Early scrapings

I had a go at the Book 7 cover today, it didn't quite work out how I wanted, so I'll have another go (probably another few goes) but I thought I'd put it up here for posterity anyway.

AAPL EN FUEGO #2

I know you have been wondering what has happened to the Internet's hottest new tech comic strip "AAPL EN FUEGO", well another installment has just arrived, I wonder what Mr Steve 'No Belt, No Problem' Jobs is up to now...



Oh my sweet lordy yes, the internet is safe once more.

Oh do stop complaining John

Or maybe it is the late-period Zack from Saved By The Bell, I don't know. Either way, in 2008 it's box office poison.

It's over

I am conceding defeat and admitting that I have no more shirt ideas left. Last week Chris Hastings and I sat down to design tshirts, a lovely afternoon of brotherly brainstorming. After about my fifteenth idea, Chris said, "these ideas are all perfect things that no one would ever want to buy".

In case you don't believe me, here are three designs selected at random:



Acknowledging that the elephant in the room for the last week has been the law of diminishing returns, I have spent the afternoon rolling around on the floor wailing. But I am all right now. After all, this existential crisis has been going on for years.

I'm sure the comments on this cheerful post will be full of disproportionately huge monetary offers from the great media organisations so don't you worry about me. I will be fine.

ADDENDUM: Reader Noel Clark sent me an Applecat pumpkin to cheer me up, here viewed from two angles.

Power from the needle to the plastic

I'm back from the twin threats of the American wedding and my brother's stag night feeling strong. At one of these events I explored my ability to blast away with a shotgun and let me tell you, Sarah Palin was right, that's livin'. See below my vanquished foes:



It turns out that I am the kind of man you want on your side when it kicks off. Who knew?

Regular blogging will now recommence. Cutting the ribbon... ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen: MR CLIFF RICHARD!

Ten zesty years

Today I'm celebrating ten years of making comics on the internet. How am I celebrating? By being drunk all day. A cup of wine instead of orange juice, Baileys on my cornflakes instead of milk, irish coffee and a vodka jelly shot as a sharpener to finish. For someone who barely drinks any more, this is very uncomfortable, but binge-drinking is all the rage and I need to get my spurs. Hopefully my spurs aren't on a high shelf as I am having problems standing up.

Of course, I am telling a lie. I am actually working furiously hard before I take off for the Dumbrella Wedding Of The Year in New York in two days! My good friend Andrew Bell is marrying a special lady and I will be there in my suit, top hat, spats, velvet lined cape, cummerbund and woad. The dress code is severe but Andy promises pomp and pageantry of the first order and we must all do our part. Jeff Rowland and Tallahassee are going to dress as Herne The Hunter and the Lady of the Lake, Steven Cloud intends to adopt the livery of Robin Hood, Jon Rosenberg is going as Stringer Bell from The Wire and Rich Stevens says he is going to be "skyclad", I guess we'll find out what that means on the big day!

The Scary Go Round front page is a big mess of gratitude today but I imagine the blog readers are the most faithful readers (or the most in need of diversion) so thank you, blog readers! I'd draw you a picture but the jelly shot is kicking in now and I can't actually hold a pen.

Explode-o-time

For reasons beyond my control, yesterday I sought out the cheapest watch in town. It had to be a Casio. Of course I bought it in Argos, and I was pleased with my £7.99 efforts. That is until I put on my Casio F91W. Suddenly I was overcome by a sense of shame and ennui so powerful that I hooked my sweater over my wrist so that people could not see this craven timepiece. My old watch was nice. This one... seemed nasty. Reassurances to the contrary warmed my heart but did not soothe my mind.

That evening, my brother called and read generously to me from Wikipedia about the cheapest watch in Casio's arsenal. Why not visit the Wikipedia page for the F91W and scroll past the technical details to the long section marked claimed use in terrorism.

That's right. I, the Freedom Eagle, have bought and now wear the watch that hates America.


"Infidels!"

