Conventions!

This weekend, I'll be attending my first convention of the year: the London Super Comic Con, at the Excel Centre. That one is a first for me, so I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like – do stop by for a chat if you're there; I'll be at Table A88, apart from when I'm doing the Doctor Who in Comics panel (Saturday 2pm-2:45pm) and a couple of signings at the Boom! Studios stand (Saturday 10:30am-11:30am and Sunday 10:30am-11:30am). Those interruptions aside, I'll be there all day for both days, sketching and selling books and artwork. (I will charge for full-figure drawings, but quick head sketches are always FREE FREE FREE!)

Then, next month, I'll be attending the Comiciade Festival in Aachen, Germany. This one's a new one for me too, but the shows I've attended in Germany in the past have always been great.

Then in June I'll be attending Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina! I love Heroes Con, and I was sorry to miss it last year. As always, I've done a piece for their fundraising auction – rather pleased with this one.

And then, in September, the mighty SPX – more about which closer to the time. Suffice to say it never disappoints.

Hope to see some of you at one or more of these swanky shindigs!

HeroesCon 2012 Wrap-Up

I know I say this every year, but Heroes Con was such enormous fun. Lovely to see so many familiar faces, meet new friends and generally feel like I'm among like-minded people for a few days. I'm going to eschew the traditional con report (my last one being a hard act to follow) and instead blast you with a pile of photos I took of the sketches I was doing all weekend.

A big thank you to all you sketch-hounds for buying these, by the way - your support ensures I'll be able to continue to attend shows like this (to say nothing of the $360 you raised for the Hero Initiative!). And biggest thanks of all to Shelton Drum, Rico Renzi and their incredibly hard-working team for making the con what it is, my favourite convention.

Charlotte, I'm Comin' For Ya!

Heroes Con approacheth! And I am woefully underprepared! Yea, verily! However, there are a few pieces of information I would like to get out there before the show starts on Friday, so let's begin:

My Location: I will be located at AA-220 (there's a PDF of the floor plan here) - looks like I've finally been moved out of Indie Island the year I set myself up to be all Indie from now on. Ooh, irony, we hardly knew ye. Anyway, I'll be splat between Don Rosa, who I'm looking forward to meeting, and Nick Galifianakis, who will no doubt blow me out of the water with his drawing skills. Fine company.

Sketch Prices: This year there'll be two tiers, after an experiment in Bristol earlier this year which worked rather nicely. On Friday, I'll be doing regular sketches on white paper like the one on the left for $20, and I'll be doing fancy sketches (hereafter referred to as "fancy sketches") on coloured paper like the one on the right for $30. I'll still sketch free for kids. On Saturday and Sunday, after extensive consultation with a bunch of yahoos on Twitter, I'll be upping those prices to $40 and $60 respectively. If you want a cheap one, get in early!

Marvel and DC character sketches: This was a tough one. I was faced with a dilemma: should I just refuse to do them? Should I do them for free and annoy my neighbours, who would be charging? Or should I take the money and leave myself open to charges of hypocrisy and other malarkey? My elegant solution is to do Marvel and DC character sketches as usual, but to donate the proceeds from drawing those characters to the Hero Initiative. I've been in touch with the organisation about this and they're keen, and have helpfully supplied me with official logos and so forth, so that's what's happening. In short: from the point of view of you, the attendee wanting a sketch of Thor, it'll be business as usual. Plus, you'll be helping a good cause. Everybody wins!

Panels: Ooh, I'm up for a bunch of these.

• Friday 1:30pm, Rm 203A: Henson Properties - with Amy Mebberson, James Silvani and Ramon Perez
• Friday 4:00pm, Rm 206: Team Cul de Sac - with Chris Sparks, Danielle Corsetto, Shannon Gallant and Nick Galifianakis
• Saturday 12:30pm, Rm 203A: Approaches to Humour - with Evan Dorkin and Tim Rickard
• Sunday 11:00am, Rm 203A: All-Ages Comics - with Chris Schweizer, Jill Thompson and Skottie Young

Phew! And as usual, I'll have a bunch of artwork with me and as many books as I can carry. Hope to see you there!

Nowhere Special: Now Somewhere!

Update to the previous announcement on FourPlay String Quartet's live streaming of their score to Nowhere Special: according to this schedule of events, it's on at some point between 11am and 12:30pm (Sydney, Australia time) on Saturday, which is (let's see)...

