Showing posts with label Iain Laurie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iain Laurie. Show all posts

Crawl Hole - Waist Deep In SICBA

I'm very happy to say that me and Iain Laurie's 2013 experimental horror comic Crawl Hole has been nominated for Best Comic and Best Cover at this year's Scottish Independent Comic Book Awards!



The SICBAs are part of the Glasgow Comic Con on the 5th and 6th of July. I'll be exhibiting in the Art School venue both days, so please do come by and check out some comics and have a chat! Voting for the SICBAs is on the 5th of July with the winners announced at the Ceremony that evening at the CCA. Do check out the full nominations shortlist, some excellent work therein, and all books will be available to read in the voting area. No expectation of snatching a gong in the name of weirdo comics, but a good night is sure to be had!

If you're not at the Con, you can get it in Forbidden Planet GlasgowWaterstones Argyle StreetGeek Retreat UK, or by post at my Big Cartel Shop and digitally at Gumroad

Glasgow Comic Con is popular with the Cosplay Contingent, who are always a pleasure to talk to and bring a huge amount of colour and fun to the comic con scene. So should any of Scotland's cosplayers have the nerve, the steeeeel required to commit to Crawl Hole Cosplay.... here's a handy guide. Click to embiggen!


Hope to see you there! Some kind words on Crawl Hole of late...
As usual with these gents, gore, violence and a twisted sense of humour is real high in the mix... All in all, this one is slight, but manages to do the important thing; it’s satisfying, with ideas that make the sum of the experience far greater than the page-count." Forbidden Planet.
"The breadth of stoires covers the existential angst of modern man, assisted suicide, uncomfortable reunions and childhood nursery rhymes, all filtered through a death metal sensibility.... Collins' warped sensibilities really do hold nothing sacred." Starburst Magazine
"Once again Crawl Hole is material that makes the reader positively delight in the unnerving; if you like your comics riddled with a creepiness that will leave you feeling profoundly uncomfortable after reading then you can’t go far wrong with a Collins-Laurie offering." Broken Frontier


Crawl into The Dome: Review Roundup!

It's been a busy few months, having had both a great time and a great success of the Stripped Fest Comic Fair and the MCM Scotland Comic Con, and in doing so meeting a load of very cool and talented people around these exhibitions...

Meanwhile, behind the facade of this innocent-looking blogpost, comic reviews have been creeping about the place unchecked and it's time to round them up in one place and exterminate them! Here we go...!

Both Metrodome and Crawl Hole, by me and the excellent Iain Laurie, have both received a powerfully good review in the latest issue of Starburst Magazine. Our "work together is instantly recognisable and like nothing else you've ever read... often hilarious, occasionally incomprehensible and always, always disturbing". Yeah!

On Metrodome, "...this ultraviolent, sickeningly offensive midnspew is utterly brilliant", while on Crawl Hole reviewer Phillip Buchan is impressed with our breadth of stories "all filtered through a very Death Metal sensibility". Iain's work is complimented as "grotesque as ever, improving in consistency and confidence with every comic that he releases" and for my part my "warped sensibilites really do hold nothing sacred". Hey man, click to embiggen and read it for yourself!


Thanks to Phillip Buchan for the review. Starburst #393 available from all good newsagents and Good Guys doll factories now!

Over on the Forbidden Planet Blog, Metrodome takes a bit of a battering from the ever-astute Richard Bruton. Unsurprising for an unconventional comic, but he does find some qualities therein, saying "It’s well written and Laurie is obviously having a great, great time doing his vilest, most grotesque characters...".  Read it over here...!

In the following weeks, Richard takes a look at Crawl Hole and finds it very good indeed. Yeah! He states Iain's work "has his very best Kev O’Neill on in a couple of the final stories. And it suits him, the angular, scratchy style, the explosion of bodily fluids, guts, and gore picked out in every detail" and describes the writing as having "...something more about them, a heft not in keeping with their short length". He concludes "All in all, this one is slight, but manages to do the important thing; it’s satisfying, with ideas that make the sum of the experience far greater than the page-count." Man, Craig, shut up. It's over here!

And following that I was delighted to see the complimentary covers for Roachwell and Crawl Hole featured on the Forbidden Plant blog! A little trick that I was pretty pleased with myself on and Iain and Derek Dow executed perfectly, so it was excellent to see it appreciated in this way.


And finally Andy Oliver of Broken Fronteir looks at Metrodome over here, with plenty good to say! On Metrodome "the characters emerge fully formed from the deepest, darkest depths of the magnificently poisonous headspaces of Collins and Laurie...".


