And still they come!

On a similar note to last week's post, I thought I'd run these this week - this is a selection of sketches I did a while back when I attended the APE convention in San Francisco. My daughter was 2 at the time, so it must have been four years ago. I think these were scanned by the gentleman who took them away with him, and the scans sent to me after the show. That's what my foggy memory is telling me, anyway. I think most of these are fairly self-explanatory.

What can I tell you, it's been a dull week.

Return of the Sketch

Since last week's post-Heroes Con report, several people have sent me photos or scans of the sketches I did for them, which was really nice. I'm going to run those this week. Nice easy post!


This one was hand-coloured at the show by Laura Martin. Lovely idea.


The Escapist, er, escaping.


The Good Doctor...


My favorite super-hero...


The Batusi as performed by Alfred.


Cheesy hero/villain trying to carry off the "gay porn star" look, Vartox, from 1970s Superman comics.


Tom Waits. It's bloody Tom Waits, all right?


Darn those Yancy Streeters!


And Sandman as a Muppet.

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.

HEROES!!

Only a couple of days now until I get on the plane to go to Heroes Con, and very much looking forward to it. For those of you attending the show who might want to track me down, I'll have a table at the Indy Island section, and will also be doing a panel on Saturday at 12:30pm, Making Comics for All Ages, with Jeff Smith, David Petersen and Chris Schweizer ("and more", it says on the schedule - possibly Don Rosa, who will be attending the show? Fingers crossed!).


Now, who can spot the difference between the cover above and the published version? Any ideas? Check out the audience members four rows back, between Gonzo's arm and his head. Yup - Bert and Ernie. I'm not allowed to use Sesame Street characters on the Muppet Show comics, but at the time I drew this cover I wasn't aware of that, so I tried to sneak 'em in. But I got busted! Still, makes a nice little curiosity for the old blog.

On the subject of Muppets, there's a chat online with me at ToughPigs.com about the third issue you may like to check out. And I spoke to Comic Geek Speak on Sunday for their pre Heroes Con show, so I imagine that will be up before the weekend. Their focus was mostly on the Muppets, although they very sweetly took the trouble to mention Fred the Clown a few times and ignored my Marvel work entirely. Did I mention I'll have Fred the Clown for sale at Heroes Con? I'll have Fred the Clown for sale at Heroes Con.

One more thing about Heroes Con - I will be sketching! Yes, I will! I'm going to try an experiment this year and have a Tip Jar, the idea being that you pay me whatever you think your sketch is worth. So everybody can afford one - no excuses!

Middle-Class Twit

Thanks to the handful of people who've sent me a note saying they'd like to follow me on Twitter. I'm afraid I don't do Twitter. I can't see the point of getting up and running over to the computer every half-hour to tell the world I've scratched my arse. Because, frankly, that's what you'd get -- my life ain't that scintillating. And I can't see that I'd get anything out of it on my end except a colossal drain on my time. If anybody's got a persuasive argument in favour of the blasted thing I'll give it a hearing, but I've yet to hear one that doesn't sound like a justification for faffing about instead of working. And I'm perfectly capable of faffing about on my own. Sorry, folks, but there it is.


Here's my back cover to the new Indie Spinner Rack anthology, Awesome 2: Awesomer, which is out around now. It concludes a narrative begun on the front cover by Jeff Smith which continues throughout the issue. The line-up in this one looks absolutely stellar, and it's my first time being published by Top Shelf after dancing around one another for over a decade. Highly recommended.

Heroes Con is just ten days away. Cushlamochree! Last year I had a blast and I'm thrilled that I've been asked back. (Guess I can't have been as drunk as I thought I was.) I normally like to have something new to sell at a convention, but I've been so busy with Muppet stuff that I haven't had time to do any new mini-comics apart from those. What I will try to have that I didn't have last year, though, is a convention-only special sketchbook mini. I'm looking at a stack of sketches about a foot high and I'm sure I can cobble something together out of that before the show. So, yes, I will have something new. I'll also have copies of the Mugwhump the Great mini-comic which debuted earlier this year at the UK Web and Mini-Comix Thing, collecting Chapter 1 of the online strip. So you've no excuse for not spending money.

