My youth

The circle has been squared, you can now watch old Chart Show specialist charts on Youtube!

The dance chart October 1989. I'm delighted to say that based on the record at number two, I still knew after 18 years what the record at number one was.* We didn't have a VCR in 1989, but I still remember being very, very disappointed.

The Indie Chart of March 1990. Fugazi were obviously too scary for Saturday lunchtime network TV but it didn't matter as they didn't make videos due to principles, so we got a Lush promo clip instead!!!

I am feeling weak and giddy and must rest. ENJOY THE PAST.

Flying vees

Cover work continues, I revised Shelley because the perspective was off and I wanted something slightly more manic. I think this might be where I leave it, I quite like it.

Old Man Winter's clammy fingers

Dear friends, work has begun on Scary Go Round book 6, encompassing Jan-early Nov 2007's comics. I started a bit too fast last weekend and my body told me to slow down in no uncertain terms. But you will be pleased that I have made my first attempt at the cover! There are usually about 70 attempts, but it's something to look at isn't it? Yes it is.

See it here.

I waited and waited and waited then stuck a pencil in my eye and felt better

I recently managed to score a second-hand Wacom Cintiq from a school at a "knock down price", and tests are ongoing indoors as to what I will use this fancy tablet-monitor witchcraft for. When I want to try something new out, I like to stick my finger randomly within the pages of Looks, Brains and Everything and re-draw the page at hand. So here's what I produced this time:



It was actually some of the bonus pages I drew to fill in the plot holes, so I can't offer you the original in the archive, but I have a feeling that seasoned blog readers already own this book.

Because the Cintiq screen is skiddy glass, it forces you to commit to more long strokes than I would normally make. But there you go, kind of a bonus comic for today!

Dark farmhouses against the sky

I'm just trying to shove some of the mouldier old posts off the page. Noting useful to say at all.

Mini-Lohan Christmas Spectrackular

Yesterday it was brought to my attention that Lindsey Lohan's little sister has made a Christmas album (featuring Lindsey and their doting mother!). I was excited, because I sensed that here we had a new release that would touch skyscraping holiday releases like Phil Spector's "A Christmas Gift For You" and Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas LP. But then I saw that it contained a song called "I Like Christmas".

I've never seen a more uninspiring song title than "I Like Christmas". You've gone to the recording studio to celebrate, in song, the birth of the one true messiah, with your "troubled" sister in tow, and the best you can come up with is "I Like Christmas".

I kind of picture it as a banjo-plucking number

I like Christmas
I like Elvis
I like gettin' high with elves
And I like pie

(THEATRICAL WINK TO CAMERA)

I like Jesus
I like George Strait
I like drivin' while I'm flyin'
A yi-yi-yi

Ding digga-ling-ding digga ling ding ding

AMEN

Back to business

I just had a brilliant idea. When my Scary Go Round book collections go out of print, I'll delete all the comics that were in them from the site. That way, buying one of my books will be a ticket to a very exclusive club.... and everyone will want to be a member.

Now, this may sound drastic, but I went to business school*, and I know all about supply and demand. I'm giving it away like the school bike on the last day of summer term and this madness has to stop.

Of course, this will render the Scary Go Round archives very confusing, but I like to think that an "oral tradition" will spring up, where the old stories are retold round campfires. "And lo, the comic did return after Christmas... and all heads were HUGE".

I've had a few more business ideas. I'm going to take all the speech bubbles off the comics the day after they run. To hear the dialogue after that, you'll have to phone a premium rate line and request a live reading from one of our operators. And all you other webcomic artists, don't try to steal this idea, because I have patented it.

The final change I intend making is the insertion of a wealthy patron into the comic. Wallace Paul, a beneficiary of Google's IPO, recently divested himself of a lot of stock and made a considerable donation to me in exchange for a 5-year contract as co-star of Scary Go Round. I think you'll like him! You'll have to, as I'm contractually obliged to draw him in every panel.

Well, thanks for joining me for Mindshare Wednesday!

CHANGE AND ADAPT
- John Allison

* in a dream, once

Winners don't do hugs

I've been practising drawing Shelby Winner so she doesn't have five faces in her first five appearances (woah, daylight on magic there &etc). So here's one of several. There was a big hairstyle workshop a couple of Saturdays ago, which ended with the words "more thatchy" written over and over again.



MORE THATCHY
NO LESS THATCHY
YES JUST THATCHY ENOUGH

Hamsters are the reason

Shame on ALL OF YOU for the fact that I am now working on this. I extend the hand of friendship to the 11 people who will probably say they'd buy it so I don't feel bad in my life. It is now available - here's your chance to prove that reader pressure is a force for good.



An intermediate yellow deal I posted

My original rough

It's the Saddest Wookiee minus the sales, I think.

...and heavy friends

It's time to gear up some new tshirt designs for Christmas, and maybe a hoodie too for those cold afternoons. I had a look in the ideas cupboard and it was pretty musty in there, but with a dinner of crumbs from the toaster in prospect, I knew I had to dig deep.



So I thought I'd do a series of SALUTES TO ROCK AND ROLL. Here's the first one, it's Led Zeppelin isn't it? If people like this one, I'll take requests and do a series of creepy looking band shirts. If people don't like this one, I'll make some shirts wth impenetrable phrases on them referring to sci-fi classics.

"My other car is the Starship Enterprise (the captain is Pike though see I know a lot about sci-fi)"

"Babylon 5? Babylon 4 more like oh wait that one vanished didn't it"

"I am a Cylon but we look like humans man now you're confused"

"Amy Acker ate my hamster"

and so on.