Kids Read Comics Report (with preamble)

Wednesday

I manage to get a bit of work done at last, inking this ten-pager for Doctor Who Magazine. Today I've arranged to have dinner with Jerzy Drozd, so that at least is taken care of. I put in several hours inking, finishing a page and starting another one, then Jerzy swings by to pick me up - we get burritos (which are excellent!) then head over to his place - "The Art and Story Studios" - to eat them and record a couple of podcasts. I get to chat with show co-hosts Mark and Kevin over Skype, Jerzy and I swap comics, and we have some whiskey - all very pleasant. Jerzy is nervous about showing signs of enjoying tobacco, alcohol or swearing in case I react badly - this is alien behaviour to me (my mother ticks all three boxes), but I do my best to reassure him that all is well. The evening ends with us sitting on his porch talking about writing. Looking forward to the show.

Thursday

Anoher day of working in the hotel room - I feel better getting something done. I'm missing home. Jim Ottaviani has offered to show me around Ann Arbor a little bit before having me over for dinner - he comes by at 3pm and we go and see a wave-sculpture at the university by Maya Lin, a fabulous delicatessen called Zingerman's, the glorious turn-of-the-century splendour of the Michigan movie theatre (at which I take lots of photos - Muppet Show reference!) and other bits of local interest around the university (historic reading rooms, antiquarian books and other such turn-ons for the cartoonist/paper-fetishist side of me).



There are unique smells associated with each sight - the buttered popcorn of the Michigan, the heady aroma of cheeses at the deli, and of course the intoxicating smell of ancient paper. Then it's back to Jim's place where I meet his wife Kat - she makes a splendid pesto, and the evening passes by in a haze of good food, wine and entertaining conversation. I ogle at Jim's original artwork treasures on the wall - there's a huge George Herriman Krazy Kat original that gets me really excited. I think I did a little wee in my pants. At the end of the evening we take a pleasant walk to "the dairy" - which is an ice-cream parlour - and get ourselves ice-creams. Mine is a kiddy-size, which is plenty, and delicious. Then it's back to the hotel to do some more inking. I listen to some BBC Radio 4 podcasts on my laptop and think of home.

Friday

Jerzy is good enough to drop me off at the convention hotel - I arrive three hours before check-in, but they're good enough to find a room for me anyway and I see about getting some work done. I still have to prepare my workshop for Kids Read Comics - I find I am still spectacularly underprepared. I make a few more notes and try to find a way in - eventually I decide to start with the assumption that everybody there will have some comedic talent to begin with and to approach it from the angle of refining what is already there, rather than trying to make lead into gold, which I only now realise is the assumption I'd been operating on without even being aware of it. Great - the whole enterprise suddenly feels a lot less intimidating. Still needs work, though.

I hit a wall with the workshop prep and do a bit of inking for a change of pace, to the accompaniment of Charlie Brooker ranting out of my laptop - I occasionally have to stop because I'm laughing too hard. The hour of the Kids Read Comics opening party at Green Brain Comics approaches - I Google the route, see it's only a couple of miles and decide to walk it. As it turns out I allow more time than I need, but I overshoot the store by a couple of blocks and have to turn around, which conveniently makes me Mister Punctuality. I'm introduced to Dan Mishkin, one of the organisers and co-creator of Amethyst (he wrote the early, good ones) and Blue Devil, who is terrific company and takes very little effort to talk to, which is good, because after a week and a half of conventioning and travelling I find I'm a little burned out on human contact and am fighting the urge to shut my brain off completely. As the evening rolls on it gets a little easier, as I finally get to meet a lot of names who have up until now only been voices on my computer, or names in books and on websites - Kevin Cross (and his smart, funny wife Laura), Mark Rudolph, Diana Nock, Ryan Estrada, Krishna Sadasivam, Sara Turner and others I'm sure I'm blanking on right now. Dave Roman and Raina Telgemeier come in later, as do a lot of other people - the place is filling up. At one point a few of us sneak out for a quick beer - weirdly, every bar we see is closed, despite it being Friday night. We eventually find one, a really rowdy joint where conversation is difficult. I find this a relief, to be honest - I feel the pressure's off. Back to Green Brain for food (houmous, pita bread, vegetables and dips) and the fund-raising art auction which concludes the evening. My piece goes for $150, I think, and I pick up a Raina Telgemeier for $30 (a small one I can take home in my luggage without it getting bent to hell). Mark Rudolph drops me off at the hotel and I work an hour or so on tomorrow's workshop. Feeling a bit better about it now, I sleep at last.

Kids Read Comics Day 1 - Saturday

Wake up nice 'n' early, with an eye towards prepping my workshop one last time before the show - I'm proud of the thought I've put into this; I think I have some sound, teachable strategies worked out for generating comic-strip humour, based on some solid comedy principles. Breakfasted and (more or less) prepared, I put together my wheelie suitcase full of guff and head out to the Henry Ford Centennial Library where the convention is to be held. The mighty Google assures me it's just a short walk away. It is - kind of. What Google doesn't tell you is that there's a significant stretch of the route without any pavement - I'm forced to drag the suitcase along the grass verge. What larks. I get to the library covered in a fine coating of sweat and lawn clippings, ready to face the convention-going public in the manner to which they have no doubt become accustomed.

