A new Wolfmen review.

It's amazing that people are still discovering these books for the first time, and enjoying what they find. Check out a new review over at Pipedreamcomics.co.uk. A very fair review, I had always intended the second book to be told in the first person from Jack's girlfriend's perspective but it just didn't work out.

Giant Monsters Attack...but not Accent UK comics...

I got a tweet yesterday from Giant Monsters Attack...

I remember the two guys buying some books at last weekend's Manchester MCM, and I remember them saying that they did a local Podcast ... it's always really interesting to hear what people think of our books and I used to love listening to the Tales From the Parent's Basement, Burnt Weiners and Small Press Big Mouth podcasts a few years ago, but one after another these all ended.
So... armed with my iPhone, which makes all of this a lot easier, I followed the link...

Turns out I had to download a new App onto myPhone, PodBean, but as usual this was pretty painless,and then a quick search and I was subscribed.

I decided to dive straight in and listen to Episode 39 - Love Interest as I was keen to hear what the guys thought of our efforts. 

Wow, they really enjoyed them and are very respectful in that they call out all the creators involved in the books, which is really nice. 

I listened to the whole episode in the end and it was good to hear their very positive comments about Mike Garley's very interesting The Killscreen and to find throughout the podcast that they had pretty balanced views and were quite willing to say they didn't like something if that was the case.

We've been invited into their Shed (which I think is their secret lair) for an interview, which we'll be sorting out in the very near future. 

Spanish newspaper reviews Wolfmen and WesterNoir...

I'm just back from the Helsinki Comic Festival (full report to follow) where, amongst many other great people, we met Eduardo Serradilla who, apart from being very knowledgeable and passionate about comics (amongst other things), also writes reviews for a Spanish newspaper, Eldiario.es.

Eduardo loved the covers to WesterNoir and The Wolfmen and took copies home with him on the first day promising that if he liked them then he'd review them for the Eldiario.es website. 

He popped over to the stall the next day and showed us printouts of the reviews, with the overall comment that he, and his wife Elena, loved them.

You can check out the reviews over at http://www.eldiario.es/canariasahora/comic/WESTERNOIR and /www.eldiario.es/canariasahora/comic/THE-WOLFMEN. 

Sadly the Wolfmen review is in Spanish only but Eduardo talked at length about how much he loved the way that Andy's art flowed like a movie.

Wolfmen Review.

There's a great review of Wolfmen and The Fall Of The Wolfmen over at www.brokenfrontier.com. It's great that new readers are discovering these books and enjoying them.

Great start to the year...

It's always great to start the year with a fabulour review, and even better when it's one of our earlier books. Andy Bloor and I created The Wolfmen quite a while back but the beauty of Independent books is that they are constantly being discovered by new readers. You can find the review over on the SFX blog...
I also received the latest copy of OFFLIFE (issue 2), which is a free comic anthology (for those who live in the London area).

once again we've decided to advertise in it, and this time we've used Robot Shorts, and included a quote from SFX 222.

It's an interesting little comic, and the standout from this issue is a short from Neill Cameron.
One of the 'Family Days' in the West household over XMas was us all sat in the kitchen making collages, or similar, and here's what I ended up with. I've decided to do them all in a little book this time to keep them all together, and also it means they'll all be a little 'scrapier', which I like. I do have some words in mind for Jack The Giant, but am not sure whether or not to stick them on the page or not... decisions, decisions.

Wolfmen Reviews.

Starburst Magazine (at the moment on the web) have reviewed the two Wolfmen books. You can read it over at http://www.starburstmagazine.com/reviews/comic-reviewscomics-a-graphic-novels/1586-comic-review-the-wolfmen-a-fall-of-the-wolfmen.

Wolfmen Reviews.

Great reviews of the Wolfmen comics that I co-created with Andy Bloor have been posted up on http://comicsanonymous.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/the-wolfmen-fall-of-the-wolfmen/ following the Thought Bubble event.

So much to do, so little time ...

Well, it's been another really busy week. I won't bore you with the day job details, but it's been a challenging week. Who would have thought it'd prove to be so difficult to leave a job.

More interestingly, we've had a good week with regards Accent UK, see below, but sadly I've not really managed to find much time to draw for a while now. I did play around with a little character development for my Two Templars book, that I'll start once Strange Times is completed.

Not sure what his name will be, but I want this book to have a much darker, and scratchier, feel to it than Strange Times ... we'll see how it goes.

The guys over at Tales From The Parent's Basement, a comics review podcast broadcasting out of Utah, have joined forces for a special Best Of 2010, with the podcasters who are known a Burnt Weiners. Episode 76 can be downloaded over on talesfromtheparentsbasement.com, and Accent UK gets quite a few mentions ... and none of them bad :o) If you do listen in though I recommend that you have a pen and paper handy as there are a lot of recommendations and although I pride myself on only buying good comic books, I had only read about 25% of those mentioned.

The Fall Of The Wolfmen got a plug over on paradoxcomicsgroup.blogspot.com, as one of the 10 books that they recommend you pick up from this month's PREVIEWS (see scans in a blog post below this one), which is great.

Colin Mathieson and I will be at next Saturday's (that's the 22.01.11) Manchester Comic Mart, shifting some of our own collections, as well as selling the Accent UK titles, so do pop over if you are in the area. The venue has changed and it is now held in the Thistle Hotel (and not Sasha's), which is in Portland Street, Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, M1 6DP. In case you haven't got Sat Nav, here's a map.

