it. Why 1/4 size? Well, The Big Bang Issue Three is going to be a stand-alone A6 mini comic, which will delve into the biography of one of the story's characters. The aim is that it can be sold out of sequence with the main storyline, but that it will enrich the reading of the main storyline for those completists among you. This was the scene a couple of nights ago:

Commander and Chief Lua the cat observes my progress.

More updates to follow soon... possibly!

Emerging from my Hovel

2011-05-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

Sally & Katia of Make Do & Mend Arts, two of the finest jewellery makers and friendliest/most-awesome hosts for a craft fair I've ever had the pleasure to meet are BACK, with the third in what I'm sure will be a slew of excellent bazaars hosting the exciting and eclectic work of the region's most talented makers (and me).

As a seller at the two previous events, I can give you my personal guarantee that you will not regret either setting up your own table of wares OR blowing all of your hard earned cash as a punter. Also, TUNNOCKS TEACAKES! For FREE!

Travelling Into The Future

2011-03-07T11:47:00.000-08:00

Travelling Man, the comic shop where I work part-time, is celebrating its 20th birthday very shortly and I designed this illustration to go on posters and flyers for all the cool stuff we'll be doing for the occasion:

This baby scored me some sweet in-store credit which I put towards a copy of Mansions of Madness, a new board game that is part Arkham Horror, part Cluedo, part classic narrative-driven RPG and all parts awesome. The gaming system, set-up and miniatures are all sweet and I know you came here to look at pictures, but check out this video and then go and buy your copy. If nothing else then for the facial hair on Corey Konieczka.

Who needs a weekend in the sun when you could be trying to stop Cultists from summoning a Chthonian in the Chapel, or fighting back zombies in an attempt to find your long lost, possibly dead relative? Nobody, that's who!

O The Horror!

2011-03-07T11:28:00.000-08:00

Phillip Buchan, an entirely morally reprehensible filth spewer of the lowest order who has been a friend and close associate of mine for some years now, is putting together an incredible anthology of horror comics, the majority of which he has either written or had some large hand in.

As well as blood-drenched, dragged-up, Lucky-Strike-smoking, mutant orgy punk bands like Zombina & The Skeletones and Harley Poe, he's also roped old wooly-vest-wearing Fallows into the project, dragging me out of the self-loathing introspective emo vogue I currently call my comfort zone and forcing me to make comics like a real man.

Below is the first page of our collaborative effort, the other three you'll have to read when the thing comes out (more on that later):

Drawing Request Number One

2011-02-11T00:06:00.000-08:00

A couple of posts ago I asked the good people of the internet to post their ideas for something they'd like me to draw for the Crumpet Time Comics Personal Commission post that I've now created on my Etsy store. This was a suggestion [female superhero drinking a cup of tea] made by my good buddy and all round mega talent Paul Thompson, and features Sugar Glider, the heroine of Daniel Clifford and Gary Bainbridge's new and exciting title.

More drawings to follow!

Ghost Citing

2011-02-09T09:12:00.000-08:00

Matthew Murray of the awesome blog 365 Zines a Year just wrote up a cool review of my comic The Gentleman Ghost. Check out the unfathomably huge backlog of reviews he's posted up there and wonder why you're not so productive yourself, mister!

A Cracking Start to 2011

2010-12-29T14:11:00.000-08:00

Hello All,

I was very pleased not only to have a lovely feature provided by comics-criticism connoisseur of the North East, Christian Kerr, in the January issue of The Crack magazine, but also to have the lovely robot illustration I created based on these lovely robots put slap bang on the cover!

But it gets better folks! The editor asked my permission after they were unable to use a picture of Muhammed Ali! Which means their next thought after legendary-boxer-hero-to-millions was ME! Ahem...well maybe. Anyway, feast your eyes:

The Crack is a free magazine that is chock full of reviews and listings for all sorts of lovely local gigs, theatre performances, galleries, good places to eat, stuff that's happening and everything in-between. You can pick it up from almost every decent pub and clothes/record/comic shop in Newcastle so please do seek it out!

Any First Requests?

2010-11-29T00:03:00.000-08:00

Since it was so popular at Thought Bubble, I've decided I will now be taking requests for small commissions online over at my Etsy Shop. Unfortunately, I didn't have the foresight to snap pictures of any of the drawings I did at the event and the listing is going to look very bare unless I have some examples up there. So I'm asking YOU, the dear blog reader, to post some insane (but unoffensive) ideas for things I can draw and scan to spice things up a bit.

I'll happily e-mail you a hi-res scan of your doodle to print out, or if you wanna PayPal me £2/$3 I'll mail out the hard copy to you as well! I will be doing two or three black and white ink drawings and one colour drawing for the listing so get in there fast with requests amigos!

If you've got an idea just comment on this blog post or e-mail me at: jack@jackfallows.com

Merci!

Speak Easy

2010-11-25T09:59:00.000-08:00

It was recently brought to my attention by a close associate of mine that he wasn't able to post comments on my blog (for better or worse). I've isolated the source of the problem and I'm here to tell you that you need keep your scathing criticisms to yourself no longer! And what better way to bring you this message than with the above video. This is a trailer for "Awake, My Soul" a documentary I had the great pleasure of seeing not so long ago when I went to see local heroes of mine Cath & Phil Tyler at the volunteer-run Star & Shadow Cinema here in Newcastle. Yes, there are some scary religious people, but l i s t e n ! WOW.

A Bubble for your Thoughts

2010-11-23T12:18:00.001-08:00

While still ever-so-slightly shellshocked from what has to have been my busiest Thought Bubble yet, I feel I should tell the tale the way I remember it. To help you imagine things in glorious technicolour, here's a picture of me behind my stall with my face turned away from the camera and towards a picture of Stalin that I'm drawing. Posed, you think? Contrived, perhaps? Well buddy, this is 100% candid camera, and a lovely chap called Paul Burrow will testify to that, since he's the generous stranger who snapped it without my knowing and e-mailed it to me later!

