Nice weather for pleather

Ah, pleather. The all-year round fabric! Suave, luxurious, keeps the sweat inside.

It's meant to be 33 degrees celcius tomorrow, according to the "weatherman", which is obscene - especially considering that for most of the year, my kitchen maintains an ambient temperature very close to that of the outdoors, a temperature that has traditionally proved hospitable for such arctic beasts as the "hoth wampa". With carbon trading on the agenda, why can't I shift ten of those degrees to a miserable day in November? Come on people, we're civilised now. These things can happen.


In the illustration above, the hoth wampa has interrupted my preparation of a delicious lamb chop and is dragging me towards a thorough duffing up.

Oh Capote, I love the books that you wrote-y.

Image submitted without me having any idea why I actually drew it. Or why I have another file open right now called "beatles67.ai".

I am thinking about a new poster print picture

I am thinking about a new poster print picture, as the last one proved popular with the minds of people who bought it. Perhaps it will look something like THIS:



Actual photo reference will replace vague scribblings in accordance with the instructions of the catholic cardinals who supervise my artistic efforts from the Vatican City.

Keine Fenster

I thought you might like to see a picture of my office slash dining room. Almost every episode of Scary Go Round was created in this room! And thanks to Scary Go Round, it has received a new floor, new walls, new lights, and a new clock which is French and from the past but ticks twice a second to tell you that death approaches. Sadly I could not run to new windows as it has No Windows. Also thanks to Scary Go Round, it is a shameful mess.

So now you know. I have been trapped in a windowless room all day since leaving work in 2003. How haven't I snapped yet? Will I ever escape Fortress Chadderton? Or will I be carried out feet first at the age of 93? I don't know the answers because the future is A MYSTERY.

A captain of industry reports

Today when placing a print in a clip frame, I accidentally broke the glass in the frame. This was the second time this has happened; on the previous occasion, I knelt on Michael Moore's fat face. I believe this was symbolic of the parting of the ways between me and the chubby polemicist as he completed his transition from thinker to man-brand.

Either that or I am just a clumsy oaf.

Thank you, dear readers, for 9 replies in a day to my previous post. This indicates interest, and I respond to market forces in the only way I know how - with ACTION. Hence my barbecue drawing will, after some careful infill with my best pens, form the next Scary Go Round annual tea-towel. This kind of readeractive market research is how I know that a. I haven't designed a tshirt anyone really liked since "Books Rule" and b. that no one wants me to write any more posts about music.

PS I have thought of a title for the next Scary Go Round collection, which I am very pleased about. It's almost too good a title for one of my crummy books.

Bar-B-Q

I drew this big old picture (too big to put on the blog, click this link to see it), now I'm trying to figger out what to do with it. I started drawing it a year ago, became disconsolate (I'm not sure why), found it today, and filled out the remaining 2/3 of the pencils and inked it. I might sell it, or I might colour it in, or I might bury it in the garden then fire bullets into the ground where I've buried it. You know me, I can never decide.

Digital

You may remember a story I did right at the start of 2005 about The Child, where the bald, sexless infant said "things are going to change", over and over again. After that story, something did change, but no one spotted it, and I have spent many nights hugging my sides and weeping as a result.

What changed was, I started drawing people with the full complement of fingers rather than three-fingered Simpsons hands. I only point this out because in looking for a book to read last night, I found an old bookmark from 2003, on which I had drawn one of those three fingered hands. It looked pretty strange, but after all, "strange" 'is just "change" spelt slightly differently.

My message of change has gone nationwide since then. I leave you with an alarming photograph from the Conservative Party conference earlier this year.



UK residents: don't buy any new gloves.

SING OUT

I'm not sure what drawing this really achieved, there were meant to be bats but I got tired and forgot. I will draw bats later. MUCH LATER.

Almost (almost) there

After months of wrangling and worry, I finally have copies of SGR book 4 in my hands. They won't be on sale until they get off the boat from old Colombia in about 4 weeks (no pre-orders), but hopefully at that point someone will want to buy one. I can tell you the following facts about them:

* They feature 216 pages! That is 16 more pages than "Skellington"!
* They will cost £10, just like all the other collections!
* There will probably be new combo packs but don't ask me what they will contain because I don't know!
* There are lots of new drawings, a couple of new comics pages, some sketchbook pages, and chapter commentary by Shelley!
* It features all the stories from "Election" to "Battle Of The Bands", apart from the Oldbourne story! That one wasn't very good!
* And etc!

