Leeds Thought Bubble Report 2009

My stuff all spread out before the con starts...

There's Dave Hughes and you can see MD Penman's fancy 'Greasy Joe' stand in the middle.

Yay had a very good time at Leeds Thought Bubble 2009. I was sharing the table with Dave Hughes and also sub-let a little bit of it to MD Penman for his Greasy Joe comics. I got the train there in the morning so it was a very long day, up at 6. Sales started well until 1 but then there was a big gap when I started to get a bit worried. But then some heroic fellow came about 4pm or so and bought a pile of comics cheering me up greatly, thank you! I was pleased as I had covered table costs. Sales were a bit less than last year but still best sales of the year. There was a lot of great stuff on people's stalls, I bought a few comics which I will mention on here once I've read them.

The after show party was a good laugh and I even had a dance at the comics disco which had some very good tunes. I was suffering a bit at first afterwards with crazy staring con eyes but the magic powers of beer relaxed my eyes and they gradually returned to normal. I was very rough on Sunday as I slowly got the train home via an odd and unexpected route.

Thanks to everyone who bought my comics!

NEWS- Ant Mercer is doing a work themed anthology, here's a link to it if you fancy submitting some stuff.... sounds cool. The Brave Brave Idiots

Johnny Ryan – Prison Pit Volume 1

Yay! I was looking forward to this and it didn’t disappoint me at all. Its very cool, go and buy it, all the good reviews of it are true. A brutal maniac is dumped on a prison planet and proceeds to meet and fight the inhabitants in various long and disgusting battles. Awesome. Each baddy has there own special moves, involving snot, jizz, growing extra arms and heads. It’s very manga-esque in it’s long and elaborate fight sequences and also in the pacing. I am well looking forward to issue 2. It is my favourite Johnny Ryan thing I’ve seen though I like a lot of the Blecky Yuckerella strips and fondly remember his ‘Every Autobio Comic Ever Written’.

Thought Bubble 2009 Getting Very Near!

It's really not long till Thought Bubble on the 21st of November. I am looking forward to it. I will have loads of comics to sell, including some at special discount rates specially for Leeds. Come and buy some if you are there. I am sharing a table with Dave Hughes. Should be good. I am all ready for going as I am very organised this year, so no rushing about necessary.

Great Deeds Against the Dead - Part Two Finally Finished

Hurray! It's finally finished. It took me ages and ages and ages to clean up all the pages but now I have burnt them to a disc so they are off to the printers tomorrow. Too late for Thought Bubble of course but they should be on sale after the end of this month...

Jiro Taniguchi – A Distant Neighbourhood – Books 1 & 2

These were very enjoyable to read. I ended up reading them both in one go to find out the mystery at the end. The art is beautiful as you would expect from Taniguchi, very detailed and with a great sense of place.

It’s a time travel / body swop story were the middle aged hero gets drunk at his mothers grave and suddenly finds himself back in his 14 year old body in the past. Once he gets over his confusion a bit, he likes being young again, having loads of energy and life. Also with his adult memories he finds all the classes easy, which is very different from when he was young and they were a hard slog. He starts changing all the things that happened when he was young, now he is dating the most beautiful girl in the class who he didn’t dare approach as a child…

Then he remembers that his dad left them without saying a word at the end of the summer holidays when he was fourteen and tries to find out why he left, and stop him if he can.

I liked these books a lot more than ‘The Ice Wanderer’ which I read last year but my favourite Taniguchi is still ‘The Walking Man’ so read that first if you are only going to get one of his books to try.

Benjamin Marra - Night Business - Issues 1 & 2

Waaaaaaaaaaahhhh these are awesome. They may well be my favourite comic of the year. The drawing is so fascinating, everyone is super shiny looking with tiny hands and strange poses. Grrrrr they are angry. (As you can see the best way of describing it is by writing funny noises)

The story is set in ‘the city’ at night in 1983. Johnny and Steve are running an agency ‘Glitz Glam’ which looks after exotic dancers. A crazy masked murderer has killed one of their girls in a frenzied knife attack and now they are after him. Johnny gets one of the girls to act as bait to draw out the murderer. The city is very sleazy, full of pimps and strip clubs. Benjamin Marra is a very funny man, the authors descriptions on the back pages of the comics made me laugh out loud. Highly recommended, go and order it from his website.

Great Deeds Against the Dead - Part Two First page with Greys

I didn't get much done tonight as i started drinking some Lambs Navy Rum. Here's the first page of 'Great Deeds 2' with the grey tones added. This is page 3 confusingly. Only 28 more pages to add grey tones too.
P.S. I am excited about GRINDER!!