Gypsies.

This is the end result of my trip to Russia last October. I was invited by the Respect project to talk about comics, listen to, and take part in, discussions on human rights and the problems in Russia, then make a comic for Russian kids that might help. A big ask. But this is a scheme where these 'pocket comics' are given away in their thousands so that's a lot of lottery tickets.

Attitudes to gypsies in Russia are pretty horrible, and share some similarities with attitudes here. As part of the project I met with a local gypsy community leader, Yan, we got on remarkably well, and my lean grasp of Romany even meant we could exchange a few sentiments in the jib (language). This story is a mix of my experiences, stories I've picked up and observations of prejudice in Russia.

I'm not great at black and white politicking, my writing is usually a bit surreal, I think. For this I just wanted to do something simple that left all the thinking with the reader. If any Russian kid changes their mind after reading this it will be their thinking that has achieved that, no instruction from me.

Don Quixote cover designs

Just had the cover design for Don Quixote Volume II approved. It was my first idea. Last time I went through loads of ideas before settling on one. Here are some of them...

Doctor Who does Narnia

Happy new year folks. Sorry about the lack of bloggery here. Hope you had a good christmas. I finally caught up with the now traditional Christmas Doctor who (opinions on twitter as ever). Amusing to see the TV version do a Narnia style story exactly a year after Johnny Morris's Narnia christmas strip that I drew which featured in the Magazine. I realise there is no connection, the writer never reads the comic strips.

Here's the first 7 pages of our strip The Professor, The Witch and The Bookshop (sans lettering). It serves as a reminder that the DWM comic strips will be collected in Graphic Novel form again this year, starting with the Crimson Hand written by Dazzling Dan McDaid.

Russia. RESPECT. And other Gypsies.

%3Cspan+class%3D%22Apple-style-span%22+++style%3D%22font-family%3Ageorgia%3Bfont-size%3A100%25%3B%22%3EIn+October+I+was+invited+to+Russia+to+take+part+in+the+RESPECT+project.+I+had+no+idea+what+this+w,Uv2)FPF RI)S%{e+ N xhQ-

Tilting at windmills...

Apologies for the lack of blog posts, I have been blogging over at the SelfMadeHero site, so go read. If you've missed my rambling nonsense, that is...

Are we nearly there yet?

Tempting fate to talk about finishing something before it's over, but I probably won't get chance on Monday to post anything and I wanted to put this panel up because it's the first panel of the last chapter of Nelson. Truth is I've struggled to get the last chapter done due to an obligation I had to self destruct through June and July. The worst of that seems to be behind me and at last I'm enjoying drawing again. And I'm pretty confident this will done over the weekend in time for Monday's big Nelson pow wow.

This book was my daft idea in the first place and it's kept me company for the past 8 months, rather like a backseat full of screaming kids on a 10 hour car journey. But I absolutely love this book and everyone who has contributed to it. You'll all get to see it soon enough, it is rather amazing.

I owe a special debt to my co-editor Woodrow who has really taken it on his shoulders as I've floundered in the bottom of a whisky glass. Cheers mate. Nearly there now.

Lightnin' Hopkins

Did this yesterday at lunchtime. It's based on the cover to Walkin' this road by myself, the Lightnin' Hopkins LP. If you have the misfortune to follow me on Twitter you probably saw me posting images of it as I went along. Started out as a tiny thumbnail sketch (below) then got dragged into Manga Studio, which I prefer now to Illustrator for creating these kind of sans line images. I may have a go at turning it into a 'proper' painting on some kind of wood paneling (or whatever I can chor from a skip).

Don Quixote - Broken Hearts and Broken Minds

Finished. Volume One of Don Quixote is in the bag. I finished it a couple of weeks ago, but it's taken me this long to get over the loss and the separation and move on. Hmmm... I'll start again... That was a piss poor attempt at making an oblique reference to the fact I marked the end of Quixote by separating from my wife and moving out of my home with her and the kids. Quixote wasn't in any way responsible for what happened, but I found much in the book that echoed my state of mind and my situation.

If you're not familiar with the original book you may be surprised to learn that it contains eternal truths about love and loss as well as madness, delusion and goats. But love is to some extent the ultimate madness and delusion, it's the quixotism we all indulge in (not sure where the goats fits in, but each to their own, eh). Maybe the best way to appreciate the idealist, the impulsive, the rash romantic that is Don Quixote is to think of madness as love, then his crazy exploits don't seem any more ridiculous than our own. (Hmmm... how long can I stretch this analogy...?)

I'll switch from discussing it in general terms and instead use some synchronistic examples from recent weeks.

The day of the Royal Wedding was a particular low in my life, the point in this particular marital breakdown where events spiraled out of control into the kind of nightmare-scape that I'd always dreaded. On that day I did this panel:

For Don Quixote love is as unrequited and sweet as a teenage crush.

Everything he does is for the Lady Dulcinea del Toboso, a figment of his imagination, a deep, lasting love he has projected onto a peasant girl in the village.

Nothing like a teenage crush to make you act like a fool, you might not have dressed in armour and fought windmills, sheep and cats to prove the validity of your own imagined love, but it will probably have found a way to make a fool of you I'm sure.

It's in the stories within stories from the people he meets on the road that we get a more realistic picture of how men and women inflict their madness upon each other in the name of love.

They're simple morality tales with a cruel twist and a wicked sense of humour.

