Modern Monstrosity Comics

The Killer Next Door

2011-05-24T09:32:00.000-07:00

Mystery Time

2011-05-19T06:13:00.000-07:00

Very much looking forward to the first of this year's MCM Expo's at the end of this month. I'll be sharing a table with Sleazy Dan Lester and we'll have the latest instalment of our Dan Lester Mysteries. This one's entitled "The Killer Next Door". It's 24 pages of pure awesome, be sure to pick one up.
I just finished reading Dan's script for the third instalment, which takes place entirely at a comic convention and features plenty of familiar faces. No one is safe. It's called "Death Wears a Monkey Suit" and will be out within the next 4 years...

As well as the new Dan Lester Mysteries, I'll have the usual array of Modern Monstrosity publications, including the Curtis and Terrorist mini comics, all with hand drawn covers alongside two sexy new Curtis and Zombie prints. There might even be some original art and sketches going on as well, if I'm feeling really daring.

Here are some teaser panels from the new Dan Lester Mysteries as well as those two prints.

Revelation!

Pizza!

Stairs!

Bed time!

Utter Terror

2011-02-18T08:43:00.000-08:00

Spread page from the upcoming Curtis and Zombie comic.

Never Compromise

2011-02-08T07:06:00.000-08:00

The most uncompromising artist working on the UK indie comics scene, it's Schmurgen Jonerhaffs!

Re-Paneled

2011-02-04T08:34:00.000-08:00

I am, perhaps, and quite proudly, one of the world's biggest fans of Spider-Man. I have been since forever. I still buy The Amazing Spider-Man and have been doing so since around 1989, sticking through it during good times, bad times and even John Byrne times (and I seem to remember rather enjoying The Clone Saga at the time as well).
So I decided to honour my favourite superhero with one of those Re-Paneled things that seem to be all the rage these days. I made a failed attempt at the cover to the first Amazing Spider-Man annual (First appearance of The Sinister Six, a collection of Spider-Man's most badass of enemies) so scrapped that and moved onto a panel from The Amazing Spider-Man #3, featuring the first appearance of Doctor Octopus. It's more of a faithful adaptation rather than a reinterpretation really. I stand by the fact that Spider-Man's costume is probably the greatest superhero costume ever designed, a joy to draw, but also a pain in the ass, trying to get all those web patterns around his costume in a way that doesn't make him look completely flat. Always preferred the early squinty-eyed mask over the later bug-eyed one introduced in the late 80's as well. And why does no one draw those web wings under his arms any more??
Click here for the Re-Paneled website and here for the Covered website.

Angouleme 2011

2011-02-03T10:03:00.000-08:00

This year's Angouleme Festival was very nearly a no-go for me due to various dramas in my life and financial difficulties. However, after selling some choice comics on ebay and having Sean Azzopardi step up to help me out, I joined him, Francesca Cassavetti, Dan Lester, Sally-Anne Hickman and the mighty Rob Jackson for another four days of comicy goodness. I'm not going to ramble on here about how awe-inspiring the whole Angouleme experience is and how it's worlds apart from any other comics festival I've ever been to and how everyone should go and exhibit there. Last year's report has all of that and I'd just end up repeating myself...

Team B.A.S.T.A.R.D.S: Rob Jackson, Dan Lester, Francesca Cassavetti,
Sean Azzopardi, Sally-Anne Hickman and myself (Picture by Carmila Barboza)

...Anyway, everyone knows that Comic conventions aren't about the comics, it's about the people and the networking and good company. Great to see Lancel Xavier, Tim Fish, Abbey Denson and the LGBT crew again. We were also lucky enough to have table neighbours who not only put up with our slightly insane banter but actively joined in - Christian G. Marra and Adriano Barone of Passenger Press, who's table was covered in beautiful comic books by artists from all over the world. I picked up an art book by Yan Wei from them, containing some of the most stunning pictures my eyes ever did see.

SCARCE Magazine editor Lancel Xavier.

Tim Fish.

Karrie Fransman remains vigilant.

Sally-Anne Hickman with Christian G. Marra
and Adriano Barone.

Francesca Follini

Forbidden Planet's Wim Lockefeer and Gary Northfield

Christian drew this on the floor of our tent on the final day.
This is apparently his girlfriend's beloved dog who also makes an
appearance on his Curtis & Terrorist guest cover,
seen at the bottom of this post...

Sorry, Sean.

As usual, I spent most of my time behind our table, drawing covers for Curtis & Terrorist. Realising I was surrounded by some of the greatest comic book artists in Europe, I quickly dispatched a few blank C&T covers. So here's some new guest cover contributions from Sally-Anne Hickman, Rob Jackson, a new one from Dan Lester as well as Christian G. Marra's cover (which perhaps explains the origins of Terrorist's missing eye) and one from the ridiculously talented Francesca Follini. And they're all miiineeee!! :D

Sally-Anne Hickman

Rob Jackson

Dan Lester

Christian G. Marra

Francesca Follini

Guest Terrorists

2011-01-24T09:58:00.000-08:00

I spend most of my time at conventions either shivering and chain smoking outside the convention venue (More events during spring/summer, please) or actually sat behind my table, scribbling away at drawing front covers for Curtis & Terrorist. Sometimes, I'll draw a cover that I'm especially happy with and initially want to keep it for myself before actually selling it to some swine. With this in mind, I've recently started giving out blank Curtis & Terrorist covers to fellow comicbook making chums at conventions and asking them to create their own C&T cover. Not to sell. Just for me. I've been slowly collecting them and thought it was about time they got scanned and interwebbed. So here are the ones I've bothered to scan. More soon.

Comic Book Workshops

2011-01-17T06:42:00.000-08:00

Alongside a couple of other less glamorous "jobs", I also run the occasional comic book workshop with Eastside Educational Trust, an Arts Council funded charity who specialise in arts based activities for children all over London. Where these workshops take place have ranged from local libraries and community centres to actual schools, with ages ranging from six years right up to teenagers.
It's the workshops that take place in the libraries and community centres that I enjoy the most. Those workshops usually happen during the school holidays, last an entire week, and the kid's parents have actually signed them up for it from a brochure, which means most of the kids actually want to be there. It also gives us enough time to work towards an overall project for the end of the week while doing all sorts of fun little activities along the way which should help inform that final project.
I've come to realise that there are two types of participant at these workshops: The kids who have at least a basic understanding of comics and will knuckle down and take their time and then the kids who just love drawing. The ones who just love drawing, they tend to tear through two days worth of my lesson plans in just a couple of hours. I remember one kid in particular who tore through everything in one morning and spent the majority of the rest of the week creating a really quite amazing, fully animated comic book on his Nintendo DS. It featured the other kids in the workshop doing voices for the different characters and they even performed it at the end of the week. Electronic comic books as performance art. By 11 year-olds. Fantastic.

I'm still honing my comic book teaching skills (My procrastination with making any of my own comics over the past year or so actually lead to a certain fear in teaching these workshops, "If I can't inspire myself, how the hell am I supposed to inspire a room full of children"?) and have Jim Medway (The godfather of comic book workshops in this country, I believe) to thank for initial inspiration and activities when I first started doing comic book workshops a few years ago. Although I've managed to pick up and devise other activities since then, it can feel a struggle not to keep repeating the same routine I do at every session.
I've just started offering the workshops out to local institutions off my own back, without the help of Eastside Educational Trust, which is a bit daunting. Next week I'll be starting a regular after school session at a local library for kids who attend the surrounding schools. The initial sign-up numbers are epic and I'm both massively excited and terrified.

The Big Dream is to eventually open my own comic shop locally and use it to run a variety of workshops, book clubs and events for both children and adults in the community. A "community friendly comic book shop" seems rather exciting to me.

Possibly one of my favourite ever mini comic covers.
Just for the simple inclusion of the "?" at the end of the title,
comically changing its tone, Anchorman style.

With these mini canvass, children were put into pairs and asked to
create portraits of eachother, for eachother.

Zombie Beats

2010-06-06T02:21:00.000-07:00

Here's an animated music promo video type thing I was involved with for a DJ by the name of Baobinga.
I basically just did all the line art while other people did all the proper animating and colouring and stuff. I probably should have made a little more effort to get some proper movement in there, but overall it looks pretty damn sexy for my first (and probably last, I've no patience for this kinda thing) animation experience.

Crack Head

2010-05-13T11:44:00.000-07:00

Cracks is a four page story I've drawn for the latest issue of Andrew Cheverton's Synchrony anthology series, written by Mister Cheverton himself. It'll be on sale at the Bristol Comics Expo on the weekend of May 22nd at Andy's stall alongside his and Tim Keable's awesome new West collection, which I highly recommend.

Free Comic Book Day - Paper Science

2010-04-26T05:58:00.000-07:00

Free Comic Book Day usually involves Marvel and DC giving away special issues of Wolverine and Green Lantern year after year in an attempt to win over new readers. London collective, We Are Words + Pictures are trying something a little different this year. Matt Sheret explains...

Saturday May 1st is Free Comic Book Day, and to celebrate We Are Words + Pictures will be once again releasing the talents of UK comics press on you all with a new edition of Paper Science.

Sporting a brand new cover by Philippa Rice, we’ll be setting ourselves up in London’s Orbital Comics, with 500 free copies to distribute to anyone who comes in. We’ll also be running a Drop In + Draw day there, featuring Tom Humberstone and Mark Oliver as well as the Mobile Library.

This new edition of Paper Science has been created with the generous assistance of Newspaper Club. They’re printing us a 16page, full-colour edition of 500 in time for the event. We’ll also be offering a print-ready PDF of the paper on this site on Saturday under a Creative Commons license, for you to read onscreen or to take to a printer. You can knock up a run wherever you are, just let us know.

We Are Words + Pictures are joined in this madness, in order of appearance, by Philippa Rice,Francesca Cassavetti, Joe Decie, Octavia Raitt, Becky Barnicoat, Daniel Locke, Anne Holiday,Matthew Sheret, Tom Humberstone, Luke Pearson, Adam Cadwell, Geof Banyard, Mark Oliver, Liz Lunney, Douglas Noble, Kristyna Baczynski, Anna Saunders, Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Sean Azzopardi, Edward Ross and Marc Ellerby.

Schmurgen Con Returns

2010-03-21T11:48:00.000-07:00

Schmurgen Con 4, this Saturday.

Sexy Time

2010-03-05T08:39:00.000-08:00

A few bits here that have been patiently waiting for me to buy a new scanner. Which I did.

First up is a mini me portrait by Mister Adam Cadwell which was done at the MCM Expo last October and a couple of pieces by Mister Jake Harold. One of them is of his Justine Tyme characters having a merry old time with Curtis and Terrorist and the other is an old piece of myself (or my Tales From The Flat alter-ego) and Spider-Man, locked in a sexy embrace...

Dan Lester vs Dinosaur

2010-03-03T04:35:00.000-08:00

Here's a little preview panel of our contribution to this year's UK Web and Mini Comix Thing

anthology, the theme of which is Dinosaurs. It's a mini, three page Dan Lester Mystery.

But why's Dan kicking a Dinosaur? Why would he do that? WHY?

Find out by picking up the anthology for the bargain price of £1.50 (or something like that) at this year's Thing on March 27th.

(Although I'm not sure if it will actually be in the anthology as we kind of missed the deadline. It was extended by a few days but I don't know if we've actually made the final cut. If it hasn't, we'll run it over at The Sequential in the near future... Speaking of The Sequential, myself and Doug Noble's new comic, The Hardened Artery, starts there tomorrow! Don't miss it!)

"His name's Doooom!"

2010-03-02T04:27:00.000-08:00

Very excited about seeing hip-hop legend, MF Doom (or just DOOM as he's now known apparently) this Friday at Camden's Roundhouse, so I did this as a warm-up sketch this morning.

Anyone with the vaguest of interests in good hip-hop and/or comic books should definitely check his music out. I highly recommend The Mouse and The Mask, a collaboration between himself and super producer, Danger Mouse, under the collective name of DangerDoom.

Here's one of my favourite Doom tracks, "Kookies" from the album, Mm..Food.

Coming Soon...

