From the archives

Reader Chris Paluszek submits the cover of the University of Central Florida Indie from mid ought-four for your consideration. He thinks that the artist may have had one key influence. I leave you to guess who that might have been!

There's a bug in my mug

Read a new interview with me at Comixtalk! Features a picture of me in an awkward position!

I get the sense from feedback I've been receiving that perhaps two weeks of guest comics was too many. Unfortunately I do have to take a break from time to time or my brain will fail - the recent, somewhat competently plotted stories you've been enjoying require extra work in the planning stages.

Mo th frenzy

Apparently moths are the new deal, people are crazy about the inferior butterfly insect thing. Perhaps the time is right... for THIS.

In The Navy

Trying to come up with new tshirts this week has been like pulling teeth. There is literally nothing that hasn't been done by someone, somewhere. But I just keep making up terrible ones until something comes out that works. So immediately following "OH F*** IT'S A TR***", I produced this. Can you tell what it is yet?

Lying very still

I claimed in my last post that I cheated death. This turned out to be premature. The following five days were spent groaning, wailing, crying and blowing my nose, over and over again. I called the priest five times, five times he went away disappointed. At last my body is recovering but my holiday was ruined. So I am cancelling my second week of idling and drawing comics that you won't see until week commencing June 9th! Then, when you are absolutely unaware of it I will take a week off and you won't know about it until you hear that my body has been pulled out of the East River, full of gin and barbiturates.

I note with interest that the best show of recent years, Mad Men, is almost out on DVD, so here is the link if you haven't seen it. A must for anyone who likes pleasing their eyes and their mind.

I think my Book 6 books are off the presses now and almost on the boat, so pre-order with postcards will commence this week. I have drawn 340 of 400 so far, it has been the most interminable task of my entire career. And I don't use the word "interminable" lightly.

I finish this entry with some designs I made for personal bathchairs when I was at a low ebb. The observant among you will see diagrams of "what Formula One drivers might look like".

Death cheated, Mount Eerie revealed

MOUNT EERIE + No Kids @ Manchester Kro Bar, 21.05.08

Prior to this show, my main concern was that I didn't keel over during it, as I was very ill. But following an afternoon pep-talk, a packet of Sudafed, your positive mind-transmissions and the hot white internal thrill that comes with seeing two very quiet musical acts, I survived, and even thrived.

No Kids are the new masters of pop, possibly the shyest and most retiring masters of R&B melody that I have ever seen. It's entirely possible that they wrote their grooves in PERL, LISP or COBOL. Their 'Come Into My House' disc is one to listen to with your ears - you can rely on it!

As for Mount Eerie, who knows what you are going to get? Certainly not songs you have ever heard before (I had heard two), but for one man strumming a guitar accompanied by some films of fog, Phil Elverum knows how to transfix the local heads. Steering clear of his more epic jams, brevity was the order of the night.

The venue was tiny and everyone left rejoicing. Certainly more artists should try leaving the windows open - it keeps the spirits high. Victory! 9/10

I apologise for the very poor English in this review. It is not my first language (apparently).

Death stalks the cartoonist

I have returned from the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Minehead a broken man, too tough to cry. I have got festival plague, it is all about the mucus and the moaning about my condition now.

Maybe I will revive and live to fight another day, but I am on holiday and typically for my holidays, I am sick. I just could not keep the adrenaline level high enough to power through. Perhaps if you are a sky wizard believer, you could pray for me, or if you aren't, just send me some powerful atheistic vibes and mind transmissions.

I don't think I am going to do a festival review this time as I need to save my energy for disease fighting, antibody production and flu-powder stirring. Tomorrow night I am going to see Mount Eerie in concert and should I survive through the night without having to call a doctor, no doubt I will be so pleased that I will write something about that instead.

Muggle Formation

I found a useful article on how to stop the annoying 'save for web' colour shift in Photoshop. I hope this is helpful to some of you.

Just in case this post is considered "too useful" and "not self-referential enough", let me report that due to an accident, I have spent the last three days listening to contemporary country music, the bad-for-you musical McDonalds that dare not speak its name. I now look like this:



I am preoccupied with trucks, "shooting the moon" (?) and freedom. I know all the words to 'Coalmine' by Sara Evans but I must never, ever sing them aloud. God bless America.

Don't it make my brown eyes blue

Last night I went to see the Envelopes, the excellent Swedish band, and there were about 12 people there. I didn't have the heart to count. I thought this was the most disgraceful turn of events on an indie circuit where "Liam Fray" and "The Courteeners" can pack venues with sets of wall to wall "shit" that makes you want to "die". It was probably down to poor promotion, but I still felt rotten.

