Massive mystery clearance

I'm clearing out Scary Go Round shirts with a huge $8 mystery sale in the Diesel Sweeties store. I think we found some of almost every discontinued design! Here's the link, see what you think!

SPX Print

Against all the odds I have made a print for SPX, not sure how many there will be but it won't be a vast number.

It is entitled "Chupacabra Eyes The Prize"

Aerial desperation

I am not what you would term a bad flyer but when I get off a Transatlantic flight, I am not the same as I was when I boarded. The first four hours are a riot of aero-fun, but during the last three I develop tense nervous headache, lamp-like white face and the shivers. Is this caused by my distance from the Queen? I wonder if at some point I will do the full Brian Wilson freakout and there will have to be an emergency landing in Guam.

That would be embarrassing.

How on earth do people fly from the UK to Australia? I think if I did that, they would have to put some sleeping drops in my milk like the A-Team did with BA Baracus.

How on earth did BA Baracus get to Vietnam if he wouldn't fly? It's fine Hannibal knocking him out with drops in his milk but I'm sure the US Army would have a problem with that.

NEMULON NEWS

Well yesterday Nemulon delivered the news, today he is the news! He has been added to the cast of Destroy History as this exclusive pre-production image reveals! It also reveals his bizarre "robot nappy" and chimley. STEAM PUNKS FOR ALL!

News From NEMULON

NEMULON THE "STEAMPUNK ROBUT" BRINGS TRUE NEWS OF THE NEW COMIC



"New comic is called BAD MACHINERY"
"It is not about robuts! BLASPHEMY!"
"It takes place three years after end of Scary Go Round YES THE FUTURE"
"Mr John Allison does not know what the future will be like so he draws it exactly like the present day: HE IS A HERETIC"
"It features HOT NEW ART STYLINGS such as a new font and a new colouring technique which seems like it would take LESS TIME but DOESN'T"
"Due to schedule miscalculations Mr John Allison finished the website on SATURDAY AFTERNOON but has been too busy to make the TWO SMALL GRAPHICS needed to make it live"
"First story entitled "THE LONG PREAMBLE" lasts three weeks, all future stories last a robut-mandated 100 episodes: THE MOST DECIMAL WEBCOMIC EVER"
"New comic does not feature Shelley Winters except at Christmas, GINGER NINJA RETURNS IN DESTROY HISTORY when time allows"
"STEAMPUNK IS BEST ask Wozzle Ezzle etc"

The Electrifying Conclusion part 3

The final part of the Electrifying Conclusion is a deeply personal "journey" like the ones all those celebrity documentarians go on. What will the new comic be?



I guess that means that end of the year album reviews are safe for the future, forever.

The Electrifying Conclusion part 2

Having gone native, I now go un-native... read on!



Today's apologies go to "Our" Stevens, Jeff Rowland, Kate Beaton, Ryan North, Carly Monardo and especially Chris Hastings.

The Electrifying Conclusion part 1

I hope the following comic is educational, informative and maybe even entertaining. Part two (of three) is tomorrow.



With apologies to poor Adam Cadwell, Marc Ellerby, Lizzes Lunney and Greenfield and Wozzle Ezzle.

Yore questiens answer'd

Q. I know that you're selling out of certain tshirts soon, but are you still continuing to sell custom prints of SGR strips? Or are those going to be discontinued as well?

Over the years I have taken careful aim at my foot with a favoured firearm but man is the learning animal and I... am a man. Most Scary Go Round items will remain available until they run out naturally (the books tend to last three or four years) but in the case of custom prints, that's never.

Q. What has been your favourite story arc over the years? Also, if I'm allowed two questions, which character are you most proud of creating and developing?

My favourite story arc is the story where The Boy goes on the French exchange and meets the Easter Bell and Elodie. It was exciting to write and fun to draw. The character I'm most pleased with is Ryan.

Q. Is there a single panel or page that you like the most? Some scene that just came out better than you'd ever planned?



A. This was the point where finally I started drawing like I wanted to.

Q. What have we done to make you hate us so much that you would deny us Scary Go Round evermore? I know some of us are Americans but this is a bit much.

A. The way that some Americans think that people from other countries hate them is peculiar. You won the culture wars, everyone likes Coca Cola. Remember that cowboy man who was in charge? We just thought he was funny. I love America and Americans but not as much as I love Britain and the Queen. Who can forget "Seven Seas Of Rye"?

Q. I always notice the characters' clothing, especially the female characters -- do you have any kind of background in fashion? They always seem to be wearing very accurately-observed, current fashions, and I'm intrigued that you take the time to dress them that way. I'd love to hear about that.

