Hey! Look, I did it! A proper issue 1 of my A4 ‘zine, A4!
Most of these stories were written in a flurry of activity after I’d finished the zero issue – itself more a test of concept than anything else. To my surprise we’ve had a decent number of downloads (around 400+ I say that because I only thought to add a download counter sometime after doing it, so there’s a good chance it’s closer to 500+)
Anyway, if you’re interested, here’s the download for issue 1:
So, looks like (somehow) I have three books all coming out in October, and they are:
Soul Plumber
Concept by MARCUS PARKS, HENRY ZEBROWSKI, and BEN KISSEL
Written by MARCUS PARKS and HENRY ZEBROWSKI
Art by JOHN McCREA and PJ HOLDEN
Cover by KYLE HOTZ
$16.99 US | 152 pages | Softcover | 6 5/8″ x 10 3/16″ |
ISBN: 978-1-77952-068-5
ON SALE: 3 Oct 2023
From the creators of The Last Podcast on the Left, exorcism just got a whole lot easier. After attending a seminar hosted in a hotel conference room by a mysterious group called the Soul Plumbers, Edgar Wiggins—disgraced former seminary student—discovers what he thinks is the secret to delivering souls from the thrall of Satan. But after stealing the blueprints and building the machine himself, out of whatever he can afford from his salary as a gas station attendant, Edgar misses the demon and instead pulls out an interdimensional alien, with dire consequences for all humankind. Get ready for things to turn bizarre, barfy, and biblical!
Collects DC Horror Presents: Soul Plumber #1-6.
A small town in the middle of Ireland, a string of unexplained deaths and a monster on the loose. Better call in the experts.
When Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain drive into Termoncara, they discover a town with a dark past and a people haunted by their own secrets. There is a creature stalking the streets – a creature who delights in cruelty, who feeds off the little hatreds, who grows stronger with every drop of blood spilled.
Horror and mystery collide in an original graphic novel by Derek Landy, P.J. Holden, Matt Soffe, Rob Jones and Pye Parr.
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers ISBN: 9780008585785 Number of pages: 144 Weight: 270 g Dimensions: 260 x 170 x 9 mm
Due date: 12th October 2023
Fascinating Folklore: A compendium of Comics and Essays
With their combined talents, John Reppion and PJ Holden have created an astounding compendium and a unique way to learn about everything folklore from around the world!
The creative seed for Fascinating Folklore began under the popular hashtag #folklorethursday. Each week Reppion tweeted a different writing prompt on a folkloric theme that PJ would swiftly adapt into a stunning single-panel comic. What began as a creative challenge between two friends rapidly developed; Reppion expanded each of his original prompts into a rich essay corresponding to each of PJ’s stunning comics. The range of folkloric topics in the book is genuinely expansive, from Hawthorne, Blackberries, and the Willow tree to the legend of Boudica, the Wandjing spirits of Western Australia, and the Japanese ghost, Okiku!
Hey you! Been a while! I’ve loads to tell you about, bought a new/old house, family got covid over xmas, and I’m another year older, but let’s cut to the sweet meats – what was the book haul this year?
Two (count ’em) Artisan Editions (these are the paperback equivalent of the artists editions and I think they’re a little smaller – no matter, the good stuff is what’s inside and they’re priced at a reasonable price too)
The first was the Gil Kane The Amazing Spider-Man artisan edition (via forbidden planet here). Gorgeous stuff, I love Gil Kane though not checkign the cover initially I thought it was a John Romita spider-man aritisan edition, as Romita’s deft line work is all over this, but I think he was inking or finishing a lot of Kane’s work on this (or at least for some of it)
Second, Steranko’s Nick Fury Agent of Shield artisan edition (here’s an amazon link as I couldn’t find a Forbidden Planet link) I’ll be honest, I think Steranko as a creator passed me by totally (of course I knew of him, but I never really looked at any of it) so it’s interesting to see just how kirby it all is.
Outer Darkness. I realise this got cancelled after one series (I think?) but I kind of love the art and the premise of scifi/religion stuff.
And that’s the book haul! I’ll be honest, every year I build a big old wish list and thank god for cheap image books. Any book I really like I’ll invariably buy again in a nice hardback edition.
