I, along with Adam Cadwell and Jamie McKelvie, will be teaching comic and illustration workshops during the afternoon of an all-day event hosted by We Are Words + Pictures. It’s on Valentine’s Day. The press release:

Sunday 14 February at the Notting Hill Arts Club

Drop In + Draw 3pm-7pm; £1 (under-12s free)

Illustrators Adam Cadwell, Jamie McKelvie and Tom Humberstone

Illustrators, writers and animators of all ages come together for an afternoon of comic book art and fun. Featuring group-draw sessions, comic-themed activities and one-on-one tutorials, Drop In + Draw is open to all ages and artists of all abilities.

The illustrators coming to Drop In + Draw are among the finest young professionals working in comics today.

Adam Cadwell’s The Everyday is an acclaimed auto-biography web-comic that’s grown a loyal and devoted audience over the past three years;

Tom Humberstone won an Eagle Award – the ‘BAFTA’-esque British comics award – for his How To Date A Girl in 10 Days and spent two months following the US Presidential Primaries for My Fellow Americans with journalist Dan Hancox;

Jamie McKelvie shot to attention illustrating Phonogram, quickly being picked up for work on Marvel and DC titles and working on signature characters like Cable, Robin, Nightcrawler and most recently S.W.O.R.D. His creator-owned series Suburban Glamour will start its second volume in summer 2010.

All will be on hand to offer advice to amateurs, aspiring professionals and kids of all ages throughout the day. Even if you can’t tell Batman from Manbat, or don’t know which end of a brush pen to hold, come on down and we’ll get you making comics.

Here’s the flyer I made for the event:

In the evening, bands take over the stage for the Modern Romance night. Hosted by comedian Robin Ince.

You can find out more information on that and see Julia Scheele’s flyer here.

Hope to see some of you there!

Dan Hancox and I were invited by Sheffield’s literary festival Off The Shelf to give a talk about My Fellow Americans on October 26.

As Dan wrote on his blog:

“It’s 20-odd months since Tom Humberstone and I hitched our way through sub-zero temperatures to see prospective Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama speak at a rally in the snow-caked fringes of Iowa City. Fuck it was cold that day. Few thought it would be possible on 3 January 2008, the day of the Iowa Caucus, but yesterday President Obama addressed the UN about his vision of a multilateral American future, about leaving the Bush era behind, and everyone nodded. Of course he said that; we knew he was going to say that. It’s funny how quickly extraordinary events become normalised. The New Statesman’s myopic, Clinton-obsessed US editor decided (from the comfort of his desk, naturally) Obama was finished within a week of the Iowa rally. Ha.”

We had no copies left to sell, nor did we have any business cards or, in fact, anything to promote our work. In a way, that seemed to be for the best. Equal parts shambolic and noble. The My Fellow Americans way.

It was a great weekend. Many thanks to the organisers and everyone who helped out on the day. There were many moments where Dan and I felt we were getting a chance to relive the My Fellow Americans trip – for which we were grateful. Sitting around in bars, re-reading the book and discussing anecdotes ahead of the talk… there was something very enjoyable about it all.

Of course, we were a little anxious when it came to do the talk. But it went extremely well. The hour flew by. People seemed genuinely interested in our journey. And they laughed in the right places. An hour-long Q&A followed in which we offered as much political insight as we could, and then we headed to the bar to relax before our journey home the next day.

A new experience for the both of us, but one I can see us happy to try again at some point. In the meantime I need to get started on making My Fellow Americans available to download as a pdf. The kindle and e-book readers are the way to go at this point I think.

Due to our nerves, we didn’t think to get any photos from the weekend so I’ve chosen to throw a few from the trip itself on here.

Meanwhile, Matthew Sheret has reprinted one of the blogs with some accompanying illustrations in his mini-anthology Paper Science – which you can pick up here.

There’s also an interview with Dan here – with some of his thoughts about My Fellow Americans and grass-roots reportage.

… and relax.

