tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17889920312581958932024-02-19T06:49:49.260+00:00Dinlos and SkilldosRob's comic strip blogRob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.comBlogger165125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-61817246764471345242013-10-30T13:02:00.000+00:002013-10-30T13:04:08.291+00:00Why The Complete Don Quixote?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">Q: Why did you call it the Complete Don Quixote?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A: So many readers have failed to complete Don Quixote, this book advertises the possibility on its cover. Now you too can "Complete Don Quixote"! </span><span style="font-size: large;">And because I finished my adaptation of the book, something that seemed unlikely at times. Other adaptations have failed to complete Don Quixote, not naming any names, you know who you are.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Q: But you missed some bits out so it's not complete is it?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A: Yeah, yeah, shut up. It's nearly 300 pages of comics, you could knock someone out with that lush hardback edition (only £19.99 from good stockists and a paltry £15 for a signed one at Thought Bubble!). And I have added as much as I've taken away, this is the graphic novel not the novel novel. Cervantes would have loved comics as they can demonstrate his crazy ideas with an ease that cuts through age gap. Given how different shaped our brains are now*, one could even claim that the Complete Don Quixote will give one a more complete experience of the story.</span><br />
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*There is no science to support this assertion.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Q: How so?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A: Here is an example from Volume Two, Chapter Four (a personal favourite)...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The mad knight, having escaped a wedding punch up, uses his idiot squire who has consumed much of the wedding feast for ballast as he leaps into the dreaded Cave of Montesinos. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">After half an hour, Sancho drags his friend back up.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Quixote's tale is rather abstract, we switch to his point of view with a change in style.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As you can see, there is some discrepancy between Quixote's version of events and the probability that he just fell asleep. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">This experience has changed his mission.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Brilliant! A true knight's adventure! Sadly they are immediately distracted by a man dragging a cart who tells them of an impending war. Again, the switch of style lets us into the polite farce that began this war. Now whether we're in Quixote's imagination, Sancho's imagination or the storyteller's imagination matters not - by now we are familiar with the comic clues to a story within a story.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And back in the inn the man completes his story in person. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Or at least he would do but for the arrival of another storyteller in the shape of the Puppeteer, Master Pedro, and his psychic monkey. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">And once again we enter the comic story within the comic story as Master Pedro's puppets play out the story of another brave knight who would also rescue his fair maiden. But this time the comic page is a puppet theatre and the characters are puppets.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Turn the page. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Hmmmm. Quixote breaks the fourth wall. The comics break their own rule. This could be getting a bit meta if it weren't for the gift of comics to help it all make perfect daft-sense.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Q: Fair enough. So what happens next? Does Quixote rescue Dulcinea from Merlin's evil clutches?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A: I suggest you read the book. And so does the title.</span><br />
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Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-51055471117069198372013-04-16T10:14:00.004+01:002013-04-17T09:45:12.249+01:00Don Quixote Volume II<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Yes, Volume II is here! Well, not here exactly, it's in a warehouse in London somewhere. But on Saturday April 20th it will be available for the first time at the COMICA Comiket in St Martin's College.<br />
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That's right. You can find out what happens next to our hapless heroes as they confront reviews of Volume I (including one by the dastard Paul Gravett), donkey thieves, demons, wise monkeys, old foes in new clothes, new foes in old clothes, death, cats, holes and humiliation. Not necessarily in that order.<br />
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A monkey</div>
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Some humiliation</div>
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The devil.</div>
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Hopefully I will be there on Saturday afternoon to deface your copies of Volume II. At this moment in time I can't even afford the train fare due to an oversight by some people who were supposed to pay me for some drawings. I shall keep you informed via twitter or facebook. </div>
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Adiós.</div>
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Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-68775950983418683722013-04-12T16:37:00.001+01:002013-04-17T09:45:32.555+01:00Don Quixote in New York.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>"Thou hast seen nothing yet!" Quote from Don Quixote.</i></div>
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I've just returned from New York where we launched the Complete Don Quixote on an American readership. I was there with a SelfMadeHero posse promoting some of the first SelfMadeHero books available in the US. Along with Emma Hayley (the brains behind everything we do) and Sam Humphrey (Sales and Marathon Man), were fellow creators JAKe and Robert Sellers (with their fabulous collection of drinking stories from Oliver Reed, Richard Harris, Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole - HELLRAISERS) and Glyn Dillon (creator of instant classic Nao of Brown). Were there as guests of Abrams who sell our books in the US and who were all very cool. Below you can see us sharing a table with them at MoCCA (the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art convention run by the Society of Illustrators).<br />
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Whilst there we did a panel with the wonderful Mr Jimmy Aquino, you can hear the interview he did with me on his Comic News insider podcast <a href="http://www.jimmyaquino.typepad.com/comicnewsinsider/2013/04/episode-467-mocca-recap-w-heidi-macdonaldrob-davisrobert-sellersmatt-miner.html">here</a> . Jimmy wanted to know what the differences were between British and American comics and, quite frankly, we struggled to answer that.* Historically there are differences and for some of us (of a certain age) that history has shaped the way we see comics. But what struck me thinking back over the reaction to our books at MoCCA was the sense there is such a broad readership of comics in the US. Many of the attitudes about comics we have in the UK today come from the fact they aren't read across the board. Readers fall into factions and look suspiciously at each other; creators either belong to faction with its own support network or crave ways of reaching the 'common people'. To some degree this affects the way we make comics. What I felt watching the reaction to my work in the US, and talking to people there, was a sense of being freed from that.<br />
I may be wrong, but I watched a lifelong Marvel fan take nothing but SelfMadeHero books home. Marvel was for another day.<br />
I always say that questions about comics as a genre (especially ones that presume that genre is about men in tights and capes) crush me. The crowd at MoCCA dispelled that notion, for a while at least. Why not see comics as a medium and switch over every now and then to see what's on the other side. A pleasantly surprising, open-minded attitude.<br />
Hopefully, whilst we wait for that 'growing UK market' to get big enough to pay the rent, some of our current UK comics will find a readership in the US and those of us who aren't big fans of Superhero comics won't feel obliged to don a superhero costume for the privilege.<br />
There's been an emptying of talent from UK comics to US comics in the past, what I hope we'll see in the future is a US discovery of UK comics. Rather than talented artists and writers dropping their tools and jumping onto franchises in the US we might see more original stories and ideas from the UK finding a readership there. I think that would be better for both parties.<br />
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Of course this may just be me tilting at windmills again.<br />
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*Hannah Means Shannon did a great job of summarising that panel <a href="http://comicsbeat.com/on-the-scene-mocca-fest-2013-selfmadeheros-englishmen-in-new-york/">here</a>.</div>
Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-15366717865071620492013-02-02T15:59:00.000+00:002013-02-02T16:03:24.953+00:00I know nothing about Manga but...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I got a stack of Manga for Christmas, so I'm going to do a quick review of what I've been reading.</div>
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<b>MW - Osamu Tezuka</b></div>
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<b><br /></b>It's Tezuka who got me excited about Manga. There's something about the tone of his books that is pitch perfect. The dark stuff doesn't need to wear a cloak and be painfully serious, the sex doesn't exploit the characters in a pornographic way, the humour comes from the goofiness of the personalities, the horror comes from the situation not from gore and shock, and the style... the style bends like a reed to suit all of these aspects. I have no idea what his books were like to read in context and I'm reading books of his from the 70s or 80s without factoring that in the way I would if it was a western comic from that period. This stuff just reads itself, it doesn't need me to make adjustments or allowances. The man was a genius.</div>
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MW is supposedly the anti-Tezuka, the darkest of all his books, it's hard to imagine a darker book - child molestation, rape, mental torture, genocide... it's like an attempt to batter every last grain of humanity from your characters (and readers) and see if there's still a human being left behind. </div>
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The plot is a loopy 70s action movie/thriller affair with government conspiracies, a corrupted priest, a long haired detective, a serial killer and a secret weapon. The bouncy 70s art styles and immaculate storytelling make this fun to read and horrific to consider.</div>
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The story was originally serialised between 76-78 and was Tezuka's reaction to new violent adult comics (Gekiga) appearing in Japan at that time. Tezuka was Japan's Walt Disney at this time. Can you imagine Walt Disney deciding his next story will be about a homosexual serial killer, a homosexual priest and government genocide with chemical weapons? That Tezuka is as happy to write a thousand pages about Hitler or Buddha says everything about him. He created Astro Boy, but y'know, so what? You need to keep growing as an artist. If you need a touchstone for what an artist working in comics can achieve, Tezuka' your man.</div>
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Next...</div>
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I read the first book in a number of different series.</div>
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<b>The Drifting Classroom - Kazuo/Umezu</b></div>