2010-02-28T07:09:00.001-08:00

Angouleme Comics Festival

2010-02-22T09:56:00.000-08:00

Almost a month ago, myself, Dan Lester, Francesca Cassavetti and Sean Azzopardi set off for the Angouleme International Comics Festival armed with our awesome B.A.S.T.A.R.D.S anthology and a fine array of our individual works. Sean had been there before as a visitor a few years ago and had also arranged us some accommodation in the form of our very own converted barn with four bedrooms, a snooker table and a huge log fire. We also had Francesca who speaks fluent French. Without her, the entire trip would have been a massive fail.

It was an incredible four days which opened my eyes to how much the comics scene over here is still in its baby stages (but growing fast) and in terms of how open I thought the general public are in this country to the idea of comicbooks as a serious thing. And also in terms of the scale and organisation of comic events in this country.

I've left it a little late to do a full write up, here are the main things I remember coming away from it...

A four day comic festival isn't quite as daunting as it sounds.
The town of Angouleme (southern France, kinda near Bordeaux) is beautiful. I wish I'd gotten up off my arse and explored it a little more, as well as all the other things the festival had to offer. The town is taken over by this festival, with giant tents dotted around the place, alongside talks and exhibitions, TV and radio journalists everywhere, guests and exhibitors from all over the world, dancing in the streets, balloons, fireworks, mass hysteria and free love.
We were in the best tent in town. I'm not sure how many there were in total, the others I saw were housing the big European publishers as well as Marvel, DC and some Manga publishers. You could spend ages walking around and taking in the huge variety of comics on display in our tent, a massive cross section of genres, art styles and formats from creators all over the world.
24 page, A5 comics aren't very popular. They want 50 pages at the least, preferably in a big format with a spine.
Did I mention Angouleme is beautiful? It's well worth visiting even when there's no festival in town. Gorgeous street art sprinkled everywhere, stunning views, lots of great little bars and tiny, winding roads to explore.

Here's some photographic material from Sean, Francesca and myself...

B.A.S.T.A.R.D.S. That's us y'see.

Adverts for Joe Sacco comics. In the street.

The bus passes were given this makeover for the festival.

I got a bit obsessive about having them all.

It's'a Mario!

2010-02-13T07:20:00.000-08:00

Still wallowing in the joys of a new scanner, here's a couple of Mario Brothers sketches I did around Christmas, a little drunk, after a marathon session of New Super Mario Bros Wii (It's an alright game, it just made me want to go back and play Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World. Which I did).

Fan-Art Project Finale

2010-02-12T07:26:00.000-08:00

So. Eight months later, here are the final fan art pieces I did in the run up to the LUC @ 176 event that happened last Summer. David Baillie's Tongue of the Dead which is available to read online over at The Sequential, Jake Harold's Justine Tyme, which has taken a bit of a break recently as Jake copes with the horrors of university and Marc Ellerby's awesome Chloe Noonan.

All of these thanks to my lovely new scanner which will hopefully be the source of more regular blog posts from now on. Maybe.

A few words and alot of photos from the Angouleme International Comics Festival coming up next...

Fan-Art Part Two: NECESSARY MONSTERS

2009-06-23T09:53:00.000-07:00

New fan-art today for Daniel Merlin Goodbrey and Sean Azzopardi's spy/horror comic, Necessary Monsters.

Daniel and Sean will of course be at LUC@176 this Saturday with the first three parts (and maybe the forth..?) of NM in comic form as well as their own glorious works.

More fan-art fun tomorrow...

Fan-Art Part One: NINJA BUNNY

2009-06-22T06:35:00.000-07:00

Kicking off a week long series of small press fan-art pieces with Phil Spence's Ninja Bunny!

Phil will be at the new London Underground Comics event alongside a load of other ridiculously talented small press types on June 27th (this Saturday!), selling his awesome Ninja Bunny comics as well as some emo-filled autobiographical goodness.
"Inspiration" (meaning I just copied it, badly, and put Ninja Bunny in there) comes from this picture right here.

Check back tomorrow for more fan-art shenanigans...

BLOC Party

2009-06-16T23:00:00.000-07:00

Yup, it's been a while. Again.
And that's because I've been working my skinny behind off to get this badboy finished in time for LUC 176. Anyone who follows this very irregular blog on a regular basis will know that BLOC has long been a thorn in my side. It was first meant to come out for our "No Barcodes" event at Camden Lock Market back last Summer and I then managed to miss every other convention deadline all the way up til now.

So why so long?

Mainly because I'm lazy and smoke too much.

But also because the script (written by Oli "fuckface" Smith) is ridiculously open for interpretation and improvisation. And because the comic itself is completely wordless, it gives you even more room to stretch. The original script has the story clock in by 18 pages. I stretched it out to 47 pages.

Got there in the end though and I'm fairly pleased with the end result. It definitely tested me and it probably shows in places. Very much looking forwards to making a proper start on the next installment of The Dan Lester Mysteries (entitled "The Killer Next Door") and drawing a comic that has actual people in it as opposed to a stone man with no face.

I've posted a couple of very badly scanned preview pages alongside the cover image below. I think Oli's gonna have a Bloc mini site within his own website with sketches and stuff soon, so keep yer eyes peeled and that.
So yeah, BLOC will be available at the aforementioned LUC 176 which takes place in a couple of weekends time. Here's a link to one of the animations that's going to be shown during the day. It's by a fellow calling himself Lando and to be honest, it's bloody awesome. Can't wait to see it up on a big screen. He'll also be blessing our ears with his DJ stylings alongside Modern Monstrosity's very own Laurence Powell.

Animations, music, free tables for exhibitors (I'll say that again, FREE TABLES FOR EXHIBITORS. We know how to party), free tea and coffee and superhappy cheap bar prices all alongside an all star line-up of small press talent. Fucking brilliant.

In my absence I managed to completely miss out on reporting on the very awesome MCM Expo that went down in May. Basically, it was superb. There's a steadily growing indie comicbook community gathering amid all the Manga, Anime, films, computer games and super-special Hollywood special guests (Linda Hamilton and Tony ruddy Curtis).

This year saw record amounts of punters show up (33,000 to be precise) and so the next show (which is in October, these babies happen twice a year) is actually going to grow by another 2000sqm in size. It's going to be huge. Huuge. And it's already fucking big.

MCM offer exhibitors a table for just £40. It may not be everybody's cup of tea, those who found the few cosplayers at last year's Thought Bubble off-putting will probably want to stay clear of MCM.

But it's got a great energy to it and y'know, it's like, different and stuff. Different is good right?

A big fat belated thankyou goes out to Emma Vieceli, Andrew "VonPud" and Anna Petterson for making it all happen. You are soldiers of the scene.

I should point out that the pictures below are nicked from Vice Magazine's website's report of the show.

There's going to be regular posts in the run-up to LUC176 on the 27th, I'm gonna run a series of fan-art pieces, featuring a few of the different exhibitor's characters and creations interpreted by me. I'm all about the self-indulgent funtimes. Check back in the next few days for the first in a series of about five or six.

Peace out x

Sketchbook Bits n Pieces

2009-04-30T08:54:00.000-07:00

This was meant to go up at the end of April. Today is May 11th.
Somehow, I managed to put this post together but not actually publish it. And I just noticed. Oopsie...

Those two were done whilst on holiday in Portugal. I was probably drunk which explains why they're a bit shit and full of big colour.
A three page Curtis and Terrorist comic wot I did for this year's UK Web n Mini Comix Thing anthology is available to read on line now as well. Right over here.

Sketches of Jon Scrivens' Little Terrors cast. I'll be doing a guest chapter at some point in the next five years.

"We Are Adventurers" (The title's based on a song by Be Your Own Pet) was going to be Modern Monstrosity's attempt to get in on The DFC. It's about a kid who discovers a portal to other worlds in his washing machine. On his first adventure he ends up bringing back another kid from a world he visits and having to integrate him into his life at home whilst also trying to get him back to his original world through repeated trips through the portal. It's Quantum Leap meets Narnia.
And since The DFC is sadly no more, we're thinking of starting it as a web comic later in the year maybe.

An Interview With Schmurgen Jonerhaffs...

2009-03-24T02:54:00.000-07:00

Schmurgen's a new face on the UK small press scene, having recently moved to London from Norway. His uncompromising styles can be found on his blog which he updates with a couple of new comics every week and he's even taken it upon himself to organise his very own Schmurgen Con which takes place this Saturday in Mile End.

I sent the man of the moment some questions...

Hi Schmurgen. Welcome to the UK! Tell us about how you got involved in making comics and the scene back home.

I haf want to make comics ever since I see my brothers Conan! Then later on I read Moebius and Robert Crumb and realise that comics can make anything!

What made you want to move here to the UK?

I was board of Norske life and all my friends only wanted to go skiikng but I haf fobia of skiing since I was little boy so I think I go to London, Home of From Hell, one of my most favourite uncompromising comics!

What kinds of comics to you like to make?

I like to make comics that show real world in all it's uncompromising ugly beauty! I like to make uncompromising comics! I feel that anything else woud be to betray of my talent!

Who or what are your influences?
I am very influence by Henry Rollins. He tought me that artists should always tell truth, even if truth is that you have unusual dream about chickens.

What is your favourite comicbook of all time?

I like the one where Wolverine cut off his own face as April fool prank. Or maybe I dreamed that? I also like Conan because he is uncompromising!

Tell us a bit about "Schmurgen Con" which happens this Saturday.

I am very exciting about this! It is my chance to announce myself to the world as real presence, and also share drinks with my new london comic freinds! It will be uncompromising fun! Also Special thankings to my friend David Bayley for making my idea happen!

Just why are you so uncompromising?

Because I cannott live any other way! If I tried my brains would melt off!

Stadium Love

2009-03-19T11:20:00.000-07:00

Jake Harold, Matt Badham, Oli Smith and Me. Photo by Baz Renshaw

At last year's Leeds Thought Bubble Festival, I have vague memories of drunken brawling with

fellow creators. This picture turned up on Matt Badham's new blog to confirm my suspicions.

On that note, this year's Thought Bubble has already been announced and I can't bloody wait!

2009-03-17T04:04:00.000-07:00

Some sketches from recent PubDraw sessions. I really need to mess around with my scanner's settings. Everything's coming out all washed out like...

The hot piece of ass that is Sean Azzopardi has set up The Sequential, a new site for people to showcase comicy arty stuff. So far there are posts by Mister Azzopardi himself, alongside the esteemed Douglas Noble, Phil "Ninja Bunny" Spence, Jon Scrivens, Oli Smith and Jake Harold. I've also just put up the first page of Modern Monstrosity's contribution to this year's UK Web n Comix Thing. Check it.
I'm sure also that Sean would welcome anyone else who's interested in taking part. As long as they're good.

2009-03-11T18:30:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's been a while since the last update and the whole "I'm gonna post a blog twice a week!" thing didn't quite work out (not to say it won't actually happen... eventually). Although I will get round to doing a "Secret History of Tales From The Flat" post as I'm always up for a trip down memory lane and it's about time the old, original and reeeally crappy TFTF's that no one's really seen were given some public viewage.
Anyways, you may well have heard about London Underground Comics' spangley new event which is being held at the 176 gallery in Camden/Chalk Farm on June 27th. It's being sponsored by those lovely folks at Gosh! Comics (London's bestest comic shop dontcha know?), FREE entry for the public, DJ's, animation screenings, space for between 40 and 80 creators (the tables are huuge) and very reasonable prices for the tables as well. Head on over to the LUC site for the announcement video and more details. The exhibitor list is already looking mighty impressive, spaces are going fast, so if you're a creator then get on it now dammit!

Like most comicbook types, on Friday I went and saw the "unfilmable" Watchmen. On Saturday, I watched it again and then on Sunday I watched it again on Imax.

Bloody hell it was good. I actually had pretty low expectations despite the fairly decent early reviews. Zach Snyder has given us an adaptation far truer to the comic than Paul Greengrass or even Terry Gilliam would have produced. As far as I'm concerned, it's pretty much as good as a Watchmen film can get. I'm just praying to baby Jesus that Warner Brothers don't go and make a sequel or something. Although it wouldn't surprise me if DC made some sort of comic book prequel or sequel in order to cash in at some point soon. The rubbish sketches below were done in the pub after viewing #2. Ran out of blue.

As great as the Watchmen movie is though, it comes no where near the greatness of this.

