PJ Holden's Blog – Page 4 – Comics, Drawing, Writing and more (or less)

Time

We’re in a super accelerated world now. Time just seems to whizz past. December felt like three days. Pre-Christmas, Christmas Day and post Christmas.

Maybe this is an age thing, maybe this is just the stage of life now where instead of summers that last for decades when I was 12 they last for two BBQs and lots and lots of rain. Maybe it’s because covid felt like the world paused – at my age that felt like a breathing space – and then whoosh things moved faster. But for my son, especially my youngest – it happened it the most critical moment of his growing up. That period when you spend your days living in the pockets of your friends and doing sleepovers. He missed that. As did every one in that generation at his age.

It’s weird I can barely remember covid now, but it was a major formative event for him and his friends. What will it have done for them for the rest of their lives? I don’t know.

Time’s relentless march and my facing another 12 years of work before retirement (official work age retirement, I will still be doing everything that I do now, there will be no change!) is one of the reasons I bit the bullet on finally doing my own creator owned project. There’s never an ideal time to start doing something like that, a thing if I’d done when I Was 18 or 25 or 30 or 45 would’ve allowed me to build up a library of creator owned books. But I’ve started now. You should probably do the same!

Colouring

I was asked if I wanted to colour the DC strip, YES PLEASE! It took seven hours. SEVEN HOURS. Counter to what I’ve just said, some things seem to take forever.

I generally try to avoid colouring, I’m not fast at it but I do enjoy it. This page isn’t complex, though I will admit, I think it’s quite pretty.

Traitors

There’s not many things my wife and I will sit and watch together. Partly because so much of my time is spent drawing. But we’ve watched the last few series of Traitors together. It’s a fascinating watch, both for what the show is like (it’s delightfully silly for a thing that really is so low stakes, though I suppose you could win up to £100k so it’s not low stakes to the contestants)

This years show ended in such a way that you were routing for the traitors, no matter where you started it’s hard sit and think “why are these two traitors who have lied their entire way to this pot of money … why am I on their side now?”

Anyway, was great.

Yesterday in Social Media

Over on the Guardian there was an article… look just read the headline:

Victoria Beckham tops UK singles sales chart as fans show support over Brooklyn feud

How does this work? What if I want to support my friend through a separation but they don’t have a single out? AM I A BAD FRIEND IF I CAN’T MAKE THEM CHART?

For future reference if I end up in a terrible feud in the future I’ll be putting out an all new dance mix of Lukas diner. That’s if it’s a family feud. If it’s just like a social media flame war? I’ll just re-release something from the back catalogue. Not bothering recording anything new for that.

Here’s on of those little bon mot thoughts that pop in to the old noggin:

“About 15 minutes in the air fryer” is our generations “about 3 minutes in the microwave”

My mum when asked about the microwave would always say “about 3 minutes” one day it occurred to me that this was her answer to pretty much everything I asked her about cooking in the micro. Soup, meat, bread. Three minutes (“and if it’s not hot enough try it for another minute”). I said “You always say three minutes, no matter what it is” and she burst out laughing like she’d been caught in a tiny lie by a child (I was maybe in my early 20s)

Our airfryer defaults to 15 minutes and there are very few things we don’t just press start and do in 15 minutes, despite the highly complex programmable timer for sundry food stuffs that are all available on the super complex touch controls. Nope. None of that bollocks. 15 minutes in the air timer.

Our kids never ask us how long things take because they don’t need to. 15 minutes it is.

Oh man, do you know how long I’ve been drawing for? Do you know how long I’ve fetished drawing tools for? DO YOU KNOW the weird tools I have? (10 point divider? CHECK! Rapidoraph drawing pens? CHECK? Ames Ruler? CHECK!)

BUT I’VE NEVER HEARD OF THIS…!

Via Meghan Hetrick on instagram “My absolute favorite art gadget”

https://www.instagram.com/p/DTtjZxQDhON/?igsh=MWx2Y2kzdmowMHZiYg==

It’s called an ACU-ARC and is for drawing ARCS ! ARCS!

I’ve never even heard of this, like a full I’ve been using French Curves (terrible) and freehand (slightly worse) BUT this looks amazing.

Invented in the 50s too, so I can’t claim ignorance cus it’s new!

Dave Cook posted this over on Bluesky (it’s time limited, so don’t dawdle!)

And that’s your lot.

Tomorrow I’ll send out the first of my new Monthly newsletters (COLLECT THEM ALL!) signup at pjholden.kit.com

If you’re following the blog, that’s great. The newsletter is a “In case you Missed it” blog post for the whole month. (With maybe a little paragraph of two talking about the month gone) last sunday of the month!

Gonna go before this turns in to a proper irish goodbye (one in which the leaving party spends several hours saying goodbye to friends)

Hair Today

I have a note with a suggestion for today’s blog, it simply says “haircut”. Why it says that, I’ve no idea. I know that I got a haircut yesterday and I know I had something I’d intended to say about it – what that was I don’t know?

I’ve already talked about haircuts before, I even wrote a comic strip, but do I have anything new to say on the topic? Probably not. I’ve been getting a haircut once per month every year since I was 14. With the exception of the covid lockdowns – which means I’ve spent in the region of £5k in that time on hair.

I complain endlessly about my hair, it’s a thick matt of animal rug, slightly receded at the front, but not so you’d notice. There’s a little bit of grey, again not a lot, and what is there is usually less visible when I’ve recently had a hair cut. It comes to a widow’s peak. When I was younger, I’d get a flat top hair cut and two odd little side tufts would look like the little bits of an owl that look like ears. Twit twoo.

Yesterday In Social Media

Per Joanne Harris

Unsolicited writing advice, no. 21456: There are two kinds of writer: the ones who write for love, and the ones who do it to get results. In a world in which writers are paid less and less, results are often uncertain. But if you really love what you do, you'll keep going.

And, with a bit added by Gareth A Hopkins

This holds for comics, too.

