Christmas telly ramblings

OH well, that's another Christmas done and dusted. The kids certainly enjoyed themselves (Robosapien, Scalextric and computer games console for Dylan; Iggle Piggle, remote control racing car and, erm, toy kitchen for Connor), but I find it harder and harder to work up any enthusiasm for it these days. I think it's a combination of my age and the fact I only got five days off work for the festive season (in my magazine days I could count on 10 or 12). Still, I got a nice new jumper and Doctor Who series three on DVD out of it so I shouldn't complain too much.

On the subject of Who, Voyage Of The Damned washed over me a bit. Having only seen it once I'm not sure whether that was the fault of the show itself or the fact I had to watch it through a barrage of kid noise. I'll probably give it another look over the weekend to see if it deserved that incredible audience of 12.2 million (the show's highest since 1979, I understand).

The only show watched more than Doctor Who on Christmas Day was EastEnders which surprises me a bit as it's so profoundly bleak and, as The Guardian's reviewer remarked, "misanthropic". Its also horribly ham-fisted with the settings marked "shouting" and "crying" turned up to 11 at all times. EastEnders doesn't do subtlety and you get the impression its producers wouldn't know where to start if some BBC bigwig suggested that they should.

One of the two Christmas Day episodes ended up with Tanya Branning falling down the stairs and cracking her head open after finding out about her husband's affair with his daughter-in-law. You half expected someone to pop in and shoot her in the face at the end just to add even more melodrama and misery to proceedings.

My favourite EastEnders Christmas Day episode ending was a good few years back and featured Arthur Fowler (pictured above) sobbing his heart out on the floor of his prison cell (he'd been banged up for stealing some cash). It was genuinely quite upsetting and about as Christmassy as a dog shit sandwich.

I thought this year's Christmas Day Coronation Street was far and away the best of the big two soaps - full of humour, storylines that didn't stretch credulity too far and even an uplifting ending. Of course, it got utterly walloped in the ratings. It seems our festive goodwill doesn't extend to soap characters - we want them to suffer and, if they don't, we switch off.

* THIS will probably be my last post until 2008 so, to everyone, HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Kurse at Christmas

IN the last week or so, I've been able to get back to some serious writing. I gave up on the two short stories I was trying to finish off (sometimes you just have to take it on the chin and admit that half decent ideas don't always translate into fully realised stories) and got down to my next one-shot title - Kurse.

I'm about eight pages into the first draft and am really enjoying it. As ever, it's interesting to see how what actually ends up on the page differs to what you've been carrying around in your head. This caused problems early on as I realised I'd rather underestimated the number of pages I'd need to move the book's main character (the Kurse of our title) from his initial predicament and into the actual guts of the story. After a bit of rejigging, I managed to do it in eight which isn't as few as I'd have liked but certainly makes for an all-action introduction to the character and his world(s).

I'll probably post a couple of pages of script here at some point soon.

* MICK Trimble's been in touch this week to tell me that he's now 25pages into drawing Septic Isle and is aiming to have it all finished by the end of January. Chuck in a couple of weeks for me to letter it and it should be winging its way to Diamond for the end of February. If they opt to solicit it, I probably won't get order numbers until late May meaning it won't be printed in time for the Bristol Expo. As a result, I'll probably have to have some kind of limited edition of 100 knocked out to sell there.

At the moment I'm leaning towards doing a hardback version of the book but that could easily change when I find out how much it's likely to cost (I suspect its extortionate)...

* MIKEY B and I's story for the Accent UK Robots anthology – The Saboteur – missed the deadline so it won't be appearing now. It's entirely my fault as it took me an age to get the script written and then, when I did, Mikey was snowed under with paying work. Not to worry, we're still going to get it finished and will either submit it to another anthology title or give it pride of place on the Moonface Press website. Actually, the latter is quite an appealing idea as I've wanted to do some web-exclusive stuff for quite a while.

* THIS will probably be my final post before the 25th, so to the half-dozen people who take the time to read my aimless witterings, have yourself a merry little Christmas.

My Top 10 Comics 2007

10. 2000AD (Rebellion)
It's been a good year for Judge Dredd and Bob Byrne's Twisted Tales have been a breath of fresh air.



9. Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 8 (Dark Horse)
Buffy the TV series really lost its way towards the end but this comicbook continuation of the Slayer's story has freshened up the concept very nicely.



8. Wisdom (Marvel MAX)
Witty, imaginative and enormously fun mini-series from Doctor Who scribe Paul Cornell about a British team of super-powered paranormal investigators. Look out for that suprisingly bleak finale though.



