The reason for the season

A very merry Christmas to the three of you who read this!

Christmas Card 2007

My Christmas card for this year.

I love Tchaikovsky, which I believe in classical musical circles means I have vulger tastes, make of that what you will. It's actually quite hard to find reference of a Nutcracker that doesn't look like a creepy Batman villian. I'd probably change the original drawing to make it look more like a lino-cut if I'd had the chance.

Our sentence is up...

There's exactly five years left till the end of the world

Spend is wisely.

Oort and Kuiper

I really don't use this blog very much.



Character designs for a possible mini-comic.

A few sparse details here

Kidnapped

If you were wondering where I went to for most of last month well...

But don't worry, it actually turned out to be a lot of fun.

Attention Christmas shoppers...

...Please be nice to your Sales Assistants, they have to deal with a near unending parade of moronic dicks at this time of year, don't make it worse. It's not their fault you didn't do your Christmas shopping months ago like someone with some sense. They're at breaking point, you don't want to have to try and comfort some sixteen year old girl who you've just reduced to tears in the middle of the shop floor, do you?

So be nice. If only because when you're giving your credit card details to someone on minimum wage you probably don't want to piss them off too much.


This has been a public service announcement.

Happy 250th Birthday William Blake

It's the Birthday of the great English visionary William Blake. You could say that Blake's innovative juxtaposition of images and words and small scale self publishing eventually led to the development of comics, but that's probably a bit of a stretch.


The complete poetry and prose

Illustrated manuscript of the epic poem 'Jerusalem'

Poet of Albion documentry on Radio 4 (for the next week)

I just realised that I can still remember all the words to 'The Sick Rose' which I memorised 6 years ago for my a-levels.

The scariest thing I heard this Halloween...

...McSpaced

Guh!

Panel of the Day 01/11/07

Halloween Week

Lucha Libre - Bill & Jerry Frissen

Panel of the Day 31/10/07

Halloween Week

Scary Godmother - Jill Thompson

Happy Halloweens

Here's a crappy picture.

Panel of the Day 30/10/07

Halloween Week

Planetary - Warren Ellis & John Cassaday

Panel of the Day 29/10/07

Halloween Week

Frankenstein - Grant Morrison & Doug Mahnke

Panelof the Day 26/10/07

Skin Deep - Charles Burns

Panel of the Day 25/10/07

Cammy - Mashiko Nakahira

Panel of the Day 24/10/07

Return to Sender - Vera Brosgol

Panel of the Day 23/10/08

Lloyd Llewellyn - Dan Clowes

Pane of the Day 22/10/07

Frankenstein meets Shirley Temple - Roger Langridge

MJ vs. Gwen Dance Off a go-go Week

Spider-man Blue - Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale

Panel of the Day 18/10/07

MJ vs. Gwen Dance Off a go-go Week

Amazing Spider-man - Stan Lee & John Romita

Panel of the Day 17/10/07

MJ vs. Gwen Dance Off a go-go Week Amazing Spider-man - Stan lee & John Romita

Special 100th post extravaganza!

Yes my hundredth post, and I'm going to use it to make your lives a little better. Bookmark this and then whenever you're feeling down you will be instantly perked right back up again, all because of...


Dancing Ryu!




Look'it'im go!

Dancing Ryu is by the wonderlicious Emlan who always makes me smile.

So you don't want my money Vertigo?

So what are the chances that these great Joshua Middleton images were connected to the cancelled 20th anniversary Sandman mini-series to be written by Gaiman.

Bah.

Panel of the Day 16/10/07

MJ vs. Gwen Dance Off a gogo Week

Amazing Spider-man - Stan Lee & John Romita

Panel of the Day 15/10/07

MJ vs. Gwen Dance Off a go-go Week

Amazing Spider-Man - Stan Lee & John Romita

In Rainbows

Disclaimer: I know pretty near to fuck all about music so any advice I give should probably be discounted.

The new Radiohead album, y'know that one, is pretty awesome. No real standout singles but that's a welcome change from Hail to the Thief's few good songs and annoying filler.

Also kinda upbeat in an Electioneering style way.

It's powering me through my drawing right now, woo.

The monster shark to Jutland

Now I love me some Terry Gilliam, I even made a comic telling the story of the making of Adventures of Baron Munchausen for college once (if only so I could use a joke I stole from an issue of Promethea), so seeing Tideland for sale in my local HMV I thought 'sure probably going to want that'.

It's been about 24 hours now and it's still rolling around inside my head, whenever i try to think of words to describe it I realise that I'm using the wrong part of brain. It's not disturbing, or shocking, or freakishly twisted (well maybe a little twisted), but I feel that those terms are the ones most people would understand the film by.

I'd compare it to Pan's Labyrinth but it's the contrasts between the two that really make Tideland so potent. There's no shocking violence to show that the adult world is a horrible place, fantasy and reality have a very different relationship. Both are advertised as children's stories for adults but it's Tideland that is more accurately described.