The show itself is great, if a little slow. Not in a bad way - it's steady, manageable business. Sketches are going well. Books, less so - it looks like I've overstocked and will have to ship a bunch of things home before my plane leaves on Monday, so I'm not totally off the baggage-weight scale. At lunchtime there is food laid on for the exhibitors, courtesy of Art & Story - I have a falafel wrap, which is excellent, and I thank the guys for laying it on. Towards 1pm I'm dragooned into an extra bit of programming, a Quick-Draw event, due to Matt Feazell having to leave for a family emergency. This turns out to be great fun, possibly one of the highlights of the show. Three cartoonists (me, Diana Nock and Mike Bocianowski) are given a challenge made up of suggestions from the audience which they have to draw against a strict time limit, the winner being judged by the volume of audience cheering. Half a dozen challenges later I'm an honorable runner-up. I forget the winner - I think it was Mike - but Diana knocks it out every time with sheer crazy inventiveness. My efforts are more traditional gags, like bad New Yorker cartoons. The kids seemed to like 'em, though.

Back to the table for an hour, then the dreaded workshop. I'm nervous, my notes all laid out in front of me as a visible crutch to get me through. Five seconds in, it's obvious that I've put in a lot of work for nothing, as what essentially happens is a bunch of five-to-ten year olds ask me to draw fart jokes for an hour. I go with the flow - I offer a figleaf of analysis at the end of each bit, once I've drawn the strips we work out together as a group, but this is essentially a sideshow for the kids, with Uncle Roger as their ink gimp. Once I've accepted that, I find it's actually pretty good fun. I make an executive decision at one point and steer a strip away from bodily function humour, because we've already been down that road for a while by this stage, but otherwise my input is more in the way of herding cats.

Back at the table and I'm trading books with loads of people now. This for me is the best part of doing shows in far-flung corners of the world - I get to see a ton of small-scale, small print run books that never get wide comic-shop distribution; everything is utterly unique and this show is the only chance I'll ever get to see most of it. The level of talent around the floor is for the most part really high, probably even more so than at the UK Web and Mini-Comix Thing, which it resembles in terms of scale (and that show's pretty good).

The show wraps up around 6 - I've been invited to a barbecue at Mark Rudolph's place and Zach Bosteel (amazing name!) has offered me a ride there, so after dropping off my artwork at the hotel we head out. It's a hell of a long drive - I think we'd been expecting it to be a half-hour or so, but it takes us over an hour. At one point we get lost and drive miles past our turnoff. Eventually we get there and the beer and conversation is flowing freely. I just have the one drink because I'm pretty tired and another one will have me snoring. There are grilled mushrooms for the vegetarians, and salads and dips and other good things. I sit on the back porch swatting bugs most of the night, enjoying what are essentially hugely entertaining rants by the other guests, particularly Kevin Cross, prodding them once in a while with the occasional question to keep things moving. Zach offers to take me back around midnight - we spend another hour in the car finding the hotel. Zach is good company, an interesting guy with an interesting mind. I resolve to check out his work. Around 1:30am I finally get to bed. I'm getting too old for this...

Kids Read Comics Day 2 - Sunday

Despite my tiredness, I wake up ridiculously early, which is par for the course for me these days. Aargh. Still not early enough to catch Sylvie and the kids, who will be out for the whole day at the annual school fair (Sylvie being one of the chief organisers, she's there hours before everyone else). I write for a while, then I breakfast, shower and brave the grass verges once more. No suitcase this time, fortunately - that, and my books, remain at the library. It's a slow start - someone mentions that everybody's probably still at church, which seems obvious, but living in a country where even the Archbishop of Canterbury seems to have his doubts about the existence of God, it surprises me. People still do that? The only churchgoers I know back home do it just to get their kids into good schools.

My workshop rolls around - at noon this time, so I'm getting it out of the way early. It takes much the same form as yesterday's session, only this time Matt Feazell is in the audience, which momentarily paralyses me - I know full well that he could be standing up there instead of me and running rings around my shabby performance. I soldier on, and everybody seems to have fun - those that stay, anyway. A few leave early, for reasons unknown. I'd like to believe it's because they were wanting some of the theory I'd prepared, but I expect it's more likely to be because the thing was an utter shambles. At one point during one of our improvised four-panel strips, desperate for a punchline, I shamelessly recycle a Goon Show joke. If Matt Feazell spotted it, he was kind enough not to mention it. Once we got onto the hands-on stuff, where the kids made their own strips, there was one boy up the front who had the most amazing ideas. I don't know whether it's because my blather about anticipating the obvious and doing the opposite for comic effect had sunk in or whether he just had funny bones, but his stuff was genuinely funny. All the kids were really original - none of them used the characters we'd worked up together, they all made up their own. I felt a warm little glow.

