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!

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