Come back in a few days when I might have finally gotten around to doing an all new comic book version of review of the year…
A couple of days ago I decided to finally collect a whole bunch of my little silly one / two page strips together into a single collection. Bundling some one page future shock style stories, the holiday strips and a couple of autobio comics (incl the one about my mum) and sticking it up in gumroad.com It’s called PJ Holden’s Short and Curious (a title I was very pleased to have come up with).
It’s priced at free or pay what you like (owing to my inexperience with gumroad I’d initially set the price as $2+). Anyway I have some numbers, firstly my plan wasn’t to make money (making money in comics is hard, and I’ve seen smart publishers lose money on comics, so no way would this comic hit any where near what I’d make if I were paid to do it)
But I was curious to see how much I’d make and how many people would download it.
First of all, lots of people paid way over the odds – thank you, you crazy fools! I think I averaged around $4 per sale (many were more generous than that!)
So there two sets of numbers – one is from twitter. How many people see a tweet and click a link.
I have a following of about 15k followers on twitter, and in order to get these numbers I had to push QTs of the original tweet every few hours for a day or two.
Slightly depressing. 22k impressions for 480 engagements is 2.1% rate!
So … is it not hitting the right people? I dunno. I could risk some promotion on twitter, and that be worth playing. When it comes to gumroad and the comic the figures look like this:
Twitter
203
30
14.8%
$135
Direct, email, IM
44
8
18.2%
$28.17
pauljholden.gumroad.com
6
1
16.7%
$5
bing.com
2
0
0%
$0
com.google.android.gm
1
0
0%
$0
forums.2000ad.com
11
0
0%
$0
lm.facebook.com
6
0
0%
$0
m.facebook.com
9
0
0%
$0
I’ve been told by a few people that a 14.8% conversion from looking to buying is pretty damn impressive. So thats great! (and is even higher when people are emailed the link)
The country breakdown is pretty interesting too:
🇺🇸 United States
35
3
$8
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
192
25
$123.17
🇫🇷 France
2
1
$3
🇮🇪 Ireland
10
3
$11
🇬🇷 Greece
2
1
$3
🇦🇺 Australia
5
1
$5
🇳🇿 New Zealand
6
3
$15
🇿🇦 South Africa
1
1
$0
🇩🇪 Germany
4
1
Somehow the United States, where I’d assume the majority of people might have come from, only had 35 visitors and only 3 purchases – THE SAME NUMBER OF PURCHASES AS NEW ZEALAND. That’s peculiar – surely? (I mean not that they’re the same, but rather, that the US is so low…) I’m not sure whether that’s just because I have a lot less US followers than I realised or the comic wasn’t being seen during US awake hours
So I’ve made a grand total of $168 (I think that’s after fees) but by the time that gets to me, maybe £120? at any rate, that’s actually enough pocket change to print the thing up and drop it off to my local comic shops or other venues that MIGHT be able to sell it, and really, that’s the fun of self publishing, isn’t it?
This was a silly little idea that I had simply from the notion of a hard boiled detective describing some really long legs (you know the sort “she was the kind of dame whose legs had their own zip code” sort of nonsense) believe it nor, page 2, the punchline, didn’t occur until I was describing the story to my son, Thomas (even at age 14 a prolific maker of comics) and then I realised that oh my god, I could make that joke – it was all there! And he literally said “oh my god dad, you can’t do that joke that’s terrible” (but he was laughing and aghast, the perfect reaction). My describing it as “and that’s how the dream ended” is a bit of a fib, it wasn’t a dream, obviously, just a silly idea – but that sort of justified all of it.
I definitely enjoy cartooning and feel liberated to do so when I’m the central character, almost like it’s a license to be silly – or at least be less precious. Once I’m writing another character I tend to clamp up and over think, but when it’s me its] just flows out (even when it’s super ridiculous).
over The course of the week doing these has been pretty valuable, I think, I went from “i dunno if I can write something bup it doesn’t matter if it’s a bit crap looking” to “actually I think I could write any stupid story I can think of and draw it quickly as a comic and it’ll look decent”. Certainly it’s not something I’d expect to send to 2000ad, but actually if it turned up in the right venue I’d not be offended by it (Laurence Campbell has suggested some of them wouldn’t have looked out of place in deadline)
I know I’m gonna lose momentum though, holidays coming to a close (three days at home) and then Iol be on holiday again in Paris, but I won’t have any opportunity to work then, though I might still bring my sketch pad and some pens in the off chance.