Back at the table, another falafel wrap was waiting for me courtesy of the Falafel Fairy (Jerzy won't like me calling him that). Lunch over, it's back to work. Traffic is slower today, and I get to walk around a bit during longeurs and pick up a few books. Aware that I'm accumulating paper like a madman, I calculate that I'll have enough time to go to the post office on Monday morning before I fly home and ship a ton of it back separately, which seems like the only sane course at this stage. It'll be worth it - I can read my own books anytime, but this stuff needs to be grabbed when I see it.

I got to meet William Messner-Loebs, who told me he's writing for Boom! as well (I told him I read Journey back when it was first coming out, which seemed genuinely to surprise him - maybe I don't look as old as I think). Actually, I met a lot of people and reacquainted myself with a lot of others, and many of the names aren't coming to mind right away, to my shame - I'm pretty awful with names at the best of times, but the last couple of weeks have been a challenge all round. I remember Joe Foo, Paul Storrie, Thom (blanking on surname), Michelangelo something-or other... oh, I'll shut up now, I'm just embarrassing myself. Forgive me, people!

By six o'clock everyone's pretty eager to get out of the joint - it's been a long, slow afternoon, and most of the general public went home an hour ago. Dinner arrangements are made - the plan seems to be to meet in the hotel lobby and head on somewhere from there, so I prevail upon Zach one more time to take me and my heavy suitcase back to the hotel. Soon, gear dumped, I head downstairs, and pretty soon the place is filling up with exhibitors. The plan now seems to be to order pizza to be delivered here - there is beer available at reception in a little fridge you could miss if you blink, so we get in some drinks and the chatter begins. Kevin and I compare notes o the New Zealand punk scene - he's got a smattering of knowledge, but it's all of bands I've never heard of, and I thought I'd at least heard of most 1970s New Zealand bands. I promise to send him some Exploding Budgies and Toy Love and whatnot. Kevin asks me if I've ever been in a band - I mention my only claim to fame in that regard, the mighty "Gondaliers of my Black and Blue Love Canal", in which I perform as Knuckles the Malevolent Nun. He and Mark Rudolph are intrigued by this and make me promise to send them MP3s presently.


(Left to right: Kevin Cross, Laura Cross, Zach Bosteel)

The company is great - really, the company is hysterical - but I feel ever more exhausted and I still need to pack. It's time to say goodbye. I go around the room thanking everybody and slink upstairs to do what needs to be done. It feels like an ending in a way - and I guess it is, as far as this report is concerned - but I feel like I've made some friends.

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.

I've Got the Pods

Here's a sketch of Barney Google I did for Mike Rhode at Heroes Con. Eye candy for all the octogenarians in the audience! My thanks to Mike for the scan.


May I draw your attention to a couple of recent podcast appearances? A Heroes Con panel I was on, Craft and Process in Comics, is up at the Dollar Bin website - one for the cartoonists there, I imagine. Also for the cartoonists is a guest appearance on Art and Story, the podcast about the craft of making comics - actually sitting in in person this time, as I'm in Michigan for Kids Read Comics. Thanks to Jerzy Drozd for making me welcome and for sharing his bourbon!

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!

Ridiculous!

I'm back from New Zealand as of a couple of days ago, though I've barely got time to touch the ground before I'm off to Canada for TCAF. This month and the next are going to be ridiculously busy! But that's not what I want to talk about today, oh no. Today I want to tell everybody that my collection of Doctor Sputnik stories is available to order online from IndyPlanet.com - just follow the link.


This image isn't from the comic - it's from a Doctor Sputnik story I began once and abandoned after six panels. But they were a nice six panels.

Toronto and the Lone Stranger

In a whirlwind development that's just come together over the last day or two, it looks like I'll be a guest at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival on May 8th and 9th. In addition to signings at the Boom! Studios booth, I'll be chatting to Tom Spurgeon about my work and possibly popping up on other panels as well (at this stage I honestly have no idea). Anyway - should be crazy fun.

Thor!

I've been sitting on this news for a while, so I'm thrilled that I can finally reveal the new book I'm going to be working on with the amazingly talented Chris Samnee for Marvel. It's called Thor, the Mighty Avenger and you can read all about it here and here. I'm now officially a two-books-a-month guy!

Those Pigs Are Tough

Quick heads-up about an interview on ToughPigs.com about some of my recent Muppets work.


And here's a Doctor Sputnik sketch, for no reason at all - because it's there, I suppose. Which is as good a reason as any.

Up For a Gong

Well, a bit of news today. It appears my first Muppet Show book, Meet the Muppets, has been nominated for an Eisner Award. I'm not holding my breath about actually winning the thing - I'm up against John Stanley, for crying out loud - but it's a great feeling to be on the list. Thanks to the Eisner committee for the nomination, and to all the talented people who facilitate the process and make my work look as nice as it does.

Sputnik!!

