Bristol Bound Birmingham Champion.

Yesterday I booked my hotel room for the Bristol Comic Convention, and the Midlands Comics Collective (which I'm a part of) has been given a free table! So I'm going to Bristol, to flog the MC2 anthology.
There is a catch, though. I may be roped into doing a cartooning workshop with local kids with Kev F. Sutherland (Who I've met a couple of times before through the StripSearch scheme I was part of. He complimented me by saying I had a great name. He then spoiled it by asking me if I was related to Ulster unionist David Trimble. He is the current artist for the Bash Street Kids in The Beano, but he was one of the original artists on Oink!,which was a great kid's comic, and he's also a stand-up comedian and compere [he introduced Stephen Merchant and Graham Norton to british audiences]and organised the first few Bristol conventions. It could be a good laugh.) Trouble is, this takes part on the Sunday morning of the convention, so this follows the Saturday night of the convention. Anyone who's been to the con for the weekend knows that the Saturday night involves drinking Herculean amounts of alcohol and subsequently going to bed very late indeed, if at all. If I am awake at all by the time this workshop takes place, I'm not going to be recognisably human. I'll have the voice of a Dalek and the eyes of a particularly bloodshot zombie.

This is the first time in a few years that I'm going to the convention on my own, and this will be weird. I might need somebody to hold my hand. If any young lady wants to accompany me, please email me photos (preferably topless!).
I shall stop being horrendously sexist by about 8 o'clock tomorrow.
(Sexist or not, topless photos are always welcome.)

In other news, Birmingham City Council launched their Arts Champions scheme on Thursday. Victoria Square (which is where Brum's Town Hall and Council House are, as well as the statue/fountain locally known as the 'floozie in the jacuzzi' or, if you're from an Irish family, like me, the 'hooer in the sewer') was festooned with banners which had my artwork on, as well as similarly decorated mobile display units. I only know this as an old friend of mine, who works at the Council House (he never gets me any extra bin bags, though) texted me to tell me that he saw the display and was bragging that he knew the artist to all his colleagues. Fame at last! If only there were council-backed art groupies!
It was nice of the Arts Team to tell me they were launching it, wasn't it?
I missed it completely, and I'm slightly pissed off about it. Saying that though, I'm slightly pissed off about most things.

The Frogile.*

Had to share this. You all probably know that I'm a big fan of American pop/skiffle combo Nine Inch Nails. I've just seen this awesome cover of Hurt on YouTube. It's far more poignant than Johnny Cash's rendition.



* It's a shit NIN/muppet pun, I know. Here's some more:
(Miss)Piggy
Piggy Hate Machine
Big Man With a Gonzo
The Day The Waldorf Went Away
With Dr. Teeth
March Of The Piggies
Help Me I Am In Henson (Struggling...)
Animal That Could Have Been (really struggling...)
Happiness in Puppetry (I'm going to stop now.)

Pow! Biff! Part7.

The very occassional series that shows you comics panels that are funny in hindsight returns!! These are doing the rounds on some other blogs, along with the classic "Captain America! I order you to--WANK!" panel that I found on my own ages ago. It's probably why Cap didn't see that sniper last month. It'll make you go blind!


Anyway, all of these have a link with erections. Here goes:

In other non-erection related news, I now have a page on ComicSpace, so pop along and have a look. This is a great site. One strip of mine, Why Can't I be You? has had 238 views since it went up on Sunday, not bad when you consider that my Flickr page has had 114 views in about a year. Also, that mega-secret 'Werewolves vs. Cavemen' strip I did was picked to be part of a big multimedia launch involving a magazine, a computer game, the internet, and a British film star. More about that when it is actually launched, in about three weeks time.

Cyber-courting?

Since the mother of my children and I split up (we're still arguing over who gets custody of her mother) I've had to go round all the websites I feature on and change any mention of my marital status, be it on a comic's website my bio is on or just changing my MySpace so it now says 'Single' instead of 'In A Relationship.' I even tried to tweak the 'Homunculus' cobblers next to my photo over there on the right of your screen, but Blogger won't let me get at it, for some reason.
I mention this because in the last couple of weeks, since I changed my status on MySpace, I've had a couple of women sending very forward messages to my inbox. One American lady in particular was very forthright, said I was 'cute' and that I should send her a message back through some internet dating site she's on. She's obviously borderline blind (she was wearing glasses in her photo) and a little bit mental if she finds my picture on MySpace in any way arousing (it's a picture of me scowling and raising a pint of lager to my lips), and I'm not particularly interested in a new relationship just yet.
Even so, I had a look at her profile online (it was free to join, so my fears that this was some clever advertising ploy to get me to part with my hard-earned cash were allayed) found she lives in Missouri or somewhere and I'm not really inclined towards a relationship which consists mainly of emails, and nothing else. Although, someone I know, who will remain nameless, seems to think that these internet-only relationships are the best thing in the whole world.
Having a nose around this dating site, all the people on there have a list of their qualities on their profiles. Nearly all of them say 'Confident, Outgoing, Intelligent', the usual bollocks. If that is the case then, why do they have to use online dating to meet people? Some people are that confident that they don't even post their picture on their profile! The rest of their profile is so astounding that I was already in love with them, so seeing what they look like is irrelevant.
Bollocks. What they probably look like is an elephant. (See what I did there? Rhyming!)
Don't get me wrong, it works for some people (two friends of mine met their wives through the internet. I don't mean buying them from the Phillipines, either.) and I'm not ruling out using the internet to get my end away, either, at the appropriate time. It's just a method of meeting people that wasn't around when I was last single, and it's going to take some getting used to.

