Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Hushers on ICE

ARTIST Manuela Bassu Lebrino and I will be at the Markosia table, signing copies of Hushers: A Very Victorian Apocalypse, at the International Comic Expo (ICE) in Birmingham. The event is happening on Saturday, September 5 and you can find out more details from their website, right here

Manuela is flying over from Milan to do the signing so please come and say 'hi'. I'll be sticking around on the Sunday, too, for the Comics Uncovered event at which I will be trying and almost certainly failing to pitch Image Comics' head honcho Eric Stephenson an idea for a limited series. Wish me luck!

If you can't wait until then to get your hands on Hushers, you can either buy a 'hard copy' direct from the Markosia website or go to Drivethru Comics to buy a digital copy for the offer price of $3.99 (just over £2.50).

Here's another page of Manuela's art from the book...




Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Hushers - we got it covered!

Here is the cover to the Hushers: A Very Victorian Apocalypse graphic novel which is published by Markosia on Monday August 3. I wrote the book, Manuela Bassu Lebrino drew and painted it, and Ian Sharman lettered and designed it. 

It retails for £13.99/$17.99 and for that you get 124 pages; that's 100 pages of story, a section dedicated to Manuela's unused art and sketches for the project, plus a bonus tale - The Comeback Kid - courtesy of me, artist Jim Lavery, colourist Aljosa Tomic and letterer Nikki Foxrobot. Bargain or what? You'll find more details at www.markosia.com


Hushers is influenced by a heap of things, but most notably the stories of HG Wells (my story is, at heart, a "scientific romance"), disaster-from-space movies (Lars von Trier's Melancholia and Don McKellar's Last Night, especially), and The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec. Most of all, though, Hushers sprang from a desire to write about an "invisible" woman who gains in strength, confidence and power the more the story proceeds. I also wanted to be rude about the British establishment so there's a fair bit of that in there too. Despite its subject matter, Hushers isn't nearly as grim as Defiant: The Legend of Brithnoth - in fact, in many ways, it's a throughly eccentric madcap romp. 

Here's a slightly extended version of the blurb you'll find on the book's back cover...

England, early 1848: Despite the revolutions sweeping Europe and unrest at home, the British Empire is seemingly stronger than ever as Queen Victoria prepares to celebrate 10 years since her coronation as monarch. 

It all seems a million miles away to Sarah Buckman, who just wants to pack up her recently-deceased sister’s house and return to her rich, factory-owning husband. But, alone in the late Grace’s country retreat, Sarah is attacked by a mysterious and mute intruder. Her sister knew a big secret… the biggest secret of them all, and now Sarah knows it too. The British government and their terrifying agents – the sadistic Mr Goodluck and his Hushers – want her dead before she can tell anybody.

A huge, civilisation-ending meteor – Astraea – will strike Earth in only a few weeks and the government is determined no one finds out until it’s too late. Desperate and alone, Sarah teams up with enigmatic Frenchman Jacques and a band of anarchists and criminals called the Lambeth Rats. Their plan is to reveal the truth but what they uncover is a massive conspiracy that goes all the way to the very top of the British establishment.

Hushers is a fast-moving, sci-fi adventure story from Eagle Award-winning writer Andy Winter and artist Manuela Lebrino Bassu.

And, finally, here's a page of Manuela's unused art that we couldn't fit into the book's backmatter...




Tuesday, June 16, 2015

A damn fine book

THERE was a lovely review of Defiant: The Legend of Brithnoth over at the Forbidden Planet blog last week. Highlights from Richard Bruton's piece included: "It's a damn fine book, the pacing the thing that really stuck with me" and "This is a thrilling tale, well told, writer and artists really getting over the legendary nature of the history here". 

You can read the whole review here.

And you can buy Defiant for a little over a tenner from the FPI store here.

While I'm encouraging you to buy the book, we also have digital copies available through DriveThru Comics - it's a snip at $7.99 (a fraction over £5). Get it here.

* HUSHERS - my collaboration with Italian artist Manuela Lebrino Bassu - is being released by Markosia on August 1. The book - a tale of Victorian apocalypse - will retail for £12.99p/$17.99 and I shall be doing a proper blog post about the whole thing next week. In the meantime, here's some of Manuela's art. This isn't featured in the story itself but will appear in the book's back matter, along with a ton of other stuff...

