Nottingham Comic Con Sketches IV

Heroes Con 2014 Sketch: Scrooge and Donald

Mickey Waits

Die Muppet Show

Hey, now here's a bit of excitingness (for me, anyway) - my Muppet Show comics are going to be published in Germany! They've been picked up by Egmont, Europe's main Disney licensee. Of course I don't see a penny from any of this, but it's nice to know they're out there.

And it gives me a little bit of hope that maybe they might be widely available in the UK one day... the country they were actually drawn in. One can dream, one can dream...

Whatever Happened To...

So by now I expect everyone who's got a horse in this race knows that Marvel will be publishing the Pixar books that Boom used to do from now on. So far, so groovy - they have the technology, the expertise and the resources to do a great job... if they want to.

So where does that leave the Muppet comics?

To be honest, I have no idea. As far as I understand it, the unpublished work I've done for Boom isn't technically Disney's until it's published, and obviously Boom can't publish it without a license. So it's in a kind of limbo right now. In the best of all possible worlds, I'd like to think that Boom and Marvel can come to some kind of arrangement whereby Marvel can eventually release the work. I'm only a cartoonist, real business stuff makes my brain hurt, so I'm not sure how that would work - I guess Disney/Marvel buys the rights from Boom or something. Or maybe they have to go out into the woods at midnight and bury Kermit in effigy with some chives in order to break the curse. Something like that. However it happens, I would very much like for it to see the light of day eventually.

Until that happy day, which I look forward to with a smile on my face and a song in my heart, I guess it can't hurt to share some of the pages here. This arc would have been called The Four Seasons, hence the seasonal theme - these few pages would have been from the Winter/Christmas issue. (Appropriate for pages that are in cold storage for now.)

Roll on Spring...

What just happened?

What a strange, strange week it's been. First thing to say is thank you -- thank you to everybody who said kind things about Muppet Show #1 online or in person, thank you to everyone who bought it or read it or just gave it a chance. (I'm especially gratified by the thumbs-up from ToughPigs.com who, as the name implies, I was expecting to be a tough crowd.) And thank you to Mark Waid for getting to the heart of the matter in his inimitable style.


The page above is one of the ones I did for the late, lamented Disney Adventures magazine, which was never published. It seems to me I ought either to have some Muppet content on my website or a link to a place where you can find some, so this will have to do for now until I figure out what I'm doing.

I had the privilege of recording an interview for the wonderful podcast for freelance illustrators and cartoonists, Big Illustration Party Time, on Sunday night. It's a great show for those in the ink-wrangling field, and very entertaining for those who aren't -- highly recommended. (And check out the work of hosts Kevin Cross and Joshua Kemble while you're there!)

But the highlight of my week was the great UK Web and Mini-Comix Thing, my favourite UK show by some distance. No dealers, no costumes, just cartoonists promoting their own comics, like it should be. Mmm... comics. Smoke one today.

Mangled Manga

Not quite a week old: there's yet another Newsarama interview, this one focussing on the Muppet Show comic, over here.


Almost finished with these old Disney mastheads now; just a couple more left. I was asked to do this one in a Manga style, except I can't do a Manga style to save my life -- so what you get is more or less 100% Langridge with a few big eyes grafted on top of it. Sorry, Manga fans.

Tough Pigs

One for the Muppet watchers among you: there's a brief Muppet-themed interview with me over at ToughPigs.com this week. Thanks to Joe Hennes for conducting it.

Meanwhile, back here at the Hotel Fred, I thought we deserved a splash of colour for a change, so here's another one of those Disney Adventures credit-box masthead illustrations I did a couple of years back.


It's only just occurred to me that the Hotel Fred website is probably overdue for a redesign - the black-and-white theme was concocted when I was doing a weekly colour Fred the Clown cartoon, and since switching to black and white for Mugwhump it's been looking a tad drab. Might have to give this some thought over the next little while. Watch this space! But, er, don't forget to go away and have a cup of tea and a biscuit every once in a while. Otherwise you'll just starve.

Have a Happy Nude Ear

Nothing special happened this week except I took two days off and promptly caught the biggest cold I've had in a while. It's something my body seems to do whenever I take off more than a single afternoon - it treats my inactivity as an excuse to stop fighting whatever viruses have been hovering around me and get really, really sick. So, atchoo. There's something to be said for working through Christmas...

Here's another of those Disney Adventures credit boxes, vaguely topical if you're watching a lot of telly over the hols. Happy New Year!

The Sincerest Form

This week I've been doing a two-pager for Boom Studios' Cthulhu Tales anthology (#11, if you're curious). So tempting to post it here, but I should probably wait until it's been out a while. So instead here's another of those Disney Adventures credit mastheads I did last year.


Observant readers will notice that I completely stole my own idea from the back cover of Fred the Clown #1. Which in turn was stolen from the radio panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.

As to where they stole it from, I'm afraid you're on your own there.

Disney Dribblings

It's my daughter's sixth birthday today. Blimey. Where did that go.

Just about finished the second of the short Captain America stories I'm writing for Marvel Adventures. This officially puts me ahead of schedule. Yay! It looks like Scott Gray will be writing the first 16 pages of each book now, which makes me very happy indeed. (He'll be doing the 21st Century Cap, I'm doing the World War Two stuff.) Scott's plot outlines look fantastic. I'll have to actually work at this.

