Happy 2010 everyone!

Hope we've all had a pleasant xmas break.

I am one of those lamoes that make resolutions, but the only one I'm willing to share is that I'm going to see a Bittern in 2010. It was last years resolution that never came true. Anybody else make resolutions?

Oops got to dash, the sleet is building up outside.

Chins up everyone!

Jusssssttt.........one....morrrrrrrre............daaaaattte

The key to cronic overeating at christmas is getting match fit beforehand.

October: increase calorific input, try small introductions of sugar and purine rich foods to get the gastric juices primed.

November: increase sherry consumption. Eat a sack of fudge. Start buying 'eat me' dates.

December: Should be able to cope with 3000 calories per day. by ~18th December you should be able to eat through that difficult 'gag reflex' boundary without hurling.

Happy Xmas everyone. I hope you've all had a good year, for me the highlights are getting Thomas Wogan published and Thought Bubble. What are yours?

2010 looms and there are some interesting anthologies on the way, more on that in the new year.

A tank of thank to Tabella publishing and John Freeman.

Godspeed everyone!

Little fat Grey Partridge in the snow

This partridge is very concerned about the effect snow will have on the UK economy, and all those lost school days.

Great Deeds 2

The second and final part of Rob Jackson's Great Deeds Against the Dead is out and available from his website. It turns out I was quite wrong in thinking I'd guessed the ending, no amount of time in a dark room would have brought this to my mind. A good read, follows on nicely from part1.

Gin Palace!

Rob Jackson is seeking contributors for his upcoming Anthology GIN PALACE, the deadline is Feb and it's planned to appear at the UK Comics Thing in March. There's no agenda, so you can let your imagination run riot.

Here's Rob's top smart cover, an interpretation of a painting by Manet. So far I've spotted a bog wizards character in the background and I'm sure there's more stuff hidden away there.

And he's accepted my offer for the back cover, the idea is to have text to the side of it.

Did I ever mention I did a book called Thomas Wogan is Dead?

More samples of Thomas Wogan can be found via here.

December Geoscientist

Here's this months offering, even more xmas gifts for Geoscientists. The last frame was inspired by some of the hilarious t-shirts on offer out there: Geologists make the bed rock, That's some Gneiss Schist, Geologist will work for BEER!

Titter.

I'm fairly proud of frame 3, and think there may be some genuine mileage in Piltdown: The musical. Opens in the west end next week.

Little Owl

It's

Supermum

Apostrophobia

After all this time I still make grammatical errors. Dont' blame me its' the school's's fault.

These guys don't though, a couple more reviews:

Forbidden Planet

Decoding Static, this blog was recently part of the A-Z of possible worlds tour. Send him your free books!

Thought Bubble: Trip Report

This was mostly a splendid weekend. Firstly many thanks to Rob Jackson who let me share his table, and helped to eek out those difficult few hours when the sales went dry (ask him about the tracker bar radio interview).

I'm chuffed I did the A4 stands, they really got peoples attention, as did the little postcard drawings (enjoyed doing the Sid James especially). They didn't alway convert to a sale, but that might have been because my eyes were nervously boring into them. A tank of thank to everyone who bought a book!

The casino was a strange venue for the aftershow party, but great fun nontheless. The inflated price of bad beer should have been prohibitive, but it didn't stop me overindulging, nor my setting the dance floor alight later on(wince).

The burlesque drawing sounded interesting, though I can't decide where it lies on the scale between art and perving.

Could have always sold more books but I covered the table costs, but not the holiday inn, train, sandwiches, pizza, £3.60 pints of fosters, books (yet to read), tracker bars, ginger nuts, seedless grapes, 2 large cups of railway station tea and a cookie.

Best con yet.

Thought Bubble!

Well I'm rather looking forward to Thought Bubble this weekend. Mostly sorted, but it's important that some things are left until the day before eh? I've probably decided not to dress as Captain Cantaloupe for the festival, favouring perhaps a sweater and slacks. Rob Jackson however, still intends to go dressed as a giant frog wizard, as usual.

