Who Is Dave West?

Well, as part of the new day job I've been asked to do a mini-presentation, the idea being that I let the rest of my area know who I am. You know the kind of thing, where you stand up in front of about 50 people and bore them for 20 minutes or so about what you do and where you've worked before ? Yep .. that kind of presentation. I'm still in my probationary 6 months, but what the hell, a few of them know about my 'comic book' hobby now anyway so what could possibly go wrong... Anyway, here's what I'll present to them...
…maybe I should have kept all of this quiet until I’d passed my 6 month probation period…

Where did all the birds go?

Something has been bothering me ever since starting my day job in Manchester. Something had changed over the years, between the time when I used to travel to Manchester once a month to hit the comic stores (about 15 years ago) and today.
Something was missing.
And then it hit me as I looked up at the buildings. The netting to keep the birds away from store windows and ledges, where they used to amass in their hundreds, was gone.

The birds themselves, were gone.
And then I started to take more interest in their numbers in the garden and their numbers, and variation has really changed. All the Sparrows have disappeared, and the Starlings and other birds were present in much smaller numbers. Is this another effect of Global Warming somewhere along the line hitting them, or their food source ? Will they ever return to their previous numbers ?

I hope so, it certainly feels a lonelier planet without their noisy activity in the skies above us.

I've had a busy month or so compiling, lettering (some contributions) and editing the ZOMBIES 2 anthology, which is coming along very nicely. The deadline for contributions has passed, so get in touch if you're near completion and we'll see what we can arrange.

I've also been busy writing the final installment of The Wolfmen, which will be titled 'The Last Of The Wolfmen', and Andy has approved the script, and suggested a few minor additions.

This has meant that I've not not had much time for Strange Times, which hasn't seen an update on the Accent UK website for a few weeks now, but intend to get back into that now. My intention is to have Book 2 completed for printing next year, early next year, so wish me luck :o)

Oh, nearly forgot, I've been interviewed in the latest Multiverse Comics Newspaper,
so pick up a copy and amongst the pages you'll find out a little more about what I'm up to.

Leaving New York's never easy.

This year I went to New York City's MOCCAFest comic convention, along with Colin Mathieson, co-founder of AccentUK and his son Scott. This was our first Mocca event and had been recommended by a few people as 'the comic event in the US for Small Press and Independent comics', but it was Cliodhna Lyons, who seems to have been to most of the US Cons, who finally convinced us to go. Flying Delta airlines was problem free, and whilst being tempted on the plane to part with $995 in order to have my very own Easter Island Head, I arrived in JFK airport tired, but pretty much OK.

I've done a few Cons now and I tend to keep a little 'journal / scrapbook' going to capture the events of the days. Before I did this I'd get back from a trip completely exhausted and struggle to recall much of what had happened.

I've scanned a few pages of the book and scattered them, hopefully not randomly, amongst the write up.

So, arriving on the 7th April we found ourselves checked into the hotel and were wandering passed the Chrysler Building by around 3pm. The Chrysler has always been my favourite building and it is even more impressive than I thought it could be when seen in person. We had a bite to eat in Grand Central Station, remembering the films that it had been featured in, wandered around Times Square, avoided Comedy Club ticket salesmen, and then planned what we'd do tomorrow, as we had a day free before the Con started. The Museum Of Modern Art was top of the list, Colin for the African Art exhibition (hoping to see some Zulu art I bet) and myself to see the Picasso Guitar exhibition. Scott was happy to pop in with us as it was on the way to Midtown Comics, kind of :o).

The exhibitions were amazing, and the normal collections very impressive. It always strikes me how much more impressive paintings are when seen for real. Pollack's explosions of colour just don't translate into smaller books.

Midtown Comics is a real comic shop. A huge selection of comics and minimal toys and other merchandise. We actually found some AccentUK titles there as well, which is great.

This was followed by lunch in a 'posh' diner (well, it was more expensive than the others we'd been to), before setting off to find The Strand, which is a great bookstore. Selling both second hand and new books, and being on 4 floors. We miscalculated the time it would take a little I think, but we made the 40 block walk and it was certainly worth it. The store is incredible. Sadly out of time we had to leave and decided to return on the last day and buy a whole heap of books, if we had room in our suitcases.

