Bristol reservations

THIS year's Bristol Expo is under two weeks away and as ever I'm looking forward to it – although it's going to be a much smaller event than in previous years.

The organisers have also introduced a peculiar admissions policy this year, making tickets only available in advance, something which I imagine is going to have a fairly huge effect on the number of punters coming through the door. In fact, had I known this in advance of booking a table and hotel room, I may well have decided to give the event a miss this year and concentrate on making a big splash at BICS and having a table at Leeds' Thought Bubble one-dayer instead.

Hopefully, my fears of only selling three copies of Brothers, Tim Skinner etc will be unfounded, but I have to say I'm going to Bristol this year in a substantially less optimistic mood than before. I also suspect the size of the event and the strange admissions procedure is going to put off an awful lot of people who I enjoy spending time with there. Worst of all, my collaborator and good friend Declan Shalvey won't be there this year either as he's snowed under with paying work.

I know this year's changes were forced on the organisers in part by the unavailability of the usual venue, so let's hope the event returns to normal in 2010, as it should always be the highlight of the British comics calendar.

* BRITFORCE should be back from the printer this week and Brothers early next. Getting those two projects off my hands means I can return to doing some writing this week - more Blood Psi, another crack at Kurse and something new that I've been tinkering around with in the odd spare moment.

Skinner gets the Bullet

THERE are a couple of nice mentions of mine and Dec's Skinner one-shot over at Comics Bulletin.

In Regie Rigby's Fool Britannia column, he says: "Nobody is safe from Winter's acid pen. The caricatures are cruel, sharp and totally totally spot on. I don’t laugh out loud often, but I laughed out loud at this. If you have even a rudimentary knowledge of contemporary comics... you’re going to have the most fun you’ve had with a comic for some considerable time."

The full article is here.

And Kelvin Green gave Skinner 4 out 5 bullets in his review on the same site, saying: "It's a triumph of scripting and one of which writer Andy Winter can be proud. Not everyone can turn such an irredeemable git [Skinner] into a compelling character. Declan Shalvey's art is as impressive as I'd come to expect... the storytelling is strong throughout, and there's a looser yet more confident feel to the linework than before."

Read Kelvin's full piece here.

More Skinner love

THERE'S a review of Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag by Glenn Carter over at Comics Village. You'll find it here: www.comicsvillage.com/review.aspx?reviewID=613

If anything, it's even more positive than the write-up the book got last week over on the Forbidden Planet Blog Log, with Glenn concluding: "[Skinner's] a great example of the best of the Brit Indie scene and probably the only essential purchase from that movement in 2009. 10 out of 10"

In your face, Diamond!

Sick, perverted, twisted filth

JOE GORDON has written a very positive review of Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag on his Forbidden Planet Blog Log. You'll find it here.

It's "sick, perverted, twisted filth full of violence and sex," according to Joe which is just about spot on I think...

True Brit

HERE'S Glenn Fabry's gorgeous cover to BritForce #1 - now with added lettering!

The 64-page perfect-bound one-shot is launching at the Bristol Expo in around a month's time. This is the first comic Moonface Press is publishing that isn't written by me - the book is both written and illustrated by Andrew Radbourne, who is also the artist on Brothers.

Moonface actually has a double presence at Bristol this year - I have a table in the main exhibitors' area for the whole weekend and Andy R has booked a pitch for the Saturday at the small press event that's happening over at the Mercure.

Here's the BritForce back cover blurb...

Britannia! Bulldog! Lionheart! Stonehenge! Moonwitch!
Hellspawn! In the ’90s they were BritForce – the UK’s
very own team of super-powered heroes. But driven
apart by catastrophe, BritForce disbanded and haven’t
seen each other in over a decade... until now.

Waiting in the wings is a threat so huge it might just
be enough to throw the team back together. The Grail
and his army of meta-human zealots have attacked
Downing Street and are intent on making Britain the
power base for their brutal religious crusade.

Will BritForce reunite to combat the threat? Or does
Britain face a future crushed beneath the heel of religious
oppression, presided over by a man convinced he’s the
resurrection of the Messiah himself?

* I'VE finished lettering the Brothers one-shot but it's now that the hard work really begins - I have to print out all 52 pages and proofread them. It isn't unknown for me to change bits of the script at this late stage either - punching up dialogue and making sure exposition is kept as short as possible.

I'm really pleased with Brothers - it's the big, crazy, 1000mph story I set out to write in the first place with splashes of triumph, tragedy, romance and loads of completely over-the-top violence. Andy R has done some terrific work - there are several sequences from the script that he's just picked up and run with, transforming good, solid scenes into genuinely excellent ones.