Here's a list of mistakes I've learned valuable lessons from this year:

Turn Up Earlier - no, packing the night before and getting up at 5:30am is not enough. Especially when your flashy new cardboard display stand has never been taken out of its box and you have no idea how to assemble it. On-lookers were treated to the sight of a cussing yeti flailing his arms around in a barbaric display of primitive oragami as the contours of the defiant card mocked him with their malicious smiles.
Assemble ALL Your Comics - Another wise idea of mine was to take the loose pages of my MAIN TITLE with me, as well as my long-armed stapler with probably THREE staples in it, instead of finding the time to assemble them before the show. This resulted in a panic attack in the middle of the day which found me back at Leeds station desperately groping the shelves of WHSmiths and Paperchase to find more staples.
Take Down That Stupid Sign - I'm not Jack Kirby, and I cannot produce good drawings in five nanoseconds. So what possesed me to put up a sign saying I would draw anything you want for £2 (with the 'anything' in italics and everything) baffles even me. Don't get me wrong, it was cool drawing cosplayers as zombies, couples as pigs, celebrity portraits and Stalin's bushy lip, but MAN was I tired by the end of the day. I've only today actually finished all the requests I got, which I'll be mailing out to the people I made empty promises to on the day. Maybe up the price or lower the options? How about:

"I will draw a rodent of your choice for £50"

See how many takers I get on that one. Hmm.
Embrace Capitalism - It's taken me a while to come to terms with the fact that some people don't have the time to listen to me whinge, even if I spend all of my waking life trying to turn that whinging into half-way decent comics. So why not exploit the fact that most people aren't as horribly self-loathing as me and create an alternative product to my comics in the form of punchy big prints for twice the money?! I should have brought more of these, I did not anticipate them to sell as well as they did! And despite my backwards way of expressing it, I'm really grateful to everyone who picked up one and validated the existence of the illustrator within.

Remember Mrs. Gren - Basic human functions still apply, even at Thought Bubble. I should have gone to bed earlier the night before, I should have had time to eat some lunch and use the toilet on the day. Chewits and Chuppachups only cut it for so long.

Now here are some great things that happened, just to leave that lovely feeling in your belly:

I met loads of great and talented people, some for the first time, including:

Jess Bradley - ex Travelling Man chum, now internet-based comics chum with stacks of awesome art and comics (and trainers!) for you to oogle at on her website. She and her boyfriend even offered me a guided tour of Bristol should I ever drop my anchor in those lands. And I expecting GUIDING, guys!

Magda Boreysza - the mind responsible for one of my very favourite small press titles Toasty Cats, as well as a slew of other weird and wonderful art and animations, no less!

Paul Rainey - a machine of comics production, the creator of There's No Time Like The Present and all round splendid chap. Didn't speak to him nearly as much as I'd have liked this year but it was good to frantically cram a conversation in with him, none the less.

Steve Tillotson & Gareth Brookes - of Banal Pig fame, of course. Whose latest offerings met the extremely high bar they've set for themselves at previous cons and through their immense back catalogue of gems. If you haven't already, buy the Banal Pig Showcase.

Selina Lock - I didn't get much of a chance to speak to Selina or Jay of Caption fame, but will hopefully be introduced to them properly by Paper Jam member and comics veteran Terry Wiley when we all discuss plans to make the best con ever here in Newcastle.

Kristyna Baczynski - who I didn't realise I was actually meeting until it was pointed out to me in the pub after the show by close comics associates Gary Bainbridge and Andy Waugh. Nor did I realise that it was the very same Kristyna the year before as I egotistically talked up my comics to her all the while being amazed by the wonderful things on her blog.

Marc Ellerby - As he pointed out, we only see each other once a year, so it probably wasn't in-line of me to get all up in his face on a bitter, jealous rant about his insane level of success. Not least of which is being featured in the awesome CBGB anthology that the likes of Jamie Hernandez were involved with - god, I hate you, Marc.
Paper Jam World Domination - The Comics Collective I started in Newcastle some four years ago has grown immensely during that time, and its members have unleashed unbelievable talents on the comics world. We had FIVE stalls all in a row this year, one for the Collective itself, another for me, one for Andy and Gary, another with Terry (and honourary PJCC member Selina) and a third with Paul Thompson, Daniel Clifford and Martin Newman. All of whom had amazing new things to offer which you can read about on their respective blogs.
I Made Some Money - and was able to treat my girlfriend to some nice things on her birthday to make up for the present drought that struck the Land of Giving this year. Thanks, November, month of poverty! But non-sarcastically, thanks to everyone who stopped by my stall this year, even the cheeky little kids who justed wanted some of my free chewits! I really appreciate everyone's support and I'll look forward to seeing you all again next year!

One Year Later...

2010-11-13T01:13:00.000-08:00

...and I've finally printed the second issue of The Big Bang. I've decided I might as well make its official launch at Thought Bubble, since it's only around the corner and I still need to fold and staple the whole lot. But it is available to buy from my Etsy Shop before then, where you can see further preview pictures and find out more about it. So if you're not going to be at Thought Bubble and/or can't be bothered to wait until it's in the shops after then and/or don't live in the UK, go check it out!

Covering My Tracks

2010-10-13T05:58:00.000-07:00

The Big Bang Issue One will soon have a new friend, who I've affectionately named The Big Bang Issue Two. To generate some interest for this publication, or remind people of its existence, as the case may be, I decided to document each stage of the creation of the cover. I've been reading a lot of those artists' processes lately over on my two favourite blogs Drawn! and Meathaus so I thought I'd give it a go and maybe trick you all into thinking I'm more pro than I really am. So:

1) Materials!
Paper: 160gsm A3 watercolour card.
Pencils: 0.5 Faber Castell mechanical pencil with blue lead refills.
Pens: 0.1, 0.4 and 0.8 Uni Pin fine liners, with a Copic double-ended brush/chizel pen for bigger blocks of black.
Technology: Mustek A3 scanner, Wacom Tablet, Photoshop CS3 and the blessed iMac.

2) Pencils
In keeping with the first cover, I decided to use no human subjects on this one, and to focus on a tranquil/eerie city scene with lots of tedious architechtural details. Notice also that I employed a poor man's one-point perspective, which is about the only good thing to come from my Design Technology GCSE.

As you can probably tell, this is going to be another wrap-around cover with the vanishing point being the spine of the book. In other words, the right half is the front cover, and the left half is the back cover!

3) Inks
Once I was happy I had reached an almost finished composition I started inking over all the lines. I noticed that the windows on the left-most building were totally NOT straight, so I just fixed it when inking instead of drawing the whole thing over in pencil again. I blacked in all the little x's I'd left for myself in the pencils, which is something I stole from Doug Braithwaite and which is basically pointless in my case. Where Doug Braithwaite would then give his amazing pencils to some incompitent Marvel Monkey to ruin, I'm only drawing for myself, so there's really no need to tell myself which areas are supposed to be black given that I made that decision all on my very own.

4) Scanning
I don't bother to rub out pencil lines any more. It took me a lot of time to ween myself off that Blue Peter/smART technique, but I'm finally there. I scan in inks as 1200dpi RGB .psd files and use Photoshop's Image > Adjustments > Threshold tool to make all the blacks absolute black and all the whites absolute white. I picked that one up from this awesome RePro Guide you can download for free from Jordan Crane's website.