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<b><br /></b>I didn't know this was from way back in '72 until I finished it. The series ended in '74, it's 11 volumes in all so I have a long way to go. The plot: a school disappears and reappears in a mutant wasteland, the kids go mental and the teachers go mental. This is supposed to be one of the great 70s horror comics, what may horrify some readers in 2013 is how the teachers deal with the hysterical kids. Mr Nice Teacher takes to thumping as many 6 year olds in the face as is needed to calm the mob, and Mr Not-so-Nice Teacher grabs a kids, smashes his glasses and uses the broken glass to stab him in the arm. But it was ok because the kid was his own son. Phew! I'm not sure if this stuff was intended as the horror, it seems mostly consistent with my own memories of childhood in the 70s. I guess the mutant landscape stuff follows in later volumes. I don't know if I'll finish this series but I loved its hysteria, it's like putting your head in a pit of screaming kids.</div>
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<b>Uzumaki - Junji Ito</b></div>
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<b><br /></b>Now this is the stuff. This is a horror comic. I read in bed and this book actually gave me a nightmare.</div>
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It's all about spirals. Forget vampires or monsters or serial killers, I can assure you - spirals are the real horror. The plot: kids on an island notice their parents and others becoming obsessed and then consumed by spirals. Spirals in art and nature. They're everywhere! A boy's mum gets so terrified of them after they take her husband she tries to destroy them all - slicing off her fingertips because they're spirals and attempting to stab out her inner ear to get at the cochlea.</div>
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This book came out in 1998, eight years after I was terrified by a fibonacci cauliflower (Romanesque). That's a story for another day, I'm just glad I read this 20 years after the cauliflower incident. Will continue reading this series, with some trepidation.</div>
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<b>Death Note - Tsugumi Ohba/Takeshi Obata</b></div>
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I imagined this would be a gripping Horror/fantasy thing, and in a sense it is, but as with Tezuka it relishes getting tripped up by the realities presented by the plot. Boy finds Death Note - anyone whose name he rights on Death Note dies, the Death God who owns the note haunts/hangs around with the boy. Great set-up. That the boy sets out to reshape the human race with the note gives it a grandeur, that he is constantly beset by the logistics of carrying out such a plan makes the whole thing credible and so much more fun. The art is really tight, veering between brilliant and stiff. I can imagine this book being popular with teens the world over. I may eventually get the rest of the series.<br />
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<b>Children of the Sea - Daisuke Igarashi</b><br />
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A girl who thinks she saw a ghost in an aquarium finds herself captivated by two kids raised by a sea cow. These 'Children of Sea' seem to understand the 'mind' of the sea and struggle to live on the land. This book is a mystery, an immersive mystery. Not a mystery in a whodunnit sense, or immersive in a page-turner sense - it offer no easy answers and immerses you with its naturalistic storytelling and fully realised settings. Everything unfolds at its own pace and much of Igarashi's effort goes towards creating a naturalism with a loose but persistent style. In fact the drawing is almost quirk-free and achieves moments of great atmosphere without stylishness to the line or hatching. I'd say I was intrigued rather than captivated so far.<br />
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<b>Blue Spring</b><br />
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Worth it for the art. Something un-manga about it to my eyes. The usual ingredients are missing to the faces, but the storytelling is excellent and the short stories here have a British 1960s kitchen sink quality. All the tales centre around a bunch of bored teens waiting for the summer to come. And it can't come soon enough. Recommended.<br />
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<b>FLCL</b><br />
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Couldn't make head nor tail of this, I really wanted to read it after scanning the blurb, but I found it utterly impenetrable. There are some cutesy drawing and some bits of dialogue and I'm sure they connect together somehow, but...<br />
Apparently this was a TV show, so maybe it makes sense if you knew the Anime first... I dunno... it was like looking at doodles on the back of a sketch book and trying to connect them together to make sense. If anyone can help me with this book please do.<br />
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And if anyone wants to offer further suggestions based on my thoughts here I'd be happy to hear them. I plan to scoop up another haul as soon as I can. Manga is just more readable than most Western comics and I feel I should go away and think about all the reasons why it is so readable and apply them to my work. </div>
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Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-15991347964689096902013-02-02T12:11:00.003+00:002013-02-02T12:14:13.106+00:00Hourly Comics Day 2013<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-50550281537805078002012-12-04T12:51:00.003+00:002012-12-04T12:55:32.573+00:00Nelson - British Comic Award winner!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>The original colour rough I did for Nelson from Woodrow's type rough back in December 2010.</i></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Last month Nelson won the first British Comic Award for best book and I want to congratulate and thank everyone who contributed to the book. I would have liked to do that when Woodrow and I picked up the award, but it's a long list and it would have taken quite a while. Here goes. Thanks and congratulations to <b>Kenny Penman</b> (our publisher) <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Woodrow Phoenix</b> (my co-editor)</span>, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Paul Grist</span>, Ellen Lindner, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Jamie Smart</span>, Gary Northfield, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sarah McIntyre</span>, Suzy Varty, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sean Longcroft</span>, Warwick Johnson–Cadwell, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Luke Pearson</span>, Paul Harrison–Davies, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Katie Green</span>, Paul Peart–Smith, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Glyn Dillon</span>, I.N.J.Culbard, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">John Allison</span>, Philip Bond, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">D’Israeli</span>, Simone Lia, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Darryl Cunningham</span>, Jonathan Edwards, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ade Salmon</span>, Kate Charlesworth, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Warren Pleece</span>, Kristyna Baczynski, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">HarveyJames</span>, Rian Hughes, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sean Phillips & Pete Doree</span>, Kate Brown, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Simon Gane</span>, Jon McNaught, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Adam Cadwell</span>, Faz Choudhury, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">JAKe</span>, Jeremy Day, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dan McDaid</span>, Roger Langridge, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Will Morris</span>, Dave Shelton, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Carol Swain</span>, Hunt Emerson, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Duncan Fegredo</span>, Philippa Rice, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Josceline Fenton</span>, Garen Ewing, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tom Humberstone</span> , Dan Berry,<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Alice Duke</span>, Posy Simmonds, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Laura Howell</span>, Andi Watson, and </b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Dave Taylor </b>(the contributors) and <b>Bridget Hannigan, Kayla Hillier, Martin Steenton </b>and<b> Geri Ford</b></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> (for everything from pulling the project together, proofing and colouring to publishing it). </span></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I also have to thank my partner, Rachael, whose conversation with her sister inspired the final chapter of Nelson at a time when I had no idea how to end the book and who, on our first 'proper' date, took me to the Nelson in Blandford Forum. Coincidence or fate, don't know that I believe in either. She had no knowledge of the book and on that day as we sat there getting drunk in the beer garden with the rough script notes under a pint glass to stop them blowing away I knew this was just meant to be. And I had an idea for a single image prelude to the story that was eventually drawn by Paul Grist and which is now hanging on mine and Rachael's wall with the date of that drink at the Nelson written underneath.</span> </span></span></span></div>
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<i>Summer 2011 in London, the whiff of riots and Murdoch in the air</i>.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; line-height: 19px;">Nelson started life at Thought Bubble festival in 2010 when I realised that what makes the British comic scene of today is its diversity and harmony. Perhaps it's the nature of the Thought Bubble that it levels things and makes there appear to be no headline acts or star turns just a panoply of creative talents in the same room. Maybe it was a trick of the light and we all exist in cliques with our own agendas, I think Nelson says otherwise. At Thought Bubble 2011 we launched the book and everywhere I looked people were walking around with it under their arms. So it felt right that if Nelson was to win an award it should be at Thought Bubble 2012.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; line-height: 19px;">There's been some discussion since those first British Comic Awards about agendas and cliques and sexism. Primarily a few creators, Nelsonites among them, questioned whether there were enough women on the shortlist, no one covered themselves in any glory as bruised egos produced curt responses, which is the nature of Twitter based debates among friends. Unfortunately The New Statesman, which has an agenda to expose 'sexism in nerd culture', leapt on the debate and hitched it to this agenda. I have no problem with such an agenda, I'm not sure what nerd culture is, but if there's sexism at play I of course want it exposed for what it is. I say unfortunately because I would have been overjoyed for the New Statesman to do a piece on The British Comic Awards and from my perspective Nelson embraces so many positive issues that I have in common with them that it would have been great promotion for British comics' creators. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; line-height: 19px;">What's done is done. I hope the Awards committee are open to criticism and are aware of all forms of bias that may influence voting, but I say that with no proof that this wasn't already the case. I'm sorry if anyone came away from the awards with these concerns, I came away dazzled by seeing so many wonderful British comics flickering before my eyes on the big screen. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; line-height: 19px;">I just realised that the awards were almost clean sweep for Nelsonites. We did try and get Raymond Briggs into Nelson at one point (he took the lifetime achievement award).</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large; line-height: 19px;"> Josceline Fenton took the Emerging talent award</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">John Allison took the best comic award for Bad Machinery</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">and Luke Pearson took the Young Peoples Award for Hilda and the Midnight Giant.</span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">The shortlists included graphic novels, web comics, short form, long form, adaptations, factual books, fiction, humour, kids books, observational, sci fi, romance, hight art, low art, experimentation, traditional comics... a broad range that demonstrates how far British Comics have come in a few short years. I feel excited and privileged to be making comics during the most creative time there has been in British comics in my memory. This is the time to be making comics in Britain, this is the time to be reading British comics!</span></span></span></div>