Oh, and check out The Daily Mail's review for a good giggle.

A quick reminder that this year's UK Web and Mini Comix Thing takes place in London on March 28th. Modern Monstrosity will be there with all new Curtis and Terrorist plus a few other little goodies. Personally, I'm looking forwards to seeing Jake Harold's foray into auto-bio comics. Heaven help us all.

Oh yeah, and I'm on Twitter now. Follow me and stuff.

Oh yeah, and please sign this petition, our government's being twits again.

2009-02-06T05:40:00.000-08:00

Frankly, it's been a bit of a shit start to 2009.
My girlfriend's mum died of last week after a years long fight with cancer. The month leading up to it had been intense rounds of taking her to different hospitals, getting numerous opinions and mainly having to care for her at her own home. Having lost my dad to cancer about 8 years ago, it was all horribly familiar. Strangely enough, she actually died in the same hospice, in the room next to the one my dad had died in all those years ago.

So whilst Anastasia and her sister busy themselves with funeral arrangements (under Russian tradition, the funeral usually takes place three days after the death, but because of all the snow it's had to be postponed. The snow was actually quite poetic in it's appearance, it started in the evening of the day that Galia had died and had come in from Russia), I'm attempting to get myself out from a rut of spending my spare time playing computer games and smoking too much weed instead of drawing. For a while, the urge to put pen to paper left me completely.

When I did eventually get back to it, it flowed surprisingly easy and just this morning I put the finishing touches to a new Curtis and Terrorist comic. I'm adamant also that Bloc will be finished for the UK Web and Mini Comix Thing in March, even though every time I spend time on it I end up adding another two pages. It's looking to clock in at around 40-something pages now. Oli's script had it at 18 pages. TFTF#8 hasn't been forgotten about and although the last issue came out almost a year ago now, it will be blessing your eyes sooner than you may think...
A new Dan Lester Mystery should be out in time for the next LUC event in June.

One of the things I know is gonna get me back on the artistic bandwagon is this Monday's LUC organised "PubDraw". Basically, we've ripped of Tom Humberstone's Pen Club.
Come along, bring yer mates, bring pens, bring paper. Let's drink n draw. Together.
Facebook group here. Main London Underground Comics site here.

One of my new year's resolutions was to make more frequent blog posts, so from this day forth I'm gonna attempt to make one at least once or twice a week. So, next week: PubDraw report and The Secret History of Tales From The Flat revealed!

LUC 176

2009-01-10T07:33:00.000-08:00

The London Underground Comics site has been sexified for the new year, check it out.

And this here be a teaser image for the next LUC event. What does it mean, what does it meeeeann??!

So long, farewell...

2008-12-29T09:43:00.000-08:00

Firstly, the final page of the TFTF Xmas Special is up and all six pages are now viewable here. My scanner decided to take a Christmas break and not do anything useful for a few days and I was then paralyzed by general festive activities such as eating, drinking and sleeping so the last page was um... a few days late.

December 20th marked the final LUC Camden Comics Stall after over a year of peddling indie comics goodness to unsuspecting members of the public. We sold thousands of comics, held three highly successful events and hopefully gave the UK small press scene a bit of a kick up the bum.

The first day!

I had a great time over the 14 months, Camden became a strange sort of home away from home and felt like the most stable "job" that I've had over the past year or so. Friendships formed through repeated meetings at conventions were strengthened by hours of sitting in the cold together trying to shift books to wary looking tourists at 10:30am (it always seemed cold there, I don't remember the Summer months).

Christmas 2007

In the first month or so it was mainly myself, Oli, David Baillie, Andrew Luke, Phil Spence and the occasional visit from Karrie Fransman manning the stall, but towards Christmas we were joined by Sean Azzopardi and Dan Lester, both of which, for me, kind of sealed the deal. They're both rampantly creative, constantly churning out sketches to decorate The Stall with and Dan's 24 hour comic a month always went down well with customers. Sean's selling techniques are now legendary through the LUC YouTube promo videos that Oli made and there was never a week that went by without Sean (unwillingly) reducing the rest of us to hysterics with his kooky ways. I'll miss that.

The Camden blaze, we left at 6pm for the pub, no fire. By 6:30, it looked like this.

No Barcodes poster by Thomas Tuke

I'll also miss irritating the hell out of some of the other stall holders there with our impromptu dance routines and loud selling, the incredible pizza, drunken, creative rants after the stall either back at Oli's flat or at The Enterprise pub just down the road and some of our regular customers who made the whole thing worth it with their endless enthusiasm and spending.

Big props go to Alan and his team who organise everything that goes on at Camden Lock Market. They supported everything we did (I'm sure they were also relieved to finally have people there who weren't just selling jewelery, scented candles or tshirts) and without them, No Barcodes or Low Energy Day would never have been possible.

It was probably those two events that got us the most recognition. No Barcodes and Low Energy Day (a phrase coined by Sean Azzopardi in the first of the Camden Stall promo videos) expanded the format of the stall into a mini comics convention and gave creators the opportunity to exhibit very cheaply to an untapped audience right in the center of Camden during the height of the Summer. Everyone did very well and with any luck, we'll be back in Camden Lock Market for another event next Summer.

It was a good final day in all, felt more like the early days where we just had our own comics on the table and didn't have to worry so much about selling other people's stock. We sold a load of canvass left over from our LUXmas event the previous weekend and put together a great set of playing cards each with an individual illustration by one of us. I also sold the 200th copy of the Tales From The Flat Collected Edition Volume One! Woop!

Finishing The Stall is a bittersweet affair for me, it'll be great to have my Saturdays back again and yet sad not to see the people who I've gotten to know so well over the past year and a bit. Hopefully (definitely), 2009 will be even more successful for LUC. So long Camden, hello world! :)

(Oh, and the final Camden Stall video is right here. Very drunk me at the end...)

Best of 2008

Richard and Joe over at the Forbidden Planet blog have been running a great series of "Best of the year" with a fine array of talented comics folk talking about their favourite comics and TV and what-not of the past year (Oli and Sean's here, Marc Ellerby's here and Oliver East's here, to name a few).
I couldn't find enough to say about anything, so here's my best of for this year in simple list-with-a-couple-of-comments stylie...

Films
There Will Be Blood
Wall-E
(Yes, Dark Knight was great too, but we all know everyone liked it. Apart from that guy who writes for Comics Village)

Music
Hot Chip: Made in The Dark
Pinback: Summer in Abaddon
MGMT: Oracular Spectacular

Games
Grand Theft Auto 4
Mirror's Edge
Super Smash Bros Brawl (Pretty much exactly the same as Super Smash Melee but with a few new changes and sexier graphics. Give us a new Zelda game already Nintendo!)

Conventions
Leeds Thought Bubble (Again)
LUC's No Barcodes
LUXmas

Small Press Comics
Circle by Josceline Fenton
Crack by Ed Hicks

Mainstream
All Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely (Again)
Laika by Nick Abadzis (I sort of grew up reading Nick's comics when I first brought The Magic Skateboard from him at my local market).
Too Cool To Be Forgotten by Alex Robinson (Great story about giving up smoking, but also about how our school years effect us in later life. Highly recommended!)

Webcomics
Necessary Monsters (Azzopardi's finest work so far. Check out Dan Lester's cameo!)
Justine Tyme (Shock! Jake Harold embraces the webcomic format that he spat venom at for so long!)
The Everyday (Auto-bio ain't usually my bag (Oli Smith put me off for life), but dammit, Adam Cadwell's good).

Must also mention The DFC which has kicked major arse this year. I have to admit, I doubted it at first, thinking it wouldn't last. Having been to most of their panels at most of the major comics events this year, I know these guys are gonna be around for a looong time, putting out really great comics for kids and making the UK comics scene a better place in general.

That's all for this year, hope 2008 was as sexy for you as it was for me, see you on the other side!
x

TFTF Xmas Special

2008-12-19T06:58:00.000-08:00

The first page is now up here. One page a day until Christmas Eve. It's fun, check it.

Catching up

2008-12-17T03:23:00.000-08:00

Agh, long time no blog.

Ok.

Previously in Modern Monstrosity Land...

LEEDS THOUGHT BUBBLE

As widely reported many other places, this year's Thought Bubble is considered to be convention of the year. Just like last year's was. It was waay bigger in scale this year but the atmosphere remained the same, the focus still on the small press side of things, with a few retailer stands dotted around selling the usual Superman/Spider-Man back issues and cutsie Manga crap. All the big-name creators did their signings at the back of the hall, with an Artists Alley of sorts running along the side. This layout stops fanboys from queuing in front of your stall and reduces crowding, y'see? Other event organisers take note.

Large showing of cosplayers as well, more than you get at Bristol or Brum. I'm ammune to them after withstanding 'em in larger numbers at the London MCM Expos twice a year.

Star of Thought Bubble. He almost swept everything off our table with geeky glee at one point.

The best bit was the after party which took place in a big sexy casino. Small press lowlifes mingled with top names (or just Mark Millar, who Alex Fitch threw me infront of to tell him I was an extra in the Kick-Ass movie. Mister Millar smiled and quickly found someone else to talk to) and we hit the dance floor hard (with one of the Thought Bubble team, Mike, bangin' out the hits from his laptop), highlights including Kieron Gillen's messiah act and Matt Badham removing his tshirt at the height of the dancefloor mayhem and then being politely asked by Emma Price to put it back on. Oh, and the wrestling, which I think involved myself, Oli Smith and, god help us, Jake Harold.

Thanks to Tamsin, Lisa and the rest of the Thought Bubble crew for another wickedsyles convention. More next year please.
Here's my favourite Thought Bubble report, by Claude TC of Reckless Youth.

Next..

COMICA AT THE ICA
Again, last year's was great and I knew to expect similar things this year, especially with the involvement of the mighty London Underground Comics. Curtis and Terrorist outsold Tales From The Flat, since most customers were going for the handmade aesthetic over the more superheroey vibes of TFTF. I also got me a Curtis and Terrorist cake from Marc Ellerby's girlfriend, Anna. Everyone else got personalised cakes at Thought Bubble except me and I had to threaten suicide in order to get one at Comica. It worked and it tasted yum.
Again, great post-con drinks at the local 'spoons around the corner which I think ended with me getting bummed by Doug Noble on a sofa. Possibly. He's insatiable

Josceline Fenton looks on whilst Sean has another stroke.

And then...

KICK-ASS THE MOVIE
For one day I was an extra in the movie adaptation of the Mark Millar comic, Kick-Ass. I nearly kicked Jonathan Ross' wife in the face and watched some girl from Desperate Housewives moan about being given a Tesco's sandwich to eat. It was a fairly open set too, so we were able to wander around, stand behind monitors and watch stuff get filmed. Good food as well.

And most recently...

LONDON UNDERGROUND CHRISTMAS
Our third and final event of the year was, of course, a great success. LUXmas acted as both an exhibition and comic convention, with displays of art by the core LUC team. There seemed to be a fairly constant flow of people during the day, with plenty of confused looking drunk people coming downstairs in the evening and spending a few quid on some comics before returning to the safety of upstairs. Great music all day also courtesy of allsorted ipod playlists and DJ's including Modern Monstrosity's own Robo Jimo. I even managed to hammer out a load of Curtis and Terrorist covers during the twelve hours spent there, despite being powered only by free beer (yes, there was free beer, that's just how LUC roll baby).
Video diary of the event here. There's swearing.

Frazer Irving, Cassandra Conroy and Emma Price. Word.

The final LUC Camden Stall EVER is this Saturday. Myself, Oli, Sean and Dan will be there, come down and buy some stocking fillers.

And in other news...

The Dorrito-powered boy wonder that is Jake Harold has been working away very hard on serialising his Justine Tyme epic at his new site. It started off as being updated FIVE DAYS A WEEK, which he kept to like the freaky robot man that he is. You can now catch a page of the goodness every other day. Check it.

The Dan Lester Mysteries, reviewed by Richard Bruton over at the Forbidden Planet blog.