2am-3:30am Saturday morning,  British Summer time
9pm-11:30pm Friday in New York
6pm-7:30pm Friday in Los Angeles
1pm-2:30pm Saturday in New Zealand

If I haven't listed your location, you can work it out yourself. Anyway, there will be a live stream available here, I believe. I don't know if I can handle staying up until 3:30 in the morning when I usually wake up at 5am, but we'll see. I'm going to at least try to set up my computer to capture the audio.

Most exciting.

 

Totally Unrelated Dept.: Here's my piece for the fabled Heroes Con original art auction, inspired by Bruce Ozella's cover to Popeye #1. Only a month away now. 

Stuff stuff stuff!

A few things!

First, I'm delighted to report that I'll be returning to HeroesCon this June - definitely one of my favourite US shows. They've just officially announced that here.

Next, there's some more info on the very worthwhile Kickstarter fundraiser for The Graphic Textbook, which I'm contributing a story to, at Publishers Weekly. Check that out, and please, please, please consider contributing to the fundraising appeal.

And thirdly, there's a piece on IDW's new Popeye series, which I'm writing, at USA Today. There's the usual mangled quotes you get in any newspaper article - I've never yet seen one about me that's 100% accurate - but it's a pretty solid piece all the same. And I believe the book itself is out any day now! Huzzah!

Thor vs Fin Fang Foom!

I'm looking forward to attending Heroes Con in a month or so in lovely Charlotte, North Carolina. They've been wonderful hosts to me for a few years now, and it's always a hugely enjoyable experience. Every year they ask their guests to donate a piece of artwork which they can auction off to defray expenses, so here's my contribution for this year - a recreation of Chris Samnee's fabulous cover for Thor: The Mighty Avenger #6. Got out my paints and did it all nice. I trust it will find a good home.

Oh, and a little update: it looks like Thor: The Mighty Avenger has been nominated for an American Library Award for Great Graphic Novels for Teens! Details here, I believe.

Greyhound Madness

(Here's a short account of my travels between Heroes Con and Kids Read Comics - full KRC report to follow shortly.)


Time to leave Charlotte and make my way to Michigan for the Kids Read Comics show. Not having anywhere else to go once I leave my hotel, and having put off the moment of departure as long as I dared, I find myself at the Greyhound bus station waaaay too early. Fortunately, I have a book - Mad World, a highly entertaining biography of Evelyn Waugh by Paula Byrne - which sees me through the hours I have to wait. I attempt to find something vegetarian in the cafeteria that isn't disgusting - I fail miserably, and end up with what is possibly the worst cheese sandwich I have ever eaten. Next time I hear an American say the British can't do sandwiches, I will be prepared.

I buy a phone card and (after trying two phones that don't work) I phone home. Sylvie is giving the children dinner - Thomas is throwing his food around in an uncharacteristic tantrum when I call, and has just been told off. Thomas and I exchange a few incomprehensible words through his floods of tears and snot and I feel keenly that my absence makes me a terrible father.

More waiting, more reading. At last 6pm rolls around and we board the bus. I'm sat next to an enormous woman whose bulk makes the entire bus tilt to our side when she sits down. She and her two male friends - one to our side and one in front of us - talk loudly and raucously between themselves, the guy in front doing a repetitive hour-long riff on Scooby Doo and Shaggy being potheads, like he's the only guy who's ever thought of it. Eventually I manage to sleep, briefly. I awaken in the middle of a sentence by the guy on our right: "... solitary. I mean, they put me in solitary confinement just for that, man." I reflect that I may have some trouble going to sleep again.

We stop to refuel - both us and the bus, it seems - at around 9pm. It looks like the only option is a McDonalds, presented to us as if it's some sort of treat. I've managed to avoid giving any of their horrible establishments any of my hard-earned money for close to twenty years - not for ideological reasons or anything, I just think the food tastes like garbage - but I need something in my stomach. This seems to be the trip for breaking the habits of a lifetime. I order a Caesar Salad - the poor cow at the till asks me "Crispy of Grilled?" about six times before I realise it comes with chicken. I make involuntary horrified noises - one twenty-year habit I have no intention of breaking on this trip is my vegetarianism - and am duly presented with something that resembles a Caesar Salad not a jot. It's basically just a green salad. What the hell, thinks I - down it goes.