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Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-87728813901658885082012-10-15T10:11:00.002+01:002013-04-17T09:50:16.872+01:00The British Comic Awards<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I was reading the <a href="http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2012/british-comic-awards-nominations-announced/">FPI blog</a> piece about <a href="http://britishcomicawards.com/">The British Comic Awards</a> first ever shortlist (because I'm on the list and I wanted to see if anyone had anything nice or horrible to say about me, it's what we do) and I came across a mini-tirade from an ardent 2000ad blogger about the absence of 2000ad from the shortlist. There followed a long and impassioned description of the many talents and wonderful stories that have appeared in that comic. The chap was clearly very angry about this because he is a 2000ad fan. And then it struck me that there was something about the list and the omission of 2000ad that was quite positive.<br />
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(I feel like a drunk in a minefield writing about awards where I'm nominated.)<br />
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Here come the sweeping generalisations...<br />
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There's a connection between the five books nominated, something they share that 2000ad doesn't. And something born out by the fact that it was a '2000ad fan' who leapt forward. When I started Don Quixote I wanted to make a book that might be read by people outside the comics' world, and it was around this time my then wife pointed out that she had no idea who was speaking in these caption things in a comic I handed her. "Well, it's either the thoughts of a character, a first person author or a third person author or..." Why should she know? She doesn't read many, if any, comics.<br />
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So I put in that bit where the voice from the cell, the author's voice, pops up in a caption and tells you that's what he's doing. I could do this in Quixote because the whole book is full of these kind of metafictions anyway. There's nothing wrong with a book being difficult to read, often the most rewarding books are, but I didn't want mine to be off-putting purely because of modern conventions in the medium.<br />
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This idea was very important to Woodrow and I when we were editing Nelson, we wanted a book that could walk and talk on its own in any company, not something that was a foreigner the moment it stepped outside of a comic shop. This has been born out by the reaction we've had from people who haven't read a comic since they were a child in the 80s/70s/60s etc.<br />
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I don't have a copy of Goliath or Science Tales yet, but I'm very familiar with the work of these two authors and admire both. What they share is clarity. Darryl's Psychiatric tales is a book I gave to people not because they liked comics, but because I knew it would touch them deeply and inform them. It didn't matter whether they read comics. Equally Tom's work is all about instantaneous reading, his strips are fast to read than words. Anyone who encounters them receives the messages sent.<br />
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Then there's Luke, whose Hilda book has been read and loved by me and my daughter. It's a kids book. This doesn't mean it doesn't warrant the same accolades as an adult comic (actually I'm not sure whether Quixote also counts as all ages given that many kids have read it). My daughter knows that comics can offer more than three pages of filler in a merchandise tie-in, she has read Hilda and has high expectations of comics. Good.<br />
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Well, there's the connection between the five nominees. So where does 2000ad fit in, you ask. 2000ad, for the purposes of this blog post, represents a different relationship between comic and reader, the traditional relationship - comic and fan. Comics are a nerdy fan world, and that's fine. 2000ad has given me some of my best experiences reading comics. 2000ad has been THE comics industry in the UK for many years, but it is almost totally 2000ad fans making comics for 2000ad fans and it is in a sense a celebration of itself. What these awards highlight is not, as our afore mentioned 2000ad blogger claimed, a leaning towards 'indie' it's a leaning towards new readers. Without them we're dead.<br />
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Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-80615198657089180282012-09-20T13:34:00.004+01:002012-09-20T13:38:27.340+01:00Mick McMahon - Demon Artist<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Tim Pilcher just asked me if was ever influenced by Mick McMahon, it shocked me so much I thought he might have been taking the piss. I think this is probably a good excuse to make Mick blush once more and print the article I wrote for Vworp! Vworp! magazine a couple of years back where some of my good friends from Doctor Who comics explain why Mick's one and only Doctor Who strip is the best thing since sliced bread.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Excuse the cod McMahon illo, I did this before I got to know Mick and the caricature isn't the best. Oh, and DWM means Doctor Who Magazine).</span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVl9eP2vG1-O61TTQdDmyScqT5x9FKdQS3vlENw8Ofm4MozMDQ0PXX0Erlqp0Ds0Qps6eJ9Kakv-M5tcLr9Fsg3DwJ1wtTA4tw9ycFyr2Xo511e3Q-PafVhfa26q7Y1pb76hkFed03Oaxl/s1600/Demon+artist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="459" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVl9eP2vG1-O61TTQdDmyScqT5x9FKdQS3vlENw8Ofm4MozMDQ0PXX0Erlqp0Ds0Qps6eJ9Kakv-M5tcLr9Fsg3DwJ1wtTA4tw9ycFyr2Xo511e3Q-PafVhfa26q7Y1pb76hkFed03Oaxl/s640/Demon+artist.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The Demon Artist</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">By Rob Davis</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">If you ask the DWM artists for their favourite DWM comic strip chances are they will pick Junkyard Demon. (For the record I <i>did</i> ask a collection of my fellow artists including Dan McDaid, Martin Geraghty, Ade Salmon, Sean Longcroft, Roger Langridge and Paul Grist.) So why would we pick a two part oddity like this over the many wonderful epics on offer? It’s a great little idea by Steve Parkhouse. Prefiguring Rob Shearman’s 2005 classic, Dalek, it’s about a battered, inert monster of supreme powers collected amongst the universe’s flotsam that comes to life with the arrival of the Doctor. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“Parkhouse on top form,” says Sean Longcroft, “an amiable and redoubtable pair of space barrow boys and their windmill-powered robot share our sense of awe as a Cyberman awakes from its lengthy sleep. ‘<i>One Cyberman could stop an army!’</i> The Doctor informs us, but the immediate threat he poses is to a perfectly charming afternoon of hot chocolate, small sherries and er… hand bellows. The conflict between the fantastically monstrous and the cosily common is one of the hallmark strengths of Doctor Who, a genre Parkhouse nailed right from the off.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“A story that strong could have been daubed in crayon and it would still be effective,” observes DWM’s own Muppeteer, Roger Langridge. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">He’s right, whoever had drawn it, this would have been a great strip, but due to some bizarre happenstance it fell into the lap of the UK’s most innovative comic artist approaching the peak of his powers. And we were blessed with something unique in Doctor Who.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“Demon really opens up the Universe of comics Who,” says Dan McDaid, “Gibbons, Wagner and Mills pushed Tom Baker's Doctor to the edge of madness, but McMahon takes him right over that edge, into the an inky, super-charged space full of bristling moustaches, ramshackle battleships and junkheaps which walk like men. I love Gibbons to bits, but it's hard to beat the sudden shock of McMahon's potent linework: erratic, spontaneous, instinctive - instantly gripping.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Ade Salmon adds, “I love how McMahon brings his 2000AD Dreddview to the Dr Who mythos! Buyulla's inks also play a large part here , delicately spinning web lines between chunking great granite blocks of black. Mick would have inked the heavy blacks before connecting with the linework and Adolfo does a decent imitation here. I also like McMahon's storytelling, plenty of panels ( up to 12!) pushing the story forwards yet taking moments to concentrate on some nice design work.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">In case you haven’t got the message Mick is what they call ‘an artist’s artist’. Explaining why is not easy - talking about art is like dancing about architecture, to paraphrase Declan McManus. Shall we dance?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Some artists see their role as representing reality – a kind of consensus reality that says we can all agree the world looks like this so therefore the story is believable, nothing wrong with that. There’s been some great comic art done by people trying to achieve that kind of ‘consensus reality’, but I’ve always been enticed by comics that let me see the world through another set of eyes. And first glimpse of Mick’s world tells you this is something shockingly different. The world seen through his eyes is no less believable, but reintroduces you to reality as something shockingly new and awe inspiring. That’s not to say it’s fantasy, it is grittily real. In fact there are very few artists who give us a reality as solid as Mick McMahon, despite its amplified and abstracted forms.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The Jigsaw puzzle of blacks in his work are so well placed that, as Roger points out, “you could take away the thin lines, just leaving the solid blacks and it would still be coherent!”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">These aren’t just wonderfully rendered objects though - what of the familiar characters now filtered through the McMahon mangler? </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“Likeness is important in a licensed comic,” Dan explains, “but in Junkyard Demon McMahon offers us something more - a bristling, lively caricature of the Fourth Doctor, a gangling mass of a man with iron-wool hair, who meditates among plush cushions and throws spanners around like there's no tomorrow. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The Doctor, the Tardis, the Cyberman are all familiar and recognisable and yet utterly unique and completely McMahon's own.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“Awkward, caricatured, outlandish, yet totally believable,” is how Martin Geraghty describes him. But is it Tom Baker? I don’t think it is. I was glad my first Doctor Who strips featured David Tennant because I felt he’d made himself into something of a cartoon (he had a silhouette, a quirky hairdo and converse pumps) and that made my job so much easier. The Tennant I drew was for the most part a cartoon. Mick’s Doctor is like that, he’s the Doctor that Tom Baker created not a drawing of Tom Baker in a costume. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">So what about the villain? “Mick's cyberman is bloody brilliant!” That’s what Ade thinks and anyone who wants to argue with that is liable to get a spanner lobbed at them.