The Lone Stranger

Further behind schedule than ever on the Muppets, but The Treasure of Peg-Leg Wilson #1 is only a couple more days away from completion now. I spoke yesterday to some cartoonist friends who, concerned for my health, kindly pointed out that nobody else writes, pencils and inks a monthly comic single-handedly. "Nobody else. Just you."


Now here's an illustration I did a while ago (judging by the art style). The name of the file is "Egghead and Zzapboy", but for the life of me I can't remember a single other thing about it. Who was it for? (affects Pee-Wee Herman voice) I Don't Know! Answers on a postcard please. Actually, writing these words, something comes back about the Egg - I originally drew him dour and professorial, but the client kept asking me to make it look more and more like "he was having a good time" until the final version looked completely unhinged. Who was that masked client? Shucks, Jimmy, I don't know.

Cracking Toast, Kermit!

I received some copies of Science Fiction Classics in the mail this week, which I take as a sign that it's now available. My contribution to the anthology is a Professor Challenger story called The Disintegration Machine (adapted by Rod Lott from the story by Arthur Conan Doyle). It's the first time they've attempted full colour, and right fancy it is too.

Here's a little curiosity from the vaults. Many moons ago I was asked to do a couple of sample pages for a Wallace and Gromit comic. The gig ended up going to another artist, but I was always quite pleased with the pages I came up with. So here they are. Mmm... bit of Wensleydale. Lovely.



Apart from that, my work life at the moment more or less revolves around the Muppet Show comics, which doesn't leave much room for other projects I can make exciting announcements about. I can recommend a few podcasts I listen to when I'm inking, when I need to feed some interesting content into my brain so I don't become a total vegetable: there's Art and Story, which is about the creative process as it specifically relates to comics; Big Illustration Party Time, which is more of the same but from an illustrator's point-of-view; Seqalab, the podcast of the Savannah College of Art and Design, always fun; Indie Spinner Rack, which probably needs no introduction; Webcomics Weekly, which hardly relates to what I do at all but which I find really entertaining; and a bunch of Radio 4 podcasts, including The News Quiz, Start the Week, A Point of View, The Today Programme and In Our Time. I've been meaning to plug those shows for a while now, so there we go.

Please Me, Tease Me

Running a bit behind this week, so this entry is a get-in, get-out-as-fast-as-I-can one. Here's a teaser image from an upcoming Mugwhump story for something called the Act-i-Vate Primer, which is pretty much what the title says it is - a print introduction to the work of various Act-i-Vate cartoonists. One for the Mugwhump fans who might be getting itchy during the hiatus. My story consists of six densely-packed (twelve-panel) pages showing events before the current strip began.

I got an e-mail this morning informing me that The Muppet Show Comic Book #1 is going for some larcenous price on Amazon right now. Please wait for the book collection, folks! The whole collectors' market is a cesspool of poisonous idiocy and I would encourage people not to spend stupid amounts of money on something you'll be able to pick up in book form in a couple of months. I don't draw these things to be put in bags and ignored. They're there to be read. Sorry to get all cross and irritable, but really.

Krazy, Daisy

The Small Press Expo is over and went very well, despite a few teething problems - my drawing workshop was cancelled at the last minute due to a room being double-booked - but it had a good vibe and sales were healthy. Looking forward to the next one, especially if it can be joined to the main Bristol show a bit more seamlessly. Thanks to everyone who stopped by, and thanks to Mal Smith and her colleagues for all their hard work.

There's a radio interview with me (which was conducted at the UK Web and Mini-Comix Thing a month or so back) up online now, part of Resonance FM's "Strip" feature. You can listen to it here.

This week's picture is kind of a commission, although I was paid in books rather than cash - Ulrich Merkl is one of the editors of Sunday Press's frankly wonderful Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend collection, which he sent me a copy of in exchange for a Krazy Kat drawing. I finally forced myself to stop drawing pigs in wigs for five minutes and get the thing done, so here it is. The flow is a bit wonky between panels 4 and 5, alas - I couldn't make that work and still keep the design, so the design ended up winning.

