Despite being a very small time comic artist I get a fair amount of suggested collaborations. When I first started drawing comics I had a couple of bad experiences with collaborators/writers so for ages I stuck to the one man band formula.

This year has been great for meeting decent like minded writers, Brian Kenny (writer of "20/20 Vision" available in the Shiznit #2 download on this site) emailed me first during the Summer and has since become a valued friend and ideas man. The other success story is Cian Hallinan, writer of Clown Syndrome.

The title alone nearly sold me on the project but Cian's sharp writing and direction sealed the deal.It makes things so much easier when a story is laid out properly with everything broke down panel by panel. So if you're sending me an idea for comic lay it out properly.

Cian also provided detailed character biographies so the character design only took a couple of tries. Below are few of the sketches, ranging in different styles and from good to downright shit.


After settling on the character designs, I roughed out the comic and put in the text to see how it read. It's always important to include the text in your rough because a common mistake made by aspiring comic artists is to neglect to make room for the speech bubbles. You can see from the roughed and inked versions that very little changed which is a rare thing. I colour my stuff in Corel Photopaint, fuck Photoshop, Corel is the king and all the nay-sayers are invited to try it out before dissing it.



Stay tuned to clamnuts, www.oxygen.ie and The Spanner for more.


On a completely different note: Check out Looking for comedy in the Muslim world

Jesus Christ, the trailer for this vaguely rascist film made my good/bad opinion meter swing from both ends of the spectrum around ten times.

'Aw this looks deadly! Very sharp'
'ah, here...'
'No it looks good!'
'What the fuck? Looks like Cool Runnings'

Check it out and see what you make of it, I'm confused.
http://wip.warnerbros.com/index.html

Yes, Wanderly Wagon was shit.

If I heard this a few years ago I'd be incensed, just like alot of people who are reading this are now but hear me out.

Nostalgia is dangerous to your better judgement. Rose tinted glasses and hindsight being 20/20 and all that. In your mind Wanderly Wagon is great and there's nothing wrong with that, but as a quality, entertaining kid's show it doesn't stand up.

Wanderly Wagon ran from 1968 to 1982. Can it's shitness be forgiven because of it's vintage? Not at all, The Flinstones debuted in 1960 and the Banana Splits in 1968, same year as Wanderly Wagon. Britain ran dozens of decent kid's shows earlier than '68 and don't get me started on Japan, not only were they excelling in animation, their live action adventure shows, some of which first aired in the 50's boasted better special effects and production values than RTE's more recent efforts.

I know what you're thinking; BUDGET. Yes it's true RTE's budget was nowhere near as big as NBC, Toei or BBC but lissen dis; it ran for 14 years and was for a long time the only kids programme on the books so money isn't at fault. Look at the Morbegs, plenty of money available there and its beyond crap.

I've seen the Lambert Puppet theatre show twice, once when I was 9 and then when I was 19 and both times it was unimpressive. All due respect to the Lamberts, they try their best but how can they ever impress adults or kids when the whole world has been exposed to the magic of Jim Henson? Even watching it as a kid I knew the puppets were lame.

Maybe we are so protective of Wanderly Wagon because its an exclusively Irish 'institution', up there with Panky bars and Richy Kavanagh. Nuff said. All shit. RTE let us down badly with childrens entertainment, I can distinctly remember watching Forty Coats in a friends house when I was 7 when his older brother came charging screaming 'Turn that gick off! Thundercats is on BBC!' To me that sums the whole mess up, BBC had Thundercats while we had Forty Coats.

Wanderly Wagon is now out on dvd. If you want to re-live your crap Irish childhood go ahead. It was shit. And if you still hold it close to your heart be advised to let it stay there in your warm deluded brain and never speak of it again.

Chiggedy check this out! I was skimming through a book on Hitler yesterday when this image jumped out at me. This is young Hitler compared with Dewey the little cute kid from Malcom in the Middle. Heh!

Last week I was up in the local Centra, queuing up to pay for my Maltana bread. Two girls around 14 or 15 were on front of me, the cashier scanned all their crap and then one of the girls asked for a packet of Rizla. The Cashier who is an aulwun says 'Sorry girls, do you have ID?'

Yep, cigarette papers can only be bought now if you are over 18 apparently. That's fucking crazy! I'm sure some young legal dick could make their reputation on this one. Cigarettes and smoking tobacco kill, we all know that, but a packet of skins? Whose to say what a person is going to use them for. Legit and innocuous uses I can think of are:

1-It's a known thing among people who camp or go to festivals that you can wipe your arse with one finger and a few skins. If you're laughing you've never done it.

2- I went to school with a girl who used eat rizla, she'd chew on them like a pack of gum

3-Use a pack of skins to wash your face if you've woke up after a rough night away from home, try it, rub a skin off your nose and look at all the oily gawk that comes off.

By this logic you should need ID to buy tin foil lest you smoke some Gack off it.
Where will it end? Diabetics taking blood tests at the sweets counter? IQ tests to prove you
really are a thick cunt when buying The SUN?

I'm not even going to think about tampons on this one.