Decided to pare back and try and just enjoy doing something silly again. I don’t think it’s terribly clear in this strip that I’ve been drawing all of the comics in a large A4 sketchbook, so there’s always a sketchy quality to them (I don’t even have a ruler with me, for goodness sake!) and I dunno if it’s obvious that that the big joke here is I’ve shifted perfection away from quality and on to quantity, which is just as unhealthy really.
Still they’ve been fun to do, and this is the first one that I’ve really liked how I’ve lettered it…
Last day of holidays tomorrow, I have an idea for a strip, it’s a bit silly, and hopefully I’ll have time to do it. But even so, six pages of free comics so far. That’s not bad!
So, this comic clearly follows yesterdays, I was thinking “what would I do if someone did come back in time and shout “Buy Apple Shares!” at me, and the reality is… not much really.
Time travel element aside, this is entirely autobiographical – in 2006 I did legitimately think “I should buy apple stock” and then … didn’t. I literally had no idea how to proceed. This unnerring sense of not buying stuff that will go up in value has also stopped me buying shares in Google when it did its IPO (I was using google from university around 95?/96? so had come to really much prefer it over things like Yahoo, and thought “Well, everyone will eventually use google…” oh how little I could know) I did not buy shares in google either.
Somehow, I think I got distracted while writing it “Buy apple shares” became “Buy apple stock” and I’m two minds – do I go back and add in panel three “I should say “BUY APPLE STOCK” – which introduces the idea that I DID go back in time and I’ve got another chance and I think changing the word to “STOCK” will work where “SHARES” didn’t – or do I just replace any errant use of the word “SHARES” with “STOCK” – not sure, a decision for the inevitable non-collection!
Anyway, hope you’re enjoying these. I’m getting a little too caught up in how to make them look good instead of just goofing around. My son (Thomas, now 14 and maker of his own comics) quite likes ’em, and said they remind him of some art I have on the wall – that art, dear reader, is from my first published work – Holy Cross, published by Fantagraphics, that was drawn in a not disimilair style, which makes me wonder have I been lying to myself about how I draw all these decades?
Holiday Comics Day 5
Script, written in notepad , looked like this:
Panel 1: soldier hacking through jungle
Caption alone
Panel 2: close up of arm. Bubbles around a festering bite mark.
Caption I think I’ve been bitten.
Panel 3: standing in jungle. Being him statues of ancient Burmese gods.
Caption totally alone.
Panel 4 his face as he looks up skyward. Night.
Caption you can see the star s from here.
Panel 5 amazing sit from the web space telescope.
Caption it’s glorious.
-ENDS-
I wrote this at 5am, It’s only notable because I don’t normally script them at all. Mulling over a few things I wanted to do, one was do something with all the Chindit stuff still floating around my head – I learnt how to draw those bloody hats, so I’m doing more of it, dammit.
Wanted to draw abandoned Burmese statues in the jungle (something I didn’t draw for Lion and the Eagle) and I wanted something to marry that up with all the space Web telescope doing the rounds and … well, that was it.
Sometimes you do these things and you edit and rewrite as it goes, and somehow there’s a few ways to interpret some it and so you end up trying to ease up on some and lean harder on others. As drawn panel 3 caption said “But civilisation is out there” and that could lead you to conclude that the chindit didn’t consider whatever he found in the jungle as civilisation (it wasn’t my intent, but certainly I could see how that could be read as that). “I think I’ve been bitten” felt tonally wrong, but I dunno, it could all do with a rewrite. Somehow the little me talking to camera strips are a lot easier to write the dialogue for as they are me writing letters to myself, more than anything.
Anyway, a slight depature and somehow a companion piece to this other story (which I eventually retitled ALONE)
(Holibobs was a word my mum used a lot for holidays, I’d entirely forgotten about it until there now)
So I’m on hols, one week in Rathmullan – this is our regular escape from it all. We book a little holiday house and the kids get their own room, we get a dish washer and a tumble dryer and day trips with me, typically, squeezing work in between it all.
Here’s the first three, with some notes!
Day 1 – an actual conversation I had with my wife, in the car. When she told me we’d be in france for a week I felt sick. Three days in Disney land, three days in Paris. Then I thought – jesus what’s wrong with me. The truth is I love drawing comics, but I’ve spent most of during covid trying to squeeze as much work in as I can. And I’m not sure how to reset that.