I'm reliably informed that the weather is going to be splendid....

Gaahh! Sorrow! Pain!

Another failed submission to coveredblog. I don't think I gave anything different in essence to the original so I'm not suprised, and the bar is set so high anyway. Ho hum.

The main reason I did this was that I needed to organise myself for Thought Bubble next weekend and I have a Geoscientist deadline looming, hence it was important to do something else completely. I'll probably try again when I have some more deadlines in the future.

Hello

Would you like to buy a clementine?

You know when you start doodling on a scrap of paper, like an envelope, then it starts to look alright? That's what happened here.

Thought Bubble

I've received my Thought Bubble pass from Rob Jackson, who I'll be sharing a table with. I'll be there selling Thomas Wogan is Dead among other things. This will be my third con as a seller and I'm looking forward to it immensely. Do pop by and say hello if you find yourself there, it's the 21st November. I'll be going dressed as a character this time, see above.

November Geoscientist

Here's the months edition. I got the idea when i saw a picture of a seal wearing various monitoring devices. I couldn't believe the weight the scientists were expecting it to carry and not affect its behaviour. I do give the Coelocanth a hard time in these cartoons don't I?

Swedehead

I'm glad I don't have a Swede for a head, it would upset me.

Our Chuck

...is very happy with a good review at Grovel.

Sciency stuff

Here's a cartoon I submitted to LCGC Europe magazine. The must read publication for anyone who's anyone in Gas or Liquid Chromatography. I must apologise for it being ever so slightly in-jokey but just in case you were wondering:

ECD is the electron capture detector, invented by everyones favourite smartarse James Lovelock. An incredibly sensitive detector for measuring pesticides and other electron grabbing compounds.

FID is the flame ionisation detector. A robust and effective general burny detector.

In the final frame I've depicted the HP5890 Gas Chromatograph. A real workhorse that some have likened using it to a religious experience.

If you don't find chromatography hilarious (and why would any sane person not?) you will be in agreement with LCGC magazine, who turned down my submission.

Here it is again in colour, with overzealous use of the burn tool.

Our Vince

I wonder why Gauguin was a little unsure about Vincent before he went to stay with him in Arles....

An A-Z of possible worlds

The second leg of the blog tour (a new concept to me) of the book An A-Z of Possible Worlds is on the Decoding Static blog. I reckon I'll buy this, sounds like a really interesting idea, a bit like Jim Crace's Continent but with more worlds looked at more briefly.

Leg break

I wonder which hurts more, a broken leg or a broken arm? (I have broken neither). It's the leg isn't it?

Another decent review at bookbag.

More reviews

A couple more favourable reviews of Thomas Wogan.

Meandmybigmouth , Scott Pack of the Friday Projects book blog.

Another Myreviewer.com one, by David Beckett.

Wouldn't it be great if we had Red Butter Beans?

Oh yeah!

There have been some pretty good reviews of Thomas Wogan is Dead:

Sidekick Comics by the Boat Man

My Reviewer.com, by Si Woolridge

I'm happy, and so is Dr Zaius.

Kentucky Waterfall

Caught

"Erm....it's not what it looks like"

October Geoscientist

Appearing in this months edition of Geoscientist Magazine. Anyone who has planned fieldwork or a school trip will be aware of the masses of paperwork involved. Having said that I've never had to do this paperwork, so maybe it's not really that bad, but I did have 4 panels to fill.

By the way

... just noticed a few problems with the web ordering, should be sorted very soon. If in doubt best go to the Tabella shop.

The Agreement

Just had the lurgy for a couple of days, all better now.

I recently drew up and signed a contract with Lancaster Artist Andy Harrod to make sure we get our artwork done. In each case the artist would act as the others agent to bully and hardass the other into fullfilling their artistic promise. Andy's promise is to satisfactorily complete 3 chapters of his book, his contract is here. This seems a little unfair but I'm keeping my contract promise secret as I keep changing direction. The stakes are high; we've exchanged £5000 notes and there's a pint riding on it. So naturally neither one of us wants to welsh on it.