Back on the bus. I manage to sleep without half trying this time - Heroes Con has wiped me out somewhat. But it feels like I've hardly been asleep five minutes before we stop and we're all told to get off the bus while it's "serviced". I am to discover over the next few hours that this is to be a pattern - sleep, rude awakening, off the bus, sit in a station terminal, back on the bus. My only previous experience travelling by bus has been in Europe, where you just, you know, get on the bus and sleep until you get there. Alas, this is not to be.

Many long, weary hours pass. Many layovers in many places. I am occasionally gripped by an irrational terror that I have got on the wrong bus and am on a one-way trip to Nowheresville, but by the following afternoon I finally end up in Ann Arbor. Helpfully, the bus station has a big sign in the window giving half a dozen phone numbers for local taxi services. Unhelpfully, there are no telephones, just a telephone directory on a small shelf - a big space on the wall above it with a couple of wires sticking out where the telephone used to be. I head out to the footpath (sorry, sidewalk) and start walking, dragging my suitcase behind me, in the blind hope that I will see a public phone, a taxi or, failing that, the street in which my hotel is situated. At one point I stop at a Borders to buy a map - I mention the street I'm looking for and the guy tells me I'm practically on it. That's the good news. The bad news is that, once I get onto it, the hotel is about thirty blocks away. I start walking, confident in the knowledge that the worst-case scenario is that I'll get there eventually. Fortune smiles upon me - I see two taxis. I jump in one and (apart from one moment when I almost give the taxi driver a hernia with my suitcase full of books) all is well. I reach the hotel, unpack, send a couple of e-mails, phone home, shower, get some dinner (another salad from a burger restaurant, all that's available after dodging traffic on a pedestrian-unfriendly stretch of road) and sleep. Oh yes. Hitting that pillow is without a doubt the highlight of my day.

Heroes Con Wrap-Up

(Scan courtesy Tim O'Shea - thanks, Tim!)

Heroes Con Day 0 (Thursday)

For once I've had the foresight to bring my laptop with me to a convention, so I might actually be able to get a report out. Even remembered my camera! Go me.

Okay, so I arrived on Thursday afternoon, only slightly late, and got the shuttle in from the airport to the hotel with none other than Brian Bolland, who I'd never met before - we must have been on the same flight, but I didn't recognise him. What a nice man! This is a good start. Our driver is Billy Reed (not "Billy", "Billy Reed") - an old friend of Shelton Drumm's, he says - and his wonderful accent is already relaxing me.

I check in to my hotel and get to my room - five seconds after I sit down there's a knock at my door and a frantic lady comes in looking for her telephone charger, wondering if it's still here - this had been her room until she switched it, and she left it here. No sign of it. I sit down again, phone home just in time to say goodnight to the kids (Ahh, Skype! You save me many hotel phone bills), and there's another knock at the door - this is getting on my nerves now, as all I really want is a shower. It's one of the hotel staff asking if everything's all right. I tell him yes - off he goes. I have my shower - and now I know why the lady switched rooms. There's no cold water. Both taps run hot. I decide I'll live with it and take a shower jumping in and out of the boiling cascade.

Refreshed and slightly pink, I go and get my guest badge. I run into some of the Boom! Studios crew as I leave, so we go and get some pizza. This will be dinner - I'm trying to lose a few pounds at the moment, so I eat lightly, but the food is good and it sticks to my ribs. Speaking of ribs, Boom! head honcho Ross Richie gives me a bear hug, presumably in appreciation of the Eisner nomination, and it feels like he cracks a couple. (He's a big guy.) I go and set up my table afterwards, walking funny.

So far I've run in to a few familiar faces: Paul Maybury, MK Reed, Alec Longstreth and David Malki off the top of my head. Con organiser (and brilliant cartoonist) Dustin Harbin is running around like a chicken with no head, but he makes time to look at my Heroes Con Art Auction contribution and makes all the right noises. I'm relieved. My painting skills are really rusty and there were several occasions when I thought I'd ruined it.

The mobile phone I bought at the airport, swallowing back a lifetime of antipathy towards the damn things in order to make my presence here in the USA less of an inconvenience for others, appears not to work. It's entirely possible I'm just doing it wrong - I've never even looked at one of them up close before - but even so, I'm less than happy about it. I'd hate to think I threw away my principles for no reason. Always have a reason for throwing away your principles, I say.

