I’ve been ill the past week so apologies for the lack of updates lately. I have, however, been able to finish off this two page How To Date A Girl In 10 Days epilogue. This will be my last auto-biographical comic for the foreseeable future. Enjoy!

Here’s a short, fun one-pager I drew as a post-script to How To Date A Girl In 10 Days. More for those of you who have read the whole thing I guess. There’ll be one more of these little comedic epilogues (set in a comic convention) which I’ll throw online sometime in July.

Old news for those of you who bought the final book, but for those of you who have yet to pick it up, here are a few more pages from the final issue of How To Date A Girl In Ten Days.

If you’d like to buy the comic and read the final pages please click here or visit Gosh! or Orbital Comics.

There will be a couple of fun “postscript” comics to supplement the ending of the book which will be internet only exclusives so keep your eye out for those…

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.

As the final pages of the concluding chapter of the Eagle award winning (sorry, I will let that go…) How to Date a Girl in 10 Days slowly get finished, I thought I’d offer you an exclusive chance to see the first page and a look at how it came together…

The third issue is all plotted out and planned, with notes, dialogue and page layouts scribbled in various notebooks. So the first stage of tackling each page involves a quick thumbnail drawing to work out pacing, beats and basic composition:

Then, I’ll draw a rough version of the page in pencils, with basic shading and lettering:

At which point I can start inking, lettering and putting simple shading washes in. I started cross-hatching any shading with issue 1 but have since made a decision to experiment with this. In issue 2 I relied on scratching Letratone into the pages, with Issue 3 I’m trying a mix of grey brush pens, Letratone, and a little computer interference. Here is what I have by the time I scan the page in:

And here’s the final image:

The rest of the issue will follow soon. Would be good to find out what people think of the new look. Hopefully it remains consistent with the previous issues of How to Date but also shows an aesthetic progression…

So I’m finally making steady progress on the concluding chapter of How to Date a Girl in 10 Days. I should hopefully have some final pages to put up here in a week or so. I’m really excited about this issue and eager to see what you all think. Watch this space!

Like staring in front of a hall of mirrors, wearing a suit made of mirrors, on a planet made entirely of mirrors, eating tiny shards of mirror, which is all being drawn by one giant, self-referential mirror…

And that’s the last preview of Issue 2 that’ll be uploaded before the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing (March 17th) where the whole, whingey relationship saga will finally be unvieled. Come pick one up and save yourself all that squinting in front of your computer screen…