Creatively, it's been a pretty lazy year from Modern Monstrosity, with only TFTF#7, The Dan Lester Mysteries and the TFTF 24-Hour comic coming out (and I don't really reckon a 24-hour comic even counts). Next year though, we're cutting back on conventions and concentrating on more output and our own LUC events with our brothers in arms. We've got a fairly definitive timeline planned out which should see 2009 end with the star-studded Tales From The Flat #10.
Anyway, to make up for our heavy procrastination this year, every day from Friday December 19th through til Christmas Eve, we'll be publishing a page of the Tales From The Flat Christmas Special, a 6-page, full-colour Christmas adventure with the TFTF crew! We've been meaning to do a Christmas story for ages and this seemed like the perfect chance.

That's all, we're up to speed now. More before the new year.
x

End of an era

2008-11-05T16:22:00.000-08:00

London Underground Comics is dead, long live London Underground Comics!

I was initially against ditching the stall and I will be sad to see it go, although it will be nice having my Saturdays back again. I'll most likely do a proper retrospective after the final stall on December 20th.

Bigger and bolder things await us in 2009, and to show you what we mean, on December 13th we present you "London Underground Christmas", a week long exhibition of comics, music and original art at the Alphabet Bar in Oxford Circus. This is going to be huuge and a real taster of what to expect from us next year. As always, there's more information and the announcement video over at the main LUC site. Exciting times!

Oli Smith continues to dabble in the world of film making with his new "Stumbling Block" series which will chart the highs and lows of the LUC collective running the last few weeks of the stall and organising its related events. The first two episodes are up here.

Modern Monstrosity will be taking a break from the convention circut next year, we'll hit a few specially chosen events but will otherwise be focusing on running our own shindigs with our LUC brethren. The word "boycott" is tossed around alot these days, but we're not boycotting anything, we're just not going.

That's all. LUC prevails.

Oliver's Army

2008-10-22T04:42:00.000-07:00

Yes! Check these badass little mofos out! Many thanks again to Zoe Darnell for these beauties, be sure to have a look at Zoe's site for more of her amazingness.

In other news:

London Underground Comics are co-hosting this year's Comica Comiket with Paul Gravett at the ICA! Oh yes! Awesome comics on sale! Workshops and live art goodness! View the epic YouTube promo video here! There is dancing.

That Oli Smith fellow has a new site, where he manages to spell my name wrong at every mention, the swine. There's also Bloc artwork from the two artists who were originally going to be drawing it.

I've done a sudden interview over at Paulo Patricio's Mundo Fantasma blog, scroll down a bit to get to the English text version. Apparently I'm a key-figure in the UK indie comics scene, go me!

Karrie "G2" Fransman also has a new site, where I'm sure she'd never get my name wrong cos she's all lovely and stuff. Have a look at her comics and check out The Guardian's G2 supplement every Friday for more Fransman goodness.

I'll be at the MCM Expo at the Excel Centre this weekend with Jake Harold. If you're going, stop by, say howdy and dance with me.

Being Vigilant

2008-10-16T10:02:00.000-07:00

Curtis and Terrorist figures! They're coming! Oh yes they are! Courtesy of Zoe Darnell.

Brum

2008-10-01T03:57:00.000-07:00

Off to Birmingham this weekend for some comic pimpage. I've high hopes for Brum Con this year, the first one was a bit of a let down but last year's was a vast improvement. And after the giddy highs of selling shit-loads of comics at The Camden Stall and it's related events, I'm looking forwards to getting back to a "proper" convention and seeing how worth it they really are.

Check out Andy Luke's interview with Brum Con organizer, Shane Chebsey. Interesting stuff. And in true Andy Luke fashion, he lists me as one of the exhibitors alongside people like Dave Gibbons and John Cassady. I won't have a mile long que infront of my table though. But then, I'm not charging ten quid for a sketch of Rorschach or Wolverine either. Actually, I'm gonna do free sketches of Wolverine blowing Rorschach, come get em.

(Handy hint: be sure to buy Gibbons some tea if you wanna make a good impression. Might go a bit cold after standing in Que for an hour though).

(I should also point out that I've no idea if either of those artists really do charge ten quid for a sketch or not. They may charge nothing or they may charge 30 quid. Who knows. Who cares?)

LOOK! NEW TFTF POSTCARD PROMO FLYER THINGY!!! WOW!!!

A while ago I sent Forbidden Planet blogger, Fictions writer and gin and tonic lover, Richard Bruton two fatty parcels filled with comicy goodness from The Camden Stall. So in the run-up to Brum Con, Richard is reviewing some of those very comics, some of the creators of which will be exhibiting at Birmingham this weekend.

Here's the list so far and I'll try to update it as more reviews are posted:

Whale Hunts, Turtle Guitars and Bitter Herbs by Ben Powis

Ninja Bunny by Philip Spence

Crack by Ed Hicks

Sex, Drawn & Rock-n-Roll and A Stinky Tail by Sally-Anne Hickman

Gran by Andy Luke

The Most Natural Thing In The World by Francesca Cassavetti

Tales From The Flat by Me and Laurence

Hazy Thursday and Summer Ball by Oli Smith

Monkey Stain

2008-09-18T03:46:00.000-07:00

Low Energy Day

2008-09-06T12:03:00.000-07:00

So yea, Low Energy Day happened a few weeks back now. I've left it a bit long to report on what went on. The mists of time have clouded my memory but I'm sure it all went really well.

I had persuaded two friends of mine who'd never exhibited at a comics thing to come down with their first self published works: Emily Webber had some mini giveaway comics and an 8-page homage to The Dark Knight called Batsman: Trial and Error. She did alright throughout the day (it's £2 pricetag didn't help) but sold a load of them at the pub afterwards.
Steve Butland (website pending) was selling a handmade follow-up to his Rock Story from our Modern Monstrosity Anthology. He was even giving away pet rocks with eyes drawn on them with a certificate of ownership. Look out for Steve's Ultimate Warrior story in Dan Lester's Monkeys Might Puke #8 guest artist issue. Steve did especially well, considering he was in the always difficult, outside spot.

One of the great things about these events is meeting people you've only known through emails or who's work your into. At LED, I finally got to meet Martin Squires who does Trucking With Greg. Trucking With Greg is naughty, hilarious filth and I ruddy love it. Claude TC of Reckless Youth was there also, I'd met him briefly at a few Web n Mini Comix Things but had some proper chats with him and did some swapping too. Hopefully gonna collaborate on something in the future. Sarah McIntyre of the DFC popped down at the end as well, she's awesome.

I also got to meet Ed Hicks, who's comic, Crack, I've been championing since I stumbled across it (or rather, it stumbled across me) at this year's Uk Web and Mini Comix Thing. I had gotten in contact with him immediately after reading it and made him send me a bunch of copies to sell at The Stall on Saturdays. Unfortunately, he didn't have any copies left to exhibit with at LED, but he did bring a page of original art from Crack, for me! Free, original art! For me! Cheers Ed!
Not content with just being given original art, I also purchased this lovely piece from Circle creator, Josceline Fenton. Circle is awesome. Read it.

TFTF did better at LED than it has at any comics event this year I've decided, after looking at the numbers. Didn't do so well at our last Camden Event, No Barcodes. We had a prime spot this time and Laurence DJing on our table definitely attracted extra customers who wanted the comic written by the guy dishing out the bangin' 'toons.

The day's swag. Includes Philip "Ninja Bunny" Spence's first foray into "proper" comics, Fool's Errand. Also in there is Dan Lester's collection of Monkeys Might Puke, complete with a smudge of his own blood from his cut finger, inflicted by over-excited page trimming. All the comics in this picture are awesome.

Keeping Up With The Kids

2008-08-25T03:50:00.000-07:00

Last week I led my first ever comicbook workshops for kids. It was at a school in Lewisham which was taking part in a borough-wide summer school project type thing. The kids did two activities a day, including, Bollywood dancing, Hockey, cooking, film making and "Manga and Illustration". I don't know anything about Manga so that went pretty much straight out the window. Instead, I did a load of activities with them that I stole from Jim Medway and a load of other resources that I found through his blog. Very helpful (The card characters game I actually played with some mates a few nights ago, it's incredibly addictive. Will post the results of that sometime).
By the end of it all, they each had made their own 8-page mini comic with a hand made cover.

I'm really hoping for more chances to do comicbook workshops in the future, it was good fun and there's a million things I know I could have done different or better.

Hopefully some of them will be selling their wares at The Camden Comics Stall in a couple of years time.

I'm gonna post this little teaser image thing wot I got off Jake Harold. Jake is collaborating with Dan Lester on a new Junkies In Space series. For those not in the know, Junkies In Space is one of the regular stories that appears in Dan's, Monkeys Might Puke series. The upcoming Monkeys Might Puke #8 is a guest artist issue, with Dan writing a load of strips for others to draw (I've done Gene Wilder's Masturbation Masterclass). Jake's been given the mighty job of drawing that issue's installment of Junkies In Space which will be followed up later in the year with their new Junkies In Space series. Awesome.

Be Vigilant

2008-08-05T13:10:00.000-07:00

Off to Caption this weekend. I always look forwards to Caption. It's everything I like about conventions without all the stuff I dislike. Basically, someone else sells your comics while you drink beer, draw and do stuff.
And in a first for me, I'll have three new comics out for this event, none of them TFTF.
There's The Dan Lester Mysteries (the most awesome comic of the year), Weekend Friends, a diary comic collaboration with Sean Azzopardi, Oli Smith and that Dan Lester again. I'll also have a new, full colour, 8-page Curtis and Terrorist mini-comic with individual, handmade covers.
Not all the material in it is new, some of it's the same strips from the original C&T giveaway mini-comics but in colour and drawn better.

BoomBoomBlahBlah

2008-08-01T11:06:00.000-07:00

I got roped into going to a mate's band's gig the other night. We were allowed to sell our comics alongside the band's and supporting band's CD's though. I didn't think we'd sell jack-shit so took the bare minimum with me: a few copies of each TFTF comic and a small selection of comics from The Camden Stall. Even when we used to do our Modern Monstrosity Monthly nights at Inigo in Clapham Junction, there wasn't really an overwhelming interest in the comics we'd sell there. At this gig though, we sold out of everything in a couple of hours. Hopefully they're going to make it a monthly event. Live music and comics go well together.

So, yea anyway, here's some pictures...

Camden Stall sketches by Azzopardi, Lester and Me.

A panel from the forthcoming BLOC with Oli Smith

New Low Energy Day flyer!

Low Energy Day?

2008-07-09T14:16:00.000-07:00

Ohh, what's all this about then? Watch this space.

(Oh and the main MM site is being given an overhaul. You can now reach it at http://www.modernmonstrosity.co.uk/. Have a look around and do join the forums)

Stuff 'an ting

2008-06-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

Been a while since my last post, been trying to do real-world things and spend less soul stealing time on the Internet. Went to Tunisia with my girlfriend for two weeks and recharged my batteries. Quit smoking too!

The Dan Lester Mysteries is officially finished and should make its first appearance on The Stall sometime in the next month. Bloc is also looking good for a Caption premiere. Hopefully.

My good friends Alex Thomson, Jack Tomkins and Jon Hull have just completed their film degree at Manchester uni. As their final piece they were originally going to make their own version of the fairytale and Powell and Pressburger film, The Red Shoes. That however fell through and, luckily for us, they settled on making a short documentary about Modern Monstrosity and The Camden Comics Stall instead. They even followed us to Bristol. Poor chaps. It's viewable here and should be up on YouTube at some point in the future.

Modern Monstrosity will also be exhibiting at a cool indie comics and zines festival festival-thing in London on July 19th. Read all about it here.

That is all.

Believe The Hype

2008-05-29T08:26:00.000-07:00

Went to Tom Humberstone and Dan Hancox's "My Fellow Americans" book launch last night. Great little pub in King's Cross called the Cross Kings (ha!). The whole LUC gang was down, with Sean Azzopardi out-dressing us all. Sly dawg.
Great music, sexy people and I gave Tom his Eagle Award too.

Tom's gonna be at No Barcodes along with a load of other ridiculously talented comicbook making peoples. Sir David Baillie has conducted inteviews with some of them on a variety of UK indie comics websites. Check 'em out yo:

Francesca Cassavetti
Dan Lester
Ben Powis
Andy Luke
Josceline Fenton
Tom Humberstone
Paul Rainey
Sean Azzopardi
Me

The Story So Far...

