Fermented Gags From Pickled Brains

Who likes beer? We dooooo!

I’ve been a member of Edinburgh’s Beer 52 for a couple of years now, receiving all manner of exciting and delicious craft beers from the world over in a big box at the start of the month, along with a copy of the excellent Ferment Magazine.

Last summer me and my good pal and collaborator the excellent Mark Brady had wrapped up our work on Medieval Times, and it was over a few sunny Sunday beers that I suggested to Mark we make a quite ambitious and unrealistic punt at submitting some comics to Ferment. We worked up about a dozen ideas for gags, picked the four that were strongest and that covered a pretty broad range of relevant topics, scripted them up for Mark to work his magic upon and posted them off...

Lo and behold, they only really liked them! Mark and I have had our short “Ales of The Unexpected” strips sitting pretty up front in the editorial pages of the last six editions of Ferment with more to come. It’s been absolutely ace working up ideas for weird beery gags with Mark and scripting them up, and being in the pages of a magazine I really like (and recently award-winning no less, congratulations Rich and Ashley!) is really exciting. Thanks very much to Ferment for having us on board!

I’ll post some full strips in the coming months. Cheers!

Ascend Unto Unknown Realms of Hot Trash

...or alternatively drink deep and descend into the Oubliette!

While I've been working away on some very exciting stuff with the excellent Mark Brady, I've been doing a bit of DIY zine action on the side. And here they aaaaare:

Oubliette: a short story from a deep hole. A 12 page plus card cover comic which debuted at the excellent Glasgow Zine Fest in April this year.

And new for this year's once again excellent Glasgow Comic Con in July is Hot Trash Dimension, a 12-page plus hawwwt pink cover collection of weirdo illustration and misguided fan art.

You can get these rascals in my online shop for a single morgul coin (£1). More illustration and zine-garbage in the works!

Battletoads!

Way back in the heady summer of 2016, my good pal and national treasure Neil Slorance and I collaborated on a comic for the Glasgow Comic Con's first ever Awesome! Anthology. And here it is... our Battletoads comic, entitled "Bufo Proelium, Bufo Paenitet".

I spent many excruciating GameBoy hours trying to fight this toad to wherever he was trying to fight his way to. The specifics are hazy. Whatever became of you, Giant Arm? Did you ever find the love and acceptance you so clearly needed?

You can read the full Glasgow Comic Con Awesome! Anthology online for free. Get to it!

Glasgow Con and New Work - A Welcome Breeze of Fetid Air

New comics are here, all up in your face and also eyeballs!

I'd meant to post some details of all the new work I had going on at this year's Glasgow Comic Con before the event, but yer old pal Craig was busy folding and stapling comics into the dead of the night and didn't manage to. So here we are...

I had an excellent time of Glasgow Comic Con once again, made some new pals and saw some exciting new work both by creators I knew and didn't, and the new venue seems to suit the event really well. I was on a speed-drawing panel, hardly my natural environment but a good time, and I was really pleased to have a strip in the Con's official Awesome! Anthology collaborating with my good pal and national treasure Neil Slorance. We did a deeply profound Battletoads comic called "Bufo Proelium, Bufo Paenitet". Here's a page:

There's loads of cool strips in their including work by Zyzanna Dominiak and Łukasz Kowalczuk, and check out that amazing big bear by BHP's Kirsty Hunter. You can even read the whole thing online for free. Get to it!

My big new effort for 2016 was launched! Medieval Times by me and the excellent Mark Brady went down great and people seemed to really like them, and we were left with just a handful by the end of the weekend. Some more info on these wee rascals in a previous post. I've now made up a new batch, and they're available in my online shop now. Make like the medieval English infantry and go forth and pillage!

I also finally released my Ultimate Ross Geller Fanzine, which for something so profoundly stupid seemed to go down very well indeed, which was lovely because I put a great deal of effort into it considering it's profoundly stupid. It's available online now, eight pages plus covers charting the life experiences of everyone's favourite F.R.I.E.N.D in the context of Occult Armageddon. Get one over at Central Perk.

Lastly I released upon this unfortunate world a couple of new microcomics that I give out for free (the last lot are here) so if you're picking up anything from my online shop some of these are sure to creep their way into the envelope. If you like hand-folded Space Marine illustration zines then hoooo boy nerds, have I got a treat for you.

It's been great to get some new work out there, so a big thanks to Mark and Neil for their collaboration. I've got a lot of different things simmering away, so stay tuned for some new comics soon!

Medieval Times Are Here!

I'm thrilled to announce Medieval Times, a set of six new minicomics by me and the extraordinary Mark Brady!

....Once upon a time two knaves sat down in Ye Olde Tavern with a big bag of soldiers. These craven peasants selected the six miniatures of greatest fighting spirit, then perused their poses, demeanours and finery searching for the tales of valour and calamity within each."Medieval Times" follows these six brave English souls as they battle across Northern France in the heady days of the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) to tell their stories of victory and misadventure. For King and Country!