I mean, the horrible reality is doing it for what you love is also going to pay less. But at least you’ll starve doing the thing you love.

Yesterday was trailertastic day on youtube

Here’s the New He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Trailer.

Honestly, I missed He-Man, it came out just as I’d aged out of playing with toys (I mean I was 11, what did I think I was gonna do?) I think I’d gotten in to comics and He-Man just seemed a bit silly. Even his name, for gawd’s sake.

My youngest brother at the time (another brother would come along much much later) was well in to it though. I think when I was his age we were quite a poor family, but in the meantime my dad was doing much better and now he had everything – He Man, Castlegreyskull and I’m sure all of the figures. He’d also gotten every single star wars thing you could get, death star, millenium falcon, everything.

Though to be fair I’d never felt like I didn’t get the kind of toys I wanted as a kid – largely anything Action Man related.

Anyway, longtime friend Ross pointed me towards a trailer for another movie, Death Stalker.

Every bit as silly, and much lower budget and yet this looks more fun.

My mate Rob has a new creator owned comic out from Dark Horse, I’ve read the first issue, it’s enormous fun (and gorgeous)

I dunno if it’s obvious but I’m trying to ignore the state of the world, and the news in the blog. There’s enough of that out there. This is a place for imagination and happiness and joy, and oh sod it, ok, one little thing (and I’ll explain why in a second)

Musk, at Davos:

“My prediction is there’ll be more robots than people… everyone on Earth is going to have one and going to want one… who wouldn’t want a robot to… watch over your kids, take care of your pets… we are in the most interesting time in history.”

And Alex Andreou response:

Isn't this a telling aspiration? To want robots to look after your kids, so you can do stuff, rather than robots to do stuff, so you can spend time with your kids? The darkness inside these shrivelled men must be like a gaping unfillable void.

To me, this is the bleakest possible 2000ad Futureshock, a clever four pager by Alan Moore with dark broody artwork by Jesus Redondo – a kind of inversion of the One Christmas in Eternity (where humanity has invented immortality, and so never die, but conseuqentially, no one is ever born and there are no children, except the little artifical boy you get to have at christmas to open presents with)

So, this lead me to thinking that actually the future shock format is a wonderful short story format that I don’t think enough people play with. It can be quite formulaic, but once you crack it you can pretty much write it indefinitely – Alan Moore certainly did. If you want to write (and I say to this to myself) you could do worse than scour the news (and focus magazine, and new scientist, and any journals you spot – all available in the libby app or your local library) for a a couple of articles that you can tweak in to a future shock style story. Biting irony, twist in the tale. Doesn’t have to be good, just do it for a while and see where it leaves you.

Ther rhythm of a four page future shock to me is setup, escalate, ironic twist. There’s not room to do much more than that.

Set up :

A world where robots can do every job.

Escalate:

But there’s one job they can’t do, we see the world the robots have made.

We see children running around and robots doing everything to help them they love the kids. No adults anywhere.

Escalate: We see the adults, they are in lock step, walking towards some giant factory. Wearing Robes. Maybe a younger male is talking to an older man “First time, huh. Just turned 18? It’s not so bad. They feed you”

Escalate/twist: the robots talk, they love children, it is entirely the purpose of their existence to look after them, they love them.

Which is why it’s so important that they maintain a good breeding stock of humans to keep the children coming.

That’s it. (Is it good? maybe, certainly you’d want to polish it more and more, and maybe throw in some wilder twist? maybe an adult escaping from the breeding farms and seeing life, which he remembers.= – maybe the children on reaching adolescence get their minds wiped, and one man remembers it as a dream?)

But a news story should get you thinking.

Anyway, use the news, don’t let it use you.

Rain Down On Me

Ireland, as I like to tell people, is called the Emerald Isle because it’s always bloody wet and everything is covered in moss.

Went to go for a run this morning, and it’s bucketing down and has been all week so I turned back. Now, I actually like the rain, I think though the constant dark is getting to me now. The sunset is getting later, but when the hours during sunlight it’s overcast and grey, hooboy.

I mean, as befits a Norn Iron native, I will always complain about the heat and too much sun, but I promise this summer I will not. I welcome it. I welcome light. I welcome warmth. I welcome ice cream.

But, again, a joke I’ve told a billion times, sure if you wanted nice weather you wouldn’t live in Northern Ireland.

Patreon Hits 350!

That’s it, the headline is the news. We’ve hit 350 followers on Patreon. Now, I would love, before I launch a kickstarter or take Terran Omega further to keep pushing that number til it hits 500. I think it’s possible. (And oh lordy,

DC GOES MAD

I don’t have a lot to add to this, but yesterday it was announced a 64 page Mad about DC. Mad Magazine, which I’ve loved for a very long time, though getting it in Belfast was largely a question of luck, when you did stumble across on, hooo boy!, is gonna be filled with DC Characters. I can’t tell you what I’m doing, or who I’m doing it with or … well… can’t tell you much (but I will say; my bit is very very short)

DC is proud (and slightly concerned) to announce MAD About DC, a 64-page one-shot arriving April 1, 2026. Yes, April 1. And no, this isn’t a prank—unless you count letting Chip Zdarsky run this thing as its Guest Editor a prank on the DC Universe itself. You’d have to ask Chip.

“They say at DC there’s nowhere to go but down after writing Batman, and, yeah, it’s true,” said Zdarsky. “It’s very true.”

Yesterday In Social Media

On Writing

Turns out writing every little disconnected notion for all sorts of stories means that when you've got a story and you want it to be two parts but can't quite figure out what would make it interesting enough sometimes that little notion becomes a crucial part.

Ah! Yes! Nearly forgot. So, I have a notes app on my phone and I’ll just add little notions as they occur to me, thinks like “Terran Omega faces off against a space Gorilla” – largely they’re simply visual ideas that I think will be fun (I mean that was a silly example, but Terran Omega faces off against an army of space gorillas, that’s got something.