Ling-wa fran-ka Ming-Na

One thing I know in my heart is that there are about 80000 English-language webcomics. But do other countries have a similar tradition in their own languages? France and Belgium are hotbeds of comic art, but do they have their own equivalents of "Control Delete Alt" or "Very Good Cats"? Is there a Latvian "Overcompensating"? And whither the Polish "Order of Some Sticks"? Surely the Russians, the leetest haxxors of all, have their own tall-eyed "Gurl Genius". Are you foreign? Perhaps you know the answer!

As a fact bribe, here's a picture that will resonate in any ancient society's cultural memory.

Turn, karmic wheel

I think that if I could choose one perfect mode of existence, I would be Rag Dolly Anna. Now I know this is a controversial choice, I am a grown man and people are going to be crossing the road to avoid me after this. But watch this instructional film and rejoin me on the other side.



Rag Dolly Anna has a wicked time, all the time. She is only small but her concerns are few. She gets to:

1. See a fresh steam roller
2. Chillax with a nice bunny
3. Talk to a friend on the telephone
4. Push a little wheelbarrow (friends of mine know my love of the barrow)
5. Hang out with lovely old Pat Coombes
6. Have, not to put too fine a point on it, "a bunch of paper roses in her big straw hat".

Maybe the fact that someone drove into my car on Saturday causing a lovely crumpling effect, combined with the knowledge that my roof is leaking, has caused me to revert to an infantile state. I think someone had better send help, and fast.

AAPL EN FUEGO

"Tek humor" jpeg compressed to 30%

Radioface

Good homegrown home-made comedy is beginning to emerge on Youtube, proving that you can't keep an honest nation down because we are Good At This Sort Of Thing. Turn away, watery eye, from the sad fizog of BBC Three and watch a Radioface.

The vapidity of choice

Earlier this year I took one of my most popular and successful shirt designs, "I Am Your Secret Scary Friend", out in the yard and shot it. It was (I think) the first or maybe the second ever Scary Go Round shirt and it stayed on sale for five (count them), five years. That's a lot longer than blue Pepsi lasted for.

I was so sick of the sight of it, but the hot, seamy desire was still out there for what that shirt said about a person. So a new version is hours away from being on sale. It features a demond playing an organ and took roughly 100x longer than the original to draw.

Bathroom 4 / Tree 1

I was going to post more about the bathroom but it is hard to complain as apparently (for once) I hired someone really good at their job. The work is almost finished but today the fitter told me to cut down a tree. And what an experience it is for a man to cut down a tree, now I see what lumberjacking is all about. Crash, crash goes the mighty oak (leylandi) felled by man, the superior organism in every way. Who is laughing now, tree? Who is in a skip now, tree?

Having had a skip for two weeks, I began to get nervous about the expense of such a giant, rusty, metal extravagance. But I was informed that "you can keep them as long as you want within reason". WHAT HO! I said, because the skip-hire economy speaks to a long-lost England where fairness was a suit each man, woman and child donned before breakfast.

Funds allowing, I intend to start work on publication of Scary Go Round book 7 very soon*. I'm currently working on titles. After the brevity of "Ahoy Hoy", I intend to stretch out for the next one. "Dazed And Confused In Chinese Taipei"? "One Hundred Wet Legwarmers"? "The Blunderbuss That Couldn't Say No"? Who can say what I will christen this rotten baby.

*Please remember that this inevitably takes me 6 months, most of which are spent crying

Like a three-legged dog in search of a crutch

After a power meeting with Mr Andy Bell (who debated its "pervasive sense of magic"), I have made revisions to my poster. I post them purely for comparison.

Dragon mountain colour friends

I coloured in my dragon poster this morning. It's ochre-tastic, sienna-mungous and earth tones-tastic.



I also working on a new Secret Scary Friend shirt to replace the old one, which I was so sick of looking at. Here's my scrawly rough, which has some clues about the final shape of things.

Batdance

I attended Manchester Comix Collective's Drink and Draw this weekend and have the following to report: Batman. I drew a load of Batmans. I don't spend much time thinking about Batman and I've read only a couple of Batman comics ever, but apparently, I know all about him!

