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Hello people
So, that whole posting more in the new year thing is working out GREAT!
Seriously, I'm sorry for neglecting this thing so badly. Believe it or not I genuinely really really miss being able to access livejournal at work, which is where I used to do most of my posting from (on my lunchbreaks of course *cough cough*)
That said, I'm hoping to start MINDHACK in a couple of a weeks- and I'll be running that three days a week like I did with Damnation, and I'll be cross-posting here naturally. So that should pump up the posting average quite a bit. And let's be honest, I'm unlikely to be able to stop myself having a bit of a rant no and again when posting.
Also, you may have noticed, I've killed the twitter thing. It just got to be too much trouble with the whole adding a cut and all that, and I know it was irritating a lot of people. It's a shame, since the fact that people here were able to comment on my tweets made it feel at least a little bit like my lj friends were being included in those conversations. But you know what? You guys should really give twitter a try. COME, JOIN ME IN MY ADDICTION. Apart from anything else, I miss you.
Is that everything? I think that's everything. PEACE, people!
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About time I did some blogging again, isn't it? I'm barely awake though, so this'll be disjointed and shitty.
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My day so far: Amanda's out visiting friends, so I'm alone in the flat. When she's not here, I wake up grumpy.
I have no instant coffee, so I made a pot of fresh filter stuff. Got to the bottom of the cup, and got a mouth full of grounds. Went back into the kitchen and discovered that I'd forgotten to put the filter in to the machine, and had instead just dumped the grounds straight into the bloody thing. My subconcsious is trying to kill me.
I was outside having a fag a couple of minutes ago (yes I know I know) and a couple of clean cut young men with name badges came towards my door... I sarted to say "are you..." and before I got the word "mormons" out one of them said "can we talk to you about jesus christ?"
My response? "Oh god, no..."
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A fair chunk of you will already know this, but yesterday was Transgender Day Of Remembrance, and I'm ashamed to say I didn't know that before hand. For more about it, go here here and here.
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I'm sorry that Voyages Of The Windbird stll hasn't come back. I'm going to stop talking about it till it actually happens.
Thing is, my brain's all full up with Perceval Blake stuff right now. I've been working out the intended next book, Blank Generation, and it's sort of coming together, although I've hit yet another bump lately. And then this morning my brain decided it really does hate me by coming up with the damn fool notion of pushing Blank Generation back a bit and doing a different Blake story next instead. And it's just stupid enough that I might actually do it... the story is a frantic bit of PULP! ACTION! And won't require anywhere near so much in the way of plotting. In fact, it's pretty much ready to go as is. It's extrememly tempting...
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Did you all go listen to Geek Syndicate yesterday? I still can't get over what a nice review they gave the book. I need to find more people to send review copies to now. Any suggestions?
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So, I was in Derby for the weekend to help celebrate Amanda's sister's 30th birthday, which jut happens to fall on Halloween.
I wish my birthday was on Halloween.
Anyway, we went out for a pub-crawl, in fancy dress,with the theme being the 1970's.
(Yes, I know, that's not very halloweeny. But just imagine if your birthday was on halloween. You'd get so sick of creepy horror movie stuff, wouldn't you? So I was happy to go with the theme. Especially since, the 70's being the decade that spawned punk rock, it gave me an excuse to drag my old duds out of the wardrobe. Here I am "in costume", which means I'm dressed pretty much exactly how I would have been dressed on any normal day ten years ago:
You can't tell, but the hair is blue. It felt really good to be back in my old punk regalia actually, although I don't think I could be arsed to do it every day anymore.)
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I am on a bit of a downswing right now. I'm okay, life's okay, but I'm just having a bit of a hard time. Listening to Neil Young, and it suits my mood pretty perfectly. Time to cheer myself with a bit of blogging maybe?
I'm working on something at the moment that kind of has to take priority over Windbird, so that'll be away for a little while longer. I honestly don't know how long-- rest assured it WILL be back, before you know it. The whole first story is written, so there's no reason not to finish it. I just don't have time to be drawing it right now.
