The Rabbit Speaks His Mind

If you need warnings about rude words, this contains one. And it's quite uncomplimentary about Batman, too.

The words are from Reginald D Hunter. There's a nod to* the work of San Fransisco Examiner photographer Chris Hardy in there as well.


*obvious steal from

Danger! Danger!

Who's this handsome buck? Why, it's Derek Danger, newest man of action on the man of action scene and baddest cat in the UK Datsun Owners Club. Brainchild of righteous talents Robert Ball and Warwick Johnson Cadwell.

This is, unavoidably, 'fanart.'

World of Ned.

Ned Sparry's  and his show World of Dangerous Animals was a strip I drew six or seven episodes of. It centred on Ned Sparry, an Australian naturalist who agitated animals and even algae to the point where he could utter his catchphrase "it's ripped me aam off!" 

And then Steve Irwin met the fatal stingray and that bollocksed that.

Still...

Not a Whole Lot of Rosie.

Rosetta Stone. Work nominally in 'progress.' Hm. 
Pages 1, 2 and time passing on page 3.

Remember, Remember.

My dad, having quietly enjoyed his first outing as a comic character, makes his second, and he's brought my mother.

Again, these people look like people who look like my mum and dad, but not exactly my mum and dad.

Calvin & Hobbes.

I feel a bit fraudulent for entering into the latest 'draw' Twitter hashtag thing run by James Howard. Calvin and Hobbes seems to be one of those things that people go giddy over like a frayed and much-loved childhood toy, and until I looked into it today I wasn't 100% sure which one was Hobbes and which Calvin. 

I've never really read a strip, although having a look at the originals, they are beautifully drawn (by Bill Watterson.) I kind of put them in the same stinky cat basket as the appalling Garfield, but I'm beginning to see that this might have been a mistake. 

So, anyway, Calvin and Hobbes. Or Hobbes and Calvin. Whichever way it is.

Thought Bubbles.

The Thought Bubble Sequential Arts Festival, to give it the name it goes by at its Gran's, is on in Leeds from the 11th to the 18th November. As part of it, the 3rd Northern Sequential Art Competition is running, and the entries are live online now on THIS LINK HERE. Have a browse.

There's some very fine work in there, and although I've not had a close look at everything and it's probably unfair to pick out individuals, a couple really caught my eye - Sarah Fogg's 'The Tale of the Selkie' and 'Boundary' by Corban Wilkin. I think these are lovely.

 

Mine's called 'I Held Stuff' and it is a true story. My Dad has not seen it yet. It's this one.

I have to say, it's a terrible likeness of my Dad.

UPDATE: my mum has shown it to my dad. He seems quietly pleased with it.

Time Passes

From work in progress; passage of time page.

Wendell Hicks - Frontier Librarian.

Finally completed the second Wendell Hicks strip. And here it is. (And here, if you want a frankly better look.)

Hell of a Colour.

I tried, I tried really hard today to get this up as some sort of zoom-in-able PDF thing or lovely flash flip-page book complete with crinkling page sound effects so that you could actually read the damn thing, but... well, it just didn't happen.


After many wasted hours this afternoon, I was about ready to chew through the desk in  frustration, but a week ago today I fell off my bike on an icy patch and gave my ribs a proper good crack, and I've just taken two of the wonking great painkillers that the doctor gave me yesterday and I'm a lot more relaxed about it all than I was a couple of hours ago. So I thought what the hell, just get it posted. You can at least look at the pictures. Look at all the pretty colours. Wow.


Anyway: it's a technical exercise in learning how to colour (and letter better) but also a sincere tip of the hat to Mr. Mignola for creating such a great character, and to the likes of Duncan Fegredo and Richard Corben for all their fantastic and inspirational illustration. I dare say it's a copyright infringement festival, but it's not for sale, just a big doff of the hat.


(Right click & 'open image in new tab' lets you zoom in and read.)

 Sing and readalong here:

Handsome People - Gail.

Gail with the Golden Hair. 

She goes barmy in the end.