7. Girls (Image)
A visceral, twisted and highly original alien invasion story by the Luna Brothers.



6. Thunderbolts (Marvel)
Warren Ellis is a real conundrum - on the one hand he says he hates superheroes/villains, on the other he writes them better than anybody currently working in the comics industry. Go figure.



5. Fables (Vertigo)
Bill Willingham's ongoing series about fairy tale characters living in the real world is never anything less than inventive and engaging.



4. Army @ Love (Vertigo)
Rick Veitch's ballsy, laugh out loud satire centring on American soldiers fighting in "Afbagistan".



3. Captain America (Marvel)
Writer Ed Brubaker brought back naff sidekick Bucky and killed off the title character. Somehow he pulled it all off brilliantly with a new Cap set to debut early in 2008.



2. DMZ (Vertigo)
Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli's hard-hitting tale of a second American Civil War set in a bombed out, beaten down Manhattan. A future dystopia as vividly realised as anything in Children Of Men.



1. The Punisher (Marvel MAX)
Grim, gritty, brutal, bleak and utterly captivating, The Punisher is easily writer Garth Ennis' best work since Preacher. A pity he's set to leave the book in the new year.

Carry On Shrieking...

Reviewer Glenn Carter says some very nice things about Shriek! over at www.comicsvillage.com this week. He gives it 9.5 out of 10 and sums up by saying: "I recommend and recommend very highly."

I'm particularly pleased with the review as, out of all the comics I've written and published, I often feel Shriek! is the one that has been least successful. A four-story anthology, Shriek! made its debut at the ill-fated Brighton Comic Expo at the tail end of 2005 along with the original versions of Blood Psi and Hero Killers. The printing on all three books was truly terrible with the art on at least two of the stories in Shriek! being pretty much ruined as a result.

When it became obvious the quality of printing was harming sales, I took the decision to swallow the financial loss and have both Blood Psi and Hero Killers reprinted by a far superior printer (this one: www.cambrian-printers.co.uk) to the one I'd been using. It worked out pretty well with the shiny new versions of both books being picked up by Diamond and, apparently, one of them even won an award of some kind!

I didn't go down the same route with Shriek! as, by that stage, I'd decided that not all of the material in the comic was good enough to merit it. As a result, it remains largely unknown and unloved. Until now...

Doctor Gloom

I'VE had a very unproductive couple of weeks and, to be honest, have spent quite a bit of that time thoroughly fed-up about one thing or another. I'm sure it's a case of the winter blues and nothing more, but I really hope it clears up fast as my writing is being adversely affected (it also got me into a spot of bother over the weekend but I'm not going into that here).

On a more positive note, I've just started a couple of weeks holiday from the day job so at least that won't add to my stress and general shitty demeanour. Today I'm finally going to take a look at the two short stories I started ages ago but never finished. They're both sound ideas and don't need a lot of work to finish them off.

Next week, I'm going to make a belated start on my next one-shot project. It's called Kurse and it's something I'll be working on with artist Duncan Nimmo. In theory, it shouldn't take me long to write as the whole thing is fully plotted out (unlike, say, Tim Skinner and Septic Isle, which were only loosely plotted when I started writing them).

Hopefully, by the time I update again, the black cloud hovering over my head will have gone and I'll be feeling a little more "sunshiney". Feel free to send jokes to cheer me up. Or porn.

10 Things I've done this week...

1. WATCHED ten episodes of US sitcom 30 Rock on DVD. Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey are pure comedy gold.
2. READ the final two issues of World War Hulk – a rushed, rubbish ending.
3. BURIED a cat in the back garden (yes, the poor old thing was dead).
4. TRIED explaining the concept of death to my four-year-old son, Dylan. His response? "Is X Factor on tonight?"
5. SHOUTED abuse at Steve McClaren and his crappy England team full of overrated prima donnas.
6. WORKED out that I'm only at the day job for seven days in December. Yay!
7. WATCHED Robert Rodriguez's half of Grindhouse – Planet Terror – and thoroughly enjoyed every silly minute of it.
8. HAD impure thoughts about the extraordinarily sexy Rose McGowan as a result of watching Planet Terror.
9. GAVE up reading Douglas Coupland's latest novel, The Gum Thief ,less than halfway through. What has happened to my attention span?
10. SERIOUSLY thought about going to see American Gangster at the cinema but, erm, haven't.

Village people

MY latest Starting Out column is up at www.indiereview.co.uk.

This month's subject is finding outlets to sell your comic or graphic novel if you aren't going to use Diamond. Hopefully there's some good advice in there.

* WHILE we're on the subject of British indie comics websites, be sure to check out www.comicsvillage.com. It's the brainchild of Craig Johnson who used to write regularly for www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com.

