Comica Comiket Review

This weekend I exhibited at Comica Comiket, and I have a few thoughts about it.

Firstly I'd like to thank the organisers and staff, who were helpful all day. The drawing parade was fascinating to watch and I was well looked after throughout.

But I cannot ignore the elephant in the room: the hall was near-impossible to traverse. Three people could not pass down the aisles simultaneously, so it was very dificult for people to browse your work comfortably most of the time. Exhibitors on the central aisles were crammed in back to back with almost no room for manoeuver, and it was hard to stand up and engage with people face to face because there was inevitably a chair in your way, buckling you at the knees.

I can only speak for my own experience when I say that I couldn't even get to the tables I wanted to, and when the call to pack up was given at 6, I went home empty handed. One of the greatest pleasures of attending these shows is discovering new work and meeting new/rarely seen people, and I felt at the end of a pretty uncomfortable day that I had largely missed out on both of these, with the exception of a very pleasant chat with Sarah McIntyre.

Having taken part in a signing in the punter-free downstairs room, I felt very sorry for the exhibitors who had been marooned down there. Last year's London Small Press Expo in Deptford was damned by a lack of signage and I felt that these poor souls had suffered the same fate.

With seemingly no shortage of attendees or organisational enthusiasm, I hope that Comica can overcome these logistical problems and continue to grow as an event. It's important that the capital has an alternative comics show worthy of the location.

Karrie Fransman's "The House That Groaned"

Karrie Fransman is one of the most enthusiastic and engaged comic-makers I've met here in the UK. Following her regular strips in the Guardian's G2 section and the Times, her debut graphic novel has emerged via Random House imprint Square Peg.

The loose linework, owing a greater debt to contemporary European art comics than anything published in the English language, will not be to everybody's taste, but perfectly supports the queasy tone of The House That Groaned. And the book is beautifully and imaginatively designed with a splendid die-cut cover.

A far cry from the slice-of-life work she did for newspapers, The House That Groaned is a bleak tale built around the interconnecting stories of a group of people living in a house divided into flats. Used to Karrie's more recent comics, I wasn't expecting the body horror, kaleidoscopic sexuality and magical realism it contains. Anyone who enjoyed the icy, anything-goes world of the early nineties Vertigo comics should enjoy the book's unbridled spirit.

You can read more about Karrie and The House That Groaned at her website.

The Subscription Experiment

I know that a lot of people are interested in my subscription experiment, and that I should write a little something about it - at the very least to say thank you to all the people who have taken the time to sign up.

I wanted the experiment to be low key. I posted once about it on Twitter, at the weekend (and at a time when most US readers would be asleep), and put a small post on my site under the comic. It's not a Kickstarter, there is no goal, merely a push toward sustainability through the website at a time when I probably won't be able to start putting Bad Machinery book collections out (a substantial part of my projected income in any calendar year) until 2013.

In the week since I announced it, I have raised about £4000 (around $6000). This will make a huge difference later this year when a glut of book work for the above collection will make it difficult to do commissions, freelance or prepare special items for conventions. It will buy me a two or three month holiday from near-constant anxiety.

I expected most people to subscribe at the lowest tier, £2 or $3, but the majority of donations were in the middle. The fact that readers were willing to commit to an annual donation greater than the baseline was incredibly encouraging. That several people chose the maximum annual subscription really surprised me.

I've been looking at sales graphs for a decade, the early spike is pretty much the default setting for things I have done over the years. But that people responded at all, and with such generosity, to a quiet request for support, is something for which I am very grateful.

If you enjoy my work and want to support it with a subscription, you can still do so on this page.

Thank you again to everyone who has contributed.

Delivered on a Segway!

Have you ever had a takeaway menu through your door that you just couldn't throw away? No. No one has. Until now. I love this menu. And here's why:

This is my favourite bit. I want to be in this grid. You want to be in this grid.

Could it be the best steak you ever tasted? It depends on whether you have ever spent more than £6.95 on a steak and chips dinner, I suppose - but I'd be happy to be proved wrong.

People say there are too many fried chicken outlets in metropolitan areas. Perhaps what this astonishing document shows us is that, really, there just aren't enough. Bravo.

What a great album cover

That is all. (It's Escort's self-titled album).

Sound of 2012

On the first week of the year, the BBC website runs its BBC Sound of 2012 (for example) poll. With the greatest of respect - BURN IT DOWN. Here are the five acts that will redefine music this year - ending with the "Sound of 2012".