I’m slowly recovering from the Alternative Press Festival last weekend. Both events (Collaborama on the Saturday and the Alt. Press Fair on the Sunday) were fun and roaring successes but I, as always with comic shows, found the entire thing exhausting. It hasn’t helped that I’ve been ill recently, but I also just find the process of selling my own work emotionally and physically tiring. That said, Jimi, Peter and the other organisers behind the five day long festival put on a wonderful show so a big thank you and congratulations to them for putting it all together. Long may the Alternative Press Festival live.

It would also be remiss of me to mention that while I love to moan about my relationship with comic/zine shows, I also end up coming away feeling vindicated, encouraged and inspired. There were a lot of great zines and comics available throughout the weekend which always makes me feel the need to work harder.

My favourite thing though, is that handful of people who stop by and offer feedback, or support, or just some wonderful conversation. I had some genuinely lovely chats with genuinely lovely people and it really makes that day of watching-people-judge-your-work-and-nonchalantly-walk-away go a little bit easier. Thanks to all of you who came by supplying me with much needed respite and sorry to that one person about the mistaken Canadian accent – I’ll never live it down.

During Collaborama on Saturday all exhibitors were asked to provide a page or two of art for an A5 zine that would be compiled by the end of the day. The very talented Footprint Co-operative folks then took that artwork and printed it. They had red and black inks so I decided to draw a secondary tone on separate sheets of paper to get the effect you can see below. I think it came out well. The pages were drawn very quickly and inbetween peddling my wares to unsuspecting passersby so bear that rationalising caveat in mind when reading.

I picked up a few comics when I got the opportunity to wander away from my table. My recommendations: Browner Knowle by Paul Ashley Brown, Dancing Eye and  Your Filthy Jesus Christ Made These Tits by Mark Oliver, Tight Fit edited by Sarah Duncan, Powered By Robots by Julia Scheele, and finally Nose Picking and Beard Book by Sarah Gordon.

Since Sunday I’ve been getting some orders for books people weren’t able to buy on the day and I’m now totally sold out of My Fellow Americans. If you see Dan Hancox prowling the streets of Dalston you may manage to get a copy from him but I think he is similarly low on copies. We won’t be going to a second printing without a publisher but it’s still possible to read the unedited blogs we produced while on the road here. I’m also looking into making a PDF and Kindle friendly version for e-book owners.

My next comic is a short, entirely fictional, story which will be around 6-8 pages long. I’m so excited about it and really looking forward to doing nothing but working on it this weekend. However, I doubt it will be ready to upload on here for about six weeks at least. I’ll continue to post illustrations and sketches and any further news here but this blog may be a little light on new comics for awhile. Brace yourselves accordingly.

I decided, on a whim, to print up the recent work I’ve been doing for the 69 Love Songs Illustrated project in time for the Alternative Press Festival this weekend.

The prints, I’m glad to say, turned out very nice indeed. The extremely limited full colour A3 prints will be available from me during the Collaborama (Saturday) and Alternative Press Fair (Sunday) events for the modest price of £2. There will only be 30 of each print so get there quick! I won’t be selling these on the website.

So the San Diego Comic-Con, the largest comic convention in the USA, is happening. The con gets a huge amount of coverage by the comics press due to the amount of big announcements that are made during the five day event. Among the news: Supergirl is wearing bike shorts under her skirt. The comic industry is failing to boycott the homophobic Hyatt hotel. Marvel have acquired the rights to the most famous unread comic – Miracleman. The Eisner winners were announced (congrats to Chris Ware and Nate Powell for their awards). Further developments with Longbox. Etc.

Next week sees another five day comic-related event happening right here in London: The Alternative Press Festival 2009.

The Alternative Press Festival 2009 begins on Wednesday 29th July and runs to Sunday 2nd August. You can read about all the events that have been lined up at their website here.

I’ll be exhibiting my comics at the Alt. Press Fair on the Sunday but also taking part in Collaborama on the Saturday.

What is Collaborama? Here’s what the organisers say:

We hope you’ll join us at the Collaborama (as we’ve affectionately come to know it!) an all day event which will comprise many elements of the small press coming together. Tables will be set out in the main space downstairs at the miller for zinesters, comix and small press creators to exhibit their work. There will also be space where any combination of visitors and exhibitors can get together to create pages which will be used to create a zine of the day. The garden will have a barbeque and the upstairs space will be used for workshops, film screenings and talks. In the evening Resonance FM’s Radio Orchestra will be performing a piece written by Ed Baxter which will be interpreted and illustrated live by two teams of small press artists on overhead projectors!