Andy has informed me his note adds up to 5000, I've counted a few times up to the 4000s and my eyes go funny, so I'm going to take his word for it.

Study of Queen Elizabeth 1 with swollen head

I might do the sequel.

Received my grizzly bear badge from Lizz Lunney this week. I wil wear it with pride.

Trying to get one's comic in the shops is a big fat pain in the arse (a big thanks to Kevin for all his efforts).

Trip Report

First of all if could mention that Thomas Wogan is Dead is available from Waterstones, if you just follow the link at the right.

Well back from the British International Comics Show 2009. This is the third con I've been to and it was mostly an enjoyable weekend. Sketching and watching the world go by on the Tabella table was fun. Visitors to the exhibition were ushered in by a brilliant sneering Judge Dredd, the ubiquitous storm troopers guarded the perimeter, I washed my hands next to Batman in the toilet, saw the Joker and Harly Quinn (oooooh) wandering around.

Here I am at Kevin's Tabella Table.

Here are some of the sketches, I'll put colour versions of these on the blog sometime. Not sure if their presence helped or hindered sales but they were fun to do anyway.

As predicted I spent a small fortune on books. I'll mention in more detail when I've read them but the pick of the crop thus far has to be Paul Rainey's latest. Those of you familiar with the story (well worth catching up with if you aren't already) of There's no time like the present will be interested to know that Kelly makes a return. I tried to winkle the ending out of Paul when buying my copies at his table but no dice.

Without realising it I bought the bluest comic ever, Firkin by Tim Manley & Hunt Emerson, almost every page has womens' or mens' rude parts on it. Not to be read on the train.

Off to Brum

Well I'm prepared nice for BICs this weekend. I'm going to be on the Tabella desk some of Saturday morning drawing, see what happens after that. Fingers crossed Thomas Wogan will do well. Looks like I'll have more spare time than I thought though, so was thinking of visiting the botanic gardens and the museum. Don't suppose anyone knows of nice places to visit or eat in Brumland do they?

Thomas Wogan is Dead is now available from the WHSmith Website, and should soon start appearing on Amazon and Waterstone's website. Will keep you posted. Hopefully in shops soon too, we need to start pimping it after this weekend.

Thomas Wogan is Dead

Here's the snazzy new cover of TWID. We've gone for a more 'book' like appearance than the first print, hope we like it.

And here's some sneak peaks of the insides. There are some differences to the original version, the most noticable of which, I feel, is the addition of a commercial font. I gave this some serious thought after Tabella suggested looking at the lettering. I think I'll keep my own lettering for some projects and use fonts for others, they're certainly not as emotive, but they offer a regularity and overall look which lends itself well to certain projects. I definately think they work here.

I'm surprised to find myself talking this way about fonts, I've long been a stubborn old goat on this topic.

I'm not sure about availability yet, other than it's being launched at BICs 2009 (see earlier post), looking forward to BICs, not least having a rucksac full of comics to read on the train back.

Hope it goes well, details to follow.

There are no salamanders in the book.

Grizzly Bear Thursday..

Do you like bears? Do you like Thursdays? You can see some great drawings of bears at grizzlybearthursday.
Panda lovers need not apply.

Here's my bear sketch, the colour one is on the proper GBT site.

Burger me...

My book 'Thomas Wogan is Dead' is being published by Tabella publishing, it's got an ISBN and everything. For those of you that have already seen it there are a few changes, new content, dialogue font and other bits. There will be some sneak peeks over the next few days, leading up to its launch at BICS on the tabella table, and I've managed to scrounge a ticket too!

There have been some last minute panics (on my part that is, Tabella was as calm as a cucumber) over various things but it should be at the printers any day now.

Much more to follow I hope.

Time for a little celebration methinks....

Toady

Big Ear