2008-05-28T05:00:00.000-07:00

Well, May's almost been and gone, it's been quite an epic month and No Barcodes hasn't even happened yet!

LUC had a great time at Bristol, kicking major arse and making a boat-load of hard cash. No Eagle Award for TFTF again this year but our good pal Tom "Vented Spleen" Humberstone got it and I couldn't have asked for better than that. Tom wasn't there either so I still got to leap up on stage like a drunk twat and accept it for him.

This year's Bristol was also most probably the hottest I've been to and I spent the majority of my time outside chatting with stormtroopers.

And this past weekend, myself and Jake Harold attended the MCM London Expo. This is the third year now that we've been attending these and to be honest, they really do get better and better. They're pretty damn expensive but this year we made back our table costs and had an all round great weekend.

It's nice also to see more comic folk coming down for the expo. Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie pimping Phonogram and Suburban Glamour as well as more indie folk such as Ross Burt with his brilliant Astro Funk, Alex Macieira and Richard O'Donnell with The Zombies Ate My Chilean! and the lovely Jenika Ioffreda sharing with us on the Saturday with her Vampire Freestyle.

Looking forwards to more in October.

Now back to work...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Flat

2008-05-21T07:03:00.000-07:00

Word crackers!

Has been a busy busy month. I'll have reports from the Bristol Expo and this weekend's MCM Manga Expo (where I'll be joined by that big lump of man, Jake Harold) up at some point after the weekend. Until then, feast your eyes on the alternate cover for TFTF#8 by Gordon Johnston! It's a homage to the first cover of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic. All very appropriate since TMNT started life as an indie comic by two guys and soon flourished into a multi-million dollar, world-wide phenomenon. A bit like Tales From The Flat will.

Maybe.

And remember, NO BARCODES, Camden Lock Market, May 31st. Come!

Details and stuff here.

Peace out.

Sealed

2008-04-30T08:55:00.000-07:00

Did this as my girlfriend's sister's birthday present. She's a bit of a Bergman fan. I'm quite happy with it and it didn't take too long either. If only I applied this much effort in the comics I'm supposed to be drawing...

Blah...

2008-04-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

Me and Sean Azzopardi have a 'lil chat about the process of making comic books. Here.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

2008-04-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

Us crazy London Underground peoples are holding a comics festival at Camden Lock Market on May 31st. If you make your own comics and fancy getting involved, then check out the LUC site and drop us a line at camdencomics@hotmail.co.uk.
Oh, and check out Oli Smith's video announcing the event too!

One More Thing

2008-04-17T10:35:00.000-07:00

The report of this year's UK Web and Mini Comix Thing, wot I did for Alex Fitch's "Panel Borders" show on ResonanceFM , is now up online! It doesn't sound as disastrous as I remember it being either, which is nice.

Go now and enjoy the drunken mouth flapping.

And a reminder to VOTE TALES FROM THE FLAT as your favorite British black and white comic book for The Eagle Awards!

And yea, above is the logo for "THE DAN LESTER MYSTERIES" (As a rule, I reckon it should always be typed in capitals) which is ever so close to completion.

TFTF 24

2008-04-06T15:38:00.000-07:00

We've done a 24 Hour Tales From The Flat comic!

Sorta.

It actually ended up taking closer to 36 hours due to an epic game of Cranium. Even rock n roll comic creators like us enjoy the occasional board game. But the comic's story itself takes place over 24 hours so it still sorta counts.

It's only viewable on Facebook at the moment (but everyone has Facebook now right? And what better excuse do you have now if you don't?) since ComicSpace and WebComicsNation were being difficult. Should have some printed copies for the Bristol Con though (Where we'll be exhibiting alongside our Camden Comics Stall pals on the London Underground Comics table).

Also, in a move set to further infuriate Steve Tillotson (jus' playin'!) TFTF has been shortlisted once again for an Eagle Award in the Favorite Black and White Comicbook- British category. Many thanks if you voted, and if you'd like to go back and vote again for us to win, well, that'd be lovely.

And MIKE WIERINGO for roll of honor! One of the greatest modern superhero artists who died very tragically last year.

That's all. Will have that interview/ranting session with Laurence up next time.

Keep yer hoes in check n all that...

And Another Thing

2008-03-25T17:55:00.000-07:00

2007's Thing wasn't so hot for us. It was mainly down to us being lazy sods and not actually trying to sell anything. Which is always a big no no.

This year however was bloody wonderful. Despite the shitty weather there seemed to be a pretty big turnout. Bigger than previous years it seemed. There was a random panel at one point which I missed. No idea what they were talking about. Giraffes probably. I seem to remember some panels at our first Thing in 2006. I reckon it's probably a good idea to bring some sort of panel or workshop events to the Thing, gives the visitors more bang for their buck and all that.

I also seemed to be the only person who wasn't affected by the "freezing conditions". Toasty warm all day I was.

A great anthology this year as well, although I don't understand why everyone doesn't make the most of being able to have something in full colour, in print. Quite a novelty to us non web comic based people. It had a good cover this year too!! Shocking!!

Sales were good, lots of people picking up the latest two issues of TFTF as well as plenty of sales to potential new fans of the first Collected Edition. Managed to make back table costs with extra booze money to spend as well. Whee!

Jake Harold's Tards also did well in it's first proper solo convention outing. Well done fatty.

Bought and swapped loads of great comics too, including Francesca Cassavetti's new one, "Party Pieces" which I'm yet to read, Aaron Murphy's "Fecal Depot" which is CRAZY-WEIRD and the second part of Claude T.C's adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau. The first part of which I got last year. Yeah. Read Reckless Youth, it's wicked-styles.

Special mention has to go to Crack. I love Crack. "Crack" is a comic that had a table somewhere but also had a couple of guys wandering about with it and pimping it to other stall holders and customers. I bought it and got a free poster. I took it home and read it and it rocked me. It made me laugh and scream and almost gave me a heart attack as my heart was racing at the end. It says Chapter One on the front cover so I can't wait for more. It's by Ed Hicks who has a Deviant Art page here. Apparently the main character is him. Brilliant.

Managed to get no decent photos all day which is a shame since we'd planned on bringing back our photo-comic report for one last time. Don't think we ever did one for a Thing. Here's me with Phil Spence's Ninja Death Bunny instead.

Post-Thing shenanigans were as good as always, with a far bigger turn-out from comic-folk, old 'spoons was under siege.

Over the course of the day I was supposed to be doing interviews with different exhibitors for Alex Fitch's Panel Borders show on Resonance FM. He'd given me a little recording device thing with a microphone and all that. But I never quite got around to it and ended up having to do the interviews in the pub, drunkenly running around and persuading people to have a quick chat about the day. Most people managed to veer away from talking about The Thing itself and just talked about themselves and their comics using lots of swear words. And I was probably asking shit questions anyways. I'm no journalist and I can barely string together a coherent sentence when I'm sober. I also managed to make a complete tit out of myself by interviewing Marc Ellerby's girlfriend and not Marc himself who was standing right next to me. Balls.

I have vague recollections of flange over with Mal and Cliodhna...

Another big thanks to Mal for her back-up story in TFTF7and her limited edition alternate cover which I failed to actually acknowledge existence of within the actual comic (It's 'cos it's a super-secret alternate cover I've decided). Her Sin City cover actually sold more than the regular cover and I had to ask for some of her copies back.

In all a great Thing and I look forwards to more Thingy goodness next year.

Yippie for all!

There's Light At The End Of The Tunnel

2008-03-10T15:25:00.000-07:00

I've been working my skinny little arse off to get Tales From The Flat #7 ready for the UK Web n Mini Comix Thing on March 22nd. I've been drawing the average of 2-3 pages a day, taking two weeks off work and travelling up to Stafford to stay with Jake Harold for an intense 3-day retreat, doing all the "post-production" on the issue: scanning, lettering etc.

It's been gruelling but I'm happy to report that (if the printers don't let us down. Again) TFTF#7 is finally complete and on schedule to be out in time for The Thing.

Many, many, many thankyou's to Jake for putting up with my mood swings and insane demands. I'm not the easiest of people to spend 3 solid days locked in a small room with. You are a soldier sir! (Jake will also be at The Thing, premiering the very excellent second issue of Tards).

TFTF#7 also See's the first of our guest creator "back-up" stories. Six page TFTF stories by the best and brightest of the UK indie scene. So first up is "Thesis" by Malory Chan. Mal's also provided an alternate cover for the issue, a homage to the Sin City movie poster. Out of the 100 issue seven's printed, 20 of them will feature her cover.

And in TFTF#8 we'll have the brilliant Gordon Johnston providing "Armageddon". Gordon wrote and drew what is one of my favorite comics ever, The Bunisher. Do check it out.

(I want it in print again if you're reading this Johnston! I shan't rest 'til I can hold it in my hands. I know a terrific printer y'know and I'm sure it'd go down well on The Stall. People seem to like rabbits).

Continuing my series of interviews, next time I'll be talking to my partner in comicbook crime, Laurence Powell, before he buggers off to Thailand for a few months... Though I use the term "interview" loosely as it'll most likely end up being a deranged ranting session.

Oliver's Question Time With... Jake Harold!

2008-02-28T11:57:00.000-08:00

Modern Monstrosity first encountered Jake Harold at a London MCM Expo about a year ago. Blink Twice's Lorenzo Etherington had just done an amazing job colouring the cover to TFTF#5 and we were in desperate need of a new colourist for #6. Luckily we met Jake, who was there primarily to see Simon Pegg. But TFTF caught his eye, we got chatting and the rest is history. He's Modern Monstrosity's Third Man. Since colouring the #6 cover, he's done tons of work with us, a stand-out being the two-page comic we did for the first issue of Volume Magazine which he coloured (Viewable on the main MM site).

Last year he put out his own 45-page comicbook, "Tards", a tale of four disabled kids who think they're superheroes.

I sent him some questions...

So, Tards has been out a while now and you've seen your share of conventions. What do you make of the UK comic scene from what you've experienced? Well I haven't sunk too deep into the bitter cold sea of the UK indie comic scene, but I will call it this... EXPENSIVE FUN!! I've had such an amazing time going to conventions, sitting behind tables and selling comics. If anyone has an interest in making comics I'll tell you this industry is one of the most rewarding I've come across! And if you're not too up your own arse, then you'll be greeted with a smile by most creators. And now is apparently a very exciting time to hop on this ever expanding bandwagon.

McDonalds or Buger King?

I'm staying away from both right now, but honestly BURGER KING. Fuck that McCrappy crap. Their chicken nuggets used to be soooo fine. Then they took salt out of them, HEY PRESTO they tasted just like cardboard... But Burger King, bacon double cheeze burger, with onion rings on each layer, and a helping of BBQ and mayo on each layer. Maybe stuff a couple chips under the top bun and you'll have the mega fat boi delux. I lived on those when i worked at a service station, got them for free!

You're now finishing up a media course at college and then you're off to uni to take a sequential narrative course. Tell us a little about the various mediums you've dabbled in and how you plan on using them in your own work.

Well the course is called "multi media". Media courses are usually shitty film courses with wannabe directors filming their emo friends in the local kid's playground.

The course I'm on is an art course. Where I've learned EVERYTHING! Well, Photo Shop and its peripherals... Done 3D, some animation (flash and hand drawn), all sorts. The course is a real mixed bag, turns you into a jack of all trades. But after doing this course, I'll offer this advise to anyone... NEVER stick to one medium! Try to learn as much of everything as you can, expand that visual spacial scratchpad!

About what i use in my comics, I try and keep my art as traditional as I can, whilst still accepting that digital methods exist. I usually do my colouring in Photo Shop, but I always try and draw my line art by hand with a brush or pen, it just looks more human that way... And everyone can relate to humans!

Onto Tards, where do your influences lie for the series, what kind of stories are you trying to tell and why should people give it a read?

Well, Tards originally started as an idea for a front cover of a comic... (and it probably shows) This cover was in fact very different the the eventual cover to issue 1. The logo was a large stone block in the shape of the Tards letters, with a team of realistic looking retards ambling towards the reader dressed in shabby super hero outfits... This image made me belly laugh to myself (sad I know). The idea evolved into what it is today, which i hope is a comic that's alot more than "Look he's a retard, LOL!"

