Comic artists London bash

How many cartoonists can you fit in a police station? And how do you round up a flock of comics folk? Booze and cake will do the trick. Assorted comicarati gathered Saturday night at the Fleece station, graciously welcomed by hosts Sarah Macintyre, Ellen Lindner, Gary Northfield and Lauren O'Farrell, and had a jolly old time, popping into the cells intermittently to relieve themselves. Darryl Cunningham's birthday was celebrated with a splendidly decorated cake, and I believe any disordely conduct whilst under the influence was in the main safely avoided.
We returned home to find our house full of teenagers but remembered to go and hide discreetly in our quarters, and not cause offence by our presence. After a day of rest, Monday was a beautiful day to drive to the seaside, the empty sky a bonus. We passed the airports, both closed, and traffic was blissfully light. Having dropped son off with daughter, treated them to a spot of lunch and stopped in the comic shop, we pootled along the coast to catch up with the Dawgtastic team for the night. Valerie's range of felt goodies now includes these dashing accoutrements.

Back home again and gearing up for Unicon this Saturday in Hatfield – printer don't fail me now!

The bastards are on their way

Finally got word of imminent arrival of printed comics! In time for MCM at the weekend, yippee!
My printer is playing up as usual. Does it to me before every convention, probably nerves. I'm getting quite excited as I'm gearing up for a run of events over the next month starting this Saturday, and taking in Handmade and Bound on November 1st, Comiket on November 8th and Leeds on November 21st.
Printer don't fail me now!

Stepping up to 176

All done printing and stapling my brand new 24 pager!
Put your best foot forward and stride on down to 176 for a fab day out in Camden and pick yourself up a copy while you're there.

A sneak preview of a tale of treacherous footwear.

Power to the people

Another first for LUC: convention costs have henceforth been abolished. Well for this one anyway.
The blessed Oli has announced that 176 will now be completely FREE for those lucky exhibitors who have boked a table. Details hereWhat will he come up with next?




Just over two weeks to get a new comic ready.
Will she do it? watch this space.

176 and all that

Oh look London Underground Comics are announcing their next event on the 27th of June 2009 at the fantastic 176 art gallery in Chalk Farm. Yippee!
More details HERE.
Oh and I forgot to mention that I appear in the last ever issue of Comic Foundry magazine, page 11 if you're interested. So now some people in AMERICA know my name... well one or two anyway.

Re pubdraw

There's another one tomorrow night at the Fitzroy Tavern this time... here's some more I did last week.

Sip'n'sketch

Last night, I battled through the elements (well got very soaked anyway) to attend the first LUC PUBDRAW. Only a handful of us made it but it was great to see the gang and to catch up with Sean again. Some drawing and drinking took place and lo, it was a good vibe. I don't think the pub was too impressed with us. Our drinking was so restrained they closed the upstairs bar and kicked us out as we weren't spending enough...

LUC Christmas party

This Saturday will be the culmination of an extraordinary year for comics in London and the Camden crew along with many other creators and their friends will be exhibiting art (click for full listing), selling comics, partying and generally having a good time all day in this central location.
Come on down and start celebrating Christmas in a sequential art stylee and rub shoulders with the likes of Oli Smith, Dan Lester, Sean Azzopardi and Oliver Lambden!
They might draw a picture! And let you buy it! How cool is that?
Or you could simply have a few drinks and enjoy the scintillating company at the LONDON UNDERGROUND COMICS CHRISTMAS EVENT.

Of mice and matter

Last night we went to the Soho Revue bar to catch the splendidly tuneful and musically eclectic
Oh Atoms whose catchily poppy Sugar Mouse 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 in terms of storytelling and art. 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 LUC's Christmas do at the Alphabet Bar.

Publishing sensation

The complete edition of TMNTW is FINALLY ready and I am holding it in my sweaty hands.

It is already available on the LONDON UNDERGROUND COMICS stall in Camden Market, I will be at LEEDS THOUGHT BUBBLE on Saturday 15th and at the COMICA COMIKET at the ICA on the 22nd.


To purchase your very own copy CLICK HERE!!

Publishing news, Paris and a party in a pub

Listen up all you good people in blogland: my collected edition of TMNTITW is at the printers as we speak and will be available shortly!!! I will be updating my website as it is no longer available in its original format as four comics as I have completely sold out.
Having safely despatched the files to the printers, I skipped over to Paris again for a few days last week to attend to some family business and catch up with an old friend. My friend unfortunately had been taken seriously ill so I ended up catching up with him in intensive care (I have since my return received some more optimistic news).

Along with some other more serious activities, I fitted in a visit to the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in the Jardin des Plantes with my brother and nieces, a wonderfully old fashioned collection of dinosaur skeletons, pickled organs and two headed piglets in jars, all crammed into a quaint late nineteenth century building and refreshingly un-jazzed up. The larger dinosaurs hadn't been dusted for so long they appeared snow-capped.


HOMOEROTIC HIGH JINKS

I returned in time to head straight to a pub in Euston where London Underground Comics were celebrating a year of success and good times with their usual exhuberance. Lots of testicle grabbing and a good time was had by all.

Summer Madness

Not been massively creative of late, been a bit preoccupied organising the logistics of a large family spread out in several countries taking turns spending time over the summer with parents in varying states of health in separate houses at opposing ends of France. Aaaargh.
Did however get round to creating a logo for the next London Underground Comics event, LOW ENERGY DAY at the end of August. Which should be a hoot even if it's half as successful as No Barcodes.
A toast to Oli's new abode in Camden last Friday night with Sean and Alex and a few others made a welcome distraction from the tedious business of getting things together for friday's departure.
And the best news today is the arrival of little Johnny,the cutest baby in comicsland. Congratulations to Ma and Pa Medway!!!