Rumour has it that Silver Bullets is about to shift its focus to cover Marvel and DC books only and change its name to Comics Bulletin, so Craig decided to set up his own "indies only" site.

At the moment the content is mainly columns and reviews (including a nice one for Devilchild Volume III) but I'm sure as it develops news and previews of forthcoming books will be added to the mix. They're certainly going to be on my mailing list from now on.

Brodie's Law exhibition

LAST night I went to the "private view launch party" of David Bircham's exhibition at the Animation Art Gallery in London. David's the artist on Brodie's Law (www.brodieslaw.com) and anyone who's seen his work on that title will already be aware of what a terrific talent he is.

I was expecting a couple of dozen people to be there and was rather shocked when a couple of hundred turned up - an amusing mix of comicbook nerds, Hoxton arty boys and drop-dead gorgeous women. It was so packed there were times when I could hardly move. Tucking into wine and nibbles with the best of them were Joel Meadows (Tripwire), Oli Smith (Hazy Tuesday), David Baillie (Scribe), Rob Dunlop (Tozzer) and Mike Conroy (Comics International).

According to David, the Brodie's movie is definitely on for next year with Samuel L Jackson, Jason Statham and even Daniel Craig all being linked with roles. I really hope it comes off for Daley and David as they work harder than anyone I know in UK comics (they've attended 35 conventions this year alone, while I've managed, er, two).

If you're in London doing some Christmas shopping, you really should spare half an hour to go and have a look at David's exhibition (as you'll see from the above photos it contains some lovely work). It runs until Wednesday, 21 November at the Animation Art Gallery, 13-14 Great Castle Street (a five minute walk from Oxford Street).

* I'VE had a stupidly busy week that, for once, didn't include any comics writing at all. However, I have started thinking about how I'm going to publicise Septic Isle and even bought a domain name for the micro-site that will be launched to support the book.

Ideally, I wanted septicisle.com or septicisle.co.uk for the site's url but both of these were already gone. I also thought septicislecomicbook.com or septicislegraphicnovel.com were a bit unwieldy. Anyway, eventually I decided to name the website after the book's "tagline" which, I think, is really catchy and thought-provoking. I shall reveal all in the New Year...

Bird botherer

Dylan menacing a peacock in the grounds of Warwick Castle from a couple of weekends ago.

I'll be back to talk some shit about comics later in the week or early next...

Amphibious

I'M off-work Wednesday and Friday this week and plan to take a short break from the comics writing.

Wednesday I'm going to bang out the next of my columns for the Indie Review guys and then pop into London for a bite to eat with Joel Meadows. After that we're heading off to see the exhibition of David Bircham's art at the Animation Art Gallery in Great Castle Street.

David's the guy who draws the excellent Brodie's Law (www.brodieslaw.com) and his art is on display at the gallery until November 21.

Friday is my son Dylan's fourth birthday so he and I will be heading into London for a look round the Natural History/Science museums and a trip on the rather interesting amphibious vehicle pictured above. The idea is that you get a tour of the capital with a difference - part on land, part on the Thames but all in one vehicle. I can't wait to see his face when it veers off the road, down the bank and into the river!

* ONCE this week is out of the way, I shall get back to the writing. I've currently got four comic scripts with artists and aim to have a fifth – Kurss – finished by the end of the year.

Before I get cracking on that though I plan to spend a couple of days revisiting one or two old scripts for short stories that I never finished. I want to see if they're worth having another crack at or whether they should go into my Unfinished File Of Doom.

* THAT brings me to plans for 2008. All being well Moonface should have a lot of stuff out next year - starting with Septic Isle in the spring. Meantime, I'll be busy beavering away writing more new stuff, these include Razor Snakes (a chunk of pure sci-fi), Pendragon (a three-issue mini-series with Simon Wyatt) and a slew of other projects that, at this stage, are a little more nebulous.

There's a book set in the same world as Hero Killers and featuring a couple of the same characters, a sequel to Septic Isle, something else called The Utopians, projects with Keith Burns, Mikey B and Alma O'Carroll, and the "controversial" story I mentioned a couple of weeks ago.

To be honest, I'll be happy if I can get half of them written before 2008 is done and dusted.

* THIS weekend is the Dublin City Comic Con and it's another one I won't be able to make (as I said it's my son's birthday this Friday, and Saturday is his party). I think one of my aims for next year will be to attend a few more comic-related events. I'm already paid up for Bristol and Birmingham, but new ones seem to pop up every year (like this one, for instance: www.thoughtbubblefestival.com) and I really should make the effort to get to one or two more. My stuff always seems to sell pretty well at conventions so it would make a lot of sense.