Anyway, been thinking about the next Terran Omega story and I have a delicate little 11 page story that is more poem than story, and I had mulling it over and thought about how to extend that out and I did, I got to something like a 22 page strip (by also using it as a way to explore her backstory) but it still felt a little conflict free, like it needed something (the back storyu filled with conflict, the present just a nice little journey). So I was rereading some ideas and ahaha! there it was. A foil. A thing that was visually striking that would have present day implications that turned it into a two parter. And it was an idea as simple as “Terran Omega meets …”.

So ideas are not wasted, they just need to find their moment.

Tron

Was gonna watch tron Ares. And thought maybe I should rewatch tron. 5 minutes in and I’m thinking oh wow. This film is terrible. I loved tron when it came out. LOVED IT. Visually still knocks the socks off all the sequels. (For me).

I persevered! And actually, despite a very rocky start (and very silly metaphors that I suspect worked because people didn’t know a LOT about computers in those days – imagine a world where people didn’t know what a network was!) I really enjoyed it. I’m still 20 minutes from the end (watched it in bed and was just knackered) will finish it at lunch time.

I am going to watch Tron: Legacy (which I remember being sort of meh about) and then the animated series (which IS great) and then Tron: Ares (ugh). I think the thing Tron has going for it are the arresting visuals (though in the original sometimes scenes just seemed so weirdly empty). I think the later stuff sort of loses a lot of the charm of the first one. (And Jeff Bridges¹, who I love, in CGI is weird and uncanny)

Make Stuff

And via Dennis Detwiller (creator the RPG Delta Green)

Morning, bitches! 

Some upsetting statements on #creation from management 
-The larger the creative team the less likely the work will be notable 
-Great #art is almost always created independent of corporate requirements 
-Art that changes the world is usually what no one knew they wanted at the time

Continued: 
-if you create something great for a corporation it’s far more likely you’ll never get the credit or the money for it as opposed to making it on your own 
-corporate creative jobs are neither stable or a method of “making it” as an artist 
-owning your work is key to success as an artist

Dennis can be very forthright in his worldview, but actually I don’t think you’d go too far wrong paying heed.

That said, with the “You should own all your work!” statements I always think of Survivor Bias. We’re not all Kirkmans, or Detwillers… but I DO think the smart money is keeping something back for yourself. If not for the money (which will likely be small) but for your soul.

BBC Bits

And as a final out, a couple of delightful things for you – BBC’s Winterwatch is taking place in Northern Ireland, in Mountstewart on the banks of Strangford Lough. I’ve been up there quite a few times on the hunt for a red squirrel sighting, Like Marshall Law though, “I hunt heroes. I’ve never met one yet”.

Anyway Winterwatch has some live cameras you can keep an eye out for them, but the website is here.

And I leave you with another BBC offering (look, it has it’s problems and I know lots of people deeply resent the bbc licence fee arrangements, but actually I think it does a lot of great things and I don’t mind paying it…. I certainly resent paying it less than I do paying for amazon prime… )

It’s the Traitors Soundtrack! Good dramatic, over the top! Perfect for writing/drawing to!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0mvgzkg

Accidentally typed Jeff Goldblum when I posted this originally. But that’s fine. I also love Jeff Goldblum. ↩︎

Padding time

I had gotten quite used to, for some time, drawing digitally. You set up a new file and proceed and that’s it. Time is marked by projects. Having returned to drawing on paper, I’m finding a odd little marker of time that I had become so inured to that I hadn’t really noticed, at least until I’d gone back and suddenly it was very present.

I just finished another pad of paper, I buy 20 sheets of Canson Bristol Board ¹ (because as a kid all artists talked about Bristol board as the best for drawing on – though it is the best surface for brushes I think) and every time I get to the end of 20 pages (in a good month I’ll finish one and make a start on the next) it feels like I should mark it.

Instead I take the hardback board and put it aside with every intention of doing something with it.

I never do.

The art pads are a consumable, and so you consume them. It’s just surprising how quick you can go through one.

Terran Omega Next

Terran Omega The Ghosts of War is nearing half through. My original plan was to get to the halfway mark and start considering my next thing, ideally so once it’s all finished I have a new script and can just start putting pen to pad, and begin.

But some events this weekend (which may amount to nothing) have pushed me to start thinking about what’s next sooner rather than later. And while I was originally mulling over a bunch of non-terran omega stories (I mean, I think I’ve already scripted a sort of James Bond action adventure that I could easily just start with) this weekend has made me realsie (again even if they amount to nothing) that I need to think about what’s next for Terran Omega.

I did have a short, 11 page in mind, but I’m thinking of making it more consequential, and ramping it up to another two parter. We’re heading up to my Mother in Laws, and that’s always a good chance to start forming a story on the hour long drive. So will mull it over.

Oh, and a reminder, Terran Omega page 22 is out for free for everyone today, over on patreon. Hop on over for a good time!

Yesterday in Social Media

I was working, and set up my phone as a clock and it displayed a photo of my youngest kid when he was about 8…

It cannot be normal, surely. To glance at a photo of your youngest (now 17) when he was like 8 and nearly burst in to tears because you miss that kid? That’s not normal. And not a thing that nearly happened to me. Nope. Not now I’ve stopped my phone showing me photos.

Well consensus is, it’s normal. Not only that, According to James Brophy

Not only is it normal, it's apparantly quite healthy. It means you are not treating them like they are the person they were.

And finally, great news for people who like plucky independent webcomic creators getting their work turned in to tv shows (look, I can dream)

via catsuka

The Jim Henson Company's first-ever adult animated series will be "Lore Olympus" (for Amazon Prime Video), based on the webtoon by Rachel Smythe.

For whatever reason, these are usually the cheapest, and I buy them in bulk – 15-20 blocks at a time, depending on my budget ↩︎

Dredd vs Dredd.

A Dredd head to head.

Quick blog post, back from a run and not enough time in the day, so I thought I’d have my final say on the Dredd movies.