Just not cricket.

I hate cricket. It's a stupid game. It's so bloody middle class. All that guff about cricket on the village green and stopping for tea harks back to an England that never existed. Not for me, anyway.
My local county cricket club, in Edgbaston (a resolutely middle-class suburb), is Warwickshire, a county Birmingham is no longer part of, and hasn't been part of for at least as long as I've been alive. If there was a West Midlands County cricket club, I still wouldn't support them. It might be different in other counties, but they're isn't really a West Midlands identity. Maybe it's because it's a relatively new county, but there isn't as much pride in being a West Midlander as, say, a Yorkshireman has in his county, nor do we have a county stereotype like Essex has.
Brummies couldn't give a fuck about Coventry, or Wolverhampton, or Walsall, and neither could they give a reciprocal fuck about Birmingham. That's why football is better. When you go to a footie match, there's a real sense of belonging to your community.(Unless you're a Man Utd. supporter, in which case you could be from anywhere! Glory hunting bastards.)
The game of cricket itself is stupid. They play in the summer but wear jumpers. They stop for tea. They can play a game for five days and still draw. Commentators say stuff like 'silly mid-off'
and 'gully' and expect you to know what they're on about, and they don't want to explain it to oiks like me in case I get interested and want to take my working-class arse into Edgbaston.It's such a snobby game! I mean, it's only been in the last few years that women could go into Lord's club.
The snobbery reared its head in the recent Andrew/Freddie Flintoff 'falling off a pedalo pissed' incident. There were a couple of people saying it was a disgrace, but generally the consensus was that "he's been a bit of a silly boy, but boys will be boys, let him get on with his cricket" (which I kind of agree with. The most exciting sportsmen, generally, are the pissheads- Alex Higgins, Maradona, Botham, Gazza, Paul Merson, George Best, Greavsie-the list goes on and on...) but if you imagine that if it was an English footballer at a World Cup that fell off a pedalo whilst pissed up the reaction would be 'SEND THIS DRUNKEN YOB HOME!!', because football is still seen as a game for oiks (although, lately, it's priced out of this particular oik's price range), and is played by mostly working class men, and if we do things like get drunk, it's an outrage, but if a cricketer does it, it's just horseplay.
The recent suspicious death of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer ( whose name sounds a lot like a local Central TV newsreader; I initially thought Bob Warman had been killed suspiciously!) and the Cronje match-fixing scandal shows that cricket is totally corrupt and is probably as fixed as wrestling is. (Although, recent events in Italy show us that football isn't squeaky clean either.)

Cricket is a throwback to the empire, and we should leave it the past, and it's kind of ironic that the countries we once lorded over keep beating us at it. I can't wait for this cricket world cup to finish.

