Winter's Wonderland

We could be Heroes

2011-10-25T04:51:00.000-07:00

THERE'S a lovely review of mine and Duane Leslie's Scoregasm webcomic in Comic Heroes magazine, issue #9 of which is out today (October 25).

Choice quotes from Rob Power's piece include: "Leaves you gagging for more", "Breathlessly entertaining" and "Gloriously evocative black and white artwork". He also gives it four stars out of five and the review itself features three big panels of Duane's art.

In fact, so happy am I with Rob's kind words I'm willing to forgive the fact that Scoregasm is misspelled (as Scorgasm) throughout the review!

* WE'VE had a couple of other nice recent reviews, too. A four-star one from
Comics Bulletin, and the other from Ain't It Cool News. The latter is full of praise for Duane's artwork - "Leslie captures the speed, style, and excitement of football to near perfection" - and deservedly so.

* THE fact I haven't been blogging much recently isn't because I've been idle. Far from it, I'm working on three pitch samples with a trio of artists at the moment and am really looking forward to getting them 'out there'. The stories are all very different to each other and from anything I've done before (no superheroes, vampires or spies). With the artists' permission I'll post artwork up here as and when...

An extremely smart book

2011-08-23T04:23:00.000-07:00

THE first review of Scoregasm is in and it's hugely positive. A few highlights from David O'Leary's piece over at comicrelated.com...

"This is an extremely smart book."

"Duane Leslie is a great artist with a keen eye for detail."

"I was buzzing a bit after reading this issue."

"In a perfect world, this would be a weekly comic."

Here's a link to the full review

* WHILE I'm in the mood for irksome self-congratulation, Mick Trimble recently pointed me in the direction of a link to Demonoid in which Septic Isle, the graphic novel we worked on together, is listed as one of the 'best comics of the decade/ever'.

I don't know what made me laugh more; the fact we're being mentioned in the same breath as Joss Whedon and Frank Miller, or that the heading above the list reads: MANY THANKS TO ALL THE SCANNERS WHO MADE THIS COLLECTION POSSIBLE. Yep, turns out Septic Isle's biggest fan is also an illegal downloader!

Here's the link

Scoregasm is go!

2011-08-12T01:45:00.000-07:00

MY new football comic - Scoregasm - is now available for your delight and delectation over at www.scoregasm.co

You can read it at the site or download a PDF of the entire thing to keep. Whatever your preference, the 38-page book is totally FREE.

Scoregasm is part-homage to the football strips I grew up reading in the seventies (things like Billy's Boots, Hot Shot Hamish and, of course, Roy Of The Rovers) and part-poison pen letter to the cynicism of the modern game.

Duane Leslie has done an excellent job on the art (see above) and many thanks to Eva de la Cruz for colouring the cover and Kay Downes for her fantastic website design.

* I'M keen to do more web-based stuff and one of the projects I'm looking at would be to bring back Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag (star of 2009's critically-acclaimed one-shot). Obviously I can't ask Declan to get involved as he's somewhat busy at Marvel, but, if anyone else might be up for it, just give me a shout.

Smells like Team spirit

2011-07-13T05:50:00.000-07:00

SEE that fresh-faced young scamp at the front there, between the girl with short hair and the big galoot in the striped shirt? That's me, from around 1986, when I worked as a presenter/reporter on a BBC Radio Northampton 'yoof' show called The Team. I hadn't laid eyes on that pic - a publicity shot for the show - in at least two decades but then a former colleague put it up on Facebook this week.

It made me feel very, very old but it also reminded me of just how good The Team was, especially in terms of the music it played - reggae, hip-hop and indie-rock were all staples of the show. We were playing the likes of Schooly D, Misty In Roots and Butthole Surfers on a Sunday night on a conservative local radio station whose usual output rarely got any more radical than the Traveling Wilburys and Kim Wilde.

The best thing about working on The Team for me, though, was that I got to interview loads of great bands and singers. I chatted to Sonic Youth, Swans, James, Danielle Dax, Zodiac Mindwarp, Steve Earle, Spacemen 3, Ruby Turner and a hundred others the sword of time has cut from my memory.

I also spoke to the silly Tory MP who tried to get the Beastie Boys banned from Britain, and Boy George's brother immediately after the Culture Club singer's heroin-related fall from grace. Best of the bunch was interviewing Rowan Atkinson at the height of his Blackadder fame. Just me and him in a radio studio for around half an hour talking comedy was heaven for a teenager who'd been a massive fan of Not The Nine O'Clock News.

Of course, it wasn't all plain sailing. There were constant arguments about the show's direction - I was firmly in the camp that believed an NME/John Peel vibe was best, others saw it as a more mainstream No Limits-style proposition. Because I was such a control freak/force of nature/total bastard back then, my side almost always got its own way which didn't exactly endear me to my colleagues. Yes, I was a dick but I always had the show's best interests at heart - at least that's what I tell myself all these years later whilst trying not to cringe at some of the terrible things I said and did.

And then there was the rather unpleasant altercation with a local band, called Stiff Lizard, whose awful single we refused to play. They got very upset and tried to attack me at a gig we put on at Northampton's Roadmender Centre. In retaliation we snapped their single in half live on air the following Sunday. God, even typing those words feels childish now. (Funnily enough, a few years later I was editing Splinter, a Northampton music magazine, in which I gave a demo by a duo called Hex a glowing review. I then went along to see them at a local pub only to discover they had both been members of Stiff Lizard!).

For its part, Radio Northampton was always pretty supportive. I think the station's suits liked having something a little edgy on their schedules, even if we landed them in trouble a couple of times (I'll never forget the on-air apology we were forced to make after cracking a joke about snooker players all taking cocaine or the horrified look on a senior producer's face when we played the Beasties' 'It's The New Style' featuring the immortal lyric, 'We told her some rhymes so she pulled up her skirt'). There were, of course, snipers and whiners who resented a bunch of ill-educated teenagers playing on their turf once a week, but they were mostly ineffectual posh twits with no bark, let alone a bite.

It seems odd now, but we never knew or even seeked to discover how many people actually listened to The Team. Frankly, we didn't give a toss. It could have been 10,000, it could have been 10. No one was interested in chasing ratings or poring over demographics; we did it because we loved it and felt we had something to say. And I think that's the reason why I'm still so proud of it.

Neil, the former colleague who posted that photo on Facebook, is threatening to upload a couple of old episodes of the show to the net and I have a horrible feeling it will sound terribly earnest, horribly dated and a bit pretentious. But, hey, being earnest and pretentious in the 80s was practically a badge of honour.

I eventually quit when I started to feel exploited (I poured my heart and soul into the show for a couple of years for little more than expenses) and realised my reputation for being 'difficult' probably meant proper employment lay elsewhere. I did more radio at university and for the BBC in York but my experience on The Team had been so enjoyable that nothing else came close to matching it, and I soon shifted my focus to magazine journalism. But that's another, not terribly interesting, story...

Slow and low, that is the tempo...

2011-06-04T01:59:00.000-07:00

THINGS are slowly coming together on one of the projects I've been trying to get off the ground for the last few months. The artist I'm working with has done some very striking character sketches and we've decided to do a full-colour, 22-page sample to pitch to companies.

I'd originally written a 10-page script for him to draw but have spent the last week or two completely rejigging and expanding it. I haven't got much written this past week because the children have been off school and my time simply hasn't been my own, but I'm hoping to have the whole thing done and dusted very soon.

*SCOREGASM is slowly taking shape, too. Artist Duane Leslie is about halfway through lettering it and I've been talking to web designer Kay about what the host site is going to look like. Still confident of that early-August launch date.

*I'M doing the Twitter thing now so please feel free to follow me @andywinter1 - unsurprisingly, I tend to talk most about sci-fi, comics, TV and film. I occasionally say unpleasant things about Adele and David Cameron, too.

Bristol Expo 2011 - five thoughts...

2011-05-17T00:17:00.000-07:00

1. NEXT year the Bristol Expo is returning to the Empire & Commonwealth Exhibition Hall (aka 'The Cowshed') and not before time. I never warmed to the 'split site' idea and it will be great to get the whole thing back under one roof. There was a real buzz about those events in the Cowshed, something that's been sorely lacking for the past few years (the word most people used to describe the Ramada event this year was 'quiet').

That said, this year's Expo really confirmed for me that my time as a self-publisher is up. I have a few interesting irons in the fire at the moment and it's them that I'll be pursuing in the coming months. Besides, I'm looking forward to attending the likes of Bristol as a punter - for a start, I might actually get the chance to talk to a few more people instead of being stuck behind a table on my own all weekend.

2. BRISTOL hotels really know how to take the piss. £2.75 for a small cup of tea in the Mercure Holland and £12.80 for three bottles of Budweiser in the Ramada. FFS!

3. SOME exhibitors didn't seem to care whether they sold any of their books or not. My table was in Hall 4 at the Mercure Holland hotel - right at the back in the spaces presumably inhabited by those of us who'd left it late to book. Chances are, this area would have been one of the last places punters visited as they made their way round the Expo and, as a result, it was quiet for a lot of the weekend.

Faced with such adversity, my reaction was to try and engage as many people as possible - I stood for the entire weekend (ouch!), said 'hi' to anyone within six feet of my table and pointed out I had a sale on. That slightly 'in your face' approach worked and I did better business than I had any right to.

However, I noticed a lot of other exhibitors near me made little or no effort to actually get people to their table. This was exemplified by the two guys sharing a pitch next to mine. They were both terrific artists with some high-quality stuff to sell, but I doubt they made a dozen sales between them all weekend. They seemed content to sit and sketch for hours at a time, occasionally breaking off to chat to friends.

I probably sound like a terrible capitalist pig for even mentioning it, but isn't the idea of being an exhibitor to get your work out there and try and make a few bob back on what it costs to actually attend in the first place?

4. IT'S been two years since I've exhibited at a comics event like the Expo and the sheer number of new small press and indie publishers that have popped up since then is astonishing. When I started self-publishing nine or ten years ago there were a couple of dozen other like-minded souls doing their own books. I bet there's a couple of hundred now, and a lot of them are very, very good.

5. I KNOW a lot of people hate them but Cosplayers really brighten up these events. My favourites this year were the rather chunky chap dressed as Deadpool and another guy done up as Strontium Dog - he even had contact lenses to give him that weird mutant dilated pupils look.

Bristol weekend on its way

2011-05-09T01:56:00.000-07:00

I HAVEN'T been to any comics-related events in around two years so am really looking forward to this weekend's Bristol International Comic & Small Press Expo. I have a table (#60 in Hall 4 at the Mercure hotel) from which I will be selling the likes of Hero Killers, Blood Psi, Septic Isle, Devilchild and Brothers for a once-in-a-lifetime sale price of just a quid each.

In fact, punters will be able to buy the entire Moonface Press back catalogue (except Shriek! and Tim Skinner which are sold out) for the princely sum of £7 - a bargain in anyone's language.

I'm also hoping to recruit a couple more artists in Bristol. I've already got two guys lined up to work on stuff I've been trying to get off the ground for ages but am keen to find a couple more collaborators for story ideas I've come up with more recently. If you're a comic-book artist and might be interested in finding out more, come and say hi.

My football-flavoured one-shot, Scoregasm!, is now being lettered by artist Duane Leslie and I'm hoping to launch it in time for the new football season in August. Watch this space for further details...

New British Comics #3

2011-04-30T02:43:00.000-07:00

I'VE been a bit out of the indie press loop lately so was pleasantly surprised when Karol Wiśniewski got in touch to tell me about the New British Comics anthology he edits. He was also kind enough to send me a copy of its third issue (see Lawrence Elwick's gorgeous cover above) which boasts 80 black and white pages featuring 13 different strips.

As with any anthology there is good and less-good but the former far outweighs the latter here. My favourite strips include Ink vs Paper by John Miers, a silent tale that is beautifully drawn and ingeniously constructed, and Better Living Through Distance by Dave Thomson, a bleakly amusing story about the universal nature of disappointment.

Best of the bunch for me, though, is Von Trapp by WJC. It's a nine-page vampire western that is not only atmospheric and chilling, but also boasts terrific, off-kilter art full of weird angles and odd perspectives. Loved it!

New British Comics #3 is a snip at £4. For purchase information, visit the NBC blog site at: http://newbritishcomics.blogspot.com

The shock of the new

2011-03-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

THERE'S a new four-page story to download over at moonfacepress.com. It's called The Saboteur and was written by me and drawn by Mick Trimble, who you may remember as my collaborator on 2008's Septic Isle one-shot.

Look for the link at the top of the Moonface home page – it's FREE to download as a PDF.

* ON the subject of new stuff, my one-shot football comic – cryptically entitled Scoregasm – should be winging its way onto the net or into print (or maybe both) in the next month or two. The brilliant Duane Leslie – whom I collaborated with on the third volume of Devilchild amongst other stuff – is the artist. Duane also did the cover, with colours provided by Eva de la Cruz (see below).

Bits of the story's DNA come directly from the kind of football stories I read as a kid in comics such as Tiger & Scorcher and Roy Of The Rovers. The strip Billy's Boots was certainly on my mind when I was writing Scoregasm, although my story operates in a very different, far more cynical world.

Blokes of a certain age should remember Billy's Boots. It was about a young boy – named Billy Dane – who had a magical pair of football boots that made him the best player on his school team. It was a fun, innocent tale full of last-minute winners, plucky underdogs overcoming the odds and scurrilous opponents who'd have been more at home in the KGB than on a school football pitch. Because of the 'magic' boots, the strip also had an almost-supernatural element (although you were never entirely sure if the boost the boots gave Billy was all in his head).

As I've inferred, Scoregasm is a whole lot darker than Billy's Boots (its sub-title is 'Sex, Secrets... and Football'). I guess it's all about the loss of innocence and perhaps reflects how my own opinion of the beautiful game has changed over the years. I LOVED football when I was a kid, was obsessed with it actually, whereas these days I find many elements of the cynical, brutish soap opera it has become thoroughly dismaying.

There are hardly any football comics these days (Striker in The Sun and very little else) so I'm hoping Scoregasm may get people talking. I'd like to reach actual football fans with it but god knows how I'm going to do that. Ideas on a postcard please...

* MY old friend Phil Hall is currently telling the story of his lifelong relationship with comics over at his blog: http://alifeincomics.blogspot.com

Three chapters in, Phil hasn't got to the really juicy stuff yet (I suspect the recollections regarding his time as News Editor at Comics International will make essential reading, as will the chapters dedicated to Borderline magazine), but it's still an enjoyable, nostalgia-tinged read that British fans of 70s Marvel and DC will find essential reading.