As a viewing experience it felt so personal that I'm almost afraid to hear what other people think of it. I felt a very similar way after I read the novel of Peter Pan for the first time last year, it's primal, it sits in your mind like a stone. Like Gilliam says in his introduction, it's innocent and true, that's where the power comes from.

Perhaps it's just me.

Tomorrow I'll go back to my feeble attempts at humour, but for today you get the meditative Smithy thinking about doll heads and taxidermy.

Panel of the Day 04/10/07

Hats - Vasilis Lolos

Panel of the Day 03/10/07

Pinocchio - ?

Panel of the Day 02/10/07

Nickelodeon magazine - Craig Thompson

Panel of the Day 01/10/07

Dirty Pair - Adam Warren

Panel of the Day 28/09/07

The Gardens of Aedena - Moebius

Evangelion news round up

And now some news about that whole Evangelion: Rebuild thing, well new to me.

Apparently you can briefly see one of Rei's nipples in the new film, many people seems inordinately excited about this, it's probably the main box office draw at the moment. Expect the film to be released as Evangelion: Rei's Nipple in the west

As a special cinema promotion you can pick up the Pole dancing Rei cup! On the outside I'm mocking but inside I really want one!

This teaser poster for the second film features the new character, well parts of her. Surely having a new female character to introduce will take some precious screen time away from Asuka, and thus induce mass rioting.

What could be more awesome than this? well these. But more awesome still are these

Panel of the Day 27/09/07

Silver Surfer - Stan Lee & John Buscema

An optimistic prediction works out?

Just seen this on the Dark Horse Presets Myspace thingy

Hey, iv'e just gotten the first issue of The Umbrella Academy. I've never read a comic book in my life to be honest. I'm quite a big fan of my chemical romance it made me want to check it out just to see what it would be like. So i went in to forbidden planet and looked around for it. But wow, there was a LOT of cool stuff in there. i spent about half an hour looking around at other things and comics. i seen a lot of awsome stuff. My friend is always trying to get me to read comic's but i always said no, i was never intrested untill now. I went in and seen for myself how much cool stuff there was. So thanks to Umbrella Academy for bringing me into the world of comics.

It may just be that one lone person but it still gives me a warm tingly little feeling inside.

Birmingham Comic-Con 2007

Yes, The Birmingham Comic-con running on the 13-14th of October. Unlike Bristol I won't have a table but I will be milling around the floor picking fights with strangers and taking occasional sly sips from a hip flask.

Also in attendence will be Zak, Chigs, and possibly The Rascal himself.

If you want copies of any of our mini-comics from last year, (The World that's coming by me, Spirit of The Sky by Zak and Eddy Reynolds, PAW by Chris, and Attack of the Zombie Ninja by Rob) let us know and we'll print up some more copies. Well I will at least.

But I'm fairly certain that everyone reading this blog already owns a copy, actually my entire readership might have been in that list just now.

See you there!

Panel of the Day 26/09/07

Rocco Vargas - Daniel Torres

Panel of the Day 25/09/07

Phonogram - Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie

Some Observations on Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows

...which i just finished.

The cover is damn f'ugly what ever way you look at it.

Blood, blood everywhere, the blood oh the blood!

Was Ginny's Birthday present to Harry just to let him feel her up?

Ravenclaw have the best common room, this is no great surprise as Ravenclaw is clearly the greatest house by far.

Did anyone else find the Goblins a little too close a particularly unpleasant real world stereotype (not that I'm accusing Rowling of anything, I'm thinking more along the lines of a Ragnell-esque analysis of familiar fantasy tropes that we take for granted type thing, but I can't find the post that best illustrates it, damn)?

Rowling managed to actually do some stuff with the characterisation that I had previously been very critical about her not doing, so good for her.

Never did find out if there's a Wizarding school in Japan, y'know some original Potter-verse manga would be pretty damn lucrative.

No I'm not going to draw any and pitch it to Bloomsbury. Not while I still have my dignity.

So check back in about a month...

Panel of the Day 24/09/07

Nexus - Mike Baron & Steve Rude

Panel of the Day 21/09/07

Hate - Peter Bagge

Magic of Shazam

Following on from Tuesday's Spectacular Spider-Man character designs, here's Mike Kunkel's Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam.

Sivana's super crazy awesome.

Warm up sketch - Aeon Flux

I may be pushing the definition of warm up sketch a little.

Terrorist special agent and foot fetish model Aeon.

Panel of the Day 20/09/07

Fell - Warren Ellis & Ben Templesmith

Panel of the Day 19/09/07

Batman Adventures - Kelley Puckett & Mike Parobeck

Spec Spidey

The designs for the new Spider-Man Cartoon

I think they look pretty awesome. Thank you Mr Sean Galloway.

Panel of the Day 18/09/07

Cinderalla - Junko Mizuno

Anime Central: Snap Judgements

anime central is a new channel on digital offering those Japanese cartoons the kids love for the UK, based on previous ventures to do the same I give it about 4 months. The channel itself is a no thrills affair with endless repeating trailers for the shows and some tacky idents. So far, so inevitable, but what of the opening line up of shows? Well I've not really watched any of them particularly before, but we're two or three episodes in so let's see what we've got.