5. Crumbles & Corn

The breakout act of this year's Indietracks festival, Aberdeen's Crumbles & Corn proved capable of turning arch-spined, pot bellied scenesters into frenzied dance machines. Ignoring trad jangle, twee-folk and rote C86 shambling, the band combine a three-stringed nylon acoustic, atonal chanting and cardboard box drums to lethal effect. "We wanted someone to spill their fucking Tizer for once", says guitarist Ed Tomlinson. "I saw a kid pissing on his own cardigan" adds vocalist Fudge. Drummer Janyss Cotton (cousin of Fearne!) describes their upcoming album "Trench Warfare" as "glue-sniffing for people who don't like glue".

4. Markuss

As Chillwave fades into the distance, with acts like Ariel Pink and John Maus unable to crack the mainstream, a new nostalgic sound has emerged from the unlikely wellspring of Glossop in Derbyshire. Self-styled "morbid shut-in" Marcus Wentworth filters the knuckleheaded thrash of early-90s metal titans like Sepultura and Pantera through gooey synthesisers and "raps" over the top. "I'm just making the music I want to make", he declares on his debut single "Stop Getting Tattoos". A recently-inked contract with Universal suggests that others want him to make it too. His "Grandma Chic" album is due in February.

3. Lebanese Skin Party

"We're realer than anyone else. Realer than your worst nightmares. The last gang in town." Frontman Oliver Skin might just be right. The first band to be on the cover of the NME before writing their first song ("we just got the call and thought, yeah, having it"), LSP met at Bradford Grammar School and bonded over the Strokes' "First Impressions Of Earth". "It was so good, we vowed never to listen to another record, and we haven't. It was just too perfect. A band needs to bring rock n' roll back. I'm sick of all this dubstep bass shit. Where are the songs? We're about getting out of it, girls, having adventures, a good time." On the evidence of their "Second Impressions Of Earth EP" and an explosive support slot with Viva Brother, Lebanese Skin Party will be near the top of at least one year-end list come December.

2. Rotor Motor

No one created more buzz in the second half of last year than Rotor Motor did with his series of "BIGGA BETTA" 14" singles. Dubstep artists are second only to looters in their desire for anonymity, but Rotor goes a lot further than wearing a hoodie and a mask. He DJs live from a specially redesigned tank. Meticulous about presentation and determined never to break cover, Rotor Motor's appearance at Creamfields Buenos Aires descended into farce when bass vibrations from his vehicle caused an over-mined stretch of land to subside, with hundreds of MDMA-powered dancers experiencing an early comedown and, in 13 cases, premature death. A press release read simply "ITS (sic) ALL ABOUT THE MUSIC".

1. Albert III

"I'm all about pop. I'm all about fun. I'm all about love. Women, men, whatever! Come one, come all, I kiss you!" In a landscape dominated by slick talent-show and stage-school stars, Albert III's "I Kiss You" single is a hymn to acceptance. "I was bullied as a child, I didn't fit in. But they couldn't stop me dreaming. I want to be like Freddie Mercury, Liza Minelli and Margaret Thatcher all in one!" Just six months ago, Albert III was Steve Gosforth, working at a branch of Natwest in Surbiton. "Steve Gosforth is dead," he pronounces grandly, Meerschaum pipe in hand. One night I was walking home from work and a white light shone down on me, perhaps from a UFO or God himself. From that moment on, I was Albert III and I'll be Albert III until I die." Reportedly the subject of the biggest marketing spend "since Norwich Union turned into Aviva, darling", Albert III's "I, Albert III" LP should hit the charts like a bomb in late January.

Albums of the year 2011 4-1

4 CHATEAU REVENGE! - The Silver Seas

"What's The Drawback?"


"Another Bad Night's Sleep"


3 FATHER, SON, HOLY GHOST - Girls

"Vomit"


"Alex"


2 DAYS - Real Estate

"It's Real"


"Green Aisles" (live)


1 THE ENGLISH RIVIERA - Metronomy

"The Bay"


"The Look"


"Everything Goes My Way" (featuring Roxanne Clifford)

Albums of the year 2011 8-5

8 ZONOSCOPE - Cut Copy

"Need You Now"


7 TRUE LOVES - Hooray For Earth

"True Loves"


"True Loves (Cereal Spiller Remix)"


6 50 WORDS FOR SNOW - Kate Bush

"Wild Man"


5 STARTING FROM NOW - Heidecker & Wood

"Right To The Minute"


"Life On The Road"