BATMAN



BATMAN RETURNS

Tabby Time

Since Christmas I've been drawing Scary Go Round on a Wacom Cintiq in Manga Studio,and hopefully the improvements have been clear for all to see. The ability to squash down someone's head that you've drawn 5% too big, or to nudge an eye over a bit at the pencilling stage, is invaluable to an incompetent like me.

But the sick fact of the Cintiq craze that has swept comickers worldwide is that they are very expensive and about as portable as an ironing board. Wacom introduced a twelve inch model for pros on the go, it cost precisely one arm and one leg, and rumour has it that when you put it in your hand luggage with a laptop, it consumes all available space that you might have used for a bottle of water, and improving book, and a clean pair of underpants.

Keen to take my show on the road every once in a while, I decided to look into Tablet PCs. Despite being a Mac user, I will use a Windows when the time is right. And as a skinflint, I like a second hand laptop. But the screens on a lot of the tablets available are rather mean - 1280x800 widescreens or even a particularly unkind 1024x768 on some models. And those vicious shiny screens! Does anybody like them?

I was going to get a new HP Pavillion 2500 thing and live with the resolution,the shiny screen and "Vista" which is apparently Windows 95 for the very young. But I couldn't spend £700 on something I'd use once a flood. So following careful research I found the Toshiba Portege M200!

Yes, this machine is my new deal. Yes, it is four years old, with a sound card unworthy of the name, one pitiful speaker and a very bad attitude toward 'hibernation'. It has no optical drive. But it has a super hi-res 4:3 1400x1040 screen that is a real pleasure to draw on and it flies in XP. Even after lavishing laptop stands, stupid flexible rubber keyboards, firewire pc cards, a recovery disk and a DVD-RW drive enclosure on it, I'd spent £320 on a machine with a nicer drawing area than the 12" Cintiq for half the price. It is my guess that you could probably do this too if you wanted to.

Best of all, it has lots of programmable buttons for your shortcuts. I like to hit the space bar and various keys to scrub around artwork quickly, but a lot of the consumer level tablets just seem to have "media buttons" that aren't a lot of help. The M200 has a little joystick that you can assign five functions to (per application, per orientation) and four more programmable buttons. If you can, you might as well just plug an external keyboard in, but it's still very handy.

I would suggest treating it like a drawing appliance and not ragging it to death (I always ragged my PCs to death back in the dangerous 1990s), but for the busy artist on the go, I would say that it more than does. It might seem strange to be writing a glowing review of an ancient piece of hardware but if you can find on e in good nick, this is still an excellent digital artist's tool.

Bathroom 3

Progress is going too well on my bathroom. I am nervous. I've yet to see a ne'er do well in my skip, nor hear the great sound of a supporting wall giving way along with a large part of the roof. But there's still time. I will say that my new bath tap is like a Dalek's nose and has an aerator which seems like a miracle to me because I am a simpleton. "Whuddahoppenadawadder" I said, like a big old rube. A big old Chaddy rube.

Books Rule was then, this is now

Here's a legit cleaned up Dr Dewey for the masses

Bathroom 2

Today was very exciting. A skip arrived (I learned that Canadians don't know what a skip is because they are all born with trucks) for the bathroom of the past. Of course, I took the opportunity to throw every unwanted item I own into it. That's what having a skip is all about (or rather, your neighbours having a skip).

My bathroom fitter is a LADY which is amazing. Usually a hairy arsed man is responsible for destruction around the home, but today there a civilised air about the place. It is like World War 2 and now I see how the war at home was won, with the sweat of sisters' brows.

Of course it is not all skip fun and gender equality. When the tiles came off, the wall beneath looked like ancient cake and had a similar consistency. Let us pray it can be "made good". Pray with me, blog readers. But the wobbly wall has almost been replaced and now feels sturdy enough to resist at least the initial Russian nuclear strike. Situated as I am just one mile from BAE Systems in Middleton, I will be the first webcartoonist to die in the coming conflict. So keep prayin'.

But progress is good and there is no need to "have kittens" today. I will return tomorrow with more of the same.