I've always loved the theory of parallel universes and time lines, and this schizophrenia angle is the perfect way to tell stories like that without having to worry too much about continuity...

Extra mouth on your forehead or sentient arm coming out of your arse?

Mouth on the head, its more exciting sexually... MINDFUCK!!

What's this "Rindhouse" zombie anthology thing all about then? Why does the world need another zombie comic?

Everytime I hear the word "Grindhouse" I automatically think the person saying the word has made a mistake, due to the title of this project... "Rindhouse" is the working title for a comic I'm working on. As the reader may know, Grindhouse is a double feature film in the style of an old drive-in movie, not particularly intelligent plot lines, deliverd with every ounce of sincerity.

Now cross Grindhouse with a Simpsons Halloween Special! A mixed bag of tales revolving around a new theme per issue, created by a cross breed of artists and writers. Each story is near enough a 6 pager, and has to have more than one person working on it. The main push of the book is to promote collaboration between people in the UK inde comic scene.

Right now it's just the few people I know working together, but hopefully the more contacts i make, the more people i can drag into the whole spectacle! Incidentally, if you're interested in working on this project contact capspac@gmail.com

What's your ultimate creative fantasy, what do you long for?

Basically, I want to reach 100 years of age, with a couple of decades ahead of me. Wife and amazingly artistic children by my side. By then I will have drawn so much, that I can practically shit pure comic gold out of my fingertips.

Anything else apart from Tards and Rindhouse in the pipline?

Oooh, you'd like me to reveal those secrets wouldn't you!

Meh, Nobody's going to read this anyway.

When Tards wraps up, it will lead to a spinoff comic based around a subset of characters (It's more exciting than I've described it there). And also a time travel epic! With countless spinoffs!

I'll be referring to this as the Justine Tyme series... I have alot of stories and ideas blocking up my mind, hopefully when i reach that 100 years old mark, quite a few of them will of found their way to your eyes.

Cheers, that's all I think. Famous last words?

"Fine. I know what I saw. I don't know what we're gonna find, but whatever it is, it'd better be ready for FLAMIN' FREDDY!"

Retreat!

2008-02-18T06:23:00.000-08:00

Drawing for me has never been much of a social affair. I tend to be at my most creative hunched over my desk at five in the morning.

So I was nervous at the prospect of attending last weekend's "Jamboree", Rich Lillie's art retreat in goth central, Whitby. A weekend of social drawing with a load of other people? Scary shit I thought.

After an epic train/road trip with Jake Harold, Phil Spence and Karrie Fransman we arrived at our compound. The kind of place I have memories of from school adventure weekends where your year group set off for the countryside to experience rock climbing, hiking, castle visits and canoeing.

Minutes after arriving, we were presented with a plethora of pens. Paint pens, pens for drawing on t-shirts, pens for drawing on glass and pens with three widths of nib. Pen heaven.

We were up until sunrise decorating canvases and t-shirts with our illustrations. Not even the dangerous mix of beer and weed could prevent my steady hand.

Canvass by Myself, Rich Lillie, Phil Spence, Kel Winser and Jake Harold

Managed to catch a few hours sleep despite Jake Harold's incredible snoring styles and awoke to a crisp spring afternoon.

Most of Sunday was spent eating all the free food on offer and creating more canvasses, t-shirts and badges. My original plan of getting as much TFTF#7 done over the weekend as I could was in ruins. But screw it, I had a TFTF t-shirt instead, who cares?

A random family from off the streets popped in to see what all the fuss was about. I managed not to say the word "Cunt" infront of the children for a whole two hours and even helped one of them make their own t-shirt without jamming a Posca marker in his eye.

Kel Winser, Myself and Phil Spence all hard at work.

The evening was spent decorating pizza boxes with our illustrations (Rich also runs a t-shirt making company which sell their personalised t-shirts in personalised pizza boxes) while watching Grindhouse on a projector. Didn't pay much attention to Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror but Tarantino's Death Proof was ruddy brilliant, went and bought myself a copy as soon as we got back to London.

The car journey back was a good one, this time aided by about seven CD's worth of music burned for us by Rich. Made a welcome change from crappy Radio One. The train journey from Stafford back to London wasn't quite as glorious though since we had to sit on the floor in separate carriages. Luckily I was sat next to a hungover, Welsh raver who I shared my warm Fosters with and together we sneered and spat at all the evil passengers who had seats. Good times.

Pizza Box by Karrie Fransman

The Eagle Awards for this year have begun. Why not nominate the UK's greatest sit-com adventure comic, Tales From The Flat as your favorite Black and White British Comicbook? And while you're at it, Ninja Bunny for best web-based comic, 12 Hour Shift for best compilation and London Underground Comics/Oli Smith for the roll of honor? You know it's the right thing to do. Yes it is.

Next time on Modern Monstroblog, I'll be interviewing serial-snorer and all-round creative do-gooder, Jake Harold about his comic, "Tards" (Family Guy meets Futurama meets Mystery Men. Sorta).

Don't miss it.

Poser

Oliver Chats With... IndieReview!

2008-02-12T06:47:00.000-08:00

Brothers, Hassan and Rachid Otsmane run the brilliant IndieReview website which was launched last year. A breath of fresh air in terms of internet based UK comicbook journalism, the site hasn't stopped evolving since its creation and at the beginning of this year the boys transformed IndieReview into a fully functional, interactive UK smallpress resources website.
I sent 'em a few questions...

Right, first things first. Who are you and what the hell do you do?
Hassan: I’m Hassan, and I’m currently finishing up A Levels so I can get off to uni. I currently draw and write in my spare time, and I’m an avid “amateur” (read: not very good) film maker.

Rachid: And I'm Rachid, graduated from Uni 2 years ago, currently a software engineer based in Manchester.

How did you get into comic books in the first place?
H: A friend of mine introduced me to an Essential Spider-Man collection a good few years ago, and from then I was hooked. I loved superheroes, eventually moving away from them and over time I found the UK indie scene, and was in love with the creativity found in it. People like David Baillie and Oli Smith (and you guys of course) were things I hadn’t really read before, and I loved them.

R: Well, whilst being at university, I found I had a lot of free time which ended up being filled mainly with Japanese Anime, which in turn led me on to reading a bit of manga. I didn't really read comics until I started reading my brothers collection, and even more recently being getting into the Small Press scene (Has anyone ever mentioned it used to be quite hard to find information about?)

David Baillie's "Tongue Of The Dead"

Any particular comics, small press or mainstream, that you're into at the moment? (apart from Tales From The Flat. Obviously.)
H: I love Y – The Last Man and The Walking Dead and read them as often as they come out. Apart from that, I haven’t really been following any mainstream US comics for a while. Too many bad memories with messing about with characters that I love. I’m all up for trying something new, as long as it doesn’t mess with any already made characters! On the indie front, I loved the first issue of London Horror Comic.

R: Haha, well I still have the 2 Tales From The Flat posters I got from BICS 2007 on my wall!! I'm really enjoying some of the Manga styled comics from Sweatdrop at the moment, especially loving the couple of "Cookie" comics by Fehad Said and Shari Chankhamma, very weirdly amusing. Other than that I've been working through some of the Dragonball manga I got for Christmas.

Where did the idea of doing the site come from? Is one of you more on the computery/tech/maintaining side of things while the other handles the writing chores or do you both share certain responsibilities?
H: It was an idea I had after seeing some articles about small press in 2000AD’s Judge Dredd Megazine, and then getting more interested in the indie scene. It hit me that people like I was before then (readers of mainstream comics) had probably never heard of these creators and comics before, and it seemed like a closed circle of people reading and creating the comics. So the idea was to create an inviting way of getting a lot of useful information, including regularly updated news, reviews, articles, etc to people interested in this sort of thing. Not necessarily just those who already knew about the creators and indie comics, but those who have no experience of it at all. Looking round I couldn’t really see anything like it, there was Bugpowder and Smallzone and the Forbidden Planet Blog, but not much more beyond that that was concentrated and well known.

As for what we do, initially Rachid did most of the techie stuff and I did near enough all the content, but as time’s gone on we’ve shared responsibilities a bit and both work on maintaining the site and writing for it.

R: Well no matter what he says, my brother is definitely the more creative persona. Like he said, he came up with this idea and told me about it. I agreed with the principle of what he wanted to do and we set about first identifying exactly what we hoped the site would achieve, and secondly what would be the best way of achieving that objective.
We do share the responsibilities a lot more now than at the beginning, but naturally we still have our own areas to concentrate on if for nothing else but the sake of being more efficient.

What do you reckon sets you apart from the many other small press sites out there, such as Bugpowder or Comics Village?
H: Bugpowder has been around a good long time, and we didn’t want to take away what it has to offer, there wouldn't have been any point offereing the exact same thing. Bugpowder is a news resource that seems to be aimed at those who are dead set and know about the indie scene, and we seem to go as almost an opposite of that, as we are welcoming people who may have no experience of the scene at all.

R: I also think we compliment Bugpowder and vice versa. To me they are more of a "by creators for creators" kind of site, which to be honest is what you would expect from a bloggy type site focused on any subject. We are focused to being more of a "for creators AND fans" site. If you didn't know anything about the UK small press, spend as little as 5 minutes on IndieReview and you can't help but learn something new.

H: The Comics Village I believe launched after we did, and seems to have a similar focus, but I'm not sure it really does. The Comics Village for me seems slightly unfriendly to newcomers, and relies already on knowledge of the subject matter they are discussing. They aren’t solely dedicated to UK small press either, and again, if you are new, you may become even more lost looking round at Comics Village.

R: They don't seem to have any sort of focus on the UK, never mind the UK Indie scene. (Checks their frontpage) yup, there isn't anything about the UK Indie scene on there now. But I wouldn't expect there to be because I don't think that's what they are trying to do. So I cant fully answer your question because I don't think its accurate to label them as a UK small press site!!

H: As for our aims, we want to become a hub for UK indie comics, and a way for newcomers to find out more and get involved.

We always try to make it more newcomer friendly, with our reviews we try to explain more about the book and the creator, and really what they should be expecting from the comic, and what sort of style it is. If you already know the creator, that’s fine, but if you don’t, there’s an added bit of information that can really mean a lot if you are first faced with the big world of indie press.

Of course, we are also building a community, we ourselves use the forum all the time and are always there to deal with any questions or tips of any kind, and we do help newcomers into it. Ben Powis recently published his first comic, and hit IndieReview first for some guidance and we helped him get a comic in print, providing him with the articles and info he needed. Introducing personal spaces into the site and getting the new creators to join also helps, as it breaks down the idea of “breaking in”, and allows them a community to discuss ideas and show new comics to people in the same situation as themselves.

R: At the end of the day I think its great that there are so many resources on the web for people to find out about the small press community, if nothing else it shows that people do care about it, and are willing to put their personal (and I'm assuming unpaid) time and effort into promoting it.

Artwork By Hassan Otsmane

It's said that most of these UK small press sites are mainly read by creators and not alot of actual readers or "fans". Do you guys take any steps to get new traffic to your site such as potential new readers? How do you promote yourselves in general?
H: I think that’s definitely the main problem at the moment. These current indie sites aren’t very user friendly for newcomers, they expect you already know what you are looking for before you enter, and that’s one of the reasons I think small press comics are so hard to get into as just a reader. In this day and age, the first place you are going to look is on the internet, and if everything's confusing you’re going to stop right there. I think IndieReview has a friendlier feel to it, us not being creators ourselves have been able to see what we’d like from the site, and try and build that.

R: Well yeah we mentioned that before, like my brother said the sites out there at the moment are not tailored towards new fans. They seem implicitly focused on the creators. That's great for you guys to create your comics, but not so great if you want to reach a wider audience or increase the number of people who actually realise there is this great small press community putting out some fantastic comics.

Obviously like many small press guys, we don't make a profit from the site at all, so we try to rely on word of mouth more than anything. Hopefully by creating a site full of resources and reviews and things like that word will get around. We do try to contact as many creators as possible to get their info listed on the site, again so that when people do visit they can see the variety and quality of material there is in the UK small press community and hopefully want to stay around.