Ingress & egress

My travels to and from the USA on this particular voyage have been tricky. I was stuck for about ten hours at Newark last week because of the weather, and on the way back I now find myself having missed my flight home and "on standby" for the last gosh-darn bus out of town. Where? NEWARK. How can this be? It seems that Freedom comes at a price, and that price is incarceration in an airport in New Jersey for an indeterminate time frame.

"On standby" means "riven with stress". It is a semantic thing invented by the airlines to distract you from the uncertainty of your immediate future. I only hope my strict adherence to the principles of freedom throughout my visit will grease my departure somewhat. I love freedom, even though Newark International Airport is trying to make me hate it.


FREEEEEDOOOOOOOOM

I am not sure why I keep doing these

I have started to do some paintings to sell at MoCCA next weekend. To the best of my recollection I've never sold more that one painting at a show (maybe two) but that kind of drives me to try to be less of a failure at it. Anyway here is what I managed so far.



Tomorrow: MOON MUMMY DILEMMAS

Continental drift divide

Firstly, let me apologise for the lack of blog updates lately. I spent a lot of time getting book 4 off to the printers and sorting out proofs and Fed Ex and greasing certain wheels in the "underground" to make sure things turn out extra good. And next week I am off to Massachusetts and New York for MoCCA Artfest, which requires a certain amount of preparation (mostly ironing). Plus I have been marshalling approximately 8 million entries for SGR Idol, all of which required careful scrutiny by the jury. But now I am back back back to tell you that everything is going to be okay. It's going to be... okay.

I wish I had more to report but you don't get to have any adventures when you're ironing. Apart from the accidental, painful kind.

Tshirt outpatients

New Jimmy, new DANGER



I'm thinking PRESIDENTIAL TRIFECTA THREE-PACK

New t-shirt clinic continues

With the midterm elections on their way, I am working on some new, deliciously bipartisan designs. Can anyone really work out what these shirts mean? I am particularly pleased with the Nixon one. The colours are just for display purposes for now.

I am also thinking of re-doing the classic Jimmy Carter shirt as I think I can draw a better Jimmy now!

Tshirt freedom clinic pt 3

This is kind of a follow up to my Jimmy Carter shirt. Times have changed - I'm just not sure how because it is late and I am getting confused in me brain.

Summer tshirt workshop 2

Here's a shirt that I made specially for R Stevens. It's Richard Belzer in a UFO, tractor beam-ing up a donut, flanked by the Stars and Stripes. it's unsaleable, but I definitely want one.



It originally said "Belzer ate my donut" but as if you couldn't work that out just by looking at it.

Summer tshirt workshop

Here's a design full of summer FUN and JAPES and SAND and BEACHES and POISON

The gas man came-eth

Yesterday the gas man came round to service my boiler and look at my radiators. We always have good times, the gas man and me. Him with his outlandish "gas tools" and me with my paralysing fear that he will tell me my house has to be knocked down because of "gas problems".

This year's visit was a rollercoaster of emotions. Oh dear, says he, your boiler should not make any long term plans that involve a continued existence. From what I could tell, its insides are all twisted up (like Gollum's, perhaps). But this was expected. That thing had one yellow tooth left and a walking cane the day I bought this place.

Then, then came the best bit. I decided, as a treat to myself (and as a tribute to gas) to have my living room fire serviced. It is an exciting fire that produces hot, Bunsen burner-like flames that you can admire. I imagined the gas man would clean out a few tubes and nozzles, compliment me on a handsome and fiery appliance, then go on his way, whistling. Things did not work out like that at all.

John, he said, this thing is a death trap. You are lucky not to be dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Your chimney is a non-functioning disgrace and you should seize every day because frankly, each one is a precious gift ill-deserved.

But, said I, see the pretty flames, how they dance! At which point he disconnected the offending heat-maker, tucked it under one sooty arm, and took his leave. It was probably for the best, thought I, gazing upon my ravaged hearth and checking for short-term memory loss.

