There's Still Room For Writers

The strip I drew for the first issue of Rol Hirst's anthology comic PJANG! is now available to view free online. Not only that, but the far superior strips drawn by Tony McGee and Andrew Cheverton are also available for your viewing pleasure.

A Year in Review

This won't be one of those best-albums-films-books posts, because I lack the capabilities to be a music enthusiast -- although I have developed a liking for Crystal Castles -- and I've spent most of the year trying to get through Don Quixote, so I've not had much time for anything else. I did see quite a few films -- including some new ones for once! -- and I'll be a dissenting voice in saying that I didn't think Inception was nearly as good or clever as everyone seems to think it was, and Scott Pilgrim was miles better.

Instead I'm going to have a whinge, in the manner of Mr Phill Hall.

2010 started for me with one of those big life-changing events, and not one of the good ones, either. It's not something I feel ready to talk about in detail, but it's fair to say that I've spent the rest of the year trying to recover, with limited success. Some days are good and I feel quite normal, but others are a proper struggle and I wonder if I'm right in the head. I suspect I may have acquired a touch of depression in there, but it's hard to tell if it's that or if I'm just being a stick-in-the-mud.

So there's that millstone, but it's not all been bad. As I hinted at above, I've been to the cinema more often this year than I think I ever have before, in part due to a good friend who's a bit of a film buff -- and who seems to love everything he sees, which is quite charming -- and who often requires company. It's a simple thing, and it seems absurd and more than a little embarrassing to talk about going to the cinema with a friend as a highlight of the year, but it's surprising how sometimes even that can feel like I'm doing something special, and it becomes quite cheering as a result.

The other highlight -- and it's entirely possible that I'm being naive and optimistic in my estimation here -- is that my art seems to be taking off. I still look at the stuff I draw and hate it almost as soon as I put the pen down, but people seem to like it, and I've been kept busy doing something I love. I received a big commission in the summer, to illustrate an entire book, including covers, but the client seems to have disappeared. On a happier and more productive note, I've been contributing art to Fight On! on a regular basis, did a few pieces for a Dungeons & Dragons product, and have contributed to a book of fictional gods for release in 2011. That said, comics are my first love in terms of art, and while I continue to battle against writers' block on my own projects, Rol has been keeping me fed with scripts for his anthology title PJANG! That doesn't seem like a lot now that I put it down in words, but it's been keeping me busy. I may be forgetting some details somewhere.

That's pretty much it for my year. With the ConDemNation cutting public sector spending, my job has got worse over the year and will likely continue to spiral downwards in 2011, but that's the thing I do for money and I try not to let it invade the rest of my life, the important bit, which is all that stuff up there. So 2010 has been a bit of a mixed bag, with one big howitzer of a bad turn throwing everything else akimbo, but I wonder if, in the end, I haven't made an extra effort to make the most of the good stuff as a way of dealing with the bad stuff. If so, I think it's worked.

So to all three-and-a-half people who read this blog, I hope you have a happy 2011!

PJANG! #5

Rol has just published the fifth issue of his not-The Jock-and-not-Escape Committee-but-still-quite-good comic-for-misanthropes PJANG! and the latest issue has a story drawn by myself. It's not all bad news though, as it also features a story drawn by Paul Rainey. You can order a copy for the bargain basement price of £1.75 by clicking on the image below.

Fluxalle

Fluxalle, the petty god of corroded cookware and brewing gone bad. For James Maliszewski's upcoming Petty Gods book:

Doxy #2

Cover Me!

I have been contributing art to the gaming magazine Fight On! for a while now -- I think it's been two years -- but so far it's been internal illustrations only. I'd never even considered doing a cover, in part because I'd not been struck by a good idea for one, and also because I didn't consider myself in the same league as the usual cover artists:

They're working on the eleventh issue right now, and the editor put out an open call for a cover image. The subject is to be something from the Runequest game, and one of the suggestions was the Crimson Bat, which is a kind of massive chiropteran Godzilla, flapping about and destroying everything in its path.

I can imagine it would be quite easy to come up with an epic bit of fantasy artwork to illustrate such a creature, but another quite different image sprang to mind instead. As I mentioned above, I've not had an idea push its way forward like that before, so I've gone with it.

While all the pieces above are very good, they're also all of a stock, illustrative fantasy style, and what occurred to me was something more "designy", iconic and abstract:

What I have in mind for the title and text is for it to go somewhere near the bottom, and to be plain white and unobtrusive, making the cover as a whole rather stark and simple.

The editor is unsure. He likes the image, but thinks the readership might respond in the negative, so he's not sure about making it the cover.

What do you think?

Dearest Hollywood

I can't think of any films which would have been improved by being filmed in 3D.