Four-legged f**ker!

JUST sent the final script for Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag to artist Declan Shalvey having finally wrapped it all up this afternoon.

There were a couple of pages towards the end that had been bugging me and that I just couldn't for the life of me get right. I'd tried to approach this particular idea from a host of different angles but couldn't get any of them to work properly - until today. As it turns out, the new scene I've written is probably my favourite in the entire book.

I ended up having to leave out quite a lot of material from my first draft of the script for one reason or another - some because it didn't sit right in the story and some because it just didn't work on the page as well as I thought it would in my head. I'm particularly gutted that I couldn't find room for my homage to/piss-take of Transmetropolitan. Beetle Bastard (aka Spider Jerusalem) might just see the light of day another time though...

The current plan is to launch Skinner as Moonface Press' first full-colour one-shot next summer possibly at the San Diego Comicon. We shall see...

* AREN'T cats peculiar creatures? Around four months ago one of ours, Freddie, disappeared. We didn't think anything bad had happened to him because his defection to new owners had clearly been on the cards for some time. He'd never got on with any of our other cats and was horrified when first one noisy child and then another turned up.

He'd been staying away for longer and longer at a time - 24 hours here, a few days there before seemingly buggering off for good back in late July. He was my wife's cat and she'd had him nearly 14 years, so she was understandably a bit upset and angry when he went. We all thought we'd never lay eyes on the mangy - but oddly loveable - creature again. Until yesterday when he just turned up completely out of the blue looking fit and healthy. He's been here ever since and seems to have fitted back in like nothing has happened. Absurdly, I'm actually worried about his new owners who must be wondering where the traitorous little shit has got to.

That said, I bet he won't last the weekend with us before he's off again - he really doesn't like the kids.

Done

IT'S been a busy week but I'm delighted to announce that the script for Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag is now just about finished. There are a couple of minor bits that still need fiddling about with but it's 99 per cent there. I'm really pleased with it too as it contains some of the maddest shit I've ever written. I'm going to send it over to Dec sometime next week and just hope he doesn't pass a brick when he sees some of the stuff I'm asking him to draw...

* THE family and I are off up to Warwick this weekend to visit my oldest mate Rob and his girlfriend Tracy. In January, Rob's set to become a dad for the first time - at the ripe old age of 42. The poor sod really has no idea what's about to hit him...

Grim

A FUNNY old weekend. Underwent a "test" at the local hospital on Saturday morning which was fine (well, about as fine as having a camera shoved up your arse can ever be) but it left me with an upset stomach for the rest of the day and Sunday. This meant I was in no fit state to travel into London yesterday for Joel's birthday which was a bit of a downer really (I almost said "bummer" but thought better of it).

Instead, I spent most of the weekend flat out on the sofa half-heartedly trying to keep my noisy, disobedient children amused. I ended up watching loads of kids' TV and was gobsmacked by just how good a lot of it is. Justice League Unlimited, Teen Titans and Ben 10 are all great (the first two are substantially better than their comicbook counterparts) but best of the lot is The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy (see pic above).

It's about two kids (sociopath Mandy and cretinous Billy) whose best friend is the Grim Reaper himself. It's violent, surreal and contains loads of gags about bogies, farts and, surprisingly for a kids' show, death. It also seems to have boasted a whole host of intriguing guest voices since its debut in 2001, including Weird Al Jankovic and Fred Willard.

If you're old enough to remember the classic Ren & Stimpy then you'll love every ridiculous minute of it.

* I'VE got an idea for a new superhero project but I'm not sure I should actually go through with it. The subject matter is somewhat controversial (to say the least) and I'm worried that writing it would leave me open to accusations of insensitivity - or worse of exploiting something quite hurtful to line my pockets/boost my career.

The thing is, since I started thinking about this idea on Saturday, much of the story has just clicked into place in my head. It's a good idea and, I think, a pretty original one. Right now I reckon I'm going to give it a shot and see what happens. I can always chicken out further down the line.

Oh, and before you ask, no it isn't about a super-powered paedophile...

Synchronicity

My favourite comicbook panel of the week, courtesy of Andy Diggle and Leonardo Manco's Hellblazer #237. A clever little reference to John Constantine's early days as a Sting lookalike perhaps...



* A BUSY week all in all. After a lot of messing about and multiple rewrites, the script for my Robots anthology story is finally complete. It's only three pages long (four if artist Mikey B wants to spread his wings a bit). Not sure why it's taken me so long to get the story right as it's quite a simple idea.