I bought an electric fire today, which I thought would have led to some nice anecdotes about how I drilled some marble and knocked my house down, but sadly it took longer to extract it from its box than install it. The nice thing about the new fire is that you can turn the faux flames on without generating any heat.

I shall let the faux flames lick all decadent summer long.

He has made a friend!

Image posted without comment.

These are my confessions

My new fridge has arrived! I had to take the doors off the cupboard it lives in to accomodate this glossy white beast. So silent, so cold in its cupboard, an exciting monolith.

Unfortunately the men from Comet wouldn't take my old fridge on the same day because I hadn't defrosted it, so I had to put it in the back yard so it could spend the necessary 3 days leaking its icy cargo onto the back yard. But it was fortunate that they didn't take it, as I was informed that I couldn't turn the new one on for 12 hours! I put all my refridgerated items in the icy section, knowing they would be safe in my back yard. What a treat it was to go outside every time I wanted some ketchup or an egg. Splendid!

The following morning I awoke, excited about turning my new fridge on. I ran out into the back yard, avoiding a 7am snail, to retrieve my egg and ketchup. And what a vista! It was warm and sunny, the first warm morning of a burgeoning summer.

On the way back in, I accidentally trod on the snail.

Dear reader, I had to go back to bed for an hour, so bereft was I that even before I had thought my first thought of the day, I had taken the life of a small creature. What was worse, I actually trod on its remains again later. Messrs Insult and Injury had been invited to the party.

So what have we learned? Firstly, if you turn on your new fridge/freezer straight away, it will blow up. This may prove useful knowledge if you are ever held hostage in a white goods warehouse. Secondly, despite its mighty shell, a snail is no match for a foam flip-flop. And thirdly, nothing makes you feel more like poor white trash than a rusting, decades old refridgerator mouldering in your yard.

ADDENDUM: I have not tried other, more dangerous white trash techniques, like "rusting half car up on bricks" or "eighteen babies by eighteen daddies".

ADDENDUM 2: Does anyone want to buy two cupboard doors? White, old, faintly discoloured, heavy. Would suit someone easily pleased.

New painting

This one came out quite nice. I might sell it, or I might bury it in the back garden - you can never tell with me.



Or obviously I might paint on it a bit more. That's the painting way!

I have bought a new refridgerator

It has only taken six years but I have bought a new fridge-freezer to replace the one that came with my house. This oil-burning pig is full of ice, rattles, and may be toxic not just to the environment but also to ghosts and outer space aliens. It lives in a cupboard.

But since I did the dirty deed and ordered a new one, I've noticed a palpable chill in the kitchen. Somehow (perhaps by collusion with the equally-damned oven) it has found out, and it is giving me the evils from its cupboard. This fridge has had a long time to develop its hatred of man - by my reckoning it was purchased in the late 80s.

As you can see from the pictorial evidence, at some point it has been a victim of fire (a fridge's most hated enemy) and it is in the grip of a pretty fierce rust. I've been waiting for it to die of natural causes, but natural causes never came. Please do not judge me as I turn to euthanasia. Just pray that I am not found by the delivery men next tuesday, flattened under its recriminatory carcass.

Providing needles for your balloons

I went to see the Flaming Lips last night and was delighted to find that the support act was the Go! Team. Perhaps it is blasphemy to say it, but the Go! Team were a lot better than the Lips, whose set is creaking under the weight of so many gimmicks that it resembles an evening out at a novelty factory.

As the onslaught of glitter-cannons, pseudo-Billy Graham prosletysing, giant balloons and dancing scientologists threatened to overwhelm the evening, I couldn't help but wonder if we weren't witnessing a. some kind of emperor and b. his recently purchased clothes.

As much as I like and admire Wayne Coyne, the band could have played another four or five songs in the time he spent pontificating, messing about and expounding at length. I saw the Lips at Glastonbury on the Soft Bulletin tour, prior to their show becoming the out-of-control carnival it is now, and it was heartwarming, silly and transcendent. Lest we forget, they have 7 or 8 albums-worth of great songs. What a pleasure it would be if they deigned to treat us to some of them.

