Hello.
It’s been a while. This place is still terribly under construction, and posting here is kind of like entering into a room you abandoned in a hurry that still has orphaned socks and paperclips and other random shit lying around, discarded in a corner and gathering dust. But nonetheless, I have been thinking of blogging again recently, so blog I shall. There’s much news.
First off! I did gone done a fanart for the brilliant Jillian Tamaki’s equally brilliant SuperMutant Magic Academy. I might have raved about her before. She illustrated Skim, which was one of my favourite graphic novels of, um, the year that came out. 2007? 2008? Then. But back to SuperMutant Magic Academy, go and have a read. It’s dry, funny, sardonic, at times heart-breaking.
Another thing that has happened recently was ELCAF, the East London Comics and Arts Festival organised by publisher of pretty books NoBrow. So recently, in fact, that I’m still feeling the effects from it now. It was yesterday. I am shattered.
Here is a terribly unflattering picture of me at ELCAF.
(Pictures stolen from Bleeding Cool. I hope he won’t mind.)
I was there with Gosh!, the excellent comic shop I work for. As we hit noon, it became apparent that they had already MASSIVELY outgrown their venue. At noon! The place was so crowded with people interested and passionate about comics that you could barely breathe. Later in the afternoon, I managed to worm my way outside for a quick cigarette and saw a queue stretching all the way down the road and around the corner. I sat in the sun blinking at it in disbelief for a good ten minutes before diving back into the madness. And the comics! What comics there were. The ever-brilliant Solipsistic Pop (of which I’ve been a contributor for the first three volumes) was on sale accompanied by its editor and good pal Tom Humberstone. Landfill editions, who produce beautiful, beautiful stuff were having an insane clearance sale. Babak Ganjei‘s books Hilarious Consequences and the brand-new Twit were also worth checking out, as well as his mini-anthology Steak Night. Quick comment on Babak – his auto-bio comics featuring his son Woodstock are fast becoming my favourite thing on the internet.
This was BEFORE it got really busy.
Landfill’s table!
This last picture is the Gosh! table again. I am accompanied by my charming colleague Tom who I will mention because I was totally going to go straight to bed after work this evening, but he insisted on writing me a to-do list which included the instructions to write a blog entry. Which is very nice of him because he’s figured out that I need a gentle shove (violent kick) to get started on work. Tom’s influence on various interesting things can be found on the internet here and here.
The next convention *I* will be at as my own person, not as part of Gosh!, will be my favourite, Thought Bubble up in Leeds. It’s in November and I will be sharing a table with the aforementioned Tom Humberstone. I will have with me (hopefully, money for printing permitting) several things:
a) A short-story comic which was beautifully written for me by the lovely Katie West. She is all the way in Canada and I am all the way here and we have never met in person, which is a damn shame. I’m very excited about this comic. I’m in the inking stage at the moment.
b) A collection of online work I’ve done in the last year or two which will possibly feature
c) An abstract semi-fictional story in three parts which I’ve been writing in my head and on random scraps of paper in the last two days. It’s been exclusively soundtracked by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ first album From Her To Eternity, which will tell you a bit of the state my poor head has been in recently. Here’s a song from it, just because.
d) A contribution to the next issue of The Strumpet
e) There might also be something else available around that time that I can’t talk about but is very exciting, and
f) The Heroines Zine, which is my current anthology baby and which I talk about at length here. I’ve gathered a long list of exciting people to contribute to the print zine, but! Also! There is a submission Tumblr for it here. No-one’s submitted a thing yet. Be the first. It doesn’t have to be long or complicated as long as it’s honest.
Here’s the cover again because I’m quite chuffed with it:
Other than getting back into making comics, you know what else I’ve been doing? Putting comics right into my face and reading them with my eyes:
- First one is Hugo Tate without its dust cover because Nick Abadzis did me a lovely lovely sketch on it. Highly recommended.
- Then the ever-interesting Koyama Press‘ new book by Tin Can Forest, Wax Cross, which is just STUNNING, people. These are comics to aspire to.
- A bit of Gotham Central which is one of my favourite superhero comics at the moment, even if (maybe because?) it barely features Batman.*
- And right this moment I’m reading All About My Mother? by Alison Bechdel, who became a bit of a hero/influence on me with Fun Home and Dykes To Watch Out For. It’s good, people. It’s very good. I was dubious at first because of her palpable obsession with psychoanalysis, but god I was wrong. It’s making my brain crack into gear again, which is a welcome feeling.
*that is a straight-out lie. I love Batman and everyone knows it.
I…I think that’s it. Lots of things to do, and now that I said I’d do them on the internet I better get to it. Apologies for the rambling tone of this update, I have to practice writing coherently and not in 140 characters again. But first, drawing and sleep.
I’ll leave you with another Nick Cave thing, which is this frankly rather hilarious interview with Blixa Bargeld filmed exactly six days before the exact day of my birth.
Good night, Internet.