Ok, the little one page comic is also work, but it feels like a different thing. An act of defiance. I had fun doing it. I could only lay my hand on one pen and I thought, let’s just use that.
Day 2
It’s early to start getting into toilet stuff, but here we are, eh. Again, another actual thing that happened – I should’ve gone to the loo when I left, and I found walking on dry sand (collapsing, as it did under my feet) was destablising to my tummy and it was a source of constant danger (next time, I bring immodium). We went out of pizza after this (gluten free for me, because cramps and loo visits are the GOOD options …) and it was pretty much the same thing. Basically if I eat, I need the loo 15 minutes later. Regular as clockwork.
Day 3
A prompt from twitter “If you could travel back in time and only tell yourself three words what would they be…” – my initial thought was “Remember don’t ever…” and just leave it hanging there. Saw quite a lot of the “Buy Apple Stock!” messages but surely that would depend on when you see your younger self and how much your younger self is aware of what apple is. (This has sparked a follow up comic, but you’ll see that tomorrow)
Anyway, this has been a fun exercise. I might even keep it up. Day 3 was a pain for the art though, days 1 and 2 I had no really good tools so used the big thick pen I had, day 3 I found a smaller pen and decided to up the quality but that leads to more thinking and more work that needs rescued, so a stupid idea. Stick with simple.
They’re all drawn in an A4 SAKURA sketchbook, pencilled in HB .5 inked with a Winsor and Newton pigment pen 1.0 (except day 3 which was inked with a 0.5) photographed on my phone using a scan app “Scanner Pro” which ups the contrast, and straightens the image up (even if the camera is at a funny angle). Then pumped over to Procreate on the iPad pro where I use the levels to clean it up and export as a decent sized PNG.
I suspect I’ll keep it up for the hols at least, even if I am now super tempted to keep going and then collect 30 days worth in a small press comic… that’d be stupid though…
A brand new Monkey Arms secret origin comic! Thomas (now aged 14) has been working on this for yonks, issue 1 is officially launching at the Enniskillen Comic Festival (assuming the prints arrive on time!) Selling for £5 per issue – BUT you can download and read issue 1 right now!
And, if you’re feeling so inclined, you can paypal Thomas whatever money you like here:
I’ve lately returned to pencilling pages in a notebook. For the past… I dunno … 300 pages? I’ve pencilled and inked directly on to the computer, and I think it’s some of the best work I’ve done, BUT I feel like I’m missing something from not touching paper. Not sure what exactly, it may well be all that I’m missing is the satisfaction of feeling pencils touch paper.
So I bought a couple of Sakura drawing pads (roughly A4 in size) they’ve replaced my previous love Canson 180 because… well, they’re a decent amount cheaper (£11 vs an astonishing £27 on amazon – price correct at time of writing, and honestly I’m shook it’s that much – brexit? supply problems? amazon algorithem going mad? dunno – it was about £18 before and I’m sure you can find it that price still)
The Sakura isn’t bad, the paper is pretty nice, the book lays reasonably flat (the canson lays totally flat, though the paper is rougher).
I’ve used it to pencil the most recent work I’ve done, so far there’s about 35 pages of pencilled comics in there – it’s nice to have and look at too. Pencils are generally a nice medium. Though I use HB leads, I seem to have two grades of HB leads – a cheap and expensive set and they are different on the paper. Very odd.
I’ll generally pencil, scan them in to clip studio and then resize and rejig the panels – so there’s still a bit more work to do with them than simply pencilling directly into the computer, but the bg advantage is I can pencil anywhere.
I would LOVE to return to old fashioned inking, particuarlyl with a brush, but I now lack the studio space to do that, but it’s a dream, innit (Plus everytime I did ink traditionally, it’s not long before I run back to the computer with my tail between my legs). I no longer have the eyesight, the subtly in the hand or the patience to work with traditional inking media. Real pity.
I think time can correct that – I taught myself to ink with a brush with my first pro comics gig for 2000ad, in 2000 – largely by stubbornly refusing to give up (and computer inking wasn’t an option, plus I’d convinced myself brush inking was the way pros worked – it’s not, they use whatever makes a mark)