Event Horizon

2011-02-26T04:06:00.000-08:00

AS I mentioned in my last post, I'm keen to attend some UK comic events this year. I was going to do BICs but 2011's event has been postponed because the organisers need to find a new venue (this is a shame because I always really enjoyed visiting Millennium Point and its museums).

Anyway, after giving it some thought, I've booked a table for the Bristol Expo (May 14-15). I intend to use the weekend to meet up with old friends, recruit a few artists and to sell off some of my remaining stock of comics. It also works out quite nicely for my missus whose sister lives in Bristol and who she hasn't seen in ages.

I've booked table 60 in Hall 1 at the Mercure Hotel (I'm next to Mirus Entertainment) so if you're attending, please come and say hello.

On a more positive note...

2011-01-31T23:55:00.001-08:00

IT'S been an interesting start to the New Year. As I mentioned in my previous post (you know, the ranty, embittered one about how awful 2010 was), I've been talking to a film producer for a few months now about turning one of the comics I wrote and published a few years back into a movie.

Anyway, things seem to be moving in the right direction at the moment and just last week I was in London (at swanky Soho House) to meet said producer, a couple of up and coming young screenwriters and a well-known actor/director whose work I admire enormously.

The premise of the meeting was to start thrashing out a plot made up of the stuff from the original comic (which would probably only make up 15 minutes of film time), a load of new material I'd written to continue the story and a variety of ideas from everyone else. It went very well and although there's still a lot of work to be done and obstacles to overcome, I got the feeling everyone present was really committed to making this happen.

I won't be counting my chickens though. I was in a very similar position a couple of years back after being contacted by an American producer who had worked on a hugely successful '90s serial killer flick. Everything was really positive for a few months and then slowly but surely the whole project crumbled to dust. I'll get round to telling that whole sorry story one day (perhaps on here) but it still hurts just thinking about it.

* I'VE been writing some short stories recently (well, I might as well get on with something while I wait for a couple of decent, reliable comic artists to make themselves known). I haven't written prose in years and years but it's going quite well so far. It's much harder work than writing comics, where you have an artist to rely on for a lot of the tricky stuff. Anyway, I seem to have settled into a kind of horror/comedy groove and am going to have a look around to see if I can find some anthologies to submit my stuff to.

* THERE should be a new four-page comic story available for free download from moonfacepress.com in the next few weeks. It's called The Saboteur and is written by me and drawn by Mick Trimble, my collaborator on Septic Isle. It was originally intended for Accent UK's Robots anthology a few years ago but the story's original artist never got round to finishing it and Mick stepped in.

Piss off 2010, you've been a crap, frustrating year and I'll be glad to see the back of you!

2010-12-05T01:39:00.000-08:00

AS my rather unsubtle title implies, the last 12 months have been somewhat difficult. This has been especially true when it comes to my writing.

As you may remember, my plan for 2010 was to team up with a variety of artists to pitch story ideas to comic-book companies such as Image, Markosia and Insomnia (of whom, more in a minute). I had several ideas that I duly worked up into pitches and wrote sample scripts for. Unfortunately, not a single one of my collaborators actually completed - or in several cases, even started - the work. There are many reasons for this (one guy simply had a better offer) and I'm not one for recriminations, but it still put a major crimp in my game plan and left me feeling rather disillusioned.

I also came close to getting a project off the ground with British indie publisher Insomnia - or more specifically their historical imprint, Vigil. Martin Conaghan, who was the editor of the company's Vigil line, loved one of the two pitches I sent him and was keen to take it on. Unfortunately, it was very shortly afterwards that the company imploded. I'm still hoping to place one or other of my historical pitches with another company so fingers crossed...

There is another possible light at the end of the tunnel, too. I was contacted by a film producer in May and have been working on something for him that I'm hoping will pay off in the new year. If it does work out, it will make all the frustrations of the past 12 months more than worth it. If it doesn't, I shall probably go and sit in a dark corner somewhere and sob...

Due to a profound lack of cash, I haven't attended a single comics-related event this year. I missed BICS for the first time since its inception and Bristol for only the second time since 2001. I still haven't attended Hi-ex or Thought Bubble. I've even missed the MCM Expo events in east London that are a short train journey from my home. Hopefully this is something I'll remedy in 2011. I still have a few boxes of Moonface Press stock (Hero Killers, Blood Psi etc) knocking about the place so I may even book a table at a couple of events. Probably not Mark Millar's new Kaboom! event in London though as the price of table space there is extortionate.

In the new year I shall also continue my search for artists to collaborate with. I have a few cracking ideas for graphic novels and mini-series and I'm not going to let them fall by the wayside.

To hell with Twilight

2010-07-09T10:47:00.001-07:00

Edward who?

CI R.I.P.

2010-05-27T06:44:00.000-07:00

VARIOUS sources on the net (Bleeding Cool, Down The Tubes etc) are reporting the demise of Comics International, the long-running British comics news magazine.

CI seems to have breathed its last after the magazine's publisher - Cosmic Publications - was closed down. Admittedly, CI hadn't published a regular monthly issue in over a year, but I for one will still mourn its passing.

Not only was it a great source of information for me when I returned to comics fandom after a decade away in the late '90s, but it was always very supportive of my writing and publishing. I remember being elated when they gave the first Devilchild volume 8 out of 10 and even more so when they ran a big news story on Blood Psi. Such positive coverage gave me a real confidence boost and definitely helped hike my order numbers with Diamond.

Despite the huge amount of comics stuff on the net, I genuinely miss having a cheap and cheerful British-flavoured print magazine full of news, gossip and reviews to read every month. But maybe I'm just old fashioned.

Reader, I eviscerated him...

2010-05-24T00:17:00.000-07:00

THOUGHT it was high time I got hip to the latest literary sensation - classic novels with a horror/sci-fi twist. You know the ones I mean - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Android Karenina and lots of others that clog up the shelves in Waterstones forcing out immeasurably better books written by proper authors.

I've decided to adapt Charlotte Bronte's classic Jane Eyre for my purposes, reimagining wilful Jane as a depraved serial killer (perhaps she hosts the same demonic spirit that possessed Charles Manson and currently resides in Vernon Kay).

Hilariously, I've decided to title my rewrite Jane Scare and I think you'll agree it's an inspired - not to mention jolly clever - play on words. Because 'Eyre' rhymes with 'Scare', do you see?

Anyway, here's the cover (I laboured long and hard for all of 10 minutes to knock it up on CorelDraw) and an exclusive preview of the book's first page...

CHAPTER ONE
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question.

I was glad of it; I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed. How I hated the fuckers.

The said Eliza, John and Georgiana were now clustered round their mamma in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarelling nor crying), looked perfectly happy. I was about to put a very permanent stop to that.

I moved quickly towards the sofa keeping my hands behind my back (I didn't want to ruin the surprise that awaited Mrs Reed and her reviled litter of shit-kittens). The old woman let out a pathetic rodent-like squeak as she saw me raise the knife once I'd reached her side. Eliza, John and Georgiana spun round as one, then scattered as I brought down the jagged blade and plunged it deep into their mother's chest. The impact of the blow vibrated up my entire arm leaving it numb. But I'm willing to wager any pain I may have suffered was tiny indeed compared to the eye-popping agony that then engulfed their indolent mamma.

The loathsome old bag howled like a kicked dog and crawled about on the floor, red pumping from her wound and pooling on the floor under her. The sight would have probably got me quite moist down below had I not already turned my murderous attention to her three ugly spawn, one of whom, Miss Lah-dee-dah Georgiana, had already soiled herself. I was going to enjoy burning her.

(Not) to be continued...

Something wonderful

2010-05-18T23:47:00.000-07:00

TOMMIE KELLY (the creator of Road Crew and the artist on my Mongo, Music Critic strip) has recently launched a new webcomic.

You can find it here: www.somethingwonderfulcomic.com

It's quite dark and very funny.

Bristol no-show

2010-05-17T06:23:00.000-07:00

I WON'T be attending the Bristol Comics Expo for only the second time since 2001.

I had thought about popping down for the day on Saturday, especially when I discovered my good friend and Blood Psi collaborator Keith Burns was going to be there signing copies of The Boys with John McCrea.

Unfortunately, I then discovered all the Saturday one-day tickets had sold out which rather put the kibosh on things. Never mind, it would have been a long way to go just for the day anyway and Birmingham's BICS event is only a few months off.

Hopefully, by then, I should have a pitch or two ready to show publishers.

* I'VE now completely sold out of copies of Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag. I don't even have a file copy for myself (anyone willing to sell one back to me can drop me an email – seriously).

The guy who bought the last copy was a Canadian by the name of Pete Skinner – he wanted it as a birthday present for his younger brother... Tim.

Jive turkeys

2010-05-15T01:44:00.000-07:00

HERE'S the cover to Andy Radbourne's BritForce #2 which he's going to be launching at next weekend's Bristol Expo. If anything it's a stronger cover than the one by Glenn Fabry on the first issue, which, whilst being very pretty, didn't really reflect the book's contents.

I'm very much a fan of comic covers with speech balloons on them - DC used to do some crackers, like this hilarious but vaguely offensive Justice League of America one from 1979. Did black people ever use terms like 'jive bunch of turkeys' or had the white, middle-aged man who wrote the cover blurb just been watching too much Starsky & Hutch?

Pucker up

2010-04-16T08:43:00.000-07:00

HAVEN'T posted anything in a while so here's a three-page script I wrote for an artist last year - an artist I haven't heard from since. Oh, well.

Anyway, the idea was that it would be the first of a short series about a bloke - called Keith - who was trying to summon a demon to carry out some nefarious plan or other. Unfortunately, every diabolical creature he summoned was more eccentric and difficult to control than the last. I was quite pleased with it...

PUCKER UP
By Andy Winter

PAGE ONE

1. A man – we’ll call him Keith – is dressed in a hooded robe and is standing in the middle of a pentagram that has been drawn on the floorboards of his tiny flat (the carpet has been rolled up and his sofa moved out of the way). Keith is reciting incantations as he attempts to conjure a demon. Although he is far from expert in these matters, Keith is giving it his all – booming out the incantations and standing in as dramatic a pose as possible while he does so.

Placed on the five points of the pentagram are lit candles which drop wax on to the floor – the only light source in the darkened room. Keith has inexpertly marked out the pentagram with white chalk on his floorboards.

Keith isn’t a terribly attractive man – he’s a bit overweight and unshaven. He isn’t wearing anything under the rather baggy robe but does have a pair of white socks on and there is a hole in one of the toes.

KEITH: Appear fiery hell-spawn to carry out my directions, to carve up my enemies into neat tidy sections…

2. The air in the room seems to shudder and Swasokretch the demon appears before Keith in the pentagram. I don’t mind what the demon looks like just make him scary and at least a foot taller than Keith.

DEMON: I am Swasokretch the demon and I will do whatever you command me to. But first...

3. Swasokretch has puckered up his lips – such as they are – and stuck his face right next to Keith’s. Keith reacts with total shock and horror – his mouth hangs open and his eyes bulge.

DEMON: … A KISS!

KEITH: WHAT!?!

4. Keep the composition of this panel roughly the same, only now the demon has unpuckered his lips and Keith has slightly recovered his senses. The demon points at his lips as if that is going to encourage Keith to kiss him.

DEMON: A kiss – go on, gimme a smacker right on the lips here!

KEITH: You haven’t got any lips.

DEMON: I think you’re mean.

KEITH: And I thought you were a demon.

5. His demon manhood challenged, Swasokretch puffs out his chest and tries to look as tough as possible. Keith has fully recovered his senses now and is actually making fun of the demon.

DEMON: Oh, I’m a demon alright, mate.

KEITH: A demon who likes kissing men?

6. The demon looks down at Keith and pokes him in his chest with one of his long fingers; he’s getting a little cheesed off now. Keith looks up at him, but suddenly not so scared; almost laughing at him.

DEMON: What are you implying exactly?

KEITH: That you are Swasokretch… the gay demon.

PAGE TWO

1. The demon puts his arm on Keith’s shoulder. Keith sticks out his arm and is pushing the demon in the chest to keep him at bay.

DEMON: I’m not gay, I’m curious – I’ve never kissed a real, live human before. Now, c’mon, pucker up – I promise not to use any of my tongues...

KEITH: I’d rather eat the gunk out of Michael Winner’s belly button.

2. The demon releases his grip on Keith and throws his hands up in despair.

DEMON: You’re a homophobe.

MAN: No, I’m not, my brother’s gay!

3. The demon points accusingly at Keith.

DEMON: Yeah and you haven’t spoken to him in three years.

MAN: That has nothing to do with his... gayness.

4. The two continue bickering like an old married couple.

DEMON: See, you don’t even know the proper word for it.

MAN: It’s you, you’re confusing me... shut up!

5. Keith and the demon have turned their backs on each other – both have folded their arms. There is tension and silence in the air.

NO DIALOGUE IN THIS PANEL.

6. The demon has turned around and is talking to Keith’s back which remains turned to him.

DEMON: Right, last chance. Are you going to kiss me or what?

MAN: NO!

PAGE THREE

1. Keith has turned around to face the demon.

DEMON: Fine, send me back then...

MAN: I’d be delighted to…

2. Make this panel similar to the very first one on PAGE ONE. Keith is once again standing in the middle of his pentagram. Most of the demon has disappeared but perhaps we can still see part of him as he fades away back to hell.

KEITH: Return this demon to the pit; I can really bear no more of it!

DEMON: See you in hell, bigot!

3. Keith decides to summon another demon straightaway so begins a new incantation.

KEITH (thinking): If at first you don’t succeed…

KEITH: Send me a demon who’ll do as I say, send me a demon but not one that’s gay…

4. Another demon appears before Keith in the pentagram. Again, I’m quite happy for you to make the demon look however you want just make him very different in appearance to Swasokretch. This new demon has one hand behind his back because he is concealing something.

NEW DEMON: I am Eggelthasgok and I am here to do your bidding. But first...

5. The new demon has pulled out from behind his back a box containing the game Twister. He holds it up in front of him as if to say, "Ta da!". The demon is smiling a big goofy grin.

NEW DEMON: ...TWISTER!

6. Close up on Keith – he looks utterly deflated and ready to end it all. His expression is one of utter defeat.

NO DIALOGUE IN THIS PANEL.

THE END

Mugshot

2010-02-23T06:34:00.000-08:00

TO promote the newly-available PDF download of Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag, artist Declan Shalvey has put this new sketch of Tim up at the Eclectic Micks blog he shares with Irish artists PJ Holden, Nick Roche, Stephen Thompson, Bob Byrne and Stephen Mooney.

Dec posts new sketches there every Tuesday so check it out here: http://eclecticmicks.blogspot.com

Dec is also the artist on 28 Days Later, which you can read every month from Boom! Studios.