I don't want to be completely miserable about it. But the more I think about it, the more miserable I am. Because I am a miserable man.

Yours miserably,
John Allison

Newsflash

I have decided to design all tshirts pre-emptively in order to stop other cartoonists making them. The only rule is that I cannot spend more than 30 seconds on each one - including "thinking time"! So to establish copyright, here are some of the shirts you are not allowed to make any more:




There's $10000 that someone is never going to see.

Consonant

Have you ever wanted to see a list of all the celebrities who have appeared in Dictionary Corner on Countdown since 1982? Of course you have. And now you can. Did we really have to wait until 2002 before Pam Ayres was allowed into the hot (warm) seat? A crime!

Did they? Really? Kenneth Williams, Hayley Mills, Ernie Wise
Mental Midget Awards: Paul Burrell, Daniel O'Donnell

Have any of your friends ever appeared on Countdown? Have you? maybe you should!

Disclaimer: despite working from home, John Allison has not watched Countdown since 1998.

Guilty as charged

Friday night's post about stick-thin jazz-pop kittens was the result of my taking a cold drink. Don't rush out of your homes as if you were on fire, howling like a cat up a tree - things are going to be fine. I went to see Giant Drag on thursday and all the requisite jams were kicked out.

Ever since a wild night in East Streatham (circa 2002) wherein I completed something called "the Lewin Run" and paid the price, my body has been systematically saying no to booze. The list of alcoholic beverages I can still drink is getting really short. I reckon I can trust Guinness, gin and wine. Pretty soon I will be down the temperance society with the maiden aunts. PLUS:

Guinness: you will be waiting a while
Gin: mother's ruin
Wine: Q. Are We Not Men/ A. No we are drinking wine

The two day hangover: god's way of telling you IT'S OVER.

On tshirts

I wrote the following on a message board in response to this article by Lore Sjoberg, but I think it is worth preserving here because I sound imperious and conceited as only I know how:

***

Webcomics’ dirty little secret is that most of the people who “make a living from their comic” don’t really make a living from their comic at all, they make it selling t-shirts that perhaps have some tenuous link to their strip (but not really). It’s not really something to feel guilty about, it’s just patronage in one way or another - a democratised, utilitarian form of “micropayment” far more acceptable to my mind than a Paypal begging bucket on your site.

That these tshirts have ceased to be so closely linked to their parent comics is a matter (I think) in part of natural selection - in a crowded field (and it gets more crowded every day) you need more options than your strip might provide. And if you’ve proved successful in an area, you want to develop it. The alternative is, after all, eating sawdust and drinking puddle water.

Personally, I would much rather make shirts that have nothing to do with the comic than attempt to shoehorn t-ready zingers into the strip or extract vest-centric mottos from complex source material.

As for Lore’s assertion that a backlash is on the way, I don’t think people will tire of owning short-run, attractive garments that their friends probably don’t have. I believe that’s the central tenet on which fashion is founded.

The only way to kill it stone dead would be to sell your designs to Hot Topic and have them printed in the thousands. And I believe that kind of suicide can only take place on an artist by artist basis.

Sadness

Ever since my cleansing journey into Yacht Rock, I've been pretty certain that indie rock as a form is moribund and essentially dead. Don't worry, indie rock always recovers, I felt like this in early 1994 and 1998 (almost all year!) But I still have to buy records - I'm still a man, damn it. I've been too bashful to tell my gig-going friends that I've spent most of the year gorging on Erin Bode and Nerina Pallot. They wouldn't understand. I think they'd understand my Jacqui Naylor problem even less. Why did things have to get so dang smooth?

Thanks

Dear person who decided to use my rear bumper to estimate the exact position of their front bumper yesterday afternoon: THANKS. PS I know who you are.

Book 4 has probably been saved! Things might just be okay. I need you guys to buy a lot of copies so I can buy a bigger house, with offroad parking. Or if you're rich and want to marry me, that's cool too. I'm okay with that. Rich gals usually have a garage.

EDIT: I have used CSI skills to track down the scraper, this deal is gonna get fizz-ixed, we had it out at a summit chaired by Presidents G.H.W Bush and Clinton.