Albums of the year 2011 12-9

12 DIAPER ISLAND - Chad VanGaalen

"Peace Is On The Rise"


11 LAST SUMMER - Eleanor Friedberger

"My Mistakes"


10 HOTEL SHAMPOO - Gruff Rhys

"Sensations In The Dark"


9 PARALLAX - Atlas Sound

"Amplifiers"


"Terra Incognita"

2011 Albums of the year 16-13

16 UNDERNEATH THE PINE - Toro Y Moi

"New Beat"


15 UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA - Unknown Mortal Orchestra

"How Can U Luv Me"


14 GLOSS DROP - Battles

"Ice Cream" (NSFW)


"My Machines" (feat Gary Numan)


13 TRAGEDY - Julia Holter

"Goddess Eyes"

2011 Albums of the year 20-17

20 THE KING IS DEAD - The Decemberists

"Down By The Water" (Live On Jimmy Kimmel)


19 VERONICA FALLS - Veronica Falls

"Bad Feeling"


18 WELCOME TO CONDALE - Summer Camp

"Down"


"Better Off Without You"


17 MIRROR TRAFFIC - Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks

"Senator"

An unmissable treat.

This year as last year, Lunge Dolphin has emerged to put a Jesustide smile on my face - and yours! Check his mood.

Lunge Christmas 2011 from Eclectic Schlock on Vimeo.

Come get drawn tomorrow, by me, at Cornerhouse Sketchomatic

MANCHESTER, UK ALERT
I will be working the portrait booth for Sketch-O-Matic at the Cornerhouse on Oxford Road tomorrow (Nov 30th) from 1-2pm. I draw you, £1. Details here!

scarygoround.com site issues

Some readers have been getting a generic (and gross) holding page rather than the usual Scary Go Round website today. From what I can work out, the domain name for one of my nameservers (the backup) lapsed so what you're seeing is some kind of spontaneously generated holding page. I don't think the DNS has been hacked, I haven't lost control of the site, or any of the other horrible things I thought might have happened this morning.

I have requested the necessary changes to fix this, so hopefully it will be sorted in the next couple of days. If you've not been able to see today's comic, have a look here.

Mr J. Allison at Leeds Thought Bubble Festival

Are you in the north of England? Then why not come and see me this weekend at Leeds Thought Bubble Festival. It's at the Royal Armouries, and I am assured that the venue will be "rammed with intrigue" and "spoiled for talent". For the first time, the show is running across two days and I will be there all day Sunday too.

I will be on a panel, "Comics Economics", from 14:30 – 15:20, in the Alea Casino Cinema Room. Come down, hoot and holler that I am "da best". Demand the hits!

I'll have the following items, many of which you can't get on the site.

* Some show-only limited Bad Machinery collections of The Case Of The Lonely One and The Case Of The Simple Soul
* A few Scary Go Round / Giant Days / Ghosts books
* Meat Means Dinner Aprons
* Knitting Is Zen totes
* A variety of limited prints, A4 and A5 size
* Stickers!!!
* The last few tea-towels
* Postcard sketches (depending how busy I am, I may do larger drawings - probably only on Sunday, but do ask if you're interested)
* Other assorted gewgaws and curios
* RAW LOVE FOR FANS / ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS THAT PLAGUE YOU

I really hope to see some of you there, this is my favourite UK show - it gets better every year.

Cold, Dead Fingers Dept

Much ink has been wasted on whether music as a predominantly digital format has cost us something precious, and wonderful, and irreplaceable, and why can't I stop crying &c. There have probably been losses and gains. No song ever need vanish from the catalogue, no treasure need be buried unheard, deleted. Physical formats become fun and worthwhile when produced, rather than drably essential. There need never be another CD released with a single page in the jewel case, another exercise in "why did we bother".

Sure, there's too much music to ever listen to it all, but that's like having too much dinner and remembering with a warm glow the cold hard certainty of rationing. I miss the excitement of the record shop, but not the excitement of discovering something new.

But I don't feel the same way about ebooks. I hate them. I genuinely hate them. With music, your relationship is predominantly with what is going in your ear. Yes, you may stare at the cover for Tales From Topographic Oceans by Yes for half an hour while going on a prog journey, but that really is making your own fun at its most innocent, deny that if you like.

The relationship with a book is very different. It's a tactile object relatively unchanged since the Gutenberg press. You've got to hold that thing in front of your face. It's your buddy until you're done with it. A well-thumbed, much read book is like a vile, beloved, drooled on childhood bunny, but you wouldn't buy one of those second-hand unless you had a lot of problems in your life.