Download Skinner for FREE

2010-02-20T09:08:00.000-08:00

THE Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag one-shot is now available as a free download from www.moonfacepress.com - just click the banner at the top of the homepage and you'll be directed to the site's download page.

The download consists of two stories over 43 PDF pages (30MB, under a minute to download). The first tale is written by me and drawn - in glorious full colour - by 28 Days Later artist Declan Shalvey. The original comic came out in November 2008 and was launched at that same month's Dublin City Comic Con in Ireland. Scarily, few of its jokes are out of date!

The second - black and white - story is from 2005's SHRIEK! one-shot. It was Tim Skinner's first appearance (in a tale entitled Zardo Zapp Attacks!) and was written by me with art by Natalie Sandells (pencils) and Adrian Bamforth (inks).

I'd love to do more Skinner at some point - I had a story based around Phonogram all mapped out in my head - but Dec's super-busy with paid work these days so I can't see it happening any time soon.

And, finally, here are some nice things reviewers and comics pros said about the Skinner one-shot...

"Fucking hilarious!" - Jonathan Hickman, writer, Fantastic Four

"Delightfully, incredibly, enjoyably sick. Oh, I liked it." - Joe Gordon, Forbidden Planet blog

“Tim Skinner [is] a very self-referential, up-its-own-arse comic that I was destined to love. Even The Boys gets a good shoeing over with hilarious consequences.” - Rich Johnston, bleedingcool.com

"I don’t laugh out loud often, but I laughed out loud at this." - Regie Rigby, comicsbulletin.com

It's been awhile...

2010-01-31T03:08:00.000-08:00

HELLO... anyone still here? Ah, there you are. Apologies to my half-dozen regular readers for not updating this blog in nearly four months but, to be honest, there hasn't really been much to report. Um, Happy New Year!

Because I've stepped back from self-publishing for the forseeable future, I don't have new releases or shipping dates to talk about any more but I have kept very busy. In fact, writing-wise, I've been rather more prolific in the last couple of months than at any time in the past two years. As I've mentioned before, all my efforts are now focused on collaborating with artists on projects to pitch to professional publishers in this country and the States.

As a result, I've got a few things on the go at the moment, including projects with Tommie Kelly (Roadcrew, Mongo: Music Critic) and Andrew Radbourne (BritForce, Brothers). The plan is to get 'pitch packs' together to show off to publishers and editors at the Bristol Expo and B.I.C.S events in May and October respectively. I'll reveal more the nearer we get to the events in question.

* ALTHOUGH I'm hoping to attend, I won't be exhibiting at Bristol for the first time since 2003 nor at the Birmingham show for the first time since its inception. Copies of all my comics will continue to be available through the Moonface Press website and I'm hoping to make at least some of them downloadable in the near future, starting with the full-colour Tim Skinner one-shot.

* AND on the subject of digital comics, there's a very positive review of mine and Tommie Kelly's Mongo: Music Critic webcomic here.

Comics Bulletin columnist Regie Rigby describes it as "a great, fast, funny comedy hit". Which is nice. You can still download Mongo for free at moonfacepress.com

* ANDREW RADBOURNE'S BritForce graphic novel is available for order in this month's UK section of Previews. You'll find it on page six of the catalogue, under Moonface Press, and the book's order number is FEB10 1756. It has a lovely cover by comics legend Glenn Fabry (Slaine, Preacher) and costs £4.50 for 64 pages.

* AND finally - I shall endeavour to update this blog a bit more regularly in future even if it's only a couple of times a month. Promise...

Blood Psi STILL getting great reviews!

2009-10-05T23:41:00.000-07:00

THERE'S a lovely review of mine and Keith Burns' Blood Psi one-shot in episode seven of the Small Press Big Mouth podcast. Reviewer Stacey Whittle , who also blogs for www.sfx.co.uk, describes the cover and interior art as "gorgeous" and says the story is "very satisfying" and kept her guessing right until the end.

The review starts at 17 minutes 20 seconds into the podcast and you can check it out here: http://castroller.com/podcasts/GeeksyndicatesPodcast/1209360

You should also take a look at the SPBM blog here: http://smallpressbigmouth.blogspot.com/

Blood Psi has been out for at least a couple of years now but a great review's a great review as far as I'm concerned.

Post-BICS

2009-10-05T00:10:00.000-07:00

I HAD a blast at the BICS festival in Birmingham over the weekend, catching up with lots of friends, meeting some great new people and selling loads of comics. Septic Isle and BritForce were my top sellers, suggesting punters are more interested in a meaty graphic novel-length read these days than in flimsier pamphlet-style comics.

If anything, though, the event very much underlined to me that I've really taken the self-publishing lark about as far as I can. I simply don't have the money to kick on from here, especially since Diamond's increase in their minimum order benchmark makes it harder than ever for tiny indies like me to get into Previews. Nope, my decision to concentrate on my writing and slowly run down the publishing side of what I do is, I think, the only one that makes sense right now.

To that end, on the Saturday morning I met with one of the artists with whom I'm going to be pitching to companies and we agreed a way forward for our project. I'm really excited about working with this particular illustrator (whose identity will remain a secret for now) and about the project itself. The plan is to get the 'pitch package' ready to show to people at the Bristol Expo next May.

I also met a young artist called Matt Birks whose work is terrific (strong storytelling, great design sense) and I'm keen to collaborate with him on a pitch, too.

I probably won't stop publishing altogether at this stage - BritForce's creator Andy Radbourne is keen to do a second issue and I might do the odd thing to keep my hand in just to sell at cons. But I'm not sure right now whether I'll be exhibiting at Bristol and Birmingham next year or whether I shall just attend as a regular punter/aspiring writer. I have to say it would be very nice to go to a comics convention and not spend all weekend stood behind a table endlessly spouting the same sales pitches for my comics. It's given me a sore throat and aching legs this year...

BICS bits

2009-10-01T02:11:00.000-07:00

I'M off to Birmingham tomorrow for the British International Comics Show - or BICS as it's better known. I have a table there as usual and Brothers and BritForce will both be making their BICS debuts. These are going to be the last titles I publish for the timebeing as I'm going to be concentrating on pitching projects to other publishers instead of putting out my own stuff.

As far as that goes I have three outlines with artists right now and the plan is to get proper 'proposal packs' together to show editors and publishers next year. I'm keen that this stuff shouldn't be rushed as I want to make all of the proposals as slick and professional as possible. I've certainly found three terrific artists to work on them with me, one of whom I shall be meeting up with in Birmingham to discuss our collaboration in a bit more depth.

In the meantime, new stories will continue to appear from me on the Moonface website - Mongo, Music Critic is already up there and will be joined in due course by a couple of other tales, one of which will be drawn by my old Septic Isle collaborator Mick Trimble.

After a very lazy summer - the kids being around gave me an excuse to do bugger all on the writing front - I'm keen to really get back into things. I've done a fair bit of work on another story idea but need to retool it a bit, while another couple are at the 'very roughly sketched out in my head' stage. After BICS I have a couple of weeks off work and intend to use them to get some of this stuff up and running...

All Hail Mongo!

2009-09-07T00:08:00.000-07:00

MONGO, MUSIC CRITIC, my collaboration with artist Tommie Kelly, is now available to download for FREE as a PDF at www.moonfacepress.com

Mongo is a violent alien warlord with a sideline in scathing music journalism. All Earthlings must tremble before Mongo's might - especially those in terrible emo and indie bands.

Tommie is the creator of the frequently hilarious Road Crew comic strip, which you'll find here: www.roadcrewcomic.com

The first collection of Road Crew strips in book form - called Electric LadyLand - is now available for pre-order from that site, too.

Hopefully, Mongo will be the first of many free strips going up on the Moonface site. In fact, if there are any artists out there who'd like to collaborate with me on one, please get in touch. The strips will all be under 10 pages in length and I have scripts ready to send out right now...

There's a good chance an extra-special version of the now completely-sold-out one-shot TIM SKINNER: TOTAL SCUMBAG by 28 Days Later artist Declan Shalvey and I will be made available on the site at some point, too, although I shall probably charge a quid or so for people to download that.

Holding pattern

2009-08-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

APOLOGIES for the lack of updates in the past month but the kids have been off school for what feels like an eternity (roll on September!) and my time is at even more of a premium than usual. And, to be honest, there hasn't been loads to report anyway...

Work on the Kurse proposal continues apace and I'm a bit nearer to naming the artists I'll be teaming up with on further pitches but that's about it really. All told, when the dust settles, I should have at least three or four things to show editors and publishers over the next year or so. The good thing is that the projects are all pretty diverse, spanning a couple of different flavours of sci-fi, a bit of comedy and some other tomfoolery I don't really have a name for yet.

One of the sci-fi projects is the post-alien invasion story I mentioned in passing a while back. Just waiting for the potential artist to get back to me and say whether he wants to do it or not - I'm actually quite nervous about his response as he would be SO perfect for it and it would be a disappointment if he doesn't fancy it...

* I'M seriously thinking about attending the Dublin City Con again this year - for me, it was one of the comic highlights of 2008 so if I can get a cheap flight and accommodation that's a few quid less expensive than last time I'll be there. I'm not sure the event's official website is up properly yet but when it is you'll find all the details here: www.dublincitycomiccon.com

* I'VE seen a couple of pages of Dec Shalvey's 28 Days Later artwork and I think people are going to be in for a real treat. Dec's black and white stuff is as tight and dynamic as ever but the coloured version is lovely, too. I enjoyed the colours on Dec's Frankenstein graphic novel but felt they overwhelmed his art a bit. This is a much better fit - muted and subtle, perfect for the subject matter and a great showcase for Dec's work. Not sure when the first issue hits the shops (later this month, I think) but I'm looking forward to seeing it in all its finished glory.

Kurse komes together

2009-07-18T02:21:00.000-07:00

GETTING the Kurse proposal together continues apace with sketches of the story's main and secondary characters all completed by artist Chris Simmonds (with his permission I might post a few here at some point soon). I've now sent Chris the first 10 pages of script and I'm sure that will be keeping him busy for the next couple of months. I have high hopes for my collaboration with Chris as he got what it is I'm trying to do with Kurse straightaway and has already brought quite a few of his own ideas to the table.

I've heard from a few artists who are interested in collaborating with me on further pitches and they're all really good. Unfortunately, none of them has an art style that would suit the particular stories I'm working on. After all, it's pointless having an artist with a light cartoony style working on a black-hearted alien invasion story full of death, misery and violence. My search continues...

Road Crew collaboration

2009-07-06T02:20:00.000-07:00

MY first short story to go up on the Moonface website will be drawn by Tommie Kelly. Tommie is the creator behind the frequently hilarious Road Crew webcomic (you'll find it here: www.roadcrewcomic.com) and I met him at last year's Dublin City Con. Look out for it sometime during the next month.

* THOSE proposals for editors and publishers I've been mentioning are bubbling along nicely. I'm now working on four different stories. Two of the projects have artists attached and I'm hoping Keith Burns will take on one of the others just as soon as his workload eases a little. Last I heard he was pulling 14-hour days to hit tighter-than-tight deadlines on The Boys. Poor sod...

The project that's furthest along at the moment is Kurse and I got some preliminary character sketches from Chris (the artist) this week and I couldn't be happier with them. He pretty much nailed the look of the two main characters straightaway which is hugely encouraging.

I know I've mentioned my frustrations with the Kurse script on here before, but a few weeks ago I finally solved the plot glitches that had been giving me problems and the whole thing works rather nicely now. About bloody time...

Brotherly love

2009-06-22T23:45:00.000-07:00

THERE'S a short but sweet review of Brothers featured on the latest edition of the Geek Syndicate podcast (episode 124). You'll find it right here, about five or six minutes in.

"Entertainment all the way" is one of the nice things Barry and Dave say about the book.

A decent proposal (hopefully)

2009-06-20T04:54:00.001-07:00

I'VE spent the last few weeks working on a proposal for a mini-series/graphic novel that I hope to show to comics companies later in the year. I'm hoping to get together with an artist, who will also be my co-creator, to make the proposal as strong as it possibly can be with fully illustrated sample pages. I haven't got anyone lined up for this yet but hope to have someone in place by the end of the month.

The proposal I've been working on is called Isle Of Zeke and has, I think, a pretty strong premise (and therefore one I won't be divulging at this early stage). I decided that before I wrote up the story as a proposal to show editors and publishers, I'd actually fully script at least the first couple of chapters/issues to get a proper feel for the characters and to see if the ideas and aspects of the plot actually worked. As it turns out, I'm enjoying the writing so much that I might end up banging out the whole thing as a challenge to myself; to see how well I can actually write a 120-page script that has to satisfy as both a serial and as a complete story.

I'm sure I shall talk a lot more about Zeke in the coming weeks - as well as my other half-dozen proposal ideas.

* I'M very keen on getting some original short stories up on the Moonface website, so if there are any artists reading this who might be interested in illustrating one of my four-ten page scripts, please email samples of your sequential work to me at: moonfacepress@hotmail.com

* BRITFORCE #1 got a nice review on the Waiting For The Trade podcast (episode 50, Wednesday June 3). Dave and Ang - your genial WFTT hosts - start talking about the book around five minutes in and give their mostly positive views a lengthy airing. You can download the podcast from here: http://wftt.libsyn.com/

Burns notice

2009-05-25T01:00:00.000-07:00

MY good friend and Blood Psi co-creator, Keith Burns, has had two great big dollops of good news recently. In April he became a dad for the first time (to James Francis Burns) and now he's working with Hitman artist John McCrea on the Garth Ennis-penned Herogasm. The mini-series is a spin-off from The Boys and my favourite line is "Come on my hump" which should give you some idea of the kind of weapons-grade filth to expect within its pages...

The first issue is out now – buy it and keep baby James in nappies!

* BRITFORCE #1 and the Brothers one-shot are now for sale in the Moonface Press shop. BritForce (written and drawn by Andrew Radbourne) is £4.50 for 64 pages and a gorgeous Glenn Fabry cover, Brothers (written by me and drawn by Andrew R) is £3 for 56 pages. By the way, just to clarify, BritForce will be an ongoing series with 64-page issues coming out twice a year. Issue 2 should be ready for Birmingham...

* ON Saturday I went to the MCM Expo at the XL Centre in London's Docklands (MCM stands for Movies Comics Media). It was the first time I'd been to one of these twice-yearly events and the first time I'd been to a con as a punter rather than as an exhibitor in years. I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it – especially after the damp squib that was the Bristol Expo earlier this month.

