Seasons Greetings

Merry Christmas 2009.



Octopus theme suggested by Jim M and Ste C.

Thought Bubble 2009

The Thought Bubble Festival took place at the Saviles Hall, Royal Armouries in Leeds, on 21st November 2009.

This was our second year visiting Thought Bubble and the first year Zip Gun Comics had a table. The new Bahala Na! had come back from the printers earlier in the week, so we were all set.

BN!09 sold well, I was able to finish off my convention sketchbook, speak to a few people in person, pick up a bunch of new comics and take some photos:

From Thought Bubble 2009

Lots of cosplayers, although the Stormtroopers were conspicuous by their absence.

The City Inn hotel was certainly the nicest one we've stayed in this year, even though the view was of Leeds train station.

That's convention season over for this year, but the next one will be starting all too soon. See you then.

Bahala Na! 09 - available now

Bahala Na! 09 is now available and will be making its debut at the Thought Bubble festival.



Featuring 24 pages of short comics (well, 22) with a full colour centre spread.

Recently Read: Grandville

Recently Read: Grandville, by Bryan Talbot.

Anthropomorphic steam-punk thriller as a mysterious murder sends Detective-Inspector LeBrock of Scotland Yard to the capital of the French Empire: Grandville.

Recently Read: The Best of Bulldog

Recently Read: The Best of Bulldog, by Jason Cobley and various artists.

Collecting some of the stories from long running small press comic Bulldog Adventure Magazine. In a world populated by humans, sentient animals and plants, Captain Winston Bulldog of the Aerial Defence Force defends Blighty against all threats, from without and from within.

Recently Read: Dungeon

Recently Read: Dungeon by Joann Sfar, Lewis Trondheim and others.

The Dungeon is a formidable black fortress - a maze of rooms and passageways, filled with treasure, populated by hordes of monsters - and the people who work behind the scenes to make sure it all runs smoothly.

A celebration and send up of D&D Fantasy tropes, with engaging characters and sly humour.

Deadline 2009 - Progress update 4

There are/were:

2 weekends until Thought Bubble.

Bahala Na! 09 has:
22 completed pages including 3 full colour pages. At least 1 of those will be printed in colour.

Bahala Na! 09 needs:

• Front Cover


• Back Cover - this will be one of the colour pages


• Introduction/contents

The front cover is in production, the page order needs to be finalised and the pages sorted. Hopefully everything will be ready to go to print by the end of this week.

Deadline 2009 - Progress update 3

There are/were:

1 weekend until BICS
8 weekends until Thought Bubble.

BN!09 will not be ready in time for BICS. My next target is Thought Bubble, so I have about 5 weeks until the end of October to get it ready for print then.

Bahala Na! 09 has:
17 completed pages including 4 full colour pages. At least 1 of those will be printed in colour.

Bahala Na! 09 needs:

• Front Cover


• Back Cover


• Introduction/contents


• 4/8 more completed pages

There is 1 completed page in limbo. I might not include it unless I need to.
There is 1 strip in production, accounting for 6 pages. This is also for another project, also aimed at Thought Bubble.
There are 2 scripts waiting for production, accounting for 3 pages each.
One script has been taken out for rewriting.

This will require some juggling and/or filler before the day is done.

Recently Read: Where's it at, Sugar Kat?

Recently Read: Where's it at, Sugar Kat? by Ian Carney and Woodrow Phoenix.
Slave Labor Comics

Sugar Kat, the most popular girl in the world, joins her more intelligent and less fashionable private detective sister Rebecca. Together they crisscross the country solving mysteries, and wherever they go, people shout "Where's it at, Sugar Kat?"

I recently re-read all the Sugar Buzz books and was reminded of how retrorifficly awesometastic they are.

Recently Read: Skadi

Recently Read: Skadi by Katie Rice and Luke Cormican.
Every week at Dumm Comics.

Brainless barbarian maiden seeks glory in her quest to "eat of every beast".

Deadline 2009 - Progress update 2

Not had one of these for a long while. Progress has been a bit slow lately, with nothing much to report, not helped by my computer getting borked and requiring a complete reinstallation.