1995 Stallone Dredd, the best depiction of Dredd’s world on screen (maybe the best we’ll ever have, though it is somewhat emeshed in 80s design). Also first 15 minutes or so, everything up until Stallone opens his mouth? Magic. I even like the uniform. I’d heard (but can’t verify) that after Demolition Man (a great film, packed to the gills with 2000adesque humour) Stallone wanted a straight action film, which is why the Danny Cannon Dredd movie was so humourless (aside from turning the character of Fergie into a comedy sidekick (a dreadful, dreadful comedy sidekick)).

2012 Karl Urban Dredd, the best depiction of the character of Dredd. The best relationship between Dredd and another Judge. The best cast, top to bottom. The best sort of day-in-the-life type story we’ll ever get. Great movie. Mega City 1 didn’t feel like Mega City 1 though. It was fine when they got into the block, but outside of it, it made mega city 1 feel like a precursor to the proper big meg.

Saw both in the cinema. Stallone’s Dredd saw it in Milton Keynes, while on a placement year at uni. The placement year last a couple of months (I hated Milton Keyns and bletchly, and not being able to drive in a place that needed a car) and I was so lonely, I saw it in the cinema twice, despite thinking it was terrible.

I also did some sample art and sent it to Judge Dredd Lawman of the Future, the kids comic spin off doomed to failure because the movie got an 18 rating and not a more kiddie friendly rating. My samples faired just as well as the movie did.

I can’t remember where I was when I saw the Urban Dredd movie, I do remember it was an empty theatre and I think I saw it twice and found it mesmerising (3d, slow motion, colours suddenly popping, just great looking), so much better and just loved it. Favourite line “It’s all deep end”. Just some great stuff in it.

But it hit and was promoted on the basis of 3d (I remember the poster was a big old DREDD 3D written across it) and I suspect they’d’ve loved a summer blockbuster and it just didn’t do that kind of business. Thought Karl Urban was great but lacked a strong enough chin, that’s my biggest complaint. Insufficient chin.

I bring this up, because when someone finds out you draw Judge Dredd this topic invariably comes up, so here’s possibly my final word on it.

Stallone Judge Dredd? A great 15 minutes. Karl Urban Dredd? fab film, great Dredd but lacking the madness of mega city 1.

Yesterday in Social media

Oh god, everything yesterday I posted was about the current madness – Trump’s Greenland demands. So I have nothing interesting to put here. (This is in fact a fascinating way to tell you’ve bought entirely into the doomosphere and I should endeavour to post more nonsense)

But, I can’t let this section go without something…

To which, I replied:

I like popadom preach because I too believe in the healing power of popadoms.

And something very cool to end on.

That’s it, that’s yer lot! Bye!

(Oh, a little postscript, where I can I will not embed a post from bluesky, I’ll just grab a screen shot and stick it there with a link, hopefully that should prevent any much later link rot, but Mark Garlick’s post has a video, and it’s impossible to screen grab that, so instead you get an embedded post.)

The New Normal

I’ve mentioned this a few times in the past but will very much make a point of spelling it out here.

I hit, prior to covid, on a strategy I called “Two Things” (A terrible none-name but describes it perfectly) basically making sure every day had two objectives in it, and then when I do those things, that’s it. Thats your day done. Relax.

Now, the reason for this, for me, was that I’d very often do quite a bit more than two things, spend all day in the studio and fret and worry that I haven’t done enough. Two things was about setting a boundary around the work that I do to ensure that a) I get enough done, and b) I don’t beat myself up for getting too much done.

Two things can be any two substantial things, for me, just emailing my accountant is a thing – the cognative load of which can knock me out for a few hours. Drawing a page in pencil is one whole thing. About 12 pages of layouts is one thing.

So one productive day could look like emailing accountant and 12 pages of layouts.

Now, this stood me well, given my day was often broken up into fractured moments because… well… two young kids and wife working from home.

BUT – I’m now operating in a new normal. Wife and kids all out all day, either working (in case of wife and eldest) or school.

(In fact eldest making plans for a trip to Japan in the summer, youngest making plans for trip to London in summer means for the first time my wife and I can plan a weekend break at some point without worrying about babysitters. )

So my day now looks like:

9-12 work. One THING.

1-5 work. Another THING.

And then every one is home.

If I can do that on a schedule, that will solidly help you draw 30 pages per month.

Now, this means I might successfully hit the dream goal of a 9-5 and then relax in the evening. But I won’t because the free time will become extra time, time to play with for things like creator owned work. But the nice thing is, since I’ll have done my TWO required things, anything extra is EXTRA. No matter how much or how little I do.

That’s the plan this week. Let’s see if it works!

When Harry Met Sally

I watched this a couple of days ago, I can’t remember when exactly I saw it first, but I will say I was 18 when it came out and it wouldn’t have been much long after that. I suspect it left a deeper lasting impression on me than I’ve ever realised. I’ve seen it a few times since over the decades, but not for a long long time. This and Sleepless in Seattle – two of Nora Ephrom’s finest romcoms, I think both heavily imprinted on me. I suspect I fancied myself as something like Harry, acerbic and funny (but really slightly lonely and bitter) but was surprised in the recent viewing to see how New Years Eve is such an important fulcrum in the film – and I love New Year’s Eve. New Year’s Eve is a new leaf, fresh start. A reboot. It’s unboxing a brand new computer, taking the cellophane off a new drawing book, that first stroke with a brand new brush pen. Love it. My wife, conversely hates it.

When my wife and I met, I think I was banging on about watching An Affair to Remember (which was the movie referenced through out Sleepless in Seattle).

I should watch both again.

Kobo in Kolour

My wife bought a Kobo ebook and it arrived yesterday. I will say, it’s actually a love little device. She got it because it integrates with Libby and she can borrow books on it. (More on borrowing books in a second!)

The box it was packaged in though, what in the name of chinese-puzzle-boxes was up with that. It looked unopenable. I eventually figured out it opens from the bottom (!)