One of the most noticeable things about the show was the fact the average age of the punters was around 10-15 years younger than at regular comics cons, with a lot more women and girls in attendance too. In fact, the show attracts many thousands of people - we were in the queue to get in for about an hour - and while that can make things a little bit cramped even in a big exhibition hall it also suggests that London really might be the best place for this kind of event after all.

The MCM show isn't just a glorified comics mart either - there are lots of signings (everyone from movie legend Tony Curtis to Warren Ellis on Saturday), advance previews of films and games and loads of cool Japanese and American merchandise it probably isn't that easy to buy elsewhere in the UK. Then, of course, there's the cosplayers. Now I know a lot of people (mostly grumpy old blokes) don't like cosplayers much but they never cease to impress the hell out of me. The hours and hours it must take to make some of the costumes alone is reason enough to cut them some slack and, to my mind, they always add a dash of colour and exuberance to these kind of events. Not sure about this weird "Free Hugs" thing they've got going on, though...

As a punter I'd have liked to have seen the comics industry represented at the show a little more strongly but apparently that's something the organisers are working on for the future. There were still quite a few comics people exhibiting their wares though, including Markosia, the Geek Syndicate podcast guys, Sean Azzopardi & Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, Gary Erskine and the Tozzer boys. Tables in the 'comics village' area of the event are dirt cheap, too, so there's every chance I might have one at the next MCM show in October.

Bristol: Reduced circumstances

2009-05-11T00:06:00.000-07:00

THIS year's Bristol Expo wasn't the damp squib I was worried it was going to be but neither was it a patch on previous years. For those who aren't aware, the Expo's organisers weren't able to hire the usual big space at the British Empire & Commonwealth Exhibition Hall and had to settle instead for a variety of rooms and corridors at the Ramada Hotel. There was also a separate small press event on the Saturday at a completely different hotel a few minutes up the road.

All in all, this gave the event a very fractured feeling; the buzz you get from a great big room packed with creators, fans and colourful cosplayers sadly missing. They'd also limited tickets to just 500 which meant Expo was already less than a quarter the size it usually is.

Worse still, the indie and small press room at the Ramada was very small and stuck out of the way. There were times when exhibitors far outnumbered customers. Bizarrely, the bloke who played Greedo in Star Wars was also stationed in the room on the Saturday but he gave up and buggered off around 3 o'clock!

The other downside was that a lot of the people I most enjoy spending time with weren't around this year - Dec's beavering away on his 28 Days Later project, Keith Burns has just become a dad (congratulations, mate!) and Mick Trimble was, apparently, on his way down Saturday morning, only to be put off by the extortionate train fare from Birmingham to Bristol!

And while I'm moaning, Saturday got off to the worst possible start when BritForce creator Andrew Radbourne called to say his books hadn't arrived at the Ramada from the printer. Of course, after contacting the printer and generally running around like a headless chicken for an hour, it turned out the books had been at the hotel all along and they just hadn't been to look for them properly.

On the plus side, Moonface sales were pretty good. Not the usual numbers but far from a disaster. Oddly enough, BritForce and Brothers didn't sell particularly well but I knocked out loads of Septic Isle (the weekend's best seller), Hero Killers and Blood Psi. I also sold the last 15 copies of Tim Skinner which means there are none left until I can afford to print some more or put it up online (the latter's quite probable actually).

Having spoken to one of the Expo's organisers, it seems next year's event will again be held across two hotels rather than in the old exhibition hall. The reasoning is that it's simply too risky to put on a "big show" in the current economic climate. It seems a strange direction to take - especially as the Expos in 2007 and 2008 were the most successful yet and the event had become a genuine part of Bristol's cultural calendar. Once the credit crunch eases - next year or in 2011 - the organisers are going to have to graft incredibly hard to re-establish the Bristol Expo all over again. It's a risky strategy - especially with the Birmingham International Comics Show seemingly going from strength to strength and Leeds' Thought Bubble one-dayer garnering rave reviews from all and sundry.

Pre-Bristol ramblings...

2009-05-08T06:36:00.000-07:00

OFF to Bristol in a few hours and feeling a bit more optimistic than I was the last time I talked about the Expo here. It's probably got something to do with the fact Brothers arrived back from the printers this morning and looks absolutely brilliant. It's three quid for 56 pages with only one ad - the story and art are also pretty neat.

It'll be for sale on the Moonface website soon, too.

* APPARENTLY, there is going to be an Eagle Awards this year after all. From later on today, people can go and nominate their favourites in a host of categories here: www.eagleawards.co.uk

I wouldn't be too upset if TIM SKINNER: TOTAL SKINNER was nominated in the Favourite Colour Comicbook - British category and SEPTIC ISLE likewise received a nod in the Favourite Black & White Comicbook - British section. Just saying...

* ON the subject of Skinner, I only have 15 copies for sale left so anyone reading this planning to buy one in Bristol should probably turn up early on Saturday morning. Colour printing is horribly expensive so a second printing is very unlikely in the near future...

Newcomer sensation

2009-05-02T00:22:00.000-07:00

DECLAN SHALVEY, who many of you will know from his work on Hero Killers and Tim Skinner, has a new gig. He's just been named as artist on Boom! Studios' new ongoing 28 Days Later series.

Not only will the title come adorned in covers by the likes of Tim Bradstreet (see above) and Sean Phillips, but its plotted by Alex Garland who was the screenwriter on the 28 Days Later film. You might remember he also wrote The Beach novel that ended up being made into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

By a weird coincidence, I once interviewed Alex – along with 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle – when I was working for men's magazine, Maxim. But that's another not actually terribly interesting story for another day...

Anyway, here's some blurb from the Boom! website...

Alex Garland, screenwriter of 28 DAYS LATER, lays out a story connecting the film 28 DAYS LATER to its sequel 28 WEEKS LATER in a new ongoing series! Focusing on Selena, one of the three survivors of the first film, as she embarks on an epic return journey to Great Britain! Co-written by HEXED and FALL OF CTHULHU’s Michael Alan Nelson and drawn by newcomer sensation Declan Shalvey.

I shall now be referring to Dec as "newcomer sensation" every time I see him and in every email I send him! It's lucky for him he isn't going to be at Bristol.

The book's Diamond order code is: MAY090724. Go and order it already!

Bristol reservations

2009-04-27T04:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-21T04:50:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-14T03:53:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-08T00:16:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-03T08:43:00.001-07:00

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.

Brotherly love

2009-03-30T11:48:00.000-07:00

HERE is the cover for the BROTHERS one-shot written by me and illustrated by Andrew Radbourne. The 56-page book is being launched at this year's Bristol Expo (May 9-10).

I had pretty much decided to publish it in the same "graphic novella" format as Septic Isle - i.e. perfect-bound on thick gloss paper for four to five quid. However, because of the bleak economic situation, I've been thinking of doing something that's a bit more cheap and cheerful instead - maybe do Brothers as a straightforward comic on slightly less lovely paper for around £3-£3.50.

It isn't a done deal yet but if I can find a printer that can deliver what I'm looking for I shall give it a go. When flimsy pamphlet-style US comics full of ads are being flogged in stores for £3+, it strikes me that now might be a good time for indie publishers to do a bit of outreach to mainstream readers fed up with seeing their hard-earned cash buy fewer and fewer comics every week.

I'm also considering doing a 16-page comic at some point and selling it for a £1-£1.50. The idea would be to cram as much material in there as possible - maybe a couple of one-pagers along with some slightly longer stuff. The price would massively undercut pretty much everything else that's out there - including a lot of mini-comics - but would have the same top-notch production values as any of the stuff I've done before. This whole "value for money" subject is something I shall return to I suspect...

Skinner for sale

2009-03-16T00:56:00.000-07:00

THE Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag one-shot is now on sale in the moonfacepress.com shop. It's £3, plus £1.50 p&p, for 36 full-colour pages (just one page of ads). It's the first time artist Declan Shalvey and I have worked together since the Eagle Award-winning Hero Killers and we're both delighted with the results.

Other people rather like Skinner, too. Jonathan Hickman (writer of Secret Warriors and The Nightly News) called it "Fucking Hilarious" and Rich Johnston (writer of CBR's Lying In The Gutters column) said it was: "A very self-referential, up-its-own-arse comic that I was destined to love."

The book contains scabrous parodies of a host of much-loved comic stories, characters and creators, including Lost Girls, The Boys, Power Girl, Blankets, Judge Dredd, zombie books and Jack Kirby. It's guaranteed to make you laugh... or your money back.*

* This statement isn't legally binding, I've checked.

Future imperfect

2009-03-12T01:15:00.000-07:00

CAN'T believe it's been over a month since my last post here. Not that there's been much to report anyway - nothing good at least.

Diamond won't be soliciting mine and Dec's Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag one-shot, which is a bit of a blow really; especially as it's easily the best thing I've yet written and published. And Dec's full-colour artwork is terrific.

I shall probably be contacting Haven Distribution in the very near future to see if they might be interested in picking the book up but, to be honest, I can't see us getting nearly as many orders going that route as we would have through Diamond.

The worrying thing is that if Diamond don't want something as blatantly commercial as Skinner, I really can't see them going for anything else currently sitting on my release schedule (although Brit Force's Glenn Fabry cover might give that book more than a fighting chance).

That means I'm back to square one in many ways - publishing comics to sell online and at conventions. This is something of a backwards step so I'm going to have a serious think about making some changes. I'm currently in the middle of lettering the Brothers one-shot for release at the Bristol Expo in May but, after that, I'm going to take a long hard look at what I do and decide what my next step will be.

It could be that I stop publishing altogether and concentrate 100 per cent on writing and pitching to professional companies, but that would take a lot of the fun out of it for me. I enjoy the entire process of putting a comic together - not just the writing side. And, of course, the problem with pitching is that there's no guarantee any of my ideas would ever be picked up - I could spend years toiling away for absolutely no return.

As you can probably tell, I'm a bit confused about where things are headed at the moment - hopefully I'll feel a bit more positive after Bristol...

Diamond aren't forever

2009-02-10T05:36:00.000-08:00

A QUICK browse across the net has already thrown up a couple of early casualties of Diamond's new minimum order policy.

Steve Tanner, of Time Bomb Comics, reports that his Dick Turpin & The Restless Dead book has been ditched by the distributor because retailer orders failed to hit the new threshold. Read about it on Steve's blog.

And over at CBR, Rich Johnston discusses Classical Comics' adaptation of The Tempest which has been dropped "due to a lack of sales expectations". Read about it in this week's Lying In The Gutters.

The Dick Turpin book's rejection is a shame but, under the new rules, understandable because a) it's from a tiny UK indie publisher and b) it's black and white. But I'm astounded at the news concerning The Tempest - it's full colour and the art (by Jon Haward and Gary Erskine) is gorgeous. Check out the cover at the Classical Comics website.

More than that, though, Classical Comics are a proper, bonafide company - they pay their pro writers and artists good rates and have budgets for the marketing and promotion of their books. As far as I know sales are good too - Dec Shalvey's excellent Frankenstein adaptation outstripped sales estimates and went to a second printing after just three months. The company and its books also get acres of positive coverage in the comics press and elsewhere.

In his piece, Rich suggests Diamond might take a "second look" at The Tempest and I very much hope he's right because, if stuff as good as that can't make it into Previews any more, then the likes of Steve Tanner and I have no chance at all.

Very long post about Blood Psi and Diamond

2009-01-30T01:07:00.000-08:00

I'VE just had a week away from the day job to get cracking on the Blood Psi stuff and have made pretty good progress. I finished the first draft of the story's second part yesterday and will now spend the next week tweaking and chopping it around.

I don't know how other writers do it but, for me, a first draft is never more than about 60 per cent of the way to the finished script. It's all about giving what you're writing a structure and hitting the plot points you need to in the allotted number of pages (in this case 24-25). It's in the second and third drafts that stuff like dialogue and panel descriptions take proper shape. You also become aware of plot elements that aren't really explained properly in the first draft and have to work out ways of weaving them into the story without having to rely on obvious exposition. After fight scenes, this is the thing I find trickiest.

*WHEN artist Keith Burns and I first discussed doing more Blood Psi, we thought it would take the form of a three- or four-issue mini-series. It's more likely to appear now as a graphic novel though. The main reason for that is the recent changes Diamond (the comic distributors) have made to their minimum order benchmarks. In the good old days, titles submitted to Diamond had to generate a minimum of $1500 in revenue for the company. That figure has now been raised to $2500 - a massive increase.

The implications for small publishers like myself are obvious - if low sales mean we can't get our books listed in Previews, we're pretty much screwed. I think I'm right in saying that all my books to date have exceeded the $1500 minimum but, in the new climate, expecting a four dollar mini-series by a couple of obscure UK creators to do $2500 four times on the bounce is unrealistic to say the least. Therefore doing Blood Psi as a 100-page graphic novel makes a lot more sense. If we solicited it for $10, on a 60-40 split in Diamond's favour, we'd only need 600 orders to hit the minimum benchmark; $12 and it's just 500.

Where all this leaves the raft of one-shots I'm submitting to Diamond this year I don't know. Tim Skinner is the most commercial thing I've published and boasts full-colour art from Dec so I'm hopeful that'll be picked up. Brothers is black and white but it's about superheroes and the art's gorgeous so that could go either way. Scoregasm is about football so that has about as much chance of being picked up by Diamond as I have of being picked up by Halle Berry.

So while I'm still determined to submit my stuff to Diamond and get it into Previews, I'm probably going to have to look at other ways of getting my books out there. One thing I'm going to do is check out Haven Distribution (www.havendistro.com) who, from what I can gather, carry quite a lot of indie comics stuff. I'm also going to look seriously at making my stuff available for download - either from the main Moonface site or through Eagle One Media (www.eagleonemedia.com), a company that already have many smaller comics publishers supplying them with digital content for download.

It's all a bit scary - worst case scenario is that I could end up with no US distribution for my comics. And on that glum note...

The trouble with Tarot

2009-01-21T05:46:00.000-08:00

MY favourite review of any comic ever, courtesy of Chris's Invincible Super-Blog...

www.the-isb.com/?p=980#more-980

Most definitely NOT work safe!

Blood and Coolio

2009-01-19T00:10:00.000-08:00

I'VE had a very disorganised start to the New Year but have just about caught up with correspondence and other stuff now. All that means I can get on with writing – in fact, I've already made a pretty good start.

First up is the fact that artist Keith Burns and I are going to be working on a sequel to our vampire one-shot of a couple of years ago, Blood Psi. Actually, it's rather more than just a sequel because we're also going to be revisiting the original story itself – Keith's completely redrawing it and I'm going to be tweaking the script here and there too. We'll then use that as a springboard to continue the story as a graphic novel or mini-series.