Couple of things this week. First of all, I recently made an appearance on the Art and Story Extreme!! Podcast, where I talked briefly about my upcoming trip to the USA in June, as well as a bunch of other stuff (it was that sort of conversation). You can check that out here.

Secondly, but related to firstly, I've put together a 32-page collection of my Doctor Sputnik stories for that very trip, so I'll have something brand spanking new (and yet very, very old) for folks to pick up when I'm there. It's nothing you couldn't already read online, although the print edition will be cleaned up a little (content-wise) to be kid-friendly, but even so, it should make a nice wee package, if I do say so myself. I'm trying out the services of Ka-Blam, the print-on-demand printers, for this one - a colour card-stock cover and black-and-white interiors. The cover was done in Adobe Illustrator, partly because I was in a hurry, partly because I liked the look. Out in June! (And it should be available online from that time as well.)


Lastly, I should mention that I had a grand old time at the UK Web and Mini-Comix Thing last Saturday. It's my only local show these days, and I don't think I've missed one yet. I probably won't be doing any report on the show because I'm off to New Zealand in a couple of days and I'm running out of time for that sort of thing, but I'm guessing there'll be other attendees with comprehensive accounts who are only a Google away.

Now, Here's the Thing...

I spent yesterday getting ready for the UK Web and Mini-Comix Thing this weekend - London's finest (and possibly only) small-press comics show. Oh, such treats! As well as printing up another batch of my usual old mini-comics, I'll have a brand new mini-edition of Mugwhump the Great collecting the web strip to date which will be making its debut at the show. This one clocks in at a stonking FORTY! PAGES! - and that's only Chapters 2 and 3; Chapter One is in a separate mini which I put together this time last year (also at the show this Saturday - so you can get the whole thing if you want). Terrifying in its own small way.

If you've seen the latest Mugwhump strip, you'll be aware that I'm taking a short break from the strip. Still a bit vague about when I'll be picking it up again, but I'm thinking it'll be a couple of months. During the gap, I'll still be updating the blog, so do keep checking in, won't you?


Here's an oldie. My brother Andrew and I did a comic called Zoot! for a couple of years in the early 90s. Zoot! #7 is a comic that never happened - most of what was intended to go into it was eventually collected in Zoot Suite, and I used a re-done version of the cover as the back cover to that book, but this actual version of the cover has never been published. I've often considered starting up Zoot! again as an online project, releasing it as a PDF every so often or something, right before looking at my schedule, falling off my chair and laughing.

Sketchy Neighbourhood

Over at ACT-I-VATE, the current chapter of Mugwhump the Great wraps up this week... leaving just the final chapter to deal with once I catch up with everything else. Most of the story is just about in place in my head now, bar a few dangling things I need to loop back in somehow. Should keep me on my toes, however it happens. Also running there at the moment is a story I did with Jim Dougan, Machismo Monitor. A fun little thing from a couple of years ago.

Heaven help me, I'm actually going to be drawing today for the first time in a while. I'm getting used to the writing life, to the point where that white paper is feeling mighty intimidating sitting there on my drawing board. I'm doing the covers (they do two per issue - crazy!) to Muppet Show #8 - here are a couple of rough sketches I submitted, only one of which will be making its way on to an actual comic.



Which one will they actually be using? Aha! You'll just have to wait and see.

Hulk Pants

Langridge-watchers (all four of you) may like to check out a brief interview with me at Comic Book Resources, where I talk mainly about Muppets, but also about a few other bits and pieces. Here's the linkypoo.

Just finished writing Muppet Show #8, which will be the start of a new four-issue story arc. I'll be back at the drawing board from here on in for a while, so I'm taking the opportunity afforded me by Amy Mebberson's fabulous work on the Family Reunion story to get a good head start.


Do ya like the Hulk? Do ya? Well, do ya?? I drew this as part of a short burst of daily sketches which petered out after three days. Pooh. I may take another run at it. I haven't done much drawing over the last couple of months - it's all been writing - and I think I need to get limbered up a bit before jumping in to a new four-issue story.

Breathe in... aaannd relax.

Thinking Out Loud

I get asked from time to time about my web strip Mugwhump the Great - whether it's all written in advance, whether I have plans to publish it at some point, that sort of thing. The assumption behind these questions seems to be that I actually know what I'm doing; that I have some grand strategy or master plan. I'd love to be able to tell you that that's the case. I really would. But the truth is more that Mugwhump is a reaction to everything else I'm doing, and it's enough for me to know that I'm doing it. What happens when I finish it, assuming I ever do, hasn't really crossed my mind.

The thing is, Mugwhump exists on a week-by-week basis and, despite the ongoing narrative that's nominally weaving its way through the strip, it's usually thrown together at the last minute. I do kind of have an overall end point in mind (although it changes all the time), and I have a couple of nifty set-pieces I'm meandering towards (ditto), but essentially I'm busking.