This other project is giving me a little bit of trouble, if I'm honest... It's partly that I can't seem to get the inking style right. It's funny, since I basically want it to look like Damnation, only with, you know, decent figure work and stuff. This shouldn't be a problem, but it is... I can't seem to find that look anymore. Which is infuriating, to be honest, since I thought I'd developed a bit of a signature style there. Of course part of why I mention this is in the hope that now I've talked about it in public, it'll just kind of magically come back to me. Hey, you never know.
I suspect the thing that's REALLY causing me problems is that there's no deadline. I've always found it much easier to produce my comics under deadline pressure, for some reason. Something about the mad rush to the finish line just kind of clears my head, and lets me get on with the drawing without over-analysing everything to death. Self-imposed dealines are no good though. It has to be the real deal.
(And yes, I know the dealines for Damnation were technically self-imposed, but a public update schedule, once it starts rolling, is "real" enough to have the same effect).
Oh, and I'm starting to get the itch to work on the next Blake book. Can you tell? From the way I've managed to mention Damnation twice already in this post? (whoops, I guess that makes it three!) This is no bloody good, since I've not finished writing it yet. I know how it starts, I know how it ends, I know who most of the characters are, I know what it's about. I even know what it's called. I just have no idea what actually happens. GAH.
I WAS thinking about doing a 24 hour comic this weekend... but it's one of only three weekends off that I've got left before christmas. So I think I'll spend it doing nice things with Amanda instead.
Happy election day, Canadians. Vote for Obama (OH WAIT)
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So, you're probably all aware of a youtube video that's doing the rounds of A-ha's Take On Me. Well, that turned out to be just what was needed to bring me beloved ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) dawnbird back to the internet. Here's her review of the Albert Hall gig we went to earlier this year. It's very long, but I think you'll agree that she's an engaging and talented writer:
Click here to read the review
(My own review of the gig is here)
Go say hi to the love of my life!
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So...
That was pretty awesome.
We travelled up on the Friday night, and were at the con for opening on the Saturday. Weirdly, while we were waiting in the queue for pre-reg attendees, directly adjacent to us in the queue for buying tickets on the day was a gentleman I thought I recognised- and later on I found out that yes, I was right, it really WAS
bevismusson . I still wish I'd said hello.
Once we were in, we had a quick look around the two halls of tables, and I had a chance to gush at Paul Grist (as well as getting him to sign my Jack Staff books that I'd dragged all the way up norf for exactly that reason). The man's a genius, and I felt it was important to tell him so... he looked a little uncomfortable. I have that effect on my heroes. I'M NOT A STALKER, HONEST.
As we were milling about, I spotted Dave Monteith from the awesome Geek Syndicate podcast, and said hello, and told him that I was looking forward to their panel later. So that was ace.
We then ran back to the hotel to drop off the books (heavy!), and grab a quick cup of coffee before heading back in time to catch Paul Gravett's talk on incredibly strange comics, which was incredibly strange, as billed... and in the process, meet up with happymrlocust . After the talk, we adjourned to the pub, and while Amanda pooped out to have a little look around Brum, we chatted and plotted domination of the comics industry. Or something. I have to say it was absolutely fantastic to finally get to talk to him face to face, and I look forward to doing so again, hopefully soon.
Then it was back to the con for Geek Syndicate's thing, which was a lot of fun, and then The Kryptonite Factor (which was chaotic but very funny). And then it was to the pub and out for dinner withthe afore-mentioned mister Locust, and the spectacularly cool Tom Reynolds (buy his book!)and his brother Brett. Again, much fun. Tom managed to raise himself even further in my estimation by eating a dessert intended for two all by himself.
Lem had to run straight after dinner unfortunately, so he missed the end of the evening, and the inevitable descent into the discussion of FOIR (Foreign Object In Rectum) cases that we have encountered in the course of our working lives.