Book 4 problems

I just got the quote back from the printers in Hong Kong who did my last two books, both of which featured some of the best printing I'd seen. Unfortunately for a number of unavoidable reasons the price has gone up considerably (about 50%). I've asked for a couple of other quotes but last time I asked Quebecor and Brenner for prices, they didn't bother writing back.

The Scary Go Round collections are a really delicate ecosystem; they take months to break even and involve as large a financial risk as I can afford to make. I don't want to do shorter collections more often so unfortunately, this might be the end of the road. This is pretty sad so I hope I can think of something.

Apologies for blog silence...

...I have been laying out Scary Go Round book 4. There are some new hand-drawn comics pages, loads of new colour drawings, commentary from Shelley (the vainest commentary ever compiled!) and a sketchbook section. It covers the Bulgaria vampires story through to Battle of the Bands, though I did have to cut out the Oldbourne story for space reasons - it's 216 pages even without it. I've posted the front cover before so here's the back:

...and the "ology"

All Popjustice had to do today to win big was put 4 KLF videos on the same page of the internet.

When I was a young teen-ager, the KLF were the biggest band in Europe! They were two Scottish art-terrorists making techno records. I can't imagine such a conceit dominating popular music nearly 15 years on, which seems awfully sad, but maybe we all just went buck wild because the world was going to explode in the year 2000.

The last of the four (utterly preposterous) videos is when they performed their biggest hit with a death metal band at the Brit Awards, then quit making music forever. At the end you see Billy Bragg turn to someone and say "fuckin' hell", and he's right! Fuckin' hell!

Things you probably ought to know

At around 1pm today, just before lunch, I entered into an internal debate.

"Does my car have a sunroof? I don't think it does"
"No wait, it probably does"
"I'm sure it doesn't"
"No, I'm positive that it doesn't"
"But surely it does"

This went on for a minute or so, during which I assured myself that no, it didn't have a sunroof. I went to look out of the window.

It does have a sunroof. Well I never!

Perhaps one day I will learn the difference between a sunroof and a moonroof. I imagine it is similar to the difference between a rainbow and a moonbow.

Dogtooth dogtooth

The video for Franz Ferdinand's L. Wells is a real good treat, I promise!

It's Windows Media, so Mac users might have to use Flip4mac.

News is thin on the ground this week. It's a tough business, living for pleasure alone. I hope you enjoy this week's comics, the new artistic strategies I've been working on for the last month or so are hopefully bearing fruit.

Women of the world take over, because we haven't got long

I bought a new suit today! Ladies, I don't want to cause swooning and conniptions across the blogodrome but please take heed: nothing says "here to fix the photocopier" like me in a suit. Toner low, good to go.

One of the proudest moments of my whole life was when found out that people were taking printouts of my comics to the hairdresser and saying, "that's what I want". Somehow, I have done a good thing.


"Give me a Len Pickering: scorched earth on top and tidy the borders."

Air-punching masterclass

After 24 hours of holding the sides of my head and weeping for my creative instinct, today I designed three new shirts that are "real nice"* and also came up with a new vinyl doll in the magic Mongor style. I have decided to design for pleasure alone and forget about trying to make shirts that visually describe the nebulous concepts depicted in Scary Go Round, shirts which invariably prove as popular as thumbscrews and glue sammiches.

So, coming soon for you to own: KROPOTKIN FAMILY EARWIGS


*One of them is not "real nice", it is "spectacularly ghastly on every level".

A living tribute in topiary

Reader Matt Jones sent me this, see what you think!



It is, isn't it?

But is anyone, even me, really innocent?

A plea

To all the people who wrote to me asking for a shirt based on the last panel of today's comic: I don't know how to make that into anything that would look good. I tried to induce hypnagogia in order to hallucinate up an answer but it didn't work. With the t-shirt line creaking like a gate in a stiff breeze, I will be in the fashion lab all next week, so feel free to give me a shout.

Grevious omission from 2005 chart-of-the-year that I now rectify

I thought "Nashville" by Josh Rose was a 2004 record, but it isn't. I have put it in the chart at number two, it's the ideal record to listen to when you're feeling a. bucolic or b. melancholic. You can get it on emusic.com too, the site that seldom fails to please.