That thing about it being a reaction to whatever else I'm doing? Right now, that means a couple of things. The biggie, the one that takes most of my waking hours, is the Muppet Show Comic Book. The big thing about that is that it's owned and controlled by Disney, which means that every step in the process is scrupulously controlled, overseen, filed, catalogued, approved, altered, scrapped, rewritten and generally dicked around with. And that's fine, and entirely to be expected on anything Disney own - they've got millions of dollars tied up in these properties, and to let some yahoo like me come along and do whatever he damn well pleases would be corporate negligence of the highest order. I knew the deal when I took the gig, and if anything it's been a much easier ride than I ever expected. But the fact is, it's something I have to work out way in advance and submit my thought processes every step of the way, or the system breaks down. And on my day off, I don't want to do things that way.

Hence Mugwhump. The strip where I jump off a bridge every week, flap my arms like mad and hope I land on something soft. Now that I'm approaching the final chapter, I see that what I'm doing is pretty much what the newspaper strip cartoonists of old did on a daily basis.

I read an interview with writer and Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat recently where he talked about how he never writes outlines - he just jumps in and finds the story moment by moment. His defence of that approach was along the lines of, well, you can't be writing something in a script that's there purely to get you from point A to point B, you can't be putting stuff in there that's only worth putting in for what it eventually builds up to. Every moment in a script has to work in its own right, every moment should be compelling on its own. Not knowing where the story's going ensures that you make every beat in your story as good as it can be. And, if you're lucky, talented and ingenious enough, you just might be able to pull it all together by the end.

That seems to me to be pretty much what Frank King, or Chester Gould, or E.C. Segar did every day of their working lives. It actually seems to be an approach that's tailor-made for the strip format, as opposed to the comic book or graphic novel formats. And darned if I'm not realising that that's where my heart's been all along. So I'm thinking my next web project once Mugwhump concludes should be something much more newspaper-strippish, something open-ended. And something I can do quickly. Four panels a day with a stopwatch, before my work day starts properly. During the break from Mugwhump that's coming up, I may attempt something along those lines, just to get my feet wet. Not making any promises just yet, mind, but it's lurking at the back of my brain.

Who knows? It's so crazy it just might work.

G'day, Mate!

Okay, so this week I made a decision - Mugwhump the Great will take another short hiatus once the current chapter is finished, which will be in about a month. I've got a trip to New Zealand coming up - I'll be there for most of April - and trying to get ahead enough before I left was proving too much for even my considerable powers. Best to worry about it after I get back from the Old Country. I'm determined that there will be content updating at the Hotel Fred of some kind or another during its absence - so stay tuned as I work out what that actually is.

Anyway. Having made that decision, I've had to get cracking on some scripts that are due. I'm currently scripting, tag-style, Muppet Show #8 (which I'll be back to drawing full-time after Amy Mebberson's wonderful run concludes) and, er, something else. Sorry to be a tease, but I saw the cover for the first issue yesterday and I just about wet myself. It should be something wonderful.

Kids Read Comics!

They've announced it on their website, so it's time I made some noise about it here: I will be attending the Kids Read Comics convention in Dearborn, Michigan on June 12th & 13th - one week after attending Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC, actually, so it's going to be a busy old time for a couple of weeks there. I'm excited about both events, but Kids Read Comics is kind of unique in that, as the name implies, the focus is on child-friendly and all-ages comics. Which is the end of the comic industry where I'm spending pretty much all my time these days. In addition to the opportunity to meet a lot of younger readers I might not otherwise get a chance to see, there'll be a whole bunch of great cartoonists there who I'm really looking forward to meeting as well. So - a good place to go and a good time to go there.

According to Graham Linehan's blog, he's actively looking for "cool stuff" to spread around the set of the new series of The IT Crowd, currently a strong contender for Britain's Best Sitcom in my humble opinion. By "cool stuff" he means all kinds of things, but particularly comic-related things - in previous series he's had Jim Woodring posters, Daniel Clowes books and, oh yes, Fred the Clown comics. It helps if you own the rights to the things you send him, but it's not essential. So if you think you can help, head on over.

In other news, I just clocked up another year on this dirtball we call Earth. My birthday presents reflected my rapidly-advancing age - a box of licorice, no doubt intended to ease my bowel movements; a David Sedaris audiobook, to aid me with my failing eyesight; and some Art Jazz by Bill Frisell, because I'm not into all that hippety-hoppety stuff they do nowadays.

Pass the toffees.

Police Box

Doctor Who fans, epecially fans of Doctors past, might like to know that there's a publication focusing on the history of the comic strip in Doctor Who Magazine to which I contributed a part of the cover and a short interview about my days as DWM's regular caricaturist. It's called Vworp Vworp! (after the sound the TARDIS makes in the strip - no, I don't know why it does that either) and you can get it here.


Here's a closeup of my bit on the cover, a "jam" featuring a veritable Who's That of Who artists past and present. The full spread is glorious to behold. And there are free transfers by Paul Grist of the Eleventh Doctor attached to the cover, which makes me happy in a way I can't tell you.

Bastards!

I've been noticing this thing turning into a sketch blog lately. This may be a welcome development. Here's one I did for someone which they then kindly posted on the internet so I could steal it back.