End of Thursday - I try to watch a video on my laptop and fall asleep in the middle of it. So much for dropping in on the hotel bar later. That will have to wait until Friday.

Heroes Con Day 1 (Friday)

Awake ridiculously early - I'm still on London time. I manage to kill an hour or two writing before I go and get some breakfast (and technically lunch as well, as what I'm about to eat has to last me until dinner). At breakfast I see Irwin Hasen smooth-talking the waitress, the sly old dog. He doesn't look a day over ninety. The convention kicks off at 11 - I'm there at 9:30 to have a look around and say hello to a few people, buy some sketch pads and so forth, but I've barely had time to introduce myself to Muppet Show's "Family Reunion" artist Amy Mebberson (at last we meet!) before I'm getting sketch requests, and that's pretty much it for the rest of the day - I've got a list going before the doors open to the public.

Which doesn't mean I don't get to see a few people, as I'm pretty easy to find. Off the top of my head, I see Mr Phil of Indie Spinner Rack, Evan Dorkin, Andy Mansell, Jamie Cosley, Steve Leiber (fleetingly as I rushed past his table), Mike Maihack, Chris Schweizer, Richard Thompson, Mike Rhode, Dave Roman & Raina Telgemeier. At the table next to me, lo and behold, it's the lady who switched rooms with mine yesterday, who as it turns out is Jill Thompson. Well I never.

At 4:30 there's a panel conducted by Dustin Harbin with me, Jim Rugg and Drew Weing talking about The Craft of Making Comics. Dustin freely admits this is entirely for his own benefit, it wasn't really put together with an audience in mind; despite this, we get a respectable crowd by my (admittedly very low) standards, as the last panel I did at TCAF was attended by, like, five people. It's an interesting talk, albeit a bit of an esoteric one. A fair bit of thinking out loud on my part, I know that. I often wasn't sure what I was going to say until I'd already said it. I kind of liked that, though.

Back to the table - as I pass the Boom! booth, I'm told I have a dinner invitation from Ross Richie. I gratefully accept, put in another 90 minutes at the sketches, and am delighted to see I'm only a few away from the end of the list.

Waiting in the hotel lobby for my dining companions, I see Tom Spurgeon at the bar talking to a few cartoonists, among them Jim Rugg and Sammy Harkham. We chat about Thor, of all things, and about New Zealand (Sammy lived there at one time). Then Mark Waid grabs me and I'm off.

Dinner is great. Apart from the Richies, we're accompanied by Mike (Boom! staffer), Mark Waid and Peter Krause. The wine flows and an enjoyable evening filled with scurrilous comic industry tales passes by. We then head back to the hotel - I intend to have a drink and socialise at the bar, but I don't see anybody I recognise. I decide to go back to my room and catch 30 winks, then come down later. At 2am I wake up in my clothes with a headache and write that idea off for another night.

Note to self: Bring Camera Tomorrow.

Heroes Con Day 2 (Saturday)

Okay, I forgot my camera again.

Busy day sketch-wise, and I sold some artwork, too, which means the trip is officially now paid for - everything else from here on in is a bonus. I had a sketch list going most of the day which I just caught up on as the show was closing. I finally got to meet Chris Samnee (there with his wife Laura). What a nice man! Nice and TALENTED - he gave me one of his convention sketchbooks which is amazing. Saw a few more faces today who I'd missed yesterday, including Craig Fischer, Greg Means, Johanna Draper Carlson, Paul Tobin, and at this point I know I'm going to slight someone I left out, so let me just cut my losses and apologise in advance. The business of the day means, paradoxically, that I have a whole lot less to report - as it was just a case of drawing my socks off all day. I sold out of some books, both ones I expected to (I only brought a few Fred the Clown, Art d'Ecco and Knuckles collections due to baggage weight restrictions) and ones I didn't (Mugwhump minicomics are gone?!). All good in terms of what I can take home with me - I don't want to be paying excess baggage rates, after all - but it leaves me a bit underprepared for Sunday, not to mention Kids Read Comics next week, though I'll have Muppet books to fill the gap for that.