Now I sell ebooks, of course I do, because people want them, and while I am sentimental, I am not mental. And I can shove in 50 extra pages that I found down the back of the sofa because it costs very little to do so. Did I think those pages were worth publishing the first time? No. There's something wrong at the heart of that, like the height of the CD era, when filling the disc to the full 74 minutes became paramount. Bloat over art.

I've seen examples of the beautiful work being done in interactive ebooks for children. They depress me. Kids are in a world of their own and we seek ever more to make concrete things that would have lived in their imagination. Any graphic work is dead on screen compared to how it looks on paper.

This is the first time I've felt like this. I love digital media. They free us from clutter, from waste. But I don't think we have to be beholden to gadget manufacturers on books. I don't think we need to enter the dismal Kindle's annual upgrade curve. Books aren't a delivery medium, they're an art form. We forget that at our peril.

The Beatles

Today heralds the US release of Kate Beaton's "Hark A Vagrant" through the auspices of Drawn & Quarterly and I commend it to you. Kate has been a friend and an inspiration since 2007. Her work has a lightness of touch and an infectiousness that makes it easy to ape but almost impossible to originate - anyone who has witnessed her brutal creative process can attest to that.

Kate's Mystery Solving Teens and Bad Machinery originated on the same day, in the same car, from the same teen-based event! I doubt I have achieved with 400 pages what she has managed in the minds of readers with ten. Now she's not perfect. Don't ever let her touch anything you own if you like its current, unspoiled condition. But if you want to follow Agent Dale Cooper's advice and "give yourself a present every day", here's todays.

Blame The Sky cover process post

I haven't blogged much lately but I thought this might make a nice little process post. Here's the process for working on the new cover for Blame The Sky, which I just added to my e-book shop. If you like e-books, why not buy it? It can't hurt, can it?

Here's my original sketch, which I did with a ball point pen while cooking some rice. It didn't take very long.

I then began to painstaking trace my original in Illustrator. Flaws in the original sketch soon become evident when you add solid colours .

Once I was done tracing, I refined and juggled around shapes until people looked like they were meant to. Tessa and Rachel are characters I've hardly drawn in the last five years, so I had to do a bit of revision in order to capture their attitude. Amy was easy. Apart from how she barely looks like she did then at all.

Here's the new cover next to the original. The original was never very good. I was capable of a lot better even back then, but I didn't know how to lay out an effective cover so I would often do something rather stiff-looking, just to get it done. 

Despite hardly drawing anything in Illustrator since 2006, I can produce a far nicer illustration from it now than I ever could back then. It's a great program to produce a sharp-looking drawing from, but fresh hell to work in day-in, day out if you want to produce organic looking comics. 

Birmingham Sketch Party

I was lucky enough to be sitting between Joe List and Kristyna Baczynski at Birmingham Zine Fair, and there are few people more able to reduce me to paroxysms of helpless mirth than those two. Any summer blues were blown askew by this kindly two. A lot of ideas hit paper, and I am able to post some highlights below. Prepare for a feast!

In the first picture I illustrated the point that what I am looking for in a girlfriend is "a really high forehead". Then, below, Joe List and Mr Dan Berry explore their love of CSI. At the bottom, Kristyna and I go "sales mad" with explosive and largely unproductive fervour

With love and marriage now firmly on the agenda, Ms Baczynski and I played a game of "Couples", where each artist has to draw half of a romance and the other creates a suitable mate. What followed was, by turns, beautiful and unutterably vile. 

Meanwhile, Joe had drawn on a large number of Post-Its, in the hunt for the ultimate idea. And below, together we created a Blind Date/Dating Game style trio of suitorettes for me. Tina Warbucks has the nightmarishly high forehead that I called for, Tessa Terabyte has glamour and plenty of external storage, while Polly Clock is sweet-natured and extremely punctual, with a kind of moving facial timepiece tattoo. Lorra lorra!

The choice... is yours (MINE).

Birmingham Zine Festival

If you live in the middle of England, why not come down to Birmingham Zine Festival on Saturday July 9th, where I will be selling books, doing sketches, and attempting to raise the nation's spirits. It's a free event! I'll be sharing a table with my friend and ally Kristyna Baczynski, whose work is a stone cold treat for the eyes and mind.

It's at the We Are Birmingham shop on King's Parade, very near New Street and Moor Street stations, here's a map! I hope to see you there.