...and in other news...

So far this blog is pretty comix oriented (that's gonna change), so here's a video I made starring my partner, the Maharishi Walnut. The band is called The Museum of Love and Mystery, the song is "sub-life".
Obviously comic book inspired, obviously better. I wrote the song, and you can grab it from uscds.bandcamp.com (link opens in new tab/ window).

Do I make comics?

People keep asking me this lately, so the brief answer is "Yes, amongst other things."
Primarily I make collages, both scissors-and-glue AND digital stuff.
Until recently I never thought of myself as a comics-writer/ artist. I published a comic last year (link below), and am putting together an anthology of shorter comics I've drawn, but I draw them at random intervals. I don't plan them, so I have no idea where they're gonna go, how long they'll be, etc.
More than anything I like to play with the format/ concept of a comic, so the final product looks and feels like a comic, but its more a random collection of images...
Anyhoo, the comic I published:

[click the image for outside link]

And there'll be another one real soon - both hand-drawn and otherwise.

A behind-the-scenes documentary!!!

The Making of... : source materials & links

So I mentioned that my chum Tim Harris gave me the stack of comix I am re-working to create The Angel.

We're talking nearly every issue from 1976, so that's aboot 48 - 52 issues - some are missing.

Here's some background on them if you care.

First, according to Pat Mills, first editor of 2000AD (and all-round comics Godhead): 

"In its heyday during the seventies our now iconic Tammy sold 250,000 copies per week, which was more than 2000AD!"

( Check out mighty Pat [[HERE]]. )

I have to say one of the drawcards for me in this project is the artwork in these comics. I didn't know anything about girls' comics so I was quite surprised to see how well they are illustrated. The artists involved obviously dug drawing these strips. (Though some panels look to me like they were drawn for the readers' dads... *ahem!* ... naughty schoolgirl fights... girls in gymnast outfits fighting... etc, etc.)

Now. Here's some background on Tammy c/o wickedpedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammy_(comics)

Some stuff on 26Pigs (comix collector site):

http://www.26pigs.com/tammy/index.html

And a wee interview with one of the writers (as well the source of the above quote by Grand Vizier Pat):

http://www.downthetubes.net/features/comics/tammy/creating_tammy.html

And last but definitely not least, here's what the good Rev.Doctor Tim Harris gets up to when he's not palming comix off to yours truly:

http://www.fengtastic.com/

Look for contributions by Charles Dexter Ward. Fucking hilarious!

FREE download for y'all (or you can buy it)

Okay kids. Here's a free comic book for young and old! It's the first 16 pages of the Angel PLUS the original Angel as well! You can download a free pdf and print it yourself, or you can fork out and buy a nice big A4 size book.
This edition shall be known as Volume 00, Issue 00.
Why should you get it? Well, for one it contains awesome stuffs (duh)! Also, the finished product will be quite different. The pictures will be in a different order, and there will likely be words. So this first (zero-eth) edition is quite unique in the history of this here comic.
Okay, links. (They open in new tabs/ windows.)

• FREE pdf from [[HERE]].
• Buy A4 size comic [[HERE]].

There is a preview version (ie: a little flash animation thingy) at the first link.

The ORIGINAL "Micturating Angel" [2001]

There was in fact a sort of predecessor to this comic. It was a small collage novel(la) I made back in 2001 in one night, and it was called "The Micturating Angel: A Tale of Science and Erotica." I had no agenda beyond making a book in one night.
It's really quite good and I always read it as a story of a man who makes and falls in love with an automaton, but alas!, the Inquisition knocks them out. (That is MY interpretation, you can have your own.) I really liked the idea of the story, so I've been meaning to expand this story a lot further, and once my chum Tim Harris gave me a truckload of old comics to work with - well, here we are. (Though it took a   few years to get started on it.)
Anyhoo, without further monkeying, here's the original Angel.

The Making of .... - p015

Bit of a sneaky-peek into how this baby is made.

I photocopy pages from a comic, blow it up A3 size, then collage it and remove bits with white paint, or make corrections with a black pen. This is what a page looks like before I fix it all in Photoshop (where mostly it's just correcting contrast and removing words).