Me and Dave Comiket 2009

The lovely Dan Berry from the Glyndwr Uni­ver­sity took this and lots more great pics at the ICA on Sunday.

Sexy norwegians

With two down and two more to go this convention season is picking up pace. Next up this Sunday is Comiket in one of my favourite settings, the ICA, such a gorgeous building, but also the place where I first made contact with a lot of my comic buddies.
Handmade and bound last Sunday was pretty successful. It was also the first outing for my new Tshirt and minicomic Foreign Bodies combo, as well as premiering my friend Schmurgen's venture into merchandising. I will most likely be promoting his wares at Comica, as he forgot to book space there. Drop by my stall and get your hands on you very own cuddly Norwegian to love and fondle. More info HERE

Comica Comiket

Saturday at the ICA. What can I say? GOOD DAY. Lovely venue, fantastic tablemates and shifted some stock.
Not so good that Lucy got her phone jacked by some pikey on her way out of work, but then Nick brought her to the after show pub and a couple of G&Ts put a smile back on her face.
Managed a few sketches – a couple of which I'm quite pleased with, and picked up a handful of comics I haven't yet had a chance to look at.
Last night we went to The Soho revue bar to catch the splendidly tuneful and musically eclectic Oh Atoms whose catchily poppy Sugar Mice should be huge. And I finally got round to reading Matter from Philip Barrett. I swapped a couple of mine for issues 1 and 7 with him at Leeds, both very accomplished. Issue seven has a Daniel Clowes vibe, a kind of Twilight zone story, creepy with a twist, and brilliantly drawn.
I have now produced four canvasses for the Christmas do at the Alphabet Bar

The story so far

The last few months have been a whirlwind of activity after years of furtively drawing my comics on my own with little or no feedback.
Having fortuitously met Gary Northfield at an Indesign course, he encouraged me to put my comics in Gosh! and Orbital where they were picked up by Paul Gravett who invited me to take part in the 24 hour comic event at the ICA.

This summer I also created a strip for the Observer Graphic Short Story competition. I didn't win but was pleased with my effort and the standard of entries was so high that I didn't feel embarrassed

( although slightly baffled by the winning entry).


You can check out some of the other entries here.

















The 24 hour comic thing was a complete blast – very little sleep, warm coca cola and a fantastic bunch of very talented other participants including Sean Azzopardi (Twelve Hour Shift), Takayo Akiyama (Siamese Twins), Richy Chandler (Tempolush), Tom Humberstone(Vented Spleen) and Alex Potts (Lost Shoe Comics) to name a few.

You can read it here

A couple of weeks later I took part in the ICA Comiket small press comic fair. I made up my 24 hour effort into a mini comic to sell along with my other efforts. Again a brilliant day (not from a commercial point of view- spent more on comics and beer than I made).
Not only caught up with Richy and Sean and got a chance to talk to some of my other fellow 24hrers like Richard Peel and Oliver East but met even more great people and did loads of good swaps.
Having finally worked my way through my big pile of swag, I'm still chuckling over the wit and wisdom of Richard's Fights and Wizards, loved Oliver's beautifully observed Trains are...mint 1-3 and the raw miserabilism of Bedsit journal is hilariously drawn by Richard Cowdry (an awful lot of cartoonists seem to be called Richard...)