A. I think fashion is interesting and women's fashion in particular! Dressing a man is essentially the business of covering five tube-shaped areas. Here's a shirt, raise the waistline on the trousers an inch every ten years. But the shifting sands of women's fashion provide the artist with a world of new things to try drawing every six months and a way to say something indelible about the characters. This was particularly helpful early on when I, like most artists, drew people's faces and bodies fairly generically.

Q. Is there any chance of a Scary Go Round anthology?

A. I'm not sure where the notion of this 1800+-page book came from but I imagine that it exists in the same place as Terry Gilliam's Don Quixote film - development hell! Impossible, impossible to practically produce.

Q. Will I still get Dr. Ladysounds' Top 20 music picks? I am over 45 and no longer with the hookup to know what's worth listening to, as the radio is aimed at my teenaged daughter and I can no longer throw myself in front of it to protect her.

A. This question will be answered in a special, terrible comic on Thursday. Shelley is capricious and her contract demands are outrageous, it is a matter that will take some negotiation.

Q. Will we see what happens with Roxy Postlethwaite before the
conclusion, or did I somehow miss that because it was a
limited-distribution story packed in with one of the collections?

A. Ho ho! This reader is referring to my ending of the Erin Winters saga on a limited-to-400 mini-comic. Hugo refers to his run-in with London types in the Super Crisis Quests story; his teenage protege was wooed away by big-city money, signed a record deal that went nowhere, had a small part in "Casualty" and is now working in a branch of Agent Provocateur in Birmingham.

Q. Where did Desmond Fish-Man come from? Lets see more of him before the series ends!

A. Poor Des, we never did find out his origin! While I'd like to think that this will be answered in the new comic, Desmond is a figure apparently reviled by a large section of my readership (presumably the ones who do not agree with me that Jar Jar Binks is "totally wickles" - how wude). So while concept sketches exist for his origin story and continued appearances, his future is in the balance.

Q. Will Shelley Winters be in the new comic?

A. When I was coming up with the ideas for the new comic I had two that I worked up: the one you are about to see, and a Shelley Winters comic based at the Ministry of History. I hope to make some of those Shelley stories into books but it won't be for a few years. I love writing and drawing her though so I might do some one-offs on the blog.

Q. Will we see Ryan again? He is like a role model to me and I will be sad if we don't.

A. Like Shelley, I hope to find something productive for him to do as I enjoy writing him a great deal.

Q. According to the "About" bit of your site you were a journalist before you were a cartoonist. So how did you become a cartoonist? What made you sit down and start drawing Bobbins? Why cartooning rather than any other medium?

A. I don't know what the answer to this is! I grew up somewhat remotely from my schoolfriends and making comics was how I filled the time at home. I'm never bored when I'm drawing and making things up and looking around me on the train or the bus, people prodding at their phones or making deathly chitchat seem more bored than they've ever been, so I think that I keep going in the opposite direction as fast as I can!

Q. Scary-go-round used to be mainly about 20-somethings (I think)... then the focus shifted more to teenagers... and now the main characters are children. Can you confirm that (a) you are slipping into a second childhood, and (b) the new comic will be Tackleford Toddlers?

A. When you're 21 you think everyone in the world is your age or irrelevant. I don't know, perhaps you've read... most webcomics? I have always wanted to write both older and younger characters and as I've got older, I realised how trivial most of the things that bothered me as a 22-year old were. Children are exciting to write because they don't know where the limits are, older people are fun to write because they aren't cowed by fear or embarrassment. Far from a "second childhood", I am simply trying to crumble as discreetly as possible.

Q. I always wondered what became of Holly/Molly. She was a semi-homicidal multiple
personality - she would have fit right in with Scary-Go-Round. She could have escaped
from that mental institution and began to stalk old friends. Something to consider for the new comic?

A. When I started introducing characters from Bobbins into Scary Go Round, it was mostly because I wasn't that good at making up characters at that point. I needed to flesh out the cast and it was the easiest way to do it! But I considered Holly a bit flat in 1999, let alone 2004.

Q. My question concerns Natalie Durand. During scenes with her in the afterlife, she is sometimes depicted as normal, sometimes as a crazy eyed skeleton, and one illustration appeared to have her giving off a reflection of the mottled drowned girl who tried to pick Ryan up in the afterlife bar. What exactly was going on there? Can she shift shapes, and if so why did she appear as a skeleton to Ryan, and then a drowned girl?

