It has come to my attention this year is the 20th year of NYCC. Blimey. I went to the first with my wife. We had one kid at the time (now two) and he was 1 and we left him with his grandparents while we galavanted off to New York for a few days and it was amazing.

I still had my day job, part time working in IT, while comics where a fun second income for me, and at the time the dollar was about $2 to the £1 – so you felt filthy rich the entire time.

Despite being a part time comic artists I’d also wangled a guest pass, so I could wander in and out of the show at my leisure, it was all just a little magical. I went back the following year and intermittently over the last 20 years (not that often, it got more and more expensive)

I think 2018 was the best year for me at NYCC, and 2022 was the most recent and it turned into a comical disaster. I was on the cheap so got an inexpensive air bnb but it turns out NY door locks turn differently to ours and when going back to the apartment at 3am, I managed to lock myself out and got in to a panic and spent a very uneasy few hours trying to figure out what was next. Luckily twitter still had the juice then and I was able to get into the hotel of a twitter pal who was also jetlagged, and then finally around 7am I got to Will Sliney’s hotel room and he let me crash there (at this point I’d been awake going on for about 30 hours)

Next day I would’ve happily gone to the airport and just waited on the plane home.

Early comic cons, when I was making money in IT were great, they didn’t need to justify themselves I could do them as fun excursions (or “weekend famous” if I was doing a signing) but as my career picked up and I left my day job these things really had to justify the expense. And they are expensive. They’re great though for meeting people you only know online and finding out where you stand in the industry because it’s easy sitting in Belfast to write all sorts of epic poems about how you’re station in life as a comic artist, epic poems that are full of nonsense because you just have no idea.

Hitting a con, seeing other pros who know your work, or meeting editors who know your name, or signing at shows are a great way to feel like you’re part of that big weird comic industry.

Fond memories include the year Dave Gibbons made a bee line to come and chat to me (because we are brothers in clip-studio-paint)

Going for dinner and drinks with Garth Ennis, Torunn Gronbeck, Brian K Vaugn, Rob Williams and others also great.

This year, of course, I’ve been nominated for a Harvey’s award, so yeah this would’ve been a great year to go. But nope, I’m sitting in my dining room, looking at a kitchen I’ve just tidied and thinking “maybe next year I’ll get there”. But I suspect I won’t.

We’ll see.

Anyway, happy birthday NYCC.

(I know TWO blogs in one day, especially after I said I may kill the blog, I guess when I think of something I should just sit down and blog it instead of waiting and forgetting and then not bothering)

I’m forcing myself to blog. I’ve entirely lost the habit of it. I mean it’s been gone for a while, but a few months gap between posts is silly. My online focus is largely bluesky – though even then I’m nowhere as online as I once was, I hesitate with personal stuff now in a way that I used to just blurt it all out. I’m finding myself asking “do I really want to put this online” when online stuff is slurped up in to the ai machines.

That said, here’s some recent thoughts:

I’ve been spending some time looking into reddits aicomics threads (KNOW YOUR ENEMY) and it’s fascinating. Part of what’s interesting is where that group intersects with comic writers who’ve spent years building a comic world, with mad ideas about characters and politics and tech and not really given much thought to story. A lot of aicomics are these long rambly wikipedia like comics that seem to go nowhere. As though a writer meeting an artist is a requirement for the writer to knuckle down and create a story and not an imaginary encyclopaedia of their world. There’s also a good chunk of comics that are “ai haters” vs “ai ‘creators'” – suggesting that at some deep level a lot of the aicomics crowd are absoloutely sore at not being conisdered real artists by comics artists (who, by and large, are tired, and fed up with being considered the lowest form of artist, only for ai artists to stomp up with their computer generated comics claiming that they’ve put in the work just as much even though the average artist has been drawing since they were 5 years old).

Lots of the aicomic creators are also focused as much on the how-to of making ai comics, building spreadsheets, fretting about drift (where things start changing slowly over the course of the comic) and “styles” (because they get to pick from a limited menu of art styles, all of which slowly begin to look similar enough you can smell ai art from a mile off)

In comics news: I’ve finished a chimpsky strip that starts in 2000ad at Christmas, I think. Also, DOG TAG #6 is coming soon, and that marks that story complete. New York Comic Con is this weekend, I won’t be at it (boo!) but I should find out the fate of my Terrran Omega: The Ghosts of War Harvey Nomination for Best Digital Comic at it.

Books: Read Ursula K. Le Guinn’s Paradises Lost. Good, short book. I have to read short books cus reading takes me forever now because I don’t spend any time reading. I should fix that.