Plus (and I do not say this lightly), Joshua Brooks in Manchester is the only venue that makes me want the smoking ban rescinded. It stinks of a different kind of sewage in each of its zones.

Anyway, the Envelopes are amazing quirky pop done right for us all to enjoy, here is their Myspace! When bands play to twelve people two great albums in, they usually split up. So get on the (extremely small) bandwagon while you can!

Vestmania

By which of course I mean, "listmania".

I love compiling, over and over again, my favourite albums of all time. If I can't get to sleep, it's a good exercise which always sends me off. Of course, it's an arbitrary exercise too - when you have listened to things hundreds of times, there can be no number one and the positions constantly shift.

1 ALL SHOOK DOWN - The Replacements
2 #1 RECORD - Big Star
3 LIFES RICH PAGEANT - R.E.M
4 NIXON - Lambchop
5 (MUSIC FOR THE UNREALISED FILM SCRIPT) DUSK AT CUBIST CASTLE - The Olivia Tremor Control
6 COPPER BLUE - Sugar
7 EXILE IN GUYVILLE - Liz Phair
8 SOMETHING/ANYTHING - Todd Rundgren
9 LOVELESS - My Bloody Valentine
10 STEVE MCQUEEN - Prefab Sprout

11 AJA - Steely Dan
12 CROOKED RAIN, CROOKED RAIN - Pavement
13 BANDWAGONESQUE - Teenage Fanclub
14 FINN - Finn Brothers
15 STANDS FOR DECIBELS - The dBs
16 DOOLITTLE - The Pixies
17 HOLLAND - The Beach Boys
18 IN THE AEROPLANE OVER THE SEA - Neutral Milk Hotel
19 COURT AND SPARK - Joni Mitchell
20 YS - Joanna Newsom

"Holland" is only someone's favourite Beach Boys record when they have listened to Pet Sounds so many times that they never ever need to hear it again.

PS There is a rule when I make these lists - one album per artist.
PPS Some of these records I got on "twofers" - I don't know where #1 Record by Big Star ends and Radio City begins, and I don't know where Stands For Decibels by the dBs turns into Repercussion. But if you care about sounds you should own them all!

Colouring tips for beginners

I wrote the following tips to help a friend colour her comics in Photoshop. I don't know if she'll actually find them helpful but if you, like me, have a slapdash attitude to colouring comics that basically comes down to "once I've filled all the white bits, I'm done", maybe this will help.

(PC users substitute the world 'ctrl' for 'apple')

COLOURING COMICS THE SCARY GO ROUND WAY

1. Start with a 2-bit image so it is just black and white pixels, then convert to RGB or CMYK mode. You can either rub out your pencil lines or tit about with the threshold value on your scanner.

2. Select all the white areas with the magic wand (deselect 'contiguous'), then hide selection edges (View > Show > Selection edges) (it is useful to set a shortcut for this - apple-comma is usually free)

3. Fill away with the paint bucket, with 'anti-alias' deselected! I recommend only using colours out of the CMYK palette with one eye on eventually printing things.

4. Use a thin pencil tool line to join up any gaps in your linework as you go round. Deselect and reselect after you draw a black line as you will inevitably hit the black and accidentally colour the little line you just drew.

5. Keep deselecting and reselecting the white as you go, in the end you will have little isolated islands of white selected and often you can just use the square tool to plough colour over them.

6. It is fastest to learn and use keyboard shortcuts so you can go round quickly, clicking menus is annoying and they get in the way

I - eyedropper
B - brush/pencil
G - paintbucket
Apple-D - deselect all
W - magic wand (set tolerance to 3, turn anti-aliasing off)
D - default colours (black foreground, white background)
X - switch foreground and background colours
U - shape tool (set to 'fill pixels)

I hope this saves you the hundreds of hours I wasted before I reached this way of doing things! If you are conscientious about colour, you probably have your own way of doing things, but it probably takes you more than 45 minutes per page!

Bench press a million

Idea for a rap:

"Driving in my Volvo
Listening to Polvo"

It's currently a very short rap.

DEAR BBC,

Yesterday on Radio 4 there was a programme about comics. I was very disappointed not to be asked, since after all I am the great white hope of British comics, also extremely erudite, and a show-off. My head is enormous, both physically and figuratively. Adding insult to injury, he show was presented by Michael Rosen, whose books of poetry fostered in the young me my fierce love of rhyme and the deathless drive to make things scan at all costs. So, BBC, next time you want to speak to the "next generation of British comics artists", just call me up, I have all the answers (none of the answers) and I never mark a pause with a long, drawn out "urrrrrr" because I was trained by the best.

My disappointment at not being fêted by your network will not stop me listening to the Today programme, as I find the sound of John Humphreys shouting at people an excellent alarm clock.