Sunday was also, cool- we turned up early-ish, in time for me to discover that in order to show my portforlio to Harry Markos (the head man at Markosia comics) I should have registered in advance... despite the fact that there was no mention on the Brumcon site that he was going to be portfolio reviews, and thus no way of knowing about it untill the day of the con. So that was a bit poo. But we turned it around later- but that was later...
We had pre-registered to attend Dave Gibbons's talk on his "Watching The Watchmen" book, which began at twelve thirty, so that was our next stop. Let's just say, I think I'm going to have to buy that book.
The next event was suppoesed to be a talk by Alan Martin and Rufus Dayglo on the subject of Tank Girl's twentieth anniversary... unfortunately, Alan Martin couldn't make it, so it was just Rufus- which logically shouldn't have worked since he had nothing to do with the creation of the character and has only been involved in making Tank Girl comics for a year. But I have to say, he really pulled the whole thing off very well. It ended up being a really enjoyable and informative talk.
After that, I went and had something to eat before heading back for one last round of the two halls. I took this opportunity to grab a quick chat with the afore mentioned Harry Markos at the Markosia table. he took a look at my pages, and was very complimentary, but sadly didn't feel there was palce for me at Markosia. He advised me to go and chat with some other peeps though, but I don't think I'll talk about that in public just yet. I may pop up a little friends-locked post later...
Anyway, after that we were done. We spent the rest of Sunday and most of Monday doing lovey dovey coupl-y things that I won't be blogging about here, since that's not con-related, is it?
The highlight of the con, for me (apart from, of course, meeting up with amazingly cool people), was probably getting to see some original Lazarrus Churchyard pages at D'Israeli's table, and chatting a bit about Timulo.
We both bought Genki Gear t-shirts, and I got myself a nice fat haul of books.
The only negative thing I can say about the weekend- a couple of indie comics people out there really need to learn how off-putting the hard sell is. Seriously, if you've called me over to your table to look at your comics, rather than waiting for me to show an interest, then you need to be prepared for the possibilty that I'm not going to buy one. And you especially should not get arsey when I say that no, i don't want to sign up to your mailing list. Talking of which, if you want people to sign up to a mailing list, shoving a clipboard under someone's nose and telling them to write their email address on it without telling them what it is is really not the way to go about it. Let's just say that there's an indie manga publisher who publish books that I probably would have been interested in, but will now be avoiding like the plague...
But all in all it was a great con.
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So, I'm back at work, and between jobs I'm catching up with everything I've missed on the internet this week while I've been doing the photoshop drudgery required to get Damnation ready to go to the printers...
It's been an eventful week, by the looks of things. Lem has really excelled himself over at Bunny, for starters- that'd make fucking wicked mini-comic, mate. I'd buy one. Seriously, everybody, Bunny is awesome all the time anyway, but this week is special.
When Fangirls Attack is back, which is a double edged sword- on the one hand, WOOHOO! because it's a really good thing. It's no coincidence that there hasn't been any FEMUHNIST CONTRUHVUSSY in the mainstream comics geekosphere while it's been away, if you ask me. WFA serves the extremely important purpose of providing a centre for the, well, let's call it what it is, movement to revolve around. Interested in feminism, and how it applies to comics, and whats going on in comics right now that's worth making a noise about? Who's worth starting an argument with (because believe it or not, arguments aren't always pointless), and who's worth supporting? Want to hear other people's thoughts on the subject, and maybe have your own views and opinions challenged? Well, that's your one stop shop, right there.
(Hell, I wouldn't be reading BPRD if it wasn't for WFA. No, really. BPRD is the first (only!) comic I've ever bought on the basis of it's editorial team, which includes Rachel Edidin, who's blog I discovered through WFA)
On the other hand- well, being a feminist more often than not involves getting really bloody angry about the bigotry, hypocrisy, and just plain stupidity of various people- often people I'd like to expect better of. And that can be a bit depressing...