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Ade goes on, “His Cyber-Controller is dense with floral decoration, his intrusive Cyber-intruder grows and warps as his menace increases. Where Gibbons had brought solidity, integrity and grace to the world of Who, McMahon brings anarchy, energy, movement. And it's this spirit, this restless creativity, which I hope has found its way into my own work.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Ah, yes the influence thing. As Roger observes, “McMahon’s influence in the UK is as great as that of Jack Kirby in the US.” And his influence on Roger? “From him I get idea that your job as a cartoonist is to take this job and put your own stamp on it, make it as much your own as you can without actually breaking it.” For Paul Grist McMahon’s influence is in his relentless invention,</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“one of the most impressive things is he doesn't stand still. McMahon always seems to be trying something new something different, and then once he's got that, incorporates it into his style and moves on to try something else.” And like the rest of us Paul is “still looking at McMahon’s old Judge Dredds and trying to figure out how to get that kind of energy into my work.”</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Sean and I have been best mates since childhood, we grew up slavishly copying Mick’s work. And even as grown up professional comic artists the problem for those of us heavily influenced by Mick’s work (and this includes some of the biggest names in British comics) is trying not to end up just aping his style(s). </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">I asked Sean how Mick’s work had influenced him, “Looking at my drawing of a cloth faced Cyberman in the Fangs Of Time, I'd have to say almost completely! Oops!” Truth is, Sean, Ade and I have all fallen victim to the temptation to just ape McMahon’s style in the past, as Sean adds though, “the aspects of his work it'd be wiser to try and emulate would be his love of form and line, his prioritisation of clear storytelling over showing off, and of course his tireless creativity.” </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Mick brought all that to bear on Junkyard Demon and with Adolfo Buyulla’s faithful inks and Steve Parkhouse’s mad script we have a comic strip to just gawp at in wonder.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Link to typically modest Mick's blog featuring Junkyard Demon <a href="http://tuggingyourcoat.com/2011/11/13/vworp-vworp/">here</a>.</span></div>
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Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-83490582049207543162012-09-19T14:01:00.001+01:002013-04-17T09:46:10.740+01:00What to expect...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW3X_GgCrgaseNRwMwJfc7IVz462UG0QrAW3gYByVEG0EmYKMBgCcoaMKd_7TlbLSWuItbZXpa2HmWPh5kFv1HvYyYekK1hwmp-OZNrT7N3HfLu0guMyWUiSwaqxXD3X1lAun36i5RpOW3/s1600/Picture+18.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW3X_GgCrgaseNRwMwJfc7IVz462UG0QrAW3gYByVEG0EmYKMBgCcoaMKd_7TlbLSWuItbZXpa2HmWPh5kFv1HvYyYekK1hwmp-OZNrT7N3HfLu0guMyWUiSwaqxXD3X1lAun36i5RpOW3/s320/Picture+18.png" width="223" /></a></div>
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This is the first of a couple of blogs I'll do about what you can expect from the second Volume of Don Quixote. First of all there's the cover (above) which is dark. Doug from SelfmadeHero hates this cover because he says it's hard to sell black or white covers. In future I'll try to make his job easier (see the cover to the US Complete Quixote at the bottom of this post)<br />
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Why did I do that cover? Well, I'm a storyteller not a designer or marketing man and so I can't help but think about covers as symbolising something about the book itself. In this case the relationship between Quixote and the world is summed up pretty well: he is connected to the real world, tenuously, by the rope and he is making a leap of faith into the unknown that is idiotic and courageous in equal measure. When I drew it it reminded me of those images of spacemen in orbit that always look like embryonic babies, all very 2001 (The Kubrick version not the 9/11 Kylie Minogue version). That babies/death/infinity thing is the way to sell a funny book I decided.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihwxxnXwRerrdMlOqs5bq1Vdlx7L6Ta-Qt1XWUTho7tb5Ewt9ll76aRB8vubE6jW_qU8wmeCzB3g3c8vF79Ii3XbLUa4tmaRmRNHFNOQVIPI31FQbY9UFNyf9jxakw0c7CGdqWWTItk7VB/s1600/483153_10150925763795308_1826772411_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihwxxnXwRerrdMlOqs5bq1Vdlx7L6Ta-Qt1XWUTho7tb5Ewt9ll76aRB8vubE6jW_qU8wmeCzB3g3c8vF79Ii3XbLUa4tmaRmRNHFNOQVIPI31FQbY9UFNyf9jxakw0c7CGdqWWTItk7VB/s320/483153_10150925763795308_1826772411_n.jpg" width="180" /></a></div>
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In Volume Two Quixote looks much the same. He had to. In comics we rely on a recognisable silhouette (or distinctive features or colouring) because like letter recognition to a child it is essential for reading. Comics are there to be read, comics where you spend ages working out what's going on in the lovely intricate pictures and wondering who is who are never a smooth read.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwnzztceWEpU47Q75_irnzNBR6HAyaU6n3z9QUvrqw0VfpqgS-iVU0ZQoX7Uy1PHah58LavIjUuWJbSfMKgl8UFnn5GStrjzzWjhDENhNv-kyvy48YLQmAwUOy450P_2ljh35_NWXRt5wM/s1600/542558_10150979847340308_1143259784_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwnzztceWEpU47Q75_irnzNBR6HAyaU6n3z9QUvrqw0VfpqgS-iVU0ZQoX7Uy1PHah58LavIjUuWJbSfMKgl8UFnn5GStrjzzWjhDENhNv-kyvy48YLQmAwUOy450P_2ljh35_NWXRt5wM/s320/542558_10150979847340308_1143259784_n.jpg" width="320" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; color: black;"></span></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNfA9RqwP7an6Ux_UoB44JaN9Xt28dfYv2oG7vGWgvprx5eNlD8JX3JP2g00wzgLHXcDqyOI7fyHm9IaIVA3JSDausjfZGRyB92jJ65WTi3L3EKaVnFamY6ye20pHkNH0I_FFUMOTYufgD/s1600/Picture+10.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
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Here are those silhouettes at work, a couple of scribbles setting off on another adventure. Yes, once again this book is about those two idiots riding their useless mounts along dusty roads in the baking sun.<br />
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The difference here is that things are a bit darker. The book ends in death. He pops up throughout the book like signposts, or omens or whatever.<br />
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Darker book. Darker cover. And as with any book about death... hilarity ensues.<br />
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There are campfires in Volume Two. They were very popular in Volume One and setting aside their primal significance in the art of storytelling they allow me to draw some shadows.</div>
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I like drawing shadows. But when I started drawing Quixote I knew I'd be colouring it as well, so made a decision to draw the lines and use two or three tone flat colour for the shadows. It's better for me to be able to draw <i>for</i> the colour rather than use the colour as some kind of fanciness that I frilly the picture up with after it's done.</div>
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Couple of splashes of sunlight on a swarthy face tells us so much. Alas there are moments in Volume Two where the colour goes a bit hallucinatory. The symbolism of having Quixote fight this chap (pictured below) is as mind-boggling as his suit of armour suggests.</div>
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But generally I still try to keep the colour simple, picking out the shapes the reader needs to identify at speed and bringing a temperature and hue that reflects the time of day or mood or whatever.<br />
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So, plenty of fun and japes (and death) to come in Volume Two, plus Lions and Weddings and puppet shows, spanked arses, cat scratches and caves. Deep dark caves.<br />
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More on what to expect from Volume Two in the next blog post, but for now here's that <i>dark</i> cover to The Complete Don Quixote which will be released in the US next may through Abrams. Link to the SMH catalogue here: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://issuu.com/selfmadehero/docs/smh_usa_springcatalogue_issuu" rel="nofollow nofollow" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://issuu.com/selfmadehero/docs/smh_usa_springcatalogue_issuu</a></span><br />
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Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-61411818585992328792012-06-11T10:37:00.000+01:002012-06-11T10:37:34.198+01:00Old vector art<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Had a clearout and found a disk containing my earliest experiments with vector art in Illustrator. These are from 1999-2001. Had no idea what I was doing, but some of these are fun images. Includes my first book cover job from 2001 doing covers for old ladies' romance novels.</div>
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<br /></div>Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-8006020543532464672012-03-22T10:03:00.004+00:002012-03-22T10:24:54.608+00:00The Phoenix Comic with Amber Eyes.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">When I dropped out of art college it was with a clear aim - I wanted to make comics for kids, comics as startlingly original and inspiring as the ones I grew up reading. Sadly that publishing world was dying by the time I got there, opportunities were thin on the ground and getting thinner. In the 20 odd years that have elapsed since then I've given up that dream as the world of comics has drifted away from what should be its prime readership with most of the opportunities to create comics for kids revolving around merchandise projects.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Things are changing though. Kids love comics, it's instinctive for them to read stories on paper where words and pictures live together. The flag ship for this resurgence in UK comics is The Phoenix comic. It isn't tied in to any TV, Movie, game or toy franchise, it doesn't come in a bag with a toy on the front and minimum reading content within, it is quite simply a collection of stories for kids to read. What a zany idea!</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Anyway, I desperately wanted to do something for Ben Sharpe, the editor, and I was really pleased when I realised I could squeeze in this little four page one-off story written by Ben Haggarty.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">Whether you're reading this as a creator, a reader or a parent I suggest we get behind this thing and see if we can't make the next generation of readers as inspired as I was by reading comics.</span></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPJg_If2ip7RHK_r8NXQOo18DEkwnyvbbvqsE7sOoqywqkAfYSz9EUwMGQJEw7qtGE32RY_WJeI7dQR4eyiiFC9WIG2tlB3ENOjXbMVV1dsjDQvpHrzYpPoxYOCcb_x5yeN66MvMxOfush/s1600/Ambereyes1.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 287px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPJg_If2ip7RHK_r8NXQOo18DEkwnyvbbvqsE7sOoqywqkAfYSz9EUwMGQJEw7qtGE32RY_WJeI7dQR4eyiiFC9WIG2tlB3ENOjXbMVV1dsjDQvpHrzYpPoxYOCcb_x5yeN66MvMxOfush/s400/Ambereyes1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5722663502645162866" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMRYaE6SGWzjJrxNSm6z0UacniOIpUx2vYcjdp43EwE2GBJ3FZV-nulwfYYnbIaiwtwbp3erL7-Ey4VY0HlfA5n_mmr9Jv5n7immdqXyu3IVqU-yaDnmce8T9v0eRtlUHzPFx3kNB8vScw/s1600/Ambereyes2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 287px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMRYaE6SGWzjJrxNSm6z0UacniOIpUx2vYcjdp43EwE2GBJ3FZV-nulwfYYnbIaiwtwbp3erL7-Ey4VY0HlfA5n_mmr9Jv5n7immdqXyu3IVqU-yaDnmce8T9v0eRtlUHzPFx3kNB8vScw/s400/Ambereyes2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5722663496947247330" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwifbIs1_K8rEyqiWu4U-iZZOm6d6A8QKZDtNIpdMKNydk8ELvILXqSaFKkYxgycCw2okrpVMTLqPSzeAPiXbgyik0QFNrMSyHHF8TPC0WI1uPr59utFWm81_x8UuKHN35F-lkA_yCOESn/s1600/Ambereyes3.