We took the subway back. It was certainly quicker.

The evening was finished off with a Chinese Meal, plentiful portions meant that none of us could finish it, but the food was great, and cheap. The fortune cookie had me a little worried though. 'Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come to watch you burn', can be interpreted in a couple of obvious ways, one good, the other not so.

And so the 9th April had arrived. No need for breakfast as I was still digeting last night's Chinese meal, Colin, Scott and I set off, suitcases loaded with comics, in search of the venue. What can I say, the grid set up to the city streets made it painless to find.

The venue itself is the Armory on Lexington Avenue, which is still in active use, and consequently pretty basic to look at. What you could sense though from first entering the building was the passion and energy being generated by all the creators setting up their stalls. I'll not talk about the event from a comic's perspective (or try not to anyway) on this blog as that will be covered, with photos, over on http://accentukcomics.blogspot.com/ but will say that our comics were received very well. We met a number of very talented creators, mostly in our immediate area as it was difficult to wander off for too long, a spent some cash picking up some really interesting comic books.

I'll mention a few of the books I picked up. 'Jack' by Olivia Pelaez is a great little understated story illustrated very nicely, and her little greyscale paintings were wonderful (http://opelaez.blogspot.com/). Manny The Bot, by Maurice Murdock (who almost had the stall next to us) shows an emerging talent and is all the more impressive for being produced so quickly (http://www.murdockink.blogspot.com/), two amazingly designed anthology books called The Anthology Project from Lucidity Press (http://theanthologyproject.com/) and Ten Thousand Stories from Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr of Idiots' Books (http://idiotsbooks.com/), all of whom have reviews and thoughts on Mocca.

I also got to meet some of the people who contribute to AccentUK's anthologies, Morgan Pielli, Jonathan Baylis and Charles.D. Chenet for example, as well as Martin Flink who was part of a Danish group who had travelled over. It's great being able to put faces to email addresses. A big surprise was meeting Ed Traquino again. Ed was a regular on the UK comic scene a few years ago but seemed to disappear. Well, that was because he now lives in the Bronx, NYC, and works as a story board artist. See, the comic world is not that big.

I also met Dennis Kitchen... ... briefly.

It was an amazing two days.

One of my main aims whilst there was to sort out an outlet for electronic versions of the AccentUK books. I've got an iPAD now, (yes ... I know ... it'll probably only give me 2 to 3 years of pleasure), and want to see our books in that format. I spoke to a very helpful guy called Frank Reynoso who had a contact for me. I also spoke to Justin Mound who is setting up a Comixology set of apps for Independent Comics. It's early days for Justin but what he does offer is an electronic store that doesn't get swamped with 30 X-Men titles every month. Following a few follow up chats with people we've decided to use Lush.

and see how it goes. I'm more than happy to share our experiences as we enter ... the Twilight Zone ... err ... digital age.

As we had a free morning, before our return flight, we went back to Midtown Comics. We wanted to meet the manager and thank him for stocking our books. We also had 8 comics left (from 4 boxes) and wanted to leave them with him as a free gift, and so the space that they would have taken up could be filled with other books :o)

A really nice guy. He knew of our books and was more than happy to stock them. His attitude to comics was excellent, actually using the sure sales of Marvel etc to allow him to take a few risks on some Independent titles.

And then it was just a quick trip to The Strand book store, by Subway this time, a morning buying books, a quick lunch and then the flight back home.

I would recommend Mocca to anyone, as either a creator, publisher of reader. It's one of those Cons that has a real identity and is all about comics. No Hollywood stars signing autographs, no props from movies, nobody only selling trading cards or merchandise.

We've already booked the same table for next year ...

... just need to create some new books for it now :o)

Making the most of the journey.