5) Colours
Once I'm happy with the crispiness of my lines, and once I've gotten rid of any specks, mistakes and other incriminating evidence I make sure the image is set to the right paper measurements for print and reduce the resolution to 300dpi so my computer doesn't have a fit. Once it's time to add colour, I go to the Channels tab, make a copy of my Blue layer, Invert it, use the little marching ants tool to select all the black ink lines (which are now white), go back to my Layers tab, create a new Layer and Paint Bucket black (or in this case, a dark blue) into the selected area to make a copy of all the black lines seperated from the white background. Then I can fill the Background layer with white and create an intermediate layer between my white background and my free-standing ink lines where the colours can go. For adding grey to comic pages I usually just need one intermediate layer, but for this cover I had three: one for the sky, one for the clouds and another for the buildings. And here it be:

I'll have the comic printed and up for sale at my usual outlets by the end of this month, so be on the look-out! Thanks for sharing the tedious monotony of comics creation with me. I feel better already.

The Crumpet Time Ghostly Gramophone Doodle Book

2010-09-12T05:50:00.000-07:00

...has landed. And here it be, in all its doodlesomeness:

The idea was conceived when I realised how boring white paper was, and how changing something as minimal as the colour or texture of your paper can inform your drawings and make them look much snazzier. The item, as always, can be purchased from my Etsy Shop for a mere $4.00 which works out at about £2.50 English. Go there for more pics and info!

Wings & Things

2010-07-29T08:08:00.000-07:00

Well then,

Big Bang progress has begun to steam along again - I can now truthfully say I'm more than half way through the second issue (only by one page mind, but still!). I've also whipped together a new product for my Etsy Shop, to satisfy both ornithological and capitalist hemispheres of my brain. Here it be:

Why, it's a birthday card centred around a very tenuous pun, of course! I realise these kinds of jokes don't aid me in my epic battle against the decline into an embarrassing Dad-type, but it did give me an excuse to draw a bird in a top hat and a monocle.

In other news, a friend of mine called Phillip Buchan has just written a novel and started a Twitter account @FrancisSobriety among other things. If you want some proof that this guy isn't a total douche (and believe me, it can be difficult proof to find) - he's responsible for some really great, really profane comics that were spewed forth onto the world along with mine in one of our earliest ventures into self-publishing with Phil Marsden, entitled Black Out. Remember? No? How about What's Inside A Girl? or Everything Is Going To Be Alright? Well, then I can't help you. I guess he'll have to speak for himself, or his novel will. His novel, which I can testify to at least being one-quarter great (since that's all I've read of it so far).

Anyway, that's all that blood-sucker is getting from me. Go check things out!

You Can't Kill What's Already a Dead Einstein's Ghost

2010-07-01T15:19:00.001-07:00

Just saw this over at Paul Hornschemier's blog. If you can tell me what's not good about it, I'll tell you how long a piece of string is*

*answer: as long as your stupid boring face.

Jack & Daniel's Comic Book Workshops Blog!

2010-06-25T00:28:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

I often make reference to the workshops myself and writer Daniel Clifford facilitate at various libraries, schools and other institutions in the area, but haven't, until this point, been able to do that fancy text link thing that I just did up there ^ Did you miss it? Here it is again.

The reason I can do this now is because last night we launched our blog - finally! Hopefully, we'll be posting photos, drawings and any other interesting stuff that happens as the sessions go on. We'll also be keeping an up-to-date list of all our forthcoming workshops and information on how you (or your little whipper-snappers) can get involved.

Follow the text links, or this bigger, fancier image link, to see the thing for yourself!

Viva La Home Office

2010-05-16T10:05:00.000-07:00

I received a very nice e-mail and this awesome picture the other day from a girl called Astrid, who bought my Viva La Robolution print from Etsy. I've never framed or hung one before so it was super cool to see it on the wall - and in an already cool-looking space at that!

Thanks, Astrid!

Bitty Bang

2010-05-14T00:14:00.000-07:00

Hello,

I've been hard at work for the last day or two finally knuckling down on The Big Bang Issue Two after a big hiatus while I moved house and various other excuses. The second issue is going to feature some envelope-pushing on the format side of things, the nature of which I'll not get into just yet - but suffice to say that when myself and Alexi Conman realised that such a thing was doable, my excitement was enough to put the plain old comics drawing on the back-burner until I brought the thing into existence. A preview of artwork featured within can be seen below:

It dawned on me yesterday that it has been 6 months since the first issue and I'd better get my act together before everyone forgets about it! So any and all spare time I manage to wrangle over the coming weeks will be spent pouring over old scripts, thumbnails, doodles and ideas and hopefully I'll have a new issue for you very soon!

Hot Look for Summer

2010-05-11T13:06:00.000-07:00

I've taken my blog for a make-over. It now looks like <-- this --> I like it better now, but that might just be because it's different to how it was before and sometimes it's nice to have a change. I kind of wish I had more to report than that so this post was a bit more flashy but I'll just let the blog do the talking. Go ahead blog, you handsome devil you.

Swing The Heaviest Hammer Ya Got

2010-05-06T05:22:00.001-07:00

I just picked up my 24 Hour Comic John Henry Split My Heart from the printers, and it's looking rather delicious. I've cropped it so it's about 2cm shorter and 1cm less wide than A5, mostly because my stupid PDFs left mysterious black lines as if to say "crop me" but it was a welcome mystery because now the book feels just that little bit more substantial to hold in one's hand. Here's a couple of photos I just snapped:

You'll be able to pick up copies from all the Travelling Man stores come the start of next week and you can already buy copies from my Etsy Shop. It retails at £3/$4 but if you're coming to the Paper Jam meeting tonight you'll get it for a shocking £2.50! Read more about the fabled item here.

Triumph in the Absence of God

2010-04-29T14:39:00.000-07:00

Hello,

I have three things to report, in chronological order:

1) I finished the covers and inside front/back pages for John Henry Split My Heart, which is now available to buy from my Etsy Shop, despite the fact that I still haven't printed any physical copies of it yet. I will be getting a batch done up either tomorrow or early next week though, and if I do sell 500 copies all of a sudden it won't be hard to print on demand...I hope.

2) I listened to the pilot episode of North East Geek Feast, which is a podcast created by comics cohorts Daniel Clifford and Lily Daniels. It features a documentary about the Paper Jam Comics Collective that I'm always blathering on about and that I'm sure at least the majority of you, the readership, have no idea about - if you need more reason to listen, it also has reviews, interviews and a heart in the right place. You'll even get to hear my radio-unfriendly barritone mumblings crashing through the niceness like a miniature wrecking ball.