There are/were:

3 weekends until BICS
10 weekends until Thought Bubble.

BN!09 will not be ready in time for BICS. My next target is Thought Bubble, so I have about 7 weeks until the end of October to get it ready for print then.

Bahala Na! 09 has:
12 completed pages including 4 full colour pages. At least 1 of those will be printed in colour.

Bahala Na! 09 needs:

• Front Cover


• Back Cover


• Introduction/contents


• 9/13 more completed pages

There is 1 completed page in limbo. I might not include it unless I need to.
There is 1 strip nearing completion, accounting for 5 pages.
There are 3 scripts waiting for production, accounting for 6/3/3 pages. The 6 pager has high priority because that's for another project, also aimed at Thoughtbubble.
One script has been taken out for rewriting.

This will require some juggling and/or filler before the day is done.

Recently Read: The Rainbow Orchid volume 1

Recently Read: The Rainbow Orchid volume 1 by Garen Ewing.
The Rainbow Orchid

The race is on, with much at stake hinging on the existence of a legendary flower. Period adventure in a Euro-comics style.

Recently Read: The Erotic Adventures of Space Babe 113 #7

Recently Read: The Erotic Adventures of Space Babe 113 #7 By John Maybury.
Space Babe 113

Saucy sci-fi scenarios starring stylised siren sporting subversive sentient scanties.

Recently Read: Schmurgen's Uncompromising Comic!

Recently Read: Schmurgen's Uncompromising Comic! by Schmurgen Jonerhaffs
Schmurgen's Blog

Autobio/Slice of Life in an uncompromising style. More than you could ever want/need to know about this legendary cartoonist.

Recently Read: Necessary Monsters #4

Recently Read: Necessary Monsters #4 by Sean Azzopardi & Daniel Merlin Goodbrey
Necessary Monsters

Espionage Thriller with a cast of post-70's Horror film antagonists.

Recently Read: Red Fox #2

Recently Read: Red Fox #2 by Richard J. Smith
hitlersbrain.deviantart.com

Much Superhero parody as urban vagabond discovers a costume and sets out to fight for justice as... The Flying Fox!

Recently Read: Queen Mum Adventures No. 1

Recently Read: Queen Mum Adventures No 1- Mine's a Gin and Tonic by David O'Connell
Queen Mum Adventures - Scroll down to the bottom to start.

It's the 1990s and the Queen Mother is having adventures.
Gawd bliss yer, ma'am.

Recently Read: Mister Amperduke

Mister Amperduke by Bob Byrne.

Amperville is a thriving miniature city built by Sherman Amperduke in his basement. But the idyllic lives of its tiny inhabitants are thrown into chaos when his grandson arrives...

(Actually I re-read this because I got it last year.)

Omnivistascope vol 5 and Space Lord

Volume 5 of the sci-fi anthology Omnivistascope is available now, featuring (amongst other things) the diminutive dictator Space Lord, who faces his most formidable foe yet:



Space Lord is also published in Bahala Na!

Rejoice! Red Eye Returns.

After a hiatus, UK independent comics magazine Red Eye is back, and available as PDF over the electronic Interwebs for just £1.

Highly recommended if you're at all interested in the UK independent/small press comics scene.

Deadline 2009 - Progress update 1

There are/were:

4 weekends until Caption
7 weekends to complete Bahala Na! 09 before it goes to print in September
11 weekends until BICS


Bahala Na! 09 has:
10 completed pages including 4 full colour pages. At least 1 of those will be printed in colour.

Bahala Na! 09 needs:

• Front Cover


• Back Cover


• Introduction/contents


• 11/15 more completed pages

There are 5 scripts waiting to be completed accounting for 13 pages, with one script yet to be determined (but estimated to be 5-6 pages).

That's approximately 2-3 pages per week. I'd better get a move on, hadn't I?

Her Majesty

I've used this colouring technique on small doodles, but this is the first time I've used it on a full size strip. I don't know if I'll be doing it much in future. I still have no idea whether this will print okay in greyscale.

Update: After my computer got borked, I found out that the orignal work file hadn't been backed up properly, and the coloured version had been lost. This picture is all that remained and obviously isn't print quality. I'll eventually get round to recolouring it at some point.

