Had to, just had to

I was in Manchester on Saturday, and had to make a little pilgrimage. There was a gang of tuffies hanging about opposite so it was a bit of a rush in, get a snap and rush off. I also popped into Travelling Man and made a couple of purchases, the best of which was Garden funnies 2, edited by Jim Medway of Paw Quality comics. Good stuff, fun, for most ages. A really nice touch was the rounded corners.

Great deeds against the Dead Part 1

Rob Jacksons latest comic 'Great Deeds Against the Dead' is now available from his website. From fantasy to sci fi, historical to hard boiled, Rob seems keen to work with many different genres and this is no exception: GDATD is a horror comic, or maybe more an eery tale. It follows an old painter, Tisdale Carnegie who moves to a secluded house after the death of his beloved wife. Needless to say, eery things happen. Is the house haunted by a malevolent force? Is somebody trying to protect Tisdale? Is it something less than supernatural? Is his agent on the fiddle? Is Tisdale going mad? These questions are hopefully set up nicely to be answered in part 2, expected around December. It would have been nice to see the whole story in one go, but at 2.50 for 28 pages, this is well worth it.

GDATD is followed by a short story 'Colonial Amusements'. Lancaster residents will recognise the scenes around the castle, bridge, underpass (see below) and path to the Crook o' Lune. I guess the reference material is a bit old or intentionally altered (well, actually very altered as there are pyramids in Skerton!) as the colonial amusements sign has been subject to an attrition of letters. At one point it read 'Colon' instead of Colonial'. I guess this demonstrates the creativeness and humour of street artists, as does the extract below...........but you should see what they did to the Canal Tavern in Ulverston.

Talking of eerie stuff, we saw this near North point on Walney Island on the Whale trip...

Brrrrrrrrrrrr.

Brian Sewell

...this drawing will appear as part of a strip in Geoscientist later in the year. Took me a while to get anywhere near, even when I tried tracing it. I will have to work on my Delia Smith caracature as well, but more on that later. For some reason I'm rather fond of Brian.

Book of Lists

Spent a splendid couple of hours reading Paul Raineys Book of Lists yesterday, I'd read a lot of them already in the previous incarnation of B.O.L but this offers a lot more and is in proper bound format. Looks great, reads great, recommended. I wouldn't compare it to his other opus 'There's no time like the present' (reviewed in May on this blog but I couldn't get the link to work) as it's a different sort of book, to be enjoyed in a different way. These strips are his bread and butter, cartoons based around real life events.

Favourite bits: Office snubs, Ant, Dec and Paul, his dad would rather have sex with a (female) sheep than a man, most of his secrets of happiness and lots of naked events in the gym changing rooms.

It's great to see where his inspirations come from, for example the old man in the changing room stating that it's better exercise to walk through the water than swim. This features in There's no time like the present.

Keep the great work coming Paul. And don't be so hard on the BBC. Radio4 and 7 alone are worth it!

Book of Lists is over 100 pages so the 10.95 cover price is well worth it. It's available from his website. Go on you know you want to.

Trip report

Went back to North Walney to view the Whale carcass again. It was pretty much as expected, more skeleton exposed and more sand piled up against it. 'Twas a grand day out.

...and here's one of Dr Thomas poking it with a stick.

THE PASTY ANTHOLOGY!!!

The pasty anthology is here, and bloody good it looks too. Full of good stuff, though I have to say my favourite is Jim Medways anthropomorpho-pasty story. It's available from Rob Jacksons website , he's also selling it this Saturday at Blackburn Art Market. First age comics in Lancaster are stocking it too. These anthologies are great fun to do, especially as the subject matter can be so varied, I'd like to do more of these after I've finished a couple of big projects. Also if you want a copy off me drop me an email (stonechatproduction (at) yahoo (dot) co (dot) uk, they're 2.50 each. Credit to Fallen Angel media too, who printed this quickly and at a very reasonable price. It's been reviewed by optical sloth and downthetubes.

Mmmmmmmmm

Geoscientist: July issue

This one appears in the July issue of Geoscientist. Thanks be to my brother Marky who is fortunate enough to go on many science conferences and gave me a lot of ideas for this (particularly the lanyards bit, the editor said he was LMAO, not his usual parlance). As a technician there aren't many conferences that I would be able to convince my boss it would be worthwhile paying for me to go to, I'm always looking though, as I do love a bit of gravy...