Simple pleasures

I always liked "Great Big No" by the Lemonheads, off "Come On Feel the Lemonheads". But today for the first time, I enhanced the pleasure of singing along by singing "GREAT BIG NOSE".

Great big nose!

Still trying

It's now 3 years, two months since I released my black and white Scareodeleria book - the book that was meant to be number one in a quarterly series! Excuse me while I execute a hollow laugh.

I live in hope that I'll manage another standalone project, because although I am pleased with my efforts on daily Scary Go Round, I find the book collections very dense reading. It's nice just to be able to tell a yarn without worrying about getting the quips and snipes in just the right place and ending whatever you were trying to say in the bottom right hand corner of your piece of A4 paper.

This morning I spent £50 and gave myself a headache trying to make one page of a prospective follow up. I don't know about you, but £50 and a headache won't do. At that rate, by page 22 I'd have spent £1100 and be suffering from some kind of aneurysm (probably several).

I should explain that in producing this project, I am attempting to become "the new king of manga". You and I both know that I am not going to become the new king of manga any time soon. Even with the aid of the ministrations of my spiritual guide Mr Godiba (see here), I'm not going to be the new Junko Mizuno.

BUT I WILL DIE IF NECESSARY IN THE ATTEMPT! DO NOT TRY TO STOP ME BECAUSE YOU WILL FAIL! ALL WILL FAIL!



That was less intense than I hoped it would be.

Fancy womerns

I was delighted and excited to learn about today the existence of "Unknown Hinson", depicted below. I have never heard his music, and I think to hear it would only disappoint. Just to know that this man is out there is enough for me.

Tiny little face that may be alive

Mike, who made the little pixel Shelley, also made the Esther below. A fancy thing!

He's a blade, he's a renegade

What happened to my blog? i seem to have abandoned it over the last couple of weeks. I don't suppose anyone really wants to read about how I am eating some Easter eggs very slowly, or how I planted a rhododendron today. These things aren't the fiery facts that force recumbent internetters off their asses and out of the front door full of jellybeans.

I don't think I have any projects to tell you about. I haven't forced another rusting appliance into my back yard.

I did want to say a brief word about t-shirt artist/painter Todd Goldman and his Dave Kelly art-stealing saga. It was a blatant and ugly steal, but the red-faced, hysterical table thumping from the webcomics community, a community that frequently feeds upon licensed properties (when not feeding upon itself), was a bared backside begging to be struck with a banjo.

No one is innocent. Todd Goldman was undoubtedly handed that picture by a studio assistant. When a web cartoonist who has made a tshirt with a Star Wars related design gets a cease and desist letter, it's a badge of honour. When the shoe's suddenly on the other foot, there's a collective move up onto the table with skirts raised - and let the screaming commence.

Go crosseyed talking about "fair use" if you wish, but you'll waste a lot of breath. It's the same thing.

Somersault Notes!

I did a bit more on my poster last night, I worked too long into the evening on it and feel a bit mentally feeble today but oh well.

Eurocamping

I'm working on a new and large poster to ruin your walls. It's early days but here's what I managed this morning - much still to do!

Slug update 2007

Having repelled the slugs from my kitchen, it seemed time in 2007 to turn my attention the devastation they habitually cause in my garden. Who can forget the grisly sunflower massacre of 2001? Not me! So under these auspices I bought some slug pellets to prevent my friends, the slugs, eating anything with tasty leaves and pretty flowers.

Now, these slug pellets claim to be safe for the environment (so long as you don't include the aggravation their intense blue-ness causes to the eye). The packaging claims that "there is no need to clear up slug carcasses, as they will crawl away to a secluded spot to die". This is one of the most impressive boasts I have ever heard. It is also a lie.

My paving stones are now peppered with what I can only describe as baked-on moustaches made of beef jerky. Perhaps I do not provide the necessary "secluded spot". If you have any suggestions on the construction of the mooted "slug chill-out slash death zone", do let me know.

On this day in history

While I deal with the dirty business of book 5, blog posts will be minimal. So today why not enjoy "On This Day In Scary Go Round History", a painful trip through the years that made me feel weird and kind of ill. Click here and SEE!

Godiba's powers bring good juju

Book 5 back cover! I hope to get this off to the printer within the next week.



ALSO: I've finally added the canvas Curious Orange prints to the SGR shop!