From Gay Paree to A&E by way of Bristol

Returned from Paris on Thursday night after a couple of days visiting the folks. A spot of stapling on Friday night after work and I was set for my first ever Bristol Expo.



My day trip turned out just fine. The company was fab and I made the right call for once and dressed appropriately as it was somewhat oven-like in the convention hall.

Digging the nerdfest... Above: David and Jake; below: Oli, Sean, David and Oliver



Managed not to miss my train and got there in time to meet up with the LUC gang and their hangovers for kick-off. There was a massive queue waiting to get in even before it opened with a large sprinkling of daft buggers in superhero garb – those stormtroopers and Darth Vaders must have been cooking inside their costumes. Or maybe it was some kind of sponsored slimathon...
The stall was heavily manned with seven or eight of us sharing the two chairs in rotation. Did a fair bit of circulating around the hall and bumped in to a few familiar faces. And I dared Sean to steal an apple at the Ramada. We're so rock'n'roll.
By the end of the day my feet were killing me and Richy and I managed to lose Jake on our quest for food with the help of Sean's crap excuse for a map.
It all turned out OK. We eventually stumbled upon the Weatherspoon by accident and everyone gradually drifted there including, finally, Jake who was most pleased to have found not only a branch of Subway in his wanderings, but also the car he had lost earlier that morning.
Had to leave before the Eagle Awards to get my train back to town.
I arrived home at midnight just in time for a whole other drama to unfold.
Suffice to say that not a lot of sleep was had as I fielded calls from Nick from the hospital until he got home at 6am. I brought Lucy home on Sunday afternoon, thankfully with no lasting damage, but we were all pretty shaken by the incident.
And so relieved that I had decided to only go for the day.
Everything happens for a reason.

Neither shipshape nor Bristol fashion

Feeling a bit bummed as Bristol is looming and I had hoped to have a new mini comic for it and instead I keep having to do WORK!
Still shouldn't complain. After all I do like sleeping in a house, eating decent food, wearing clothes and stuff like that but why oh why must the pesky details of real life like paying mortgages and bills and shit have to interfere with the joyous business of comic making.

Although if truth be told I mostly like my paying work - it's just there's never enough TIME!

Anyway, Sean has done a splendid job and produced a poster for The Camden Con and Oli dazzled us with his brilliance on Radio 4 yesterday (you can hear it here).

Bristol is only ten days away and it's pissing down with rain.

No Barcodes announced

Things seem to have got busy again, with regular strips and recurring freelance jobs fitting in and around subbing shifts.
Met up with Oli, Sean and Dan on thursday for a little reconnaissance mission in Portobello for a future convention site.
That one will be taking place later in the year,
but the exciting news is the official announcement of NO BARCODES, the London Underground Comics convention on Saturday May 31 2008 at Camden Lock Market.

Should be a fantastic day with all the jolly crowd from the stall plus all you lovely small press creators out there who want to come along and join in the fun. It will be free to punters and only about £7 to exhibitors – much better value than your average convention!
Check out the fabulous trailer video and further details of how to take part at www.londonundergroundcomics.com

Spring is sprung

Tulips appearing in my garden and a little ray of sunshine to make everyone more cheerful. So far have been fortunate enough to have avoided the bug that has been striking people down left right and centre.
Been catching up with old friends and sorting out work as well as thinking about contributions to publications.
Camden again on Saturday. Spent some time on the stall in the afternoon then back to Chalk Farm in the evening for a few drinks with the Egan clan ending in slightly disgraceful behaviour (i.e. dancing) with Maire "Eileen" Fahey and Anne Witchard.

A few pics from the stall at various times:

Sean's new gloves


And the award goes to...








Dan the man









More fun and games last night with the aforementioned Egans plus Heva and the chichiraras.

Going Underground

Needless to say I haven't achieved any where near as much as I had hoped to last week. but we did catch a preview of the Jack Black/Michel Gondry movie Be Kind Rewind. Very funny idea, and their website is hilarious with the sweded google. Check it out.
Back for another dose of Inn on the Green on friday but this time wisely avoided alcoholic refreshment ( Nick didn't fancy coming out so I had to drive). Also meant I was bright eyed and bushy tailed the next day to drop by Underground Comics in Camden for a couple of hours. It was a beautiful day to be hanging out with Oli, Oliver, Sean, Andy Luke et all with much laughter and a little drawing and I even made a sale.
I continue to deny any involvement in the huge fire at the market later that day.

Scribing

Creative scribing turned out to be a really good day . Not least because there were a few of us scribes doing our thing and it's always a blast to meet others in what can be quite an isolated line of work and exchange tips and anecdotes ("I once drew a nose this big!").
They are invariably top people or at the very least interesting ones. It was quite exhausting standing for over five hours of solid drawing, all the while concentrating on trying to convey the speakers' meaning.
However we get paid and fed for our trouble so I'm not complaining.
Saturday, wandered down to Camden market to check out Oli Smith's excellent London Underground Comics stall where I purchased Sean Azzopardi's Twelve Hour Shift collected edition, as well as some more Tales from the Flat and Dan Lester(Monkeys Might Puke)'s very funny 24Hour Comic. The Bedsit Journal guys had a stall there too but I think it was a one-off. Nice to see something edifying and worthwhile among the endless sea of tat, crafts and souvenirs.
And just a few steps away from the Hawley Arms. Very civilised.
Oh and I left some comics with Oli who will put them out next week I hope.