Bathroom 1

Bathroom madness has begun. I have saved up for almost a year to have my hideous bathroom remodelled and on Monday it begins. But already the fitter has come round and pressed on some walls and the walls wobbled (like an early eighties soap opera set) and said "John whoever built this house was quackers please can we have a million pounds". So cruel you say but they are not wrong, my house was bodged from top to bottom in 1989 by a maniac. To paraphrase Richard Herring, he was a "fucking idiot".

Today, when scraping away the old painted over wallpaper, I found some of his excellent plasterwork. What happens is that you tap it, and it falls off, then you fill in the hole with Polyfilla or wet toilet paper or just raw fury. I usually employ a mixture of all three. I was so cross that I got the wrong tube of goo out of the cupboard and used Polyfilla Woodflex, which will no doubt explode in the night as I used it on a wall that was not made of wood.

I will provide more bathroom updates every day of this no doubt epic tragedy. It will be like an episode of Grand Designs, meaning I will end up overbudget with four mortgages. Younger readers may well wish to take note.

Eat eat whale meat when you need a meaty treat

Here are some Real True History doodles. Who was Beowulf... and WHY?

I see you with your big harpoon, killing whales all afternoon

Thanks for the comments on prints and that. I was reminded during the course of the discussion that I used to do the odd small watercolour, and thought I'd do a couple this afternoon. Kate Beaton suggested I do a Blackbeard one (as a staunch lover of the sea) so here are the two I made. I'll probably put them on eBay once they are dry and I've trimmed the wiro tears off the top. Starting price, 100 pence.

Update: the eBay listings are up! Shelley here, Ryan & Blackbeard here.



(Click on the picture to zoom in)

A stiff sleeve

I've been making prints on Scary Go Round for a few years and in that time I've become aware of the merchandise novelty curve. When you release something new that you haven't done before, there's always a take-up for the new and novel thing - pretty much regardless of price and quality. As time goes on and you broaden the range, novelty decreases and you must ramp up quality to a professional level as you are competing with everybody else in the world who is good at making such items. When I sold hundreds of my first print in the first two weeks, I was competing with nobody. By the time I made the fourth, I was competing with Frank Kozic and Tara McPherson and of course, I lost very badly to them because they are great and I never take more than three hours over a picture, ever.

So I have been trying to improve my compositional skills and work out how better to serve the walls of a waiting world. I can't serve up any more stiff poses, and I probably have to take more than three hours over it. But I don't exactly know what people want format wise (artistically speaking, you have no choice).

1. Smaller vs larger
2. US paper sizes vs international paper sizes for easier, cheaper colonial framing
3. Do you like the canvas prints or are they too pricey (they are expensive to produce but they look great and last forever)
4. Do screenprints appeal, weird velvet papers etc, or do you prefer a more disposable artefact, maybe unsigned, that you can just tack up on a door and bin a couple of years later?

In conclusion here is what I am working on at the moment, it's historical and borderline hysterical. I look forward to some thoughts.

Well I never

I've had a lot of very positive email about Butcher, Baker and Candlestick Maker this weekend, which was unexpected. Ty Halley of Gtrood even drew fan art, which was extremely unexpected, thank you Ty!



I read an interview with Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics the other day where he says that he takes three hours to write each comic. I don't take three hours to write five comics! Ryan is operating on a level so far removed from me that to gaze upon him is to gaze upon a sort of Olympian god. His head in the clouds, one hand stopping the oceans from floating away into space as the world turns. His other hand writing a comic.

Father forgive me

Yesterday I was talking to Kate Beaton and I offered her the idea below free of charge. I have been watching David Starkey's 'Monarchy' series as you can probably tell from my idea, which is a nun exposing her bum to Ethelred the Unready.



With apologies to Kate, David Starkey, nuns, Denmark and anyone who has gone spontaneously blind.

You're The Mugs

I wonder if anyone reading this knows what "You're The Mugs" refers to. My brother is not allowed to enter this competition.

I have designed a mug for Café Grumpy in New York (visit their locations in Greenpoint and Chelsea and know that you have truly lived). New Yorkers can get down there and own some high quality porcelain. Drinking from it will cure your ills and water in this mug may turn into wine.