Show over, I join Mr. Phil, Alec Longstreth, Greg Means and MK Reed for dinner. I wisely take the salad option tonight. Then back to the hotel for the art auction, where my piece gets a respectable $400 - I ogle at the art a bit (and not at the ladies dressed as fishnet-era Zatanna who are showing it off, oh no), then chat and sip beers with Tom Spurgeon, Chris Pitzer, Evan Dorkin, Craig Fischer, Greg, MK, David Malki, Dustin and various other bods for the rest of the night.

At about 1 am I turn in, surprised I made it that far.

Heroes Con Day 3 (Sunday)

Bit of a lie-in - another Skype call home - and then it's off to work once more. Sunday is much slower than Saturday for me, although still pretty respectable. I shift some more books, some artwork, some sketches (no list today) and managed to say hello to a couple more people (Robert Goodin being the only one I can remember right now). Robert asks me to contribute to his Covered project - I say I've been wanting to for months but haven't been able to find the time. I pick up a print of his version of an issue of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories which cracks me up every time I see it. Forgot my camera again.


Managed to earn enough to officially call the trip a success from a financial standpoint, at least - though my suitcase doesn't feel any lighter because it's full of stuff people gave me (or which, in a few cases, I actually bought). Just as importantly, I had a good time; it's an amazingly friendly show, everyone's super-nice.

The traditional after-show party was great, as always. This year the food that was laid on wasn't pizza, it was actual dinner-type food - though vegetarians like me were pretty much left with coleslaw and houmous. Oh, and beer. Let's not forget the beer.

Managed to get some quality chatting time in with Jeff Parker, Steve Leiber, Evan Dorkin, Ed Piskor, Guy Davis, Rosemary Van Deuren, Chris Schweizer, Heidi MacDonald, Mr Phil, Robert Goodin, a brief outside-the-lavatory-door chat with Liz Baillie, and some conversations with friendly strangers. I buy a couple of Dustin's mini-comics and a Laura Park mini I haven't seen before. Catch the second-to-last shuttle back to the hotel, crash, happy ZZZs.

Tomorrow I catch a Greyhound bus to my next stop on this two-stop tour, Kids Read Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. But that's a story for another day. (And oh, what a story.)

Frog of Thunder!

Just finished this piece for the Heroes Con Art Auction and I thought I'd fling it up here for people to have a look at. The paint's barely dry!

I'll be on a couple of panels at Heroes: the first is "Craft and Process in Comics" on Friday at 4:30pm, and the other one is called "Family Friendly Comics" on Sunday at 12pm. And that table number again is 518 -- I'll be there whenever I'm not at a panel, signing, sketching and selling my wares. Hope to see you there!

Heaving on a Jet Plane

Two days until I board the plane to Heroes Con and there's still a ton to do. I'm currently working on a Doctor Who story, a ten-pager for Doctor Who Magazine, the inking of which I'll be finishing on the road by the look of it. Here's a sneak look at some of the pencils.


It's called Planet Bollywood, which pretty much tells you all you need to know - script by Jonathan Morris, who wrote the last one of these I worked on, Death to the Doctor, a couple of years ago. Great fun.

Anyway - Heroes Con. If you're going, look out for me at Table 518 (looks like they've moved me out of Indie Island - I'm in the block of tables around Boom! Studios instead, so I should be really easy to find). Indie status notwithstanding, I will have my own self-published books there with me, including my new Doctor Sputnik collection. So if you're after a sketch or you want to get a Muppet Show book defaced in a personalised way, please feel free to stop for a chat and a browse. I seldom bite - hardly ever, really.

How Conventional!

Been a bit slack on the blog lately, I'm afraid, though I have an excellent excuse: I'm gearing up for a two-week trip to the USA to attend not one, but two conventions. Yes! Such madness sounds impossible, but I assure you it's true!

First there's Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC on June 4th-6th; then I climb aboard a bus and schlep my way to Dearborn, MI for Kids Read Comics on the 12th & 13th.


Looking forward to both for different reasons - at Heroes Con, for example, among the many fine people I expect to run into, I'll have the opportunity to meet my collaborator on Thor, the Mighty Avenger, Chris Samnee, for the first time. We seem to be getting along great so far - hopefully meeting me in person won't spoil the magic for him.


And then, at Kids Read Comics - apart from the fact that it's you know, a comic book show actually targetted at an all-ages readership, which is to say my audience - I'll get to meet the hosts of the always thought-provoking Art and Story, the creative podcast which whiles away many an hour at the drawing board and which has been a near-constant companion for me for a couple of years now.