Mithering Sunday

I thought the humour on this year's Comic Relief was in very bad taste. Those sketches based in Africa just weren't funny. What we want is more Mr. Bean!
Not really. I avoided Comic Relief completely this year. I hate the whole notion of millionaires asking me for my money. Don't get me wrong, the causes are a good ones, and I do give to charity quite often, I just don't like being pressganged into giving money. Even if you go out drinking on the night, like I did, you still get arseholes dressed as the Pink Panther or something bothering you in the pub by waving buckets of change at you. I don't even know if these people are on the level or not. Those buckets of change could be paying for the Paddy's Day piss-up the night after. Still it makes a change from those people with buckets of roses (the flower, not the individually wrapped Cadbury's choccies) who try and lay a guilt trip on you if you don't buy the lady you're with one of their minging flowers.
Speaking of Paddy's Day, everyone celebrating it in town yesterday had the same hat on. It was a leprechaun-type titfer but with the top being a felt facsimile of a pint of Guinness. I'm from Irish stock (probably why I'm called Mick and not #shudder# Mike.) but I hate going out on St. Patrick's Day. The pubs are full of English people with Ireland rugby shirts on who think that having a long-lost decendent who was from Donegal somehow makes them more interesting. They'll still support England in the World Cup. I generally hate all displays of public patriotism. I really am a miserable killjoy bastard.
Today, as you all know, is Mothering Sunday, but I'm not really close to my Mom. I've not bought her anything as I think today is supposed to be an acknowledgement of all the hard work your mother does, and I don't think that I have a lot to acknowledge. I feel a little guilty about this, but I think she should feel more guilty.
In other news, the story Why Can't I be You? a strip I drew for writer Daniel Cox nearly two years ago, is finally going to see the light of day. I'm glad about his, as this strip has a lot of art in it that I consider among some of my best pieces. It should be on sale at the Bristol Comic Con. My character designs for Septic Isle are also being highly praised, and I'm nearing the point where I can actually do the pages. Also, I'm going to feature on an online gallery called Art Peeps which features a lot of local artists, as well as a Birmingham City Council online artists' database. Things are beginning to happen to me and my artwork now, after months of famine, it looks like there might be a feast soon.

Going back to the Mother's Day theme, here is a clip involving an awkward call to your parents:

Tramps-Elysées

About a year ago, the bus I used to catch home stopped virtually outside my place of employment. It doesn't anymore. It now stops about a ten-minute walk away, on the lovely road known as Digbeth High Street. Think of the Champs-Elysées, now imagine its polar opposite. You are now seeing how Digbeth is. The walk to the bus stop is, most of the time, dull, but every now and again, the traipse chucks up something shocking, like the time I saw a fight involving a broken bottle, and a man taking out his dentures in readiness for the punch-up. There's the woman who uses the same stop, but thankfully, catches a different bus, who carries around childish watercolours under her arm, and keeps asking other patrons of Travel West Midlands their opinions of her work. They're rubbish, but no-one wants to say so, as she is obviously mental.

I only bring all of this up (pardon the pun) because on Monday afternoon, I was trudging towards the bus-stop when I saw an elderly woman at another bus stop. Her head was down, and I thought she was inspecting her ankle, because it looked swollen and was covered in scabs and sores, and must've been giving her gyp. As I walked past her, though, she made a horrible wet retching noise and vomited onto the floor, narrowly missing my shoes. I could see now, that, she wasn't as old as I thought she was, and she was what's known locally as a 'pisshead'. Lovely. I'm sure they breed people who regularly drink in the afternoon in a tank somewhere. They seem to be a different species to everybody else.

When I finally got to my bus stop, I noticed that the phantom scribbler had struck again. Every now and then, the bus stop gets covered in racist graffiti by a kind of gonzo Jim Davidson. He sometimes lists all of the minorities he hates, with 'kill all' on top of the list. Nice. Well, on Monday, he put a speech bubble by one of the silhouettes on an EasyJet advert saying "I hate pakis". This was obvious, because they're included on the list on the reverse of this advertisement hoarding. I was standing by this when two Asian lads came past, read the graffiti, and shouted " You hate pakis? Well fuck your mother up the arse!"at me as they were walking past. This was probably because I was the only caucasian at the bus stop.

I shouted "I didn't fucking write it!!" back at them as they went, but they weren't interested in a debate.

Digbeth is a shithole, and if people come to Brum by National Express, it's the first thing they see of the city, as the bus station is there. (Like New St. Station, another shithole, is the first thing they see if they come by train) It's no wonder people think Birmingham is a dump. Thing is, Digbeth is the site of our annual St. Patrick's Day Parade, which is, apparently, the third biggest in the world, which brings in a lot of visitors, who would be far from impressed if they see the kind of shit I see every day. I believe there are plans to flatten it, and redevelop, and if that's true, the sooner the better. Let's hope they flatten the cunt who keeps writing on the bus stop as well.

Ignoring A Cameraman.

On the first Thursday of every month, the members of the Midlands Comics Collective (or MC2) meet up to discuss our next joint project and also show each other what we're working on individually.

Normally, only a few of us (myself included) show up every month, but an e-mail went around earlier in the week that told us all that one of our members, Asia Alfasi (who is a genuine rising star in the comics world, and is having a graphic novel published by a proper book publisher, Penguin or Bloomsbury or someone, I can't remember which), was going to be accompanied by a cameraman making a film for the BBC. Subsequently, loads of people showed up, like those churches you see on Songs Of Praise that are bursting at the seams, but you know that the week before, that same church had a congregation that numbered at about seven. And one of them was only in there because it was pissing down outside. The fact that we're all going to get our fizzogs on the shit-pump was a powerful incentive to actually turn up.