Yours sincerely,
John Allison

DONE also DUSTED

I have finished fooling with my yaks and wendigos, it now says a nice legible oh no.

The bearded model is kind of an indie rock tramp I gave 50p to in Chorlton.

Oh no

I designed a Yak-Wendigo war shirt but it might be a bit crazy. Have a look!



Given that the above took me more than two hours, I am reluctant to post the five minute wonder I followed it up with. It was probably closer to four minutes.

A to-do

During most years of Scary Go Round, I manage maybe two stories that I'm proud of, one that was all right, and the other 25 or so weeks of the year show off my well-developed skills in the field of wheelspinning. Most creative endeavours - especially those mounted alone - are patchy. But I think the two stories I started the year with this year were some of my best work, getting away from the sicklier aspects of the "old" comic that I've definitely outgrown. However, by the law of averages, that means... the worst is yet to come. I do have a particularly good yarn with which to finish the year, but what do I do until October?

Here are the creatively mundane storylines currently on the table.

1. (Note: I started writing stupid fake storylines and the first one I came up with was brilliant, I am a genius).
2. Melanie buys some chairs, has to return them because they are an inch too short for the table in question
3. Amy and the ingrown toenail
4. (Number four also bordered on sublime in its idiocy)

In conclusion, I am the king of comics, I am best, I ♥ me.

I saw a girl with a bag that said 'I ♥ me' yesterday and I was furious that I did not make it to the screenprinter's first.

He is the smallest

Sometimes I have a tshirt design idea and it doesn't really work but it makes a nice drawing. For some reason I pictured a cat litter tray as a superhero chest emblem (I don't really know why). Then I put a little cat in it. Then I named it 'Brian, The Smallest Cat In The World'. Now I will close the file and never look at it again.

Redux

I changed "boobi3s" to "hello" on my Maths Is Easy shirt because when it came down to it, I would not wear a shirt with "boobies" written on it and if I won't wear it, I won't make it any more.

Self-respect is a party that I am holding at my house and to which I have invited myself.

Shirt on sale now y'all!

Musicology

Today I purchased the new record by Times New Viking. Now I have been in the trenches of rock for a long time, but never have I heard so good a record recorded so badly. Bands like No Age and Times New Viking certainly have a way with ear-shredding feedback. Doubtless* this is some kind of sonic comment on today's super-compressed, unlistenable mainstream albums.

I am sure you have heard of the loudness war. What, you haven't? Then click the link! I couldn't tell why modern major label albums were giving me a headache but this explained it to me.

Times New Viking gave me a headache for a completely different reason. But I kind of liked it! Now, the most ferocious squall of feedback I have ever had to suffer was when I listened to the entire ouevre of So So Many White White Tigers all the way through, twice, on their Myspace page. It was the same thrill of pure, adrenalised terror I used to get listening to John Peel back in the day.

I must warn you that the link above is not for weak minds, and that I found the band when investigating the mercifully brief musical career of "No Condom? Whatever". You have been warned &etc

*By "doubtless" I mean "wouldn't it be nice if".

Hey Boffins Listen Up

Here's a question to tax the smartest mind. Ten years ago, you never saw a "surge protector" on sale in the UK. Given the nature of UK 240AC home wiring, and that all plugs are fused, aren't surge protectors completely unnecessary for a home computer? To the best of my understanding, the only way you could fry your computer with a surge was via a phone line plugged into an old school modem. And that could only happen if lightning struck something (I don't know, the postman? I'm not a scientist.)

Who will answer my parochial surge question?

Who will be a hero?

Time tunnel

I designed this last week after making today's comic. It seemed the right thing to do! That first sentence makes it sound like I can travel in time, which I can, but only forward (like every other stumblebum).



I am going to begin a gradual cull of a lot of the long-in-the-tooth designs in the tshirt store. It appears to be time for a new broom!

ADDENDUM: Somehow I typed an "E" when I was meant to type a number 3. Should I leave it in for the sake of serendipity? Or might I drive the obsessive compulsive off a cliff like lemmings?

Bell

Working on the repeatedly requested Easter Bell shirt today.

The magic hour

I can't believe it's April already. Everything I do seems to take ages and yet the months are whipping by so quickly. Soon I will be trying to eat steak with one tooth and riding around in a bathchair with a blanket over my knees, steering with a kind of front-mounted wheel-rudder. by George, that day can't come fast enough! Apart from the tooth thing, brush your teeth everybody and don't eat too many sweets.

Hm now, what news what news.

Adding the comments feature to the Scary Go Round site was very dangerous for me, I have thin skin and hate criticism. After all, when you have buried your neuroses good and deep in the pit of your stomach, it's not fair of people to dig them up, print them on a tshirt and dance in front of your weeping eyes. But I have been pleased with the good manners and lack of bad language among the commenters. Maybe society will be okay for a little while yet!

