Pasty Related News

I am having a stall at Blackburn Art Market on Saturday 25th of July and I'm going to try and get the Pasty Anthology finished for then. I think it would be a great place to launch it, on a market stall in Blackburn. Maybe it would sell well there too. I'll do some publicity for it nearer the time if I think it's going to be finished. It's only £5 for the stall so I can't lose...

My paper bags to put the anthology in have arrived. They are very nice.

I've done another piece for the anthology myself now, it's a hard boiled private detective story filled with pasties and pasty shops called 'Devil in a Blue Tabard'. It's more an illustrated story than a comic though, it works better as writing for some reason.

Pasty Anthology Ideas

I'm going to get some paper bags like these to put the Pasty Anthology in, so they look more like pasties. Can't afford to get them printed on so they will be hand decorated in some way. I think they'll look cool.

Pasty Anthology

Here are some of the great pages I've had back for the Pasty Anthology. It's going along well. These are from Dave Hughes and Francesca Cassavetti. I need to do some more stuff myself now as they are so good... There is still room for a few more people if anyone is interested - anything food related. It's going to come out in June or maybe earlier and I'm going to get it properly printed.

Page 7 of 'Great Deeds Against the Dead'

Here's half of page 7 of my new horror story 'Great Deeds Against the Dead'. It's not cleaned up, and I haven't added some grey ink yet. I've had a lot of trouble with the drawing for this story, I've had to stick so many bits of paper on the pages to correct mistakes that they are getting really thick. I think it's finally starting to get better now. I was thinking of leaving some of the mistakes and fixing them all at the end but looking at them was annoying me so I had to sort them out before I could carry on. It's going to end up being fairly long, I might serialize it over a couple of comics, not sure yet.

Also I have drawn a 3 page fan art story for Schmurgen Jonerhaff after going to Schmurgen Con last month, you can see it here.

This Is What Slows My Drawing Down

It's Pedro!

Western - Accent UK anthology

I enjoyed the latest yearly anthology from Accent UK. This year's theme is Westerns, it's a good theme and I've hardly ever read any cowboy comics before. It's only £7.99 for 192 pages so it's very good value.
My favourite story was 'Mrs Henry' with art by David Hitchcock, story by John Reppion and Leah Moore.

Humbug

I'm feeling rough today as I went out last night so I have been lying in bed all day reading this massive book of all 11 issues of Humbug. It's a lovely looking hardback book in a box case. The drawing is great, I knew that it would be, but what surprised me is how funny it still is. As its from the 50's I thought the humour would be really dated and the references too obscure, but it's not, it's made me laugh out loud many times. There's a lot of written stuff in it rather than being all cartoons and loads of awesome parody advertisements.

Jeffrey Brown - Funny Misshapen Body

I enjoyed this brand new book from Jeffrey Brown a lot. I was a bit worried when I heard it was coming out as I thought it would be another nerdy kid getting bullied at school book and there are too many of them and they bore me. But happily it’s more about his time at college and art school than about high school.

If you have read his long and very interesting interview in The Comics Journal you will have heard the basics of the main story, it’s all about how he became a cartoonist. He wants to be an artist since when he’s young but doesn’t have any clear ideas about what kind of artist. He tries painting for a few years but after a very harsh critique of his work by all the art teachers wonders if it’s really for him. In the end he kind of stumbles into cartooning via illustrated poetry. It probably helps that Chris Ware comes and gives him advice on his art work at college. It ends with him spending all his money having 2000 copies of ‘Clumsy’ (his first book) printed up and him stacking them all up in his bedroom. ‘Now I just have to sell them….’ he thinks.

There is also the story of how he suffered with Crohns Disease as a teenager. It must have been very embarrassing and stopped him socialising as he had terrible farts and was prone to crapping himself until he had an operation. He shows everything in very honest detail without sparing any of his embarrassing stories.

The other chapter is about how he drank for a while and smoked a bit of pot at college. Nothing especially bad or good happened to him with it, and then he gave it up. Not particularly interesting you may think, but as he went to a Christian college it’s quite interesting as it seems very weird to me, used to English universities and that. They have a pastor to look after them and sleep in weird dorms with lots of rules.

It’s a very good book and if you like the rest of Jeffrey Brown’s books I’m sure you will like this one.

Shelf Porn

I've seen lots of other cartoonists and critics putting up pictures of their shelves recently, called 'Shelf porn' so now I've finally got my bluetooth phone thingy working I thought I'd put up mine. As you can see I've gone for the messy organic aproach to pile making.

1- pile next to my bed of recent stuff
2- pile on box
3 & 4 - my main shelves
5 - under my table are big piles of comics and Comic Journals.

Can you see anything you know? Why not play a game of trying to name things.

This Is Where The Magic Happens

This is my drawing desk, where the magic happens. And here's the always inspiring view from the window. So many stories immediately spring to mind as I gaze out of here...

UK Web & Mini Comics Thing 2009 report

Here are the obligatory table shots from the thing last Saturday. The first one shows my 'Cardboard Wonder' table decoration which also came with me to Leeds. Sadly it broke after this Thing and I had to throw it away. The real shame is that it was only two days away from retirement....

I had a good time at the thing, I was on table 18 next to Francesca Cassavetti, Sally Anne Hickman and Richy K Chandler. The problem was that I had poor sales and only sold 8 comics. Don't know why. I didn't sell a single comic till 1pm by which time I was getting somewhat desperate. I bought some good comics which I'll mention here later, I would have bought more, but I was planning to spend my earnings on them and I didn't make any. A lot of people said how nice 'Bog Wizards 2' was with it's board game, but no one bought one.

Afterwards I went to Schmurgencon in a pub down the road for a few pints of Stella and then got drunk with my brother, and went for a nice curry. I also popped by the Post Thing Thing and had a few beers there and saw a few people.

It was a very good weekend except for the disappointing sales.