Anyway, it's called The Saboteur and packs a heck of a lot in to just 20 panels. Hopefully, we'll still be able to make the anthology's end of November deadline but if not there are plenty of other indie press publishers to which we can send it.

* LOOKS like the weekend is going to be a busy one too. I'm in hospital tomorrow, the details of which I really won't bore you with. Suffice to say, I hope I'm in and out of the bloody place as quickly as possible.

On Sunday I'm off into London for Joel Meadows' birthday lunch and booze-up. I hate central London these days but Joel - the brains behind the excellent Tripwire annual - is a lovely bloke and it'll be a good chance to catch up with him as we hardly saw each other at the BICS event a couple of weeks ago.

* NEXT week is all about finishing off the script for Tim Skinner. The second half is written as a first draft but needs a lot of polishing. I've got five days to do it in which should be ample.

Don't call me Scarface...

THIS is artist Mikey B's vision of what he and I would look like as gangsters (terrifying, ain't we?). Mikey's the artist who has been waiting an age for me to deliver my Robots script to him and I'll also be teaming up with him on something suitably "gangstery" next year. Mikey draws good gangsters - check out some more, here: http://themeat.net/

* I'M right at the start of another fortnight off work in which I will again try to get the scripts for Tim Skinner and the aforementioned Robots story finished. Not sure quite why everything is taking so long right now but it's enormously frustrating. I'd hoped to squeeze another two one-shot scripts into the tail-end of the year but it looks like I'm only going to have time to do one now - and that'll be Kurss, something I've been promising artist Duncan Nimmo since Bristol 2006.

* PLANS for next year are shaping up nicely. Pendragon, a three-issue mini-series with artist Simon Wyatt, is probably going to be the first thing I tackle in 2008. It's going to be a bit of departure for me as it will be my first foray into the field of fantasy. Dragons, mermaids, magic, all that malarkey...

* I THINK I've officially fallen out of love with Hollywood. I don't watch a lot of films these days but 90 per cent of those I do see are pretty disappointing. I caught Tarantino's Deathproof and Brian de Palma's Black Dahlia over the weekend and, despite the odd thing here and there, both left me pretty cold.

Quality-wise, I think television has really stolen a march on the movies over the last few years and is now vastly superior. Any night of the week I can turn on my TV and find something new and genuinely terrific, be it The Riches, The Wire, Californication or 30 Rock. Every time I glance at a list of what's on at my local cinema it just seems to be an interchangeable list of dumb comedies, CGI-soaked action films, please-give-us-an-Oscar melodramas and misogynistic horror films.

I can't remember the last time I saw a film that really blew me away like Blade Runner, Good Fellas and Crimes And Misdemeanors did all those years ago.

New column

THE second of my "Starting Out" columns is now up at www.indiereview.co.uk This one deals with how to get your comic or graphic novel into Previews and what happens once you have. Hopefully there's some good advice in there.

BICS and pieces

I'M delighted to say that this year's Birmingham International Comics Show was a massive improvement on the one at the tail end of 2007. First and foremost the venue was excellent - the show was held at a place called the ThinkTank in the city's impressive Millennium Point building.

The ThinkTank is a kind of miniature version of the science musuem in London, full of moving, talking, whirring, clicking technology from the past, present and future on four or five floors. There's even a planetarium. It would be a great place to visit even without the comic show.

The other good news is that the venue, convention hotels and public transport were all within easy walking distance of each other. It may seem like a tiny thing but I spent a small fortune on cab fares last time which is an expense I could have well done without.

The event was a success in terms of punter numbers too - the main event room, which is probably only a bit smaller than the one at Bristol, was absolutely packed all day Saturday and pretty damn busy on the Sunday. I took a fair bit of cash and sold most of the comics I took up with me but, more importantly, I was able to catch up with all the people I only ever get to see once or twice a year.

It was lovely to see SBC columnist Regie Rigby who had just signed a contract with Markosia to publish his Sunset mini-series. Really delighted for Regie who's one of the nicest and most supportive people I've met in the five years I've been doing this.

Also good to see Phonogram writer Kieron Gillen whose bullshit-free attitude to his work and recent success make talking to him an absolute pleasure.

I was surprised by just how young Hassan and Rachid Otsmane are. They're the guys behind the indiereview.co.uk website for which I write a column, and I was expecting them to be the kind of grizzled 30 or 40-somethings that UK comics fandom is full of. But not a bit of it - I'm old enough to be their dad!

Sean Azzopardi was kind enough to keep me company on the Moonface Press table for practically the entire weekend and sold a fair few of his own comics too. It was funny because although we're mates, our work has bugger all in common. Sean's stuff is the kind of thing likely to get picked up by Top Shelf or Fantagraphics whereas mine is far more influenced by a lifetime reading very mainstream Marvel and DC books.