I've recently discovered the work of a guy called Chris Samnee, who I understand is big shakes in the world of superhero comics. He's bloody great! Like the bastard child of Alex Toth. And what drew my attention to this fine fellow, I hear you ask?

Ah, now. Well. Patience, grasshopper. Patience.

Spïjnåch

This is an old thing, but it's only just been posted to the web - I did a sketch for Hey, Oscar Wilde - It's Clobberin' Time! It's all about cartoonists drawing characters (or their authors) from literature. Well worth browsing through the rest of the site while you're there.


It's been all scripting this week, apart from a couple of covers which if I showed them to you would SPOIL EVERYTHING so I'm not going to. Nyah. I can tell you that Muppet Show #5 will contain the words Brobdignagia, Trunticled and Spïjnåch.

The Comic Supplement

Lots of writing at the moment as I get caught up. So - not a lot of pretty pictures to share with you... you'll have to settle for my manky old sketches. Meanwhile, a crust of inky shellac forms on the rim of the inkpot, welding the lid onto it like cement...



Been reading a rather good biography of W.C. Fields lately. There's a lot of interesting stuff about a revue he appeared in when he was a Broadway star called The Comic Supplement, in which the acts represented "strips" in a conceptual Sunday Funnies section, and it struck me that I'm far from the first person to combine vaudeville and comics. Genuine vaudevilleans beat me to it by about 80 years.

Doing the Hokey Kokey

Okay, Muppeteers -- the next story arc situation is sorted out, and basically it means things have been switched around and a later story arc has been moved forward. And in a funny kind of way, it's worked out for the best -- because there's a big surprise coming up for long-time Muppet fans, and it's one we've managed to avoid foreshadowing in Previews and online publicity thanks to the switch... so when you see it, it'll really be a surprise. I'll say no more.

Last week I finished writing a Hulk one-shot for Marvel, which was great fun to do. I'm talking about doing more work for them, but only after I've caught up on my Muppet commitments... which I'm running kind of late with at the moment. Time to get to that keyboard. Fly, little fingers... fly like the wind!

Man vs Mouse

Not the greatest week for Muppet-related matters, as I've just been told that my next two plotlines have some sort of issue as far Disney are concerned... but they haven't told me what. And there are no obvious problem areas as far as I can see. So everything's on hold there until I hear something. In the meantime I'm getting some work done for Marvel and hoping my schedule won't be a complete train wreck by the time Disney finally tell me what I can and can't do. I suppose I can't complain too much, I've had a good run. I believe this happens all the time to anybody working on a Disney property. I've just been phenomenally lucky in avoiding it up until now.


Anyway, I hope everybody had a great New Year's celebration. Here's what would have been one of the covers to issue 5 (and may still be yet -- fingers crossed). Have a great 2010, won't you?

New Year's Revulsions

What about that 2009, eh? What about that?! Yeah, me neither. Actually, my 2009 has been all right, so I'm counting my blessings, really. I know it's been rough for a lot of people.

New Year's Resolutions:
(1) To try and get a collection of my old mini-comics and scattered one-off short stories together, probably as a print-on-demand affair for selling at conventions and through the ol' website.
(2) To produce a comic through entirely digital means that looks as much like my hand-drawn comics as possible, just to prove to myself it can be done. So far my attempts at digital artwork have been very digital-looking, and that's not what I want. So yeah, learn some skills.
(3) To get more sleep. Of the three, that's the least likely to happen.


Here's a picture I did as a commission - Waiting for Godot as performed by Laurel and Hardy, which I'd love to do one day - a straight adaptation, with the entire original text unaltered, just with Stan and Ollie as Vladimir and Estragon. It's a book waiting to happen.

Well, Ho Ho Ho to you too

It's actually starting to feel like the end of the year now - people are getting reflective all of a sudden. There's a short interview with me on ToughPigs right now where I talk a bit about The Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson - check it out here. Also very flattered to be mentioned as part of Rich Kreiner's Best of 2009 roundup over at the all-new Comics Journal website - and especially pleased for Fin Fang Four collaborator Scott Gray, who's getting some much-deserved attention lately.

Here's a Christmas present for you all - Kevin Cross starts his new webcomic, Monkey Mod, today. Yow! Been looking forward to this for a while. If you haven't seen the trailer, go now. Now, I say! Fly like the wind!

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Pet Avengers Assemble

I was recently asked to do a cover for the Marvel comic Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers. Here's a step-by-step snapshot of the various stages, because I've recently been asked about such things.

First I did a couple of roughs...



The one selected for developing into a fully-rendered cover was the second one, so I then drew it in pencil on a piece of letter-sized paper.


Finally, I scanned the pencils and blew them up to finished art size, printed them out as a blueline (light blue lines which can be inked without reproducing, so only the inked lines are visible), and inked everything with a No 2 sable brush and a Hunt 102 dip pen.


Ta-dah! Wyatt Wingfoot's your uncle.