The design, which can kindly be described as "berserk", is a tribute to my favourite ever mug which I got from the Museum of Film, Photography and Television (as it was then known) in Bradford. In fact, I bought it twice, and would buy it again if I could. That mug featured a family misbehaving, including a baby pulling the guts out of a TV. The first one fell apart in the washing up bowl, the second rolled (how?) into the washing machine.

Reverse Mohawk Party

Peter Gabriel's first four solo albums are my favourite album covers. I don't own any of these records (or spend a lot of time thinking about Peter Gabriel to be honest!), but the covers make me want to buy them. I am thinking of hunting for them on vinyl so I can hang them on the wall. Visiting plumbers will fear for my mental health -- but LET THEM.



But which is best? Damp face, fingernails, melty mush or alien overlord? There's only one way to find out...

...FIGHT!

Sketchface

You may remember that last November I started drawing comics on A3 paper. I bought a £700 Epson scanner for the purpose! And 2 months later I stopped doing that because it was appallingly hard. I worked out that my scans worked out at £17 per comic - which is probably more than a print bureau would have charged you in 1983 when there was only one scanner in Britain (called "VALIANT 1").

For comparison I scanned about 600 comics on my £40 Canoscan. But it used to cut the bottom 1/3 of an inch of the page off, so I think Canon might actually owe me a considerable sum by now.

So to drag the average down, I scanned a page of my big sketch pad. I've been working on Shelley's diary comic style, as towards the end of the year you are going to be forced to sit through at least a week of this amateurish nonsense. Why not spend 30 seconds trying to work out exactly what I'm reaching for here. Then you can write me an email begging me not to do it.

Chorlton Fibre-fest 08 (Incorporating Macrobiotic Putsch 08)

Katie Rice has a very good tutorial for all you inkers out there. If your inks sometimes look a bit dead, follow her tips to feel better about yourself.

I know that many of you are eager to hear about the impending destruction of my bathroom. After all, it has been a couple of years since I last shoved a mangled appliance out into the yard and defaced it with Sharpies. Well, fear not. When papers have been signed, I will show you just how awful my bathroom is. It is going to give a lot of people a boost, your hovel will seem like a palace when you bear witness to the grout of 40,000 years, the improvised shower screen emergency run-off made out a piece of a venetian blind, the silly putty toilet and the AMAZING SUB-CARAVAN QUALITY SINK.

Thrills and delights await! Actually, photos of twenty-year-old cheap plastic sinks defaced with Sharpie await, but it's almost the same thing.

Painting day

Something you might not know about webcomic artist John Allison (me) is that he throws away 2/3 of paintings he does in blind fury. Here's one that made it to the blog, the foggy limbo between the wheelie bin and eBay. The price I've been able to sell things for on eBay has actually decreased steadily over the years, as my novelty declines and the market floods with the 6 paintings I have ever sold.



Yes it is painted on the bottom of a box and stands 57cm high. The exact same height as Gandhi! I would add that because I seem to do the exact same painting over and over again with only minor variations, the marketplace is right about me.

Left of the dill

Typically ornery, Paul Westerberg has released his best new songs since 2002's Stereo/Mono (and maybe since the late 80s) on a single 49 cent, 44-minute MP3 full of jarring cuts, songs played over each other and mangled cover versions. It's exactly the sort of record I want to hear! You can download it here if you like the old man's jive. More info here!

Free Blakey My Fella

I have just finished reading Westsiders, William Shaw's compelling factual book about up-and-coming rappers in South Central LA in the late 90s. Well written, human and unsensational, I would recommend it to anyone.

Now mindful of the true state of things in this deprived, gang-ravaged environment, I have designed a new garment that reflects (hopefully with a modicum of sensitivity) the daily struggle to get by in places like Watts, Compton and Bellflower.

So many trees will die in his name

I have been remiss in not congratulating my good friend Jon Rosenberg on his 'Goats' book deal. Well done Jon! Jon is a good man, he sometimes lets me come to his house and cooks food on a big flame he keeps in his back yard.

