On the ropes

Sunday - I've just spent the morning finishing off page two of The Lightning Fist (one page to go), now I'll spend the afternoon doing the Doctor Who spot art (the deadline is tomorrow). The last two panels here may be a bit rushed, or it may be that I'm just picking fault with the page now it's finished. I often think I'm doing something brilliant when I've got my head down working only to decide I'm actually a talentless fraud when the job is finished. Guess that's the fragile ego of the artist.

The Cooraben Devel

I'm spinning plates here at the moment, but I'm determined to keep Dinlos moving amidst my landslide of deadlines. Here are 3 panels from page two of Kackernory. Top and bottom of the page aren't done yet. In the top panel Jesus wakes up to find himself in a boxing ring facing the Cooraben Devel (that's the Barefoot Parangoo God of Boxing for anyone who isn't paying attention!), in the bottom panel he just gets beaten up some more.

Reading the last blog entry I realise that I sound quite apologetic for writing this story in Kackernory's peculiar mix of William Barnes's Dorsetese and pidgin Romany. I'm not. These are just two pages from a large novel and all becomes clear later... Well, maybe not all, but....

These three panels took longer than they should have because I spent a while ensuring that everything was centered - Cooraben Devel's nose, the ref's nose, the ring etc. You may notice I've done something similar on page one. This is an idea I'm using for this story to get away from the filmic, camera shot look that predominates comic panels. I spend so little of my life looking at the world through a camera lens that I fail to see why I should make my stories look as if they are seen through one. In the case of this story it has an unsettling symmetry that helps the feeling of creepy bedtime stories and mythic imaginings.