He concludes " If you like your comics unsettling, in-yer-face and gratuitously grotesque then you can’t go wrong with the wicked and wily wit of these guys".

So here ends the gratuitous splurge of frothing reviewage! All in all I'm really pleased to see our weirdo experimental comics being received so well in some very esteemed quarters. Thanks to the reviewers above for their time and efforts in writing these, and their continued support of the UK small press.

Enter The Crawl Hole....!


Crawl Hole: a new comic by me and Iain Laurie, and the spiritual cousin of sorts to Roachwell....



Sensationally bloody colouring job on the cover by Derek Dow. 

Crawl Hole is a collection of short surreal comedic horror strips, some of which you may have seen here and others that are completely new. Includes work featured in New British Comics (UK), Top Shelf Online (USA), Lazer Art Zine (Belgium) and Yuck! magazine (Australia).


A 16pg A5 comic, colour cover black and white comic. £2.50 plus p&p. Available now! 

 


The Teeth That Never Bit...

Keeping in line with Glaswegian Heraldry, "Here's the teeth that never bit..."

Way back in 2011 I was asked to provide an header image for Creative Spotlights, to be used on the site and email newsletters and the like. Here's what me and the mighty Iain Laurie cooked up for it...


For whatever internal reasons it won't be used, so here's the toothy bastard for you to have a look at anyway. Click the image to embiggen for the full dental examination!

Thanks to Henry Gomez for the invitation. Henry interviewed me on my comics work back in 2011, which you can read here. Marvel at my naïveté or how I've subsequently failed to take my own advice!

Lazer Glorious Lazer!

Well lookee what dropped through the door from Belgium...!
Myself and gargantuan art-golem Iain Laurie have a strip in Issue 18 of the wonderfully weird Belgian art and comics magazine "LAZER Artzine", which you can check out here!
Lazer is an excellent anthology full of all manner of strange and striking comics and art from all over the world, including a particularly cool contribution from Pascal Tessier and a scary fucking bear by Milton Blasverano. Thanks to editor Chanic for having us over!

You can see our contribution here, which on reflection is probably our most physically disgusting effort to date.

Haunted Bowels Phantom Newsround

Some news and reviews tumbling forth from the Haunted Bowels...

Ahem-hem. I'm pleased to say Haunted Bowels has received more positive reviews...

First up is on High-Low Comics, where Rob Clough has plenty of good things to say including "Accustomed as I am to seeing cerebral if visceral horror stories from Collins, it was amusing to see him riff on pop culture and lay down some deadly puns".

It's all about the Round-Ups, as Henry Northmore grabs the Scottish Small Press by the scruff of its filthy neck in Scotland's premier events and entertainment magazine The List, and describes Haunted Bowels as "... satisfyingly weird as long as you like pitch-black sci-fi/fantasy-themed humour." And surely you do!



Phillip Buchan review Haunted Bowels in the mighty Starburst Magazine, nestling me between reviews of Scott Snyder and Craig Thompson like a turd betwixt two tiaras. Among Phillip's comments are "That dichotomy between wry observational humour and outright bad taste lies at the heart of Collins’ best work..."


And "...Collins’ love of horror elevates his comics to the extent that I suspect we’re only getting a glimpse of what he’s be capable of on a more sustained project".


 Startburst #380 - available in all good newsagents and Aggro-Domes now!

Phillip also sets me against the
"wholesome, Guardian-friendly fodder being created by so many independent artists around the UK" and likens Haunted Bowels to "the grotesqueries of Frank Quitely or the confrontational stylings of Mark Millar" which makes me sound far more bad-ass than actually I am.

And as an aside Rob Clough is back reviewing New British Comics in The Comics Journal as part of a Survey of International Small Press, giving a nod to me and Iain Laurie's strip "The Quiet Burden".


So thanks to all the above for the very kind review! You can head over to my Big Cartel store, but you won't find any copies of Haunted Bowels to buy I'm afraid. Either I sold them to you, or I gave you one because I think you're cool and I like your work. But I'll print more soon, so check back sometime!

Forever Foes!

Everyone seems to be getting in on the children's book market these days... Madonna, Katie Price, Idi Amin and many more. And just as they stretched their respective talents beyond pop music, brutal repression and having big tits, I have done the same and launched my own line of children's novels!

Proudly brought to you by Harry Potter publishers Bloomsbury, FOREVER FOES! is available in all good bookshops including Waterstone's as seen below. FOREVER FOES! follows the adventures of a series of different villainous adventurers "...as they run the gamut of negative human experience, smashing and fucking everything in their path!". Wowee!

