Brizzle 2007.

This Friday I head down to what's locally known as 'Brizzle m'luv' for the Bristol Comic Convention, a weekend where you intend to behave but end up nursing a particularly damaged liver. It's going to be strange for me this year for a number of reasons. It's the first time I'm going without a spouse, as I no longer have one .

(Not strictly true, thinking about it, I've been without her before. It was the time we went as 'StripSearch' graduates, flogging our book 'Stuffed' and it must be the memory loss caused by alcohol at said event. I do remember, however, being asked by John McCrea if I wanted to go to a strip joint with him and Simon Bisley, but I'd drunk far too much by that point, and I don't think John went anyway. Biz probably did, though.But, I digress.)

Also, I'm not there to promote myself as an artist-for-hire. Well, maybe a little bit, but I've got Septic Isle to do, and it's a big job, and it's one I really want to give my full attention to, as it's a fantastic project; one I feel strongly about. (There's a panel from the 'difficult fourth page' of SI to your left, there. I'm now in the middle of pencilling the fifth page.) So I don't want to take on too much extra drawing, but, if the unlikely event of DC offering me megabucks happens, I may have to have a rethink, obviously!

I think I've got three new books on sale at the Con. Mine and Lee Robson's Whole (that sounded rude read aloud!) is in FutureQuake #8, Why Can't I Be You? (with Daniel Cox as writer) finally appears in True Romance Comix (it's only been about two years since I finished drawing it!), and MC2 is making its Brizzle debut, and to celebrate, there's a new mini-comic from the Midlands Comics Collective called Mini-C2, in which my No Such Thing one-pager is in. No doubt some of the older books I've been in will be on sale as well. None of the books I've been in have ever sold out!

I'm going down there a day early because I'm going out with one of my oldest friends, Mark, who lives down there. Apparently, we're going to see Mark Ronson do summat at the Ramshackle night at the Brizzle Academy. I thought he was the dead guitarist from Ziggy & The Spiders, but I've since found out he's that bloke who gets singers I don't like to cover songs by other people I don't like. I've not really heard that much of his stuff, though, so I can't really comment. Might be a laugh.

The weird thing about these conventions (well, at first, anyway) is seeing your heroes pissed up. Finding out that the artists whose drawings you pored over in your formative years are ordinary blokes. Well, mostly, anyway. (I'm thinking of the 'Glenn Fabry has conversation with a toilet door' incident at the Brighton Convention, amongst others) I'm looking forward to find out what we'll all get up to this year, I'm also looking forward to catching up with the people I know, but only see at these events, and trying to cadge a drink off them!