Of course, since I wrote Blood Psi back in 2005 the main character's name - Ruby - seems to have become a bit more popular, what with the Kaiser Chiefs song and all. Then there's a character called Ruby in ITV's disappointingly mediocre Demons show too. I'd hate people to think mine and Keith's Ruby was in anyway inspired by the Kaisers or poxy Demons but we were there first so the name stays.

I won't be giving too much away about the plot just yet but the second chapter is set a few months after the first and begins in a remote French farmhouse where Ruby and Rebecca are in hiding from the vampire community's very own "police force". It's round about then that the shit really hits the fan...

* YOU'D have to pay me to watch Celebrity Big Brother but I have to say Coolio's reportedly obnoxious behaviour on the show hasn't surprised me in the slightest. Back when I worked for men's magazine Maxim I had the dubious honour of doing a phone interview with the Gangster's Paradise star. It was a little bit odd to say the least.

I called to talk to him at the agreed time and we started the interview (about some shitty straight to video film he'd made), then he walked off mid-sentence and didn't come back for several minutes. This happened at least three times in the course of our chat. While he was away from the phone I could hear him having a massive row with people in the background. One such exchange ended with him screaming: "I don't have any friends, motherfucker, only acquaintances and employees."

I remember being amused that someone called Coolio wasn't actually that good at keeping his cool.

* LAST week I finally got round to getting an account on Twitter – you'll find it here: www.twitter.com/andywinter1

Brothers preview

2009-01-14T00:24:00.000-08:00

HERE are a couple of unlettered pages from mine and Andy Radbourne's Brothers project. Andy's now finished all the interior art and lovely it looks, too. The book will be out for this year's Bristol Expo - probably around 60 pages (52 of story) in the same graphic novella format as Septic Isle.

The pitch for the book is "dysfunctional superheroes do Cloverfield" and the two preview pages (#4 and #6) feature Firework and Empire State Human (the brothers of our title) getting stuck in to a big fight at the London-based team's headquarters.

Welcome Matt

2009-01-04T04:01:00.000-08:00

I MUST admit I was rooting for Paterson Joseph to be the next Doctor - mainly because he's a fine and charismatic actor but also because it would have really pissed off loads of twits on Outpost Gallifrey who seemed disgusted at the very notion of a black man playing their beloved Time Lord.

I was therefore a little knocked sideways when it was announced relative unknown Matt Smith (above) had got the nod instead and my first reaction was that he was really just David Tennant-lite. I thought the BBC had played it far too safe in casting another young, "attractive", stick-thin bloke.

But then I had another look at the Doctor Who Confidential episode in which Matt's casting was made official and reckon he's going to be a terrific Doctor. He has an off-kilter quality about him that is strangely charismatic but also quite unsettling. It's there in his looks (Dougie Howser MD channelling Lord Byron), it's there in his manner, it's there in that ridiculous ruddy haircut of his. Smith is a bit other-wordly and what could be better for the actor playing a 900-year-old alien super-being than that?

Unsurprisingly, there's already a backlash against 26-year-old Smith over at OG saying he's too young and inexperienced for the role and that, really, his casting is just a cynical attempt at appealing to teenage fangirls. It's patent nonsense, of course. If Who's new showrunner Steven Moffat's only goal had been to cast someone young and sexy he'd have gone for a kid off Hollyoaks or Skins, he certainly wouldn't have picked an actor with Smith's somewhat unconventional looks (unkind posters on certain forums are already calling him "Tefal Head").

I think it's a really exciting, bold bit of casting and I can't wait to see him fire up the TARDIS and get cracking. Alonsy!

The year ahead

2009-01-02T01:57:00.000-08:00

I TRUST everyone had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year. Mine was so-so – mainly because I had to work Boxing Day and a couple of days over New Year but also because I fell ill on Christmas Eve with some weird stomach thing that hung around for ages.

On the plus side, I got to spend some genuine quality time with Jen and the boys and soaked up lots of enjoyable Crimbo telly, including the terrific Doctor Who special and its brilliant giant steampunk Cyberking.

I'm also enjoying the Nintendo Wii console we bought the kids a little too much and am growing quite addicted to Wii tennis. I am, however, rubbish at the boxing, something I realised when my five-year-old took precisely 30 seconds to completely demolish the game's crappest opponent who I'd barely managed to beat on points. Ahem...

I haven't been a regular gamer for around 10 years but will probably spend my Christmas HMV vouchers on this at the end of the month...

* All being well, Moonface Press will be releasing several new projects over the coming year. Hopefully Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag will find its way into Previews very soon, but beyond that there's the superhero one-shot Brothers, the artwork for which is now almost complete.

The brilliant Will Sliney was down to be the original artist on this but has ended up having to settle for well-paid work on Boom Studios' Farscape comic instead (see here). Stepping in to fill Will's enormous shoes as artist is Andy Radbourne, who I am also working with on his own title, Brit Force. Anyway, Brothers looks lovely and I can't wait to get it out there - probably for this year's Bristol Expo in May.

* ALSO likely to make its debut at Bristol is the long-delayed football-flavoured one-shot, Scoregasm (or Faster or whatever I'm going to call it). It's really close to completion now and it's probably the strangest thing I've ever written – basically it's a traditional Tiger & Scorcher-style football story like Billy's Boots seen through the cynical filter of the modern Premier League. There's a thriller element and even some super powers thrown in for good measure. God knows what people will make of it. Duane Leslie's art is very nice, too.

* BEYOND that it's back to the writing about which I'll say more soon. The Moonface website also needs a bit of an update – the home page could do with a redesign and I'd still love to get some original comics stories up there. Soon, hopefully...

Something new

2008-12-08T02:18:00.000-08:00

I'VE just had two weeks off work which has given me a chance to catch up on a few things. I've also started writing something brand new which, as things stand, I'm rather pleased with. At this stage I'm not sure whether it will end up as a standalone graphic novel or even a two or three issue mini-series. I'm just having fun writing it and am quite happy to just let the story take its course and see what I end up with.

I've been experimenting a bit with the way I write. I had a pretty good idea where I wanted to go with the story and characters but, instead of planning everything out meticulously, I just decided to start writing and see if anything interesting occurred. So far I've found it a really useful exercise for developing the characters - I've discovered what kind of people they are by just getting on with writing them rather than sitting down and thinking through individual traits, motivations etc.

When I'm a bit further into the first draft (I've only written a dozen or so pages so far) I'll provide a few more details about what I'm up to - all I'll say at this stage is that it's rather more sci-fi than anything I've done previously and that it's very much a "group book".

Of course it means that the other stuff I was writing - particularly Kurse - remains annoyingly unfinished. Kurse is a decent idea that I can definitely do something with but I ended up writing myself down a particularly tricky cul de sac with the book that really needs a lot of work to resolve. I'll return to it at some point next year but for now it rests in limbo...

* THE lovely people at Comic Related have interviewed my Hero Killers and Tim Skinner collaborator Mr Declan Shalvey. You'll find it here: www.comicrelated.com/display.php?item=243

In the interview Dec mentions that there are no plans for a Tim Skinner sequel and, as things stand, he's quite right. However, the words "Tim Skinner sequel" are now loose in my head and I've come up with a few ideas for how to continue the story past the original one-shot. I've even caught myself in odd moments day-dreaming bits of dialogue.

On the subject of Skinner, I was a bit unprepared for the high number of enquiries I got from comic fans following the book's positive mention by Rich Johnston in Lying In The Gutters last week. The first print run of 100 was meant to be little more than a marketing tool to get a bit of a buzz going before the book's appearance in Previews. I hadn't even set up a PayPal page for it on the Moonface Press website so people could buy the book. I suspect I won't be troubling Sir Alan Sugar for a job any time soon...

* TOMORROW I have a day off and will spend a bit of it watching The Dark Knight (I missed it at the cinema so have had to wait for it to come out on DVD). I thought Batman Begins was good but overrated so I'm a bit worried TDK won't bowl me over either. We shall see...

Skinner In The Gutters

2008-12-02T01:22:00.000-08:00

RICH JOHNSTON says nice things about Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag in his Lying In The Gutters column, here: www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=18985

You'll find the review about halfway down the page under a heading that says "Comics Irish Style" (Rich picked up a copy of Skinner at the recent Dublin City Comic Con).

By the way, if anyone would like a copy of Skinner just send £4 (£3 for the book, £1 for postage) to me at andywinter1@yahoo.com on PayPal.

* THERE'S an interview with Dec about his Frankenstein book over at Comics Bulletin. You'll find it here: www.comicsbulletin.com/features/122720538458371.htm

The interviewer seems to think Dec actually drew Blood Psi and, ahem, "Septic Island" (he did the covers only) but, apart from those research glitches, it's well worth a read.

Winterview

2008-11-29T09:16:00.000-08:00

THERE'S a new interview with me up at the Comic Related website, here.

Conducted by David O'Leary (not that one), it covers everything from Hero Killers and Tim Skinner to David Hasselhoff and Liam Gallagher!

Septic Isle US

2008-11-27T00:25:00.000-08:00

Mick Trimble and I's Septic Isle graphic novella hit comic stores in the States yesterday. Just in time for Thanksgiving when everywhere will be closed!

Still, it's 52 pages, perfect-bound, with a wraparound cover by Eagle Award-winning artist Declan Shalvey - all for under six bucks!

More info here: www.britainisbroken.com

Larking around in Dublin

2008-11-24T23:48:00.001-08:00

"So, you've been writing Doctor Who..."
Daredevil artist Michael Lark to me in the Park Inn Hotel bar, Dublin. He'd mistaken me for Paul Cornell (I think).

I attended the Dublin City Comic Con over the weekend and had a ridiculously enjoyable time. I'd carried 100 comics over with me on the plane and sold over 90 of them. All 50 copies of Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag went and the book received a hugely encouraging response from punters and professionals alike.

Indeed, Dec and I did a panel with Jonathan Hickman (The Nightly News, Pax Romana, Secret Warriors) and he told us he thought the book was "fucking hilarious" and that we should submit it to Image pronto.

The Dublin Con isn't the biggest comics-related event I've ever been to nor the busiest but the fans that turned up seemed very keen to get their hands on stuff they hadn't seen before. This was perfect for me as a first-time exhibitor and selling my stuff at a little bit less than usual to encourage sales worked wonders. British small pressers and indie publishers really should think about giving Dublin a go next year, especially as Bristol is downsizing for 2009.

Of course, the other crucial part of any con worth its salt is the social aspect and Dublin didn't disappoint there either. In fact, I preferred the cosy, intimate atmosphere in the Park Inn Hotel bar after the con each day to the chaos and noise of the Ramada at Bristol. I met some great people too, among them IDW artists Stephens Mooney and Thompson and their partners, Dec's hilarious mate John Skelton, writer/artist Paddy Brown and colourist extraordinaire Matt Hollingsworth.

My favourite moment of the whole show, though, was when an elderly chap who'd been propping up the hotel bar for most of the weekend accosted Dec for an autograph after being told he was the writer of Spider-Man. The look on Dec's face as the guy continued to pester him even after Dec had told him he had nothing to do with Spidey was absolutely priceless! Dec eventually gave him an autograph, too.

All in all, I really can't recommend the Dublin con enough - the organisers always pull together an impressive guest-list (Jim Lee, Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch in previous years; Michael Lark, Dan Slott and Tommy Lee Edwards this time), the atmosphere is friendly and fun, and, if you're a self-publisher, chances are you'll do decent business.

I'll probably pop back here later in the week to talk about a few of the Irish comics I bought over the weekend...

Skinner invades Dublin

2008-11-18T23:55:00.000-08:00

THE Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag one-shot is back from the printer and is ready for its debut at this weekend's Dublin City Comic Con. Guests for the weekend include: Dan Slott (writer of She Hulk, the Amazing Spider-Man), Adi Granov (Artist Iron Man), Olivier Copiel (Artist Thor), Jonathan Hickman (Writer/Artist The Nightly News, Pax Romana), Tommy Lee Edwards (Artist Marvel 1985), Michael Lark (Artist Dardevil, Gotham Central) and Paul Cornell (Writer Captain Britain And MI:13, Doctor Who).

I'm heading off to the Con late Friday morning and should touch down at Dublin Airport sometime after six in the evening (yes, I know short-haul flights are very bad for the environment but I haven't set foot on a plane in three-and-a-half years so I doubt my carbon footprint is enormous). I've never been to Dublin before (and Ireland only once) so it's something I'm really looking forward to. Dec and I have a table from which punters will be able to purchase the usual catalogue of superior Moonface Press product, plus Dec's frankly marvellous Frankenstein graphic novel. If you're at the Con, please come and say "Hi". And, y'know, buy our stuff.

Skinner only costs €3 (about £2.50) for 36 full-colour pages (30 pages of story, a letters page and a bit of deleted script) on gorgeous thick glossy paper. It looks so lovely, in fact, that you won't know whether to read it or snog it!

Skinner and stuff

2008-11-10T23:37:00.000-08:00

Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag is finished and with the printer. Dec and I are both very proud of our latest collaboration and can't wait to get it out there. The 36-page, full-colour book will make its debut at the Dublin City Comic Con over the weekend of November 22-23 and will then go through the process of being submitted to Diamond.

You can find out more about the Dublin event here: www.dublincitycomiccon.com

Oh, and here's the blurb from the book's back cover for anyone not up to speed with the idea behind Tim Skinner...

"Soon after Tim Skinner inherited his grandfather's old comic book collection he discovered something extraordinary - it was magic and by making a simple wish he could step into the pages of any of the fabulous four-colour fantasies his heart desired. He could hang out with cowboys, futuristic robots or whingeing adolescent mutants.

Unfortunately, Tim is a loathsome piece of garbage and instead of enjoying fun and frolics in a universe of action and adventure he brutalises and exploits his comic-book chums for his own nefarious ends.

Truly, Tim Skinner is a total scumbag!"

* I'd really hoped to attend the Thought Bubble comics festival in Leeds this weekend but, unfortunately, it clashes with my son's fifth birthday. It's a shame as I've heard nothing but positive things about the event since its debut last year.

* Septic Isle hit UK stores last week and should arrive Stateside in the next fortnight. I know I've been doing this for a while but I still get a little buzz when I walk into a comic shop and see one of my book's shelved alongside other new titles from the likes of Marvel, DC and Image. I'm sad like that.

* There's a cracking Future Shock - called "The Lie" - in last week's 2000AD (PROG 1611) written by my pal Dave Baillie. If you're quick, you should still be able to grab yourself a copy.

Brief update

2008-10-28T05:04:00.000-07:00

Blimey, where have the last three weeks gone? I can't believe it's been so long since I posted anything. So, what's been happening? The last month has mostly been concerned with lettering the Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag one-shot. It's looking great - Dec has really excelled himself on the art - and the plan is to finish it off in the next week and get it printed up ready for the Dublin City Comic Con later in the month. The Dublin event has its own website, here: www.dublincitycomiccon.com

Meanwhile, copies of Septic Isle should now be with Diamond and in UK shops in the next week or two. North American stores should expect their copies sometime in the next month.

