Man, look it’s hard – SUPER HARD – to keep track of what I’ve got coming up in print, frequently I have no idea. These three things below were drawn over, I think, a two year period – and, of course, they’re all coming out within a month of each other. But anyways…
Batman Brave and the Bold issue 16
Cover date: October 2024
I have a ten page Metropolitan set story about cops and Superman (and what the cops do when superman is off doing super things), written by Jay Faerber and called “First Watch”.
You can see a little preview of one of the other strips right here:
A 6 pager I wrote and did layouts for with John McCrea finishing, called “Reflections” – Old Dog chases a suspect into a hall of mirrors, and comes face to face with himself.
Once this is in print, I’ll double check with everyone but should be able to put up the script, thumbs, layouts and inks – just so you can see the shine and polish John does on my layouts! Honestly, every time John does this over my layouts firstly I get a thrill that it’s happening, then I see all the little modifications he’s made to make the art really zing and then I spot the big stuff he’s redrawn and I learn so much (and occasionally, I’m either embarrassed or, usually, humbled at how crude my art is compared to his, though I AM doing layouts). On the pat-myself-on-the-back side, my story telling is usually 100% intact, which means I’m good at that bit! But man John really brings it alive.
Here’s Keith Burn’s extraordinary cover for the first issue (I think I might be issue 4? which means the cover date should be … November/December for my issue)
Leopard from Lime Street
There’s a collection of the Leopard from Lime Street, drawn by Me, NICK ROCHE & LAURENT LEFEUVRE and written by SIMON FURMAN (links all to Rebellion’s website of things we’ve done)
I’ve been drawing LOTS of other stuff though some you’ll seen sooner rather than later.
The Rotring Isograph is a pretty old school architectural drawing pen. It comes in a bunch of sizes, and it was my tool of choice before any professional work came knocking. I’ve had to dig one of the old pens out, actually, because I’ve been digital so long I’ve had to remove some mothballs on this one.
This is the 1.4mm sized pen. Up until going fully digital in the last decade, this was my tool of choice for drawing panel borders and why, even now, my default panel border width is 1.4mm. I think I’ve owned this pen since the late 80s.
I’ve exploded it out here so you can see its workings. It’s a refillable pen, and you’re better just using rotring ink (which to the best of my memory isn’t waterfast)
I’ve always loved the chunky line it makes and though it requires a little too much cleaning and care (it’s been sat upright for at least a year and unused and needed a bit of a cleaning, though I didn’t do as thorough a job as I could) but once cleaned it’s pretty rock solid.
If you want the 1.4 line you’ve got to hold it at 90° from the paper to guarantee a steady ink flow. On the other hand if you start playing around you can get a nice chunky ink line with some body to it.
Anyway, I’m digging it out because I want to go and use some old school tools. Many of the tools I use have deteriorated (and look, let’s be honest – so have I) in particular by lovely black erasers that where brilliant for erasing and never leaving smears, somehow the chemicals in them, it turns out, are just not that stable and they’ve sort of melted in to many plastic surfaces they’ve been sat near. Very odd.
So anyway, updates are a bit pathetic round here, arent they?
I can’t honestly say that’ll change, but I keep meaning too.
Now the meta moaning about my minimamal maintenance of this aide memoire is done, on to the action.
Things what I have done.
Couch to 5k – I’ve been doing this off and on for WEEKS! WEEKS! With my mate. It’s been a comedic disaster, our first attempt we got to week 4 day 2 and decided it was too much and went back to redo week 3, then by end of week3 we went back to week 2, then we discovered my mate, who is clearly much much fitter than I and yet was struggling, had to go to hospital to get a gallbladder removed. So we paused, and then when he was well enough we restarted back at week 1.
So it’s been 10 weeks or so, but we’re finally back at week 4 day 2.
