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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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!
