All Quiet On The Western Front ?

I've been pretty quiet on the blog for the last few weeks. But rather than that mean that I'm not very busy it's actually the opposite. I've a number of projects in various stages of development at the moment and it's hard at times picking which one to focus on. A nice place to be.
In order of publish date I guess, I'm finishing off the final touches of Missing - Have You Seen The Invisible Man ? with art from Joe Campbell. Just playing around with the back cover, assisted as always by Andy Bloor, and then it's pretty much off to the printers.

Sample of a page from Joe Campbell

I'm also starting to pull together the script for Issue 3 of Josiah Black (WesterNoir), following a gerat couple of development meetings with Gary Crutchley, meanwhile Gary is busy completing art on Issue 2.

Gary Crutchley unlettered page

 And then there's Has Kane Mesmer Lost His Magic Touch ? illustrated by Marleen Lowe. Our follow up to Whatever Happened To The World's Fastest Man ? but obviously not featuring Bobby Doyle himself.


Marleen's artwork shows Kane Mesmer taking some down time.

A new project From SuperZero to SuperHero, is now also underway. Sebastian Velez is providing art on this one. It's my first all out Superhero book, and of course it's my take on things so you know what to expect. Seba draws a great superhero.

Seba's design for 256 (pronounced Two Fifty Six)

I've also been pretty busy at work (the day job), and even had time for a Community Day, where we are let loose on the community to do some good... or try to anyway. This year we moved weeds from a pond to a lake in a park in Bolton. A good fun, if tyring, day. Alan Rigg was the team photographer (and you can follow his blog on the right), and so I had him take a couple of extra photos for me.

Photo by Alan Rigg

I'm not sure what it is about me and rust...

Photo by Alan Rigg

maybe it's that there's something slightly 'old-robot' about it all.
No wonder I'm finding it difficult to get back into Strange Times Book 2...

Wizards and Robots...

I've been asked by a few people now about projects that I'm working on, and it occurred to me that maybe I should share a little more than I do. I'm always reluctant to talk too much about comics before they're complete as I'm always worried about 'jinxing' them. Strange that someone who works in IT should worry about something so intrinsically non-logical, but there you have it, that's the contradiction that is Dave West.

Anyway, there are two projects that are well on their way at the moment, and a few others that are in progress but they can be the subject of a future posting.

Marleen Lowe and I are following up on Whatever Happened To The World's Fastest Man? with Has Kane Mesmer Lost His Magic Touch?
Kane Mesmer was mentioned in passing a few times in our first collaboration, and even then I had the idea for this story eating away at me. It differs from the first in that this one deals with two characters, the relationship that grows between them and their world views, as well as them having a few odd abilities of course :o).
Marleen is 16 pages in (and I've sampled one of the pages below), and, as expected, she's breathing life into the story through her artwork. I'm not sure when it'll be completed, and I wouldn't dream of rushing Marleen, or any other artist, these things mustn't be rushed.

I've also been working with Steve Holder on ROBOT SHORTS, a collection of short stories written by myself and illustrated by Steve (the hard ones) and myself (the easier ones).

Having just finished greyscaling The Flower, illustrated by Steve, I'm now going to finish off my contributions and will then see if the book is ready. It's already coming in at about 100 pages, and will be printed in a nice little hardcover A5 edition, the same as Strange Times.

I feel extremely fortunate to be working with such great artists, as with the other books happening behind the scenes, and am really looking forward to seeing them on the shelves.