Ah yes, how sweet it is. My life has taken a series of well deserved major good turns over the past while and then to top it all off I find out that DEVO are playing this summer. This is unreal. They are in my top 5 favourite bands and I had sort of resigned myself to the fact that I’d never see them. The three bands that I’d give my left nut to see would be Dead Kennedys, The Clash and Devo and although I saw the awful new Dead Kennedys it doesn’t count.

They’ve been a big influence on me and several references to DEVO pop up in my comics. That SHRIVEL UP comic in MBLEH gets it’s name from one of their songs and then there’s this:

The cwazy thing about them though is that I HATE alot of their stuff. Sweet sufferin jaysus, some of their later material is woeful. But I suppose you can only be pioneers for so long before you end up second guessing yourself. And that recent DEV0 2.0 nonsense is just callous. But I still love them dearly despite all this and can’t wait to see them live and hopefully buy a proper energy dome so I can get rid of my homemade one.

The Freak Show launch was deadly, thank you one and all to all the strangers who bought me pints. Dec’s new Freak Show bumper edition came out on the day, just delivered straight from Ivan’s which was another highlight. Looks deadly. And here, look at the cover to the Your Round comic that I contributed to, really is amazing and it will definitely stand out and do the biz.

Seeya later spuds

That spelt right? Conundrum? Had the files open yesterday of the cover because I was doing an ad for Your Round. Still haven’t settled on a cover design for Mr. Amperduke so I scooped up 6 possibilities. None of these are by any means finished but it gives a fair idea of what I’m thinking. Which way to put the Lego block facing, how much blood, which colours etc. I fucking hate designing. Really I do. It’s gay. There’s just too many options. Can we not just go back to Fuzzy Felts? I’ve worked as a ‘designer’ now for years and still find it a massive pain in the toast.

So I’m interested in seeing what everyone likes or hates on these. If you have any ideas please let me know or bang me a mail if you have a design/colours I can rip off. Thanks chickeys.

Don’t forget, this Thursday, the 26th, Freak Show launch and signing in The Sugar Club.

Yo yo yiggedy yizz-lo. Haven’t put any old fashioned rants in a while, will definitely rant it up next week. Rushed off my feet and
up to my womanly tits with a ton of stuff these days. So here’s some loose bits.

Two bits done for my bro and the fine gentlemen over at Irish Battlefield 2

Rogue’s Gallery

Ninjoid. Hopefully the next big project after Amperduke

Sketch for a fan. Yeah, you heard me. I have fans.

Another wacom video. God I wish I knew about the screen capture thing earlier because I do a warm up doodle everyday. Don’t always end up good or finished though. Done this one on Saturday, ‘Two little Hitlers’ by Elvis Costello was playing on the pc so there we go.

Just finished up a 6 page story for a new anthology called Your Round. It’s been published by clamnuts regular Dec ‘Fishburger’ Shavley. From him:

Your Round is an anthology series set in a pub. Any pub. Everybody has a pub story, Your Round is where creators can tell one. The first issue, ‘Tequila,’ has 3 stories. One by Mike Collins (artist on Doctor Who, Superman, Star Trek, etc.), another by Bob Byrne (of Mbleh, The Shiznit and 2000AD fame) and one more by myself.

My contribution is a real life story from 1998. A crazy night that really did change my world view. I think Dec is getting a site together for it. Also, lissen diss: Vote for his comic HERO KILLERS in the Eagle awards or else I’ll scweam and scweam and scweam. Come on lads he’s a good mate he deserves some props. It only takes a minute girl. It’s in the Best Black and White British (ha!) Comic category. You don’t have to vote on everything. Vote here

Ps. Vote for Sancho and Matt Smith for best editor (2000AD). That man has great taste.

Hewwo pals! Got a free screen capture thing and here’s my first recording. It’s a warm up sketch of my all time favourites. It’s a lifelong dream of mine to do a Turtles comic, that and to take over Spy Vs Spy when Pete Kuper dies. Hey, it was lifelong dream to get into 2000AD and be able to rip a phone book in half and I bagged them so who knows? Listen to me boasting! I have to smear vaseline on my monitor to squeeze my inflated ego in these days.

So blaze up a number and put the sound up:

Sweet Jaysus I drank a 2ltr bottle of coke for some reason today and I’m all jittery. The amount of caffiene in that shit. And you see kids drinking it, babies! Not good.

Here’s a promo pic I done for my book. It was a giveaway for The Den, it got a mention on it a few weeks ago. It’s the first physical pen on paper illo I’ve done in ages. Of course it had to be a real drawing if it was a giveaway, it’d look great if the winner just got it on a disk (with some flarn). So I done it in pencil, scanned it then inked and yesterday morning I inked it digitally as part of my daily warm up doodling. The inked version took around 45mins and I timed myself on the digital version, 12 minutes boyeeez. Ahhh, the Wacom is the fuckin biz. Shiznit 4 is all digital except for the cover which was scanned pencils and then inkified with Painter.

Was saying to Bonzo Bonham last week about going digital and he, like so many others gets all cranky at the thoughts of it. And as I’ve said a million times before, I was reluctant to make the change until I heard Brian Bolland doesn’t use real ink an’mo. Yeah it is cheating a bit but when it saves 3 to 4 hours out of your working day….

The Freak Show comic I done sort of fell through the cracks between changing over the blog to Wordpress and oh I don’t know, my whole life being ruined by Jabba the Slut.

So here it is, my first full colour ‘proper comic’. Set in 1950’s America, a detective agency headed by disgraced ex-cop Jack Dixon goes to DizzyLand to solve a mystery. It’s all very Scooby Doo. It’s different from the other Freak Show stories as it’s a stand alone episode/one shot special and is drawn badly. It was a personal triumph doing a comic completely digitally and one that featured humans. I should have pushed Rob (the writer) to do it with Lego people.

Freak Show is Ireland’s biggest selling and longest running comic. It launched the international careers of Stephen Mooney and Stephen Thompson who now work for the big companies. The current artist is my bum chum and recent Shiznit contributor Dec Shalvey and I’m sure he’ll be snapped up like the other two.

We’re all doing a signing for the launch of the third collection edition at Sugar Club, Thursday April 26th, Doors open at 8.
with live music from The Sensors and Miriam Ingram. I’m sure they’ll be doing Freak Show sketches too, I’ll leave that to the lads but if you want me to draw you a crap looking monster by all means I will.

So pick up a copy if you’re in town, Sub City is the place to go. It’ll also be available to buy through here soonish too.

An in depth showing off of how I made the comic here