When I took my new job, two months ago now, the thing that worried me the most was the traveling time. No longer was it going to be a 15 minute car journey, but a 45 minute train ride. No longer was it going to be 20 minutes door to door, but an hour. The words of advice from a good friend were, 'Make the journey a useful part of your day, that way it won't seem like the journey eats into your day but is part of it'. Wise words indeed. And so I chose to make use of the 45 minutes by reading, a passion of mine that I'd never found much time for over the last 10 years or so. So I now own a Kindle and get through about a book a week. No longer do I wait for the train to arrive before getting comfortable with my book, but start reading it on the platform. The journey is now very much part of my day. Why then did I find the trips I used to have to take to London once or twice a week such a daunting task ? OK, the train journey was about 2 hours and not an hour, but back then my iPOD still worked. OK, I had to get up pretty early and was generally too tired to read a book, but what about the journey from Euston to Canary Wharf ? The trip on London's Underground ? And then it all came back to me. The journey down the escallator into the furnace, getting hotter the deeper you got (which made the Northern Line almost unbearable at times), the platforms crammed with bodies (it usually took 4 tube trains before I managed to get even a chance of getting on one), the mass of bodies crammed into the carriages, when you finally managed to get on one, where you spent the next 20 minutes looking at someone's armpit. So that was it. There was no chance to unwind and relax. The days were too long, I was too tired, and by the time I was awake enough the tubes were never hospitable enough. Although I remember that some people on the tube had managed to master reading a book whilst being supported by the mass of bodies around them, it was something that I never aspired to. For those who still make the journey or, worst still, have to use the London Underground every day, here are a few survival tips from the calendar.

Hopefully something that will never prove useful, but here they are anyway.

I'm off to New York this week, for the Mocca Comic Book event. I've never been to New York before and maybe I'll end up on the Metro (I think they call it the Metro), way below the New York blocks. I wonder if its as unwelcoming as the London Underground ? I can't imagine it being worse, although hopefully I'll be avoiding 'Rush Hour', which in London seems to cover about 2 hours these days, so I'm hoping for it to be less busy.

I'll not be taking my Kindle though, just another thing to worry about on the journey, and will fall back to reading things on paper. I've picked this week's New Scientist and Fortean Times magazines, both of which look very interesting, so I should be fine.

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.

Inherent Failure... Guaranteed.

I really loved my iPOD. As it said on the box, it's a Classic. I downloaded all sorts of music and animation from iTunes, or copied them across from my own DVDs and CDs. It was my constant companion on long journeys. My favourite gadget by far.
And then it failed on me.
It would no longer talk to my laptop, or for that matter to any other laptop in the house. I'd followed all the instructions I could find for de-installing and re-installing iTUNES etc, but all had had no effect, other than to eat into my leasure hours.
As the months passed it became less and less useful to me, and soon found itself at the back of a drawer.
And then I got a job in Manchester and it was suddenly very easy to arrange to get an Apple Expert to look at it, and so I arranged an appointment and then in due course found myself armed with both my iPOD and my laptop, in the Apple store awaiting the expert.
As the minutes ticked away I quickly realised that the Apple Expert was entirely that. He had no idea what way up a laptop went and his first suggestion, after having heard what my problem was, was to reformat the iPOD.
'I suggest we reformat your iPOD'. He said.
'And lose all of my music and cartoons ?' I replied.
'Well, it might fix the problem', he responded as if that would persuade me.
'You don't actually know what the problem is, so that sounds a bit of a longshot to me. At the moment it does have a use as it stores my entire CD collection, and the complete Animated Batman Cartoon series, if you wipe it clean then it'll just be a small, albeit nicely designed, box of glass and plastic', I was not a fan of his suggestion.
To be fair he struggled with the problem for about 20 minutes, until I suggested he try one of the new iPOD Classics, from the shelf. I think he sensed a sales opportunity and so rushed off to get one.
'That doesn't work either !', he said, stating the obvious as I was stood next to him.
'Let's try an iTOUCH', he suggested. He was getting the idea now.
'Hey, that works. Looks like you need to upgrade to an iTOUCH'. He was getting into his stride now, sell stuff, rather than try to fix it.
'No. I think not', I burst that bubble pretty quickly.
One of his supervisors wandered over for an update on the situation.
'How long have you had the iPOD?, he asked, whilst turning it over and over in his hands looking for non-existent signs of misuse.
'Only about 3 years', I informed him.
'Well, that's a long time', he said, 'think of the value you've had in that time, maybe it's time you get a new device, the iTOUCH is lighter, thinner, has less storage ...'
'No', I cut him off. 'I'm not sure I want to invest in another Apple product if they are expected to only last a few years'. I thanked them both for their time and, taking my laptop and frozen-in-time iPOD, left the store.