I hadn’t really noticed on the cover (though it’s there for those with eyes to look) that it was colour! Blimey. I bought my kindle white in about 2016 and I think the cheapest colour ereaders where in the five to six hundred quid area then. This thing was £150. (My kindle paper white at the time was £100 which in 2016 was a lot of money, but in the present, a thousand years later, that’s just the price of a nice lunch for two)

I haven’t tried comics on it, but I WILL! I WILL!

Public Lending Rights

When the library lends a book out, that you have contributed to, you can get a little bit of cash for it to happen. It’s amazing. This happens regardless of whether you’re the copyright owner. So if you’re a comic artist, it’s perfectly reasonable to go on there and sign up and tell it which books you’ve contributed to and what percentage (for books with me as sole artists I do 50% for books where I’ve contributed a portion, I calculate it pro rata and do that percentage).

Now not every book will make much money, but Bad Magic, the book did a couple of years ago seems to be very popular in the library – at least according to the statement I’ve just received. Now, it’s not enough money to buy a kindly. BUT it is enough to pay for a reasonable lunch for two. You should go sign up here.

Yesterday in Social Media

Oh, speaking of great films, Excaliber! What a flick – here’s a great article I stumbled across on the Socials by Tin Phelan (I mean absoloutly worth it even just to see that high res poster in all its glory!)

And er.. that’s it. But, it was Cary Grant’s birthday yesterday (he of An Affair To Remember – wait… it’s like my subconcious is making connections!) and WaltyDunlop over on bluesky posted this delightful photo.

Stand by for Action

When I started doing Terran Omega, there were a couple of things I really wanted to do, quite apart from write/draw my own comic.

I wanted to really experiment with how I bring an audience to it. As an artist, I often defer to the writer/publisher when it comes to chasing an audience. I’m conscious that sometimes I can be obnoxious, and irratating and general worried that I’ll mess up, and so I tend to sit back, get on with drawing and allow others to organise PR.

I mean, I probably shouldn’t. I probably should pursue that stuff to, but it’s so much easier if a publisher is the single point for that stuff. Besides I have limited access to venues, and all I can do is ask those places based on what I know.

So usually I say yes to every interview that’s organised and hope.

Way back when we were talking about doing a collection of the Folklore stories, having built some sort of audience for it on twitter by posting it weekly, I wanted the publisher to offer a kickstarter – not so much to pay for it, but to actually build excitement round the book, and try and get that twitter audience that I’d been building to buy in to the kickstarter. I think that’s where something like kickstarter can be good. I mean it would also help fund the book, but really the book cost a lot of money to produce and it’s unlikely the kickstarter would’ve funded it. BUT! It would have then gone on to do what the publisher originally wanted anyway selling how they expected. Sadly, I couldn’t really convince anyone of the value of that, and the book while it is beuatiful and produced to an incredibly high standard by the publisher ultimately hasn’t really had much of an impact.

(You can still buy it from John Reppion’s website!)

So Terran Omega is allowing me to try all of the things. One of the things I’ve been doing is dropping the comic strip weekly into various reddit forums:

r/comics is the most obvious (as long as your comic is marked as [OC] – meaning Original Content – you can do that any day) it averages 1.6m weekly visitors, my strips get an average of around 1.5k views with 4-5 upvotes.
r/indiecomics ([OC] required, but you can only do this on a Thursday) 445 weekly visitors, 217 views, 4-6 upvotes
r/webcomics (no need to tag it, though if you’re crossposting – posting in one forum and then using that post to post in other forums, you’re better just leaving [OC] in the title, for clarity) 134k weekly visitors, 410 views, 2-3 upvotes
r/2000ad – because I’m best known as a Dredd artist, I figure it’s ok to post this scifi comic there, I mark it as [OC] 4.3k weekly, 638 views, 4-5 upvotes.
r/scifi – this is the major scifi topic in reddit, and allows original content (Marked [OC] BUT only on a Saturday!), but I get the impression there’s a few in there that maybe aren’t keen on comics because I’ll see upvotes that then become downvotes. BUT the readership makes it worth persevering! The average visitor count is 364k, and the strips tend to get around 4k views, with upvotes about 1 or 2. With the caveat that I’m convinced at least one or two people have been downvoting it (possibly paranoia!)

In the my latest post of the strip in r/scifi I decided to try a little upvoting experiment and asked anyone who was following me on bluesky to nip over and click the upvote – and howboy did that make a massive difference. My average upvotes went from 1/2 quickly skyrocketed to 32!) Making it the #6 most popular post on that subforum today.

So I might try and do that.

One thing I’ve done each time I post in the forums is ask people to head on over to my patreon and sign up, but I’ve also posted about signing up to the newsletter and coming on over to the blog. I think I’m sending very mixed messages.

I’m not sure how many are doing it. I do have some stats, a very crudely built utility that counts where someone has come from as it sends them on to my patreon page. Based on that, in the entire time I’ve been doing this (about 18 weeks) there’s been about 510 uses of the link. Now, that might be miscounted, over counted a little because sometimes the links are followed by bots (and ai bots). So let’s call it say 1/5 of that total. 100 real uses of the link. Well, my patreon following is about 243 right now, but for a large part many of those people are coming from bluesky. In other words, I don’t think reddit is doing a heck of a lot.

I think I need to start to refine my call to action (see, now the blog title makes sense!) simply to send them to the patreon.

I should add as well as posting the comic in reddit I’ve also put in an effort to be a good reddit citizen and tried to contribute to as many topics as I can (where my contribution is useful or interesting, and avoiding where I’d just post a zinger – which is terribly tempting sometimes)

I start firming up ideas about a kickstarter I hopefully will be able to take the passive audience that exists and convert it into a kickstarter audience. I’m conscious that not everyone buys in to patreon (and patreon has made it a little difficult to see how to follow people for free sometimes).

That will allow me to post in r/kickstarter and kickstarter itself, all with a simple call to action.

