FRANKENSTEINS COMIC

I'm just back from the launch event for Chris Murray, Norrie Millar and Philip Vaughan's new comic book, "Mary Shelley's Dundee".

I did a new comic story and read it to the audience as part of the evening.

Here it is for your reading pleasure...

FRANKENSTEINS

I'm doing a reading tomorrow of a new comic I've done called "Frankensteins".

Here are some previews of the two page story...

Looking forward to the performance 7pm at the McManus Gallery, Dundee.

BELL TIME page 2

Redbird Review is serialising my new comic called Bell Time.

Page 2 is up now. Have a read here.

You can read from the beginning here.

TREEHOUSE COMICS EXHIBITION PREVIEW - PART TWO

Here are more of the comic artworks going on display...

Norrie Millar

Neil Scott

Jules Valera

...and me!

Come along for the opening at 2pm tomorrow to see these and more in the flesh!
The exhibition will then be open throughout the rest of October and November.

TREEHOUSE COMICS EXHIBITION PREVIEW - PART ONE

The Treehouse Comics exhibition opens 2pm this coming Saturday at Arbroath Library. Here is a preview of what's on show...

Jon Adam

Kathryn Briggs

Andy Herd

Balázs Lőrinczi

Stuart McAdam

More tomorrow!

BELL TIME BEGINS

Okay, I'm excited about this one. Redbird Review has started running my new comic called Bell Time.

Have a read of the first page here.

BELL TIME

When I finished Dump earlier this year, I decided to lay off doing any longer form comics for a while. Dump was 50-odd pages, and was the sequel to Berserkotron, itself around 40-odd pages. I wanted to have a break from working away on the same story for years, and concentrate on doing shorter pieces. And I have done that over the summer, working on stories ranging from 1 to 6 pages.

An opportunity arose though. A new kind of project for me. I was offered “a regular comic spot” at a website. I thought that sounded interesting, but didn't really know what it would entail. The editor wanted to feature a strip, with open ended deadlines. I put my thinking cap on and came up an idea I thought could work as a serialised comic book. I reckoned I could commit to doing a new page for it every three weeks.

This was approved. I decided to go about this story differently than Berserkotron and Dump. To explain, although I knew the rough shape of those stories and how they ended, I wrote and drew those comics in chunks. Berserkotron was done in six page chapters for an APA, and I put together Dump as a three issue series. When it was time for a new chapter, I just sat and wrote and drew them, then stopped work on it for months at a time in between chapters. I had to reacquaint myself with where I was in the story, details of what had happened, etc.

This time I didn't want to work that way. I was going to sit in a concentrated period and work on the story until I was finished. And so I did. I had some time off work coming up and worked solidly throughout it. First, I put down every idea I had for the story and then started to knit it all together, ideas sparking new ideas as I went. After 5 A4 pages of notes, I was ready to start writing. A week or two later, I had it all written. 50-odd pages once again.

And then came the expected psychological barrier of starting up the mountain. I was working on other comics, doing talks, getting involved in comics related projects, all the time knowing I was gearing up for picking up the pencil for page 1 of this story.

The excitement in my mind took hold today. Tonight I did get started, and that page has been pencilled. Pretty soon, I'm going to be able to introduce my new comic to you. Can't wait!

KELLY'S EYE - VALIANT

I was asked about Valiant books yesterday, and in particular Kelly's Eye. I knew I had a couple of issues at home and here is the story in question:

This episode of Kelly's Eye is from the 20th September 1969 edition. Valiant ran covers with outlandish images such as the one below with dinosaurs and cavemen running around...

"Is it true... that the early cavemen used firebrands to fight off dinosaurs, which often attacked them? You'll find the answer on It's All Yours page inside!"

Of course, you'd excitedly reach for that page and be presented with a sobering No. No, cavemen did not do that. Cavemen and dinosurs did not live at the same time.

But what a cover...

Researching Valiant comics online now is complicated by the fact that thirty years later there was an American line using the same name. This situation is similar to looking up the UK children's Phoenix comic, and being inundated with pictures of Jean Grey from the X-Men.

MAKE / SHARE

Photo pinched from @Creative_Dundee

I took part in Creative Dundee’s monthly event Make/Share last Wednesday. It's an open call to anyone making things to come and talk about what they’re doing.

It’s held at the MakerSpace in the Vision building at Dundee’s waterfront. I knew I was one of three speakers, and as it runs 7-8.30pm, I had about half an hour.

There was a limit on how many images you could take along – 4 or 5 in total, which was perhaps a more problematic number to someone doing comics rather than other creative endeavours, what with the emphasis being on sequential storytelling. But no matter, I decided to show a page each from the 4 most recent comics I’ve put out: “No Greater Love” at the Guardian #opencomics page, “Tiddlywinks” in Dirty Rotten Comics #5, “Silently Falling” in Jack Sprat #1; and “A Book with Death in the Title” from the forthcoming Treehouse #7.

What was interesting was not knowing the extent to which the audience was familiar with comics. In one respect, I can talk about comics minutiae forever, but how to structure a half hour talk to people who maybe have no prior interest? A brief intro about how I came to start doing comics and then the background to each of the 4 stories was the way I went.

It’s always great to hear people’s interpretations of my stories. An intriguing one for "No Greater Love" came on this night, in which the mother had died after giving birth and the father was now left alone. Because the story is told in images, there is a lot of room for interpretation, and I found this take fascinating.

The MakerSpace studio is filled with creative people with an interest in technology. Another of last night’s speakers was Grant Richmond, who had taken an old radio, gutted it like a fish and refilled it with modern electronics, replacing the speakers and enabling it with wi-fi. Impressive, and he still hasn’t finished tinkering with it. The other speaker Andrew Kieran, has an enormous weaving machine onsite that he has transported around Britain. It too had a technological aspect – one of his woven articles has a mobile code as part of the pattern.

I enjoyed shoehorning self-published comics into the creative arts arena last night. A really fun evening.

JACK SPRAT #1 at BOOKS & BROOMSTICKS

Belle Whittington has reviewed Jack Sprat #1 over at Books & Broomsticks, and included a preview of my story, "Silently Falling".

Have a look here.