On the train home my mind wandered back to my youth. We used to have a television that lasted for, well it seemed like forever. It had a nice wooden casing, nice heavy glass screen and stuck out at the back as it housed a whole load of 'valves'.
When it eventually failed, we opended the back and quickly located the 'failed valve' which we replaced with a spare from a big box of spares, closed it all up, plugged it in and... it worked.

We did this for many years but eventually we succumbed to marketing pressure and bought a colour TV, the old one ending up in my room, where I could watch Star Trek without worry of it clashing with my Mum's favourite soap.
I loved it when it broke, which it very rarely did, as it gave me the excuse to open up the back and look at all those wonderfully designed 'valves'. By this time I'd realised that they didn't actually hold the TV programmes, but they were still magical to look at.
Imagine my disappointment when the colour TV failed, after only about 2 years, and upon opening it all we were confronted with were a whole load of two dimensional and drab looking circuit boards. Which we couldn't replace or fix. Technical Advancement had caused the removal of a little bit of the magic that inhabited my world. The magic of TV Sets had gone away.
As I sat there on the train I realised that that had been the change that had moved us from a 're-use and repair' culture to a 'throw it away and buy new' one.
It seems to be cheaper now to do so.
There's no interest in fixing things anymore, and companies seem to go out of their way to make sure we never return to those days, despite my sorting out my plastic, from my glass and from my paper every week.
So to Apple it seems that I should be overjoyed that I got 3 good years from my iPOD.
As a consumer I must say that I'm underwhelmed by this attitude.
But then again, maybe I'm just a dreamer, I used to think I could bend a spoon armed only with the power of my mind...

Going Up and Falling Down.

This week I put the final greyscale touches to a short story called 'Book' that has been illustrated by Steve Holder. This will form part of a collection of short comic strips that will come out later this year, in a little hardcover book called Robot Shorts. Steve talks about this strip over on his blog.


As is always the case with me at the moment, a lot of things seem to come together in very surprising ways. Reading back through pages that I'd already lettered, changing bits here and there as I do, my eye was drawn again to this great image from Steve.



It reminded me of my youth, growing up in a block of Flats (Tower Blocks) in South East London, although the locals were a little less intimidating.

My new job sees me moving between two towers in the centre of Manchester, and I always seem to be having to go up to at least the 9th Floor in each. I therefore have to use the Lift (I'll use that term as it seems more British), in order to get to where I need to get to, at the right time, and sweat free.

I always feel a little seed of apprehension when I enter the Lift.

• Will there actually be a Lift behind the opening doors ?
• Will the lift get stuck somewhere between floors ?

My experience to date has not been great, though far from catastrophic.

• I rushed past a women to jump into a Lift that actually went down rather than up, only for her enter the same lift, giving me a rye smile as it came back up to my original floor again on its way to my intended floor.
• I've stepped into a lift, pressed the button, lost myself in thought and then stepped out of it as the doors have opended, only to find myself on the same floor that I left, the Lift having gone nowhere at all in the intervening minutes.
• I've stepped into a Lift and pressed the button for my floor, only to have it make a very strange whirring sound, causing me to jump back out between the closing doors.

I'm not sure where this slight phobia comes from. I never had any real problems with the Lifts in the tower block of my youth. Sure I've heard some horror stories, but not many and none that I can remember in detail. So it was odd that this week's Desk Calendar had this advice on the subject.

I'd always thought the best thing to do in a plummeting Lift would be to jump as it hit the ground. Easier said than done I know, but that's probably what I'd have attempted. Now it looks like the best thing to do is to lie down. I'm not sure how practial this advice is as there are usually about 10 people in the Lift and I don't really think that everyone would fit if they all tried to lie down in it. Should I be first in that case, or last ? Would it actually help at all ?

Maybe I should allow more time for my journey and take the stairs, a much healthier option for all sorts of reasons.