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Defiant hits Previews

Defiant: The Legend of Brithnoth appears in Diamond's Previews catalogue this month (page 5 of the UK section). Fifteen quid for 92 full-colour pages filled with death, destruction, madness and betrayal seems pretty reasonable to me. Please order it from your local comic store and support independent creators!


Next stop for the Time Bomb Comics Viking Brigade (that's me, artist Dan Bell and publisher Steve Tanner) will be the Cardiff Independent Comic Expo on June 27. Tickets are only a fiver with under-12s going free with a ticket-holding adult.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Bleeding Cool say nice things about Defiant

Defiant: The Legend of Brithnoth received a perceptive and complimentary review over at Bleeding Cool this week. 

Writer Olly Macnamee said of the book: "[Winter and Bell] create a well realized and believable, living breathing facsimile of Essex, Maldon and Anglo-Saxon England; its society, its people, its clothing and customs. I felt drawn into each page, the artwork is clear, with an eye to the details of life in 10thcentury Essex."

You can read the whole review here.

The Defiant bandwagon next appears at the Birmingham Comics Festival, on Saturday April 18th, at Edgbaston Cricket Ground. Hope to see you there!

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Defiant launch details

THERE are only three days left to the launch of Defiant: The Legend of Brithnoth at the London Super Comic Con this weekend.

Artist Daniel Bell and I will be signing copies of the book at the Time Bomb Comics table both days so please come along, say hello and buy a copy for the special launch price of £12. 


You can find us in Artist Alley on table A118 (Aisle 9); just look for publisher Steve Tanner's brightly-coloured jacket and you won't go far wrong! If you're still unsure here's a map with a very big arrow pointing the way on it...




The book will also be appearing in the UK section of Diamond's Previews catalogue towards the end of April (cover-dated May). I shall have more details about this nearer the time. There will also be further con appearances to promote and sell the book, starting with the Birmingham Comic Festival on April 18. Again, more details to follow.

Oh, and Defiant now has its own Facebook page where we'll be posting art from the book and some of Dan's original character sketches amongst other things in the coming days and weeks. We need your "likes" so please come visit!

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Defiant launches

Defiant: The Legend of Brithnoth will be launching not once but twice! Artist Dan Bell and I will be signing at the Time Bomb Comics table at the London Super Comic Con over the weekend of March 14-15, and then I will be at the inaugural Birmingham Comics Festival on April 18 (unfortunately, Dan can't make that one due to a prior engagement).

There will also be a Defiant Facebook page going live in the next few days where you can go for updates, art pages etc.

This book has taken so long to get together and I'm genuinely excited that we're nearly there!




Saturday, January 24, 2015

There will be Blood Psi


Blood Psi will be available on ComiXology from Wednesday, January 28 and is being offered at the special knockdown price of 99c/69p. The book contains gorgeous black and white art by Keith Burns (Ex-Con, Aces Weekly) and an eye-catching cover by Declan Shalvey (Moon Knight, Injection). Personally, I think it's the best of the one-shots I wrote a few years ago and has always been a story I'd have loved to continue. In fact, when it looked like the comic was going to be optioned by a film producer a couple of years back, I actually wrote issues #2 and #3, and had further chapters sketched out. Maybe one day...

* With Defiant: The Legend of Brithnoth out in a couple of months, Manuela busy illustrating the final chapter of Hushers (sample page below), and Tim Skinner; Retconned bubbling away quietly in the background, I've been having a think about what I want to write next. One idea I've been working on is for a sci-fi black comedy. I'm going to spend the next month or so plotting out the whole thing in some detail before approaching artists. When I saw Declan in Birmingham last year he made a suggestion about getting published that I've been eager to try out ever since. This will be the project that puts that suggestion into practise...




* People have asked me what happened to a couple of projects I mentioned on here last year. Nothing good is the answer. Nix was going to be a graphic novel coming out through Borderline Press but the artist bailed (a shame because he was bloody good). This is a book I'd really like to return to at some point as I had the whole thing plotted out and had put quite a lot of work into it. I will probably try to find another artist again soon. I'd placed The Good Ship Otzi with a Dutch comics publisher but they had bugger-all money and closed a few months before Christmas. To be honest, Otzi is a project I won't bother returning to but I certainly intend to strip-mine it for the best ideas which I shall use elsewhere. 

* I've started a film blog - As Human as the Rest of Us - here. Come by and check out my recent reviews of superior low-budget horror flick Honeymoon, and offensively crappy kill-fest American Sniper. The blog also has its own Facebook page.