Apparently, the Beeb is making a film about four prominent Muslim women, and Asia is one of them. Muslim comic artists are thin on the ground, and Asia being female puts her in a field of about one. She's doing well, and fair play to her.

Anyway, we all met up in Costa's coffee, on the bottom floor of the Bullring, and this bloke shows up with a camera. We're all supposed to ignore the cameraman and act naturally, but considering the cameraman isn't supposed to be noticeable, he's drawing attention to himself by standing on chairs or shoving a lens in your mush. The other patrons of the coffee shop are watching and wondering what the fuck is going on, but not actually asking anyone, in a typical Brummie kind of way. Also typically Brummie was the fact that the cameraman was stopped three times by three different security guards in a generally brusque tone of voice. A show of an official permit and we were back on. What wasn't typically Brummie was the fact that no-one attacked him and pinched his camera.

So, it'll be on BBC2 in the next few months, so look out for me. I'm the chubby fucker who is swearing profusely in the background with a Silver Surfer T-shirt on. It looks like this will actually be broadcast, unlike the last time we were filmed by the BBC. I think I should be on the telly more, can't be any worse that the shit that's on lately. I mean, Dancing On Ice? For fuck's sake!

Meet Marley.

This is a preliminary sketch of the 'hero' , Jacob Marley, of the Septic Isle book. The writer thinks it's 'just about perfect', so, apparently, I can draw again! I got my mojo back!

Before you ask, he is deliberately named after the first ghost of A Christmas Carol.

It's only pencil at the moment, but I might ink it for some publicity stuff, or put other elements in around it, as I think it's quite a striking image. For me, anyway.

Marley is based, quite heavily, on Ray Winstone. It's what the writer wanted, so I've spent the last couple of days looking up Ray on google images for reference, and some of the websites I've been to are worrying, frankly. Some people fancy him, and post pictures of him in various states of undress on their sites. I don't think it's right to look at Ray's arse. The things I do for my art!

Also, Marley may look like Ray Winstone, but he has eyebrows. It's something I've not noticed this before, but Ray doesn't have prominent eyebrows-ones that don't show up properly in photos, anyway.

I'll post some more sketches up as I do them, if you're interested. Hopefully, the book will be out by October.

Rearranged Dates.

Last night I was supposed to see Nine Inch Nails at the Birmingham Academy with some friends. Trent Reznor had piles or something so the gig was postponed. One of my friends, let's call him Mark, as it's his name, had driven up from Bristol and so was a little miffed when I texted him to tell him it was cancelled. He promptly 'phoned me back, refusing to believe me and thinking it was one of my wind ups. After I convinced him it wasn't, we agreed to have a couple in my local instead, and after we finished watching a man sort his massive bagful of porno DVDs out in full view of everyone (he was getting them out and arranging them on the next cushion of the sofa he was sitting on), I told him my news about my changed marital status. This was when I might have insulted him.
I was telling him that I'm worried about going 'out on the pull' again. All of my friends are married or in serious relationships, so I'd have to go on my own. Going out on your own is rubbish and sad. Also, the whole notion of going 'out on the pull' is a bit wearisome, and when I'm out drinking, I hate watching the wankers who are trying to get into someone's knickers making a twat of themselves. It's all changed these days, anyway, because when I was last single there wasn't any of this modern speed dating or internet dating, and I find both of these things suspicious anyway. Also, I told Mark, women my age are either married, have kids, married with kids, and if they don't have kids, there's probably something wrong with them. Mark looked at me funnily. It was then I realised that he and his wife don't have kids, and he's my age. He forgave me though, as we've known each other since we were eleven, but I really must learn to keep my big, flapping pelican's beak shut.

P.S. It's a woman's choice if she wants kids or not. There's not anything wrong with women who don't want them. I was just being flippant, and I'm also trying to head off a sexism charge.

Spy script.

This is finally happening. I got the script for the long gestating Septic Isle project this week. Andy Winter, who wrote it, and publishes his own stuff through Moonface Press, has done a great job, and I'm looking forward to drawing it, finally. Andy and I first talked about working together on this at last year's Bristol comic con, where it was pitched to me as 'James Bond played by Ray Winstone takes on terrorists', and as a 24 page comic book. The book has now evolved into a 42-page graphic novelette, which has a darker mood now, where our hero goes after a neo-Nazi organisation, so the original four page prologue I had drawn (you know, the motorbike coming off the Blackfriars Bridge and the speed boat) has been binned, as it's tone now doesn't sit well with the rest of the book. I've been told that those pages will be an 'extra' at the back of the book.

This will be the first comic book I've done where all the art in it is mine, and hopefully, it will be distributed by Diamond like the last two Moonface books. This means it'll be in proper comics shops and on Amazon and stuff. So it's kind of a big deal. Let's hope I don't fuck it up.