Where’s Amperduke? Where’s Shiznit 5? How do you get jizz stains out of a Communion dress?
These are the questions I am constantly bombarded with. So here’s the beefio, I’m busy with other shit. I’m now working 5 days a week and have a bunch of paying gigs and favours to do. I usually could squeeze an hour here and there in work but lately I’ve just been doing non comic work. Don’t draw as much during the week too as real life tugs at my sleeve, But fuck it, I’m happy.

So Amperduke is completely drawn, the delay is working it all into book form. The cover is a nightmare but I think I’ve nailed it. The launch is mid Janurary. Cover price is looking to be 15 EURO.

So here’s some of what’s eating into my precious dossing time in work.

My boss and dear friend Paul. Uncanny likeness drawn from memory. Uncanny.

Another workmate had a kid a week after Paul.

And a robot for good measure

Have to re-do this now that I’m better at drawing. Made this when I was 19ish and it was a struggle. A struggle. Jaysis they were dark days. Didn’t even own a computer so I’d visit my Da and use his in dribs and drabs, then it was coloured arseways in Corel PhotoPaint.

Ah well, it’s the only way to learn innit.

Drew this when I was 13. Such talent.

I drew a fair few comics in school and once even in detention, how rock and roll is that? Only got detained about 12 times during my school career and usually it involved copying numbers out of a phone book as punishment! Some teachers let you do you your homework and some didn’t care just once you were writing and not talking. My mate Bill used to write these hilarious stream of conscious things where he’d just write shit like the lyrics to Kriss Kross’ Jump. ‘Because I’m the miggedy miggedy miggedy miggedy mack yall, yes I am the miggedy miggedy miggedy miggedy mack’.

I’m beginning to soften when I think of school but then I remember that I hated the kip. Had some classic moments though. The day one of the students punched the head off the Vice Principal being one. The place going on fire was another.

STILL scannerless so I cant post my 24hr comic day thing. I’m putting the two of them and a few other yolks into a book and publishing it through lulu.com for the buzz. Ordered a Graphic Novel from lulu and the quality really is deadly.

Here’s one page from it taken with the digicam.

I have an animal new pc but I need to put a new operating system on it or something, going to get back into the screen recording.
Here’s a youtube gem:

Here, what the fuck was up with John Waters getting 3 seperate articles and the cover of the Sunday Independant? 2 x 3 page articles and then one in the main paper. Hate that shitty paper anyway, I have nothing against Waters but enough with the dick sucking! Journalists writing about journalists who will reciprocate by plugging each other’s books on my dime. I hate it.

Busy little bear today so here’s a quickie, these are some of the cards I’ve made people. My first paying gig was making greeting cards, ended badly though. I know Crumb started out doing card illustration too. I got a mention in the last Judge Dredd Megazine
as ‘Ireland’s R Crumb, Bob Byrne’. Sounds good to me!!

I’m such a dope, I only read his stuff about 2 years ago and really should have checked him out sooner. I’ve copied the way he does speech balloons.

For Yvonne’s new job. Chalk and pen

Chalk and pen

Diggy-digital.

Working on a few new ones for new babies and a wedding. Blammo.

Fuck Dublin Bus in the ear. Pack of wankers going on strike. Yes, it discommodes me that I can’t get into work on time but what about all the poor grannies who have to get to the Hospital to have their cyst drained or whatever? It just dumps on any good will we have towards Dublin Bus.

Completely stupid. If they want to strike AND get the public behind them, just operate as usual and don’t take fares. It’s simple as that.

Geebags. Inbred geebags who spit when they talk and watch Fair City while eating a crappy Gateaux cake from the 80’s.

Made this when Corel Painter was new and exciting. Ah it still is really. Havent got the new version which has a Divine Ratio tool and some great new bits. I’m so ignorant that I never heard of that theory until I saw it in Painter.

This Kick the Cat was for a collection of the comics that appeared in the rose tinited, wasn’t everything better during the Blitz, piece of over-rated gick free sheet aka The Slate.

