Con (wo)man

Hi all, just a quick note to mention I'll be selling my wares and drawing piccies at the Manga-tastic MCM Expo in London this weekend (May 26th/27th), and I'll also be a guest at the 2D Festival in Derry the weekend after. 2D is a fantastic event and I urge you to come along if you're in the area (or even if you're not - Northern Ireland's lovely at this time of year;)

See you there!

Pretend it's Christmas....

...and you're eagerly tearing the wrapping paper off a flat, rectangular object. What could it be? Nope, not a squashed box of Dairy Milk - it's this year's Beano annual! Or maybe the Dandy annual, if that's how your parents roll! WOOO! The excitement of a new Beano or Dandy annual never really diminishes with time, and that's certainly the case for us overgrown children who play a part in filling them. For the second year running I've contributed to both publications, reprising last year's Bully Beef and Chips with three new stories, as well as adding three more pages of another very familiar character...



Noooo, not Our Cilla - it's Keyhole Kate, everyone's favourite peeping lunatic. Did you know she's been around since the comic's start in 1938? This must be at least her fifth or sixth incarnation, I think. Gawrsh! I'm amazed they managed to come up with so many keyhole-looking-through scenarios over the years.



The Dandy annual looks to be a real nostalgia-fest this year, probably to tie in with the comic's 75th anniversary in 2013. Check out the blog of the lovely Wilbur Dawbarn (link on the right) for more sneak prviews.

Over in Beanotown, I've been drawing a whole load of Meebo & Zuky, including a slightly new spin on the characters which I'll be blogging more about in the next few weeks...



And - very excitingly for me - I was asked to produce some new pages for a classic strip that's currently re-running in the weekly Beano. I'll let my teaser image do the rest of the talking;)



It's a fantastic experience to work on characters devised by such greats as Allan Morley and John Geering, and I can honstly say I'm dead chuffed about it. I hope my pages raise the appropriate chuckles.

So there we have it, make sure Santa brings you a copy of each one (or just treat yourself when they come out in July, eh?)

Nelson launches

If you've been keeping an eye on the UK comics scene this year, you might be aware of this daring project. I'll let the publisher, Blank Slate, explain it in the words of their official press release:

Nelson is a 250-page collaboration between 54 of the UK’s most exciting comic creators. It is an unprecedented experiment to create one complete story – a collective graphic novel.

London, 1968. A daughter is born to Jim and Rita Baker. Her name is Nel. This is her story, told in yearly snapshots. Each chapter records the events of a single day, weaving one continuous ribbon of pictures and text that takes us on a 43- year journey from Nel Baker’s birth to 2011.

Based on an original idea by Rob Davis and co-edited by Davis and Woodrow Phoenix, Nelson celebrates the incredible diversity of talent in British comics today. Creators known for their editorial and national newspaper strips unite with those from humour comics such as the Beano, The Dandy, and MAD Magazine joining a wealth of talent from children’s books, indie publishing and webcomics, with the science fiction and superhero worlds of 2000AD, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse.

Part exquisite corpse and part relay race, Nelson spans decades of British history and a myriad of stylistic approaches in telling the story of one woman’s life by 54 creators, in 54 episodes, detailing 54 days. The result is a surprising and compellingly readable book that is sad, funny, moving, poignant, ridiculous, heartfelt, and real. This is a story like none you have seen before.

I was delighted to be asked if I wanted to be on board earlier this year and now, several months after completing my five pages, the whole thing is about to hit the bookshelves. The standard of art and writing in this book is frankly off the scale, which made contributing to it quite an intimidating experience in the end - but, I'm honoured to be sharing page space with some of my very favourite UK comics creators. Here's a teeny tiny peek-ette of my bit, which comes near the end of the book and wraps up the threads of a few established characters' lives...



There's more about Nelson on the ever-reliable Forbidden Planet blog here. I won't be attending the grand launch at the Thought Bubble festival, but I'll hopefully be at the Gosh! comics signing event on Friday November 25th. Come along, buy the book - it's going to be amazing.

Bro Vs Bro

Just in case you need something more light-hearted to take your collective minds off all the Crazy that's happening at the moment, how about picking up TOXIC issue 189 and checking out my new comic strip, Bro Vs Bro? It features twin brothers with a larger-than-average case of sibling rivaly. Hmm, thinking about it, a scenario about belligerent youths isn't much of a departure from BBC News 24 at all, is it? Ahem, let's move on...

There are lots of other strips for you to enjoy in TOXIC, including classic reprints of Lew Stringer's Team Toxic, and two new ones: "Luke's Spooks" and "Captain Gross". Plus there's, y'know, other stuff in there too, but COMICS - that's the important bit.

Bristol Comics Expo

I'll be roaming around at the Bristol Comics Expo on May 14th and 15th, carrying limited numbers of my Gilbert & Sullivan and Tales from the Crust comics in case anyone fancies one. I'll also draw you a picture if you ask me nicely (or ask me extremely rudely but also offer me a cup of tea or alcoholic beverage). See you there maybe?

Your local library needs YOU

Assuming "you" are a comic fan, of course (not an unreasonable assumption for this blog's readership, I think). I was recently called upon by a local librarian to give a talk to many other librarians on the merits of reading graphic novels, which I then wrote an article about. Richard Bruton from the Forbidden Planet International blog added pictures and some intro and outro text and turned it into this blog entry, which you might like to read. What's your local library's stock of graphic novels like? Feel like volunteering some advice to improve it?

Website - now with fewer green and pink bits

Dear Lord I went and did it - I got my website up and running. Thanks, Dreamweaver! Thanks, interwebs! Thanks for nothing, old, dead site! So you can follow the link on the right and look at it, if you like. Almost all of the art in the Gallery is stuff that's not been online before, so that's got to be worth five minutes.