That said, almost every day, someone will write a question about Erin Winters. Here's an exclusive for blog readers: that is a character who is never, ever, coming back. I have written why at length in Scary Go Round book 6 (in which she features prominently) so I guess you'll have to read it to discover my tedious thoughts on the matter.

On the subject of book 6, hopefully the wait won't be much longer. I have made it to 240/400 in my postcard project but my lord, what a slog. I have drawn a lot of Shelleys now. An AWFUL lot of Shelleys.

An awful awful lot of Shelleys.

Small hobbies: "wrong video"

Pop videos are thought to be a noble art, but I find that you can play almost any, unrelated performance (muted, obviously) in accompaniment to a song and create an eerily accurate promo clip. It doesn't really matter if the words and singing are wrong so long as the instruments are about right.

I was listening to the new (amazingly not awful at all) REM record while watching this with the sound down and it seemed right!

In my defence, I had to draw something very complicated this morning so my mind might not be firing on all (or any) cylinders.

Hence, "politesse"

I redesigned my website yesterday using CSS. See, I got a letter from the government the other day, opened it, read it, it said that I hadn't learned a new web technique since 2001. I was going to write back and say that CSS always winds up being a right pig's ear in one browser or another but I tried it anyway and it seems to work. In the two browsers I tested it in. Which did not include "Intanet Explorer".

Whenever I redesign my site, one person will write and say "why did you change it mang, I liked it better before". Of course you liked it, sir, you were extremely used to it. I on the other hand have to look at that site several times a day and had gone past your simple appreciation of it. I was sick of it. That is why the colour scheme is now alien, the fonts outlandish, and the layout obscenely futuristic. I never wanted to see any feature of that site ever again in my lifetime. As a result, neither will you.

Though actually, I didn't change the layout. I like the way it is, honest, simple and true. Why not try the site in a Netscape Navigator 2 emulator for a time-warping trip into history?

Opinions I formed after judgement had gone to bed #1

"Stephanie Flanders is too hot for Newsnight."

But now Stephanie Flanders is chief economics correspondent for the BBC! She's going to RUIN the BBC with her FANCY WAYS.

Stephanie Flanders: the tip of what I fear is an enormous personal iceberg, where already clearly visible over the meniscus is Jenny Scott from the Daily Politics.

This post is brought to you courtesy of the "economists your dad would have had a crush on" desk.


"John that is quite enough of that."

Restricted dance moves

The blog is going to be quiet for the next week or so but will resume in earnest thereafter. In the meantime I have the UK Webcomix Thing in London to deal with and the upcoming visit of Dr McNinja and Mama Monardo with their strange foreign ways that will turn my town upside down.

I hope a few of the loyal blog readers will be able to come and see me in London on Saturday, when I will be bearing all before me like a Dickensian waif just evicted from the poorhouse. I posted this list on the front page of the site already but here is what I will have with me (in descending price order):

* Giraffe canvas prints (ltd run of 20, 10 available, 30 x 60cm)
* All 32 pages of my Ghosts book original artwork for sale
* All the Scary Go Round collections - including the out of print Blame the Sky and Looks Brains & Everything.
* Some fancy velcro topped Shelley bags - for a lady!
* My roughs for whole weeks of comics sold in fives
* Ghosts and Girlspy (I found five in the cupboard!) books
* Buttons and stickers
* Postcards
* Leftover San Diego minicomics that were making a mess of the place

Anyway I have worn out my brain preparing for this so be kind when you see my small, wan face looking up at you.

Grey skies

When I looked in the mirror this morning, I noticed that my hair is going pretty grey! Soon I will be unable to move among the young because they will find me out and tar and feather me. I would move to a lighthouse right now if I only had the money (in order to see out my old age in dignity and seclusion) but property prices prevent such drastic measures. So I suppose I had better go to the chemist and get one of those products I have seen advertised all my life. You know what I am talking about. No not suicide pills!



Now sure, Just For Men is the market leader. You kind of slop it on your head and suddenly a lady touches your dyed, lying hair because you are Young Again. But what about the classic alternative - Grecian 2000!



Grecian 2000 comes in a tube so I guess if I felt self-conscious and old in the street I could keep it in my pocket and whip it out for a topical application.

Of course the other option is to go peroxide blond. It's fashionable, hip and so hot right now. See below:



This is a difficult time for me, so I hope you can help me decide how to grow old gracefully. And don't laugh at me! This will be you one day, decrepit and feeble!

PS I find wigs and hats itchy so they are out.

Postcard frenzy

My 400 postcard project is one quarter finished! Here's a photo of progress so far...