The Googlemeister Is In

I have been just a teensy bit obsessed with Billy DeBeck's great newspaper strip, Barney Google, lately - not so much the later Snuffy Smith-centred material, more the Early Funny Ones. Here's my one attempt to do a Billy DeBeck style, at which I think I totally failed.


The problem is that DeBeck was such a good artist - his cartooning decisions were 100% conscious and deliberate, based on a rock-solid underlying drawing ability (this is a guy who started out forging Charles Dana Gibson drawings for a living!). So his fluidity is really hard to imitate if you have a more awkward, laboured relationship with the pen and brush.

Here's an example of the real deal.


More Barney Google in print - that's what I want for Christmas.

Rhapsody in Brown

Here's a Fred the Clown strip I did for Tripwire a couple of years ago - I think enough time has passed now for me to post it here without getting anybody annoyed.

Art and Story Extreme!! had a short appearance by me last week - just a fun cameo on a call-in show, and nothing there for the ages particularly, but it was a pretty funny show once I got out of the way.

Ooh, I think that's about it. Ever so slightly behind on stuff right now (that's code for AAAARGGH) so it's a short one this week. See you in the funny pages.

Happy Daddy

I'm a very proud daddy this week. My seven-year-old daughter asked if she could watch a DVD "for grownups". Once my heart had started again, I showed her Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill Jr -- and she loved it. And my four-year-old son has been getting me to make pencil sketches for him to trace over for the past few days, essentially so he can practise inking; he calls it "tracing", but that's effectively what he's doing. So, yay kids! I've posted this picture once before, but I thought it deserved a return engagement.

And the winner for most boring post is...

Bit of Sam the Eagle for ya. These are the pencils for one of the covers for Muppet Show #4.

Just a short post this week - I'm running behind schedule due to some domestic crises that needed dealing with. All right, the cat was ill. He's a weird old fella who we recently adopted from an animal shelter, found as a stray originally, and it turns out he's got this terrible catalogue of ailments. So he's turning out to be quite high-maintenance. Behold the mighty Sylvester...


I have just posted a picture of my cat to my blog. My life is now complete and I can die happy.

Skin

I designed a tattoo! My artwork is now a permanent part of someone's body. How about that.

I believe the final issue of Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson is out this Wednesday. I think I managed to pull everything together at the end (by the skin of my teeth), but from here on in there'll be a lot more of a self-contained quality to each issue. That whole series was quite the learning experience.

Looks like I'll be drawing a Doctor Who story next year for the Who Mag! It'll be a ten-page short story with the Eleventh Doctor, written by Jonathan Morris, and without giving the concept away, let's just say it sounds like the research will be a lot of fun.

Finished the script for the first issue of the Muppet Show: Guest Stars story arc this week, featuring Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. There's also a brief appearance by Galileo which should make Mike Dawson very happy.

You Were Rubbish, Sir

In the UK we don't really have a tradition of trick-or-treating - it's an American invention that commercial forces have been trying to force down our throats over here for about a decade now. So every Halloween we get a lot of people who don't really know the procedure trying to do something we've only ever seen on television. But even with that caveat, there was no excuse for the kid (about 13) who knocked on our door without a costume of any kind. We asked him what he was dressed as; his reply, after thinking about it for way too long, was, "Um... I'm a chav." Well, I'll tell you, he only got one lolly from us! Oh my yes! And a stern admonition to try harder next year! I don't know what we need Halloween for here anyway - we've got a perfectly good Catholic-burning five days later we can celebrate.

Salons, Scripts and Stories

First, those of of you in the New York area might like to know about the ACT-I-VATE Salon this Thursday - details below, or follow the link.


This week I was asked by Marvel to write a four-issue series for their Marvel Adventures line. This is exactly the sort of thing I gave up my magazine illustration work to be able to do more of - it's just where I think the biggest challenges are for me creatively right now - so I said yes, and now I have to figure out how the hell I'm going to do it. The brief is to do a big cosmic thing starring the Avengers and Thanos, loosely based on an old story in the Marvel Universe proper which I'd never heard of. Go on, lemming, over the cliff...

Quick recommendation: Art & Story, the podcast on the craft of creating comics. Right now they're in the middle of a series called "Your Comic from the Ground Up", where the hosts, Mark and Jerzy, discuss just that - how to build a long-form comic story from scratch. Really good stuff, especially to someone like me, who's way more comfortable in the "3-minute pop-song" end of comics.

Drink the Wind

Mugwhump's back on ACT-I-VATE! Go check it out here -- as before, there'll be a one-week lag before it appears here at the Hotel Fred, but appear it shall. Most exciting.


Here's something that happened a couple of days ago between me and my son Thomas -- I had a Soppy Dad moment and had to get it down on paper. It'll probably make anybody without kids cringe. Tough, I say, tough! The boy has a way with a poetic turn of phrase, what can I tell you? He'll be four next week.

All this to look forward to

One week until Mugwhump is back on your computer screens! I'm really looking forward to doing something non-corporate for a change - the Muppets are great fun, but they'll never be mine-all-mine. Here's a teaser - pencil art for the first installment, which will essentially be a recap since I've been away from it for so long.