A close up of those covers so your six to twelve-year old knows what to look for on Amazon, with each character brought to life by a different talented artist from the Scottish comics underground.
 Volume I: Fear, Emptiness, Despair.
 Volume II: To Philosophise With A Hammer
Volume III: Bastards of Ragnarok

Available now in national bookstores!:



A good look at the blurb, to reel in those enthusiatic young minds:

And here are the central characters, soon to be appearing on lunchboxes, stationery and backpacks and that kind of stuff:
Lust Ghost - by Spanky
Spewnicorn - by Robert Thomson
 Gaseous Bastard - by Rob Miller
Meat Nun - by Paul McCann
Plague Chef - by James Corcoran
The Wicker Gran - by Alex Ronald
 
Prison Troll - by Curt Sibling
 
 Gory Tory - by Dave Alexander
Space Racist - by Iain Laurie
Thanks to each of these very skilled gentlemen for lending their talents and tolerating the excruciating Bloomsbury editorial process.


BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!

In keeping with the fine tradition of cynical cash-ins and exhaustive merchandising, there's also the FOREVER FOES collectable card game FOE TRUMPS! Simply click to embiggen, print, snip, glue then destroy your opponents without mercy! Check out these cool kids engaged in a deadly match.

 Jim "Destroyer" Devlin is furious as Manglin' Paul McCann smites him with a killer play!
Expand your game - more Foe Trumps to follow! Gotta Catch 'Em All!

 
Gee willikers, sir! My favourite Foe has gotta be...

Haunted Bowels!

Prepare to be haunted....!

I'm very pleased to say that after some years now of producing comics, I've finally printed my first collected volume - Haunted Bowels: Craig Collins Collected Comics Volume 1.
 Cover art by Iain Laurie
A collection of small press comedy comics - gruesome gags and oddball humour, surreal comedy and morbid light entertainment. Omniscient beings, strange cowboys, troubled poets and unruly spectres and much more await within...!

28 A5 black and white pages with colour cover. Some adult humour. Chocked to the gills with comics and featuring art by:

Dave Alexander, James Corcoran, Iain Laurie, Paul McCann, Rob Miller, Nulsh, Curt Sibling, Robert Thomson and Jacek Zabawa.

And you can buy it here in my Big Cartel for a mere £3 plus postage.

Needless to say it's been a huge pleasure collaborating with these exceptionally talented gentlemen, without whom I wouldn't have made any comics at all. Thanks guys, my hat's off to you! Thanks also to Stuart Gould of UK Comics, printer extraordinaire and all-round good guy.

METRODOME

A short teaser trailer for a new comic project by me and Iain Laurie. You'll want the sound on...


I'm pretty excited about this one and to be collaborating with the mighty Iain Laurie once again. Look out for METRODOME in Summer 2012.

"The Quiet Burden" on Top Shelf 2.0!

I'm very pleased to say me and Iain Laurie's "The Quiet Burden" has been featured on Top Shelf's online comics hub Top Shelf 2.0.

Hot dang, there we are right there! Needless to say it's fantastic to be up there amongst such excellent and talented company such as Jeff Lemire, Box Brown, Noah Van Sciver and too many more to mention...
 Thanks indeed to Leigh Walton for having us over!

Roachwell in Comic Heroes

If Roachwell in a magazine with Spider-Man on the cover suggests you're finally getting the crossover you dreamed of, well you'll just have to placate yourself with this next best thing...

However, Roachwell did get a rather good wee review as part of a small press round-up in Comic Heroes #9, which is a real life tangible magazine you can find on the actual shelves of Tesco and such. According to the good folks at Comic Heroes Roachwell is "...refreshingly weird, effortlessly funny and at times just plain psychotic..." and "Funny, frightening and a world unto itself..."

It's not online, so you'll just have to take my goddamn word for it. Thanks indeed to Rob Power for both the review and extending support to small press comic creators at wide!

February 2012 Update Excitement : Screw my "goddamn word for it", here it is online now!

Food Glorious Food

There's been far to much gorging on the empty calories self-promotion around here of late. So let's fill out bellies with some nutritious comics, with art duties by fat-spattered masterchef Iain Laurie. Click to embiggen!

A tasty and satisfying meal or a boak-inducing bowl of slurry? You decide!


A Bloodbath of Hideous Self-Promotion

It's a fearsome feast of raw reviewage here of late, with a cool wee review from The List coming in that declares Roachwell "...does run the gamut from laugh-out loud funny to quite disturbing to totally incomprehensible, which may just be an achievement in itself". Thanks!


Here's us stinking up the place next to 'The Wire' writer George Pelecanos. Sorry George!