Kinder Surprise Witch

Yesterday I bought a Kinder Surprise egg and from it came a witch on wheels with an articulated jaw that cackles as you push her along. I cannot imagine that a more fitting item could have sprung forth from such an egg and the five minutes I spent grappling with the plastic tub within just added to the pleasure of receiving the witch. Today for my postcard project (current total 55/400) I am going to draw ten witches.

On another matter altogether, I like to read Pitchfork every day because it's a very good place to find new music. But some of their reviews are an extraordinary exercise in saying absolutely nothing at all. Someone clearly typed about 400 words here but at the end I challenge anyone to be any the wiser as to what it is like.

My favourite phrases:
"dialed-up vocal presence"
"this practically demands a footnoted lyric sheet"
"you suspect he's play-acting as much as he is singing"
"...turns that churning spoken-word passage into the skeleton for a celebratory sliver of symphonic electro"

A score is given (8.4) but as anyone who ever bought a Deerhunter or Beach House record can attest, Pitchfork's scores are assigned using the same numerology pioneered by lovecalculator.com and may not be based on merit. On a good day I can read the synopses on the front page and guess the score to within .3 for each one.

Mind you, last week someone described my comics as creating a sense of aphasia, in that they recognised the words used but no longer understood what they meant. No one is innocent!

Suicide strike

As my books usually take about six years to break even, while the last couple of hundred copies sell out in 2 days flat, I have decided to try something new for the book 6 pre-order. I have to sell about 400 to break even, so the first 400 will come with a random hand-drawn postcard by me. Some are felt-tip line-drawings, some are done with brush markers or pencils, a few are in colour, I may paint a couple to be won like golden tickets. My question to you, readers, before I break my body and mind forever in completing this task, is does this provide the necessary frisson to speed your early purchase?

OTHER BUSINESS
A few weeks ago I may have lightly poked fun at XKCD. This was done out of pure jealousy at its enormous readership and minimal artistic effort, probably after a day spent agonising over drawing someone's shoulders correctly. It was not a very nice thing to do. Randall Munroe is just a man doing his level best in the world and receiving towering wheelbarrows of money and gems as a result.

I am not as successful as Randall Munroe because, instead of making humorous comics about lofty scientific and mathematic principles, my comics are emotionally impenetrable thousand-yard stares into the void masquerading as hi-jinks. From now on, this is going to change.

(Thinks for a minute, I do not know anything about science, all my expertise lies in skylarking and tomfoolery, what have I done &etc)

I have been forced by circumstances to change back.

The tallest entry of all time

It hasn't all been ACTING ACTING ACTING and drinking acting juice round here the last few days. I have also been working on my UK Webcomix Thing limited print. I don't know how many of these I'm going to make yet, but you can have a look at it. I abandoned my country pride idea but what I finally came up with seems reasonable. I just wish it wasn't one of five big jobs I have to finish near simultaneously.

There Will Be Ham

Well, I saw "There Will Be Blood" on Friday. What a preposterous film it was. Maybe Daniel Day Lewis is the greatest actor of his generation, or maybe, just maybe, he serves up slices of the thickest ham ever cut and lays them on as thickly as ham has ever been laid on.

Anyway, I drew some diagrams to explain the film immediately after watching it, these should save you three hours and the price of a ticket.



I will say that the three hours passed quickly, it sure looked pretty. But it was total twaddle.

It's my lucky day

Did you hear that Nicholas Gurewitch is winding up Perry Bible Fellowship? This is fantastic news. All I need is the following things to happen and I will be the creator of the greatest comic on the internet:

Chris Onstad (Achewood) decides to concentrate on carpentry, Jimmy Carter '80 style
Kate Beaton (Kate Beaton) retires to Orkney to breed bonxies
Kelly Vivanco (Patches) finally gets her call up to the US hang-gliding team (she's so close!)
Aaron Diaz (Dresden Kodak) announces his "fingerpainting period" has begun
Steven Cloud (BOASAS) vanishes in Mongolia
Dorothy Gambrell (Cat & Girl) takes public office
Meredith Gran (Octopus Pie) and Chris Hastings (Dr McNinja) destroy each other in a blaze of anger and recrimination
and
James Turner (Beaver & Steve) will go pearly full-time

Do you suckas not understand? I will be the last man standing, ride your "talent", "ability" and "skill" all you like, but the tenacious battleship barnacle of webcomics (me) will not be denied!

Phoo Action

The first artist who I ever sat down and tried to copy was Jamie Hewlett of Tank Girl/Gorillaz fame. Very early in his career (I suppose 1987 or so) he used to do spot illustrations for Commodore User. Commodore User was a bit rub compared to Zzap!64 but I was fascinated with his dirty-looking, angular illustrations that seldom bore the faintest relation to the article they accompanied. I was only 11 or 12, but there seemed to be something vulgar and insane about them that I wasn't getting from Fantastic 4 or the Avengers. Or The Gambols.

