BICS (Birmingham International Comics Show)

I'm not going to Birmingham myself this year but my comics will be on sale at the MCC table. Look at the nice preview poster Adam Cadwell has made... there's some very nice comics there. I've sent some of the 'Pasty Anthology' and some 'Great Deeds Against the Dead'. Thanks MCC!

Great Deeds Against The Dead Review

Richard Bruton has written a nice review of 'Great Deeds Against the Dead 1' on the Forbidden Planet blog today.

Winshluss - Pinocchio

Look what I bought in France, I could only afford one comic book so i bought 'Pinocchio' by Winshluss. I've been wanting to get it for a while. Winshluss is also the director of the Persepolis film, and he did those Mr Ferraille things you might have seen on the internet. This is a massive great big full colour book and it's awesome. It's his retelling of the Pinocchio story, it's not very Disney...

Above there's the cover, an amazing page of Pinocchio fighting the army, and the seven very peverted dwarves waking up Snow White. It's all a bit wrong. It has Jimminy Cricket in it too as a drunken writer who lives in Pinocchio's metal head. It's mostly wordless so a great buy in French.

In this version Pinocchio is created by a scientist to be a killing machine for the army but he wanders off and has adventures through a very twisted fairy tale world. Very highly recommended, the drawing is amazing and he uses many different styles for the different segments of the story, from Disney-esque, french underground, childrens illustration, autobiographical style comics and lots of other stuff.

Paul Rainey - There's No Time Like The Present 10

Paul Rainey's 'There's No Time Like The Present' comics are coming out very reguarly now, hurrah! Here's issue 10 and it's great. One of my favourite issues, lots of things happen and we find out more of what's going on. Like issue 9 it's more science fictiony as the concequences of time travel and the ultranet are further explored through the very interesting characters. This one was very poignant I thought. Cool, can't wait for the next one...

I've been in France for a weeks holiday which was nice. It was hot and sunny. Now to get back to drawing 'Great Deeds 2'. I am having ideas for my next project after that which will be called 'Sealand Blight' (hopefully it will be a graphic novel sized comic, though I'll probably bring it out in normal comics as I go along) so I'm starting to do some character designs for that. I want it to look different from my other comics.

The Green Shoots of Recovery

My comic sales are up at the moment which is greatly pleasing me. Sales are up both in shops and through the internet and e-bay. Could it be the end of the recession? Anyhow it is making me very hopeful for the future, and my many plans. I am slowly getting through drawing 'Great Deeds Against the Dead - 2' which should be out before Christmas.

Maybe my increased sales are due to my new subtle and cryptic advertising campaign which I have been rolling out across the Mid West of America...

More China Photos

1- the Great Wall (2000)
2- my hotel bedroom in Shanghai
3- me, Tiannamen Square (2000)
4 & 5 - Shanghai street scenes

More China Photos

1- fancy new buildings Shanghai (also used in 'Train to Shanghai') I was planning that comic while I was there and took loads of photos and did sketches too.
2- a theatre in Shanghai
3- ancient Chinese KFC in Shanghai
4- Shanghai
5- taxis in Harbin (can you spot this picture in 'Train to Shanghai' too?)

China - 10 Years Ago This Week

I heard from my friend Eric that it was ten years ago this week that I went to China for the first time to teach English in Harbin. Bloody hell, ten years. It does seem a very long time ago. Here's some of my best China photos to celebrate this event.
1- skyscrapers being built in harbin
2- view from my hotel in Shanghai. I used this view in 'Train to Shanghai' my very first comic
3- view from my bedroom in the school in Harbin
4- street scene from in front of the school in Harbin

Leeds Thought Bubble 2009 Poster

Not that long till Leeds Thought Bubble now... I am excited for it. I hope I do as well as last year. Here's the poster for it done by Hugh Raine, nice eh. There's a great line up of small press people going.

Danzig in My Pants

I don't think I will ever draw this stupid idea.

Naoki Urasawa - Pluto Volume 1

I was a bit nervous reading the first part of this series by Naoki Urasawa as I liked ‘20th Century Boys’ such a lot but no worries in the end, it’s a very good start. It’s a kind of homage to an Astro Boy story by Tezuka called ‘The Greatest Robots in the World’. I’ll have to have a look through my Astro Boy comics tonight and see if I have the original version, I won’t be able to read it much though as all my Astro Boys are in French.

A much loved Swiss robot called Mont Blanc has been destroyed and a human robot activist has been murdered in the same way, torn to bits and with horns stuck out of the sides of their heads. Robot detective Gesicht is put on the case and sets to work finding out what is going on. Could the human have been killed by a robot? Robots are programmed never to kill humans. One robot in the past has killed a human so Gesicht goes to see him in his high security prison, a bit like Silence of the Lambs. But he isn’t any help. He does tell Gesicht that the seven most powerful robots in the world are going to all be destroyed. Gesicht himself is one of these and he sets off to warn the others that they will be next. Right at the end of the book he meets Atom (Astro Boy), a little boy robot.

It’s all set up this book but I am excited to find out what happens next. Sadly I must wait for more books in the series to come out. The drawings great again, loads of futuristic science fiction stuff, flying cars and robots.

Pasty Anthology Review

New review of 'The Pasty Anthology' up at the Forbidden Planet Blog.

Twitter

As it was raining today I signed up to Twitter. You can follow my aimless ramblings here if you so wish...

Music Sounds Better...

Here's a panel from page 16 of 'Great Deeds Against the Dead' part two. Tisdale is listening to his favourite prog rock albums.

Carol Tyler - You'll Never Know - Part One

I didn’t buy this for a while but then I saw that Rob Clough had mentioned it as his favourite book of the year so far so I ordered myself a copy.

I’m very glad I did. It’s mainly the wartime biography of Carol Tyler’s father Chuck Tyler. I can’t help comparing it to ‘Alan’s War’ by Guilbert but they are very different books though both about average American soldiers in World War 2. ‘Alan’s War’ is purely the memoir of Alan Cope with very little emotional input from Guilbert, he wants to just write down Alan’s memories without adding his own thoughts and feelings. Carol’s book adds loads of her own thoughts about everything, how she found out her dad’s experiences, what was going on with her and her family at the time, what it all means to her. She kind of starts the book by accident to try and take her mind off her break up with her husband, the cartoonist Justin Green, and to make a nice photo album for her dad too. This is just the first part with her dad going through training, meeting her mother at the training camp, falling in love and getting married, and then being shipped out to North Africa. Something horrible happened to him in Italy but it hasn’t reached that yet, and it’s not certain whether he will want to talk about it at all as there are lots of memories he doesn’t want to think about.

The drawing is brilliant, with watercolour washes. Carol puts the panels in the middle of the pages and does a lot of using the spaces around the panels and the edges of the pages to add a lot of extra feeling to the pages. She also does some lovely full page drawings.

I really liked it and I will definitely get the next part of the story, I hope it comes out soon. Oh yeah, if you are looking for it to buy on amazon its only under C Tyler as the authors name, not Carol Tyler, took me a while to find it…