3) I finished my submission to the forthcoming History...and that comics anthology, by aforementioned Paper Jam Comics Collective. My strip is rather gothically called "Anna & The Absence of God" and it's two pages of melodramatic speculative fiction based on a real person who existed in a real place during a specific time. It's taken from a book/film that I'm quite hopelessly obsessed with and if I had to rate it, I would say it was... adequate. Here's a panel:

The Hermit Emerges from his Hovel

2010-04-21T12:47:00.000-07:00

Father, it's been over a month since my last blogfession, my only sin being precisely that. Otherwise, I've been a relatively normal, functioning member of society, and even got a lot of artwork produced too. But before all of that, I'd like to share with you the single greatest achievement of my professional career. A moment that not only inflated my ego to way past its bed time but also validated my existence and the amount of said existence I've wasted toiling away at comics. I got an e-mail from my all-time favourite creator and single biggest source of inspiration and awe... Mr. F. C. Ware himself.

The e-mail wasn't to tell me he thought I was the next big thing, or that he was emotionally floored by my work, but it was encouraging, helpful and substancial, and above all - CHRIS WARE READ MY COMICS! Gods of pen and ink be praised.

In other news, I did a 24 Hour Comic as part of the P.R.E.S.S. event at the Tyneside Cinema and I intend to put it out in a book, I've written an introduction and produced a front and back cover, so as soon as the last bits are done and I have two pennies to rub together it'll be in my Etsy Shop and on the shelves at Travelling Man. Here's a peak:

I also just today finished the cover for O'Messy Life's 3rd EP entitled O'Messy Life and The Quarter Life Crisis of Conan. As per Mr. Littlefair's request, it is a truly gorey scene indeed. Behold:

The EP itself is set for release at the end of next month so you'll no doubt see plenty of promo in and around the Newcastle area. I recommend going to the show as well, they are a splendid outfit of absurdly talented people who play a great live set.

Work continues on The Big Bang, I definitely haven't forgotten about it, it will come out, honest. Promise. I also had a request to make the "Sea Food" design I created for Boreal into a print, so you can pick one of those up from my Etsy Shop if it takes your fancy!

Updates soon, maybe!

Zappa says: Updates!

2010-03-09T13:40:00.000-08:00

Hello all. I've updated my real website so that everything now makes sense in the universe. The Store icon now links to my Etsy shop, the News icon links to this blog, my About section now features a downloadable PDF of my Creative CV, the Links section has two new additions and finally, I've added a few preview pages of The Big Bang Issue One in the Portfolio section.

I added this picture of Frank Zappa from my sketchbook so this post wasn't so boring. Thanks to HTML wizard Tim Eggleston for doing all the work!

Scenes from a coming Bang

2010-02-23T00:40:00.000-08:00

Me and Alexi Conman have been coming up with tons of ideas for the future of our humble series and one particularly revolutionary idea has increased my enthusiasm tenfold. The second issue will eclipse the first in scope, content and awesomeness. Here's a snippet:

I'm hoping to have this out before the end of March so I'll keep you posted on its progress. In other news, this Thursday night I'll finally be unveiling plans for the Paper Jam Comics Collective's 7th/8th/9th anthology (depending on how long it takes) Music...and that. It's an idea I've had in the works for ages but one it has finally come time to execute. It's release will be in the summer and it will shred riffs so sweet you'll weep like Robert Smith. Keep your eyes on the PJCC blog for more info.

SUPER-AWESOME COMIC PARTY

2010-02-12T01:59:00.000-08:00

So then, me and the chaps of the The Paper Jam Comics Collective have been hard at work putting on our 3 Year Birthday party/launch event for Space Monkey and doing promotion work for it. Read all about it here. Part of that involved a creative collaboration between myself and the infinitely talented Mr. Bainbridge, (our first, in fact, despite being creative allies for all of these three years) who designed this killer poster:

Feel free to print copies and give them to everyone you know!

I coloured it and did the text and heading, but of course, the main attraction would be the giant caterpillar playing slap bass. Hopefully he'll turn up to play on the night because I've just received the sorry news that my drummer will be unavailable, so only 5 of 6 members of Sleepwalk will be headlining on that night. We may still try to jig things around so one of us can play a make-shift percussion thing, but we'll see.

In other news, I've just listed the Viva La Robolution poster I was yacking on about earlier. And let me tell you brother, it is one beastly thing to behold. I ended up printing it on A1 gloss and it's big enough to eat your grandmother. Go check it out.

Small Press Big Bang!

2010-02-09T12:06:00.000-08:00

The awesome, ever-supportive and comic-centric Stacey Whittle has reviewed issue one of The Big Bang on her podcast-come-nerd-haven, Small Press Big Mouth. If you want to hear the review click here and listen to Episode Fifteen. Then listen to all the other episodes. Or better yet, work up to the review from Episode One. Go on then!

Me and Stacey think pretty much the same things about issue one, which is both refreshing and encouraging, and I was very pleased to have its story mechanism compared to those of Alex Robinson. And, of course, I was humbled in no small way to be mentioned at all. Cheers Stacey!

Viva La Robolution

2010-02-03T12:53:00.000-08:00

I had my first Custom Item Request on Etsy last week from the talented Rachel Wheeler of Pretty Much LiQi Designs. It was for more robots but in the form of prints, and after sending her a slew of ideas we finally settled on a Communist propaganda-style thing, which turned out something exactly like this:

There were some other, equally cheesy, ideas but I'll hopefully do those some time soon as well so I won't ruin the surprise for everyone sat at home holding their breath in nail-biting suspense (you know who you aren't).

Dance With Me.

2010-02-03T12:45:00.001-08:00

Bang, the second.

2010-01-21T11:16:00.000-08:00

I've decided that 2010 will see me juggling at least 3 projects at any given time. No more mister sane guy, if I'm not ruining my life by piling needless commitments on myself then I'm not trying hard enough! Currently, I'm juggling these four things:

1) Finishing mine and Daniel's "brochure" for our workshops.
2) Putting together the second issue of Big Bang
3) Organising the 3 Year Anniversary Party for the Paper Jam Comics Collective
4) Making a record at The Stillwells' home studio with my band Sleepwalk (follow the link to hear a rough, drumless, trumpetless version of one of the tracks "Black River Falls")

Further to those I also have an idea in the works for a project which will be called:
John Henry Split My Heart: The Illustrated Music of Songs:Ohia & The Magnolia Electric Co.
An excerpt of which will appear in Andy Waugh's "Show and Tell" anthology, if I'm still allowed to do that, given that it's been about 3 months since he first mentioned it.

As for now, here's the first page from the second project mentioned above:

Two Thousand and Nice!

2009-12-15T13:18:00.001-08:00

Okay, everyone seems to be looking back on the glorious victories and crippling failures of this year as it quickly vanishes into the chasms of time, so I'm going to join in a bit.