Most of the methods used by the Indie guys at the moment to promote their comics are focused on the same people day in day out (ie conventions), there's very little in the way of "reaching-out" to any other people. Ask any great comic fan in this country to name an independent UK comic creator and guess how many will be able to give you an answer. In that regard I think what Oli Smith is doing in Camden is fantastic, I'm sure he's made a few comic fans there and getting them started on the indie stuff cant be half bad.
We are also in the process of designing a flyer to pass out at conventions, comic book shops and the Camden Market! (If you want to design a flyer for us get in touch :P).

Love the new look! The personal spaces for creators are an especially nice touch. Where did the idea for that come about and what new benefits do you reckon it brings a creator in a world full of Facebooks, Myspaces and Comicspaces?
H: We want to push forward the community spirit of IndieReview, and this is one of the ways we do it. For some of the people just starting to create their own comics, the personal spaces is a way for them to share their work quickly, and write a bit about themselves for the rest of the community to see. Of course if you do have your own website, we’ve also allowed RSS feeds as a way of not needing to maintain two areas at once, but still keep your info up to date at IndieReview. It’s really easy to set-up, and allows people to share comments with each other’s work and get to know people’s styles a lot better in an easy way.

R: I'll give a quick intro for those who might not know what this is. As a member of the site, you get a sort of free website hosted on the IndieReview server. If you've ever used a website builder tool its sort of like that. Ease of use was a paramount concern and people can get a site up and running in a matter of minutes, but if you know what you're doing you can play around with it using html/css etc to get a more unique feel. You also get a short url, for example http://www.indiereview.co.uk/confessions :P

And to expand on my brothers comments, its very different from those other "social networking" sites, here you know that every single member shares at least one trait, and that's loving comics. We aren't trying to bring down Facebook and Myspace (I mean I'm sure its not that hard, right?), but simply give people an option to add their own personal information, or anything at all to a place where people new to small press are likely to be. ComicSpace? well the personal section of IndieReview is only one of many pieces to the site which I like to think fit together well, comic space is good at what it does, but what it does is only part of a more niche and focused website that IR is.

The Camden Comics Stall

Either of you thinking of writing or drawing your own comic any time soon?
H: I’ve been drawing for a long time now, but never had the patience to actually sit and draw pages of sequentials, the most I’ve managed is one page! I might even get some one pagers uploaded to IndieReview some day...

R: I think I'd be chased with crucifixes and pitchforks if a book of my artwork ever saw the light of day...

I think that's it. I think. Any famous last words?
H: Come check out IndieReview! We're always looking for people to write reviews, columns and articles, so if you're interested, we'd love to have you.

R: If you create comics, and want others to be able to read them, pass us your info and we'll get you up on the site. We get a pretty high number of visitors a day (we are still young), so the likelihood is more people will hear about you if you're on the site.
We also get a lot of submissions (especially comic reviews), too much for two guys so if you're serious about getting involved let us know (you get to read a lot of review comics that we get sent!).
Oh Yeah, and tell all your friends, neighbours, children and pets to check us out!!

It's very late...

2008-01-29T17:21:00.000-08:00

I really wanted to get a final post in for January and I'm sure I had something set to rant about but now I've forgotten. Balls.

So what's been going on?

Well.

The Camden Stall's caused a little upset over at the Web n Mini Comix Thing message boards. Though I guess Oli Smith's "incendiary" press release didn't help much.

Andy Luke brings up some interesting points in his column here.

And for anyone who hasn't (and who hasn't??) yet seen the Camden Stall Pop Video, "Time Bomb", do it now!

TFTF#7 is coming along quite nicely, getting to draw all sorts of new environments I've not done before as well as draw some stuff I've been itching to get to.

Every TFTF issue brings that actually. A particular sequence or image that I can't wait to get done. The fight between Toby and Oliver in issue#6 being the last highlight for me...

Here's page 2

I'm going to run some interviews over the next few blogs me thinks, seems like a fun thing to do. So first up will be the Indie Review boys and most likely followed up by Jakey Jake Harold. Maybe my Mum at some point too. I can't link to her.

Ok, goodnight.

I Heart Superheroes

2008-01-04T04:42:00.000-08:00

I got into comics through the world of Marvel superheroes. Now, I know the word "superheroes" is seen as a bit of a dirty one by many working in small press, but no matter how much certain people moan, superheroes will always be what are immediately associated with comic books. They make money, shit loads of it.

Over the past nine years or so, the profile of comic books and superheroes has risen alot in the general public's eye, mainly thanks to all the comic book related movies that Hollywood churns out.

Perhaps I'm being naive but I reckon this exposure is good for anyone working in comics. Most people now realise that comic books aren't just for kids and aren't just men in tights. Comics as an art form are taken far more seriously than they were even ten years ago.

When I tell people that I draw and publish my own comic book they don't look at me like I'm diseased as I hear other creators moan (you're hanging with the wrong crowd in my opinion), instead I'm greeted with genuine enthusiasm and a barrage of questions about it. Most people crave for some sort of creative outlet outside of their banal existence and jobs and are perhaps even a little envious.

I love making comics, I love all the people I know who also make comics. It's anything but dull and unrewarding. Quite the opposite actually.

I still follow the adventures of Spider-Man over at Marvel Comics (despite how they're handling him at present) along with a few other "mainstream" titles, but my tastes have evolved over time and the bulk of comics I buy now are driven by certain writers I like to follow or random indie comics I find flicking through the Previews catalogue.

So to the world of superheroes, I thank you, for opening up a whole other world to me.

And congratulations to fellow small pressers Douglas Noble and Daniel Goodbrey who this month had their stories printed Marvel's "Giant Size Avengers Special". Again, in my opinion, this is good for anyone working in British small press because the knock on effect from this is hopefully having a load of Marvel readers go back and check out Doug and Dan's own works and have a whole new world of comics open up to them as well.

Goes around comes around.

All for one, one for all.

Stuff like that.

And the winners are...

2007-12-30T09:20:00.000-08:00

So long 2007, you were alright you were. Hopefully 2008 will shape up to be a little more productive. I feel although we (we being myself and my partner in crime, Laurence) let ourselves slip slightly after the highs of '05 and '06. It's great to see the first collected edition out there (they're pretty much sold out thanks to the Camden Stall and Forbidden Planet) but we have to push eachother harder if we're to take TFTF to the great hights we both know it can reach.

Right, because I want to, here's my very own "Best of" for 2007. I'm far too uncritical and have included up to three winners in each catagory...

BEST FILMS

Transformers

Sunshine

Venus

BEST MUSIC

Freeze Pop

Kings of Leon

M.I.A.

BEST GAMES

Bioshock

Mario Galaxy

Halo3

BEST CONVENTIONS

Leeds Thought Bubble

Camden Comics Stall (guaranteed good times EVERY SATURDAY)

Comica Comiket

BEST SMALLPRESS COMICS

The Myopians by Dave West (So what if it came out in 2006?)

In This Half Remembered World I Dream Of Love by Oli Smith

Jolly Bear and Fun Coconut Summer Special Two by Steve Tillotson & Gareth Brookes

I also have to include Donkey Head by Daniel Baker and Space Babe by John Maybury.

John's someone who's going places in the next few years.

BEST BREAKTHROUGH ACT

Daniel Merlin Goodbrey and Douglas Noble writing for an Avengers Special for Marvel Comics.

Jake Harold's Tards.

(David Baillie will be in this list next year for writing Batman or Superman or summink. You're next Baillie)

BEST MAINSTREAM COMICS

Phonogram by Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie (only just read the trade, still counts)

All Star Superman by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely

Daredevil by Ed Brubaker

BEST WEBCOMICS

Belly Button Bubble Chronicles by David Baillie

Ninja Bunny by Phil Spence

The Rule Of Death by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey & Douglas Noble

BEST 24HOUR COMICS

Reeling In The Years -A Steve Jones Story by Sean Azzopardi

Andy Luke's 24Hour Comic

Broken Hippos by Dan Lester

And coming in 2008:

MY FELLOW AMERICANS 2008

Tom Humberstone AKA Vented Spleen and Dan Hancox draw and write of their experiences on the 2008 US presidential election trail. Here.

PUB-CON!

London Underground Comics bring you their very own brand of creator run comic conventions!

DAN LESTER'S MURDER MYSTERY

A new ongoing series (ongoing as in we'll put out maybe two issues a year) with the Monkeys Might Puke mastermind. It's Dan in murder mystery situations like only he can do it. And I'm drawing it.

"BLOC" WITH OLI SMITH

Oli's finally written something good that isn't about himself. And it's not just good, it's ruddy wicked and I'm drawing it.

TALES FROM THE FLAT #7

We're starting a story that'll climax around our shocker 10th issue. In 2008 TFTF will blow your mind. And I'm drawing it.

MY 24HOUR COMIC

Just because everyone else is doing it and I have a tiny idea of what I might do.

MORE CURTIS AND TERRORIST

Just because.

I leave you with art from an upcoming (and still untitled) Modern Monstrosity horror anthology-type-thing which I'm doing with Jake Harold. It involves stories of aliens, nazi robots and (as shown here) cheerleaders fighting zombies. Just what comics were made for.

Happy New Year everyone! See you in 2008.

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-Batmaaaaaaaan!

2007-12-04T08:02:00.000-08:00

Call me a big fat-fatty fanboy, but I cannot ruddy wait for this.

Spitting out the demons

2007-11-30T11:40:00.000-08:00

I've been pretty uncreative over past few weeks even though I've got plenty to be getting on with. Too many distractions and not enough discipline. Must try harder if I'm to have all my current projects out for early next year.

Got myself a new sketchbook the other day (last one had horrid paper that I couldn't bare to draw on, I'm pretty snobbish when it comes to the quality of my paper) and I've been filling that up rapidly. Helps when I'm not in a drawing mood to break myself in using the sketchbook. I only seem to be able to draw these days when I'm not at home at my desk. It's at the pub or Camden stall I get the urge. When I'm out n about.

Camden Stall's getting lots of attention which is good. Nice little interview with Oli here for anyone who's not read it yet. Comic Village is a new UK indie-related site, they seem to be popping up more and more these days which is also a good thing. I've always wondered how many actual comic book readers compared to comic book creators actually read these sites, all the interviews and features. Do these sites just sit there waiting to be found, or are they being advertised and linked to from other comic and non-comic related places?

Anyways, here I present a cool little Spider-Man sketch by David Baillie which he did at the Camden stall a couple of weeks back. I love Spider-Man and I love David Baillie. Good times. Note also his little TFTF testimonial in the bottom corner. 'Tis the truth!

Be sure to check out his "Belly Button Bubble Chronicles" which are a little slice of genius every week, the current episode 11 is my favorite so far. I'd love to try something similar, to vent all my little insecurities and worries. Existential webcomic therapy.

Here also is a TFTF pin-up from Jake Harold (doesn't it look like Oliver's trying to do a shit on Laurence?) Putting it up here since I'm not sure when it'll see print. Wanted to put up his "Tales From The Fat" pin-up which depicts the TFTF characters as overweight slobs but I'll save that little gem for another time.

Leeeeds

2007-11-12T04:32:00.000-08:00

The Leeds Thought Bubble comic festival thingy took place on Saturday at Leeds town hall this weekend. Definitely the most successful first time convention I've been to. Great, steady crowd made up of young and old, great guests and we were very well looked after by the organisers. Gorgeous girls offering cakes n cookies (and making documentaries about the con) to the stall holders should be mandatory at all conventions. A welcome change from the usual kick in the shins and "get on with it" that precedes certain comic conventions.

It was obviously well publicised also as there seemed to be a a fine mix of comic-heads and "normal" people off the street.

Conventions are becoming quite the talking point for small pressers (the ones I hangout with anyways). Prices are soaring. The Web n Mini Comix Thing next year has gone up by a tenner making it 50quid which has ruffled some feathers. And next year's Birmingham Con (or "Show") has gone up also (to be fair, Shane's been offering old priced tables to those who book early, an offer we failed to take up in time). The Web n Mini Comix Thing doesn't have any special guests which probably costs most cons a fair bit of cash but he does print up a 200-page anthology featuring stories from all the exhibitors and sells it on for only 50p, so I imagine that sets him back a bit. The argument is of course that this then undermines the actual exhibitors who are selling twenty-something page mini comics for around £2.50.

