Look out! Monster!

My thanks to those of you who bid on my auction last week and congratulations to those who won. The pages will shortly be winging their way to you. 

I only have a couple of items up on eBay this week. For a change I thought I'd do a brand new drawing exclusively for the auction. That's him above. A5 size, black ink on Bristol Board, drawn yesterday (Sunday 1st March 2015). Never seen before. Your chance to own something unique. 

I'm also selling an original Robo-Capers strip from the 1980s that was published in Marvel's The Transformers. I don't have many Robo-Capers strips left now so if you're interested, bid while you have the chance. 

Again, all bids are welcome and I do really appreciate your interest. Good luck!
Here's my eBay page:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/graphite47/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

Do you have your Stikkums yet?

Stikkums is a behavioural reward app for young kids but it's also fun to use for all ages. You can position the characters onto the backgrounds, resize/flip them, recolour them, add numerous versions to make your scenes as busy as you like. The download is free, and you get one Stikkums 'pack' of 20 digital stickers free, with the other sets costing just 69p per pack.

I did all the artwork for this app and have been drawing more this week for a future pack to be released soon. The first sets of Stikkums are out now though and if you have a tablet device you can download the app for free. Use my characters to build your own scenes! For more info, go to the official website here:
http://www.stikkums.com/

Festival promo

Super School. Copyright DC Thomson & Co. Ltd.

I'm very flattered by the glowing praise in the PR for my upcoming appearance at the Birmingham Comic Festival (see http://www.firstcomicsnews.com/?p=127215). I hope to see plenty of you at the event on April 18th. If you haven't booked your ticket yet here's the site to visit:
http://www.thecomicfestival.com/ 

Other guests include Ian Edginton, Richard Elson, Al Davison, Laura Howell, Hunt Emerson, Mike Collins, Sonia Leong, Mark Buckingham and the legendary Ian Kennedy! How can you miss it?

Beano No.3773 preview

Here's a quick glimpse at the two mini-strips I have in this week's Beano. First up, Rasher feels it's good to be a pig, wallowing in the mud while Dennis is tasked with the chores, then in Joe King our compulsive funster is in trouble with his teacher.

There's loads of other strips in the comic too of course; 36 pages packed with all-new fun with the regulars such as Dennis, Roger, and Minnie. What other British comic has entertained kids of all ages for 77 years? (Answer: None! Although the much-missed Dandy came close with its 75 year run of course.) 

This week's issue comes bagged with a free copy of 110% Gaming magazine. No strips in that, but if you or your kids like games it'll be right up your street. 

Treat yourself to a copy of The Beano today. Only £2.20.  

The censored Tom Thug!

Usually when creators work on strips we instinctively 'self censor' in that we know how far to push the limits for the particular comic we're working on. On rare occasions an editor might think we've overstepped the mark even though we thought it was ok. That's when the white out and patch paper came out to mask over any offending item. 

One such occasion was in Oink! No.60, published in 1988. In my Tom Thug story that issue I had Tom dressed as a Sumo wrestler, doing his warm-up exercises, when he accidentally passed wind, with such comical force as to blow the hat off a passing girl. 

When the strip saw print, the fart clouds and the 'PARP!' sound effect were gone, proving too much for IPC. Yet the passing girl was still reacting with disgust. They'd changed the intent of the humour from a ludicrously exaggerated fart joke into a scene where we're supposed to think it's funny for a guy to moon at a girl. IPC may have thought this lessened the vulgarity, but to my mind it just made the scene worse. I must admit this did concern me a bit at the time although it's not something I dwelled on. 

Anyway sorting through some old artwork to sell I found the original art of that page today, which reminded me of that incident. Interestingly, the censorship was done with 'patch paper' and the censored stuff is now slightly visible through it (as you can see in the photo above). 

So, to cut to the chase, if you're interested in buying that page, the original is up on eBay this week along with a few other things. All bids are very much appreciated! Auction ends next Sunday, 1st March. See here for the listings:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/graphite47/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

Another Joe King preview

The milk's off! Here's a panel from the Joe King mini-strip I did for the latest Beano, in the shops now! 

Windy day on Wednesday

Here's a preview from this week's Beano and the guest stars in my Rasher strip are two of the Bash Street Dogs! That's one of the great things about working for The Beano. As all of the characters are based in 'Beanotown' they can interact in each other's strips, so we get the opportunity to draw characters we wouldn't usually do. 

UPDATE: Unfortunately this and other mini-strips were replaced by an advert but hopefully it'll appear next week.