Vittles

It's been a year since my last limited A4 print so I thought I'd do another. Here are the pencils in a very formative stage. I thought they might be somewhat interesting.

Incredible journey

Today I went to Middleton tip. It was amazing. I haven't been to a municipal waste dump since the mid eighties and I now consider every day since wasted. Where else can you hurl waste wood over a 25ft precipice with the approval of a man in a hard hat? Nowhere, I say, but the finest Soho sex dungeons. I also put some old cardboard boxes in the back of a van but that was a mere sideshow to the lumber-chucking thrills.

This was the perfect antidote to shoving dozens of books into envelopes; I may be cured.


"Yes well done John you done it up right old boy"

ADDENDUM
I have put the new tshirts on sale, put them on your upper body and just look generally smarter and better than your rivals and enemies.

You've got to get it back, Tony

I've been worried that the shirts I've come up with over the last 9 months have been too weird and esoteric and sales seem to have born that out. So I've tried to reconnect with what made my earlier designs popular. I'm not sure if I've quite got it right but maybe what I came up with today has a little more of the old magic. You decide!



This one is a purist design, I just like drawing wrestlers.



Hey America stop being so crazy ALL THE TIME (aromatherapy is the answer). Believe it or not, socialized medicine isn't the gateway to communism.



A tribute to a scarygoround classic. This can be worn ironically by you, or unironically by you, or your dad. Deadly and parrotheadly. #2 in my musical series!

Dinner with Grrrshwin

How does it feel to be back, asked Hall and Oates. The answer is, not great, if you are referring to my recent trip to the very seat of liberty. It was a time of extreme fun. At one point I was in a hot tub, there were bubbles, I realised that the future was now and I had to say goodbye to the past. We don't have bubbles in Britain, all liquids are unagitated by law.

But now I am back and thoughts turn to ripping out my bathroom. Ripping it out so good. I will provide more news on this potentially disastrous project when I have it. It's going to be thrilling.

ADDENDUM
Airline passengers, when your plane is departing 5 hours late due to a maintenance problem, don't applaud when the airline finally announces boarding will commence. You are probably idiots.

A retraction

Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control, the headlining act on July 4th was not Boyz II Men but "John Leg-end", the second-rate soulman. Leg-end greeted the crowd with the words "we gonna do a lot of new ones for you tonight", the classic sign of someone cruising towards disaster. What followed was low on melody, low on groove, but extremely high on sweating and vests.



Boyz II Men played last night instead, when I was up Bear Mountain eating strawberry rhubarb pie.

So much liberty

Here I am in Philadelphia, enjoying freedom at its free-est. Apparently this is where liberty was invented, or at least so the 6-minute song that preceded the film about sardines I watched last night told me.

What I have learned about sardines
Sardines are fish that like the swimmin'. Their main enemy is men with nets.

This evening I am going to see Philadelphia's world famous fireworks, and Philadelphia's world famous 'Motownphilly' hitmakers, Boyz II Men.

I would be remiss in not mentioning that I had my first ever world famous Geno's Philly cheesesteaks. Apparently this is a sandwich popular with blue collar fellows and less popular with left-leaning liberal tea-drinking elitists. I am glad to come down on the side of the common man.

The future
In a few short days I will be travelling to Amish country to enjoy plain-living ways and wood-fired technology-free antics. World famous antics, no less.



Hopefully we will speak again soon.

The gorgon's eye

I am in Philadelphia for a week. Comics will continue because there is still magic in the world. If you see flames coming from my house, let it burn brother. Let it burn.

(What I mean is, call the fire brigade immediately and save my computer, even if it costs you your life. All my backups are, as they say, "on site".)

AARGH

I just drew and half-coloured a comic with Amy wearing completely the wrong outfit. Bare arms instead of sleeves, a dress instead of shorts, ruined, ruined, everything is ruined. What do I do now?

(The answer, quiz fans, is "cry")

Addendum: I fixed the aforementioned issue in 9 minutes. This is why they made me king.

Punch me, Amy Winehouse, punch ME!

I was going to write about the My Bloody Valentine show I went to on Saturday, but what is to say, it was extremely ferocious and that is that.