Anyway, that’s it. I’d intended to talk about making sure you keep one simple call to action ask in any post, otherwise you risk people having to make decisions and people don’t want to do that when they’re passively reading stuff. Instead it’s been about my adventures in reddit.

Yesterday on Social Media

Well, flip, for whatever reason I didn’t actually post a lot on bluesky yesterday! I know! I’m as shocked as anyone!

I dunno if you’ve been following the traitors, but I have – it’s such low stakes/high camp/drama, it’s a delight.

Anyway, I made this observation

Jessie from the Traitors is like if Harley Quinn was a good guy. (Gal)

Here’s Jessie’s reaction to that:

Oh, thought this was funny! (my qt on John Wiswell’s slightly weird trending topics)

And I guess that was it! (Ok, I also got annoyed about the state of the world, but if I’m honest, the stuff I’d rather hold on to now are funny jokes about the famine than the possibility of wwiii starting with Trump invading Greenland)

And I’ll let the final word fall to Nick Stone‘s great little Project diagram.

The unbearable lightness of boredom

I’ve long contended that any creative needs boredom, and we’ve largely robbed ourselves of it. When my kids where young, I’d call the iPhone “daddy’s little helper” because I would so frequently turn to it when the kids were playing, and waiting at the doctors or shopping, or something where … well, your mind needed to escape.

Now, in those situations what it was escaping was often noise and over-stimulation. In those situations, whipping out the iPhone to sit on twitter while the kids were screaming and leaping around a play area with a dozen other kids was the only way to quieten your head down a bit.

(Of course, show me a parent that later in life doesn’t think “I’d give anything to go back and see my kids running around like maniacs in a play park for one day” – but that’s because we’re very good at blocking out the day after day monotony of this as it happens – but also, I would give anything, etc.)

But then, when the kids are older and you’re no longer needing to escape a cacophony of sound and bright lights, but just you know now you’re a little bored, so you whip out the phone and spend that time hitting up twitter/bluesky/facebook/instgram/discord/twitter/bluesky/…[repeats forever]

And boredom vanishes. But, I think, for a creative, boredom is easily our most powerful motivator (second possibly only to “oh my god, my bank account is crying”) but I think it’s a better motivator. Because it’s one where your brain will start to make it’s own noise, and that noise will form into thoughts and ideas that you may never have had the space or patience for before.

I think we all probably have our own thresholds for boredom, I often suggest three hours minimum. But really three hours is my minimum for getting stuff done – one hour to faff about, one hour to stare vacantly in to space, and one hour to go “well, I suppose I could try drawing”. I mean, once you’ve got over that start up time then the next three hours is all drawing. The problem is the speed bumps. Each speed bump doesn’t interrupt the drawing (for me) it simply resets the minimum three hour window.

Which is no way to ease the pain of a bank balance.

With my wife starting full time work this week, I’ve largely had a week free of speed bumps (wait, this sounds terrible, I love my wife, she is not a speed bump, but you know, she’s started work at the same time my son is working and my other son is at college so it’s been a dramatically different week than the weeks/years leading up to it).

Suddenly, I’ve got wide open spaces to just let myself think. And I did. (Only downside, didn’t quite do as much work as I’d intended)

One thing I also did was I sent a cold pitch to a publisher, and while it’s a long way from something actually happening, it was a fast reply asking if there’s more. So that’s good. I’m sure I wouldn’t have sent that cold pitch if I hadn’t had the wide open time and was avoiding drawing. (This is how I avoid work, crazy reach for the moon stretches)

So find some time for boredom, see what it does.

Animates

Last year I came to the realisation that almost every one I knew I knew from social media, having very few friends in real life. And with the implosion of twitter in to X I lost many of those connections, writ, as they were in mist.

So I decided to make a pointed effort in doing stuff in the real world, comics unfortunately was too dispersed (and as a professional you’re viewed differently than if you were a fan) so I wanted to do something where I had equal standing with everyone so I started Improv.

In a similar funk of existential drama I was mulling over my comics career and thinking, actually I need to explore where my skillset can be used outside of comics, and Northern Ireland (and certainly the Republic of Ireland) has become home to a number of animation companies. And I figure, well I’ve done storyboarding.

So casting around for who is here, I discovered that there’s a regular animators meet up called Animates, and while I couldn’t quite book a ticket for the next one I saw, I kept it in the back of my mind for the next time.

In the meantime, I’d been writing and drawing Terran Omega.

So yesterday Animates happened in Belfast and I popped along. I am a weird cat when it comes to social stuff. If I’m introduced, I can talk your leg off (in fact you might want to inch away slowly from me) but if I’m not introduced I can sort of stand there staring vacantly in to space. I’m like a pilot that is crap at landing and take off but amazing in the air. (No one wants to fly with that pilot)

Luckily, prior to this,I’d met a guy called Sree who worked in animation, through a mutual friend – and we met through doing Improv. Sree is also a comics but and knew enough people in the industry that I thought “well, I cam glom on to Sree”. And that’s what I did.

And it went great. I don’t know what will come from it long term (and I’m not going to talk about it because, well, right now it’s nothing), but certainly making sure people know I exist is one important aspect to the kind of work I do and I don’t regret going (and thank god Sree was there otherwise I would definiatly have been stood staring vacantly in to space wondering why I thought this was a good idea.

I will have to work on hellos and goodbyes, though, but I think I do a good pitch.

Anyway, been something of an exciting weekend, and these things are at the very early you-need-to-hold-this-flame-gently-in-your-hand-in-case-the-wind-blows-it-away stage, but I think it vindicates the decision I made some time ago which is that you have more control over your career as a writer than as an artist. (And more again if you can do both)

Yesterday On Social Media

(I’ve renamed this section, because, well, there’s more than bluesky and in a few years we may all be talking about bluesky like it’s myspace, who knows – the internet is in the cloud, and we all know what bastards clouds are for disappearing)

Yesterday on Instagram, I got what must be the funniest message I’ve ever received. The context for this is they were replying to some photos I’d posted of me shaving off my beard from doing the play The Ghost Train. Now, here’s the best most entertaining way to read this, do it in this order:

Look at the photo. Soak it in. Read the reply to the photo. IMPORTANT: Go and look at the photo again.