I can think of a whole host of films which would have been improved by better writing.

I trust you can work out the rest.

Chainsaw-A-Go-Go!

I'm not going to do one of those top ten horror films posts, mainly because it would be Halloween at #1 and everything else jostling for second-place.

Anyway, Rol said:

Since it was banned in the UK as a video nasty throughout my youth, I expected to be disappointed by [The Texas Chainsaw Massacre] when I finally saw it. Disappointed, I was not. Disturbed, I was. Not by the expected scenes of chainsaw torture - which turned out to be mercifully few and actually quite restrained - but instead by the scene at the dinner table where Grandpa's corpse starts sucking the girls finger and she screams... and screams... and screams... and screams.

I was expecting something horrendous, so when my film buff mate Chris got his hands on a grainy VHS copy from some former colony -- this was a couple of years before the ban was lifted -- we sat and watched with high expectations; after all, it had to be banned for a reason, right?

It wasn't horrible in the slightest. Rather, it was quite silly, and I found myself laughing throughout. The bit Rol describes, where the family are trying to get the emaciated almost-corpse grandpa to bash the girl's head in with a mallet, but he keeps dropping the hammer because it's too heavy for his withered hands, struck me as pure slapstick. The way the kids casually leave their wheelchair-bound friend to be hacked up with the titular tool had to be a joke, surely. And of course the whole thing was a blatant Scooby Doo pastiche, complete with a camper van full of kids investigating a mystery and the monster being the man from the local meat-packing factory wearing a mask. All they were missing was the dog.

For years I considered the film a failure, all hype and no substance. Friends reported that they found it just as scary and disturbing as its reputation suggests, so I started to wonder if I'd missed something. Then, in the third episode of A History of Horror, Mark Gatiss interviewed director Tobe Hooper, who confirmed that the film is, in fact, supposed to be funny. Probably not the silly laugh-fest I still see it as, but not the gruelling nihilistic shocker it's been characterised as, either.

I feel more well-inclined to the film now, so I think I'd like to see it again, to see if it's still as funny as I remember.

A History of Horror

Back in my wayward youth, the BBC did a series called Clive Barker's A to Z of Horror; I don't remember much about the series at all, but I liked it enough to pick up the accompanying book, which seemed to have been written mainly by Stephen Jones rather than Barker himself. I read that book cover to cover umpteen times, although I've long since lost my copy.

Anyway, I was reminded of Barker's series -- or rather the book -- as I watched Mark Gatiss' A History of Horror over the past couple of weeks, although I think I will likely remember more of Gatiss' series in years to come. Part of this is because he's an engaging host, and I could watch him talk about his favourite films and talk to their directors for hours. Part of it is because Gatiss and I seem to share much of the same likes and dislikes when it comes to horror cinema, but I think the best thing about the series is the honest enthusiasm Gatiss brings to the subject. While Barker was little more than a host, there is a definite sense that the project is more personal for Gatiss, as we see him travel to the locations of the films, speak in person with the directors, and so on. While he does wander into dry theory now and then, for the most part A History of Horror is about Mark Gatiss telling the viewer why he loves these films, and a number of times throughout the series he reminds us that it's not an exhaustive and scholarly list -- it's A, not The -- but simply him explaining to us why he owns the DVDs he does.

At only three episodes -- Barker got six back in 1997 -- it could have been longer, and one wonders just how long Gatiss spent in conversation with John Carpenter or Tobe Hooper and why we didn't get to see more. The third and final episode seemed rushed, more or less stopping at Halloween, missing out stuff like American Werewolf in London and skipping over the wave of Japanese horror, the subsequent wave of Spanish horror, and so on. All in all though, A History of Horror was a brilliant bit of telly, and I eagerly await news of an accompanying book...

Is It Safe?

I am not a huge fan of dentists at the best of times. I'm not sure why this is, but it may have to do with the butcher who gave me a bunch of unnecessary fillings -- including in wisdom teeth which should have been pulled -- without anaesthesia. I've managed to talk myself down from full-scale terror, but I'm still not comfortable in a dentist's surgery.

I went to a new dentist today and I was fine until the woman before me fled from the chair in a panic after the dentist tired to give her a filling when she was in for a check up. It turned out that she and her sister had appointments at the same time and had been sent to the wrong rooms. An easy mistake to make, but it wasn't doing my anxiety any good, and it just got worse when they sorted it out and the sister who was supposed to be getting a filling started screaming as the drill went in.

When my turn came, I was in the shocked pale-faced silence of one being led to the gallows, but it turned out I was fine and just needed to floss a bit more. I was sure I would need some kind of work done, so I was half annoyed that this wasn't the case, and half relieved.

Now that some hours have passed, I'm leaning more towards the relieved.