So I enjoyed BBC3's Hewlett adaptation "Phoo Action" last week, and I'm pleased that a series has been commissioned. The hour-long pilot wasn't the best TV show ever made but it had a lot of promise, and it looked fantastic. I'm sure most people who watched it were mystified, but I revelled in Jamie Winstone's perfect Hewlett-girl look and the beautifully silly villains. And despite the fact that the heroine's main power was rooting around in her magic hotpants and retrieving items, you could have watched it with your mum without having to avert your eyes or pretend that you do not understand what is going on at any point.

I wish there was a symbol in the TV guide that indicated post-watershed shows like that. "This episode of The Shield contains no up against the wall lady-man activity slash smoking crack through an empty eye socket". What a relief!

Back

I don't know why I'm making so many blog posts at the moment. I'm sure you long for the days when I used to update once every three weeks.

Anyway I have made the back cover for book 6, a clear indicator that this dang thing is on the way soon!

Me and the boys from Brussels

I had that Jacques Delors on the phone the other day after I complained about the USA constantly fingerprinting me and making me queue for a long time. "Johnny," he said, "you have done more for freedom and transatlantic relations in the last 9 years than any other man alive." Of course I thanked him - it's nice to be appreciated.

"It's a cuss of the first order from the USA to make you stand in a queue and maybe miss a connecting flight. We'll bite back. Leave it to me and my crazy good legislating skills." Here's what happened.

I'm sorry I started this now. Jacques is a good lad, but he's over-eager. Now what are we going to do?

PS Happy Valentines Day to everyone who does not have a sweetheart. I am not going to kiss you all because I don't want to catch a cold. Divide yourselves into boys and girls and work out who you want to kiss, school disco style. It will be fine.

Oh-woah country pride

I'm working on a print for the UK Webcomix Thing in March. It'll probably be a very limited thing on canvas (maybe 10 or 12) in a non-standard size. Anyway, after several countrified drafts, here's the final rough:



I see Shelley's country style as being like a very distracted Dolly Parton, while Esther is kind of a dread Crystal Gayle of the night.



Also on that page was a picture of Barbara Bosson in Hill Street Blues, I'm obsessed with her big specs and huge wall of hair. She must have had some kind of super powers. The missing speech bubble for the picture on the right says "it's municipal!"

It's been a pleasure

I love American freedom as many of you know. I salute the eagle and would personally dry his tears on Old Glory. But travelling into the country just gets worse and worse. Here's why I'm not attending any conventions in the USA this year or for the forseeable future. It's starting to get silly.

Crafternoon

I did a painting today to test some techniques Kelly Vivanco showed me, I post it here for completeness! It's 11x16" on canvas, dimension fans.



UPDATE: The auction is go!

More snoozing and losing

Thanks for your help with the mathematical deal between snoozing and losing. Armed with what I was told, I started on the design. But it came out... sort of nondescript:



I can only describe what had happened five minutes later as "inexplicable".



I think I've used up all my brains for this week. See you next week.

Snoozers vs losers

A few people have written and asked for a shirt based on this strip, and actually for once I think it would make a good one! But I don't know how to express "snoozing directly correlates to losing" mathematically. I can't remember any maths at all. I can't even do matrices or vectors or simultaneous equations any more. What I hope is that in the comments to this post, someone will help me as best they can.

Thanks maths.
THATHS.

Beatmasters and Merlin MC come correct

Who's in the house?
A Desmond hat made by Rachel Thompson is in the house.

Fellow ups

Well, thank you for all the responses to the previous post. I hope I can address them for you.

SUBSCRIPTIONS
------------
Scary Go Round launched as a subscription-only comic in 2002! It was about as successful as asking people to pay with their own teeth. Two years after the two week long debacle of subscriptions, people were still finding the comic and saying "hey mang John Allison I thought you stopped doing comics".

BONUS MATERIAL FOR THE SUBSCRIBING FAITHFUL
---------------------------------------
All bonus efforts are currently directed into making the daily comic good, and the blog must remain free otherwise where would I wail at length before admitting "I was wroooongggg".

BOOK 6
------
I now feel better about book 6 and have some hope in my heart. But I will do a pre-order to allow people to flex their patron muscles as this seems to be what is desired.

DONATION DRIVES
---------------
I might have a one-off NPR-style pledge drive if I stop feeling a bit weird about things like that. I think the comic is good enough now that it is okay to do something like that once a year. But I'd still want to create a kind of reward program and I know the rewards would be rotten.