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 288px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwifbIs1_K8rEyqiWu4U-iZZOm6d6A8QKZDtNIpdMKNydk8ELvILXqSaFKkYxgycCw2okrpVMTLqPSzeAPiXbgyik0QFNrMSyHHF8TPC0WI1uPr59utFWm81_x8UuKHN35F-lkA_yCOESn/s400/Ambereyes3.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5722663489766368706" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt1MxnYevRw907Ao9muP1Ts6L38ZnZysHX3bQ6dWvys2PSgALuBIw4UG6W0PscR7VC8chdlzNVYsUijTbvlFs3jFS_iugPJ6O5oSQLQoml_fGpyhyphenhyphenQCPawB3fsDuscK3x1zUqIvsoDjLvS/s1600/Ambereyes4.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 287px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt1MxnYevRw907Ao9muP1Ts6L38ZnZysHX3bQ6dWvys2PSgALuBIw4UG6W0PscR7VC8chdlzNVYsUijTbvlFs3jFS_iugPJ6O5oSQLQoml_fGpyhyphenhyphenQCPawB3fsDuscK3x1zUqIvsoDjLvS/s400/Ambereyes4.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5722663484875701858" /></a><br /><div>Subscribe to The Phoenix and find out more about it <a href="http://www.thephoenixcomic.co.uk">here.</a></div><div> </div>Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-82670118835648276782012-02-17T10:44:00.005+00:002012-02-17T11:00:07.565+00:00Gypsies.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">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.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">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.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">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.</span></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo6JSw1sdrMxYupQYSgEN4BuYcC7-iqfwrgdqLabgMOa88eJc-7XBv91-Lz38lypO2sWlxgD6pY7tuoZ1luszFaFWD-m_t3CQYKcxokOYAXdFu-BScRu7KxbWzJMQiBn5voxUzkz2Qj1ZK/s1600/my+family-cover.alt2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 269px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo6JSw1sdrMxYupQYSgEN4BuYcC7-iqfwrgdqLabgMOa88eJc-7XBv91-Lz38lypO2sWlxgD6pY7tuoZ1luszFaFWD-m_t3CQYKcxokOYAXdFu-BScRu7KxbWzJMQiBn5voxUzkz2Qj1ZK/s400/my+family-cover.alt2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5710057473487130370" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0o7xuGIpUJNAL-DUqWc5j020xggg4JjueRdBsljzKhZN2Mrwoqfp3W1MEZO6YoNepAlgX3UMivEAB0ieA_oNxWGO-3c7Ph6iMlr0_OsVcKzTgM1kj0dHw6MJTvGz5nBIquAzGFzVx9oVr/s1600/My-family1.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 290px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0o7xuGIpUJNAL-DUqWc5j020xggg4JjueRdBsljzKhZN2Mrwoqfp3W1MEZO6YoNepAlgX3UMivEAB0ieA_oNxWGO-3c7Ph6iMlr0_OsVcKzTgM1kj0dHw6MJTvGz5nBIquAzGFzVx9oVr/s400/My-family1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5710057459761295778" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggED91MXtaHSgJQjqKb7J6d94I5n7Dwb3F4bJV04nlZdHjmD217FxDoE4jVdFflmU59OYOtxBwv2Sp0Jo_S0cX74Xo9PqFLh-UotIw4pHXrXXnYBUauP1aUbM_c0jg9On5nR-oSBajMadw/s1600/My-family2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 282px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggED91MXtaHSgJQjqKb7J6d94I5n7Dwb3F4bJV04nlZdHjmD217FxDoE4jVdFflmU59OYOtxBwv2Sp0Jo_S0cX74Xo9PqFLh-UotIw4pHXrXXnYBUauP1aUbM_c0jg9On5nR-oSBajMadw/s400/My-family2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5710057437424273618" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3XwD0rZAcXYUz4XBlY8ZAF3tPzD5ErVA_Yqfa3xkOEfUxbAGYDM-Z0db-xejKPno2C6xeQ81NFKrPh2EIdRCBYw-EUaRZlEgHg2oA52NjGyR-PKyQ-F9z8vf0Ct8u2vuTcJnVp7AfIGk6/s1600/My-family3.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 282px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3XwD0rZAcXYUz4XBlY8ZAF3tPzD5ErVA_Yqfa3xkOEfUxbAGYDM-Z0db-xejKPno2C6xeQ81NFKrPh2EIdRCBYw-EUaRZlEgHg2oA52NjGyR-PKyQ-F9z8vf0Ct8u2vuTcJnVp7AfIGk6/s400/My-family3.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5710057434245434306" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbFDf8KbBqm5PcFHCo9yFBCG7x6XUs4qgxuXmVc8CJl8kvfMCEsgFl97qmCb6ISh2hL4fHw9WgsYFWM8ye1zsTC6zooEyeSSUwBYmwP01qZow6p6ztSLfI6o3YVeQAhRgbekEAIjRISX-U/s1600/My-family4.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 288px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbFDf8KbBqm5PcFHCo9yFBCG7x6XUs4qgxuXmVc8CJl8kvfMCEsgFl97qmCb6ISh2hL4fHw9WgsYFWM8ye1zsTC6zooEyeSSUwBYmwP01qZow6p6ztSLfI6o3YVeQAhRgbekEAIjRISX-U/s400/My-family4.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5710056883124898930" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ7Vhyt51rbjWiafoleKKX330audGbbi9_DTEGApwlMI-4qmVKcTxVYp35cEAESlRnVp1zWpzmrSKwQmFA-5cQa5-QYsDo4qkjF0bo-mKIf428kaCL69SncRezEV0Mq-zaF31W0ITU7C82/s1600/My-family5.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 282px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ7Vhyt51rbjWiafoleKKX330audGbbi9_DTEGApwlMI-4qmVKcTxVYp35cEAESlRnVp1zWpzmrSKwQmFA-5cQa5-QYsDo4qkjF0bo-mKIf428kaCL69SncRezEV0Mq-zaF31W0ITU7C82/s400/My-family5.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5710056872345111890" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvHHNxKFOU5NNqCk-mAVFxizQq-EkUSkFsxrF-W1-cryne44xAUZUUIEyrNxAD1yVfzdoWqguZ2Bgn_zNl5HhIWD13bbVbSM0bdSIeS67APdr25HB1OWDvRH9pN6-1CSw2eiZv3BPic-EE/s1600/My-family6.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 290px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvHHNxKFOU5NNqCk-mAVFxizQq-EkUSkFsxrF-W1-cryne44xAUZUUIEyrNxAD1yVfzdoWqguZ2Bgn_zNl5HhIWD13bbVbSM0bdSIeS67APdr25HB1OWDvRH9pN6-1CSw2eiZv3BPic-EE/s400/My-family6.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5710056863102394194" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVlYGqwCBwD0Dx50rsuayRDkhfQ5gUYSJtCMTcDr8gspIsoVD1RbkxyTsfSpmWhuslezCuFSlxWPejvkS_heHy2czoFeGEJcrYeJGn5-qKlS-G2J_nBTgSkVE-OH39DTr1n8ZhrqGBDJnn/s1600/My-family7.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 290px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVlYGqwCBwD0Dx50rsuayRDkhfQ5gUYSJtCMTcDr8gspIsoVD1RbkxyTsfSpmWhuslezCuFSlxWPejvkS_heHy2czoFeGEJcrYeJGn5-qKlS-G2J_nBTgSkVE-OH39DTr1n8ZhrqGBDJnn/s400/My-family7.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5710056851254311458" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg75r_GKnSapru2-tC3IVAHydHhJKaPcNI04bmigpmke8XXpvSsfr2S-34sQryl6SEzvhIj0i59Ic-TgIUwtq-u8AwCZBhgn2qmzoPavi9AJBoU0HnNG7Tl0gCpxsbiRf9deJgtzNVKw49m/s1600/My-family8.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 294px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg75r_GKnSapru2-tC3IVAHydHhJKaPcNI04bmigpmke8XXpvSsfr2S-34sQryl6SEzvhIj0i59Ic-TgIUwtq-u8AwCZBhgn2qmzoPavi9AJBoU0HnNG7Tl0gCpxsbiRf9deJgtzNVKw49m/s400/My-family8.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5710056839633661090" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-i_96PiDoP0eN0hD8GGyddqTh0NkB4vC07-o8kHQKQ-BryyJovVSZlm-RTpGGN1sVEJuQIZDTI8ULZTZhaVGdRnoJGS1iGsyNaMQa7ghRDeHHvcrwHSHeNmWEdLK6DEYA-WYHgz8sfa6b/s1600/My-family9.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 302px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-i_96PiDoP0eN0hD8GGyddqTh0NkB4vC07-o8kHQKQ-BryyJovVSZlm-RTpGGN1sVEJuQIZDTI8ULZTZhaVGdRnoJGS1iGsyNaMQa7ghRDeHHvcrwHSHeNmWEdLK6DEYA-WYHgz8sfa6b/s400/My-family9.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5710054335280798818" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIR_cakxNwiulcBenrcsHrXMmIKumteVS0ssCeba5UwiugWa46DvkDZ7ZepsTwwgl9ee_FWSjWOhNqvm9OO1SBN-pOBGoXLU1BY9AvDwFwF0Omj9H4DW23cdO7jsctwSdXPnAdWapkRFVp/s1600/My-family10.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 285px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIR_cakxNwiulcBenrcsHrXMmIKumteVS0ssCeba5UwiugWa46DvkDZ7ZepsTwwgl9ee_FWSjWOhNqvm9OO1SBN-pOBGoXLU1BY9AvDwFwF0Omj9H4DW23cdO7jsctwSdXPnAdWapkRFVp/s400/My-family10.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5710054326445973362" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5bSN9wO_iSg1BXeOpU___Z8FYMGh211Wyya6btvdfJdDsIIpxoiT2gsDMUL2oYmSqA-bVZbsbiv7kbb0O4yM7zwTl8cQaLYbH5IRGwAyCicGNphXxcJ5CnAADl4uJ20bxYvQw6obRdRO4/s1600/My-family11.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 274px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5bSN9wO_iSg1BXeOpU___Z8FYMGh211Wyya6btvdfJdDsIIpxoiT2gsDMUL2oYmSqA-bVZbsbiv7kbb0O4yM7zwTl8cQaLYbH5IRGwAyCicGNphXxcJ5CnAADl4uJ20bxYvQw6obRdRO4/s400/My-family11.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5710054318055242402" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7g0HIs251UGCRTG2PbkBtl-h0FSnb7JhNT2qyih_8awvhdWUG-kITiBPKicnMTTbcU3XJ68nw1PhSE_ZlG-wpo0HJdZnRPqdLcpc8RHLWdVcYf8j8TsjPYAOnAV3EPvxYyliUxVcGBOok/s1600/My-family12.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 288px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7g0HIs251UGCRTG2PbkBtl-h0FSnb7JhNT2qyih_8awvhdWUG-kITiBPKicnMTTbcU3XJ68nw1PhSE_ZlG-wpo0HJdZnRPqdLcpc8RHLWdVcYf8j8TsjPYAOnAV3EPvxYyliUxVcGBOok/s400/My-family12.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5710054300145053090" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCBDkG-le6jEaVseSPFYHFQzHR1qWHIbVvFInf7yUs1lYrLPf78LVcD5ZeLQKId8fL-5jd8ASGBAqddHHZ_nfAOCSjh5_sPJUOf0B8oPvUnhqhwG7FeQxwijF-lwy4A75e7KqQZZTV7xiv/s1600/My-family13.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 287px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCBDkG-le6jEaVseSPFYHFQzHR1qWHIbVvFInf7yUs1lYrLPf78LVcD5ZeLQKId8fL-5jd8ASGBAqddHHZ_nfAOCSjh5_sPJUOf0B8oPvUnhqhwG7FeQxwijF-lwy4A75e7KqQZZTV7xiv/s400/My-family13.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5710054293124638066" /></a>Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-63406783530755114132012-01-25T10:18:00.002+00:002013-04-17T09:49:43.521+01:00Don Quixote cover designs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 100%;">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...</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd129hnV7axCHy0tJ4WIhm2-8YaF2zg7QzyKrAKkCvYb99a0EpnzxDzvEsq5lGjdJHljSSbYrLtYIwtSJKC9ZB4Kun0YbWaFVr_j3zpxU_4xawD-g4NGB5R6CHcx9nPpyRsbJqyt88lKuD/s1600/DQ_Cover_idea.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5701512896265324210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd129hnV7axCHy0tJ4WIhm2-8YaF2zg7QzyKrAKkCvYb99a0EpnzxDzvEsq5lGjdJHljSSbYrLtYIwtSJKC9ZB4Kun0YbWaFVr_j3zpxU_4xawD-g4NGB5R6CHcx9nPpyRsbJqyt88lKuD/s400/DQ_Cover_idea.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 279px;" /></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgetrTwrEYBULLSFAvTEiolBS56U90bufHyJGjZ2J-Uk2KP4HYQQ5d2X3BpaPLm0GGeiA1PK0aCZWWo3Bn-HEafJRmZVIEIfOYUXcXaiIYCNOom2LVFE9nj7WWBhMZ_1OlGlEbtTcBCGt6I/s1600/Picture+33.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5701512889037934834" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgetrTwrEYBULLSFAvTEiolBS56U90bufHyJGjZ2J-Uk2KP4HYQQ5d2X3BpaPLm0GGeiA1PK0aCZWWo3Bn-HEafJRmZVIEIfOYUXcXaiIYCNOom2LVFE9nj7WWBhMZ_1OlGlEbtTcBCGt6I/s400/Picture+33.png" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 279px;" /></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrtFX1F9Ud8epu0PzNUoEBNd2-iA-YtMzk7PaIzHgWXgNjvx3VKG4BEgw6A-vSbEkfnMF5Mps4Uv6AjoTfR34hLZPlA-6hS2P2wTSVZJnJz0nJ2AAyXVfeySdj065GxNHlznxKhW7On8eQ/s1600/Dv.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5701512884657185010" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrtFX1F9Ud8epu0PzNUoEBNd2-iA-YtMzk7PaIzHgWXgNjvx3VKG4BEgw6A-vSbEkfnMF5Mps4Uv6AjoTfR34hLZPlA-6hS2P2wTSVZJnJz0nJ2AAyXVfeySdj065GxNHlznxKhW7On8eQ/s400/Dv.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 279px;" /></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT5ijj9hRZRB2f2jPtONZ-5Z9wC1xYGhpkkX3WEurlQUmHmqixCfa1w-Rcd9EEgMuJ43KWzIomn2blAAVIsrCDSOOw80eyZVdVaRgBxaJGUf_ya9pjtFBOVW5-rMWLbblnXLyi4oPLHrNs/s1600/Picture+10.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5701512877711074722" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT5ijj9hRZRB2f2jPtONZ-5Z9wC1xYGhpkkX3WEurlQUmHmqixCfa1w-Rcd9EEgMuJ43KWzIomn2blAAVIsrCDSOOw80eyZVdVaRgBxaJGUf_ya9pjtFBOVW5-rMWLbblnXLyi4oPLHrNs/s400/Picture+10.png" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 280px;" /></a><br />