A small handful of creators I know are actually giving the Thing a miss next year in favour of manning the Camden Stall instead and coming down to Mile End for post-con drinks in the evening. I'm not one to kick up a fuss though and booked our "Thing" table as soon as they became available.

Next year will most likely see the rise of creator run conventions. "Pub-Con" is something we've been discussing at the Camden Stall. Watch this space.

In unrelated news, I've noticed that old school chums who I've not seen for about 19 years and who've been added on Facebook are now one of three things: Married, Engaged or utterly beautiful. Or gay. Or all of 'em.

Back

2007-11-04T13:01:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy month. Had the Birmingham convention a few weeks back (a vast improvement over last year's) followed up by a London Manga Expo at the Docklands Excel centre.

The highlight of the Brum Con for me was the moment where someone (unintentionally) nicked one of Oli Smith's comics. He gave her his usual "Comics International voted it their top comic of last year over Spider-Man" shpiel (not gonna sound so impressive in about nine weeks time) and she seemed mighty interested, looked like Oli was about to make another sale. But in a moment of lapsed concentration, she was off, with Oli's comic in her hand. By the time it hit Oli, it was too late, he couldn't go after her now. I watched in glee as he crumpled before me, falling to his knees, his mighty ego shattered and crying like the big girly-girl-girl we all know he is.

That said, I'm probably drawing his next comic, so be sure to pick it up. If Comics International want to vote it their top comic of 2008, fine by me.

London Expo was also good fun, though not the massive success of last year's. It was the convention debut of our TFTF Collected Edition as well as the first issue of Jake Harold's Tards. Tards did particularly well and outsold the hell out of TFTF on the Sunday. Jake's a relentless selling machine and I'm never sharing a table with him again. Until Leeds on Saturday.

At the end of the second day I was verbally abused by a young lady from the UK Manga collective known as Sweatdrop Studios. After the hall was empty I was looking over the Manga art left behind by revellers for a competition. However, it turned out the people standing next to me were infact the judges and didn't take kindly to me snoopin' around. Perhaps they thought I was a spy for one of the artists, there to find out who the favorites were and perhaps sway their minds. Either way, I was snapped at like a child who just shat behind a sofa and basically told to fuck off. And die. It left me sad and confused all the way home and I've decided to definitely set her and her crappy Manga romance comics on fire at the next expo thing we go to (It's in May. Come along).

Anybody that's anybody should now be aware that myself and a group of fellow small pressers have started London Underground Comics, a new UK indie comics stall at Camden Lock market. We did pretty damn well the first week and made an absolute killing the second. With Christmas fast approaching and convention prices rising this is one of the best and cheapest new ways to get your comics out there. And to "normal" people too. Not just the ones who go to comic cons and shops.

Lastly. Today I attended the first Comica "Comiket". Comica is a month-long comics and graphic novels festival held at the ICA in London. It's organised by Paul Gravett and includes screenings and talks as well as 24 hour comics day and a Comica Club Night (wish I wish I'd gone to but was penniless). The Comiket was a small market type thing held in one of the top rooms at the ICA, there were only a small amount of tables, most of us sharing but was a really great experience. Nice and relaxed with a good flow of customers (occasionally the room would empty when a talk was going on) it was good to see familiar faces as well as meet new ones. I was especially happy to sit next to Daniel Baker who writes and draws one of my favorite small press comics, Donkey Head.
Picked up great comics by Francesca Cassavetti (actually, her son swapped me a load of her books in exchange for a TFTF Collected Edition), her 24-hour comic "A Very Nasty Solitary Habit" is great but especially good is her pregnancy-tale epic, "The Most Natural Thing In The World". Will make anyone want to have a baby. Also loving "The Myopians" by Dave West and probably "Strange Times" too which I'm gona read in bed tonight. Apologies to Dave actually, because I kept calling his partner in crime, Colin, Dave. Right in front of him. What a twat I am.
All in all, a great day. Only paid 20quid for half a table, sold a load of comics and made a lil beer profit. Also a special thanks to Sean Azzopardi for his words of wisdom and encouragement. You're a gent.

Check out the Modern Monstrosity interview over at Indie Review. It was conducted over MSN so is a little messy in places, but congratulations to Hassan for cleaning it up as much as he has.

Oh, and if you live in Leeds I'll be at the Thought Bubble comic festival thing on Saturday. Come say hello and give me your money. In exchange for comics.

Hmmm?

2007-10-23T12:03:00.000-07:00

Our New Zealand counterpart. Legal precedings have begun (but not really).

Drunk Surprise

2007-10-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

Returned home in a drunken mess from MM Monthly this morning and found this Vicky pinup from Space Babe creator John Maybury in our inbox. Thanks John!
It'll appear in TFTF#7 but I'm putting it up here now since issue7 won't be out for at least another millenia at this rate.

Hey teacher, leave them kids alone

2007-10-05T23:17:00.000-07:00

When I'm not drawing or playing computer games I work as a classroom assistant in a nursery in Ealing. They've recently clicked onto the fact that I have vague drawing abilities so now I spend most of my working hours putting together their displays (recent themes include "People who help us" and "Food that is good for us") or drawing giant spiders and octopuses on display boards.
These aren't just used for scaring the shit out of children and their parents, they also act as "birthday boards" which detail the birthdays of each of the kids and staff on each floor of the building.

Coming soon: Tales From The Flat Shapes n Colours Funbook! (Reccomended ages 2+)

Bristol Reports

2007-09-22T10:36:00.000-07:00

Check out Oli Smith's Bristol Convention report which is almost as good as ours.

Was drunk and thought it would be a good idea to try and revive my childhood superhero alterego "Ollie Orbit" as a sci-fi fairytale. Might happen. But probably not...

'Alo

2007-09-19T12:24:00.000-07:00

So, yes, spent the past weekend in the rolling fields of the Midlands to attend one of them MCM Expo thingies. A curious world where you must own a car to get anywhere and herds of emo kids graze on grassy laybys like cattle.

These expos hold a different crowd than the usual Bristol or Birmingham shindigs. Lots of families, children, kids dressed up for that cosplay lark and collector types who are there to get autographs from Vampire Extra #2 from episode 2.5 of Buffy (we actually got chummy with the son of 'Alo 'Alo! actor, Richard "Herr Flick" Gibson, who was there signing).
Had a great first day (we're now officially sold out of TFTF#2 after two print runs), we had a sign on our table proclaiming "FREE SKETCHES!" which was swiftly changed to "FREE SKETCH WITH EVERY PURCHASE" after we'd been swamped with requests (mainly for demonic kebab shop owner, Stavros who I hate drawing).

Many thankyous to Modern Monstrosity's third man, Jake Harold who we crashed with over the weekend. His hospitality was second to none. His sense of direction and geography however was pants. Love you Jake!

Sunday wasn't quite as hot. Only a few comics sold but it was made up for by good conversation and plenty of jokes. Very much looking forwards to the London Expo next month (the weekend after Birmingham) which last year was a huge success for us.

And lastly, here are some pics of the
new album from UK hip-hop
supremo, VerbT, "Verbs With A Vengeance", for whom Modern Monstrosity provided the sleeve's two page comic strip and cover image. Great music, great package. Go go get it.

Another lastly. Curtis and Terrorist now have a proper site, it's only in baby stages at the moment so stuff's still being added as I scan it.

Peace out.

Convention Update

2007-09-12T11:40:00.000-07:00

Getting ready for a convention this weekend but it doesn't look like our printer's gonna have the TFTF Collected Edition done in time. I'm really wanting to get into the world of real self-publishing, whereby we print the little fuckers out ourselves at home and don't have to deal with a printer who're located miles away.

The convention's located in the midlands. It's one of them big manga/sci-fi "expos" where, as Rich Johnston said, they get a load of extras from Star Wars, put em ina room and charge you 20quid to see them. They are however, good fun. It's a younger crowd and TFTF seems to go down well with them.

No worries about not having the collected thing printed in time though, since there's another two cons coming up next month, the sequel to last year's Birmingham con and another expo shindig both in a week of eachother.

Below is a piece done a while back that was intended to be the front cover for a planned Tales From The Flat Anthology which would feature TFTF stories by other writers and artists.
But realising no one would actually buy it, we decided instead to use the stories within the actual TFTF issues as backups to the feature story (Malory Chan is up first in issue seven).
The cover will now probably get used as a back cover of an upcoming issue or promotional duties.
It started as a vague pencil sketch by me a while back and then my good Pal Chris Thompson worked his painting crazy powers over it and turned out this beauty.
Chris is in America at the moment, carving out a big piece of the pie for himself. Miss ya you cunt!
Check his site.

And back to the drawing board with me. Currently working on a six page Cheerleaders vs Zombie/Vampires story for upcoming MM comic "Rindhouse" along with Dan Lester's Muder Mystery (now an ongoing series!).
Just trying to get as much drawing done as possible before Halo3 comes along and steals my eyes...

Harry Harry Pothead

2007-09-04T05:17:00.000-07:00

Been a slow couple of weeks. Just finishing up our contribution for Dan Lester's Mikey Rourke Anthology (doing more work for him than our own stuff lately) which is entitled "Being Mikey Rourke". Speaks for itself.

Over here we have my interpretation of that naughty little crackhead, Harry Potter. It's for my Potter-obsessed girlfriend who's having nasty withdrawal symptoms after finishing the last book. I have however, bought her a Harry game for her Nintendo DS along with this pic and she's still a shivering wreck. I must say, I draw a great Voldermort...

Second up is a pin-up for Jake Harold's upcoming "Tards", his first proper printed work which will (hopefully) be premiering at the Midlands Expo in a couple of weekends time.

I'm actually convinced that Jake's a robot. Tards is 44 pages, all done on within four weeks. He's drawn, inked and lettered it all himself. You're a freak, Jake. But I'm fucking proud of you.

Unfortunately, I didn't draw this. It's by one of my heroes, Jamie Hewlett and painted over by Ashley Wood. Definitely one of my favorite comic covers of the year.
Tank Girl was one of the first comics I ever read and has always been a big influence. This new series from IDW is great so far, even without Mister Hewlett on board.

Stealing girls

2007-08-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of (unfinished) pages from a comic I'm drawing from a script by monkeyboy Dan Lester. Not sure where this is gonna end up or what kinda format it'll be in but I'm having a great time drawing it.

I usually do the lettering myself for TFTF so this is the first time we'll be adding the dialogue on as another layer.

The story concerns Dan getting wrongly accused of kidnapping a young girl and I've only got up to page six, so I've no idea how the story ends. It's working title is "Dan Lester Murder Mystery"

Over on Steve Tillotson's blog he's been talking about British newspaper strips and how rubbish they are (although I've always had a soft spot for "George and Lynne").

He's right to point out that it must be tough to come up with something vaguely amusing for a strip every day and also being limited to just three or four panels.

I've been put off doing my weekly webcomic Curtis and Terrorist for those exact reasons, I just don't have the stamina of wit.

But Steve's decided to set himself the challenge of making a funny strip everyday for a month, wish I had the discipline to do the same.

New!

2007-08-23T21:19:00.000-07:00

It had to happen. Modern Monstrosity has been sucked into the world of blogging.

This new MM thread though, will be managed exclusively by Tales From

The Flat drawerer, Oliver Lambden (that's me, I'll slip into third person now and then).

I'll basically just try and update once or twice a week with whatever stuff I've been drawing and occasionally, thinking.

Will be a little slow at first but I can see myself getting addicted to this easily and drawing just so I can post stuff. Anything that makes me draw more is surely a good thing.

So my first post is this pin-up I did for Gordon Johnston's "The Bunisher" series which is being serialised at his website http://www.virginiagallery.co.uk/

It's also very much worth checking out his Mini Comix. Predator vs Columbo is the bee's knees.

The image is based on a David Mazzucchelli piece from Batman Year One. Like me, Gordon is a big fan of the Tim Burton Batman movies (Returns still beats Begins for me) and especially of Danny Elfman.
Apologies to Mister Mazzucchelli for my clumsy attempt at covering his art.

The Tales From The Flat image is a sort of a tester version for the cover to TFTF#7 which should be out in the next 18 months.
There's a page on the TFTF#7 cover "evolution" back at the main site:
http://www.modernmonstrosity.moonfruit.com/

That's all. I'm going bed.

Next time I'll talk about Caption or summink...