Cervantes saves the best for last in Volume One - an entire novella within the novel. In my version this is crushed down to just four pages. 'The Novel of the Curious Impertinent' paints a painful and hilarious picture of what happens when monogamy and curiosity collide.

Now I'm not trying to belittle the complex states of insanity that afflict folk by comparing them to love anymore than I'm trying to turn anyone's idea of love sour; I'm interested in the mechanisms of fiction and how close those mechanisms echo sanity and love. I don't expect to understand these things, it's just handy to leave a few breadcrumbs on the path as you go in so you can find your way out again.

2D Festival Derry 2011

I've attended a lot of comic conventions and arts festivals over the years, I think the 2D festival in Derry might just be my favourite. Granted, I am writing this in the hazy after glow with a crooked smile on my face, but this event was everything I would like to see from a comics' festival.

The whole festival seemed to be about getting artist to actually give something back rather than sit and receive their fans like royalty. There was no reaching into your pocket from artists or punters and yet everyone went away so much richer for the experience.

I spent a weekend in great company that included my boyhood hero, a host of brilliant artists and writers and so many people from Derry who all seemed to become instant friends.

Saturday was spent sketching all day, and I mean ALL day. No one charges for sketches and whilst you get some people who want you to draw 'what you do' (I did a LOT of Daleks and Matt Smiths) you get a whole bunch of people asking for anything under the sun (I have now drawn Wonder Woman, Wolverine, the Joker etc etc). Most of the people were kids. I got handed sketchbook from a 6 year old that contained zombies by Glen Fabry, Spiderman by Phil Winslade and Tank Girl by Rufus Dayglo mixed in with the kid's own drawings from the day before. "What would you like?" I foolishly asked. "A robot squirrel," he said.

I spent the day sat next to the genius that is Mick McMahon and his wife Chrissie. They were great company and the nervous quaking that should have wrecked me in his presence was dispelled by the fact he's a such a nice bloke. We spent a lot of time together and talked A LOT of comics.

Here's a couple of sketches he did for me:

Dredd done in my sketch pad with my pen and...

Spikes Harvey Rotten. And here's the man himself busy drawing countless sketches for everyone. I had so much stuff with me it spread all across his table too.

Eventually the kids go off to bed and the adults head to Dino's bar for the panels. I was on the first panel on the Friday night with Rufus (Tank Girl) Dayglo, Denise (crime writer) Mina, David (Bulletproof Coffin) Hine and Mark (Vice president of DC comics) Chiarello.

From L to R David, me, Denise and Mark. Photo by Rufus.

Below is the bar filling up ready for the panel.

Once again 2D was a great leveler as artists, fans and locals all mixed in. The discussions from the panels filtering out onto the street and vice versa. This is what a festival should be like and David Campbell who puts it together with the help of, yet another new mate of mine, Gary (Marvelman) Leach deserves all the praise he will get from us in the coming weeks. I don't know how he does it, but anyone else putting together a festival like this should give him a ring and find out. I want more.

I learnt a lot, had a lot of fun and made a lot of new friends. I think that was true of everyone who came.

Thanks David. Thanks Derry.

NELSON

Scan of the brush and ink drawing I did for the Nelson cover.

Finally the cat's out of the bag. I'm terrible at keeping secrets and having a big secret like this to carry around for the past few months has been a real challenge.

The 'secret project' I've been working on since December last year is called Nelson, it's an anthology of UK comics done as a novel, find out more about it here. A UK comics anthology that embraced all types UK comic creators from the Beano to 2000ad, from small press to those working Marvel and DC, from Newspaper strips to Web comics seemed like a good idea, I thought it would be even better if all of those different comic creators were working together on the same story.

I had the idea last year and with the help of Woodrow Phoenix and Blank Slate books it is becoming a reality. The idea was a simple one - tell a person's life by picking one day from each year of their life and use a different comic creator for each year. I started it off in 1968 the year the character was born and passed it on to Woodrow who did 1969 and passed it on to the next creator for 1970 and so on. Because I want this to succeed as a novel I've worked as editor, with Woodrow as co-editor, to oversee, occasionally guide and always help. It's been a honour to work with so many amazing talents and be a part of their creative processes.

I could say so much about this book, but I need to hold off until nearer publication for fear of peaking too soon. All I can say is that it is exceeding my expectations already and it has a life all of it's own. At times I feel about as in control of this book as a surfer is in control of the sea.

So next time someone asks you if you know who or what is Nelson you'll be able to tell them.

A panel from my opening 1968 chapter

Mark E Smith and the Ramones

I don't know whether you have the dubious pleasure of following me on Twitter, if not you probably won't have seen these scribbles. Comics' savant, Dan Berry, invited fellow twitterers to produce high speed sketches of first the Ramones then Mark E Smith without using reference, these are my results. Mark E Smith is a character so ingrained on my consciousness that it felt like cheating. Alongside Mick McMahon, Mark E Smith helped shape my world view growing up, for better or worse.

The Ramones one included some guesswork, Johnny, Joey and Dee Dee were fixed in my head but 'the other one' was guesswork. I used the remaining ink for a 'drawing without reference' idea of my own, the Samuel Beckett below. Probably has to rank as the quickest drawing I've done, took about 20 seconds I suppose.
As you can see below I did it on the inside back cover of my sketch pad because it was shiny and would resist the ink. I may do something wild and inky in the near future, these were a lot of fun to do.