Film: While inking, recently, I decided to do a film binge, and watched in rapid succession:

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (I thought I knew it, it turns out I did not – great film, but a film that feels like a bunch of connected vignettes and the bit i assumed was the end was the middle…)

The Sting. I liked the casting and fancied some more. The Sting was great. Another film I assumed I knew but didn’t. Then I thought there was a sequel, and there IS – but it’s a dreadful, made for tv style affair with everyone recast. Just awful (admittedly I just watched the trailer but that was enough)

Get Carter. Another film I assumed I’d seen, but had not. It too was good, though a depressing watch, the stylish music (reminded me a lot of Oceans 11 remake soundtrack) lifted the mood somewhat.

From Dusk Til Dawn. Saw it on release. Was much more, on this rewatch, a film of two halves, the first a cracking, tense film and the second half a bonkers gonzo monster movie. I like both. I’m not sure they joined together well though – visual effects in the second half felt like a smorgasborg of everything they could think of, including a fantastic matt painting at the end. Loved the cast, and may be my favourite Harvey Keitel role, operating against type (though still a bad ass).

We Dive at Dawn. WWII sub. Starts as a fun little bunch of story lines about the ships crew and their various love lives, until it heads off to sink the Bismark. Sorry, the Brandenberg. Lot funnier and better than expected. Tense war stuff.

And that’s it. Time for a rethink on the blog (what, another one?) maybe simplify it down to a portfolio site, with a news sections.

I’ve been spending some time perusing reddit, specifically forums of people making comics and one thing that commonly crops up (and actually is a habit that cropped up a lot before the invention of online fora) is “I’ve written a series bible and written two issues and have the next 10 all planned out”. That’s what, 220 pages of story (plus bible). And if you’re paying someone even $100 per page it’s going to cost $2,200 in total and possibly take 5 years?

Last weekend I was at John McCrea’s house, and he has the new Steve Ditko spider-man artists edition and I was looking through that (slightly insane £175 for it over on amazon if you fancy buying it) and in it is the first spider-man strip.

Now I’ve read it before (as we all have I’m sure) and I’m fully aware of the story from the repeated origins in comics and film and tv, but one thing that really struck me on this occasion, is spider-man’s entire origin story – where we get the “with great power comes great responsibility”, Aunt May, Uncle Ben, the costume, the web spinner, the Pete as a lowly nebbish school kid who is transformed, not just into spider-man but into a funny quick witted spinner of webs and gags.

And it all happens in just 12 pages – story and series bible. Genuinely world changing, delivered in a compact dozen pages.

So my question to you – what story is so short that impacted so much?

You know what Stan I bet every one thought this was just the usual bullshit at the time you wrote it, but nope, you were pretty much proved right…

I read a thing that struck me, which was an interview with a guy called Simon Willison (a long term blogger) on blogging and he said:

My number one tip for blogging is to lower your standards! Aim to hit publish while you are still actively unhappy with what you have written, because the only alternative is a huge folder full of drafts and never publishing anything at all.

Anyway, expect even lower quality blogging from now on.

Back in the time before time, when blogging was, if you were lucky, something you did with blogger.com (before google bought it) Blogs wouldn’t have titles. Just dates. Replacing the title with the date takes a little bit of pressure off (no need to think of a witty title!)

This week, Belfast is hosting the Fleadh (pronounced FLAH) a massive olympics for traditional irish music (seriously, there are competitions), 800,000 visitors expected through the week which is … twice Belfast’s population.

I’ve long held that Belfast is desperate – DESPERATE – for city wide events that can bring both sides of the community (and both sides is a little anachronistic these days, there are still two big political tribes in NI, but culturally we’ve enough communities from many different parts of the worlds that many places feel very international) anyway this event is drawing every one in and it’s brilliant. It’s on all week(!) and on again next year. Streets shut down, pubs spilling out on to the streets, music everywhere you go. It’s a big city with big music.

I’d love Belfast one day to do the same for comics – though it’s harder to picture that taking over the city in the same way, it would need the UK to take the comics industry seriously (and the industry itself would need to grow a fair bit).

In other news, this week getting to look at Terran Omega The Seed #1 – slightly afraid of starting it. So far today I’ve written something else entirely, pitched it, and then started building a cardboard model of the Bike Terran Omega is riding. I say building – I’ve cut out some cardboard and now I have a bunch of chopped up bit of cardboard. There’s no building going on. Just pure procrastination.

The weather remains gruesome. Sticky and hot. I do not like it at all.

Next week I’m off to Amsterdam so I really want to get some Terran Omega: The Seed done and out of the way.

Had a cracking weekend in Birmingham for my mate John McCrea’s 60th birthday. Hard to believe I’ve known him since he was 22 – like that’s proper bananas. I don’t know where the time has gone. There was a lot of talk at the weekend with others in the same or similar age range of how, as much as we ache and complain, at least we’re here. Many others didn’t get that far.

The last person’s 60th birthday I was at was my dad’s and that was about 20 years ago or so. The next will be my own, I guess. And that’s a scant four years off.