It'd be great to see you there, and maybe grab a coffee and a chat afterwards.

Diamond Geezers.

Well I've finally managed to get my hands on a copy of the latest PREVIEWS catalogue from Diamond Distribution (number 268), and once again the guys at Diamond UK have done us proud.

We've taken on a lot of advice from Diamond UK over the years, which resulted in us improving our books (over a span of some 4 years) until they were good enough to attract the right kind of attention and interest from Retails and Readers alike.

It was obvious to me early on that Diamond would have no reason to put down a book that they believed would sell, so if they had problems with something then there would be nothing personal in their view. It's purely commercial, and based on their experience of the market.

Their experience of what sells and what doesn't is far greater than mine, so I've always taken their advice very seriously.

A few years later we took the result of our fine tuning to Diamond UK in the shape of The Wolfmen and the ZOMBIES anthology. The advice from Diamond this time was that we'd arrived. These books would look good on the shelves of Comic Stores across the globe, and they would be happy to recommend these books to the parent Diamond company in the US.

All of the Accent UK books since then have been listed in PREVEWS, and many have had attention drawn to them through Spotlights and other recommendations, and our latest book The Fall Of The Wolfmen is no different.

In fact in the PREVIEWS UK section of the catalogue the Diamond Geezers have gone so far as to make our double pack, adding the original The Wolfmen comic, a FEATURED ITEM.

This type of added exposure can only help raise the books profile, and we're very grateful.

In the global part of the catalogue, which is seen outside of the UK, they've highlighted the book with a CERTIFIED COOL logo. Again this is unexpected and very welcome.

All of this helps with getting our books out there and combined with the reviews we get is very encouraging.

It'll be a few months now until we get sales figures from Diamond, but all things considered there's not much more that they could do to push our books.

I know they've had a pretty bad press of late, but I will say that they've always been very helpful to us. We respect their input and I believe that they respect our approach to the whole thing.

I think it's what could be called 'a win win situation'.

Happy New Year...

Not wanting to start the New Year on a down note, but when will I get rid of this damned Flu Virus ? Not only is it messing up my Bank Holiday enjoyment but has also chewed its way through three days of holiday that I took between XMas and New Year ... due to this I've done little more than sit in front of 9 hours of The Lord Of The Rings with my daughter (and her comment at the end of it all ? ' I prefer Harry Potter...').

We did manage to get a few games in there and as is traditional I managed to own the Bank at the end of our Monolopy session, I won't talk about the other games, being beaten at Scrabble by a 12 year old is something that I need to deal with in my own time ....

A friend at work showed me a book that I found really amusing. It's called Movie Charts, by Paul Copperwaite, and using pie charts (etc) to reflect certain elements, and messages, of films we all know and love. I've not copied any here, but have made one up concerning the movie 300 that should show you the type of thing it contains. Not to evertone's taste I know but it appealed to me.

I've made a few New Year's resolutions, in the hope that one makes out beyond January, but am not brave enough to share them with the wider world, as they'd then be played back to me on a weekly basis.

On the comic front, The Fall Of The Wolfmen, written by myself and illustrated by Mr Bloor has been reviewed over on http://www.hypergeek.ca/2010/12/comic-review-fall-of-the-wolfmen.html. Good timing as the comic itself is listed in Jan's PREVIEWS. if you'd like a copy then now id hte time to pop in to your local comic shop and get them to order one for you.

In other news, Steve Holder has a blog up and running over at http://holdersteve.blogspot.com/. Steve and I are collaborating on a couple of projects at the moment. Robot Shorts, a collection of tales about ... Robots .. that are .. well ... short. The stories that is, not the robots themselves. Steve is also illustrating a future Blessed/Cursed comic, but I'll keep that under wraps a bit at the moment.

Here's an image of Steve's that I've greyscaled, but sadly we've decided it best not to include it. To find out more then pop over to Steve blog, there's a link on the left :o)

Whatever happens we'll enjoy ourselves...

... was the last thing I said to Andy as we stepped out of the car to meet Manny of Whatever Comics in Canterbury. Manny has been a great supporter of Accent UK for a few years now, selling more copies of our books than any other store, anywhere.

We had decided to launch Fall Of The Wolfmen at Manny's store mainly because it would give us the opportunity to meet him and thank him in person for being so helpful and encouraging ever since The Wolfmen first hit the shelves. To be honest I've been to enough store signings to know how they can go, and so my expectations were set very low.

I was completely blown away, however, by the response we got.

I knew Manny had pushed our books on a number of his customers, maybe even most of them, but to a man they all told me that he had been right to do so. They had enjoyed them so much.

We met a lot of really committed comic fans and had a good chat with a lot of very interesting and interested people.

It was a really really great day.

We were working the table from 1pm to 5pm. Not a moment passed when we weren't doing something, and the time just flew.

I can't imagine better hosts than Manny and Debe, as they took us under their wings and sorted everything out for us. Also the work done, as a favour for a friend, by Karol (and later Carl) in walking the streets in Wolfmen garb to raise the profile of the event worked incredibly well, so a big thank you to them as well.

I've written a fuller report over on the Accentukcomics website, with a lot more photos. Also pop over to the http://www.whatevercomics.com/ to find out more about the store, and take part in the very active forum, and visit Andy Bloor's blog (follow the link on the right).

I'm still buzzing from the launch even now ....