There isn't much to report on the writing front at the moment, but that will change once Skinner is done and dusted. I have a couple of weeks off at the end of November/beginning of December and will use it to catch up a bit - whether that's with the long-delayed Kurse or something else I haven't decided yet.

Like I said, a brief update. More soon...

Birmingham diary

2008-10-06T01:47:00.000-07:00

THE third Birmingham International Comics Show was easily the best one yet and the Moonface Press table did pretty good business all weekend (especially on the Sunday, which is usually quiet). The first limited edition print run of Septic Isle has now completely sold out - a second printing hits comic shops through Diamond early next month.

Eleven other Brum highlights...
1. Chatting to Andy Radbourne to iron out a few problems we've been having with our Brit Force project. Things are back on track now though.
2. Being genuinely stunned by Andy's work on another forthcoming project of mine that should be ready for next year's Bristol.
3. Talking secret Blood Psi plans with Keith Burns.
4. Getting my hands on a copy of Frankenstein by Jason Cobley and Declan Shalvey - it's easily as lovely as I thought it would be.
5. Finally meeting Toxic/Bulletproof supremo Matt Yeo after exchanging emails with him on and off since 2002.
6. Getting to spend time with Rob, my oldest mate, who travelled up to Birmingham from Warwick on Saturday.
7. Congratulating my old Devilchild collaborator Jason Dennis after he was offered work by DC.
8. Spending a hugely entertaining Saturday night with Mick, Heather, Jamie, Theresa, Keith and Rob.
9. The moment the event's organisers finally switched off the No Heroics* trailer - our table was right in front of the big screen that had been showing the bloody thing on a constant loop for nearly an hour.
10. The bloke who walked about the show dressed as Heath Ledger's version of The Joker all weekend. Respect is especially due for the hours he spent in the nurse's costume on Saturday afternoon.
11. Getting a lift back to Southend on Sunday night with Jamie and Theresa meaning I didn't have to spend hours on a variety of slow-moving trains.

* No Heroics is a desperately unfunny ITV2 superhero sitcom that was being publicised at the show.

Winter in Birmingham

2008-10-02T05:02:00.000-07:00

I'M heading off to the third Birmingham International Comics Show on Friday morning and plan on arriving in Brum between three and four. That way I get time to check into my hotel, grab something to eat and generally take it easy before heading off to the launch party in the evening. Last year, I got into Birmingham stupidly late on the Friday night and had to cram everything into a couple of hours. It was all a bit frantic and I was a sweaty, knackered mess at the end of it all.

I haven't really given the event much thought but, suffice to say, am looking forward to spending time with the likes of Declan Shalvey, Mick Trimble, Keith Burns and Jamie Richards. Jamie only lives down the road from me but, this year, I've seen more of him at comics-related events than I have in my regular day-to-day life.

I haven't got anything new out for the Birmingham show – Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag won't be making its bow until Dublin in November – so Mick and I will once again be pushing copies of Septic Isle, ahead of its Diamond release early next month. It might also be your last chance to get hold of Hero Killers, Blood Psi and SHRIEK! as I'm running pretty low on copies of all three and have no current plans to reprint.

If anyone fancies visiting the Moonface Press table - you can find us in the compact and bijou Exhibition Suite, table 150. That's between Bulletproof Comics and Lee Thacker. Bulletproof is run by my old email buddy Matt Yeo, who is also the editor of the brilliant boys' comic Toxic. I've corresponded with Matt many times over the years but we've never actually met so I'm really looking forward to finally seeing him in the flesh.

Shalvenstein

2008-09-24T05:02:00.000-07:00

DEC SHALVEY'S pimping his new Frankenstein book from Classical Comics over at Joe Gordon's excellent Forbidden Planet blog, here: http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/?p=9464

Dec also talks about Hero Killers and our forthcoming Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag one-shot. The interview's worth a look not only for Dec's words of wisdom but also because there's lots of his lovely art featured in it, too.

As far as I know, Frankenstein will be available for the first time at October's BICS show so do yourself a favour and pick up a copy.

My Chemical Toilet

2008-09-17T03:06:00.000-07:00

RECENTLY I mentioned Gerard Way's excellent Umbrella Academy trade paperback and it reminded me of a script I wrote last year called MONGO: MUSIC CRITIC. It was written for Natalie Sandells to illustrate and the idea was that we were going to submit it for publication to Alan Grant's new Wasted comic (www.wastedcomic.com).

Busy on other stuff, Nat never got around to working on the story so I thought I may as well post the four-page script here. The story features Mongo, a monstrous-looking alien who is both a Venusian warlord and music critic, turning up at Glastonbury to pass justice on a band not entirely unlike My Chemical Romance...

MONGO: MUSIC CRITIC (four pages)
By Andy Winter

PAGE ONE
Make room for a credits box somewhere on here, which reads: MONGO: MUSIC CRITIC in “MUSIC! MAYHEM! MONGO!” and then the usual artist and writer creds.

1) Exterior – night. We’re at the Glastonbury Festival. Scores of ghastly young people are throwing themselves about in a decidedly un-coordinated manner. They think this is “dancing” – I, and everyone over the age of 19, beg to differ. Emo rock gods, MY CHEMICAL TOILET, are “rocking” the festival’s main Pyramid stage with their winning combination of piss-weak metal and whining, woe-is-me lyrics. The horrible little shits.

Let’s make this first panel an establishing shot – looking down on the stage and the massive crowd from above.

CAPTION #1: The Glastonbury Festival.

CAPTION #2: Packed to the gills with noise and young people.

CAPTION #3: In the name of sanity, bring back National Service and the birch!

2) Close up of MY CHEMICAL TOILET, in the middle of their set. They are, of course, an amusing send up of rubbish American "emo" band My Chemical Romance, so feel free to make your visual interpretation of the band as caricatured and gratuitously unpleasant as you like. They deserve it.

CAPTION: Emo rock gods My Chemical Toilet are midway through their set…

LEAD SINGER (singing): I’m dead and the world has turned a nasty shade of black, I’m dead and my cat is high on crack.

3) Close up of the crowd. Several especially vile emo-fixated youngsters are moshing about to the appalling din emanating from the stage. But one of them – a ridiculous-looking teenage boy – is standing stock still, looking directly up in the air.

4) Close up of the boy. He’s now pointing at something he can see in the sky immediately above him and the crowd.

EMO BOY: LOOK!

5) Big panel. We’re looking up at a massive alien spaceship hovering above the crowd. The crowd panics as well it should. Mongo’s on board, and he’s here to kick ass and chew gum... and he’s all out of gum!

PAGE TWO

1) The spaceship has landed in the middle of the throng, directly in front of the Pyramid stage. The crowd has scattered but many of them are squashed under the craft’s massive, extraterrestrial bulk. Take that indolent, useless youth of today!

2) A door on the side of the spaceship has flipped open and Mongo appears, with his gratifyingly huge alien blaster thingy slung across his shoulder on a strap.

3) Mongo floats out into the air towards the stage.

4) Through some kind of portable alien loudspeaker system, he addresses the band, who have remained on stage clutching their instruments and looking frightened. They look up at him, still floating in the air.

MONGO: I am Mongo – Venusian warlord and music critic. You shall now continue playing.

5) The band look at each other, puzzled and scared. They’re not sure what to do.

6) Mongo bellows at them.

MONGO: NOW!

PAGE THREE

The top six panels on this page should be a kind of mini-comic all of their own as we cut back and forth between Mongo and My Chemical Toilet. It should take up about half the page, I reckon. Maybe two banks of three.

1) The band start playing again.

LEAD SINGER (singing): I heard a rumour that you’ve got a tumour…

2) Cut back to Mongo – he wears an inscrutable expression as he scribbles into a notebook that he has taken out.

3) Back to the band giving it their all on stage.

LEAD SINGER (singing): ...but there’s no way you can ever be, as sick as me, because...

4) Back to Mongo with the same expression on his face as he scribbles away furiously.

5) Back to the band.

LEAD SINGER (singing): ...my cancer has cancer, and it hurts so bad, my cancer has cancer and the pain is driving me mad…

6) Back to Mongo, who has now finished scribbling. He holds his notebook and pen in one of his hands.

MONGO: Enough!

7) The band stop.

8) The lead singer addresses Mongo.

LEAD SINGER: So, er, what did you think?

PAGE FOUR

1) Mongo reads from his notebook.

MONGO: Your lyrics are morbid and melancholy, your tunes repetitive, unimaginative and hugely derivative. Your musicianship is limited, your image ridiculous – and you have the on-stage charisma of a moon rock…

2) Mongo smiles a slightly scary, not-to-be-trusted smile.

MONGO: ...I rather liked it.

3) The lead singer looks up at Mongo with a hopeful, optimistic expression on his face.

LEAD SINGER: R-really?

4) Mongo scowls – he looks scary.

MONGO: No.

5) Mongo blasts the band with his enormous gun.

MONGO: Rating: one star out of five. Sentence: death!

6) We see the band’s ashes on the stage and the spaceship in the background taking off.

CAPTION: Musical justice is served!

THE END

Let's go to work...

2008-09-11T00:11:00.000-07:00

THAT'S summer done and dusted. The kids have returned to school/nursery so that means it's back to the grindstone for me, too. Here's a projects update...

SEPTIC ISLE: Hits comic stores in the UK and North America in early November. Artist Mick Trimble and I will also be flogging copies at the Birmingham International Comics Show over the weekend of October 4-5.

TIM SKINNER - TOTAL SCUMBAG: Artist Declan Shalvey only has around 10 pages of this left to draw and colour, and I've started lettering it. Our plan is to launch Skinner at the Dublin City Con over the weekend of November 22-23. I'd better get that new passport sorted out.

SCOREGASM: Mine and artist Duane Leslie's long-delayed football-themed one-shot is firmly back on the schedule. Look for it in 2009 - maybe launching at Bristol, maybe before.

KURSE: The aim is to get this fully written by the end of the year. Starting again today!

septic isle interview

2008-09-04T07:09:00.001-07:00

There's an interview with artist Mick Trimble and I to publicise Septic Isle over at Comics Bulletin.com. In it Mick and I talk about such fun stuff as Nazis, sex scenes, James Bond and whether MI5 has a file on us!

The interview, conducted by Kelvin Green, is here: www.comicsbulletin.com/features/

Stuff I've been doing

2008-08-31T01:21:00.000-07:00

So, what have I been doing for the last couple of weeks...

* Lettering issues 2 and 3 of Brit Force.
* Reading The Umbrella Academy trade (it's so good it almost made me feel guilty about all the hateful things I've said about My Chemical Romance).
* Sending Declan Shalvey admiring emails about his beautiful full-colour Tim Skinner pages.
* Rolling home at 1.30 in the morning from work (ouch!).
* Reading comedian Mark Steel's latest book, What's Going On?
* Following the American Presidential election even though I can't vote in it and wouldn't vote for McCain or Obama even if I could.
* Loving every minute of Dexter season two on the FX channel.
* Telling my kids to be quiet about a hundred times a day.
* Inching ever closer to getting this movie option stuff sorted once and for all. The contract is now with a solicitor...
* Putting a few ideas together for a couple of new projects.
* Realising that I shouldn't be thinking about new projects when I have lots of perfectly good old projects to be getting on with.
* Enjoying the heck out of the Luna Brothers' new Image ongoing, The Sword.
* Taking the kids to see Space Chimps. It sucked.
* Visiting LegoLand with the family. It also sucked.
* Itching to get back to the comics writing on September 9.

Declan Shalvey interview

2008-08-11T00:59:00.000-07:00

MY good friend and collaborator Declan Shalvey has been interviewed by the Indie Review website. Dec talks about his work on Classical Comics' adaptation of Frankenstein (see his lovely cover above), as well as good and bad comic shops, why studying fine art is no use for comic artists, Hero Killers, Tim Skinner and loads more.

You'll find it here

Inactive

2008-08-09T00:17:00.000-07:00

THERE'S very little to report on the comics front as I've done bugger all work for a couple of weeks. The main reason for my indolence is that the kids are on their summer break from nursery which means the house is about as quiet as King's Cross at rush hour. It also means I've been filling my days off with trips to places like Legoland in a forlorn bid to keep the little buggers happy and entertained.

The redundancy scare at the Daily Mirror (i.e. where I work) hasn't helped matters either. Basically, my department has been closed with the company accepting voluntary redundancies. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I've ended up with a new job – working on the paper's sports desk. The hours are a bit more demanding but I suspect this is what they call falling on your feet.

So, all in all, I'm just waiting for life to return to something approaching "normal" before I can crack on with things again. Unfortunately, that isn't going to happen until Monday, September 9, the day my eldest son starts school. I suspect Duncan Nimmo – the artist who was supposed to be working on the long-delayed Kurse – will have grown old and died by then.

* THIS week Declan Shalvey sent me some inked Tim Skinner pages to see and they look terrific – even better than the top-notch work he did on Hero Killers. There's one panel in particular that is really going to blow people away. Can't wait to see it all in full-colour.

* CRIKEY, the Birmingham International Comics Show is less than two months away (October 4-5). Guess I'd better book a hotel then...

Septic Isle in Previews

2008-08-01T05:14:00.001-07:00

THIS month's Previews is out and, look!, there's SEPTIC ISLE on page 313. ISBN: 978-0-9542739-3-4, Diamond order code: AUG08 4213. Order it from your friendly local comic store!

Ain't It Cool review

2008-07-16T04:50:00.000-07:00

Ambush Bug, aka Mark L. Miller, has reviewed Septic Isle over at Aint It Cool News. It's another positive write up, although, like a couple of others, he reckons Marley and Maggie "knock boots" rather too quickly after their first meeting.

Here's a snippet of what he has to say: "... the story is thick with spy coolness with a bit of noir-ish hard luck, over-the-hill living adding flavor and distinction to our main character."

You'll find the full review here

Frustration

2008-07-11T00:24:00.000-07:00

THE last couple of weeks haven't been very productive on the writing front as real life has been busy chucking obstacles in my way. First, my youngest son Connor contracted chicken pox so I had to forget about my comics work for a week and spend it looking after him. Unfortunately, he still isn't 100 per cent and I've had to take him to both the doctors (twice) and the hospital for a blood test. He still hasn't completely recovered and he has another hospital appointment a week Monday. Poor lad.

The other bit of disruption has centred upon my day job. Basically, the national newspaper where I work is making 11 people redundant and while I'm now about 95 per cent sure I won't be one of them, my job is still going to change. Looking on the bright side, it could actually change for the better but we shall see...

