Strange Times are here ....

Well it has arrived ... or perhaps I should say ... they have arrived. I've had 100 copies of my hardcover collection of the Strange Times webcomic printed at MPG Biddles ... I've had to greyscale it for cost reasons but it looks really great ... thanks to Andy Bloor's work designing it from cover to cover ... asking for extra doodles here and there ... and generally nudging me along the way to get it done.

The book contains all pages on the web (and a few that aren't there yet), extra pages here and there, pin-ups from the likes of Andy, Garen Ewing, Shane Oakley, Colin Mathieson, Will Kirkby, Dave Hughes, Steve Holder and of course INDIO. It also contains a 'not to be seen on the web' Secret Origin of Mr Rock special feature ... who could resist ... oh yeah .. also .. I've put it all in chronological order ... starting 9 months after the beginning, going through the days it all started and ending a thousand or so years into the future.

The hardcover little A5 book runs to about 170 pages and costs a tenner ...

You will be able to pick up a copy at the UK Cons .. or through the webcomic itself over on http://www.accentukcomics.com/ ... or you could avoid it by keeping well away from such places :o)

Fiends Reunited

Well, Andy said he thought my little image would make a great T-Shirt when he first saw my 'Fiends Reunited' one page strip from the upcoming PREDATORS anthology ... and actually .. I think he's right ... he certainly has a great design sense doesn't he. He can make even my doodles look good ....

Wolfman vs. The Mummy

Well ... I've finished all of my contributions to the latest Accent UK anthology ... this little image has tickled Mr Bloor ... and is from a single page little comedy that I've managed to sneak in ... now it's on to Strange Times Book 2 .... the printed Book 1 should be arriving any day now ... but probably after CAPTION which is in Oxford this weekend .. typically :o)

If you're at CAPTION then Colin Mathieson and I will be there for the Saturday ... and we'll be staying for Garen Ewing's talk ... which is 5.30pm to 6.30pm I believe .. see you there.

Rainbow Orchid Discovered in Stockport.

Well the wait is over. I finally got my hands on a copy of Rainbow Orchid, an adventure graphic novelfrom good friend Garen Ewing.

In fact I bought my daughter a copy too, as when she reads a book she lives with it .. it ends up collecting food, folded (groan ..) corners, spends the odd night under her sleeping body and finally ends up on the floor of her bedroom amongst other well loved books and soft toys.

My copy however will be read wearing cotton gloves ... in a room that has had all moisture removed from it and will then find its way onto a book shelf .. well .. OK .. maybe the bit about the cotton gloves was a lie but the rest is pretty close.

It's a fabulous looking book .. the production is glorious ...the design excellent ... the story and artwork I know are top notch as I have a few versions of this as it has pulled itself through and then out of the Independent Comic world and into the welcoming arms of Egmont.

As I paid for my copies (and actually went back for a third as BORDERS seems to have a 2 for 3 deal on) I spoke to two of the staff, as it went through the tills. Both said they'd not noticed it, both said it looked great, very TinTin, and that they'd have to get a copy. This book is going to do exceptionally well ... and deserves all the success it gets.

The only thing left for me to do then was to pop back to the shelves to do a bit of re-merchandising (I moved a couple of copies into a more prime location at the end of the aisle) and then get home as quickly as possible so that I can read it.

Wonderful !!

Frankenstein versus Lightning.

Well, I came across this posting as a Comment on Andy Bloor's Blog ..

'' I am attempting to amass a large collection of portraits of Frankenstein's Monster in as many different styles and in as many different media as possible as an ongoing art project. The only stipulation is that the size is 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches (standard artist trading card size) and that each card has name, date, location, title and anything else you care to add on the back.I welcome cards from both amateur and professional artists.I will be leaving blank cards with instructions and mailing address in galleries, colleges, art shops, on buses, handing them out in the street and wherever else I can think of.If you think you can spare the time to produce a little something, please send a portrait to:A Patchwork Of Flesh45 Silversea DriveWestcliff on SeaEssexSS0 9XDUnited KingdomEach card I receive will be uploaded at http://apatchworkofflesh.blogspot.com/ to produce an on-line gallery, I then hope to put on an exhibition of these cards in a gallery''.

So I thought I'd contribute ... why not have a go yourselves ... it's fun doing things like this ...

Whatever Happened To The World's Fastest Man ?

Kind of broken my own little rule for this blog as this artwork hasn't been created by me ... but I did write the story .. so I'll let myself off .. artwork is in fact by Marleen Lowe.

The reason that I've put the cover image up for our ''Whatever Happened To The World's Fastest Man'' colaboration is that we've now got two reviews ... and both give it 10 (out of 10) ... I can't stop smiling :o)

Pop over to Accent UK Comics website (http://www.accentukcomics.com/) and follow the REVIEWS link from the ''Whatever Happened To The World's Fastest Man'' page (just click on the cover image on the home page) to read the full reviews.

I'll be sending a hidden link page to the full comic to a number of REVIEW websites over the coming weeks ... try to raise its profile before talking to Diamond Distribution about listing and hopefully shifting copies of it.

Right .. I'm off to smile somewhere else in the house now :o)

Three things must you know ....

Last week I saw one of the real benefits for the World Wide Web.

I'd lost contact with a good school friend some time ago and despite joining Friends Reunited I've had no luck tracking him down. OK, I guess I could have tried a few more things but at the end of the day I'd no idea if something had happened to him or whether life just got in the way but I stopped getting Christmas cards and the like some 10 years before.

Then I decided, following a suggestion from a friend at work, to try and Google him. Well .. he did have an fairly uncommon name, I knew he worked in 'electricity' and I knew he was based in the South East of England ... well ... the latter two were true 10 years ago anyway. So, armed with these three pieces of information I tried it.

On the first Google page was a link to a website from one of the major electricity suppliers ... based near Bexleyheath ... OK ... maybe I'd struck lucky.

I emailed the guy with an, 'I've lost contact with an old schoolfriend' email ... and waited.

And didn't have to wait long before I got a reponse.

I'd struck lucky .... he was OK .. his family were OK ... great news all round and a happy ending.

So ... the internet does have it's uses after all.

But with every silver lining is a cloud and now I worry about the livelihood of all those private detectives who used to pay their bills with missing persons cases ....