Out in the red rock desert   /   sitting on the roof of my car
drinking cans of warm beer   /   watching the sky get dark
Gail and I shot our empties  /    with an old, rusted rifle
Her golden hair went flying   /    like a wild, brush fire

CHORUS: when the mountains turned red at dusk

time passed in the burning desert  /  & the tumbleweeds they tumbled
we lay in a golden fire  /  as the screaming buzzards circled
far down in the darkened valley   /  the city lights still twinkled
but my eyes saw only Gail    /   and her hair in golden fire

CHORUS: when the mountains turned red at dusk

but the fire burned right through her  /  Gail followed unseen voices
they led her to the city  /   deep in the darkened valley
I drove circles through the alleys   /    calling my burning lover
but Gail ran deeper in the gloom  /   screaming at the street lights
and I lost her there forever   /   deep in the valley’s darkness
my Gail with the golden hair   /   that burned as bright as fire

CHORUS: when the mountains turned red at dusk

Lyrics by Renee Sparks.

Casting a Net.

eVole prepares to unleash the Netzooka* while Mouse makes for the controls of the Wobbulator.

*(It was a Net-o-Matic until I was preparing this blog post, when I realised I'd not drawn the name on, and then I thought of 'Netzooka' anyway. A happy accident. I like it when that happens.)


I also know there's two rungs on the ladder where there should only be one. It'll aaaall get sorted. GIMP covers up a thousand things.

Behold - THE WOBBULATOR!

(Says Mouse.) You know... for kids.

Behold, the original wobbulator. The brown box under the one Lenin is leaning on (while Jackie Stewart and Fairport Convention look on) - that's the wobbulator.

Handsome

I like comics. I like the Handsome Family. But what are the odds that the inhabitants of this overlapping area of the Venn diagram could be satisfied by one single item?


Why, look! - 

'After We Shot The Grizzly' - words by the Handsome Family, lovely pencil and ink wash illustrations by Dan Berry. Crashed airships, human skulls in caves, skin and bone rafts - that kind of thing. But, you know - charming.

"I've always thought that any song on that album [Last Days of Wonder] would make a good comic," Dan writes, "as their brand of narrative songwriting is consistently superb. I urge you to go and buy their albums."

Buy album and comic together and you can have a macabre and enjoyable three minutes to yourself, any time you like. 

Black Hat

A work in progress, the second story featuring Wendell Hicks, Frontier Librarian.


Observe how, using incredibly subtle iconography, I create a Bad Cowboy:

Bruin Up.

A bear, taking tea.

Rosetta Stone: A Piece of Cake.

I've had Rosetta in my head ever since she leaped in there fully formed with her name when I was lying in bed one Christmas and I sketched her out. I've even scripted and started a full graphic novel version of her story, but become increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of the drawing.

I lifted a couple of frames (the first two scene-setting panels) from that for this, a sort of short introduction to the world of Rosetta Stone. 

Originally it was an entry for the Eagle Initiative competition but that was called off because not enough people entered. I took the opportunity to redraw some panels (terrible faces), re-do the lettering and speech bubbles, add an extra page (more fighting, essentially) and expand the big set-piece ending panels.

Anyway; Rosetta Stone.

(If you right click and open in a new tab it's a lot easier to read...)

  

Fin(n)

Page one of a six-page strip I drew up from a script by Matthew Craig, for Strip Magazine's 'Spotlight' competition. (We didn't get in.) Small tribute to 'The Right Stuff' in the bottom left hand panel, there.

The rest of it is posted up on my website here.

Rosie

This is Rosetta Stone.


Although Miss Stone's hair is the least of her problems, it is troublesome.

The Quiet Comforts of the Victorian Home

This is how the angry, poker-wielding gentleman ended up. Inking is done and it's been slightly tidied in GIMP. Awaiting proper cleaning up and lettering.


This page drove me up the wall. The overall layout changed several times as I was sketching it out, then again as I drew it, then I had trouble with most of the panels and re-drew them at least twice. 


The poker was too small, then too large, you couldn't see the companion set clearly, his hands gripping the chair were wrong, his hairline was wrong, his ears were in the wrong place on his head, he was disappearing into the background of the fireplace in two panels, everything was creeping towards the point of being a completely black page - and on, and on, and on. But, as Bob said, when something's not right it's wrong, so it had to be re-done. Is it successful? I don't know.