A. When I made those afterlife comics I tried to make them dreamlike and illogical, people would see people from their schooldays, people wouldn't be visually consistent, or one person would be another person but you didn't recognise them. The implication was that none of it was actually happening, that it was all imagined or open to interpretation! I may not have made this particularly clear. Or indeed clear at all. But there is no law saying I have to.

Q. Would you mind doing a long time silent fan a favour by making up a happy ending for Moon? I am always so sad at how her life is treating her.

A. Moon got out of jail after 9 years aged 32 and got a job as a catfish wrangler in Locust Grove, Oklahoma. She eventually married an Okie noodler named Bobby McGinty and had a little baby called Clyde.

Q. What ever happened to Tessa and Rachel respectively?

A. Rachel was immolated in a giant wicker vole and Tessa left town thereafter with good reason!

Q. Howdy John, I fairly recently latched onto SGR (during the Atlantis story), and have been wondering how you draw the comic? It looks like its just raw pencils scanned in and colored, but I am not sure. I love the style and as an artist would really like to know how its done?

A. I use Manga Studio 4 to draw itand Photoshop to colour it and a Wacom Cintiq 15X that mysteriously gets hotter by the day. When it finally bursts into flames we will find out what kind of "man" I am.

Q. I was just wondering if the new stuff will be completely new, or if we will still get to see some of the characters we know and love.

A. Some! But not all. The first 12 comics introduce the central characters, almost all of whom you've seen before. Beyond that, don't expect any Lazarus-style comebacks or familiar phoenices from the flames.

Q. My question is, are you suitably proud of yourself? I hope you are.
A. I feel... young. Give me another ten years and ask me again.

----

I hope this answers most of what people want to know. If you have any more questions that I somehow skirted (such as, do you like ham? what is your favourite jam? did you lose that toe to a clam?) write them in the comments and I'll do a follow up on Friday. Because this blog definitely needs me to talk about myself some more.

Firing cannons at the moon

I was going to write a long message on the front page of the site, but since I am going to be breaking it into pieces next week, I thought perhaps I would write it on the blog instead.

I've been working on Scary Go Round for seven and a half years, which is longer than I've done anything else - longer than grammar school or any job I've done. I was 25 when I started, and I vowed that unlike the comics I'd made before, this would be a nice coherent whole, visually consistent and professional! Well what a roaring success that turned out to be. The last strip (the 1785th) bears absolutely no relation whatsoever to the first. But the journey's the thing and I emerge older and wiser, mostly older, so old.

I have received tremendous encouragement over the years from other artists, but I want to especially thank Andrew Bell, Kelly Vivanco, Vera Brosgol and S. Britt, gifted people who all encouraged me (gently or otherwise) to try new things. I also want to thank my friend Marc Malone, who was meant to have drawn the comic with me. Your old friends still miss you, Marc.

There's been plenty written on the blog this year about why it was time to finish - but mostly it boils down to the fact that I don't feel that anything should run forever. Webcomics grew out of people who wanted to draw newspaper comic strips, and with that seems to come the notion that we should whittle away at life-long works. But unless you're whittling - and I choose my words carefully here - some kind of "magic tree", eventually you will end up with nothing left.

So while I know that any new project offers an excellent jumping-off point, and that there will always be a small section of readers who want leftovers warmed up and served up over and over again, I reassure myself that Scary Go Round's audience has been willing to stick with me through endless changes of tack.

In a lot of ways the new comic is a cross between the very first Scary Go Rounds and the very last. But then it's nothing like either of them. There I am, chasing my tail again. Forming a circle when viewed from the sky.

Finally it can be told

Some of you may have been waiting to hear some tidbits about my new comic, there have certainly been rumours on the blog! Here's something that might just get your mouths watering, SGR fans!



Oh now hang on wait a minute that doesn't appear to bear any relation to the new comic AT ALL.

(Thank goodness I can keep doing this for another 12 days, it is the best hobby I have ever had).

Where Is Beatles Band

I'm rebranding the Beatles. They're better now.

I can never draw Ringo properly but I drew this in 5 minutes and Ringo takes a lifetime of craft to master.

Kittenbeard

R Stevens of Diesel Sweeties sent me the name of Kittenbeard the cat pirate, so I drew it, wait was it "Mittenbeard" oh well it's too ruddy late now.

At last at last

Here it is, the new comic, "Derren Brown Reveals". In association with the noted mesmerist, a series of adventures where the titular mind-man investigates fabled beasts. A sneak preview:



Wait hang on that isn't the new comic AT ALL.