For information on venues and times, check out the Alternative Press Festival site. Hope to see some of you there!

TCAF

It’s a little belated (which isn’t my fault!) but I thought I’d write a little about my experience at TCAF this year.

I was lucky enough to be given a shared table with Becky Cloonan in the massive Toronto Reference Library to which TCAF had moved after 2007’s UOT location. Becky was a lovely table mate and her work is definitely worth your time – I’m sure I caught a lot of secondary trade from the long queues waiting for her to sign their books.

The weekend went incredibly well and I met a lot of lovely people during the show and at the after-parties. Thanks to everyone who came and bought something or just said hello.

When it came to Sunday afternoon I realised I’d agreed to be a part of panel talking about studying comics at university. I was ridiculously nervous about it beforehand but by the time I settled into my seat in front of the audience, I managed to descend into my ‘rambling bore’ mode and somehow got through the hour by never shutting the hell up. Ross Campbell and Lucy Knisley joined me and I think/hope we managed to cover a wide spectrum of options, opinions and advice for prospective comic artists. I’m glad I did it and think I might even be less stressed if I ever agree to do another talk.

Among my favourite picks over the weekend were my Michael Cho print, Lucy Knisley’s ‘Pretty Little Book’ (absolutely wonderful – make sure you pick up ‘French Milk‘ as well), Taddle Creek’s comic issue, pretty much all of Tom Kaczynski’s comics, and… well… let’s stop there shall we? I could write several blog posts about the amazing comics that were on display. Inspiring stuff.

A huge thanks to Chris Butcher for inviting me again this year and organising what is possibly the best alternative comics festival ever. Of course, a gentlemanly hat-tip to everyone else who made the event such a success, including all the delightful volunteers – some of whom I feel I should hire as my agents, such was the vigour with which they encouraged people to check out my stuff. It’s possible they just felt a bit sorry for me…

Pen Club TO

I spent a few days after TCAF hanging out in Toronto with friends. As always, I had a wonderful time. Below are a few sketches I doodled in various patio bars, Future Bakery (which is where the Torontonian Pen Club is held), and wandering around High Park.

Here’s a photo from Pen Club. Also pictured: the Oreo cheesecake I had. A foodstuff fit for gods.

Post TCAF press

My visit to TCAF is briefly mentioned on about.com (I was tired. It was early. Excuse the photo) and there’s an interview with me conducted by Pen Club founders Cton, Steve Wilson, and Aaron Leighton on Open Book Toronto.

Hi. Sorry. It’s been a while since my post. Which isn’t entirely my fault… On top of my laptop having a nervous breakdown before I went to TCAF, I’ve been having problems with WordPress – which seemed to decide, on a whim, that it would delete any new posts I wrote the second I clicked publish. I’ve lost a couple of long, in-depth blog posts this way but – fingers crossed – I think I’ve finally managed to sort it out.

These annoying technical problems have been even more infuriating for me than they usually would as I’ve been preparing to use this blog a lot more frequently lately. I’ve decided I tend to use it simply to advertise new events I’m organising or show off new work. Which isn’t explicitly a bad thing, but I’d like to write a bit more too. Use this blog the way it should be used. I have a few pieces I’ve written for other sources that I’ll be posting here, alongside some new thoughts I’ve been having about various aspects of the comic industry – so keep an eye out for all that now that I’ve got a working computer and blog…

Comics for sale

In the meantime, you may have already noticed images of my books down the sidebar of this blog. Clicking these will take you to the individual pages for each book where you’ll be able to order them. International orders are slightly more expensive due to postage I’m afraid. Of course, if you live in London you can still pop into Orbital Comics and save yourself the postage costs. I’ll also try and drop a few copies into Gosh! today. Those of you wondering where Art School Scum is will be interested to hear that the fourth (and final) printing is now sold out. There are maybe two or three copies in Orbital but otherwise it’s gone. More about this and why I won’t be printing it again in a future post.