Eldest son remains in Japan. He was on the island that the earthquake happened last week – we have a tracking app (with his permission!) that lets us know where he is, but of course we don’t know Japan at all so we zoomed in on his location and where the earthquake was and we couldn’t really tell what scale everything was and there’s nothing scarier than thinking your son is one finger distant from an earthquake, until you realise that the finger distance is probably 150 miles.

At John’s birthday sitting in the hotel room I came up with a fun idea for a thing, which I’ve written up and pitched. I’ll let you know how it gets on. I’m happy that I pitched it, even if it bounces right off the pitchee, there’s a chance I might write it up as practice and … I dunno… just post it online. Or something. (It’s a character I don’t own) it’s possible I could file off the serial numbers but really there’s no fun in that when you’ve thought of an idea that works because it works for THAT character, you’re getting a lot of free stuff with it. Let’s say you think of an idea for Wolverine. Well, we all know the character, so you can subvert expectations, write something that has weight because of Wolvie’s history. And then, say, you file the serial numbers off. Well, now. Yes, he’s a feral character with claws, but he doesn’t carry wolverine’s history and so you have to build that for the story and now your story is different.

Anyway, what do I know? I’m no writer.

Was reminded of the phrase “Don’t let Perfect be the Enemy of Good” – which, if I’m honest I’ve always struggled to parse. It feels like “Don’t let delicious be the enemy of almost delicious” that makes no sense to me and my brain. I guess what it means is don’t let the chasing of perfection stop you doing something that is just good. I mean I kind of get that, but I’ve always really tried to live more by “Don’t let Perfect be the Enemy of Done” – which I think is a more useful aphorism. Getting things finished is the goal. Finish things.

Though I’d also add to that the idea that “the best person to do this may not be you, but you’re the only one interested in doing it” which is … look, I made that up, so it’s crap. But I’ve been trying to parse and process this idea for a little while. Yes, there’s someone out there who will write this thing I want to write 100% better than me. Of course there is. I could throw a stone and hit a hundred writers more capable than me. But the truth is… not one of them is interested in the exact things I’m interested in. Not one will be drawn to the exact same ideas and expressions of ideas as me, and so if I want to explore those ideas, it’s going to have to be me that does it.

It’s not unlike the odd little factoid that the best place to do any sort of studying of nature is your backyard. Because, yes, there are places in the world that you’d love to go, the truth is you’re always at your backyard and so you can spend time there.

Anyway, I’m rambling now. PJ OUT!

God I love a reset.

My studio space has finally hit a temperature which makes it usable.

I’ve been working in the downstairs dining area of the house, but it’s annoying to find that it turns out my messy leave-everything-at-my-ass storage method is actually an essential way of me working and finding things the next day. A point on which my wife and I diverge.

But moving between the studio upstairs and the desk downstairs has been awful for me losing stuff. I’ve lost pens, a bottle of ink, my nice graphgear pencil, my AirPods (though they turned out to be where I left them in my studio) and I’m constantly misplacing stuff.

So I think what’s gonna happen is I’ll work in the studio during the day when the house is empty anyway, and I’ll head downstairs in the evening and focus on one part of the job.

Weekends are often something of a work washout so I don’t get to draw as a much as I’d like so I may just use the downstairs to doodle a bit rather than work on an active project.

Anyway, this week I’ve six pages of Chimpsky to ink and my intent is to ink with a dip pen. But I can’t find my ink. My nibs. Or any brushes. Plus I need to practice a bit.

Here’s everything I remember about using a dip pen. I use both a G nib and a hunt 108 (I think – could be 107 but one is slightly more bouncy than the other…)

The G nib gets steadily thicker and thicker. Lines lose their subtly and then I can switch to the hunt. But the hunt is not great at filling large areas, it’s too thin, lines too weedy.

Might try doing a double pass. Outlines and big things in the G then go back in a fill with the hunt. Though that sometimes deadens the line.

We’ll see.

I’ve blue lined print this episode of chimpsky and I suspect I’ll be repencilling some of it.

I do feel like I’ve been at this (blogging) rather a long time, when it was hot and now when it’s not. So there’s maybe a day of reckoning coming. Certainly I’m mulling zapping the website and restarting with a fresh lick of paint and a focus on the webcomics and maybe shunting the blog off to the sidelines, but it used to be you could get good advice on self hosting webcomics but a quick google search but the internet has become a vast robot zombie mall. Sure, you can find the sporting goods shop, but now it’s infested with a hundred zombies and a mad robot slowly trying to prevent you getting the information you need.

Anway if you’re still reading, why not leave a comment – even an hello – and I can make up my mind about whether being one of the few non-ai websites left is worth it (not only no Artifical Intelligence here, not even any actual intelligence).

No, no, come back! I promise, it isn’t mad!