Anyway, Sean has a trade paperback collection of his brilliant Twelve Hour Shift comic coming out soon and you should really check it out. You'll find information here: phatcatz.org.uk

... and here's the cover...


Also caught up with a host of collaborators and soon-to-be collaborators. Confirmed with Declan Shalvey that Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag is going to be full-colour. Don't think I've mentioned it on here before but Dec will be the artist on the Skinner one-shot. It will be our follow-up to the award-winning Hero Killers and I'm currently entertaining a totally mad notion to launch it at San Diego 2008.

Mick Trimble showed me all the Septic Isle pages he's done so far and it's looking terrific. That will probably be our big launch at Bristol - a 52-page, perfect bound graphic novella with a wraparound cover by the aforementioned Mr Shalvey.

Briefly met with artist Simon Wyatt about a three-issue mini-series we're hoping to get together early next year. Working title: Pendragon. Also confirmed with Duncan Nimmo that he's still up for illustrating Kurss, the one-shot title I will be writing as soon as the Skinner script is finished. I've been promising him the script since Bristol 2006!

And that's about it really - as per usual I didn't get to see any panels or talks and didn't do nearly enough after-show socialising. Still, there's always next year...

Return to Brum

OFF to Birmingham on Friday for the second annual International Comics Show. I'm looking forward to it although I'm not going to enjoy spending a weekend away from the kids and missus.

Hopefully this year's BICS will be an improvement on the one last year when the crap venue, terrible weather (it was December) and a severe lack of punters with cash to spend kind of put the kibosh on things.

As ever, I'll be spending a great deal of time catching up with all the people I haven't seen since Bristol (I'm usually hoarse after a weekend of incessant comics-related jabbering) and looking to recruit a couple of new artists for projects next year. Particularly looking forward to seeing Mick Trimble, Will Sliney, Declan Shalvey, Simon Wyatt and Jamie Richards, all of whom I'm either working on projects with now or will be in the new year.

Of course, one person who won't be at BICS is James Redington who died in July. It's going to be weird not having him there and I really hope the show's organisers are going to mark his passing in some way.

* TIM Skinner: Total Scumbag will be Moonface Press' very first full-colour comicbook when it comes out next year. Better finish off that script then, eh?

* CONGRATULATIONS to my friend and collaborator Will Sliney who has just secured a paying gig with Classical Comics (check out www.classicalcomics.com) to draw their adaptation of Richard III. Look for it next summer.

* OH dear, it looks like the Heroes backlash is well underway: www.aintitcool.com/node/34363. To be honest, I'm surprised it's taken this long for the show to be found out. Yep, it has some intriguing characters, the odd absorbing plot twist and half a dozen episodes in season one were genuine crackers. But the season finale was tosh, the pace of the show is so sloooowwww and Battlestar Galactica and Buffy are way better. Oooh, controversial.

* MUCH better than Heroes is The Riches (being shown on Virgin 1 in the UK). Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver play a couple of "grifters" who assume the identities of a wealthy couple when they are killed in a car crash. Two episodes in and I'm hooked.

Warning: May Contain Football

BACK at the day job this week after a long break in which I managed to catch up with a lot of stuff but, frustratingly, wasn't able to finish off the Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag script.

That isn't to say I'm a million miles away from doing so. I'm really pleased with the first half and am now in the middle of performing major surgery on the second half which needs to be shorter, sharper and more linear. This is going to involve chucking out a few scenes and characters that I really wanted to include but, to be honest, much of it was just window dressing anyway and won't be missed.

I've come up with a much better ending too, one that neatly ties in to stuff in the script rather than just appearing out of nowhere. I'm hoping to have it all finished by early October. And then I really do have to get on with that bloody Robots story...

* I WAS going to go to the Dublin Sub-Con this weekend (I know Dec and Will are there) but a few weeks ago realised my passport had expired and haven't got round to getting a new one. Therefore, my next convention appearance will be at the Birmingham International Comics Show (October 12-13). I won't have anything new to flog but come by my table and say hello in any case.

I didn't enjoy my time at last year's Birmingham event so I'm hoping for a considerable improvement this time.

* I never talk football on here but as a Chelsea fan it's impossible not to mention the farcical shenanigans of last week when the club parted company with manager Jose Mourinho.

I liked Mourinho enormously. Yep, he could be an infuriating ego monster and terrible loser but he was also witty, entertaining and hugely intelligent. He also happened to be the best manager the club has ever had, winning six major trophies in three seasons, including our first league titles for 50 years.

For Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich to replace such a man with Avram Grant is like Martin Scorsese, halfway through shooting Raging Bull, saying, "Y'know, I don't think this De Niro guy is working out. Can someone get me Russ Abbot's number?"

More Skinner/Comics Britannia

I'VE had a streaming cold for the past couple of days which hasn't exactly helped oil the creative wheels on Tim Skinner. At the moment I've got a very rough first draft that reads like some kind of superhero comedy sketch show rather than an actual story.

The problem is that I've got one character - the titular Skinner - who is in every scene. What I'm now trying to do is to knit those scenes together as seamlessly as possible so Skinner's transition between them doesn't seem too clunky and that decent gags aren't being forced out by the plot exposition necessary to set up each new bit.

The Skinner project started off fairly easy to write but, to be honest, has turned out to be a bit of a bastard. Looks like I'm going to be working on it for at least a couple more weeks (I go back to the day job next week) which is enormously frustrating.

* BEEN really enjoying the three-part Comics Britannia series that's been showing on BBC Four for the past couple of weeks (it's the last one next Monday). Of course comics fans wouldn't be comics fans if they didn't find something to whine about on the internet so it hasn't surprised me in the slightest that some messageboards have been clogged with posters moaning about various aspects of the series.

Some are enraged that the series started with the creation of The Beano and The Dandy in 1938 rather than delving back further into the history of British comics, while others have thrown a strop because their own particular favourite characters haven't been featured.

Of course the problem is that the show's makers have just three one-hour shows into which they must fit almost 70 years of history. They need to edit down and make sense of a huge amount of material and, as a result, they've clearly had to miss a lot of stuff out, cut the odd factual corner and generalise quite a bit.

It's also true to say that many of the people who are going to be watching possess only a rudimentary knowledge of comics (at best), so concentrating on titles and characters that were the best known seems a perfectly sound approach to me.

All in all, as an introduction to and celebration of British comics, it's something I find almost impossible to criticise. The contributions of Posy Simmonds, Alan Moore and Leo Baxendale have been particularly fascinating.

The shining jewel in the Comics Britannia season's crown so far though has been Jonathan Ross' documentary In Search Of Steve Ditko about the chat show host's bid to track down the reclusive artist. It provides a detailed history and analysis of Ditko's work and Ayn Rand-inspired beliefs, but also delves into the reasons for his break with Marvel and fractious relationship with Stan Lee.

Look out for the uncomfortable but undeniably rivetting moment when Ross interviews Lee himself and presses him on Ditko's (thoroughly reasonable) claims to be Spider-Man's co-creator.

The Ditko doc is repeated on BBC Four at various times this week and you can see clips from Comics Britannia here:
www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/comicsbritannia/comics-britannia.shtml

Check out my column (oo-er)

INDIE review is the name of a new website dedicated to promoting the work of British indie and small press publishers launching this weekend. You'll find it here: www.indiereview.co.uk

It's going to carry reviews, interviews, articles, publisher and creator information, plus a few regular columns - one of which is going to be written by me. To be honest, my column is going to be a very straightforward thing - just hints and tips about self-publishing really with a few shameless plugs for my comics thrown in for good measure. I'm horribly busy but should be able to bang out a thousand words or so once a month. The first one is called Starting Out and is really just a checklist of things would-be self-publishers should consider before they leap into the fray.

The last regular column I wrote was a few years ago under a pseudonym for a comics magazine. Unlike the new Indie Review gig it was an opinion column and despite writing a couple of pieces of which I'm still quite proud, I soon fell into the trap of being controversial just for the sake of it. I figured getting people's backs up was the way to go and actually rather enjoyed the brief notoriety it brought my columnist alter-ego.

Unfortunately once you've annoyed, say, 100 people one month the temptation is to trump that the following month by saying something even more controversial and contrary. Looking back at many of those columns now they could easily have been written by someone who actually despises comics and most of the people involved in them, which is so not me.

* I HAVEN'T had a very productive week on the writing front. Went out Monday night with my old friend Lucy and got enormously drunk which resulted in my first hangover for two years. It was an absolute bastard as well, took me all day Tuesday to recover.

Last night I took the wife to see Prince in London and he was simply bloody marvellous - was on for the best part of two hours, had a band tighter than a gnat's chuff and played some of my favourite songs in the world ever ("When Doves Cry", "Take Me With You" and "If I Was Ur Girlfriend" among them). Elton John turned up for one of the encores and sang "Long And Winding Road" with the Purple One accompanying him on guitar.

A great evening but next week needs to be about ten times more productive than this one has been. The Tim Skinner script remains barely half-finished and I haven't even started the script for the Robots anthology yet. Agargh!