Did I mention I'm going to be hosting a workshop at Kids Read Comics? I'm going to be hosting a workshop at Kids Read Comics. It's called "Making Funny Comics" and you can sign up for it by going here and registering. It's free, and you may get the opportunity to see me make a complete twerp of myself in front of a live audience. Smell my fear!

Will Sketch for Chips

Phew! What a weekend. Heroes Con has now come and gone, and I had a fantastic time. A quick thank-you to everybody who stopped by my table, to all the people I met who made it so much fun, and most of all to the organisers, those splendid chaps at Heroes Aren't Hard to Find, who made the show go smoothly. It's like watching a swan sail across the surface of a pond - it looks so easy and moves so gracefully, but you know it must be paddling like hell under the surface to do it.


Did lots of sketches! Oh yes! And by the end the requests for Doctor Who/Muppet mash-ups were coming thick and fast. Unlike many previous conventions, I didn't get to bring a slush-pile of unwanted sketches back with me, but I reconstructed this one from memory on the plane home.

A few highlights worth mentioning:

* Alec Longstreth insisting I experience a Dairy Queen to get "a taste of the real America". (Clockwise from top left: Me, Greg Means, Alec, and Mr Phil of Indie Spinner Rack)



* Spending time with super-nice, super-good cartoonist Chris Schweizer (left to right: Gentleman whose name escapes me, Chris, Kevin Burkhalter, Drew Weing, Joey Weiser, another gentleman whose name fell out of my brain sometime between hearing it and now - my apologies!)



* Getting to experience Muppet Madness close-up! Over in the land of not-allowed-to-import-it, I've been a bit sheltered from all of that up until now.



* The effervescent Dustin Harbin - the only photo I got of him this year was a piss-poor blurry shot from Saturday night's auction (red t-shirt). He's not usually that blurry.



* Talking with Ben Towle, Jim Ottaviani, Craig Fischer and friends after the auction and totally forgetting to take any pictures

* The after-show party at the Heroes store. A very civilised way to end the show. Here are some of the people I got to hang out with:

Ed Brubaker and Jason Lutes...



... Joey Weiser and Mike Maihack (that's me on the end looking vaguely camp)...



... Jason Horn, Rosemary Van Deuren, Guy Davis and Paul Maybury



I had a long flight home on Monday with a stewardess who talked to us all like schoolchildren and inserted announcements about "remembering our boys in the troops", which could have been funny if it wasn't so annoying. Then home to family, kids, cuddles and sleep. Lots and lots of sleep.

Conventional

Conventions are upon us! This weekend I'll be a guest at the Bristol Comic Expo and its sister event, the Small Press Expo, at which I'll be doing a workshop for the under-12s (which I've yet to prepare -- eek!) and signing and sketching. This will be the first show I've been to for many a long year where I'm not an exhibitor, so I won't have a table for a change -- so check the schedule if you want to track me down (at this writing no official timetable is on the website, but there should be something at the actual event).

And, continuing our convention theme, this week's illustration is one I did for Heroes Con's convention booklet. The original art for this will be auctioned there to help defray the expense of hauling my arse out there in the first place.

Got a look this week at the beautiful artwork Jeff Parker is doing for my incredibly stupid Uncanny X-Men: First Class two-pager. It's the gorgeousest!

Last but not least, there's a short interview with me at ToughPigs.com on all things related to The Muppet Show Comic #2, which critics are already calling "not as good as #1".

Heroes Con confirmed! Et cetera!

I'm delighted to announce that I'll be attending Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina in June 2008 as a part of their "Indy Island" area. I met Dustin Harbin of that august institution at SPX, and we got to talking, and before I knew it I'd been plied with cheap booze, stuffed into the boot of his car and forced to sign a number of dubious documents. I just finished colouring this piece for them, after which Dustin has promised to release my children:



Also signed up this week to attend the next Bristol show, which is the 10th-11th of May 2008. (Fair warning, that link will take you to the cheapest-looking website you have ever seen in your life. Which, on reflection, is perfect for the British comic industry.) No blackmail required for this one, remarkably - it's the only time I see most of my cartoonist friends, so it's that or not seeing them for another year. I need to get out more.