There's lots of other stuff I'd like to comment on... one person who's likely to be reading this (who has a friends only blog, so I don't know if it'd be right to name them) did at least two things this week that they should be very proud of.
Anyway, better be off again, work is calling...
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I saw Sweeney Todd today for the first time. Which nicely rounds off the week in which I also saw WALL E and The Dark Knight. Because, wow, what a fucking fantastic film.
Seriously, if you haven't seen it, check it out. It's awesome. If you're put off by the fact that it's a musical... well, I don't know what to say. I quite like musicals if the tunes are good, and this is Sondheim, so the songs are absolutely brilliant.
Of course what really makes it are the performances. Obviously it looks amazing, Tim Burton excells himself in that department, even more than usual. But Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall and even Sacha Baron Cohen all deliver gloriously dislikable performances, while Depp and Carter are both mesmerizing.
It's just really, really good.
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Oh, hey, loudtwitter suddenly started working again. Weird. I have absolutely no idea why that happened, just as I have no clue why it stopped shipping my tweets in the first place. I did nothing.
Anyway.
Blogging's not going to happen tonight, not properly, anyway. Maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, here a few random things:
I saw The Dark Knight at IMAX on wednesday and it was magnificent. Go and see it on the biggest screen you can.
I also saw WALL E on monday, and that was (I can't believe I'm typing this) even better. Best Pixar film to date, and I love Pixar. If you like animation (and if you're reading this you probably do, I'll bet) then you should go see that, too.
At the Dark Knight screening, I saw a trailer for Watchmen. I know I'm going to enjoy it, but I suspect that I'm going to feel bad about that, since it doesn't look like a very good film and an awful adaptation. Put it this way- either this is a TERRIBLE piece of marketing, or it's going to be an action movie. Which prompted me to pull my copy of the book down off the shelf yesterday and count the fight scenes (or at least the ones that aren't just one character kicking the shit out of another character quickly and efficiently) and there's, like, three or four- maybe five or six if you really stretch it. In terms of the kind of big action set-piece you need for a movie, what is there? Rorschach's arrest and then his escape, and the fight scene in the alley with Dan and Laurie... and that's it. Everything else is people walking around talking to each other, and occasionally being horribly violent in extremely short bursts.
Hey, I could be wrong; it's been known. But I don't think this is going to differ from the standard set by previous film adaptations of Alan Moore's work.
Also, I've mentioned in the past that I wish Leigh Walton would blog more. Here's an example of why.
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The Personal Bit:
My life is in a bit of a strange place at the moment. Not only am I between projects when it comes to my comics, I feel like every part of my life has some level of "in-between-ness" to it right now. It's not bad, it's not good either- it just is. I feel like I'm dreaming, almost. This could of course be partly due to the fact that I am horribly sleep deprived, my body clock is completely broken, and my brain chemistry is almost certainly rather unusual at the moment, as it transitions from one state- pole, even- to another.
Some of you will know that I've had a few mental health issues over the years, and I recently just about managed to swerve and avoid a proper manic or at least hypermanic episode ( or at least I think I did, but I'm not a psychiatrist or anything). This was largely down to a kind of "contact" stress- Amanda was going through an absolutely horrific time at work, and it had got to the point where it was affecting both of us.
Well, she left that job. And we found out on the first day of our holiday that she has been offered another job that she applied for, and that I think she will be very well suited to. It's in a pupil referral unit, which I'm guessing will be a bit like a nurse going from working in an A&E department to working an ITU- less running around after hundreds of different people who all have different levels of need, more concentrating on those individuals who really need the help she can provide. Obviously, this is a huge load off both our minds, especially as it means she can now relax and enjoy the six weeks off before the term starts in September. But there it is: in betweenness.