For no reason at all, except that the magazine's been gone for long enough now that I don't think posting the illustrations here will make any waves, here's a piece I did for the defunct Disney Adventures. For a few months there I was their official credit masthead illustrator... fun job while it lasted. I've got a few more of these I'll post over the next little while.


Currently working on: Muppets, Nick Mag, Captain America, more or less in rotation. Plus I'm illustrating a two-page strip for Cthulhu Tales (did I spell that right?) which imagines H. P. Lovecraft's early, failed career as a writer of descriptive paragraphs for chocolate boxes, which is such a lovely idea I wish I'd thought of it myself.

Disney Biz

Thought I'd post a few of the spot illos I did during my brief dalliance with the Mouse. Now that Disney Adventures Magazine is no more I think I've a better chance of getting away with it. This was the third of the illustrations I did for their editorial credits page - the idea being that I was supposed to incorporate the credits into the illustration. It's hard to think where else they could be used, so it's either here or oblivion. This one was for a pirate-themed issue.



Currently pencilling the second of the new Fin Fang Four shorts - this one is a Fin Fang Foom solo story. There's a Googam one already written for me to jump into next, Little Orphan Angry, which is really really good. So's the Fin one, actually - super-tight comedy plotting in a scenario realistic enough to be credible but odd enough to be funny, like a Carl Barks ten-pager. I can think of worse ways to wrap up the FFF's adventures.

We Still Have Muppets (very badly - but they're clearing up nicely)

I've had some queries about the Muppets strip in Disney Adventures (or lack of it), and I have to admit I was wondering about it myself, as I had been under the impression it would be starting in the August issue. So I asked the comics editor, Steve Behling, what was up - last I'd heard from him, he'd sent my PIGS IN SPACE effort off to some Disney high muck-a-mucks for their official nod, and that was a while ago. I was beginning to worry that the whole thing had been vetoed. Fortunately, I received this reply last night:

"We’ve had pretty tight space constraints in the last couple issues, so we’re holding off on running the three MUPPETS strips we have until either the Dec/Jan or February issues. I did send the PIGS IN SPACE strip off, didn’t get back a detailed response, but did get a general “this is cool!” response. (I’m a big fan of the general “this is cool!” response.)"

So there you go. It looks like I'm not going to be doing any new Muppet strips for a couple more months at least, which is fine and dandy, as it happens - it will give me time to work on the odd side-project. Hooray!

Muppet News Flash

The new Muppets gig proceeds apace. I'm currently working on my first twelve-pager for the Disney Adventures Comic Zone specials. Getting some interest from Muppet fans as well, which is a subculture I wasn't previously aware of. Steve Swanson, of the MuppetCast podcast, interviewed me about the strip a couple of days ago and I believe the show will be up shortly. And the Comics Journal interview is almost done now as well - I'm copy-editing the transcript at the moment. It's playing merry hell with my schedule, but it will keep me from sinking into obscurity for another few months.

The Journal piece has been quite an undertaking - five hour-long sessions with me, plus a short interview with my brother Andrew on top of it. And it looks like they'll be printing 20 pages of my comics in that issue as well. I guess that's my book for this year sorted.

Here's a teaser for my first Muppet strip, coming up in the August issue of Disney Adventures (August cover date means it should be out very soon, as is the way with newsstand publications, for arcane, probably once-valid historical reasons).

Further Ado

Mmm. Two weeks gone already. Really must watch that.

Latest news: My Comics Journal interview is scheduled for issue #284! Which surprised the hell out of me when I read about it, because we haven't actually conducted the interview yet. The first session will be tomorrow night. And I'll be drawing a cover for it, which will be grand.

Currently on the drawing board: "The Ballad of Silvertooth Johnson", a five-pager for the Indie Spinner Rack anthology. Featuring plenty of the kind of worn-out doggerel for which I am rightly scorned.

One for the Knuckles the Malevolent Nun fans: Cornelius Stone has (perhaps unadvisedly) allowed Sister Knuckles to put up her own MySpace page. With friends like these etc., etc. (insert own joke).

Just did a job for Disney Adventures Magazine. Here's the rough. I'm so kid-friendly I could hug myself.

Where I'm At

Good lord, a new blog entry. I must be ill. Actually, it's far simpler than that: since deciding to use this forum for news, I've had absolutely none to report. I had the laziest Christmas I've had in years, and have been doing just a little bit of this and a little bit of that since then to keep the old gears turning - nothing major of note whatsoever. I don't think I've got the hang of this self-publicity business. If I don't have any news, I should invent some.

Anyway, here's some. I'm lined up for a few convention appearances this year - the first one will be next month, at the mighty UK Web and Mini-Comix Thing on March 17th. Then it's off to Bristol on the 12th and 13th of May, and last but not least (assuming I've applied in time and those air miles are still valid) the wonderful SPX in Bethesda, Maryland in October.

And Fred the Clown #2 should be available again shortly, thanks to those lovely people at ComiXpress. I received the proof today and it looks great - the printing is better than the original edition. So if you want to pick up a full set of Fred the Clown #1-5 at conventions or through the website, you'll be able to once again.

I'm working on a small job for Disney Adventures magazine at the moment. Here's the rough sketch...