This morning I had my next couple of Muppet plots given the go-ahead from Boom!, though there's still Disney to hear back from - but, all things being equal, you'll soon be seeing human guest stars (at least for a few issues) and the return of some characters who haven't appeared in the comic up until now. Yes, I'm teasing you. Tee hee.

Throwing Peanuts

Back to some proper drawing this week. Feeling rusty after only occasional doodles for a few weeks, but my scripting schedule is completely back on track now and ideas for the next couple of Muppet Show story arcs are falling into place. So I'm feeling on top of things for the first time in a while.

Hey, I received my copies of the first Muppet Show collection in the mail this week - not bad! I was expecting the dimensions to be smaller, more digest-sized. This looks about perfect to me - my originals are drawn pretty close to printed size, so a small amount of reduction actually flatters the work considerably. There's a weird printing error on one page for some reason - the resolution on one of the Pigs in Space pages is all screwed up - but apart from that it's everything I could have hoped for. And I'm really, really pleased to see my old Disney Adventures strips published in the back at last.

Also received a copy of The Widow's Curse, the Doctor Who graphic novel which features a nine-pager by Jonny Morris and me, "Death to the Doctor!", plus a bunch of sketches and notes about the story. (And lots of other goodness besides, of course.) The Tenth Doctor strip really started to find its legs around this period.


And now, for no reason whatsoever, here's something I did years ago for a Schulz-themed exhibition organised by my friend Brad Brooks - not quite the last time I tried painting anything, but pretty nearly. Ah, computers, you've ruined me.

Look, Ma! I'm Writin'!

I've had a pretty decent week, productivity-wise, having nailed down the plot for the final issue of the Muppet Show: On the Road story arc, finished writing the first issue, completely scripted the second issue, started writing the third, and written the first three weeks of the re-started Mugwhump the Great strip. And I've drawn stuff-all!

I've discovered something -- I get cross and irritable when I write all day. I don't know if it's the act of writing so much as the fact of not drawing that's doing it. I know I can't take holidays without climbing the walls after a day or two unless I have something to draw, so I suspect it's related. That said, writing is such an immersive experience that it almost hurts to be interrupted, and I suspect that has something to do with it as well. I normally just write in the early mornings, when being interrupted isn't an issue, but the Muppet scripts were way behind and I needed to catch up.

Anyway. Almost caught up. Then it'll just be back to early mornings for a bit, drawing the rest of the day, and my family will like me again. As much as they usually do, anyway.



It lives! Dean Haspiel with the ACT-I-VATE PRIMER. With Mugwhump starting up again soon, it's impeccable timing.

Pyjamas are great

Oh, I've had such a lovely week. While Shelli Paroline works on drawing the upcoming Muppet Show #0, I've been writing, just writing. And working "gentleman's hours", which in my case means getting up at 7am instead of 5:30am. I could get used to this. But, alas, it's time to get back in the saddle again, before the extra time the fill-in has bought me is entirely frittered away. Still, I want to take this opportunity to thank Shelli as publicly as can for saving my health and my sanity. Really, it was getting that bad.


On to other things! I've given up my regular illustration spot in Inside Soap magazine, and will jump off that particular horse as soon as they get a replacement cartoonist. That's going to buy me an extra 4 or 5 days a month - it means a bit less money, but it'll mean I can do some other things once in a while. (I mean, I love working on the Muppets, but I like a change every now and then too.) One thing I've done over the last week is work out the next chapter of Mugwhump the Great, which I've now got no excuse for not starting up again as soon as the nice people over at ACT-I-VATE will have me back. I'm planning to pick it up one month from now - October 20th. Mark your calendars!

Speaking of Mugwhump and ACT-I-VATE, I'm reliably informed that our guy at IDW, Scott Dunbier, has held a copy of the much-ballyhooed ACT-I-VATE PRIMER in his trembling hands. He says it looks amazing. And who am I to disagree?

The Asgard Connection

By now I expect everybody's heard that Disney has acquired Marvel Comics. I don't really know that there's anything to be said about it, except that for now it seems to be business as usual as far as my work goes (working both sides of that particular fence as I do). For those who want to get a bit more info, I recommend checking out The Comics Reporter, reading Tom Spurgeon's analysis and following the links.

Having addressed that elephant in the room, I heard this past week that we've got a definite artist for the Pigs in Space one-shot (or Muppet Show Comic Book #0, as it's now officially designated) - it's Shelli Paroline, whose Muppet work can already be seen on the Muppet Robin Hood covers. Should be all kinds of fun. And a big thank you to Shelli for taking some of the pressure off my work schedule, so I can continue to bring my best work to this comic.

And now, for absolutely no reason, here's a creaky one from the vaults - the first page of a series I did for Dark Horse Presents back in the day, Doctor Spin, with scripts by Gordon Rennie. It ran for four issues, starting in DHP #115. Still quite fond of it - I really knocked myself out on the artwork, to deafening indifference. Anyway.