The one thing I have actually managed to get done recently is publicity for Septic Isle. The press release has appeared all over the net and Comics Village.com are doing a preview on Sunday. Next week I shall do a big postcard mail-out to retailers in the US and UK, and around the time August's Previews hits stores (later on this month) I'm hoping to actually visit some shops in London and Essex in a bid to get them to order copies. I have cool SI button badges with which to bribe them...

For now, though, I desperately need to get some writing done. I haven't written a single word of Kurse or Razor Snakes in a month and I'm worried that at this rate we'll see 2009 before we see complete scripts for either of them. Bah!

* A COUPLE of people have recently asked me what's going on with the movie stuff. As far as I know it's still happening. I'm just waiting for the guys from the production company (Phyllis, Sascha and Bill) to come over to London so we can finalise all the details and I can sign a contract. Updates as I get them...

Britain in broken...

2008-07-01T14:57:00.000-07:00

THE Septic Isle website is now live at www.britainisbroken.com and includes a 10-page downloadable PDF preview of the book, plus stuff about the plot and characters.

* THERE'S a mostly positive review of Septic over at Comics Bulletin.com by Kelvin Green. He gives it four bullets out of five here

Get your geek on, ninjas!

2008-06-30T01:11:00.000-07:00

Septic Isle is very positively reviewed by Barry Nugent and David Monteith in episode 86 of the Geek Syndicate podcast. They start discussing the book around 20 minutes in, but I'd heartily recommend you listen to the whole thing as it's entertaining, informative stuff.

You'll find it here

Broken Frontier

2008-06-27T01:13:00.000-07:00

THERE'S a nicely-written and very perceptive review of Septic Isle over at Broken Frontier. You'll find it here

It isn't the most glowing write-up the book has had, but reviewer Tonya Crawford clearly gets what Mick and I were trying to do with the story even though she doesn't think we're always entirely successful.

Actually, Broken Frontier's a really decent site for comic reviews and news, and one that doesn't get half the attention it deserves.

Failure to launch

2008-06-21T02:25:00.000-07:00

I'M always jabbering away on here about the stuff I've written or am in the process of writing. But since I started doing the comics thing back in 2001 there have been a few projects that I've started with good intentions and great enthusiasm that have ended up falling by the wayside. Some of them deserve never to see the light of day again (I'm looking at you Dead Rock Stars) but there are one or two that could feasibly make it back onto my schedule at some point in the future. In the meantime, here's just a taste of the ones that got away...

DHAXX THE DEMON
This was a bawdy comedy featuring an aristocratic demon called Dhaxx who was supposed to be Satan's cousin. Even by Hell's standards he was a total wrong 'un and spent all his time causing trouble as he tried to build a power base for himself in the Inferno. Alas, everything Dhaxx did rebounded back on him spectacularly - it was sort of like Blackadder in Hell.

I wrote practically all of the first issue in which Dhaxx had to travel to Earth to retrieve a photograph of his flabby bare arse that was for sale on eBay. I seem to recall he encountered a future Messiah, monsters on a council estate and angels that performed some kind of song and dance routine. I quite liked this one actually but I wrote it not long after the third volume of Devilchild and ended up deciding to move right away from demon-related stuff with my next batch of work.

RECKLESS GIRLS
This was a story about a British all-female superhero team named the Reckless Girls because of their gung-ho approach to adventuring. The idea was that the Girls' oldest foe - Amok - had supposedly been rehabilitated and actually married a member of the team, only for her to be found brutally murdered a few weeks after their wedding night. The story would have centred on whether the Girls' ex-arch-enemy was the killer or not. For reasons I can't exactly recall I really struggled to write this one but having read the plot synopsis for the first time in ages the other day it could be one I return to in future.

DEAD ROCK STARS
This was the graphic novel project I started immediately after finishing the first Devilchild volume in 2002. It was set in the near future when Britain had become a fascist state in which all rock music was banned.

The plot saw the ghosts of famous musicians and rock stars (Jimi, Kurt, Biggy etc) visiting a young lad who had been chosen by mystical forces to lead the rebellion against the government. It was a bit like The Invisibles with lots of rather clumsy music references chucked in. The artist who agreed to work on it bailed out to do something significantly less shit.

LETHAL: HE KILLS VAMPIRES
This graphic novel project is the one I most regret not finishing. It was a story about warring East End crime gangs, one of which just happened to be run by a pair of homicidal vampires. Lethal Lenny Limehouse was the Cockney vampire hunter in the middle of it all, aided and abetted by a friendly female vamp to whom he was obviously attracted. The arrival of the unfairly maligned Blade TV show killed this one off as there were more than a couple of similarities in the premise, but I will do something with Lethal Lenny, especially if I ever bring back Blood Psi.

Up Shoot! creek

2008-06-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

I WAS sad to hear this week that kids' football magazine SHOOT! is to close at the end of June. I was editor of the title for a couple of years in the late '90s and although the job wasn't nearly as much fun as you'd imagine, the magazine will always have a special place in my heart.

Being made Shoot! editor was important to me as I'd been a keen reader of the title when I first got into football as a kid in the early '70s. Back then the mag was serious of tone and fairly wordy, and gaining access to big-name footballers was as easy as walking into the pub in which they were boozing away their afternoons.

By the time I took over in '98, Shoot! had become more of a "soccer Smash Hits" (that isn't meant as a criticism, I worked for SH, too) - everything was short, punchy, design-led and full of rather embarrassing "yoof" speak (Mega! Wicked!). Talking to players was also considerably tougher and we'd often be expected to jump through all sorts of hoops by a star's kit or boot sponsors just for a half-hour chat and a quick photo.

The biggest disappointment in my time at Shoot! was the day I travelled up to Chester to conduct an interview with George Best and Michael Owen. They'd just been voted No.1 and No.2 respectively in a readers poll to name their favourite footballers of all-time (Owen was so high because this was 1999 - barely seven or eight months after the player's fine showing in the previous year's World Cup finals). The idea was that I would talk to them together and that they'd get to swap anecdotes (the pair had never met before) and muck about for the Shoot! photographer.

Alas, Owen was ridiculously late (at least a couple of hours, if memory serves) and Best didn't show at all (apparently, his agent thought the interview was the following day). We'd even had a really nice award made to give Best (some sort of engraved crystal bowl). It now sits gathering dust in my attic and poor old George never even laid eyes on it.

Shoot! was struggling sales-wise when I took over the editor's chair and despite my best efforts its circulation continued heading south. The late '90s were a bit of a graveyard for football magazines with the likes of 90 Minutes, both modern incarnations of Goal! and the original Match Of The Day magazine all biting the dust within a couple of years of each other. I was always worried Shoot! would meet a similar fate but publishers IPC kept faith with it.

In June 2000, I quit Shoot! for a job in the States which ultimately fell through and soon after IPC decided to make half the mag's staff redundant and switch the title's frequency from weekly to monthly. The result was hideous - the sort of kids' magazine your grandad would produce. One of the things I was most proud of during my time at Shoot! was that I made a real effort to increase our coverage of women's football which was then just starting to make an impact here and in the States (the US were world champions in 1999). Of course, all that went out the window when the new editor took over, along with every shred of personality and attitude my staff and I had given the title.

The switch to monthly frequency saw the title's circulation bottom out at about 30 thousand or so and that's pretty much the way it stayed until IPC decided to try one last relaunch a few months ago. As part of its revamp, Shoot! was returned to its original weekly status and brought back the yoof speak and short, punchy articles with it. Alas, it was a last throw of the dice that didn't work.

Finally, to give this ramble down memory lane some kind of comics angle, I commissioned a regular weekly cartoon called Shoot! FC from an artist called Rob Davies. Rob, it turned out, had drawn Roy Of The Rovers (the period when Roy Race only had one foot) and had also done stuff for 2000AD, including (I think) Dredd. I lost touch with Rob after leaving Shoot! and a Google search has produced nothing about his current whereabouts. Anyone out there remember him and know what he's up to these days?

Ad for Previews

2008-06-17T14:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a look at the ad for Septic Isle that I'm placing in August's edition of Previews.

The working week

2008-06-14T02:12:00.000-07:00

I HAVEN'T got a lot of comics writing done this week as my thoughts have had to turn to Septic Isle's forthcoming solicitation in Previews. That means I've written a press release, sorted out an ISBN number, booked a little ad space and started sending out some more review copies. I now need to design an ad, start work on a dedicated SI website (help, Kay!), hit up the news sites for coverage and sort out some publicity material with which to inundate retailers. If I had any money, I'd hire an assistant.

* ONE of the best things about Septic Isle being picked up is that it makes the chances of a sequel that much more likely. I know artist Mick Trimble is up for doing more Jacob Marley and I already have a story roughly plotted out.

The Marley you'll see in Septic Isle 2 would probably be quite different from the rather lost guy in book one. The seven shades of hell he goes through in that first story are going to have changed him; probably made him revert back to the way he was before his retirement from MI5 - ruthless, uncompromising, almost a force of nature.

The ways things are shaping up I probably won't get to write a sequel until next year but I hope it happens as doing the first one has really given me a taste for writing spy fiction. Before that, though, I have to finish Kurse, Razor Snakes, Pendragon and whatever I end up working on with Keith Burns.

* THE other thing I've been doing this week is lettering the first issue of Brit Force. This is proving to be a rather interesting and unusual challenge. Andy Radbourne, the guy who writes and draws the series, had already lettered the first six issues by hand when he submitted it to me. I suggested computer lettering would look better so Andy went through and removed all the words but couldn't take out the hand-drawn speech balloons as well as it would have meant having to redo most of the art. So, I'm going back through and putting new lettering into Andy's balloons. I'm also editing and refining his script as I go. It's a peculiar way to work but, oddly enough, I'm quite enjoying it.

Previews

2008-06-11T01:17:00.000-07:00

Septic Isle is being solicited in August's edition of Previews and will hit comic stores in October. Er, that's it for now...

Southend Book Fair

2008-06-08T01:45:00.000-07:00

YESTERDAY'S Southend Book Fair was a very low key affair - 25 exhibitors and around 150 punters through the doors all day. Suffice to say, I didn't have to fight off customers with a stick. Despite being held at the local college, there were very few students in attendance, with most browsers in the 50+ age bracket. I waited three hours to sell my first comics and almost kissed the bloke who bought them. From what I gather, though, none of the exhibitors will be retiring on what they made from the day.

Still, despite the lack of sales, I had a good time and met some lovely people. A local artist even turned up specifically to see me and point me in the direction of his website. He's a really talented bloke and I intend to send him a script to see how he handles sequential work.

I also talked to a woman from the Southend libraries department who seemed keen for me to do some sort of workshop there. I'd even get paid!

If they run the event again next year, I shall probably give it another go. Selling my stuff at Birmingham and Bristol is a piece of piss (you're surrounded by comics fans all weekend with money to spend) but a book fair really takes you out of your comfort zone and that's something I rather enjoy.

* THE week off was fairly successful. After a number of false starts I'm finally making real progress with Kurse and it's shaping up nicely I think. Sometimes you can spend so long on something that you get fed up with the entire enterprise but I'm having no such problems at this point.

"Book him, Danno"

2008-05-31T00:24:00.000-07:00

I'M going to be at the Southend Book Fair next Saturday flogging copies of Septic Isle. It's my first time as an exhibitor at any sort of book event so it's going to be interesting to see how well my work is received. Judging by an article in the local college magazine, DAVE, I certainly have a lot to live up to, the fair's organiser having described me as "an amazing talent" and "a leader in his field". I'd settle for being either of those things - then I'd be writing fiction for a living instead of doing crappy nine-hour shifts at my day job.

The book fair will be at South East Essex College (it's smack bang in the middle of Southend's main town centre street) on Saturday, June 7 from 10am to 4pm. Admission is FREE. You can find out more here: www.myspace.com/southendbookfair

* STILL waiting for the movie options stuff to be sorted. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks.

* CRACKING on with the writing and alternating between two scripts right now in a desperate bid to catch up a bit. Bashing on with Kurse is my first priority but am also about nine pages into Razor Snakes, something I haven't even got an artist for yet. I'm now off work for a week so should be able to make quite a bit of progress...

Fool? Hardly...

2008-05-18T00:31:00.000-07:00

Regie Rigby's Fool Britannia column this week talks about the Bristol Expo and reviews Septic Isle. It's possibly the most positive review we've had yet, with Regie concluding: "Seriously, [Septic Isle's] right up there with Oni’s Queen and Country and TV’s The Sandbaggers, which in this genre is about the highest praise I could give."

You'll find the review here.

Bristol pics

2008-05-16T01:17:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of pics of Septic Isle artist Mick Trimble and I at the Moonface Press table at Bristol. Note the mandatory nerd T-shirts and my rapidly greying hair...

A Brit of all right

2008-05-15T01:20:00.000-07:00

I'VE been meaning to make this announcement for weeks, so here goes. Moonface Press is proud to announce a new ongoing series called Brit Force. It's written and drawn by Andy Radbourne, lettered and script edited by me and the cover to issue #1 is by Glenn Fabry (above). Look for it later in the year and in the meantime find out more at www.britforce.com

* SEPTIC Isle is now available to buy from the shop at www.moonfacepress.com. It's £3.95 (plus £1.50 p&p) for 52 perfect-bound pages.

* THERE'S a lovely review of Hero Killers here by Paul Brown. Yeah, I know it's a bit tardy but Paul has only recently got his hands on a copy!

Gene Colan

2008-05-14T01:00:00.001-07:00

COMICS wouldn't mean nearly as much to me as they do if it wasn't for artist Gene Colan (above). I grew up pretty much obsessed with his beautiful, evocative work on Daredevil, Howard The Duck and Tomb Of Dracula. In fact, he's part of my Holy Trinity of all-time favourite artists that also includes Jack Kirby and John Buscema. Anyway, in the last few days Gene has been hospitalised with liver failure. As his wife, Adrienne, says: "My darling, sweet, handsome and brilliantly gifted husband's liver is failing. The complications are very nasty. This week it's fluid retention and encephalitis. He's on powerful meds now to diminish the symptoms. He sleeps a lot and has very little energy."

If you're a fan of Gene's, why not raise his spirits a little by sending him a get well soon card. Here's his address...

