I’m going to start structuring my posts so we’ll have one rant, one art post and one illustrated blog per week. Maybe on Fridays I’ll do the illustrated blog, a little story from my silly life. When Frank can spare the time we’re going to have a new webcomic feature for the Uncle Spunk Nugget comic. I still can’t learn Dreamweaver, I really tried but just can’t.

Here are a few snippets from The Apartment, a new Twisted Tale. I was going to pitch this story as a 28 page book to a US company but manged to squish it into 6 pages with 16 panels per page. I love this comic, it has everything I want in a story; love, revenge, anger, humour….s’all there.

Finally saw Cloverfield, liked it but wasn’t impressed with the Rancor-like monster. I was expecting this lad

Hey buddies! Here are some doodles for upcoming Twisted Tales. I always include a few sketches with each submission and these are a few of them. I’m using a real sketchbook less and less these days which is probably a bad thing innit? I’ll slap up more during the week.

Just bought the new Corel Painter 10. Yes, BOUGHT.

There’s no major new features in it but alot of the stuff has been tweaked. Spent all day Sunday dicking around with it between dipping in and out of Call of Duty online.

Spent way too long on this piece but it was worth it because I learned so much. I could do it in a hour now if I had to do it again. Loads of sloppy amateur mistakes in it but good for my first proper stab at digital painting. I gave up on it before doing the wings and the gun but I’ll definitely finish it. Hi res version here

This vulture dude is part of a comic about dueling robots that I’ve been working on for around 6,000 years. If I can crack the painting skills I’ll be pitching it to 2000AD. I just finished up the roughs for 2 new Twisted Tales and one of them, The Apartment, is my best yet.

And here’s another. All naked rat moles should be killed by mini drones for my amusment.

UPDATE: The Vulture pic inspired my da Papa Peanuts to add a glowing green light to his mouth with his top class photoshop skills. Nutty old fokk.

Just sent off a new 2000AD story. I lost nearly a full page because a file was corrupt and that just wants to make me cry. It’s not the amount of time that you put in that hurts but I always feel that you can never recapture the magic of the original.

I know. Back up your files. I do. But if the file is corrupt, the back up will also be corrupt. I usually save a flat jpeg version of the file as I work but I didnt this time. When I was 17 I worked for weeks on an epic comic called MOTUKA (which will be revamped) and I lost all my colour work because of those shitty Zip disk and The Click of Death. You’d put the disk in and it just started clicking and you knew your work was gone.

I think backing your stuff up online is the way to go. I use removable drives for storing loads of crap and I know it’s inevitable that they’ll malfunction. Man sometimes I hate computers when they start dicking around and question why they just can’t work properly, but then I think, fuck, they work so well 90% of the time that it really is amazing. Same with your body, it’s an awful thing to get cancer but when you think of how complex and fiddley all your bits are it’s amazing that we live so long in relative comfort.

Ahh, things could be worse. Could be a midget being raped by a bull

**UPDATE** I’m away for a week. There are copies of the book available in Crow Corner Comics and in the George Bernard Shaw where the exhibition will be running for a few weeks. Cheers dudes, will get them in the rest of the shops when I’m back.

The above is a panel from a new Twised Tales story for 2000AD. Insects vs Lizard. What could be better?

I used to work in a petshop and I kept lizards for years but it’s something I grew out of. Keeping a living creature in a small glass box for amusement or bragging rights is wrong. It’s a theme that crept into Mr AMPERDUKE.

When I was 19 I was planning to start a large scale cricket farm, food for lizards. The sums worked out but finding a location in Dublin because of the smell, the noise and the very real threat to the local ecosystem if they all escaped were the pitfalls. I’ve heard some nutty and disturbing stories about keeping reptiles, one that has stuck with me is this; a chap had some baby leopard geckos in a tank but he fed them crickets that were too big so the food attacked the residents and ate out their eyes. Horrible.

Another mad one from the petshop; we had these nasty Nechradon-like fish called Arowanas, they’re a big status symbol in Asian communities, I’d feed them all the dead fish each day but it was never enough. I came in one day to see a tank was empty. It had been known to happen that they would jump out their tank, (only one could be kept in a tank) and be found dead on the floor as a thin brown desiccated strip. I looked around and could find him. Then I noticed that he was in a different tank about 3 tanks down the row. He jumped across into another one and devoured all the little gay and happy fish. Every one of them.

Man I could write for hours about this shit.

So the launch is tonight then I’m off to Austria for a week. I’ll put up pics etc when I get back. Thanks to everyone who has ordered the book so far.

Insect,not incest.

Over in Scotland on a training course so I’ll keep it brief. Here’s some new bits from a new Twisted Tales. It’s the kind of story that I just want to read. Insects.
I love them. It’s my porn.

Lovely.

Hewwo chumsters. Being a dope I forgot to plug this weeks 2000AD which features my 6 page Twisted Tales called The Trapper. It’s the best one yet I think. 96 panels of goodness.

Love that artwork. That DRING DRING sound effect looks great. I know, I love my own artwork sometimes, indulge me. It’ll be out of the shops by Tuesday so if you miss it you’ll never get to see it.

Hey hey hey buddies and fwendy bears, one of my new Twisted Tales is in this weeks 2000AD. Got my name on the cover which is big deal for me. Here it is

A bloke in work gave me 1000+ issues of 2000AD in cbr format and I’m working my way through them. Blown away by the early issues, such tight writing and fucking deadly art. Absolutely crammed with goodness and excitement. The modern trend for decompression of stories so that they can get the all important trade paperback out really shows compared to these gems.

Started to fall back in love with Dredd and am drawing him a fair bit now in my doodle time. What a great character.

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.

Hey Darkies! That’s white mans bandwith you’re stealing. Been getting three new Twisted Tales together for 2000AD and to speed things up and to make up for the fact that I can’t draw I’ve enlisted Declan ‘Rimjob’ Shalvey to polish up my scribbles for me to scribble over them again.

Dec is my only friend in the biz really and we’d deffo be pals even if we both didn’t draw comics. Maybe not. I don’t know. He’s a bit light in the loafers. Nah, I love him and he knows it. Check out his blog for which I can take all the credit, some really amazing shit, especially the life drawing. Here’s the first collaborative test. The first row is mine which was accompanied with a text description, the second is Dec’s breakdowns and the last one is me again. Too much tone in it but I was just mesing.

Here’s a funny one, when I went over to him for the Tequila Launch, my story about the kid cheating in the exam was just out in 2000AD and I had named the school ‘Shalvey High’ to give him a shoutout but they moved the Twisted Tales logo over it! I’ll post that page next week. Still have unposted pics from the ill fated Galway signing too which I must share.

Right, I’m off to shit on to a Rusk.