More specifically for today, I'm in between trips away- first there was the trip to Turkey (which was exactly what we needed- incredibly relaxing, and a lot of fun. The area we visited is steeped in history - there was a roman amphitheatre at the end of our street and a helenistic temple down the road! - surrounded by breath-taking mountains, and absolutely stuffed with incredibly cute cats) which we only got back from 36 hours ago, and in 12 hours we get on a coach bound for Scunthorpe. So I'm at work for two nights - last night, and now- and then I'll be off work again for ten days, thanks to the quirks of my rota (although I'll be back in London before the end of the week. After that, though, I won't have any holiday left at all till next April. Yes, you read that right. So my rather erratic blogging will probably get a bit more regular again, since I do most of it between patients and so forth here at work. So anyway, I'm getting myself ready for a long hard slog of a year work wise while at the same time trying to enjoy the free time I have right now... and it's a bit weird.
There's about a million other things adding to this feeling- my supervisor retires in september, and I'll be applying for his job, so that'll be on my mind till I know one way or the other... I'm working on a comics project with someone else that is kind of on hold right now since we're both extremely busy, and I keep having thoughts and ideas for it that I have to step on before they get too fully formed, since obviously I need to discuss it with them... on and on. I've got Ian Dury's "Inbetweenies" playing in my head on an infinite loop.
The Comics Blog Bit:
There was one of those kind of mass conversations going on in the comics blogospheraversorama a little while ago that happen every now and then- you know the kind of thing: one person writes a blog post, someone else responds, then someone else responds to that and soon there a re forum threads everywhere about it- concerning reviews, reviewers, and whether it's acceptable, or at least ethical, to write negative reviews of indy comics. It all started with a piece by B Clay Moore, the writer of Hawaiian Dick amongst other things. He started a thread on Panel and Pixel about it, and that's what got me interested. I reccomend reading what you find at the end of both those links if you're at all interested in the topic. It's quite a thought provoking discussion, at least for me- after all, I make comics, and I've also been known to at least fleetingly review other people's comics on this blog (and I'm always meaning to do more of that). So it's a subject that's had my brain going round and round for the last nigh on two months...
Of course a big part of this is because of where I am with Damnation- I'm in the process of preparing it for print, and I plan on sending out emails with links to the web version to several of my favourite comics bloggers- as well as most of my favourite writers, probably- some time within the next month or so, partly in the hopes of generating some interest, and partly in the unlikely hope of getting a pull quote or two. And obviously part of me is absolutely petrified of it being universally ripped to shreds- not least because I know that in many ways it's a terribly flawed piece of work. So I can understand where Moore is coming from, if for slightly different reasons.
But you know what? It's part of the game, and an absolutely integral one. One of the things that scares me about the idea of getting a bad review is the thought of someone identifying a fault I hadn't spotted myself- since then I'll have some more work to do! But I'd rather that happened than that I carried on without having it pointed out to me. I'm not fond of people who slate things just for the sake of it, but the fact that I'm so vocal about my affection for Alan David Doane's writing should make it obvious that I think there is an important place for negative criticism. And a voice at the back of my head says that if you can't take your lumps, you shouldn't be making art in the first place. That isn't really what I think objectively- everyone is capable of making great art, in my opinion, and I think we should all give it a try- but it is my gut feeling on the subject. Negative reviews, and scathing reviewers, are there to keep us on our toes. To give us something to fight, something to push against, someone to prove wrong. Not everyone responds well to that kind of motivation, but in that case- don't read your reviews.
Some people seem to be of the opinion that while negative reviews aren't inherently bad, there is still too much snark and negativity in the comics community, but my answer to that is simple- look at how good comics are. We may slag them off horribly, but the truth is that the good to bad ratio is better in comics than any other pop culture medium, from pop music to movies. there is a reason the bar has been set so high in comics. Because those of us who are reading them are fussy bastards, and we're very vocal about it.
Anyway, incoherent as that was, that's the basic outline of my thoughts on the subject. now that I've finished typing, I'm not sure if it was really worth posting here or not - but I wanted to share my thoughts.
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