I have consulted Shelley for a review:

"After a hard day on the farm having your heart broken by a callous milkmaid, this is the only record you need to listen to. Josh Rouse looks and sounds like he has just burned his hand on a chip pan but his nice way with sounds will help everyone feel better eventually."

RUINED

I have been tinkering with this for ages, but here's the Google Is Ruining Everything design. Perhaps this shirt can save society (from people who cheat at quizzes).

Hustl'as

I've done another two paintings, hopefully they will find favour! I hope I will see some of you in Mile End on Saturday.

Such a pretty lie!

I have made some new buttons for this weekend.



Who wants a "Google Is Ruining Everything" shirt? And how exactly do I draw that?

It's the night-time baby don't let go of my love

I am still painting painting, trying to remember what this painting game is all about. My theory on the matter: paint.



PROB-LEMS

A loaded weapon called lust

Hello! I am painting some new pictures for the Web Comix Thing and International Horse Trials Doohickey 2006 in London. I feel a bit rusty, but here's the first one.

Highway to the danger-zone

I am a lot better now, thanks for your well wishes. But I could be snatched up by a pterodactyl by any minute and eaten in seconds, so don't take me for granted. Keep those candles lit and the shrines shiny.

This week I have been forced to stay in by courier companies who don't pick up packages. When a task has bad juju over it, you might as well give up all hope of ever completing it, but unfortunately I think there are people in America still waiting for 5-packs of books so I can't just take this cardboard box out into the back yard and shoot it like I normally would.

Maybe it was a mistake to finally resort to local company "parcel2go.com", whose mandate is neither to pick up your package, nor staff their customer service area with actual humans. I look forward to trying to extract a refund from the Bolton-based no-hopers.

My current plan is simply to throw the books into the sea in Liverpool and hope they wash ashore in Boston, MA. While throwing the books, I will also hurl representatives from Fed Ex and Parcel Force into the sea. Imagine this piscine tableau next time you regard a large body of water.

So, from my sick bed to a jail cell for my marine crimes. Come, mighty pterodactyl, come. Your leathery wings cannot carry you near to me fast enough.

PS SINGLE OF THE WEEK - Absentee "Something To Bang". What a gravelly treat!

The illness has changed me

Blog readers (not the ones who post in the comments about that day's comic - I don't think they read the actual words) will be pleased to hear that I am on the mend. But I am totally ravaged by disease. I have the deth-voice (kind of "GRAARRGHH"), I cough a lot, and I have renounced listening to all music that is not YACHT ROCK.

Yacht rock is a special kind of music. It's aspirational, it's midtempo, it's smooth. It's the kind of thing that Don Johnson would isten to. It's Michael McDonald, Hall and Oates, Christopher Cross. Of course Andrew Gold, of course Fleetwood Mac circa 1987. From now on, I refuse to listen to anything that doesn't slip down easy.

Learn more about Yacht Rock in the short films at Channel 101. You will find yourself transformed. My favourite is episode 3, but it's best to jump in at the start.

Trust me on this one - forget the future: we're on a yacht now.

Inappropriate b-sides desk

As I prepare for the coolness of the tomb, of course I am singing "Seasons In the Sun", that most mordant of chart-toppers. But when one's soul has been thoroughly ravaged by Terry Jacks' hymn to dying young and you flip the record, why not quack it up a notch with...



..."Put The Bone In"?!

Insult to injury

Now I have a fever! I had some wild dreams last night, all of them hideously unpleasant. I'm pretty sure that this will be my last post ever, as tomorrow the men in tall hats will be carrying me out of my house feet first.

The good news is that I am now rated #1 in the area for shivering and complaining.

Things are getting worse

Now I have caught a cold, and I burnt my finger on a baking tray.

Fortunately I did not burn it very badly. My hands are so cold that it just went "fwoosh", as if my icy finger was cooling the tray.

Since the cold has apparently gotten into my bones, I imagine that my death is imminent. Pretty soon you'll be talking about "the John Allison legacy". I don't have a will, so I guess I'll leave everything to my friend Kelly Vivanco, and she can do what she wants with my chattels. Kelly, look forward to owning a right hand drive Japanese car, a terraced house in the armpit of civilisation, and two dozen "Just William" books. You earned 'em.