Scary Go Round book 6 news

I spent today laying out Scary Go Round book 6. It comprises stories 35-40, which runs from Crowley in love through to the ghost cube halloween thing.

Reading back through the whole Super Crisis Quests thing today, I get the sense that I wasn't at my best. I tried hard but it didn't quite come off. If I had another stab at it, I could probably do it a lot better, but such is the peril of a daily comic!

I suppose what I really want to know is, is anyone that bothered about the collections any more? There's nothing special about a book of Scary Go Round comics, I've released about ten. You've been kind enough to read them on the web, which is all the indulgence I ask.

I'm getting tired of bellyaching about merchandise and I bet you're getting tired of hearing me bellyache about it. But I worked out last night that if every reader paid one english pence a week for Scary Go Round, I'd not have to sell anything at all. It felt like a sad statistic. The people who read the blog are probably paying hundreds of those 1ps each, wouldn't it be a lovely world if you didn't have to?

A world where a unicorn was President of the United States of America.

Stick'r stick'r stick'r

Can you believe I've almost run out of the "Oh Prease" stickers? You'd think I was giving them away! Oh wait, I am. So I have designed another one. I hope you like it but if you don't, I won't be putting out too many buckets to catch my tears.

Actual conversation from earlier in the day

"That new tote bag is great! I bet you are rolling in money, John. Give me some of your money".

"I have sold 7."

"I bet this never happens to the man who draws the stick man comic about mathematics."



Actually, I did that wrong, didn't I. Drawn correctly it's more like this:



(The brutal compression applied to these images is indicative of disdain.)

Get Dancin' '08

Has it really been so long? I am pleased to offer the full seven minute version of Get Dancin' (parts 1 and 2!!) by Disco Tex And The Sex-o-lettes for people who didn't wear out their ears last time I suggested you listen to it. This is like a secret club and not everyone is going to want to be a member.

And, AND

I am working on a new tote bag, this a rough deal with placeholder writing and no colours but I liked it enough to want to put it on here. It's quite ladylike. Ladies-ish.

Triple bill of shame

I have had this one in the works for a while. I entitled it "Prisoner of Conscience In A Post 9-11 Artscape (Analogue 4)"



Designs which failed on this occasion included "Picnic Riot", "Bear On A Chopper Bike" and "Flying Saucer Race". I am still looking at "I Saw A Fish"... a tricky design which may falter on the cold concrete doorstep of public opinion.

Blards

Here's a link to the page with all the cards I did, it's a bit of a bandwidth-er so I'm going to take it down in a week.

BLARDS BLARDS BLARDS! The two broken images at the end are The Boy and Hugo, who I never drew.

In other news, I think Quebecor World are about to go into administration so I'm not desperate to publish my next book with them. This has led, alas, to DELAY.

I had a dream, I had an awesome dream 1

Awesome is an adjective and one that only Lionel Richie is in a position to use every day.

Last night I dreamt that I had been invited to a launch party for Black Kids' (hot rock tips for 08!) new single. But while the single was played (I love dreams where you hear music that doesn't actually exist), the main thrust of the evening was pushing Black Kids' range of associated merchandise. I am proud to recount what you could get:

1. "Action Van" in three sizes
2. Speedboat being ridden by plastic stag
3. Pickup truck
4. Limited edition set of two pickup trucks whose cabs were threaded through one another like a chain (I was given the hard sell on this one)
5. 12" remix record and accompanying embroidered crochet blanket.

I woke up at 4.10am in kind of a panic. What can all this mean?

Cards cards

You may remember that I mooted a set of Scary Go Round playing cards about a year and a half ago, a project that I abandoned due to cost. I can't remember if I ever showed the artwork (which was 95% done when I gave up - great use of time!) If I didn't and you'd like to see it, make some effusive noises in the comments. It was the last concerted Adobe Illustrator project I did and came out really nice.

He's predictable

Today I felt the urge to paint for the first time in about 2 years - probably no surprise as the current comics are a lot more computer intensive than they've been for about... 2 years!



I guess I'll eBay it, so if you want it, keep an eye out for an auction announcement later this week! (As always, the flash is a bit brutal - it looks a lot nicer in person).

Recent panics

"Omigod omigod do I still own Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morrisette?"

You, you, you oughta know whether you still own Jagged Little Pill, John.

The answer: YEAH!

I am going to listen to it and report back what the twelve years since I listened to it have done to this particular disc.

UPDATE (about two minutes later): I don't think I can keep going much longer

UPDATE (a further minute later): this has to stop right now

"Omigod omigod do I still own Fairweather Johnson by Hootie and the Blowfish?"

&etc

Creative decisions

I decided about two months ago that I wasn't going to censor and exorcise 98% of the Anglo-centric references from Scary Go Round, as I have done for the last 9+ years of cartooning. I have always taken pleasure from learning about American culture from US media and it is time for a valve to be fitted in the opposite direction.