Here’s what it is:

• Write a 48* page story. No more. No less. Any topic. Any subject. Make it finite.
• Draw one page per week. Post it online. Tell people about it. You have all week. Post about it every day in every venue you can find.
• Repeat every week for a year.
• Now you have a complete 48 page story that you own.

Repeat every year for the rest of your life.

(*I mean or 50, whatever, I’m not the boss of you – just that’s a good number and translates into a two issues of a comic as well as a single french style graphic album, if that’s your thing)

That’s it.

Well look, this was my approach, it worked for me, and I’m going to try and repeat it year after year. If it goes well I get a book a year that I know is mine.

I’m about to start year two. Now, I think it’s a solid idea to make each of these stories unique, brand new, self contained, ideally different genres (one day I think I’d like to do a romance story, some day a western) but I’ve sort of locked myself in to a second Terran Omega story.

Though going through my files there’s loads of little shorts and a bunch of other ideas. So maybe next year I’ll take an anthology approach and take some of the shorts and do them. I’m bound to have 48 pages worth of stuff.

Last year I picked Terran Omega out of the pile of half formed stories because it was the most complete, and the most likely to sustain more than one story, and I’m glad I did.

In other news, as you’ll no doubt know I didn’t win an Eisner. I tried not to get my hopes up, but that’s what hopes do. In the plus column, before doing this book and before the nomination I had really felt like I was going nowhere. I’d resigned myself to being stuff in something of a box of my own crafting. Sure, it was nice and sure I got to do fun stuff I enjoyed, but the days of feeling out the shape of the box where long over. Now I’ve found there are nooks and crannies yet to explore. Places I can push myself in to that I’d hitherto ignored. It’s been a real solid shot in the arm to my motivation. (Maybe a little too much because I’m caught myself sometimes being more inclined to doing Terran Omega than paid work, and that’s … not good).

There’s still the Harvey Awards in October – which has also nominated Terran Omega: The Ghosts of War, if you’re a voter and want to vote for me, I’d be honoured.

In the meantime, I’m just going to get on with making more comics. I’ve a whole year ahead of me…

My studio room is a stultifying 25C (no I know there are hotter places, but this is Northern Ireland where the humidity is high and our houses are no way to cool down).

So the news: Following Terran Omega: The Ghosts of War’s nomination for an Eisner for Best Webcomic, it’s also been nominated for a Harvey for best Digital Comic.

One could be a bit of a fluke, but maybe two is telling me something?

Delighted to be nominated, no anticipation of winning. To be honest, having “Eisner Nominated” and “Harvey Nominated” on the cover of an eventual printed book is good enough (but if you’re eligible to vote for the Harvey’s PLEASE VOTE FOR ME! – Eisner voting has closed, my fate is sealed, and I’ll find out when they announce the winners at San Diego)

I’ve also finished The Ghosts of War, the most recent page is over at my patreon, but I DO put them up here, I swear, I’m just a little behind. Patreon sees them first. That story is now complete, though I will be revisiting things very briefly next week…

I’ve just finished the last page of DOG TAG, I’ve a couple of episodes of a new Chimpsky to do, and then, dear reader, I’m going to be spending time and energy on drawing two more issues of Terran Omega – bringing the issue count up to four, and those I hope will find a home with a publisher (like most things in entertainment, this is happening, unless it isn’t – but it for definite is. Unless is doesn’t). So you’ll see me talking a bit about that process.

I’ve written the next two, so intend to power through them as quick as possible (I’m CAPABLE of 50 pages per month, and since I’m self financing this, this would be the time to turn that ability on) these next two episodes are called “The Seed” and are about one of the planets destroyed in Human/Alien war – I’m really looking forward to doing it. Originally inspired by a simple idea, I wanted to do a sort of Christmas story, inspired by summer – seeing all of the white fluffy bits of seeds floating around. And then when I was pitching more stories for Terran Omega I decided this could work as a two parter (as opposed to just an 11 page story) but only if we did some flashbacks and revealed some of the history of our hero – enough to make it worth spending two issues on.

After that, I’ve a three parter with part one written, and I need to write the next two parts – so I’ll have to block out time to write that. A twist on a classic, I think. A strong enough twist that I hope justifies me using the classic structure. Then a one parter – which actually I hope should be beautiful and moving and slow and not as action dense as everything else, but worth reading.

And finally, a four parter that takes Terran Omega to a world she doesn’t quite understand to confront a monster that understands everything about her. That one was just a notion for a four parter (with a good fun central conceit) until I came up with the villain today and it’s such a great, perfect idea for this world, that I was quietly delighted with myself.

When will I do all of this? I don’t know. I know I’m going to do the next two issues this month and the next, while doing some Chimpsky to pay the bills. The rest… well, we’ll have to see if the first four find a home in print, but if they do… well, we’re off to the races.