Ellis is back today!

 

I had a pleasant surprise today to find that my strip Ellis's Great Escapes is back in the Beano this week! (I expected it to return mid-September.) It feels good to be part of the Beano community again after a long and stressful summer. 

I believe the strip will run until sometime in December. I'm currently working on the ones for November anyway. 

Here's a glimpse of my original art for this week's strip... 

The Beano No.4051 is in the shops now! 36 full colour pages for £2.75. 

Cover art by Laura Howell.

Postman Prat meets Keyhole Kate!

 

It was inevitable that as both of them live in Dandytown that Postman Prat would eventually run into Keyhole Kate on his rounds. After all, she spends most of her time peeking through keyholes, and Prat is delivering the mail so...

The meeting is brief but it's connected to the main plot of a Postman Prat two pager in The Dandy Annual 2021, out now! There are also three other Postman Prat double pagers in there plus no less that eight Keyhole Kate mini-strips! Grab your copy now! 
https://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/the-dandy-annual-2021 

 

New interview in VWORP! VWORP!

It humbly calls itself a fanzine but this wonderful publication is easily on a par with High Street magazines in terms of design and its quality of writing. Vworp! Vworp! is devoted to covering the history of Doctor Who Magazine, and as the latter has been around for 41 years there's a lot of insider knowledge to unearth. Vworp! Vworp! manages that admirably by interviewing as many peopole involved with DWM as it can, including editors, artists, writers, and more. 

The latest edition is a combined and updated version of volumes 1 and 2 in a sumptous 196 page full colour softback book. Vworp! Vworp! isn't published very often (it's been three years since Vol.3 was released) but that's ok because there's so much in the books that they'll take you ages to read anyway! 

Vworp! Vworp! Volumes One and Two Collected includes interviews with Dave Gibbons, Mike McMahon, Adrian Salmon, Tim Quinn, Dez Skinn, the late Steve Dillon, and many more, plus a new interview with me. The interview also shows you one of my original Daft Dimension scripts and the inked and coloured version of the artwork. 

Even putting personal input aside, I can't reccommend Vworp! Vworp! enough. If you like Doctor Who comics, or comics history in general, this is for you!  It's a chunky publication and it comes at a chunkly price (£15.99) but for a 196 page A4 sized book on quality paper that's a good price. 

More info and ordering details at their website at this link:
https://www.vworpvworp.co.uk/ 

Batman in the news

 

With Batman in the news again... or rather the movie version... I thought it might be appropriate to show this page I drew 30 years ago for the Glasgow Comic Art Show 1990. Sergio Aragonés bought the original art in a charity auction at the event so this is scanned from the convention booklet. 

Thirty years on and it still seems relevant.  

Kickstarter is live for The77 No.3

 

The Kickstarter campaign for the third issue of The77 is now live! The brand new Britisgh anthology comic has proved successful enough to go from quarterly to bi-monthly now so this campaign only runs for a couple of weeks. 

 

It'll feature another packed collection of new strips including part 3 of my Sgt.Shouty strip! 

 

Pledge your support at the link below:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/the77comic/the77-issue-3?fbclid=IwAR1qTEVyxB3e9fwEgFqZ2pdam_lcmlnNd2V24IJ9KgZatT-h_aqTuW9Ey5w

 

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First look! COR!! BUSTER BUMPER FUN BOOK

Rebellion have just revealed the front cover to a new collection. The Cor!! Buster Bumper Fun Book will collect the strips from the 2019 and 2020 Cor!! Buster specials into one 96 page package. 

Above is a clip from one of my strips in the book and below is the cover drawn by Edward Whatley.

Cover by Edward Whatley.

No doubt Rebellion will reveal more info closer to publication but at the moment the book is available to pre-order on Amazon at this link:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cor-Buster-Bumper-Fun-Book/dp/1781088640

Ellis is back on the drawing board

 

As you will have noticed, my Beano strip Ellis' Great Escapes was interrupted at the start of the lockdown when the comic dropped all the mini strips to replace them with activity pages to keep kids occupied during the time off school. It was quite a blow at an already stressful time, but the mini-strips will be returning in September and Ellis will be back for another run! 

I'm very pleased to be working for the Beano again after this long and difficult summer. I think this pandemic has affected everyone's mental health to various degrees but hopefully we can emerge as better people. Using our creative imaginations is a good distraction, as is reading the end product, so I hope readers will enjoy the escapism of Ellis' Great Escapes when it returns next month!