Hot collaborative fire

This Sunday I returned to the Manchester Comix Collective and produced some collaborative comics. Joe List and I produced the following opus, which I believe will touch fans of Hallmark movies-of-the-week.

Double blog day

ARE YOU A MAN WHO WANTS TO SAVE EARTH BUT DOES NOT WANT TO USE SHOPPING BAGS THAT SAY "LADYTIMES.COM" OR "CANDLE CITY" ON THEM?

I have designed two tote bags for a man. I want to design more tote bags because it is over for the plastic bag (GET USED TO IT). I want to be the new king of totes. Anyway if you are man and you like these designs or even a lady just get on those comments and let me know, I'll phone the depot and get them to start laying pipe.

Best laid plans

Back in january, during the story where Desmond runs away (in fact at the pivotal point) there was a comic that didn't make much sense. The reason for this was that I lost my notes for the strip in question at a point when I didn't have a lot of time and just made something up to fill the gap. Well I found the notes. Here they are.



In the same folder I found two panels of a Questionable Content guest strip too ill-advised to finish.



So I apologise to you, and I apologise to Jeph, and I apologise to me.

Hard at work

I am hard at work on the new comic but that doesn't mean I am out of gas. In fact just today i devised a follow-up to Rene Engström's Anders Loves Maria.



Much as I would like to post some work in progress of the new stuff, it is too spoiler heavy and I want to make the launch a fun event. By which I mean, "painfully drawn out".

Onefer

Without further ado, here for the first time I reveal: THE NEW COMIC



Oh hang on that isn't it. Not at ALL.

Twofer

Comic Sans is the font for the common man(s)

This afternoon I have been trying to select a font for the new comic. It's a painful business. On of the things I'm tired of is the way the speech bubbles in Scary Go Round look, they float above the artwork and don't really look integrated into the page (because they aren't). I think one need only look at some of the blog entries below to see why I won't be lettering by hand (this guest page I did for Barnaby Ward is about as neat as I like to get it). I need something kind of freewheeling looking, relatively narrow, with an upper and lower case, and I am open to suggestions. I would prefer not to use a free font so just go shopping on my behalf.

I am looking for leftfield suggestions!

Tears, steers and Blears

I'm in the process of writing the last seven Scary Go Rounds and I have become emotional! I didn't expect to become emotional, mainly because I am hard and dried up like a dead tree inside, but it is a very strange sensation. It's seven and a half years of my life, almost a quarter! I've moved my office to a new part of the house with an actual window, but I've yet to do anything with the room but put a desk in there, so in a way I feel like I've started a new job already. The job appears to be staring at a wall that needs to be painted while feeling downcast. I should put up a picture, perhaps of a sad clown or a donkey in repose.

Even though a few characters from old times will be carried over to the new comic in one form or another, I still feel like I did when I was leaving school. Cheer me up, readers, show an old man a kindness.

Bonus drawing: ENTER CYBULON

Do you work at Image Comics? Do you want to party like it's 1994 all over again? See below and let's warn the treasury to start printing money.

Minstrel gigolo

It's time for a yacht rock Friday to drive the hot fire of really smooth music through my failing body. I will live again! These come courtesy of the excellent Music On Vinyl blog. Oh that "Minstrel Gigolo" fadeout! You can almost see the tone arm rising before you inevitably spin it again for the 41st time (that day).

Back to business

I am back at the drawing board today, I tried to draw The Maxx from memory although I'm sure I missed something. Perhaps he had antlers. I got the sound effect right though.

On the mend

I am feeling a bit better today, I busied myself with unengaging tasks like putting dozens of posters into tubes. The big test is whether my artistic powers have been destroyed by viruses. So as a control experiment I decided to draw the big heroes of Image Comics' blockbusting early 90s run. As you will find out, I am not quite the man I was.



In my defence I am no expert on anything I have drawn here but still, these things should be instinctual.

Death watch beetle

It is harder than you would think to take a sick day when you are self-employed. When you have a boss, you can phone up with the sick voice, and once they accept that you have something that is not quite typhoid and not quite the mumps, a verbal contract is signed and you can play Tony Hawks 3 all day and watch Bridget Jones 2: The Edge Of Reason (who does this DVD belong to?) because it is all that your shattered health will stand. It is the law, the law of the hardworking Joe.

But when, like today, you (self-employed in a physically untaxing job) awake with a terrible malaise after a night of confusing dreams about Audrey Tatou playing Coco Chanel, there is no one to give you license not to move the eight metres to the office area and get on with it. However, I have made a decision, and the decision is to lie on the settee groaning all day and playing "Scrabble" on the "Internet" while listening to the "cricket" and if anyone tries to stop me I will prove them wrong by perishing on the spot.

It may be time for a rest cure.