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Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-63010475353749422022012-01-07T12:29:00.004+00:002012-01-07T12:46:35.215+00:00Doctor Who does Narnia<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">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 <b>never</b> reads the comic strips.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">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.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-wmKmYbZ4Vt02hszNwriciv2cQn7NAYxU-Jgm_74GSebDFsuthJGI9Y7VCErpU7Gb8WUWS5OvkWLibWizKXBKY51o0rj920YhAW38s7TjMPVK7wNF1ZVrzFx-q7NTOWR4BXewrvg9mOvL/s1600/DWp1.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 287px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-wmKmYbZ4Vt02hszNwriciv2cQn7NAYxU-Jgm_74GSebDFsuthJGI9Y7VCErpU7Gb8WUWS5OvkWLibWizKXBKY51o0rj920YhAW38s7TjMPVK7wNF1ZVrzFx-q7NTOWR4BXewrvg9mOvL/s400/DWp1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694869608580288802" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsl52AahUP1N537U6xCuHyN3VqiMqqGwBomCknrS4T0h2sptBcYdtXNMP7GHaVpO0MzoEbQju8flqwfs2THEAvgfth6TWV5g1D-Tri0ejBATh6n1uvnT2nEVF4lyO2vUXqDoUAG6EhRoIf/s1600/DWp2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 287px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsl52AahUP1N537U6xCuHyN3VqiMqqGwBomCknrS4T0h2sptBcYdtXNMP7GHaVpO0MzoEbQju8flqwfs2THEAvgfth6TWV5g1D-Tri0ejBATh6n1uvnT2nEVF4lyO2vUXqDoUAG6EhRoIf/s400/DWp2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694869602644011618" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibfTLX-zL4zsgehp6dmmEeabLkhRC9Z0L1twIzKNCXqvv1XzPrA0uluQePv_Qa5mAtMpSmKK9pPYsclTfrytiMO9GfSF6gE5d1yVX6d701rSqPH5xRlSZcJB7WXRH1G-s_2Qqx_CU5nwgr/s1600/DWp3.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 287px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibfTLX-zL4zsgehp6dmmEeabLkhRC9Z0L1twIzKNCXqvv1XzPrA0uluQePv_Qa5mAtMpSmKK9pPYsclTfrytiMO9GfSF6gE5d1yVX6d701rSqPH5xRlSZcJB7WXRH1G-s_2Qqx_CU5nwgr/s400/DWp3.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694869128298642498" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX1Y6LlsEvA3cDDIqyrWJWLy-KdxuKu1R7xozd1uopXqmTJcO8JqzLicYD6WO4PyTfbPneSkKXTAEQDNb3JMJs41WmYdLryMuY1fU6OdIjX8kttY-smUnUsSu5c5Ae111mggTLd6oFdgxP/s1600/DWp4.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 287px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX1Y6LlsEvA3cDDIqyrWJWLy-KdxuKu1R7xozd1uopXqmTJcO8JqzLicYD6WO4PyTfbPneSkKXTAEQDNb3JMJs41WmYdLryMuY1fU6OdIjX8kttY-smUnUsSu5c5Ae111mggTLd6oFdgxP/s400/DWp4.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694869118421585970" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0MhX1mjl5cwJVLUNU8-ErBgJcnNLA1c-r43D9dIJoYi8pyQr72Aibb4WwQkP5zAL_vHaVCTa_-rTOjjs0BtExC4aPS5KOTnx7qdllgum3jRcwlHf3l1thS3OKty-D4ftfMj2fT5Xh6ILJ/s1600/DWp5.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 287px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0MhX1mjl5cwJVLUNU8-ErBgJcnNLA1c-r43D9dIJoYi8pyQr72Aibb4WwQkP5zAL_vHaVCTa_-rTOjjs0BtExC4aPS5KOTnx7qdllgum3jRcwlHf3l1thS3OKty-D4ftfMj2fT5Xh6ILJ/s400/DWp5.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694869116418276738" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4lYRaeE4gNXcsHiXr-NsaEf_Es93v71NIqj6JsOBSYWmjXAMIl0tWGtimZDmNWzmeJ-jAxgqJ8piQqugECfhLTZHezStP7FsVZpN4oLz9JrNZAd91WtfYZpCk_WI03Htch55WxMguFLlA/s1600/DWp6.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 287px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4lYRaeE4gNXcsHiXr-NsaEf_Es93v71NIqj6JsOBSYWmjXAMIl0tWGtimZDmNWzmeJ-jAxgqJ8piQqugECfhLTZHezStP7FsVZpN4oLz9JrNZAd91WtfYZpCk_WI03Htch55WxMguFLlA/s400/DWp6.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694869105889921218" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIp8bgzYNXJnYEajTtxCaXbwVgw1MNndfs8oGxqfURVDJcSI0UGPyl-2UP7Ak77OvnCFWCUk81lDsEtZd9ZnJEwdTqWn80aWPrlEsqPgrJpEhlVyox-ldz9PNoYSwPLPRpCnXWFK9hbXvX/s1600/DWp7.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 287px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIp8bgzYNXJnYEajTtxCaXbwVgw1MNndfs8oGxqfURVDJcSI0UGPyl-2UP7Ak77OvnCFWCUk81lDsEtZd9ZnJEwdTqWn80aWPrlEsqPgrJpEhlVyox-ldz9PNoYSwPLPRpCnXWFK9hbXvX/s400/DWp7.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5694869102823111138" /></a><br /><br /><div><br /></div>Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-22170060331520443032011-12-22T13:35:00.012+00:002011-12-23T14:49:59.487+00:00Russia. 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-Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-12605796978471833652011-09-14T12:35:00.003+01:002011-09-14T12:56:46.246+01:00Tilting at windmills...<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN18r7_exyFZthDZEM_nhuZRCFhyphenhyphenGq4qwxcrKVD9xQyrEZvoLR8Y0gdE9WLgKmmrZ5nm7TqzfO5hzg-H43_D5euMC5VBcMVzIESv0vcnWRmKpeeJpj6FpLkgRv7RfRuEozANwxWB63MM9D/s1600/Picture+17.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 382px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN18r7_exyFZthDZEM_nhuZRCFhyphenhyphenGq4qwxcrKVD9xQyrEZvoLR8Y0gdE9WLgKmmrZ5nm7TqzfO5hzg-H43_D5euMC5VBcMVzIESv0vcnWRmKpeeJpj6FpLkgRv7RfRuEozANwxWB63MM9D/s400/Picture+17.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5652178299392198354" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Apologies for the lack of blog posts, I have been blogging over at the <a href="http://www.selfmadehero.com/news/">SelfMadeHero</a> site, so go read. If you've missed my rambling nonsense, that is...</span><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-26196103900291405902011-08-12T11:12:00.006+01:002011-08-12T11:25:08.603+01:00Are we nearly there yet?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3YW0siDWtUnmTl1J9Y7I76Mo8X_FuYPAgAu-i3_5zDIxP2orsUnNmatZli2DYpDWMKGl5NUrzuiWhOHD-26PVsPj449KNsvv2Lh82IAOq6M2Ot8dF94wlDdcB6lZXCkzcVi1zpwkTHnfv/s1600/Picture+91.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 188px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3YW0siDWtUnmTl1J9Y7I76Mo8X_FuYPAgAu-i3_5zDIxP2orsUnNmatZli2DYpDWMKGl5NUrzuiWhOHD-26PVsPj449KNsvv2Lh82IAOq6M2Ot8dF94wlDdcB6lZXCkzcVi1zpwkTHnfv/s400/Picture+91.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5639912845736561922" /></a>
<br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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. </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">
<br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">
<br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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.</span></div><div>
<br /></div>Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-1763843862813784772011-06-18T15:21:00.002+01:002011-06-18T15:30:56.487+01:00Lightnin' Hopkins<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgabkvS7mFBgYbgMOJ0HTgzXHonPeX84x2U082UCXKMBfulNDJY10sOfawnI1T78ffa1_o0qbV3jwrdthe7b5jj6Ygv_zxkX81HpjAwqaCL6rY2ncySd5y9LSIqyLkFIz7FSJ7jxANDmr7o/s1600/lightnin.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 299px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgabkvS7mFBgYbgMOJ0HTgzXHonPeX84x2U082UCXKMBfulNDJY10sOfawnI1T78ffa1_o0qbV3jwrdthe7b5jj6Ygv_zxkX81HpjAwqaCL6rY2ncySd5y9LSIqyLkFIz7FSJ7jxANDmr7o/s400/lightnin.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5619565354622223522" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">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).</span><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu4V2G9c-tMbgjr8jwNNs8pUS23UOe5LdrC-lkpbozjl2Yn2bw9slJy8fdzLq1vq5-FUJ1cwSfWRrNbk7CnU04AowbCRCrBeEH2S5mLj0_ooiP86fY94-PNWPCv7rwkQUFSNG3Ipd4zAKA/s1600/Picture+43.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 275px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu4V2G9c-tMbgjr8jwNNs8pUS23UOe5LdrC-lkpbozjl2Yn2bw9slJy8fdzLq1vq5-FUJ1cwSfWRrNbk7CnU04AowbCRCrBeEH2S5mLj0_ooiP86fY94-PNWPCv7rwkQUFSNG3Ipd4zAKA/s400/Picture+43.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5619565345812704194" /></a>Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-45818061429153944482011-06-13T11:40:00.006+01:002011-08-05T09:36:48.531+01:00Don Quixote - Broken Hearts and Broken Minds<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE-cEFOif5s40O5p4_SamX-7DbgD7UWShe3_dBVMw_SLItauF2tXQ-WlQGMnjUoxCxrc6dX6z06DKeld0f503THwD9jIJtsSi6fizR2CPemeVZgdJgXdfgDvfIPhJwEeglIu2-VO5cK3Ix/s1600/Picture+53.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 356px; height: 257px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE-cEFOif5s40O5p4_SamX-7DbgD7UWShe3_dBVMw_SLItauF2tXQ-WlQGMnjUoxCxrc6dX6z06DKeld0f503THwD9jIJtsSi6fizR2CPemeVZgdJgXdfgDvfIPhJwEeglIu2-VO5cK3Ix/s400/Picture+53.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617655739408356258" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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...?)</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I'll switch from discussing it in general terms and instead use some synchronistic examples from recent weeks.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip8W0Uv77_qn77TkhrJQ4UTzjwBNOihMW34x-UyFGZr5Fw-pAIomasqZilPv-iMxgDKcpBNhyphenhyphenpRH9OyWrvc-x_bm4SSB8IVMsW6eX2YWn1l1Vvzq9Au3xGycgoYmCqojZXz7_7vDO80CjZ/s1600/Picture+54.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 128px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip8W0Uv77_qn77TkhrJQ4UTzjwBNOihMW34x-UyFGZr5Fw-pAIomasqZilPv-iMxgDKcpBNhyphenhyphenpRH9OyWrvc-x_bm4SSB8IVMsW6eX2YWn1l1Vvzq9Au3xGycgoYmCqojZXz7_7vDO80CjZ/s400/Picture+54.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617655729719942178" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br />For Don Quixote love is as unrequited and sweet as a teenage crush.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"></span><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijI_SZ-fETKYCmPrRScb516Mt5T35_GaKg7V8qpPY3I9nNg57jhCv-Nnb3G1I-99B1ROsTnp8HH5-6I3396oLKjszDpqxw-gMo1FtAp-mDAnB_Rs9cUapw2EQH6IhtFOXR0OyIbcjNCeS_/s1600/Picture+65.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 304px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijI_SZ-fETKYCmPrRScb516Mt5T35_GaKg7V8qpPY3I9nNg57jhCv-Nnb3G1I-99B1ROsTnp8HH5-6I3396oLKjszDpqxw-gMo1FtAp-mDAnB_Rs9cUapw2EQH6IhtFOXR0OyIbcjNCeS_/s400/Picture+65.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617655727558914930" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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. </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiysIjlNW9_R5SlMT2qkkBWH1b9BlhieKzTVBAF_aA5e9tAgoZ0BUK-0rL5tkznouvZWj8p8wkGtNeITqFl-ERZxhQ31HKxLpzlySfW5-z9ZoNUjEJoBse7TjXNPfYnkVbP64hOB19jXi-z/s1600/Picture+62.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 392px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiysIjlNW9_R5SlMT2qkkBWH1b9BlhieKzTVBAF_aA5e9tAgoZ0BUK-0rL5tkznouvZWj8p8wkGtNeITqFl-ERZxhQ31HKxLpzlySfW5-z9ZoNUjEJoBse7TjXNPfYnkVbP64hOB19jXi-z/s400/Picture+62.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617655721419485538" /></a><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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. </span></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv5uTOtKOfOyNkHWsdL-EZCu6jqQU6-foIqldTrFxeU0grZoSUX6WioXyD8nIbkKTIy352PW4dkELVeFmQO8YkQEfnkYtK99i67_er-7SViwhTMuTiw5bIq4-MoBhneGJVq2j-fFvjiFwR/s1600/Picture+61.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 284px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv5uTOtKOfOyNkHWsdL-EZCu6jqQU6-foIqldTrFxeU0grZoSUX6WioXyD8nIbkKTIy352PW4dkELVeFmQO8YkQEfnkYtK99i67_er-7SViwhTMuTiw5bIq4-MoBhneGJVq2j-fFvjiFwR/s400/Picture+61.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617655283660064786" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">They're simple morality tales with a cruel twist and a wicked sense of humour.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"></span><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFaErO69AdKocXwdchKH4Ho3k89La3Q12TPzFFiyV04SBvqAqlB-GgbcEoQyVp2SwFMgdtWJ3NrOA-wjBPNtv7jY_cNGdPo0HyAYZDWCM1xRQk50szuR9mFDLhc7iO3syWYllNaTlbcq-X/s1600/Picture+59.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 364px; height: 230px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFaErO69AdKocXwdchKH4Ho3k89La3Q12TPzFFiyV04SBvqAqlB-GgbcEoQyVp2SwFMgdtWJ3NrOA-wjBPNtv7jY_cNGdPo0HyAYZDWCM1xRQk50szuR9mFDLhc7iO3syWYllNaTlbcq-X/s400/Picture+59.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617655238627499762" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRWSSui1HPE-Jr9ycRVAdBAudPjB8-Tp2s2lPjTaKEIj7IT29xr9yYAaYRTFFdShbZUTGMg42umJmOOl4WiyDNmz7tGTwV5lRsS6g74GKoNq9gvwDvYiTkSdfhQzOw3DC1Fzujw4TVmcwo/s1600/Picture+58.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRWSSui1HPE-Jr9ycRVAdBAudPjB8-Tp2s2lPjTaKEIj7IT29xr9yYAaYRTFFdShbZUTGMg42umJmOOl4WiyDNmz7tGTwV5lRsS6g74GKoNq9gvwDvYiTkSdfhQzOw3DC1Fzujw4TVmcwo/s400/Picture+58.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617655233786798242" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br />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.</span><div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtclx4GTtwUs7GgrdGy3BM6lKftUOjcDHHzD0HHM-XPF2udnFv42xyQiI9_1Jtbaz8cH3Pce3q2zZkr_M1YO8KNilMt3gUzbb1iZtYePsAthbLEMOoHZU3ZoAxil4F7wCq-oSzBdI-P68_/s1600/Picture+66.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtclx4GTtwUs7GgrdGy3BM6lKftUOjcDHHzD0HHM-XPF2udnFv42xyQiI9_1Jtbaz8cH3Pce3q2zZkr_M1YO8KNilMt3gUzbb1iZtYePsAthbLEMOoHZU3ZoAxil4F7wCq-oSzBdI-P68_/s400/Picture+66.