It’s a rare thing that the reply to the photo is also the photo.

Now, I thought, wait, Paul, surely this smart young lady is looking at the OTHER photos in this series of photos, and your after photo might actually be amazing, you must look very handsome and lively.

Readers, here are the other photos (don’t bother clicking the arrows, these are screen grabs so the arrows on the image are non functional)

First – a MID POINT!

Ok, maybe not that one, oh wait this one…?

Ah yes! Lively and wise!

Anyway, I showed this to my kids who wet themselves laughing. (I wish I could show my mum this she’d have loved it)

I hope when he dies, like ancient Egyptians leaders who subsequent rulers no longer favour they scratch his name off everything they deface his likenesses and we never say his name again.

Isn’t it weird that we all know who I’m talking about?

For fact fans, on bluesky, ‪eviŁrooster‬ ‪@evilrooster.bsky.social‬ added:

Romans did that too. Technical term is damnatio memoriae.

Oh, I stumbled across this great bit of telly, two of a britains finest comedian / sketch -Sally Phillips talking about Bob mortimer’s favourite sketches in a tv show called “My Favourite Sketch”. I have become entranced with Bob’s turn from dada-esque absurdity that my parents just didn’t get, to gently funny absurdity that I think I could sit down with my dad and watch gone fishing with.

Anyway this is great. Link because embedding doesn’t seem to be working.

And a final word from ‪Loui Stonehill‬ ‪@louistonehill.bsky.social‬

2026 is the year we should all start reading books again Books are lovely. Libraries are wonderful places. Second hand book shops are mysterious and magical. Markets and fairs always contain surprise gems. And there are even cafes in forgotten street corners with excellent coffee and reading nooks

This blog intentionally left blank

Woke up a little late for a blog post, and yesterday… Well, hopefully you’ll hear all about yesterday at some point. If you don’t hear it’s because it has like so many things piffled away to nothing. But we’ll see.

Also woke up to an invite to a convention to a country I’ve been to before, and I am absolutely going to go. So everything is turning up PJ (at least for today)

AI and I

Ai has rather swept across the arts like a plague of locusts, swallowing up everything useful and leaving nothing in its wake. So in a recent pitch I added in the first few pararaphs of the pitch “for the avoidance of doubt, there’s no ai used in any stage of the creation of this comic, not script, art, nor any other area“

I think that’s a useful and practical thing to throw in to a pitch document.

It can be hard to avoid though, I mean wordpress has added ai features (this website is wordpress, though I don’t think it’s using any ai nonsense) and the apple mac I’m running has “Apple Intelligence” (AI with a slightly appley flavoured name) and will sometimes try and suggest stuff (though I’ve turned it off).

It’s everywhere, like microplastics.

So many of the comics I see on reddit now are Ai generated slop, and sure from a distance, if you squint they look impressive (I mean the impressiveness soon vanishes when you’ve seen a few and you start thinking “wait, why do these all look the same?”). And it only gets worse when you begin to read one and the art – in isolation looks terrible – but combined into a comic, somehow strives to be worse than the sum of its parts.

I look forward to this phase of the IT cycle ending and we can go back to ignoring AI.

Yesterday on Bluesky

Can I just say, as someone born in 1969 that the astronaut space suits are really rubbish looking now.

I mean, come on. Yes, for practical reasons they’re useful and less bulky and just generally not the full life support system of a proper apollo style space suit, but lordy lordy, so dull looking.

Look at them. They look like two chefs about to open slightly too hot oven.

Give me this, or give me death!

I mean you can’t beat a classic.

Well broke my chocolate blockage by eating two squares of dark chocolate. Though more out of hunger than dire need for chocolate. But since it’s milk chocolate I’m trying to avoid, that’s not terrible.

Nobody in my house eats a lot of chocolate except me and my youngest son. And even he doesn’t eat much of it. I’ve always had a real bad chocolate habit, which probably explains why ultimately it’ll be my teeth that bankrupt me.

But I can sometimes feel chocolate not sit right in my stomach and I’ve been suspicious of it as an IBS trigger for me for a while. So that’s it. I’m done. Except maybe the odd bit of dark chocolate.

Cheese is a real weakness for me too. Man, I love cheese. I don’t think it’s a tummy troubler, but I do think come 9-10 o’clock at night I feel a bit peckish and I go and eat a big chunk of cheese on its own with a glass of orange (cheese+orange juice is as wonderful as chocolate+milk – two combinations that I am now trying to avoid)

As it happens this is having a slow impact on my weight, this morning I was the lightest I’ve been for years – 14st 4.2lbs – yes, at my height my BMI puts me at obese, but it’s only been a few days, so hoping I can stick with it.

Anyway, that’s for today. See you on the flipside

Building Castles in the Sand

Everything changes. Sometimes those changes are slow and gtadual, and sneak up on you and sometimes the change is wrenching and rapid and happens so quickly you’re left breathless.

And when you have kids, sometimes those two kinds of changes happen at the same time.

Our kids (ages 17 and 21) have started making plans for the summer. The older one has done this before, gone off with his mates on summer holidays. A thing I’ve never done. And this summer him and his girlfriend have decided they ‘re going to Japan for three weeks. I’m so proud of him. If you’ve been a reader of the blog for as long as I’ve posted on it, you’ll probably have an idea of why, but he’s such a smart, independent, utterly useless at the same time, but good man I’m proud of him and us for raising him.

The youngest has announced plans to go to London to see Bruno Mars with his mates. This is big for him (and us) and will happen after he turns 18.

Since this is happening at the same time as our eldest going to Japan, this means, for the first time since before we had kids we will in effect have an empty nest. Granted, for a couple of days. But still. It’s the start, isn’t it.