A ringing endorsement

Longtime readers of this blog know that I am not over-enamoured of Oldham Metropolitan Borough. It's not really the place for a person like me, but for some reason I seem to have lived here for 8 years. Anyway, I think things are gathering a kind of critical mass - see the leaflet (below) that came through my door this morning.



Shamen are now congregating on my doorstep. I anticipate this new local trend for spells can only be the tip of a terrifying iceberg.

A giant hat covered with gems has been ordered

The Webcomix Thing in London was a total super great success. Obviously it was not a 100% success, as most conversations I had with people after 3pm in the afternoon were very abstract. I think I offended a whole table full of Brighton's most gifted cartoonists just by trying to tell them, unprompted, about the few facts I could scrape together from my by-now-ravaged brain. By God I dug myself in deep there. Note to self: avoid the south for some months.

I think I also upset a poor lad who thrust a tape recorder under my nose and wanted "to ask [me] a few questions". When I asked him to come back at a slightly quieter time, he wheeled away as if shot. Sorry, tape recorder man, no offence intended.

Having now made amends to people who have scratched my name deep into their hating books and enemy lists, I'd like to thank everyone who came to see me. It was the busiest I have ever been at any show, at home or abroad. I wish I could have talked to people for longer, and spent a bit longer with folks who'd come a long way. My neighbours on one side were Nude Magazine, a design-led publication that seems just right for most eyes, and on the other side Dave Roman and Raina Telgemeier, who I think may be some of the most talented and best people in the world!

In the evening it was a pleasure and an honour to make sport with Weebl, Madsen, Dr McNinja, Ali, and the hidden man of UK comics, Kelly Hernandez. Good men, and thorough.


Note: I do have quite a few of the limited prints I did left, and I'll put them up for sale later in the week once I've caught up with making comics. They'll go on sale at 12pm GMT, giving almost everyone a fair crack of the whip I hope.

Who's got the looks, who's got the brains, who's got everything?

I have revised the cover for SGR book 5 (now tantalisingly close to going to the printers), as having lived with the previous one for a few months I realised it was a nice idea but not up to much. Here's the new one! The back cover will have some kind of fancy decoration too but I don't know what yet.



It's still subject to tweaks as my mind doesn't work very well in the late evening, but it certainly seems books-ish.

Despite wounds, I continue

I think I'm getting old, or just incredibly fragile. I can't lift my right arm above the, let's be honest here, Hitler salute position, without suffering a pain (like touching a freshly grazed knee) in my tendon. I hate the Fuhrer and his ways so there is no need to punish me for accidentally saluting him.

But despite all that, I have made some little prints for the UK Web Comix Thing. They're in runs of ten and any left over will be available on my return from the capital. The first one is my riposte to "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" entitled "Bats Get In Your Hair". The second is of course entitled "The Day The World Changed".



My only concern is that they might be displaying 'tood - which I will of course be forced to eliminate prior to turning on the printer.

Dog problems

I was going to do drawn intros to all the chapters in my new book but what I came up with didn't really work the way I wanted it to. I did think this rough was quite funny though.

Updates update

For those of you who are curious, I am approximately one page away from completing Scary Go Round book 5. Having drawn a suitably simpleton intro, I need to make a simpleton outro to finish the job. Then it is just a question of whether I draw a back cover or just make it the same soothing and mottled yellow as the front. I have a feeling that the solution will involve a combination of both.

Last night I rocked anew and saw Brakes, Absentee and Bobby Cook on one splendid bill! I have made their names into cyber-node hyper-links for the curious of ear.

The Absentee singer man was running the merchandise stall and having stood on the other side of the table, so to speak, on many occasions, I warmed to this kindly and talented fellow. Let's hope Absentee have a million pounds very soon.

Finally, I will be packing up prints on Sunday to send out on Monday. The canvas prints are in and look really nice, so I will probably put them up for sale next week. There are only ten, so I'll announce beforehand when they'll be available. If this proves popular, I'll probably do some super short-run canvas-only prints in future.

Things are going to change

I'm back from the lakes and undrowned. I did experience some adverse cambers, mushy clay and treacherous scree but that is the nature of the wilds and we must all do our part. Also there were some witches and ghosts.

New news: I am growing an extra inch on my sideburns in preparation for the UK Webcomix Thing in two-and-a-bit weeks. It's a race against time, because if the sidewall annexe looks too ratty, I will remove it before facing my public. But I feel I need extra strength for this marathon of front-facing, gladhanding and power-sales mesmerism. I will keep you posted on "Project Samson".