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617655222163179842" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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.</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS6ds9Ahp313TPSY2Gg72zSC5gjKBVMuMjt11YC0agRslcDXiYhiSJDnZwXexHBwLEUjRhqRvlF568eLl8qy5RcvO4MCBPtd8Ob5vvKes1Uaq0RcUPcPCaVXgMiulCPOJ3iE92Cz1rW8ui/s1600/Picture+60.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 284px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS6ds9Ahp313TPSY2Gg72zSC5gjKBVMuMjt11YC0agRslcDXiYhiSJDnZwXexHBwLEUjRhqRvlF568eLl8qy5RcvO4MCBPtd8Ob5vvKes1Uaq0RcUPcPCaVXgMiulCPOJ3iE92Cz1rW8ui/s400/Picture+60.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5617655212926654786" /></a><br /></div></div>Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-75627686492941727132011-06-07T11:33:00.005+01:002011-06-07T15:31:28.268+01:002D Festival Derry 2011<img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLv9U3tZQqtkfUcbjrp8oKqrZ73Vj3lh1bptUtm1L6F8Xjv4ybo3-mx3AMF5AAkCPBb3AoXjRhhcmiAql8Q8ZjYTZnp8Gj2sLORV1axsO0Vvrx3Dyu57ZxkUP-hLP051qZTkqoth6AphhJ/s400/253440_2036521363555_1559873003_2204330_4989672_n.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5615426520422463618" border="0" />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.<div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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. </div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's a couple of sketches he did for me:</div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGXHlr1mnhzkRzCXOLoSq9906xoMBl_QENdnpaLSl8iXH0gbQUy15WQUS3aEDtcqNWxSPd4BGKZEwMqwdY9Ugi2EmDKfGyP9fjRMOWzP8VnRiHXEunSqFi2z-omeHj7EyvHIRJ08jwbp6s/s1600/Picture+53.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 279px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGXHlr1mnhzkRzCXOLoSq9906xoMBl_QENdnpaLSl8iXH0gbQUy15WQUS3aEDtcqNWxSPd4BGKZEwMqwdY9Ugi2EmDKfGyP9fjRMOWzP8VnRiHXEunSqFi2z-omeHj7EyvHIRJ08jwbp6s/s400/Picture+53.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5615433723969211106" border="0" /></a>Dredd done in my sketch pad with my pen and...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR2N64zcc4DjxnmvTMLWHY_dKkvBZzMx6Blpvi9Z9yKclnFoUi7w4UvKgadtiYSTvNfV2u7IAIVV6hGhGaZhDORFfQ9pRbYIKQ0TwOwGEdIk6sx4V4NBgdYkILFBSn2L43Vs3ask3o6Y6N/s1600/img616.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 270px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR2N64zcc4DjxnmvTMLWHY_dKkvBZzMx6Blpvi9Z9yKclnFoUi7w4UvKgadtiYSTvNfV2u7IAIVV6hGhGaZhDORFfQ9pRbYIKQ0TwOwGEdIk6sx4V4NBgdYkILFBSn2L43Vs3ask3o6Y6N/s400/img616.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5615433717127088770" border="0" /></a>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.<div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizvdytZ3PWHtheDBkDsPJx9RqIbyoqEqnyenSEr04rDFilVC6tJDB3GKsl0kSzPPrXpWVhCxHxl4jJ1Minxxb9viBYMfXA0DwUJja7tiXNoVZxedY3B3L2hyphenhyphenW1lfkwyfthYaIV4rqz-VhH/s1600/Picture+51.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 301px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizvdytZ3PWHtheDBkDsPJx9RqIbyoqEqnyenSEr04rDFilVC6tJDB3GKsl0kSzPPrXpWVhCxHxl4jJ1Minxxb9viBYMfXA0DwUJja7tiXNoVZxedY3B3L2hyphenhyphenW1lfkwyfthYaIV4rqz-VhH/s400/Picture+51.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5615426511678321586" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6RRmvALDTpag9Tnfz73yMSzYa5PL-MdX_ztAcumyBeoAHWmVfiRGZLo6g2lPxjFzOaqcpvnywo5dpgh-kAZNpjTKpz6gGBS0k1W7ZNBnNp7PyUbjVgXlVDC3KPgcb9PkhRessqO6sJ2GM/s1600/248455_2036520523534_1559873003_2204327_6085151_n.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6RRmvALDTpag9Tnfz73yMSzYa5PL-MdX_ztAcumyBeoAHWmVfiRGZLo6g2lPxjFzOaqcpvnywo5dpgh-kAZNpjTKpz6gGBS0k1W7ZNBnNp7PyUbjVgXlVDC3KPgcb9PkhRessqO6sJ2GM/s400/248455_2036520523534_1559873003_2204327_6085151_n.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5615426502508589154" border="0" /></a>From L to R David, me, Denise and Mark. Photo by Rufus.</div><div><br /></div><div>Below is the bar filling up ready for the panel.</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWgxLIAkiR0VQKlPhx_n9GrnKLkn3iYbrPtNH61F_4bff_MnhzqXohqklPEqTCcz-OU0G6J0SUEg3h8Xxo2d1bUtU9PCS8fiR_vAzWlsegVi-pNGNNzPR_C_IEmttbP31gj6jhT-PuJVgI/s1600/252870_2036545004146_1559873003_2204386_4248311_n.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWgxLIAkiR0VQKlPhx_n9GrnKLkn3iYbrPtNH61F_4bff_MnhzqXohqklPEqTCcz-OU0G6J0SUEg3h8Xxo2d1bUtU9PCS8fiR_vAzWlsegVi-pNGNNzPR_C_IEmttbP31gj6jhT-PuJVgI/s400/252870_2036545004146_1559873003_2204386_4248311_n.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5615426496976546898" border="0" /></a><br /></div></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>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.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thanks David. Thanks Derry.</div>Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-38728443926256521092011-05-05T19:20:00.009+01:002011-05-07T23:07:56.231+01:00NELSON<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf3vHAGslf3xVoMhgnJrX01YtiQckR99xQksuG4gnJ7h60QBYEkQTvGEu2XWQ8B9mjnvsKoqBOsddQc3KDII3-azdLQf5Q7rqyIrEACAxUyod0RQ6uxq_d46owB3_CdTthbr0rjhTDDWDu/s1600/cover-ink.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 338px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf3vHAGslf3xVoMhgnJrX01YtiQckR99xQksuG4gnJ7h60QBYEkQTvGEu2XWQ8B9mjnvsKoqBOsddQc3KDII3-azdLQf5Q7rqyIrEACAxUyod0RQ6uxq_d46owB3_CdTthbr0rjhTDDWDu/s400/cover-ink.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5603302011227774274" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Scan of the brush and ink drawing I did for the Nelson cover</span>.</i></div><div><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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. </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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 <a href="http://www.blankslatebooks.co.uk/our-books/nelson">here</a>. A UK comics anthology that embraced <i>all </i>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.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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.<br /></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">So next time someone asks you if you know who or what is Nelson you'll be able to tell them.</span><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBzwvYGCu6n5HRkMXXMlQFmM2pCqrnjpGMbcPow4GM2MbSc0lnca4Yi3FWjBmeK8QMY53T5zteXwa3IxKpDfSPO1DjoDY5ebLbaigJhLCwhGxS9ayLrrEDJ8Nx7B2zjBDAUDfrVzYRXHsS/s1600/Picture+19.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 129px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBzwvYGCu6n5HRkMXXMlQFmM2pCqrnjpGMbcPow4GM2MbSc0lnca4Yi3FWjBmeK8QMY53T5zteXwa3IxKpDfSPO1DjoDY5ebLbaigJhLCwhGxS9ayLrrEDJ8Nx7B2zjBDAUDfrVzYRXHsS/s400/Picture+19.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5603302001667224930" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">A panel from my opening 1968 chapter</span></i></div></div></div></div></div>Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-9485657911122502992011-05-02T08:27:00.006+01:002011-05-02T12:32:59.002+01:00Mark E Smith and the Ramones<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkyjtNE4yTcuWSptT4D0KXfQynFc64sN2K5KZpgCSo_plvNeXBiUlbfAcoja8ke5rw1HcrWQVCwWb1_PjPgcHKeUWKUSlAmX9a7YGAJidF34bDD381yD8y5VP51a6C3vODPxVKesrSX9Nx/s1600/MES.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 218px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkyjtNE4yTcuWSptT4D0KXfQynFc64sN2K5KZpgCSo_plvNeXBiUlbfAcoja8ke5rw1HcrWQVCwWb1_PjPgcHKeUWKUSlAmX9a7YGAJidF34bDD381yD8y5VP51a6C3vODPxVKesrSX9Nx/s400/MES.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5602020240006764610" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I don't know whether you have the dubious pleasure of following me on <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/Robgog">Twitter</a>, if not you probably won't have seen these scribbles. Comics' savant, <a href="http://www.thingsbydan.co.uk/">Dan Berry</a>, 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.</span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW2Nc_NqRuY5yu3Wvllh3l0lT3pCfL5OOALeao3LVEgHGYR4K1Mkq74A6dH5uqYrdLZqAGiQlXV_0JzG70wrAFx6e_1GWgrTiwP_4xKYzBe5_XJUHy0f43b0JaUuT5eDPLkx3k57yOUXEK/s1600/Ramones.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 303px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW2Nc_NqRuY5yu3Wvllh3l0lT3pCfL5OOALeao3LVEgHGYR4K1Mkq74A6dH5uqYrdLZqAGiQlXV_0JzG70wrAFx6e_1GWgrTiwP_4xKYzBe5_XJUHy0f43b0JaUuT5eDPLkx3k57yOUXEK/s400/Ramones.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5602019977751759442" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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.</span><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCR__hKAmCXRKez9RKdwYgJICvjuyFymg7rRLr3FADSgq1MMD1m6-LGLcjaTQxU3YlBTLa-SSIcwpoXfoM6iZwPWUXSYBHakGlynJZljL8mkNobhwzRJRS9AEdqlz3b_anLN0LEs6OQtFj/s1600/Beckett.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 202px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCR__hKAmCXRKez9RKdwYgJICvjuyFymg7rRLr3FADSgq1MMD1m6-LGLcjaTQxU3YlBTLa-SSIcwpoXfoM6iZwPWUXSYBHakGlynJZljL8mkNobhwzRJRS9AEdqlz3b_anLN0LEs6OQtFj/s400/Beckett.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5602019973780907666" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">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.</span><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1RkxrKuDXcIw2LMqvBsMVR-jlolIBXlkEQzHBhdtOnTcL6jTdkoqfpo1Sy-wgXt2XZxs8ZBFCrLJitoSp7BHJSwHBdQQ8G5WyVI8hgmmc7hl99uNJNoJvKf2AVIBoYF3yNgROt7IBXnBJ/s1600/Photo+1956.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1RkxrKuDXcIw2LMqvBsMVR-jlolIBXlkEQzHBhdtOnTcL6jTdkoqfpo1Sy-wgXt2XZxs8ZBFCrLJitoSp7BHJSwHBdQQ8G5WyVI8hgmmc7hl99uNJNoJvKf2AVIBoYF3yNgROt7IBXnBJ/s400/Photo+1956.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5602019969351432514" /></a><br /></div>Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-45056521469812375272011-04-26T18:05:00.002+01:002011-04-26T18:10:53.957+01:00Me then.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJu_tEsQ4gn_Ba1R4vvRaqQHa08kwWapix425-c_un1fKs3vJZSYDLHIHLeDN4JbnQZfqBIl7flTJnX0YjQwXCIuiQF9fiijswXK63lsKY4fjtiZHUOV3aBKCHXaOnMhDeGNJskFdwZ-aq/s1600/faces.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 279px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJu_tEsQ4gn_Ba1R4vvRaqQHa08kwWapix425-c_un1fKs3vJZSYDLHIHLeDN4JbnQZfqBIl7flTJnX0YjQwXCIuiQF9fiijswXK63lsKY4fjtiZHUOV3aBKCHXaOnMhDeGNJskFdwZ-aq/s400/faces.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5599940789723943906" /></a><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">These are eight self portraits. They're all in order bar the first one. So clockwise from top left they are: 1990 drawing of me as a 14 yr old, 1984 first drawing at college, 1984 first ever oil painting, 1986 oils and compass, 1986 oil and pencil on paper, 1992 watercolour, 1996 oils (I was drunk when I painted it) and 1999 oil sketch. </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Don't know if you learn anything from these, other than I got better at drawing, just thought I'd post them anyway.</span></div>Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-62078863433623310512011-04-05T09:26:00.014+01:002011-04-05T12:14:12.822+01:00Letting the puppet strings show.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6FIeX-My_77uIdX1QutgE9DBKHGr_sjtFrUZdk3EI66CZglYe8EeXxzXvIpgy4Xp124aQjIWzyu0ymSp0I1hGCx27-LfCxQM44JFdaqwe1tCGCI1x1rqdXBweeSG73c3HnugqZIEGH1In/s1600/Picturtuje+15.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 282px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6FIeX-My_77uIdX1QutgE9DBKHGr_sjtFrUZdk3EI66CZglYe8EeXxzXvIpgy4Xp124aQjIWzyu0ymSp0I1hGCx27-LfCxQM44JFdaqwe1tCGCI1x1rqdXBweeSG73c3HnugqZIEGH1In/s400/Picturtuje+15.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5592014479329349154" /></a>"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Why did you draw it like that?" you ask. Well, regardless of whether you ask that or not it's the question I'll try to answer in this post. Obviously I draw in a number of styles so the one I chose for 300 pages of Don Quixote was for a specific reason.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Firstly here's the glib answer for people who are afraid of talk about art (y' big babies!):</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The reason I did it this way is because it's quicker and I need to do 6 pages a week to pay the bills.