Everyone I know from comic land is at Bristol.
I am sad.
In unrelated news: my dad has a spare room that I’m getting a bit of work done to that will allow me to have a ’studio’ outside of the house. I think it’s time I had one. It’s time to start repositioning myself as a working artist. I don’t expect to use it more than twice a week, maybe even just the mornings. When Nathan is at school, but Annette will be off on those days too - along with the baby, and I’ll need to get out of the house to try and get some work done, I think. Although Annette is convinced this is not the case, I’m not so sure.
Necro-post!
So, been thinking a lot about Warhammer this week and have, accidentally, dug up some old stuff. Which I figured I’d share - these ’sketches’ are from November 2001 from a Warhammer story called ‘Slavebreak’ written by Jonathan Green. A Fun little three pager (three pages are a great number for a comic strip, I wish all comic strips were three pages…)
The artwork was drawn with a nib using indian ink and the greyscale was done in photoshop.
And… as an aside… there’s THIS email (which, when I have more time, I’ll go into the background off… Christian was the former WH monthly editor, I was behind the email and he never did kick my funny book drawing ass):
From: Christian Dunn
To: PJ Holden
Subject: New Story
PJ
Forget that Slavebreak nonsense, I need you to draw this RIGHT NOW! It’s the
bestest idea I’ve been sent all year and I have to have it in Warhammer
Monthly!
Of course if you’re behind this I’ll kick your funny book drawing ass!
later
Christian
———-
From: Tabitha DeV ine
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 5:00 pm
To: Christian Dunn
Subject: Scripts
I was given your email by Gordon Rennie, who suggested
I send you this script idea. I have written poetry for
the anthology title “Dark Imagenings” but can no
longer afford the $200 per story they charge. I hope
you like my story idea, and I look forward to your
response:
My Lovely Vampire Horse A Ten Tailed Cat Tale.
The Ten Tailed Cat, inside a hooded figure has a tale
to tell.
A large, seated figure beckons the barman over.
“Why the Long Face?” says the barman.
“Ah.” replies the stranger, “Thereby hangs a tail”
We cut to:
Lileth used to ride the back of the majestic white
horse “Stallion”. Until that fateful night when Stallion returned and he had
… changed. No longer a joyous creature filled with love, he had become one
of the undead. A walking corpse.
“No Stallion!” cried Lileth, as Stallion lunged towards her, his thrusting vampire lust obvious to even her. But she gave into his desires… “Make me one of the undead, Stallion… I emplore thee”
We return to the Ten Tailed Cat:
“What happened?” cried the barman.
“I made her my wife” and the figure removes his cape to reveal: he IS the Vampire Horse!
The End.
—
Yours, in darkness
Tabitha DeVine
So, this month we should’ve had a comic club meet up thing on the first Thursday. But we didn’t. Now the second Thursday is rearing up and nothing seems to be organised. So I’m giving notice. I’ll be in the Garrick bar on Thursday from 9:00pm. If I’m on my own, I’ll be there for an hour (god, please let that not happen). If I’m with friends, I’ll be there longer.
The Garrick is off Chichester Street.
Also: I’ll have a slew of artwork from DeadSignal, if anyone is interested in seeing it…
I got me the post-project blues. Woke up this mornin’… my project was done… etc.
Anyways. I’ve been back from NY for a little while now and I’m still in the midst of the comedown from finishing a paying gig and going to the NY comic con. This will take awhile to resolve itself as we’re getting closer to the baby coming - when life will, inevitably, turn upside down.
So that’s why no updates. That is all.
For those that don’t know:
I have one son, Nathan, who’s three, and my wife is pregnant with our second child. Child number two is due in six weeks. But, we’re expecting the little blighter early (Nathan was two weeks early…)
So far, this has been a slightly troubled pregnancy; nothing life threatening, just more… annoying. Annette has been off for a good chunk of it and immobile (or at least told to rest), so I’ve been looking after her and Nathan for months. This is not terribly compatible with getting drawing done outside my normal day job hours. So I’m trying to take a little sabbatical, but, it turns out, deadline fever is partially addictive.
The Doctor, rather amusingly, keeps insisting that we can tell quiet a lot about this new baby because, for example, we ‘tend’ to have light babies or early babies or whatever. ‘Tend’ being used in a new way for me, where one baby represents a trend. As Gordon has pointed out - our children ‘tend’ to be called ‘Nathan’ - so I’m not sure how that bodes for the new little guy (or gal - personally, my money is on it being a gal). Still, we’ll know for sure in a few weeks.
(Nathan, btw, can happily work my laptop to get access to a variety of websites - print from there and understands the concept of ‘bookmarking’ - he can even read a little, or, at the very least, will recognise the word ‘play’ when he sees it on a flash game. All of this is more than my dad can manage…)
YouTube - Hancock - Will Smith - Exclusive First Look (Super HD)
This is the second trailer I’ve seen of Hancock - the first made it look like a rubbish Farrely brothers style idiot superhero movie and this makes it look like a kickass real world take on what if superman did exist and he was a bit of a dick?
Just shows you should never trust trailers - so which is it? balls out comedy or interesting grey area exploration of a last lonely hero? Who knows.
Chris Weston: My trip to the 2007 New York Comic Con.
Chris’s memories of New York trip including some photos of yours truly.
My current facebook status:
has got a new drawing table - from ikea (which sounds like a scream from a commando comic! IKEAAAA!)
Now, joking aside, it’s just occurred to me that I’ve never drawn a commando comic, and I used to love war comics - they were my first love - before 2000AD came on the seen I was battling the Nazi’s with Lord Peter Flintt as WARLORD. (I sent a joke to warlord once, to my shame, it was ripped off another, older war comic - the basic joke was man points to a mine and says ‘that’s a mine!’ and another person replies ‘you canna keep it!’ - I wrote it out rather than draw it, and, since I was a member of the warlord club and had the code book I wrote my name out in Code (a simple ROT13 style wheel was used, IIRC)).
So, an appeal: if you know of anyone who can do it-I’d like to draw a commando comic, just one, at least, just to say I did it.
Overspill: A chat with…PJ Holden and Al Ewing (part one), part two, part three, part four and, finally, part five.
As ever, I ramble like a lunatic, but still, here’s an online interview Al and I did with Matthew Badham for his website ‘Overspill’.