I'm quite happy that I've managed to put out a lot of new stuff this year, including a new on-going series amongst other bits and bobs. I've had my first gallery and even scored some paid freelance illustration gigs as well as making a small sum with online sales. The Comics Evenings at Travelling Man are thriving and the comic workshops myself and Daniel are putting on have been met with a lot of success as well.

I reckon now that I'm finally making enough money to justify spending one or two days a week drawing and creating stuff that 2010 should be even better though. I've just built this DIY macro photography studio which I'm hoping will get a lot of use when snapping new products for Etsy. I'm also going to make a concerted effort to keep Big Bang rolling along at a steady pace, because I've never had the patience to do that before.

But that's all boring. In terms of real comic book accomplishments I'd like to turn your attention to some triumphs in the published and self-published world that have excited me beyond comparable belief this year:

Favourite On-Going Series
This is a tie between Uptight by Jordan Crane and Cursed Pirate Girl by Jeremy Bastian.

The former is a beautifully mundane and bizarrely captivating look at the melodramatic, grizzly underbelly of spouse-dom in domestica. Riddled with panic and suspicion, played out masterfully and drawn meticulously, this is a series that has not failed to make me squeal like a little girl when I've seen new issues advertised in Previews. The humanism of it all stays with you like the residual hum of whisky on the tongue, and this series, coupled with the handful of other delights that the creator has to offer, has made me convert to his cause indefinitely. If his name is on it, I'll pick it up, and you should too.

The latter came completely out of nowhere for me. If I'm being completely honest, I picked up the first issue of this purely because of its design. It's a chunky booklet, wrapped in a textured brown card cover, with imprints and dashes of colour placed around it, reminiscent of that package you sometimes get in the mail that looks so aesthetically pleasing that you almost don't want to tear into it. But, of course, you do and sometimes, like in this case, it's totally worth it. Jeremy Bastian uses ink made from the tears of angels, and applies it to the paper using unicorn horns and the bones of great dead artists. His line-work, sense of composition and not least of all the confidence and flair with which he approaches our well-formed ideas of comic book conventions, is as refreshing as it is breathtaking. What's more, the story is like all of those "cool" pirate movies and books and comics that were popular not so long ago, but if they actually were really, really cool.

Favourite Graphic Novel
2008 saw the release of Joshua W. Cotter's Skyscrapers of the Midwest, which made this category a cake walk last year. This year is a little trickier. There have been a decent number of books that got me excited, but at the end of the day I'd have to give the cup to John Pham for Sublife vol.1. Some of the material in this volume was originally serialised in Mome, which I'm a devout reader of, so whether or not that had some major influence on my anticipation for its release or my investment in the characters prior to its release I'm not sure. Either way, reading the whole thing together in one gorgeously produced book was a whole other kettle of fish.

Much like the title suggests, this is a walk through suburban life on one particular street in some unnamed location of America. The subtleties of the surroundings and the overbearing sense of fear and insecurity they bring makes the world almost equally important to what's happening in it, and nails a perspective for you to take on the characters, even as the story is just starting out. There are a lot of loose story lines that sometimes briefly intersect, but I suspect the longer the story gets, the more significant each neighbour will become to one another and the more loose ends will tie together. Not that they need to, mind, but I've got a feeling they might. Even in this slim volume enough happens to satisfy your buck, and if John Pham decided to never release a second book there's enough in there for it to stand alone, in my opinion.

But that's irrelevant, because he is releasing a second volume, I've seen pictures of it, so there.

Triumphs of the Small Press Community
There have been loads of these, and I'd like to name-drop every single member of the Paper Jam Comics Collective for their group and solo efforts this year. We've made a ton of progress on becoming the ultimate comics juggernaut and everybody is stepping up, or has stepped up, their game. However, I think the cup for Most-Progress-Made would have to go to one Andy Waugh for the multitude of mediums and audience he has monopolized this year.

Andy put out this really succinct, really witty, really sweet and unbearably funny comic ages ago called Melanchomic, and instead of living off continual sales from this masterpiece, as he could have done, he decided to make himself known to we poor saps at the Comics Evenings and proceeded to "show us how it's done". You can read all about his accomplishments in the comic world and outside of it on his blog, but what I'd really like to draw your attention to is his latest title Coupledom.

Okay, it's another auto-bio comic, it's small press and it's A5. Some people can't get behind that formula to begin with and some people plainly find auto-bio self-indulgent. If you're one of these people, you might not get a lot out of Coupledom, but you will get something. That's because Andy uses this tried-and-tested method simply as a mouth-piece for what he wants to say. And true, sometimes he just wants to say "boobies" but we all like to say "boobies" once in a while, it's what makes us human. Indeed, it's what makes Andy's work human.

Now, some think that everything a person does should be at least 180 degrees in some other direction to the things they've done previously, and while Coupledom might not be miles away from Melanchomic, they're not exactly twins. More like friends of the family who you only see at Christmas. There is a wealth of originality in there. Not least of all is Andy's penmanship, which over the course of the years seems to have careened from Chris Ware-esque rigidness to Eddie Campbell-esqe sketchy-but-not-messy flowiness and back again with ease. It's the ease that really gets to me. I've never really asked Andy how long it takes him to produce something or how many times he throws a rage and rips everything up, but even if he is a bubbling cauldron of self-defeat like I am, he hides it really well. His lines move like ballerinas on ice.

Anyway, he's not the only one who has done well for himself. Here's a list of comics you should check out next time you're in Travelling Man:

Grainger Street and Nightbus 1 and 2 by Gary Bainbridge
Tales of Hollow Earth by Paul Thompson
All free zines by Mike Duckett, not least of all Bothy Zine
Wor Diary > go here.
Robots... and that
Space Monkey... and that
Toasty Cats 1-4 by Magda Boreysza
Tales of Extraordinariness featuring The Investigatist by Oscillating Brow
Anything by Terry Wiley, wow.
Anything by Ben Clark, bow wow.
Anything by those Banal Pig lads, wiggedy wow.

Things to look out for in the new year:

A showcase anthology that Andy Waugh is editing (working title: Show and Tell)
An anthology that Daniel Clifford is editing (working title: Adventure Arena)
A zombie apocalypse story that Martin Newman has everybody involved in and psyched about (working title: Project Z)
Big Bang Issue Two ...if you like.

T H E - E N D

Food for Thought Bubble

2009-11-23T14:37:00.000-08:00

So Thought Bubble panned out pretty well, I met two people who I had only spoken to by e-mail/phone, namely Paul Rainey and Louise Ho, had brief chats with chums and acquaintances from last year's event, namely Hugh "Shug" Raine, Gareth Brookes, Steve Tillotson and Marc Ellerby, as well as enjoying the company of The Newcastle Paper Jam Comics Collective's finest - Andy Waugh, Gary Bainbridge, Paul Thompson, Alexi Conman, Terry Wiley, Ben Clark, Ian Mayor, Daniel Clifford and Lily Daniels.