Or to put it more plainly....! Mark and I were bouncing around a ideas to collaborate on, and one that grabbed us was the idea of using little fighting figurines as a blank canvas to infer stories of valour and misfortune upon, stories which were very specific and personal to the moulded-by-the-thousand figure in hand. We picked some historical soldiers and from these our favourite six, and their attributes and the kinds of ideas we were knocking about fell firmly into the gruelling times of the Hundred Years War between England and France. Looking over each little figure in detail, we considered their poses and countenances, weaponry and clothes, to find the character hidden within and their own tale of glorious victory, ignominious defeat, or somewhere between the two and in doing so hopefully creating something unique from something ordinary. Each comic stands alone, but there's plenty of little links and overlaps in there for the keen battle-watchers. Introducing....!

Geoffrey: Camaraderie & Lamentations

 
William: A Master's Tale

Guy: The Summer of 1369

George: In Pursuit Of Glory

Nicholas: A Flurry Of Flags.

Sir Thomas: In Noble Service.

Six handmade colour minicomics, eight pages plus covers, including and inspired by a fighting man of days of yore. £3 each or £15 for all six, available at Glasgow Comic Con - Clyde Foyer - on July 2nd and 3rd 2016 and also now in my online shop. It's been a real pleasure collaborating with Mark and there's hopefully more to come from us in the future. In the meantime - come get your Hundred Years War on!

Happy Birthday Your Majesty!

Queen Elizabeth is 90 today, here's a little comic dedicated to our beloved monarch.

2016: Oozing Wound Fascination

Hello hello. I've been working continually on a lot of quite in depth projects over the last couple of years, so it's with some excitement that hopefully 2016 is the year when some of these will see the light of day. I'm thinking of also taking a bit of an ill-advised step into the world of lo-fi illustration zines, though feel free to talk me out of this. In the meantime, here's some collected shonky photos of some dubious work that's seeped out on Twitter over the last few months. Onwards and upwards!

 

Cavernous and crepuscular opinions on The Apprentice. Serious kvlt shit. As it is, this benighted young man called it early and backed the winner.

An official Khorne Berzerker Product review for yet another excellent Williams Brothers beer. For completion's sake I should probably do the other Chaos Gods, but I don't know if I want to draw a bunch of Slaaneshi Penis Marines.

You can simultaneously indulge your interest in making profoundly stupid art about ridiculous things while shamelessly baiting for RTs and Faves on Twitter by combining a current topical issue with a hugely successful and beloved television program. But you won't necessarily get those Faves, and then you'll just feel cheap.

I thought I'd have a go at The Mooks' Draw Stormtroopers project. There's an abundance of incredible stuff here.

 

Sheldon. Ghnuzunga.

Sometimes you just lose your fucking mind and hold up a Greggs.

 

A reflective self-portrait. I watched Attack On Titan and it led to some profound thoughts.

 

Positive vibe emanation at MCM Birmingham.

He's not wrong though.

 

Sweet mood ring, Bro.

It was National Burger Day back in August. About a week later it was National Cheeseburger Day. No one's flying the plane.

 

Getting in on that "Draw Andy Oliver of Broken Frontier" action. Sorely tempted to write some of those ludicrous comics whirling about him.

The Acrid Stink of Burning Trash

Hello! I've been striving away on some in-depth and lengthy projects for some time now, so I've been doing a wee bit of dumb doodling on the side when on the train and so on. Here's some shonky photographs of the decidedly mixed results...

Jar Jar Binks ♥s Deathspell Omega. Of course he does.



For someone who's pretty sick of the near-saturation of culture by Star Wars and mash-ups thereof, it's pretty hypocritical to combine the Mos Eisley Cantina Band with berobed drone outfit SunnO))). But here we are. 

Here's KIZZ. I pretty much hate KISS. I imagine if I was born ten years earlier I would have absolutely loved them, but to me they seem corny as shit. Maybe I'm a rigidly self-conscious person who's uncomfortable with their unabashed celebration of life and self. Who knows? We could ask Paul Stanley I guess. 

♪ ...Thank you for being a friend. ♫

Even the least talented of us can get on the Mad Max: Fury Road Fan-Art Armoured Bandwagon. And why not, it was a glorious thrash metal religious experience. This is an accurate recollection of the movie's events and characters.

Life philosophy. 

You can simultaneously indulge your interest in making tattoo-like crest-designs about ridiculous things while shamelessly baiting for RTs and Faves on Twitter by engaging with a current topical issue. But you won't necessarily get those Faves, and then you'll just feel cheap. 

 For your Ferengi Devo needs. Yeah, zap those Federation fuckers!

Product Review for the Gregg's BBQ Pulled Pork Lattice. I'm a big fan of variations on existing foods. They put Ritz Crackers in Cadbury's chocolate, I need to know, and then share my opinions with anyone who'll listen. Maybe Greggs would have RT'd this if I'd awarded them four Blight Grenades, but they just weren't all that good.

It's a bit of a challenge to not be over-expectant of myself and grow comfortable with my limited skills, and essentially just draw some dumb shit and not be too precious about if it looks "good enough". But it provides a great brain-valve and allows me to just get some stupid ideas out there, so I suppose we're all in for a bit more of this.