Placid

I am going to the Lake District this weekend, so if I am destroyed by a lake, you know what to do. Ululation, tearing of vestments, brass statue of me outside the Cobden View Arms in Crookes, Sheffield. Statue should be wearing a crown.

You may think that being destroyed by a lake is improbable and weird, but you would be Dr Wrong, ministering to the needs of the inhabitants of Mistakentown. Lakes contain fierce otters, bony cichlids and kraken. At any point I could be seized by a tentacle and drawn under, thereby ending a life dedicated to amusing people in 30 second bursts every weekday.

I'll be on my guard, but I'm warning you - be ready.

Enormodome comes crashing down

Well, I failed to win any Web-cartoonists' Choice Awards this time around. It's probably for the best. I usually respond to winning a prize by suffering a seismic crisis of confidence and, as a result, plunging over the creative cliff "on fire".

In all honesty, I think I've done very well to be nominated so many years in a row for "Outstanding Comic". I'm never going to beat Nicholas Gurewitch of Perry Bible Fellowship at that, he is a genius at what he does. Though if quality was not an issue and quantity was placed front and centre, I would be officially five times better than him. Yes, take THAT and put it on the shelf with all your prizes, sir! When you're shining up your trophies and crowns, remember that for every one time you put a piece of paper in the scanner, I put FIVE in there. And I have to scan each of them twice because my scanner refuses to scan the bottom centimetre of my A4 paper. So that's TEN scans for every one of yours. Who's laughing now?

Here are all the sounds I witnessed in the last week with short, pithy reviews, so I can look back in future times and see exactly how and when I went deaf.

Tuesday Feb 13th: THE HOLD STEADY + The Checks + Former Bullies

How exciting to see the Hold Steady, the main band in America for hollering about all sorts of things over a right bar-room racket, on UK soil. They were brilliant. The Checks were choogling boogie of the kind that might have impressed a Faces fan in 1973, and Former Bullies have been haunting the Manchester scene for years and will never triumph unless they learn to face front and address the audience clearly, confidently and directly.

Saturday Feb 16th: KLAXONS + CSS + Sunshine Underground + New Young Pony Club

This was the NME New Rave tour, and as someone old enough to remember old rave, I have to say that if you are going to start a new movement, don't make it exactly the same as the dance punk movement of TWO YEARS AGO (except with glowsticks). In any case, CSS are brilliant (full marks for coming on stage in makeshift burkas), Klaxons are rubbish, Sunshine and My Little Pony Club are promising. I counteracted any ennui created by the deadbeat headliners with improvisational rave dancing and some handsome badges I made (including "NEW DAVE") which prospective new ravists can buy from me in London next month.

Sunday Feb 17th: LONG BLONDES + Lodger + Navvy

75% of people at this gig were 5ft tall girls in footless leggings and shirt dresses. I thought I was going to get the vapours. The diminutive and petite stature of many of the audience made for comfortable viewing of another fine rock outing. Navvy tried hard and had a lead (LEED not LED) cowbell, Lodger had sweater vests and some decent tunes, and the Long Blondes are a proper pop band with a proper pop star front-lady for people who like Blondie and Pulp equally well. Well done, Long Blondes, well done, you win this week's gig crown.

This week I have been rocked

Obviously the person of the year is "you" and that is because of Youtube which is because Youtube is where you can watch old pop videos that would otherwise never have been seen again by human eyes. Here are two of my favourite songs with the videos and everything just for people who like my sound decisions, good tunes for the young who grew up in recent years but like, let's say, the idea of the past.

"Beautiful John" by Madder Rose which obviously I like because it is a flagrant overstatement of my virtues and;

"This Is What She's Like" by Dexy's Midnight Runners, which not only showcases a sharp new Ivy league look for the 80s ragamuffins, but is 12 minutes long on the album! Isn't there a new Dexy's live album showcasing the "lost line up"? This is a rhetorical question to which the answer is of course yes.

I hadn't seen this video before today but it is more than I could have hoped for. At one point the issue of "what she's like" is discussed in an office scenario. At one point Kevin Rowland does a kind of street corner bogle. There is also some extremely low-key adherence to the principles of lip-syncing which I find delicious.

Sometimes I have dreams about the ITV Chart Show. They might just be the best dreams I have.

I wrote this post in lieu of reviewing all the bands I went to see this week because no one needs to hear what a great time I had or how new rave is such nonsense or how CSS came on in burkas or how the Hold Steady are attracting an audience mostly from the mid 40s man with son in tow. Just take all these things as read and go about your business.