Good news bad news

A) The Ghosts books are in stock and look great. They are now on sale but...

B) Unfortunately during a routine boiler maintenance visit the engineer discovered a gas leak and I spent most of the last two hours ripping up the laminate flooring in the sitting room.

So when considering point A) please think kindly of me and also consider point B). The good news is, if the leak isn't in the sitting room, I will have to rip up all the flooring in the dining room too! HURRAY!

O REJOICE
LET'S DESTROY
AN ENTIRE HOME
AT MASSIVE EXPENSE

Addendum: OF COURSE that is not covered by my household insurance!

Sketch blog etch-a-sketch mungo

All artists should keep a sketchbook and draw in it mercilessly, until the pages fall into dust and your finger becomes a pencil. I always have 3 or 4 on the go at once - for my ever-changing moods. I like to draw when I'm watching TV! Or waiting for a tardy friend in a public place. If you have a sketchbook, you still look friendless, but at least you're not bored.

Here are a couple of pages from the last month or so that you may enjoy. Or find awful.



I think the above page is good because it captures many of my preoccupations at once.



This page on the other hand is merely testimony to what I was watching at the time. Can you guess what it was? It wasn't terribly good.

A very short series (Ps: MUNGO!)

Influential webcomic artists that no one remembers #1: Scott Thigpen. Have we all lived so long? Scott was extremely nice to me on the way up. His reward is, from looking at his site, a fancy old life.

Mango Mungo

WHO IS MUNGO?
MUNGO!
MUNGO!
MUNGO!

Proving that times have changed and etc, in the University shopping precinct on Oxford Road, there is an outfit offering the full range of waxing services. Now I believe that a person should be allowed to wax whatever they fancy, but I am really not sure about the arm wax. I have never looked at a lady's arm and thought "strong peasant blood!" I'm sure there are a few perma-sleeved werewolf arms out there, but the fact that arm waxing consumes one third of this shop's (wide) frontage really concerns me.

Has daylight been shone in upon magic? Am I naïve? Or has an entirely new neurosis been unleashed upon the lady populace?

Tomorrow: chest waxing - a treatise.

Racing car face

I have finished drawing my Ghosts book, and selected a suitable printer to hand-etch each copy. Hand-etching is carbon neutral, provided you plant a tree for every monk who dies in the process. I will put these on sale once I have a delivery date - hopefully at the start of next month.

Unfortunately I have no other news, as I spent my weekend drawing and my hands are now claws. I can't do a thing with them!

Come fill your cups

Thank you for all the ghost correspondence! I will try to fit as many as possible in. The call for correspondence is now closed. A short poem:

MICROSPECTRE

Ghost on shelf
Is watching me
Died of croup
In '33

FIN

Forget forward-slash and revert to stroke

Wasted two minutes this morning thinking about what kind of middle-aged English man I want to be. Don't want to look like Gryff Rhys-Jones. He seems like a nice man but he's all over the place visually speaking. Iain Duncan-Smith also a serious no-no.

Please can I have some more letters via email about ghosts for my Ghosts book? I will answer your ghost problems or merely commiserate. There is still a page to fill and I want to lay this book to rest by August 22nd. Usual address &etc.

So cruel, the internet

Mere minutes ago, I read a "rumour" that Veronica Mars was going to join the cast of Lost. I rode around the house on an imaginary horse believing everything to be for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Then when I had finished doing that, I read another story that said Veronica Mars does not want to go and live in Hawaii. Then I wept.

No one understands* why I like Veronica Mars, one of my friends said it is for silly girls. Then he said I should go boil my head (he didn't really).

Work on the Ghosts book has been frenzied this week, there are just three pages left to draw. I have decided to lay it out in the style of the New Yorker, and require some letters for the letters page. These should be on spectral or supernatural issues (on which I am an expert) and extremely well written. Send them to john@scarygoround.com, then hold your breath for a month or so. Letters may be edited for reasons of style or brevity.

* I think any breathing, straight, man understands.

We're not in canvas any more

In San Diego, a few ladies asked me about Crochet Today "tote bags". I had never thought about printing on bags and had only scant understanding of the tote concept, so I sent them away with a flea in their ear. But given a morning of tinkering, I came up with something suitable for the lady about town. I'm the new Lulu Guinness! Without the money, the class, or (let's be honest) the lady chromosome. OY OY!

Self-censorship

I had to remove the bottom baring gnome from the previous post. What started as a whimsical nod towards modern social mores turned into a picture of a miniature geriatric exposing his haunches and nothing more. Woe is me.

The Irish Panda shirt is now available: thrill, thrill to the panda and his ways.

A short poem

"How I Will End Up Living Under A Bridge With Jeph Jacques"

Webcomic t-shirt economy
May you roll on in fine perpetuity
Though with crushing inevitability
You'll collapse, then:
O DISMAL CALAMITY!

FIN

Teatowels of the past

I didn't do a Scary Go Round teatowel in 2006 but this year, once again, I will offer you the opportunity to dry your dishes the SGR way. This year I want to draw a wholly up to date array of critters such as gnome, goblin, were-wolf, as many as I can fit on there. Please use this post to make suggestions, here are the ones who have made the list so far:

1. Gnome
2. Goblin
3. Were-wolf
4. Wendigo

Keep it brief, I don't have all flipping day &etc.

He's probably just thirsty

A lot of people wrote to me a couple of months back with an interest in an Irish Panda tshirt. Well here he is.

Flattery desk

Ace Soda Pop sent me this excellent picture before my trip, sadly once again showing me up as an artistic charlatan. Isn't it great?

I am the king of carrot chowders

Well, I am back from San Diego. What an exhausting trip. Flying straight out to San Diego then straight back isn't really the way to do it if you want to maintain some bodily strength but I did my best. And by "best" I mean I caught a cold almost immediately and spent the week snivelling.

As always it was a great pleasure to spend time with my Dumbrella friends. It's easy to feel remote and out of the loop when you only visit once or twice a year, but they always make me so welcome. And we had able help on the booth from some dedicated characters who did their bit almost solely out of a misplaced sense of civic duty. Thank you everyone!

Working on a booth means that you don't get much opportunity to go and lig around, casting your rheumy eye over exhibits and leaking money like a burst branch of HSBC. But I did get the opportunity to meet and get some drawings from some very talented Spumco artists, and I did go to get a book from Carla Speed McNeil and find her wearing one of my t-shirts! THWILLS!

Finally, from the sunshine state, THE VINE THAT MAKES YOU VIRILE:

1. Which premier league webcomic artist snores like a tractor being driven backwards up a hill, but LOUDER?
2. Which webcomic has taken the cookie-cutter sideways-smirk into exciting new territory... that had people ready to KILL?
3. Which outer-space TEENAGER appears younger than his own son?

From my mouth to your ears, the facts are the crack and your lips are welded to the pipe. I remain...

... STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL!

PS RIP Mike Reid! "PAAaAAaat!" "RUNARAAAAHHHD!"