I think the textured paper is akin to using lens flare now in terms of entry level dicking around with a new programme

Mew.

Yes.

A strange topic to bring up here but it needs to said. I’ve been watching it and enjoying it for 3 weeks in a row but when I hear people talk about it I want to slap them.

I’ve found myself watching telly on Sunday nights again and I like the programme. But this is what kills me, their ad libs and wacky stories are rehearsed and contrived and it should be glaringly clear to most people but it’s not. I said it to a bloke I know and he just couldn’t accept it.

The hosts have freely admitted that they rehearse and write their lines and loads of the stunts are phoney. Look at this, the famous Reliant Space Shuttle stunt and it’s fake explosion.

Now again I’m not dumping on the show just the fuckwits who take whats presented on screen as fact and not as the silly but enjoyable pantomime it is. They admitted that this caravan scene was pure fake and it even got a mention on Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipes as a prime example of this kind of shit.

This was described to me by a friend and he was so sucked into the whole thing. It’s worrying, that perfectly normal intelligent people don’t know when they are being played. I don’t think I’m stating the obvious with this one.

Top Gear is now followed by the Long Way Down which is 3 lads on bikes followed by around 500 support people in a convoy behind them and it could do with some of the Top Gear fakery. It’s SHIT!! Where’s the challenge or excitement?

Bring back the Crystal Maze.

Don’t believe the hype.

Around the mid 90’s, Poncho was big into Image Comics. I read more than my fair share of them, Youngblood, Spawn, Savage Dragon etc. They were enjoyable reads but after a while my main reason for getting my paws on any Image title was to see if Rob Liefeld had any work in it. I was already well aware of his weird proportions, stiff composition and ludicrous plagarism but it took Poncho to point this out to me:

Rob Liefeld can’t draw feet.

It soon became an obsession, going through all the back issues , sometimes laughing, sometimes in awe of his ability to structure a frame or a page layout so that the feet are truncated or obscured.There was one classic page where Cable is standing, and everything looks good till your eyes reach his feet where a German Shepherd conveniently sits, a feet blocking German Shepherd. Here’s exhibit 1. Check these, my favourite one is the X-Force cover with Juggernaut, that dodgy looking cloud of yellow smoke rids the artist of any annoying forshortening.

And when he HAD to draw feet, they usually looked like this……….

And his figure drawing sometimes threw away all the rules and invented new ones. Check out the scale of these characters standing beside each other, and that Captain America is just silly looking!

But I honestly admire him. For somebody to reach such heights in any field with an obvious flaw should be admired. And the further I rank in the biz the more I respect him. Yeah, he’s a hack but so am I. If I waited until I was 100% competent before getting into comics, my first published work would be out in 2056. Plus in the recent ‘Liefeld attacks Alan Moore’ scandal I take his side in alot of points. That’s for another day.

So hate Liefeld if you want. But he’s sleeping sound tonight while you shuffle around the comic shops like the scrud that you are, talking about Kevin Smith and wearing some lame t-shirt, pulling the underwear slying out from the crack of your arse and when you get home you sniff your finger and it still smells. And this makes you happy.

Just sent off two new Twisted Tales to 2000AD and they are doozies. Really happy with them. My favourite is one called The Trapper which has a fair bit going on in it, revenge, benevolence and the duplicity of man. Here’s a pic of the grizzly old dope himself

Again, these stories are all told silent with no words, THE WAY COMICS SHOULD BE!!!. I ‘ve just finished an interview with a lad doing a media project where I spout all my lame theories about silent comics which I’ll post next week if he has it.

The next one is called The Prisoner and this is the one that Dec did the breakdowns for. First time we’ve worked together since we held down that lad and smeared— can’t talk about that here.

That’s a pic of the nasty little brats at the centre of the story. I used old school tones on this one and it’s a sweet looking effect. Don’t know when they’re running but I’ll put a post when I know.