Rapping refrigerator

THE script for Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag proceeds steadily if not at quite the pace I'd hoped it would. I'm now 15 pages in with another 13 or so to do. I know all the scenes I want to get in there and how it all ends, it's now just a matter of finishing that first draft before spending a few days polishing it up. And, to be honest, some of it needs quite a bit of polishing.

At the moment I'm writing a scene involving a rapping refrigerator. Honestly.

* FINALLY saw Superman Returns over the weekend and was hugely disappointed. Brandan Routh and Kate Bosworth are no substitute for Chris Reeve and Margot Kidder, the whole "Superman's son" thing was plain annoying and what kind of twit writes a Superman script in which Superman doesn't actually hit anything?

The only elements to savour in the wretched flick's bloated 154-minute running time were Kevin Spacey's satisfyingly vicious turn as Lex Luthor and a genuinely thrilling scene in which Supes prevents a passenger-packed Boeing 747 from ploughing into a baseball stadium. I liked it more than Superman IV: The Quest For Peace but that's about as positive as I can get...

* OFF into London tonight to meet up with my friend Lucy who I haven't seen since my university days (around 15 years ago to be exact). I'm genuinely hopeless at staying in touch with people, mainly because I've moved around a lot in the last 15 years but also because I'm lazy and forgetful. You don't contact someone for six months, which quickly becomes a year. Then, before you know it, a decade passes and you're berating yourself for losing a friendship that was supposed to mean something to you.

Anyway, I Googled Lucy back in January, found her instantly and we've exchanged the odd email since. Lucy is one of the most thoroughly decent people I've ever met so I'm really looking forward to seeing her.

Of mice and men

ARRIVED home from work at 11 last night and finally slinked into bed around midnight after saving a tiny mouse from my cats who'd brought him in from the garden. Chased them off but the mouse gave me the slip. Having worked eight nine-hour shifts at the Mirror in the last nine days I was utterly knackered so the last thing I needed was to be woken up several times (three? five?) in the night by my youngest son Connor crying about God knows what. I then had to get up again to chase the cats away from the mouse who they'd managed to corner in the hall for a second time.

This time I successfully captured the terrified creature and put him in an old comic box in the study. All this before six o'clock this morning. At seven I rose to the sound of Connor having total hysterics about bugger all (that boy ain't right, as Hank Hill would say). One severe bollocking followed before we bathed the boys and long-suffering Jen carted them off to nursery on her way to work.

In my woozy, in-desperare-need-of-sleep state I'd completely forgotten the mouse... until he appeared a couple of minutes ago on my computer keyboard just as I was about to start typing this. I've just returned him to the garden (well, next door's garden) where he shall hopefully live out the rest of his mousey days free from feline molestation.

Anyhoo, today's the first day of my two-week "holiday" from the day job. I'm putting "holiday" in inverted commas as there won't be a lot of holidaying going on. Rather, I'm going to be smashing my way through the rest of the Tim Skinner script, bashing out a story for Accent UK's Robots anthology and making sure I'm up to date with the lettering for Nat and Ryan's Carson City project.

In between all that I'm going to see Prince in London (the first gig I'll have attended since seeing, erm, Elton John in Las Vegas in 2004) and hoping to catch up with friends on a couple of nights, too.

Because of my North Wales break and tough fortnight at the day job, I haven't written a single line of comic script in three weeks. I'm feeling a little rusty and I'll probably spend most of today trying to get back into some sort of writing rhythm (as well as mucking about on the 'net and reading comics, obviously).

Now then, TO WORK!

Zombies in Previews

THE Zombies anthology containing my "Pop Zombies" story with Natalie Sandells appears in this month's Previews catalogue (September).

And if that isn't enough reason to order a copy from your local comic shop, the book features 29 other terrifically terror-packed tales from the likes of Kieron Gillen (Phonogram), Leah Moore and John Reppion (Albion) and Jason Cobley (Bulldog Adventure Magazine). The cover (above) is by former Swamp Thing artist Steve Bissette.

You'll find Zombies on page 211 of Previews under ACCENT UK - 168 pages for a measly $10 (a bit over a fiver). Next to it is Dave West and Andy Bloor's Wolfmen graphic novel which is well worth ordering too.

Snaps

A few pictures from the holiday in North Wales...


Me, looking vaguely human for once, standing beside the steam train upon which we travelled up Mount Snowdon.


A spectacular view from around three-quarters of the way up Snowdon.


My lovely missus Jen, and Connor, the world's most appallingly behaved two-year-old.


Dylan after having his face painted at Chester Zoo. He's a bat.


The magnificent Conwy Castle...


... and again.

SFX review