The Vision of Escaflowne - Fun enough if you've got a high tolerance for 90's cheese and decidedly funky (negative funk that is) character design.

Bleach - Seems to be generic pap, occasional comedy kicking isn't enough to keep me. It's not very pretty either, but it's got a nice logo, so there's that.

Fullmetal alchemist - I always wondered why this was so insanely popular, now I wonder why it's popular at all.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Despite the soul crushing terror of the CGI cars, I'm quite enjoying it. The Cyberpunk swat team/police procedural sub genre makes for a fun little show. And of course Yoko Kanno.

Planetes - Is lovely, pretty much what I look for in anime. I wonder if it can live up to my platonic ideal for 26 episodes.

Transformers Headmasters - I'm going to bed.


Three out of six ain't bad. In three weeks or so we'll see some new shows (unless they just repeat the current ones that is) where upon you'll learn my ill informed opinions on some of the other shows they've got lined up including Hack/Sign, Gundam Seed, s-CRY-ed, and Witch Hunter Smithy.

There is black and there is white and there is nothing inbetween

The long awaited In Search of Steve Ditko was on BBC 4 last night, and I was pretty impressed. Considering that the only comics coverage on British TV for a while has been two depressingly awful More Four news reports (one about the Manga Bible, one about Tin Tin in Africa, both a relentless torrent of shit) and a little thing on Virgin Comics in India with Sanjeev Bhaskar, so such a passionately made documentary on a figure like Ditko's pretty big event.

Ross really put a lot of love into this as he repeatedly states, and while it's mostly talking heads (like Comics Britannia) they're some pretty good heads on display. Boy Wonder Neil Gaiman, John Romita, Jerry Robinson, Alan Moore reciting his Ditko tribute poetry as he stares into your soul. While the 'true face of Stan Lee' we were promised by Rich Johnson isn't as surprising as was hyped (but then if everything Rich Johnson said came to pass they'd be burning copies of Lost Girls in the streets) it's still a nice little candid moment with a man who became a parody of himself decades ago.

It's not told in exhaustive detail but then it is only an hour. There's such a sense of earnestness to the whole thing, it really won me over. I've never really read much Ditko before but now I feel like I'm missing out on something very special.

So that's how Jonathan Ross made me buy The Essential Dr Strange.

Panel of the Day 17/09/07

Adolf - Osamu Tezuka

Warm up sketch - Powergirl

What's with the pouting you ask, I have no idea.

Warm up sketch - Tim Drake

Your awkwardly posed DC character of the day.

Warm up Sketch - Mary Marvel

Inking your warm up sketches means you're procrastinating, do some work.

Becky Cloonan - Friend to all children

Every day Becky Cloonan does about 2-4 pages of East Coast Rising and 1-2 pages of American Virgin.

Her work rate would be higher but then who would valiantly fights the many giant monsters who wage war on Japan.

Here she is receiving an award for saving Kyoto from Rodan last month.

Yesterday I did a page and a half and then collapsed weeping from the pain flowing through hand, wrist and back.

I am, indeed, not worthy.

And occasionally people die...

Repeat of Bill Bailey interviewing Simon Pegg on Radio 4's Chain Reaction

It's only up for a week mind.

Panel of the Day 07/09/07

My faith in frankie - Mike Carey & Sonny Liew

Panel of the Day 06/09/07

Spiral Bound - Aaron Renier

Pane of the Day 05/09/07

Kane - Paul Grist

Panel of the Day 04/09/07

1001 Nights of Snowfall - Bill Willingham & Derek Kirk Kim

Panel of the Day 03/09/07

Rabbit Week!

Usagi Yojimbo - Stan Sakai

Dun-da-lun-da-lun-da-lun-da-dun...

I demand some continuing adventures in comicbook form.

Plus there wouldn't be a laughter track

My secret shame: No 1

I actually kinda' like the uniforms in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.





Though that collar on Deforest Kelley does look pretty stupid.

Shut up.

Panel of the Day 31/08/07

Steve Canyon - Milton Caniff

Panel of the Day 30/08/07

Shazam: Monster society of evil - Jeff Smith

"It's like Blade Runner..."

Fellow countrymen/ladies, there are apparently plans to demolish Camden Market and replace it with a mall full of corporate chain stores, clearly if this happens the Terrorists have won.


Sign here - http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/camdenmarket/

You also get an email from 10 Downing street which is pretty awesome.

Panel of the Day 29/08/07

Yotsuba&! - Kiyohiko Azuma

But what household appliance would he use to kill it?

Interesting fact I learnt at the weekend: The CIA once killed an Elephant with LSD

I am sending my pitch for a fourth Borne film, wherein Matt Damon fights a tripping war Elephant, to Universal.

Panel of the Day 28/08/07

The Pirates of Coney Island - Rick Spears & Vasilis Lolos