Instead I wish to discuss the more important issue of who is going to be the new Doctor Who! Well done the Big British Castle for keeping this under wraps, I was genuinely surprised when I watched Saturday's episode. Now, not being ten years old, I don't get the frisson of old watching this show, but once a series it still gets me a bit, and this week was like that! And last night I lay awake for far too long trying to work out who the new Doctor Who would be. It is a starmaking turn after all but you can't turn up and be rubbish. Now let me think let me think who was on my list...

1. Martin Freeman (from off of out of The Office)
I dreamt this one after I had gone to sleep so maybe it is more accurate.

2. Rory (son of Roy) Kinnear.
Rory is a good actor and the right age but maybe not heroic enough to make an action figure of

3. Andrew Lincoln (from off of out of Teachers)
I have a feeling his face is too square

4. Julian Barrett (from off of out of The Mighty Boosh)
Quite intense. Plays "exasperated" well. Can Doctor Who have a moustache though?

5. Someone really dull who has been on Spooks or Waking The Dead or Hustle
I have ruled all these people out on the basis that common sense will prevail

6. James Bolam
A stop gap is required, enter the former Likely Lad. Much too old for stunts, might need a truss

7. Alan Davies
Davies is a thesp but he bit a tramp's ear and that will not be forgotten by his paymasters at the BBC. A note: Stephen Fry sounds good but would be horrible

8. Richard E. Grant
It is ten years too late for this

9. Dave Gorman
From out of left-field selection, baffling all but the cognoscenti

10. Sophie Ellis-Bextor/ Carl Weathers / Tom "Lenk"
Peculiar stunt casting reflecting "the unique way the BBC is funded" is possible, but will not go down well

ADDENDUM: If it is James Nesbitt I am never watching ever, ever again. I am also very ambivalent about Robert Carlysle. If the selection must be regional, I demand Alex Kapranos from off of out of Franz Ferdinand, he can solve some problems in space I am certain.

Proved right more often than is seemly

Having championed the unique stylings of Karrie Fransman earlier in the year, I am delighted to have been personally responsible* for catapulting her to her new position in the Guardian G2 section every friday! If you were to picture my sphere of influence, you would do well to imagine a large planetary body - maybe Saturn, or perhaps a beachball hitting you in the face.

In all seriousness, well done Karrie, you deserve it!

*Not at all responsible

Exile in Gruyèreville

I note with interest that one of my favourite records, Liz Phair's 'Exile In Guyville', has been reissued. She's made some nasty old albums this decade but I can forgive her just about anything. The flurry of new reviews reminded me of a song that she made in about 2001 (which had a video and everything!) This, we were promised, was the brand new thing, but then when the new album came out about two years later, it wasn't on it, and instead there was a song about playing on the Xbox and another one about (forgive me) white wee wee.

Anyway, Youtube is Swahili for "old pop videos never die" so I put this up for my benefit only.



Although I am a firm believer in paying for music, apparently my copy of Exile In Guyville was pirated from Bury Library's own, paid-for disc. It features a sleeve apparently reproduced on a Chromalin digital printer circa 1999. These digital prints used to cost customers £50 a page. Oh wild, brahmin youth!

Vindication

Oh look what is #6 on a Google search for "Chinese Democracy review". That's right, now everyone expects the beaver thing with eyebrows.

Gravy sheets / black sheets of gravy

I can't believe my Guns 'N Roses review hasn't been picked up by a major website or news source. Apparently quality journalism is dead and we all bear its heavy pall.

I've been working on some mug designs for a friend today and I produced one that looked great until I saw the pouring coffee as a giant tongue and couldn't subsequently unsee it.

Chinese Democracy: First Review

Those of you who pay the minute attention that I do to these things will be aware that Guns 'N Roses long-awaited (15 years!) Chinese Democracy leaked this weekend. I haven't reviewed an album properly since about 2001 but I thought I'd give you a track-by-track praisee and flex some of the old muscles. So Guns 'N Roses are back, back back. And what a journey it's been. Countless band members, a procession of producers, scrapped sessions - but forget that... here's the product.