Take Ten

Small Press Expo 2009

Anyone who's been following the news on the UK comics convention scene will be aware that the regular Bristol International Comic Expo had to relocate to a much smaller location this year (the Ramada hotel) and that as a result, not only were the number of exhibitors much reduced, but also the number of attendees. Pre-order tickets were rapidly sold out, and there were no tickets available to buy on the door.

A lot of the Small Press publishers who make up a significant proportion of the regular Bristol exhbitors were left out in the cold, until Fallen Angel Media stepped in to set up SPExpo (in partnership with BICE) at the nearby Holland Mercure hotel. As a result, Zip Gun Comics, a lot of regulars and some new faces were back in the convention game, at least for one day.

SPExpo 2009

The Ramada hotel bar was practically deserted on Friday night, compared to previous years. There were several people around, but it wasn't a dense wall of noise and comics folks (fans and creators).

SPExpo, I think, had the nicer venue. The Forest suite was a nice big, bright room on the top floor of the hotel. The aisles were spacious and there were windows. We also had proper, laminated lanyards instead of the BICE paper tickets. What we didn't have was the foot traffic. The day was quiet compared to other years in the big hall of the Train Shed.

Compared to previous years, sales seemed slow. Passersby seemed rare, we didn't see many of our regular customers and there were very few families with children (I was also suprised at the distinct lack of Rorshachs wandering around). Part of the appeal of the previous Bristol events is that it is open to the public and many of the attendees are passersby who aren't necessarily comics fans. Maybe they're there for Doctor Who or the Beano, but they also get a chance to look around the rest of the UK comics scene, including all of us in the Small Press. While SPExpo had tickets available on the door, the restriction on BICE tickets may have put many regular attendees off coming altogether.

The Saturday night Ramada bar was back to its usual self. The bar staff were even in costume, including 2 Iron Men, a Joker, a Cowgirl and Indian, and a female-to-male crossdressing Pirate (with mustache and drawn-on hairy chest). Sadly, I didn't take photos. We saw the Joker delivering a tray of food upstairs and thought he was just a costumed fan taking his dinner back to his room until we saw him behind the bar. We amused ourselves by imagining the reaction of a regular hotel guest on finding their room service being delivered by an overly-theatrical psycopath.

Sunday was a strange day for us. We didn't have to get up early and we didn't have the refuge of a table to retreat behind. BICE was so small this year that I'd seen all of it I wanted to see on my flying visits on Saturday. I'm very much of the alt/indy/small press side so the 2000AD/DC/Marvel artists didn't really appeal to me that much.

So on Sunday afternoon, we decided to leave much earlier than we normally would, especially as there would be several changes to make on the way back.

So that was our Bristol convention for this year. Good in some ways, but disappointing in others. Time to prepare for the next one.

No RPG for Dean Dee!

On The Mutalist Relationship Between Ants And Aphids

Who says comics can't be educational?

First published in Square Eyed Stories #22.

Stinky Puppy

An exercise with a different art style.

First published in Square Eyed Stories #22.
Also published in Bahala Na! 09.

The Canals of Mars

First published in the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing 2009 anthology. Also published in Square Eyed Stories #22 (in B&W) and Bahala Na! 09 in colour.

The UK Web & Mini-Comix Thing 2009

28th March was the UK Web & Mini-Comix Thing, and as usual Zip Gun Comics had a table.

Fun was to be had on leaving the hotel, with us forgetting trivial things like keys to padlocks and comics that had been left in a backpack, thankfully only within yards of the hotel and not halfway across the London Underground.

UK Web & Mini-Comix Thing 2009

After the event and the post-Thing Thing, we dropped in on the nearby Schmurgen-Con where several other Small Press stalwarts were gathered (but not, alas, Schmurgen himself).

Sunday we saw some ancient Chinese jade and bronze artefacts, and visited the Cartoon Museum.

Happy Valentines Day!

World Peace Through Tiny Horses

First published in Square Eyed Stories #22.
Also published in Bahala Na! 09.

Peons of the Stone Age

First printed in Square Eyed Stories #22, appears in Bahala Na! 09.

Happy New Year