The thing is, past a certain age comfort becomes priority and discomfort becomes something to be avoided. So for me, being sweaty and out of breath isn’t comfortable, and so I pull back a bit – but the really is, I suppose, you need to get there so you can be fit enough to bend down to tie your shoes without running out of breath. Similarly, being hungry is my first sign that I need to eat – and I honestly can’t remember the last time I was hungry. I need to learn to sit in discomfort if I want to get fitter and get slimmer.
Definitely Maybe
Yesterday me and my 16 year old went to see Liam Gallagher play in the Boucher road playing fields – on the anniversary tour of Definitely Maybe. Despite not being a full on oasis fan (neither of us) we thought it’d be worth seeing this tour – part of me regrets the fact that in the 90s when Blur and Oasis were big, I was entirely unbothered by concerts and live music. My twenties I’d rather spend it behind a computer screen programming than going to any concerts. But my kid loves music and loves concerts and I’ll sometimes make him jealous of the fact I saw Prince in 1991 (was my first concert, really, age 21, and I think it was my last concert for quite some time, as I just didn’t like concerts). So this seemed like a good one to share.
When Blur and Oasis were doing their direct face off, I was in Milton Keynes and knew a lot of people who were Oasis fans and I never felt I had a lot in common with them – too lary, too testosterone fuled and macho, and so it proved. Drunken blokes, constantly seeing plastic glasses with beers flashing over head like inept fireworks, and one bloke shouting “GET IN! GET IN! GET IN!” (though I think this was a football related joy).
Anyway, me and the kid did not enjoy that aspect of it. Plus we’re both short (me more than him) so finding a spot to see anything is great until people taller than us stand directly in front.
There were three bands playing, Esmeralda Road – a NI band – doing I suppose funky jazz? who it turns out, has members in it, my eldest son knows cus they were a year ahead of him in school, Kasabian who was great actually – bursting with energy, way better than I expected (and also everyone seemed to know their lyrics, except me…) and then Liam Gallagher, who did a lot of singing, not much talking and when he did talk it’s pretty much what you’d expect from Liam Gallagher.
Anyway, that’s my concert review.
On Anthologies
Man, I love anthologies – isn’t that obvious. Anyway, over the last year or so I’ve accidentally picked up “ASIMOV The Early Years” volumes 1, 2 and 3 – I used to love Asimov, so much so, that when I’d sort of exhausted his scifi oeuvre (ok I bounced off Foundation, but man the Caves of Steel! the Robot Stories! and these shorts from the Early Years – all great stuff to adolescent me) I discovered his Black Widowers stories – retired detectives solving mysteries.
I’ve also picked up the recent return of EC Stories, and have now set it my mission to get something in print in one of them. Let’s see how that goes – good to have goals, right?
Also, inspired by them, I’ve decided to try and focus on writing and drawing some shorts – it’ll take forever so don’t get excited, plus I’ll probably forget about it- that I can pull together into my own ec inspired anthology (difference between an ec inspired anthology and a 2000ad inspired one? I think the ec ones are all done in one, whereas 2000ad things have long continuous arcs)
And finally…
John McCrea was around so we took out my new Samnee Artists Edition of the Black Widow book, and let me tell you, John and I just stared at this thing boggle eyed. I will say my enjoyment of the artists editions has massively shoot through the roof since I decided I’d look at these books with John – it is the best way to enjoy them, get a pal around and share them with someone. But also, especially on this Samnee book, Chris is of the “I’ll fix it after I scan it” generation – ie, people (like me and John and more) who do much of their corrections on the computer. Which means there’s very little whiteout, but there is a lot of code on the page to indicate what to do (lines with an X through them to indicate – “ERASE THIS LINE” and arrows pointing at lines, which I think indicates “redraw this bit”) we compared the drawn art to the printed art, and man there’s a lot of small, almost insignificant differences, but differences all the same. Small cutsy cartoony faces, redrawn with slightly more realistic shadow. Light carved out of figures where the figure is entirely in shadow. Nothing major, but highlighted why Samnee is a genius.
Anyway, this afternoon I’m expecting Batman Year 1 Artists Edition, where all the marks are on the page, and McCrea is still in town… so …. let’s see! (will get some pics!)