It’s real “Oh, we’ve hit some sort of milestone here, haven’t we” territory.

Because we now live in the house that I grew up in in my later teenage years, I can’t help but see echoes of my own past in all of this. My mum and dad had more kids, but I remember us all starting to feel our way in the world, I guess I never really appreciated how much of a wrench it was for my mum. Talking to my aunt about my mum and she said “Your mum was the only person I ever knew who loved the school holidays” – mum loved kids, loved being surrounded by kids and I’m not sure she was ever not looking after first us, and then other peoples kids.

There’s a silence that comes when kids grow up, when we lived in a flat, one of our neighbours would often talk about the noise of our kids when they were young and would burst out of the flat at school time, the cacopony of giggling, shouting, feet slamming on ground, doors being wildly flung open with abandon. And he’ll often say how he misses that noise.

I’m going to miss that noise.

Irish Stew in the Name of the Law

I honestly can’t tell you if my mum was a good or bad cook, I remember every meal was accompanied by bread and butter and most meals had chips. But, she was cooking for an army so you filled out with whatever you could. One thing I do remember though is her irish stew which is funny cus mum was English.

I’ve been chasing that stew for decades. Mum never taught me to cook (I was too busy being an idiot to ever want to learn). So all I can remember about it is some of the key ingredients and the taste of it and just how incredibly thick it was. As the eldest in my house I’d often do some nonsense with food and declare that I’d invented an entirely new way to consume it. With mum’s stew I remember dolloping it between two slices of bread and declaring it a stew sandwhich. That’s how thick it was.

Here’s how I do stew. Veggies (I mean the usual things here, but you can buy a mix – cube them all up). Potatoes(cubed). Meat – I like chunks of stewing steak (mum used mince meat, which I assume was cheaper – we were not rich – that said mince steak is an insane price now) and tomato ketchup big dollop, gluten free Worcestershire sauce. Some sort of beef stock. Now, lots of recipes suggest floury potatoes, and they’re probably right, but in a pinch I just make a slurry of cornflower and water and mix it in. Now, the problem I discovered with this is if you do the slurry late in the cooking (I cook a slow on a slow cooker all day) then the slurry will not cook in and will just sit – you can tell because the stew will go a sickly pale. You’re gonna need to either slowcook that longer or add that slurry right at the start. But man, give it a day before eating. And it’s amazing.

Still not as thick as my mums though.

Yesterday in Bluesky

(A selection of bluesky posts along with the occasional deeper dive in to them)

BUT FIRST! A Plug!

Over on patreon, it’s page 21 of Terran Omega The Ghosts of War!

21 pages of free comics. Read it from the start here:

www.pauljholden.com/patreon.php

(and if you want to support me making more free comics From as little as $1 per month you get access to the full colour version!)

—

I went to do some edits on page one of Terran Omega and discovered this idiotic selection of folder names

Also actually, I don’t think any of them are right –

—

Imagine making 2k on patreon a month. Oh man, the free comics I would just be doing every single day…! (I make $100 per month on patreon, which is a tiny miracle as is!)

Here’s the thing, it’s an achievable goal. It’s about building an audience and doing work that is consistent and is good. Sarah Burrni replied and said “I was once there. It was the most ideal form of work which I ever had. Of course it didn’t last […] but I realize that time was special”

I think there’s a massive drawback to, in essence, making patreon your only income. That’s a real danger point, on the other hand, that independence to do whatever work you want to – Simon Roy (https://www.patreon.com/simonroy?utm_campaign=creatorshare_fan ) just does whatever fanciful space stories he wants, as does “Bad Space Comics” https://www.patreon.com/badspacecomics?utm_campaign=creatorshare_fan

They both have around 1200-1300 followers and an unknown number of paying patreons (but notably they start their payment tiers at $3-$7 for comics.

Anyway, a man can dream, but until they bring back the little weird hovels at the bottom of rich peoples gardens for artists, this is my platonic ideal of an artist life.

—

An observation:

I don’t think the problem is that Bluesky is a bubble I think the problem is my personal bubble isn’t small enough. My personal bubble sometimes needs to shrink to just my head and let nothing else in. So I can sit and think in peace. Instead of the old superman canard of too many voices at once.

So I think we all live in bubbles, no matter how much of the world you think you’re paying attention to there’s always stuff you’re missing. I mean my news consumption is limited to english language, that means the UK and the the US are where my attention sits in the day to day. But the UK and the US aren’t everything. And I can tell you now, I know far more about American politics than I do about Welsh politics (or Scottish, or Irish). So, sure, Bluesky is a bubble but the idea that anywhere else isn’t is laughable.

I do think too, if you can do it (and not all of us are in the kind of position where they can) it’s good to spend time away from the news. It’s certainly not healthy to wake up at 6 and spin out from doomscrolling on bluesky and then hit up the news for a palete cleanser.

This is why the blog has been good for me, I think. I wake up, look at bluesky, become despondent (I used to need to go look for the doom but now it comes to me), and then sit on the blog and think of whatever it is I want to talk about – which is grounding. It actually has been a great way to control that spiral. Yes, the world is important, yes, the stuff going on in the states is awful, and Ukraine, and politics in the uk, and sheesh the never ending list of terrible terrible stuff is hard to fathom. But there’s only so much of that I can control. Only so much I can actually do something about. The stakes are too high and I’m too powerless, and you feel like one person in a dinghy cosseted by heavy seas. Blogging, by contrast, I have complete control over, and the stakes are so low. SO LOW. It’s like sitting in the same dingy, in the paddling pool of a local leisure centre.

I do feel guilt for saying “Look, I can’t do anything about this crap fire that’s going on in the world, so I’m going to ignore it”. And when given a chance to perform an action that might help, I try and make the right choice. But my world is here, my family are here, my life is here, and the choices I make here are the choices that can make a difference every day and I think that’s probably true of every one every where and all at once.

Thats your lot! Bye!