Production has ceased

I've pulled a muscle in my neck while excecuting some very very tidy parallel parking. At the moment of one's greatest triumph, one is frequently struck down. Now my head is only comfortable at 45 degrees to my shoulders, and by "comfortable" I mean "extremely painful". Also I appear hunched, like an old man. It's pretty much over for me as a member of the human race.

I'm sure that you want to know how you can help. You can help by not laughiing at me when you see me on the street, bent over like a geriatric fellow enjoying his last weeks.

Single of the "week"

Of course it is "Free jazz" by the Envelopes, a song so pleasingly jaunty and Swedish that it cannot fail (to get to #71 in the charts)



See the video here, learn more about this new and pleasing band on their website.

Lesnick breaks the silence

Josh Lesnick, the gifted and energetic artist(e) behind such comics as Girly, has drawn this wonderful picture of Gibbous Moon, which I thought you might like to see.

Pop video Wednesday (includes problems)

I was very excited today to find the video for "You Made Me Realise" by My Bloody Valentine on Youtube. I can remember seeing this video in 1988 and being extremely scared of the sound of "indie music". It's still a scary song!

I have developed a problem when I see the "Ladyflash" video by Go! team on MTV2. Every time it comes on, I start crying! This is very disturbing, since I have listened to the song dozens of time in my "listening area" with no ill effect. it has happened three times now and I am worried. Field tests are going on, because I think this might be sinister. I tried watching it in Realplayer, but that didn't make tears come out. All I know is this:

1. It features a lot of bright and pleasing strobing colours
2. There are some drumkits
3. And a plane
4. Also cheerful dancing

(point 1 seems the most important)

I am not a habitual crier, even at the saddest things, so my final conclusion is that I am going senile. I am going to form a support group of similar weeping imbeciles.

Superstars of blogging

Sorry that there haven't been many blog posts lately. I realise that this is tantamount to a failure at life. There are books and posters to ship and I am full of high anxiety. I have to go and pick up the posters tomorrow, but I've had a phone call to say that they're very heavy and I may fall over under their mighty weight. So to prepare for my new life as a 2D man I am re-reading Flat Stanley.



There should be a Scary Go Round Flat Stanley project: a FLAT SHELLEY project! Unfortunately my mind is too tired to know what form this might take.

The IT Crowd

Channel 4 have very kindly put the first two episodes of Graham Linehan's (Father Ted, Black Books) new sitcom online. The first episode is pretty good, the second is absolutely priceless. Once a master, always a master.

See it here! See hear!

Tee squirts

I designed some new shirts a couple of weeks back then forgot about them. The colours on these aren't final (more random than final), but they seem too good to bury in the hole in the garden.



[EDIT: These are the final designs, get them in the shop if you like them!]

Best new cartoonist

I don't get very excited about new web-comics any more. Five years ago there was a good new one every ten minutes, these days very little gets my dander up. But today I discovered a powerful new talent in the fetid backwater of "Livejournal".

Check this deal out!

Now I rest

The poster has gone to the printer's (from now on I am calling it an "art print", because it is our duty to be classy). The LBAE reissue is paid for and on its way to the printer's , so expect orderin' time real soon. New combo packs, magical dreams, all because you said YES.

Finally today, something I drew just to be kind of a jerk.



That isn't real, but if you ask me to draw your band's album cover, that is what you'll get.

No no no this time I've really got it

According to the folder on my computer called "posters", I have made 11 separate attempts at prints and posters, none of which have reached production. I think this blog reveals how much material the modern cartoonist throws away. Believe me when I say that I am not the worst person for this.

Anyway, I think this time I have really got it.



Maybe I am the worst person for throwing things away, actually. I'm pretty certain that that is the case. But if you are a computer-o-artist, you can recycle.

They let me back on the internets

I can get in on the Batgirl deal, I play golf with Bob Kane.

Book 4

I finished the cover for Book 4. Depending on the ebb and flow of the marketplace (and my bank balance), it may not drop until late summer, but I thought you'd like to see it anyway.

My favourite bird

Pied wagtail.