Book launch pics

A couple of friends who came to the book launch gave me these pictures which I thought I’d upload for anyone who’s interested. The exhibition of my original artwork has remained in Orbital all month and will be taken down at the end of tomorrow so stop by if you haven’t already. Thanks again to everyone who came to the launch. Those of you who didn’t make it are dead to me and shall never be forgiven.

(photos by Rachael and Chloe)

First off, I’d like to thank everyone who came to the book launch on Friday night.

I was my usual stressed bundle of nerves as expected. But I was genuinely touched by the amount of people who came and the night was incredibly successful, pleasant, and enjoyable. This is mainly thanks to the wonderful staff at Orbital Comics who kept everyone in drinks and stuck around after hours to help out.

At some point soon I’ll find a bit of time to blog some photos from the evening and take copies of the comics to all the London comic shops.

For now, Orbital is the only place with copies. I’ve already restocked the sold out first batch of books for those who couldn’t make it but want to pick up a copy. Those of you looking to order them online may, sadly, have to wait until I return from TCAF before I can focus on getting that side of things ready. But bear with me.

On the subject of TCAF – I’ll be making my way to Toronto tomorrow morning in preparation for the weekend of comic book goodness. I honestly haven’t seen such an amazing line-up of alternative and independent comic creators like this before. I am beyond excited.

Check out the current line-up here.

I’ve also been asked to be part of a panel discussing the pros and cons of studying comics at art school. This will be on the Sunday afternoon. Hopefully I won’t embarrass myself:

1:30pm-2:30pm: Going to School For Comics

Are there benefits to going to an institute of higher educated in order to learn… comic books? We’ll meet several graduates of art, illustration, and comics-specific programs who do comics, as they talk about their experiences in art school, and how they’ve applied them to their comics career. Panelists include Lucy Knisely, Ross Campbell, Ginette LaPalme, Tom Humberstone. Moderated by Douglas Wolk.

Check out the rest of the impossibly impressive schedule of events here.

You can also read a short interview with me (and several other attending artists) via Toronto’s National Post here.

I’ll be hanging out in Toronto for a few days afterwards – hopefully catching a Toronto Pen Club and attempting to sneak into the Scott Pilgrim sets. If you happen to be in the area and want to say “hi” (and possibly other, preferably encouraging, words) during TCAF, please do!

That’s right, I’ve sent the files off to the printer and I should have the books back within a week. Before I go to TCAF with the collected How to Date a Girl in 10 Days and Everything You Never wanted To Know About Crohns Disease, I want to have a small London-based book launch (considering what How to Date is about). Orbital Comics have kindly obliged:

Book launch

Friday May 1st from 7.30pm

@ Orbital Comics, 8 Great Newport Street, London WC2H 7JA (gmap)

With music, drink, original artwork in the gallery, and a chance to get your copy signed.

Print out the flyer (above) to ensure entry on the night.

“I’m a 33 year old man in a stable relationship and am about as sensitive as an extra-safe condom. How To Date A Girl In 10 days reminds me of when I wasn’t – when fear of boys with guitars, of meta, of balloons, of everything filled my life and made it worth living – or, at least, made it the life I was living and I knew damn well I didn’t have (or want) a choice. It’s full of blessed friends who know nothing, blessed friends who are righter than you’ll ever be and blessed, blessed London. It’s funny and true and necessary.”
- Kieron Gillen (Phonogram)

“Touching, awkward, funny, a beautifully drawn slice of real life.”
- Leah Moore (Wild Girl, Doctor Who)

Also available on the night: the printed edition of Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Crohns Disease

“I thought it captured perfectly that discomfort/fear/anxiety that you have in the back of your mind in social situations”
- Jeffrey Brown (Unlikely, Little Things)

“This is a truly great comic and a real achievement”
- Paul Gravett (Graphic Novels: Stories to Change Your Life)

For those outside London or unable to come, the books will be available to buy at TCAF and then from my website (which will undergo a redesign) upon my return. I’ll also be announcing a couple of new projects around this time.

A few images from the exhibition I have at the new Orbital comics store in London. Also a couple of pics of the store’s new look on the night before the launch. I believe my artwork will be part of the store’s gallery space until the end of February.