</span></i></div></div><div><br /><div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglgeMAPP6lkWyExkJHQ3faKG_FMUXVhmgeelnB_ufoHktMLeFa81zuShoWexcBY5maLkWRFQNzoCyrHgKD-M9fb8_559nUzFKlAXis1qrLWm7I35w5owUwHFdb0DWpWxcDlqCdJqzJK4JO/s1600/Picture+36.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 121px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglgeMAPP6lkWyExkJHQ3faKG_FMUXVhmgeelnB_ufoHktMLeFa81zuShoWexcBY5maLkWRFQNzoCyrHgKD-M9fb8_559nUzFKlAXis1qrLWm7I35w5owUwHFdb0DWpWxcDlqCdJqzJK4JO/s400/Picture+36.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5592014476038231666" /></a><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">What follows is the 'speak your brains' version, or 'the truth':</span></div><div><br /></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">A phrase you'll hear a lot when people discuss the styles of comic artists is "Raw or Cooked", it's self explanatory really - Raw is unpolished, as it comes and Cooked is polished to 'perfection'. The traditional process for making comics has helped create these schisms. Most comic artists to this day still work in pencil stage and ink stage and the distinctive comic art look, so shakily mimicked by Roy Lichtenstein, is a result of the process. It was necessary for a hard black line in early comics due to the poor quality printing and so the art of 'inking' was born. As was the job of 'inker', something that is still entrenched in American comics. Despite the process driving the artist naturally towards the 'cooked', some inking let the brushwork say more about energy and texture than simple tracing. Better printing techniques gave artists even more opportunity to move over to the 'raw' side of the spectrum. Now we have comic art that's stretched the spectrum as far as it can go, just look at a book by Joann Sfar next to one by Chris Ware.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I use these two as examples because they are both successful storytellers, there are examples of both approaches where the style, regardless of how wonderful it looks, detracts from the story. Neither approach is guaranteed to tell the story better than the other, but it's important that telling the story is the intention in choosing an approach.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">No prizes for guessing which side of the raw or cooked spectrum my Don Quixote work sits.</span></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn85EH9O-sqTfbHmQ05fYjFfDfP5mc8-utATfIAg_LNIqdyHwiJgFSokwN1y8qazi8uOIc-DICMzMEmriOljCwGzGuLh837Ljc4SWL1m6Wnne_kao5cgZsI6385B4460GdNZ9nl9VpRMxn/s1600/Picture+41.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 265px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn85EH9O-sqTfbHmQ05fYjFfDfP5mc8-utATfIAg_LNIqdyHwiJgFSokwN1y8qazi8uOIc-DICMzMEmriOljCwGzGuLh837Ljc4SWL1m6Wnne_kao5cgZsI6385B4460GdNZ9nl9VpRMxn/s400/Picture+41.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5592014469915594706" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><i>I imagine most artists' roughs look a bit like this, I want to retain some of the that manic energy in the final art.</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_K4SnxGRk-VroctnlQTAEfv7lLHpI9wejApsG_cgq5crf6iGZLYvsmevmjmR0Bx_b0rLnn5XXgnNaIdbVQKnzt-1fvP4a4OSyMPl19L3-b2QK8DzlyV92X379V6EcAhcyi00h6DTR0p7S/s1600/Picture+39.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 318px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_K4SnxGRk-VroctnlQTAEfv7lLHpI9wejApsG_cgq5crf6iGZLYvsmevmjmR0Bx_b0rLnn5XXgnNaIdbVQKnzt-1fvP4a4OSyMPl19L3-b2QK8DzlyV92X379V6EcAhcyi00h6DTR0p7S/s400/Picture+39.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5592014270643972194" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><i>The final line work is still very rough, but hopefully it masks some degree of sophistication.</i></div></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I knew from the start that I would be looking for something ragged enough to reflect the setting, the characters and state of Don Quixote's mind. And coming back to the unclever reason, I did need to make the haste with which I'd be turning the book around work for me rather than against me. I dispensed with ink altogether and decided to scan my pencils.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">That hasty, raw, pencil work was perfectly suited to the story, but as with all art there was a deception at its heart - there's no way I could put together whole pages of characters interacting in one continuous mad scribble, there is a lot of penciling just as with any comic art.</span></div><div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI6VWmMfCqTgL0bpmGWEHhHF5qndlIJKYSPg0dbGaMTMGQ6IzLBfkFpa3JRCqpkwhv35LiantX1qsGFJtzVLPUp9rzh6FnTJdcDM33O57WsCMJnZxpzxdN3RF0fkX9X4CIqjTd8kczhj0i/s1600/Picture+35.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 287px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjI6VWmMfCqTgL0bpmGWEHhHF5qndlIJKYSPg0dbGaMTMGQ6IzLBfkFpa3JRCqpkwhv35LiantX1qsGFJtzVLPUp9rzh6FnTJdcDM33O57WsCMJnZxpzxdN3RF0fkX9X4CIqjTd8kczhj0i/s400/Picture+35.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5592014262367050162" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><i>To prevent me from tightening up and polishing the line work unintentionally I draw onto a lightbox set up in such a way as to ensure I can't see the roughs too clearly, this means I'm never tracing, I'm looking to make definitive, if occasionally clumsy, marks.</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkavvfu9gCPHCW5pzaXknk7VFeD7cMJrfvAY6stNVUsx01jslXatyqNBdzOkG6RLIbIVZn4NQ-ubGAhyphenhyphen0hqToCCaR876y9FfTZxXjE3emy4bmKpi7u0_hYnnCsjwRMT-N16NbQw387C2L6/s1600/Picture+30.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 332px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkavvfu9gCPHCW5pzaXknk7VFeD7cMJrfvAY6stNVUsx01jslXatyqNBdzOkG6RLIbIVZn4NQ-ubGAhyphenhyphen0hqToCCaR876y9FfTZxXjE3emy4bmKpi7u0_hYnnCsjwRMT-N16NbQw387C2L6/s400/Picture+30.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5592014252889270914" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Sometimes I'll switch to a stubby B pencil and work away from the lightbox to introduce shadows and texture.</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I imagine it's obvious why the ragged look suits a rustic setting and characters, it may not be quite so obvious why that look reflects the state of Quixote's mind. Exposing the workings in a drawing has a long history in the 'fine arts', I still bear the scars of being taught by products of the Slade School where the process of building an observational painting is left on the surface for the viewer to see (the famous measuring ticks and crosses*).</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This amounts to the artist showing us the puppet strings, it is telling us that it is a painting whilst another part of our brain is shouting that it's a person. That schism was explored in art long before the meticulous Slade painters arrived and in literature it was being explored over 400 years ago by Cervantes in the pages of Don Quixote.</span></div><div><br /></div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRJnRqFq6kzJad2AGS7thzFGdFVmQGtHDwzB1so3kiB7OdAO6LCojcONEyS3VtamagJ1yf7ZA3d0ndo1HR_Zu_YL5srwndVmqPmVEQzyhSR7HWgdb-SI7oIpPM0Ri9_uqhNOeNy_d3ZcnP/s1600/Picture+34.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 181px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRJnRqFq6kzJad2AGS7thzFGdFVmQGtHDwzB1so3kiB7OdAO6LCojcONEyS3VtamagJ1yf7ZA3d0ndo1HR_Zu_YL5srwndVmqPmVEQzyhSR7HWgdb-SI7oIpPM0Ri9_uqhNOeNy_d3ZcnP/s400/Picture+34.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5592014244449468882" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Here the design is resolved digitally. It's about using negative shapes, so I'm roughing in colour. I do this a lot on Quixote. Don Quixote often becomes a squiggle, a kind of signature when he's in the background of a panel.</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj-1oHmVJI0A_mhTu65i1NTgXdmK4K8M6SEHpHDJ8d2f1l-CN-lUTHDgTnGRIMFRXBeOKoJSPMNPd3G4SMXTP7Vy3DYBMhoUq56GZu2IKe4QbfXJ16m53hyNqj5TVs3TYk1YLEyHSnROsR/s1600/Picture+10.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 375px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj-1oHmVJI0A_mhTu65i1NTgXdmK4K8M6SEHpHDJ8d2f1l-CN-lUTHDgTnGRIMFRXBeOKoJSPMNPd3G4SMXTP7Vy3DYBMhoUq56GZu2IKe4QbfXJ16m53hyNqj5TVs3TYk1YLEyHSnROsR/s400/Picture+10.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5592014244520389106" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Here's the final art of that panel with the quick lines and fixed design working together.</i></div></div></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">How can we believe in a character from the pages of a book? How can we believe in a person who is just lines on a piece of paper? Cervantes knew this madness and pulled countless readers into it. It isn't really possible to adapt Don Quixote, it's an adaptation from a translation of a history of someone who is made up, all we can do as readers is join Cervantes inside this madness. And that's all I can do as writer and artist.</span></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">*See painters like Coldstream or Uglow for examples of this.</span></div></span></i></div>Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1788992031258195893.post-19663418184226782362011-03-03T10:37:00.004+00:002011-03-03T11:08:06.506+00:00The Lovecraft Anthology<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI7h9ef-cnt64y3l2nolapIIEK6BIPb25iu8WaeVGwCh7ypGYFrvPmS7iJN679DqnRkl-Cg9S3PRnIaJ7dToQ9SEGOW0gOZt2UUoiYN5PKIMsTfiZynN_vIrEWhr8H8Z-x-8qqK9v-v5BP/s1600/dunwich.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 273px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI7h9ef-cnt64y3l2nolapIIEK6BIPb25iu8WaeVGwCh7ypGYFrvPmS7iJN679DqnRkl-Cg9S3PRnIaJ7dToQ9SEGOW0gOZt2UUoiYN5PKIMsTfiZynN_vIrEWhr8H8Z-x-8qqK9v-v5BP/s400/dunwich.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5579801932115080866" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Reblogging the above image because I just received my copy of the Lovecraft Anthology, published by SelfMadeHero. And it is a really beautiful and creepy looking book! SelfMadeHero should be applauded for their choice of artists on this book, by using the cartoon stylings of artists like Mark Stafford, Shane Oakley, D'Israeli and Ian Culbard they have set themselves apart and given their anthology a distinct vision. It reminds me of the halcyon days of 2000ad in the late 70s and 80s seeing such strong, idiosyncratic styles together in one title. Funnily enough, current 2000ad favourite Leigh Gallagher also draws a story as does David Hartman (a new name to me, but another with a strong cartoon sense to his storytelling) and Alice Duke, whose painterly work has some magical touches in it. The book employs the writing talents of Ian Edgington, Dan Lockwood, David Hine, Leah Moore & John Reppion and, of course, me.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Just to be clear, I didn't draw anything in this book, and I couldn't have drawn my story, The Dunwich Horror, as well as Ian Culbard has anyway. If you're a fan of Ian's work you're in for a treat, I think this is his best work to date. If SelfMade ask me, and if time permits, I'd certainly like to draw in a 2nd Lovecraft Anthology. The above image was just done quickly for my own amusement. It's a picture of young Wilbur from The Dunwich Horror. If you don't know who he is then you should rush out to your local bookshop/comic shop and get a copy of this anthology. If you do know who he is then I imagine you've already got your coat on and are on your way to the shop.</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMDMGLqlYu_qvmYWSYHKWYkTD0XA-AEglkgIGTOOGljtRA1J5VjwtaDh4s2xffG_XColdigxTpGAk0NPhZC2Pt2vjceNvBc18EDigZD2NDHUmeW0Bal8dl6BzlgvZSWeBazVC0cyuf-PXl/s1600/9781906838287.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 372px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMDMGLqlYu_qvmYWSYHKWYkTD0XA-AEglkgIGTOOGljtRA1J5VjwtaDh4s2xffG_XColdigxTpGAk0NPhZC2Pt2vjceNvBc18EDigZD2NDHUmeW0Bal8dl6BzlgvZSWeBazVC0cyuf-PXl/s400/9781906838287.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5579801933937861890" /></a><br /></div>Rob Davishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02971248641347207358noreply@blogger.com0