You're very welcome to write to me if you don't understand something! I will not, however, reply.

Wait, no, here's my reply: INFANT PAVEMENT

Let's not mess it up

Happy new year, blog readers. Thank you for continuing to read my self-regarding nonsense. I see a bright future on the horizon, harnessing plentiful bamboo, spandex jackets and clean, cheap geothermal energy. It's the future, we made it.

Good-bye 2007

I have returned from my Christmas revelries and in mere moments will place my nose on the grindstone once more in preparation for 2008. I hope the diversion of my end-of-year list was tolerable. Here it is in full, including numbers 21-30 but excluding numbers 31-42 which to be honest I just put in order for my own amusement. Yeah I heard that "Neon Bible", it would have made a pretty good 7" single. But no I didn't hear that new Animal Collective "Strawberry Jam" deal, I'm saving it for a slack week.

1 WIDOW CITY - Fiery Furnaces
2 RISE ABOVE - Dirty Projectors
3 NIGHT FALLS OVER KORTEDALA - Jens Lekman
4 MIRRORED - Battles
5 GA GA GA GA GA - Spoon
6 EASY TIGER - Ryan Adams
7 TONES OF TOWN - Field Music
8 FRIEND OPPORTUNITY - Deerhoof
9 SPIRIT IF - Broken Social Scene Presents Kevin Drew
10 THE STAGE NAMES - Okkervil River
11 STICKING FINGERS INTO SOCKETS EP - Los Campesinos!
12 IN RAINBOWS - Radiohead
13 PERSON PITCH - Panda Bear
14 UNDER THE BLACKLIGHT - Rilo Kiley
15 IMAGINE OUR LOVE - Lavender Diamond
16 DYNAMICO - Mitch Easter
17 SCRIBBLE MURAL COMIC JOURNAL - A Sunny Day In Glasgow
18 THE PIRATE GOSPEL - Alela Diane
19 WIZARDS OF AHHHS EP - Black Kids
20 LIKE THE LINEN - Thao Nguyen
-
21 A BRIGHTER BEAT - Malcolm Middleton
22 TIME ON EARTH - Crowded House
23 BOXER - The National
24 MOUNT EERIE PTS 6+7 - Mount Eerie
25 23 - Blonde Redhead
26 WINCING THE NIGHT AWAY - The Shins
27 THE STARS AND SUNS SESSIONS - Chikita Violenta
28 WILD MOUNTAIN NATION - Blitzen Trapper
29 ARE THE DARK HORSE - The Besnard Lakes
30 SOMEWHERE, ANYWHERE - New Buffalo

I do have some (very very) modest diversions for Monday and Tuesday, but regular comics resume Wednesday.

Albums not of the year

I spent Saturday compiling my albums of the year for 2007. Shelley has submitted some very thoughtful reviews this year - she's getting very good at this! Well, very good for someone whose thoughts aren't by any means well organised. Look out for them week of December 24.

But this year I heard a lot of records that I had missed on previous annual trawls. I've put an asterisk next to the ones you can get on emusic.com - take advantage of their 50 free tracks new subscriber deals, it's a very good site if you like music on indie labels.

TOP TEN ALBUMS NOT OF THE YEAR

1. THE GLOW PART 2 - The Microphones *
2. EVERCLEAR - American Music Club *
3. SECAUCUS - The Wrens
4. ADELIE LAND - Handsomeboy Technique *
5. 完全な昼間 - Kabbadi Kabbadi Kabbadi Kabbadi
6. DOG PROBLEMS - The Format *
7. SING THE GREYS - Frightened Rabbit *
8. COSMIC THING - The B-52s
9. MEL - East River Pipe *
10. WAITING FOR THE TIME TO BE RIGHT - The Brother Kite *

Now I realise that number 8 is a bit controversial - there was certainly a point in my life when I thought I'd be physically sick if I ever heard "Love Shack" again. It probably coincided with the period of my life where I had a series of "bad pints". But it's such a pretty, overlooked album and you can get it for a pound almost anywhere. LET'S RE-EVALUATE Y'ALL.

Terrible realisations that may cost me a wife

I just realised that when I air-drum at my desk with my Wacom pens (I have so many!), I do the "Meg White head thing". I can't help it, it makes drumming fun! NO ONE MUST EVER SEE THIS.

Experience ought to help you tell but it really doesn't

I have been practising some more with the Cintiq and Manga Studio, with a view to using them for my next side project. I stuck my finger at random in 2003's comics and redrew this one.

No A-loha(n)

I've had word in, it's official: from 12pm today you may now listen to your Christmas albums.

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.