Gene Colan
2 Sea Cliff Avenue
Sea Cliff,
NY 11579
USA

Also, writer Clifford Meth is organising a charity auction with all the proceeds going direct to Gene and Adrienne. This from Cliff's blog:

We're getting lots of email saying, "How can I help?" If you're a writer or artist or TV/film professional, please contact me at cliffmeth@aol.com -- Or just mail a drawing or signed book or whatever it is you're contributing to:

COLAN c/o Clifford Meth
179-9 Rt. 46 West
Box 252
Rockaway, NJ 07866

Items will be auctioned off at ComicLink.com (details, dates, etc. TBA)

Bristol 2008

2008-05-12T01:53:00.000-07:00

THE Bristol Expo just sped by in a blur this year. It seemed as if one minute we were arriving at the hotel and the next I was loading my stuff into the car and heading back up the M4 for Southend. Still, I've never had anything other than a great time at Bristol and so it proved again this year.

The Moonface booth had a prime position on the floorplan (opposite Forbidden Planet) and did a roaring trade for much of the weekend but especially on the Saturday. We sold lots of copies of Septic Isle and older stuff like Hero Killers and Blood Psi did steady business too. In fact, in terms of copies sold, it was our most successful Bristol since 2002 when we launched the first Devilchild volume.

The best thing about the Expo, though, is the people. It's just fantastic to spend time with the likes of Declan Shalvey, Mick Trimble, Simon Wyatt, Keith Burns, Bob Byrne, Colin Mathieson, Dave West and Regie Rigby . These are people that I not only admire but for whom I have genuine affection, even though I don't see them that often.

I'm looking forward to Birmingham in October already...

* LOOKS like the aforementioned movie stuff is going to take longer to conclude than I first thought - the people from the production company I've been talking to aren't coming over to London now until early June. This isn't as frustrating as you might think because, not having an agent, I'm having to find a solicitor to help me with the contract stuff. Updates as I get them...

Just time for a quickie

2008-05-08T01:36:00.000-07:00

CRIKEY, looks like it's going to be a big week. Not only will Septic Isle make its debut at this weekend's Bristol Comic Expo but the movie stuff is about to be concluded too. I'm not going to jinx it by saying any more at this stage but will hopefully be able to divulge a whole lot more next week.

* IF you're a superhero fan, you really should see the Iron Man movie. It's an absolute hoot with Robert Downey Jr pitch perfect as Tony Stark.

Septic bits

2008-04-29T04:39:00.000-07:00

THERE'S a nice mention of Septic Isle at Terry Hooper's popular www.comicbitsonline.com site. He says: "... this story has elements of the TV series/books featuring the character Callan [starring Edward Woodward] and even The Professionals.... I enjoyed the story and art and if you get a chance to buy a copy – DO!"

I rather enjoyed the Callan comparison as it was a TV show I loved growing up as a kid - and I'll happily take the Professionals comparison too!

Catch-up

2008-04-25T01:11:00.000-07:00

* I'VE booked a table at the Southend Book Fair in June after being approached by the organiser. They're quite keen on attracting local and indie authors but it's still going to be interesting to see how the crowd react to a – gasp! – comics writer showing up. They'll probably try and beat me to death with their copies of The Great Gatsby or something...

* I HAVE another meeting with the LA movie people the week after the Bristol Expo. I'm currently redrafting the Kurse outline for them (they wanted something a bit lighter and comedic than the one I originally sent over) and hope things are going to move forward from there. The only downside of writing these outlines, of course, is that it's severely limiting the amount of time I've got to write comics. At this rate I'll still be writing the Kurse comic-book this time next year!

* The Bristol Expo is just a fortnight away and I'm looking forward to it in much the same way a small child anticipates Christmas. It's not just because I want to sell lots of copies of Septic Isle but also because I can't wait to catch up with people I haven't seen in a while. These include Blood Psi artist Keith Burns, who has recently returned from his year working in Hong Kong; and Phill Evans, who, despite being one of my oldest and dearest friends, I haven't laid eyes on for nearly three years! For once, I think I might actually indulge in a drink or two...

Nine

2008-04-21T00:57:00.001-07:00

THERE'S a another review of Septic Isle over at Comics Village, in which writer Glenn Carter gives the book 9 out of 10. You'll find it here:

http://www.comicsvillage.com/review.aspx?reviewID=212

Septic's first review

2008-04-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

The first review of Septic Isle is in and it's overwhelmingly positive. It's written by Joe Gordon and you can find it here: http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/?p=7087

A few quotes from Joe's piece...

"...a dark-edged, modern-day spy story for War On Terror era Britain"

"Andy and Mick do something remarkable – they make you feel sympathy for a suicide bomber."

"The central character is Jacob Marley, a nice Dickens reference for a man who’s almost a ghost of his former self..."

"I can see fans of Queen & Country or even Shooting War picking this up and enjoying a story which eschews gee-whizz gadgets and heroics for a more realistic tale which avoids the stereotypical plot traps of many of its fellows."

Skinnered alive!

2008-04-16T05:49:00.000-07:00

I MENTIONED the other day that I'd soon be publicising the Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag one-shot we have coming out towards the end of the year. Anyway, this is the design for the postcard to be given away at the Bristol Expo (art by Declan Shalvey, words by me). I think it looks great and Dec says he'll be cracking on with the artwork for the book when he comes back from New York (the lucky beggar's at the Big Apple Con this week). All being well, it should be finished and ready to launch at the Birmingham International Comics Show in October.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, this is the FF cover we've shamelessly ripped-off, er, homaged...

It's here!

2008-04-15T00:14:00.000-07:00

Septic Isle arrived from the printer yesterday and it looks magnificent - production-wise easily the best comic-book I've yet been involved in.

It's the first time I've tried digital printing since the printer I used to use made an unholy mess of the first run of Hero Killers and Blood Psi. Since then I've been firmly wedded to litho printing and didn't think I'd be changing my mind. But Cambrian, the Wales-based printer I use now, produced some really nice samples from the page files I sent them and so persuaded me to give digital printing a second go. I'm glad I did and not just because the quality of what they've produced is so high - digi print is also substantially cheaper than litho meaning that I can afford to sell Septic for a paltry £3.95 (for 52 perfect-bound pages).

Any self-publishers reading this who are looking for cheap, reliable printing could do a lot worse than get a quote from Cambrian; their website's here: www.cambrian-printers.co.uk

Bristol hoves into view

2008-04-12T01:30:00.000-07:00

Blimey, the Bristol Expo's less than a month away. Where did that come from? As usual I have two tables and this year will be pushing copies of Septic Isle on anyone who comes within six feet of me. The book's artist Mick Trimble will be on hand for most of the weekend to sketch and sign copies and cover artist Declan Shalvey will also be around for an hour or two I'm sure. My good pal Jamie Richards is threatening to help out on the table too so make sure you ask him for a Star Wars-related sketch - trust me you won't be disappointed!

I'm also really pleased to announce that Bob Byrne (2000AD, MBLEH!) will be guest of honour on the table all weekend selling copies of his brand new and reportedly spiffing graphic novel Mister Amperduke. Bob couldn't get a table (according to Expo organiser Mike Allwood space ran out back in December and there's a waiting list that could comfortably fill the hall again by a third) so I was happy to step in and offer him a bit of space. Bob's a hugely talented creator and a top bloke so I'm sure it's going to be a lot of fun having him around.

The table will also feature some publicity material for two forthcoming Moonface releases: the Tim Skinner: Total Scumbag one-shot (drawn and coloured by Declan Shalvey who, I notice, has been nominated for ANOTHER Eagle Award), and the ongoing superhero series I'll be talking about on here in the week, the first issue of which has a cover by Glenn Fabry. Yes, that Glenn Fabry.

Number five is alive...

2008-04-07T01:26:00.000-07:00

THE fifth in my series of columns about self-publishing is now up at indiereview.co.uk. This one is aimed at creators about to attend their first comic convention as exhibitors and works as a 10-point checklist of things not to forget. You'll find it here...

http://www.indiereview.co.uk/index.php/articles/latest-articles/starting-out-5-conventions.html

* WITH Septic Isle at the printer (we're at the correcting proofs stage now) and the three movie outlines written, there was a brief moment at the end of last week where I felt I'd cleared the decks. Then I remembered I'd still got a script for Kurse to get on with and a ton of lettering for the six-issue, superhero mini-series that I'm publishing but not writing (expect an announcement soon about this). Looks like my forthcoming week off work is going to be as restful as ever...

* FINALLY saw the Ghost Rider movie last night and found it a frustrating, underwhelming experience. Nicolas Cage, Peter Fonda, Sam Elliot and Eva Mendes were all fine and the effects budget clearly had a few quid in it, but the script was rotten and the baddies under-developed to the point of anonymity. A missed opportunity...

Kurse words

2008-04-01T02:04:00.000-07:00

THE final outline has been written and is now with the LA movie people. More news soon hopefully...

The last outline I wrote for them was one for Kurse. Now, if you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that I've been writing a Kurse one-shot for the last few months and that progress has been even slower than usual. Although a lot of the stuff in there - characters, ideas, situations - were pretty good ones, it just wasn't hanging together in the way that it should. It felt like two or three different stories sort of mushed together and was therefore a bit uneven.

A way of fixing all the problems came to me last week and the solution was simple. In the words of Edwyn Collins, rip it up and start again. So I did. I kept quite a few elements from the original story but have completely reconfigured everything else - most of the plot has completely changed, almost all the characters have changed and the story is infinitely stronger as a result.

I was about 20 pages into writing the comic-book version of Kurse and it means I'm going to have to start from scratch but this is a small sacrifice to finally get the story working as it should. God knows what the poor bloody artist, who has been waiting for a script for two years, is going to think though...

Luckily, I have another week off work soon and shall spend it banging out Kurse script pages like there's no tomorrow. Unless I change my mind again that is...

Easter blues

2008-03-25T03:07:00.000-07:00

EASTER was a bit of a drag this year, mainly because of the terrible weather. I was cooped up inside with the kids for the Friday and Saturday (we all went a little stir crazy) and then had to work on the Sunday and Monday. As a result I'm champing at the bit to do something – anything! – creative.

Luckily, I have today and tomorrow off this week and will use it to crack on with the remaining two movie pitches. The one for Septic Isle was emailed to my contact last week and didn't read nearly as well as the comic itself does. I found the process quite frustrating because reducing everything to a three-page plot loses so much character and thematic stuff. Suffice to say I'll be sending him a copy of the actual book once it's back from the printer in a couple of weeks.

* I KNEW Hero Killers and Blood Psi would be picked up by Diamond but don't have the same confidence about Septic Isle, which is odd as it's the best thing I've written to date and Mick's art is terrific. Superheroes and vampires are an easy sell, brutal and bleak British spy thrillers perhaps less so. It's also a bit "controversial" I suppose, the main bad guy's plan to target and destroy the UK's Muslim community in the most profoundly unpleasant way imaginable is hardly fluffy or commercial. Still, fingers crossed...

* I DIDN'T attend last weekend's UK Web and Mini Comix Thing as I had nothing new to sell and thought the price of tables for so small an event was extortionate (£70 – the same as I paid for a stall at this year's Bristol). On the subject of coventions and such, it looks like I won't be able to do Comicon in San Diego after all. To be honest, it's purely a matter of finances - it would cost me an arm and a leg for a table, travel and accommodation; and although I think I'd do good business there I really can't justify the couple of grand it would cost. It'll just be Bristol, Birmingham and the Dublin one in November this year I reckon...

Done and dusted

2008-03-16T14:15:00.000-07:00

Three dummy copies of Septic Isle will be winging their way to Diamond's Warrington headquarters later today. Getting everything right with the book took rather longer than I had anticipated and I was still tweaking tiny bits of the script and lettering as late as Friday.

As things stand, though, I'm very pleased with how it's all turned out. It's the strongest script I've written to date and Mick Trimble's art is spot on. In fact, I hadn't really appreciated just how good Mick's work on the book was until I came to letter it. He really has done a first class job - perfectly capturing SI's somewhat bleak, nihilistic tone. There's a nasty fight scene at the end that he just absolutely nails - it's bloody and brutal and exactly what a fight to the death would look like.

The plan now is to do a limited edition print run of 100 to sell at Bristol and a second print run for comic stores if the book is picked up by Diamond.

With SI out the way for the time being, I can crack on with those movie outlines I mentioned a couple of weeks ago and the script for Kurse, a project that has been having to sit on the back burner for the last month or so...

No fun

2008-03-11T08:04:00.001-07:00

I've reached the part of the lettering on Septic Isle that's the least fun. It's the bit where you have to print out every page, check it for errors (spelling, continuity, scan marks etc) and then print it out again for the "master copy". The thing is, there's always something you can tighten up or improve on just about every page, so this part of the process tends to be long and laborious. It's necessary, though, as it means the final "product" will look that much better.

Proofing is a nuisance but it isn't the thing I'm struggling most with at the moment. No, that particular honour goes to writing the "blurb" for the book's back cover. I want it to sound exciting and powerful but, somehow, everything I've thus far come up with sounds a bit, well, shit. Let's call it a work in progress and get back to the proofreading, shall we?

A good start

2008-03-10T08:22:00.001-07:00

This is the week I have to have Septic Isle ready to send to both the printer and Diamond. Under normal circumstances, of course, the book would go to Diamond first and then the printer much later, after order numbers had come in. Thing is, I'm really keen to sell SI at Bristol so I'm going to do a 100-copy signed and numbered limited edition thing to flog at the Expo.

Anyway, I'm off to a flier as far as getting everything finished is concerned. A first draft of the lettering is done and I'm now going back through re-reading and correcting, then turning all the pages into PDFs. These will be printed off either tomorrow or Wednesday, and then the whole thing proofread one last time. From there, discs will go to the printer so they can, er, print the book, while dummy copies make their way to Diamond, artist Mick Trimble and a few friends/journalists/comics pros who have asked for one.

By Friday, Septic Isle should be out of my hair - for a month or so anyway...

Frantic

2008-03-04T01:36:00.000-08:00

I'M busier than at any point in the last couple of years and yet, frustratingly, I'm not going to get very much done this week. This is because, between long shifts at the day job, I'm going to be in Warwick visiting my old mate Rob and his partner, Tracey. Rob has become a dad for the first time at the grand old age of 42, so I'm going up to lend a little moral support and see three-week-old Lily for the first time. I'm looking forward to it but deadlines are certain to be nagging away at the back of my mind at least some of the time I'm there.

Luckily, I have next week off work in which I intend to finish getting Septic Isle ready for both Diamond and the printer. I have 16 or 17 pages still to letter, plus the back cover, and then the back matter (Mick's sketches and the book's original opening) to sort out, too. I then have to proofread the whole thing, turn the CorelDraw docs into PDFs and print out the whole 52-page book to make several dummies.

I also have those three movie pitches to write up in more detail. The one for Septic Isle should be simple enough (after all, I'm taking it from a finished script) but the other two might be a bit trickier. Looks like I probably won't be leaving the house much after Sunday then...