The radio has overexcited me

People always look at me like I've gone mad when I say I would rather do a radio show than comics. But for about ten years I've been captivated by the idea of what a radio show would be like if I did one. Playing some songs, saying some things. Doing some "items". I was, after all, trained in the art of audio presentation by the BBC. I have pushed a fader, I have taken a call "from the phones" - but never in anger. I have edited some waveforms in my time.

Now the age of "Podcasts" is upon us and perhaps I should make one. Just to see if this is a game worth playing. And apparently Garageband 3 makes this extremely easy, even when you do not have a studio to hand. It would be me, at my most egotistical.

The hot flame of excitement I feel today may be the result of some sort of manic episode, but I'll take a day where I'm as giddy as a five year old if it's offered.

Finally, if you like me love radio as a medium, be sure to listen to Harry Shearer's "Le Show" (if you haven't before). The eminent comic actor holds the world record for "most laconic host".

ROCK DESK: The Dan

I don't know why the rock desk is so busy this week. It may be due to a pressure front.

Did I ever tell you (dear reader) how I quit Dumbrella in summer 2004 in New York City, because none of the other members liked Steely Dan? I seriously did. I did not want to be in an organisation that could not respect The Dan, the snarkiest band of all time. In my rural English youth, those gents taught me how to cock a snook LA-style from 200ft. Hipsters before "hipster" became a dirty word and another uniform.

(I only rejoined Dumbrella in the car on the way to SPX in 2005 because new member Steven Cloud had some god-damn respect for shit-kicking country music. It's all about checks and balances.)

Anyway, that aside, today the internet played a mean trick on me, by revealing that there was a lost version of the Gaucho album. The internet had MP3s, but they've gone, like scotch mist. Needless to say the first person who can provide me with these MP3s gets the run of the SGR shop and any one item they would like.

ROCK DESK: Regina Spektor "Us"

I am led to believe that Regina Spektor has a new album due and this song has been both "appended to it" and "lifted from it" as a single. Click the "video" link here. Regina Spektor is another artist who I had the wrong idea about. This could be a series!

Rock Desk: TRACHTENBURG

I am a late convert to the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, who I always imagined must be awful but are actually the exact opposite of awful. Their website tells you what it's all about.

Work is powering ahead

I've done the new cover for LBAE 2006.

Looks Brains and Everything reissue

It's been a year since I ran out of Looks Brains and Everything and there have been a steady stream of requests for a new printing. A second printing would have a nice new cover, be the same (smaller) size as Blame The Sky, and cost me several thousand pounds to make. Are you one of the people who craves this long-lost tome? Do call.

Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen

Liz Phair's childhood passport:



Proof positive that even the most awkwardly bespectacled of us can make it as a globally admired song siren and indie-boy lust object.

Rock desk

I am confused and excited to say that my favourite under-rated band, the Loud Family, is back in 2006! There's even an MP3 to hear, proving that this is the modern age and not just a whisper from the past.

Rocks Off (Rolling Stones cover)

PS I have updated my charts page to include 2005 and a few albums I caught up with from 2004.

Maybe things are going to be okay

After thinking about VAT for a really long time yesterday and this morning, I have convinced myself that perhaps the government are going to let me off VAT accounting, because:

1) There's zero tax on books
2) My t-shirts are made in and shipped from my New England tax haven, outside the remit of HM Customs and Excise
3) What remains ain't worth a dang of anybody's time

However I think I might have been hallucinating when I deduced this from the many fascinating documents I read this morning.

If this is really true, I promise (to you, and Jesus) that I will finish the thing below without complaint, by the end of February.



It is about ghosts, phantoms and spectres.

Welcome to 2006, in which I fret

Happy new year! I have spent most of today's waking hours (fewer than usual due to antics) worrying about the complexities of VAT. Sleep a little more soundly at night, my friends, knowing that you will never have to think about value added tax in a way that includes the following phrases that I uttered this evening:

"Oh no. Oh god. Oh no. Oh dear."

I think I might have to release my vice-like grip on my accounts. The prospect of VAT has ruined the love affair between me and numbers. It was less a love affair than a blind date, where your date is a spreadsheet (who hates you).

Running a business is really hard, it's not all crowns and capes round here, you know. I'm cancelling the comic and going to live in a hermit's caravan.

GOODBYE.