A Hasty and Ill-Mannered Update

Couple of things I should mention that won't wait: The Fin Fang Four Returns, a collection of Fin Fang Four short stories which have previously appeared on Marvel Digital, hit the stores today. This has only just come to my attention. The nearest date I had until now was "sometime this year". So there's that.

The other thing is that it turns out I will have a table for the Saturday-only Small Press Expo (the indy show affiliated with this year's Bristol Comics Expo), which is good news, as I get to flog my wares and still wander around on Sunday in a happy fog looking for old issues of Kamandi. Best of both worlds! So look out for me at Table 3 at the Mercure Holland House, between Renegade Arts Entertainment and Al Davison.

(From the map I have here it looks like my table is in the Orchard Suite, whatever that is - it looks like you have to walk past the entrance to the Orchard Suite to get to the bar. Mmm... bar.)

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".

Aaand... relax.

You may notice this week that Mugwhump the Great is taking a short break. I'm planning on not making it longer than a couple of months -- I value the strip highly as my only non-corporate outlet at the moment -- but a break was necessary before I completely burn out and forget what my kids look like. Once I've caught up with my Muppets schedule a bit, I'll be jumping right back in there with both boots. In the meantime I'll continue posting new content of some description here at the Hotel Fred, even if it's just a bunch of old sketches, and continue with the weekly blog posts. Got to keep you coming back, now, don't I?

Couple of bits of news, though: first, Slave Labor is going to be publishing the third Strange Eggs anthology at long last. Chris Reilly and I did a short story in there, the title of which I'm not going to reveal as it will spoil the whole thing, but it involves a character called Hal Monty, sleazy thespian and general slimeball, who was a hoot to work on. Also, there's a short interview with me at Wonderchroma on Muppet things. End of plugorama.

Back to Indie Island

This week, the delightful Dustin Harbin followed up last year's casual invitation to attend this year's Heroes Con in June with a rather more definite and heartfelt one, so after some quick investigation of air fares I've accepted, and will be attending with bells on. Boom! Studios, the publishers of my current work on the Muppet Show comic, will be there as well, so I daresay I'll be putting some faces to names at last. I went last year and had a great time, and I'm looking forward to this one immensely.


Here's an illo I did for Nemi Magazine in Norway - the text was about a missing Munch painting which was eventually discovered in the possession of a sleeping passenger on a train. I love drawing that creepy screaming bastard.

Scrape Those Barrels!

Weary after a long week, I'm at a loss for any new and exciting things to share, so I thought I'd dig up another oldie for you. This was done for the sheer joy of it, a few months after I'd seen Chris Ware's work for the first time (as if you couldn't tell). I thought maybe I'd found a way to meld my Python influences and my comics influences into some new third thing that was neither, but at the same time both at once. In hindsight it looks like what it is, a vaguely amusing page by someone who wasn't quite sure what he was doing. Still, I remain fond.


I'll be taking a short break from Mugwhump the Great in a couple of weeks - mainly because I'm burned out from overwork and I need to get things sorted out before I jump back into it. Chapter Two will conclude soon, so that will be a good place to stop for a month or two. I'm not sure what, if anything, will appear here in its place - I'd like to do something, as long as it's really easy or already lying around. I'll put me thinkin' head on.

Cow Secrets

This past week has seen me in my bed, sweating, shivering and farting, as my body finally gives up after several months of overwork. So my schedule is one hell of a mess and I'm scrambling to catch up a little right now. Quickly, then: there's a mini-interview with me at ToughPigs.com about Muppet Show related stuff...


I can't remember what the above page was done for now - although I do have a vague memory of the title being inspired by the old "Herd of Cows" crosstalk act (you know: "Herd of cows?" "Of course I've heard of cows." "No, no, a cow herd." "What did it hear?" etc. ) This was when I was still in my "let's make up a lot of disjointed panels and hope they hang together as a story" mode as a writer, which some might argue I still am. Personally, I think I've progressed to disjointed pages now.

Sorry if your Muppet Show #1 review isn't in the sidebar of the hotelfred.com front page - I was going to link to them all, but the sheer volume of the damn things got a bit out of hand. I'll probably try to work up a review links page soon, with one elegant link in the sidebar there to keep it tidy. Or I might just leave things the way they are and go back to bed, sweating, shivering and farting my way to a better tomorrow.