Special thanks to Andy for manning my stall for ages while I was wandering around, and also for taking these pictures of my vile self and all the things I had for sale:

Check me out, selling stuff to Gareth Brookes - who do I think I am, Elvis? Anyway, following the convention, I've updated my Etsy Shop with both items I was debuting there - The Big Bang Issue One and The Crumpet Time Badge Set - you can also now pick up a copy of The Big Bang from Travelling Man Newcastle, and you'll be able to pick both items up from all Travelling Man stores at some point in the very near future when I figure out how I'm going to do it.

Updates soon ladies and gentlemen.

Biggest Bang

2009-11-20T00:45:00.000-08:00

I picked up The Big Bang from the printers yesterday and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I will be selling copies for £2.50 at Thought Bubble this weekend, and for about the same price in dollars on my Etsy Shop after this weekend. There will also be copies for sale at Travelling Man (all four stores) when I get around to mailing them out. As for now, here's a video preview (an idea that I stole from Fantagraphics).

Bigger Bang

2009-11-18T00:12:00.000-08:00

So The Big Bang Issue One is complete and will be ready to pick up from the printers on Thursday afternoon. This has easily been the most labour-intensive comic I've worked on, purely because I aimed to do more than before and in less time than before. I read through everything I had after it was finished, and the feel is completely different to most of my other titles - by which I don't mean it was some other-worldly magical experience, just very different. The fact that myself and the illustrious Mr. Alexi Conman planned 3 issues before I had set pen to paper means this first issue actually feels like a first issue - it's a beginning as opposed to a "see how many ideas I can cram into 16 pages" kind of affair.

Most of my time between now and its launch will be spent doing all other manner of preparation for Thought Bubble, and after Thought Bubble I intend to start work on Issue Two and also on making a record with my band Sleepwalk. We're not a 50's Rock'n'Roll band, but as the war continues to rage in my mind as to which televised version of Johnny B Goode by Chuck Berry kicks more ass, I'm certainly considering crossing the genre boundary. If it wasn't for stupid Keith Richards and the god damn Allman Brothers butting in on the second one I'd probably go with that, but the other has crazy beehive-sporting hipster girls doing the twist.

Answers on a postcard.

Small Bang

2009-10-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

Hello all. So anyone who read my Thought Bubble Minterview will know that I plan to release a new title by the name of The Big Bang at that very comic convention on 21st November. I'm still trying to keep most of the ins-and-outs of the project hush hush until it gets released, but for the meantime here is one panel from one of nine finished pages:

I still have seven left to go, and covers, but I'm confident I'll get it done in time (for some reason!)

Big Head Strikes Again

2009-10-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

Just like I said I would, here's another post (astonishment!). As many of you already know, I went to Mike's 30th as the Jeffrey Brown character, Bighead. I think it worked out pretty well, even though there were only about 5 people who knew what I was supposed to be and everyone else kept referring to me as "White Man" or "Sperm Man" or "Giant Sperm". Anyway, here are some pictures:

And here, for people who think I just walk the walk and don't talk the talk, is my Thought Bubble Minterview. I'm such a pathetic loser...

Etsy Etc.

2009-09-29T09:15:00.001-07:00

So I just updated my Etsy Shop with some of the unfortunate original art work that didn't sell at the Mushroom Works exhibition. I was told no one sold much, so my cheque for £3.60 wasn't as much of a slap in the face as one would naturally take it to be.

I also just finished an e-mail interview for the Thought Bubble Blog which you should be able to read soonish, and I've leaked the title of my forthcoming big project (which I plan to start actually drawing tomorrow if I can). So watch this space and I'll let you know when it goes live.

I haven't posted much on here for a long time but I intend to start making posts at least weekly from now on - there's always loads to report, but that's usually why I never get around to it! One of the big things is that the workshop facilitation enterprise that myself and one Daniel Clifford created - Jack & Daniel's Comic Book Workshops - is starting to take off. We're doing two sessions this weekend for BBC Blast and we have a ton of gigs lined up with local libraries, Seven Stories Children's Book Centre and even Bede's World!

In other news, I spent some time today stitching together a few accessories for my top secret costume which I'll be wearing to the Comics and Games themed 30th Birthday party of long-standing comics bud and boss at Travelling Man, Mike Thompson. I will definitely be posting pictures when it's complete!

That's how for now.

Coupledom Contribution

2009-09-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

So everyone must know who Andy Waugh is by now right? He's the one who did that small press comic called Melanchomic that was really funny, witty, poignant, slice-of-life and loved by all. So much so in fact that he's been able to consistently sell copies of it for what seems like decades without having to offer a follow up, while me and Gary Bainbridge have piles of Rusty Nail and Clean Living In Talsatia growing strange fungi in abandoned corners of our homes and spend most of our waking life tearing hair out wondering what the hell everybody wants from us.

Anyway, a couple of months ago I found out that Andy has indeed been cooking up a new comic entitled "Coupledom" which he'd better hope is as good as his usual standard of comic because psychos like me will have a thing or two to say about it after he's made us wait this long. Anyway, upon hearing this news at one of the Paper Jam meetings, I proceeded to tenuously link the theme of our 24-Minute Comic (Smooth + Monkey's Bottom) to a faux-advertisement for the then mysterious and unnamed project, which Andy took a liking to despite it being a bit offensive.

He then astonishingly asked if he could include it in the project, and I told him "No fucking way! It's shit!" but did offer to do a cleaner version later that he could use, if I didn't regret the whole idea after about 24 Hours. So after months of procrastination, I set pen to paper today because I heard he was coming upon the final stages of creation. And here's the page:

Mountain Goats Poster

2009-08-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

I decided against my usual "funny" or "witty" title-making for this post, because I need a moment of extreme fanboy sincerity. Those of you among us who do not know of the wonderful assemblage of musical delights that one John Darnielle has been assembling under the name "The Mountain Goats" for the last 18 years, shame on you. They sprung out of the rafters for me not that long ago and have set up lodgings in my brain, ear drums and those little hums that slip past your lips when you're not thinking about it.

Among their consistently brilliant and well-written tracks is one by the name of Oceanographer's Choice from the album Tallahassee. This song might not be the stand-out track from their library, or even from this album for that matter, but it does open with these lines "Well, guy in a skeleton costume comes up to the guy in the Superman suit, runs through him with a broadsword. I flip the television off..." - which invoked in me a perfect visual for a poster.