1. IRS
Seldom has an album's stall been set out so brutally. Over an almost avant-garde string arrangement (strongly reminiscent of Scott Walker's Tilt), Axl essays the making of Chinese Democracy. But after a strong start, 'IRS' degenerates into a laundry list of complaints against various band members, delivered in what seems to be an improvised half-rap. "Buckethead/ his real name's Fred", spits the autocratic frontman. The song ends with the refrain "Dizzy Reed/ you gonna bleed", repeated upwards of thirty times.

2. There Was a Time
On the evidence of Use Your Illusions 1 and 2, Rose's musical palette extended far beyond hard rock. But few would have anticipated 'There Was A Time', a Beatlesque mini-suite delivered in a risible cod-Liverpudlian drawl; "let's all have a spot of tea/ crumpets for you/ scones for me". Paying tribute to an unrecognisable England, the song features yeoman guest work from Ringo Starr and Jeff Lynne.

3. Rhiad & the Bedouins
This minute-long instrumental has been notorious for years, allegedly featuring the (sampled) sound of Axl Rose's wet fist being repeatedly driven into the side of Duff McKagan's head.

4. Better
A return to the classic GNR sound after the free-form experimentation of the first three tracks. Over hot blues licks, Axl announces that he will 'ride a hot train wearing a top hat'. Lyrical references to Oliver North, St Elsewhere and Paula Abdul suggest that the band has been sitting on this one for a while, but a breath of contemporary fresh air comes at 2'40 with a brief sample of 'Because I Got High' by Afroman.

5. Madagascar
Long talked-about as a potential single, the blistering Madagascar (a feature of Guns 'N Roses frequent water-treading tours during the wilderness years) is delivered on record at half-speed with vocals by the (plainly inebriated) bass-player Tommy Stinson. "Madagascar man/ like the movie with the animals/ the beaver thing had eyebrows/ there was a lion". Geffen Records will no doubt be delighted.

6. The Blues
Perhaps the reason that the Chinese Democracy project has continued to fascinate fans and critics is Axl Rose's reputation as a sonic perfectionist. The Blues is a showcase for his obsessive studio work, featuring a reputed 400 tracks of guitars, all playing the exact same blues riff, at the exact same time. And credit to Rose, it really does sound like just one guitar. The lyrics reflect the same combination of simplicity and depth: "I'm mad, I'm sad, I'm feeling bad, he sings. "Later on, I'm gonna get glad."

7. Chinese Democracy
Self-confessed Queen nut Rose has already delivered his own Bohemian Rhapsody in November Rain (which ran at times to almost 20 minutes!). But Brian May's reported appearance on this song flagged it up as the tribute to end all tributes. And so it proves to be. Demonstrating a surprisingly agile knowledge of Far Eastern politics, over a full 23 minutes, Guns 'N Roses attempt to educate, inform and entertain. Ten individual guitar solos are heard, delivered in both western and pentatonic forms. Then, around the 20 minute mark, Brian May steps forward to deliver his 1992 smash, 'Driven By You', played in its entirety on the koto. The koto is a Japanese instrument, but it's impossible not to take his point. An absolute triumph - arguably the best song ever written.

8. If The World
Some of the songs on Chinese Democracy bear evidence of 15 years of shifting musical trends. The full-on rap-rock assault of 'If The World' has all the hallmarks of a very good Korn b-side. But lifting it out of the mire of 1999, the chorus is delivered in the complex barber-shop harmony style of Manhattan Transfer. If this had emerged pre-millennium, it's difficult to imagine that the world would be in the trouble it is today.

9. This I Love
Featuring the trademark 'shredding' style of the great Yngwie Malmsteen, this could feasibly be the last Guns 'N Roses song you ever hear. It's relatively standard fare, but distinguished by Malmsteen stepping up for a solo every 16 bars and being audibly subdued by his infuriated bandmates.

IN CONCLUSION
This may be the most important album ever released... or the least important. Either way, it is important that you listen to it if you have the inclination to. Seminal stuff.

Summer repeats

There are some very weird pictures in my blog images folder.

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!