I had no reason to create this poster, but that made it an extremely beneficial process for my current mind-set. It's been too long since I've just drawn for my own enjoyment, and I'm exceptionally happy with how it turned out. I'm looking into somehow getting it to the band in case they might be able to use it for something, but will be happy enough to just have it kicking about in my portfolio if not. And here, gentle reader, it is:

Guest Ghost

2009-07-28T02:31:00.001-07:00

Gary Bainbridge produced this fine strip at one of the Paper Jam Comics meets as a response to a discussion that arose about the vile and dreadful weekly strip I produced for the Courier once upon a time (which you will never see again, so don't even ask!). I demanded he send it to me at once since I have nothing to report lately on the blog, so here it is in its original form:

And again in glorious technicolour!

If any one else out there would like to help me bury the past by offering their own "all-that-could-have-been" three-panellers please do send away and I'll make sure they're seen.

New Old News

2009-07-23T13:45:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit rubbish at keeping on top of the blog lately, so here's some stuff that was breaking news a few weeks ago and some other stuff that's still more or less breaking news.

Firstly, I updated my Etsy Shop with some prints, and I changed my username to crumpettimecomics because it was binkythedoormat7 previously, and that's just retarded. I also took some new photos for some of the items, and in the process Siobhan caught this picture of our new kitten Lua posing with my postcard set:

Secondly, the exhibition at Mushroom Works is now underway, so if anyone out there still hasn't been down to check it out you most certainly should! There are some incredible artists exhibiting and the walls are teaming with talent. I'll have some photos to show you soon.

Finally, I produced the EP cover for O'Messy Life's second EP Green Posies Growin' Gangrene Below 'Em and here it be:

Boreal etc.

2009-07-03T17:05:00.000-07:00

Started work on some new bits for the Mushroom Works exhibition, but I'll save those for the occasion. The launch night is Friday 17th, so come along if you can, it should be a swell night. In the meantime, here is the wallet I designed for Boreal, in all of its corporeal glory:

Big Update

2009-06-27T12:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, things got a little messy over the course of those last few posts, so I've deleted some stuff and swapped some other stuff around. Here is what you need to know: There are updates on my real website, so go have a gander. The Titus Andronicus poster is now being used for the Heaton Games Society, because apparently the gig wasn't confirmed when I drew the poster and the band turned down the offer to play the UK. Here's the second version:

Events-wise, I'll be in Sunderland this weekend, because the city council are putting on a big ol' festival, and we're going to have a comic stall there and maybe do some workshops too. By we, I mean myself, Gary Bainbridge, Andy Waugh, any members of the Paper Jam Comics Collective who fancy it, and Durham's finest, the Mallard Small Press crew (or some vague approximation of the above).

More impressively, I've been chosen to exhibit some work at The Mushroom Works Gallery, as part of their upcoming celebration of Illustration 'Quite the Character'. The exhibition will be running between 18th July - 29th Aug and I'll be producing lots of new stuff to show and sell for the occasion. More details will follow when I've been down to meet them on Monday!

Thought Bubble & Boreal

2009-06-03T07:28:00.000-07:00

Some new things for your viewing pleasure. They're a bit low resolution I'm afraid. Just getting a panic on about internet theft, which I've heard far too much about lately.

'Sea Food' - wallet design for Boreal.

Illustration for the Thought Bubble blog, they've done a little Independent and Small Press Friends of Thought Bubble feature on me, so go have a read.

Out of Hibernation

2009-05-14T23:56:00.001-07:00

Well that's it, I've now been officially promoted (demoted?) from university student to real life starving artist. With no more essays or exams to think about it means I can finally get down to drawing, and panicking that I'll never make it and being broke. The good news is, that during my hibernation I managed to set myself up a few jobs for when I was done. One of these jobs is a wallet design for Boreal, a small collective of art appreciators who aim to promote the work of artists, graphic/textile designers and graffiti maestros (from both established and non-established camps) through a series of limited edition, hand-crafted wallets, bags etc.

The second is a strip for a project that poets Andy Croft, Bill Herbert and Paul Summers are working on, which revolves around a curious incident involving a stray dog, a fashion model and the Moscow Metro line. More on that when I figure it out myself!

The third and final thing is a doodle for the small press page on the Thought Bubble website, which I should hopefully have done in the next week or so. Anyone who doesn't know what Thought Bubble is... what are you? A schmuck?! Gawan, geddoutahere! - Thought Bubble is the best, fastest-growing and most Leeds-based comic convention of the past two years and this third year will be even better. One of the reasons for that is because it will make misanthropic small pressers like me get their act together and produce shiny new things for the occasion. I won't have this blasted internet ruin the surprise of what shiny new thing that might be, but suffice it to say that I'm aiming to do things way out of my league and I have been discussing the operation with a trusted writer/artists/creative type, who for the purposes of this blog will remain anonymous.

In the meantime, did I mention that we're having a launch party at the end of the month? Friday 29th May at the Star and shadow will see the launch of the 5th Paper Jam Comics Collective anthology Robots...and that, and will feature live music, short films, comics, cakes, sweets and all other manner of fun and excitement. It's £4 or £3 to members of the cinema, and the anthology will be available for a special price on the night. Here's a sample from the four-pager myself and Mr. Ian Mayor put together for it:

SFX Shout Out!

2009-04-20T05:23:00.000-07:00

A gracious thank you to writer, comic book fan, small press appreciator, long-standing friend of Travelling Man and supporter/home-made cake maker of The Paper Jam Comics Collective, Stacey Whittle, for the inclusion of Costume Party in her small press Top 5 on the SFX Magazine blog, which you can read here. Greatly appreciated!

NSR Flyer Design

2009-03-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

Newcastle's Student Radio asked me to do a flyer for them, which I did. It looks like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Oscar from Sesame Street, cross-bred with me. Artists out there, do you ever find that a lot of your pictures, even of weird dog-faced monster teens, end up looking like yourself? No... just me then? Anyway, you might notice I did that thing where there's a speech bubble coming out of a microphone that I did on the Comedy Festival illustration I did for Narc. I don't know what this is, I realise microphones don't speak, or emit any sound for that matter, so not sure what I'm going for really, but there we go. This is probably going to be the last proper illustration or comic I'm gonna for a month or two because apparently being in your third and final year of university requires work being done, so this will have to suffice for now, sorry!

p.s. these are two sides of one flyer, not one long weird flyer cut down the middle!

New Stuff

2009-03-18T00:51:00.000-07:00

The Portfolio and Store sections on my website have been updated with a couple of new things. Robot postcards are go! Also, this blog is now the official News page, so you'll never miss an episode again. Things are well.

The Gentleman Ghost vs. The Courier

2009-03-08T12:19:00.001-07:00

Doing this weekly strip makes me sick. Anyway, I've got too much on right now to be busting my balls for people who couldn't give a flying toss about what I'm doing. I'm not getting paid, or any recognition, if anything I'm giving myself a bad reputation on account of how bad the strips are turning out. You won't see the weeklies ever again, and Gentleman Ghost, if you're listening, I'm sorry.

Edinburgh Beckons Still

2009-02-26T12:38:00.000-08:00

A volunteer at the Forest Cafe in Edinburgh (the venue for the recent not-so-successful Comics Fare), found one of my little business card things in the shop there and very kindly got in touch to tell me she liked my website and would like to put a comic of mine in her magazine Mind The Gap. There were a bunch of themes, but the one I chose was Fucking Christmas. Note how the strip has nothing to do with it.

Also, you should have a look at the Paper Jam Comics Collective blog, I hear it's fab.

Narc Round Two

2009-02-19T06:49:00.000-08:00

More illustrations for Narc. These are both going in the March 09 issue, the first is for the NewcastleGateshead comedy festival thing that's happening soon, the second is for another Retrospective article, this time for a local punk band called Hurrah! Enjoy.

Edinburgh...and all that could have been (v.02)

2009-02-11T02:13:00.000-08:00

Hello,

So me and Gary went to Edinburgh over the weekend for the second Zine-O-Rama comics/poetry/performance/gallery/zine fair, at the Forest Cafe. We got a stall for free and had lots of wares and a kick-ass display to entice the customers. We stayed with Gary's friend Dan, a splendid fellow who lives in a big lovely flat, where we were fed some delicious traditional Scottish porridge for breakfast two mornings in a row.

Despite all of this, the weekend was pretty disappointing. When we arrived we were asked by the organiser to help lug tables about for the stalls, before even really saying hello or introducing ourselves. Thankfully we only needed to move about four of them because nobody turned up except us, the Mallard crew and a Canadian guy called Hamish (who, incidentally, went off somewhere mid-way through the Saturday to teach people how to make books, and didn't come back until just before we gave up for the day). The Mallard crew sensibly decided to go home before the Saturday had even ended. Kudos, betrayers.

Now it's not that everyone wasn't perfectly civil, or that we didn't meet some really nice, cool people or didn't sell anything, because they were, and we did. But sitting in a cafe for two days straight while you watch a bunch of people way cooler than you dressed in clothes that they've made themselves, hair that they've cut themselves, with slogans spray painted on like Boycott Israeli Goods and World Trade Is A Death Machine - and you're sitting there with your colourful robot postcards and copies of the Gentleman Ghost, wearing a shirt that was ironed by your girlfriend and glasses that you bought from Specsavers, you start to feel A) Extremely unhip and B) Like you're ever so slightly out of your element.

Besides anything, mostly these hipsters only turned up for a vegan wrap and a bizarre Argentinean "herbal tea" (incidentally, I had a warm cashew and salad wrap and a vegetarian coconut curry, both of which were unbelievably delicious). Our sales were pretty much to people who just wandered over with vague curiosity, because apparently NOBODY besides us knew the thing was on. It's a shame because, had it been better promoted, it could've been killer. There was a bit of DIY hot-desking as the weekend went on, and we met some new faces, which was refreshing, because looking at Gary Bainbridge for any extended period of time has been known to give you vertigo.

The man himself assures me that last year's was better organised, with more people, in a different (bigger) room, and that our turning up should be validated by this bar that was so deceptively set to rise as time went by. But this reassurance was outweighed by the pain of a wisdom tooth growing in, an ulcer on my tongue, the muscle ache from sleeping anywhere besides my bed at home, and the waking up with a nosebleed when my sinuses exploded in the wee hours. I felt, and still feel, like my entire soul has been ripped out through my nostrils, been kicked in by a thousand angry Doc Martens, spat on and stuffed back inside through my rectum.

Oh well, where's the next fair?

Tonight!

2009-02-03T00:04:00.000-08:00

So the Launch Event is tonight (see below), and heroic printer Jonny did indeed pull through, meaning I'll have these wares for sale. Extremely nervous about playing, as usual, but even more so this time around because I woke up in a practically comatose state of snot and pain this morning. My throat feels like a Black and Decker work surface and I'm still not really finished writing one of the songs I'm playing. Decided on a bit of a dramatic opener for the set too, so if my voice does decide to give up it'll be after this song I think.

Anyway, that's entertainment!

New Things for Edinburgh II

2009-01-27T13:02:00.000-08:00

Also hoping to be armed with these business card thingies so I can sweet talk people into going on my site without the actual talking bit. However, the harrowing words "best laid plans..." come to mind.

New Things for Edinburgh I

2009-01-27T12:45:00.000-08:00

This is the set of four postcards of robots I mentioned. Sorry for the rubbish image quality. Praying our heroic printer Jonny can pull through and do them up for me so I won't have to shell out assloads of cash. The titles of the postcards (printed on the back) are, from left to right, top to bottom: Strange New World, It's The End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Scared), Crumpet Timer & Greed of the Mechanical Man. I'll try to sell them fairly cheap in relation to how much printing costs. Watch this space.

Narc Illustration

2009-01-19T10:33:00.000-08:00

I created this to go in the February issue of local music magazine Narc, it'll be coupled with a retrospective article on the band Crane. Have a wee gander, should be interesting to see it in print. It's free from RPM and places if anyone is even remotely interested...

Antho Launch Night... and that

2009-01-16T15:10:00.000-08:00

The fourth issue of the Travelling Man comics group anthology is soon to be released. The issue is called You Will Have To Wait... And That and all stories are linked in one sub/super-liminal way to a variety of random objects that frequenters brought down one night. These items range from magic juggling balls, to a massager, to a magic eightball (which is responsible for our title). It's cracking stuff, from contributors old and new.

But most importantly, there will be a launch night, similar to the one for our last one. This is taking place at The Telegraph behind Newcastle Central Station on Tuesday Feb 3rd at 7:00pm. It will cost the general public £2, and they will receive a copy of the comic on entry, as well as a bunch of free cakes and sweets and the joy of watching live performances from Echo Ave. and The Stillwells.

Be there or be rhombus!

blogwhat?

2009-01-12T15:12:00.000-08:00

First post and lots to talk about. I'm currently working on two sets of four postcards. One of robots and one of monsters. They will be available for purchase from my website (link to the left) and Etsy shop, as well as at this year's Zine-O-Rama in Edinburgh on 7th and 8th of February. I've also just finished one, possibly two, illustrations that will feature in the February issue of Narc magazine. I'll have pictoral updates on my real website as and when.