Hash, blow, dope, Uncle Franny's zlorkle, all popular names for eh...hash. The past week or so that's all I've been thinking about. It's bad enough being subjected to the general shit standard of Dublin hash but even worse than that is not being able to get it.

Sweet Fuck it's a terrible situation. I'm not even a big smoker, a one-skinner a night is all I need after wrapping up the comics. I don't know, is it symptomatic of just growing up and losing touch with all your bogey mates? I just feel stranded up in the new house, when we were living in Springfield there was enough traffic of young dodgy looking lads walking past the house that I could get sorted from strangers.

At night there'd be a gang of kids 16-19 hanging around a wall looking sussy, I'd put on my disguise and storm up to them as I if was going to shoot one of them. It's all about playing the odds, I've done a fair bit of teenage wall loitering and if some older dude came over to us, a group of 5 or 6 knacker kids, you'd listen to what he said. It's the same dangerous mob mentality that would cause them to brick you walking across their field that would also cause them to go out of their way to oblige the grim faced desperate smoker. I presume it makes them feel older or something.

The hash disguise. A hat and a smoke. I'd get all Batman and put a scar on my face if I could. The hat takes the general gay nerd look off me and the smoke is an invaluable prop, add an old Umbro jumper and there you go. Keep one hand tight inside the coat to give it the extra flavour. Put some parsley on your chin for a bit of garnish.

Getting back to the availability and quality thing, it's a tired point about the availability and general dangers of alcohol but it da troof. Looks like home growing is the way to go, I reckon I have the patience to do it right. But it's overkill. I just want a good old fashioned score block mailed out to me every week. I met a dude who used to get Pringle tubes full of grass sent over to him from South Africa. That's the way to do it. When are we going to get Wonka-Vision? Bang over enough for a spliff in an email, heh then your front room would be full of tins of spam.

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Been working on the FREAK SHOW special the past few months, originally a 'summer special' but thanks to my tardiness it's now just a special. I really struggled with the first few pages as I've haven't drawn 'real' people in......never. Got a handle on it and have finished the inks and am now half way through colouring it.

It's looking good, click em for larger versions, still a bit of tweaking needed.





Freak Show is Ireland's longest running and biggest selling comic. The Special is a self contained 20 pager printed in full jayis colour. Penned by Mr Rob Curley who sez:

It's main focus is 50's Americana in all its diverse forms from B movies, McCarthy paranoia and the red scare to detective noir and the corrupt underbelly that lurked just on the edge of every decent apple pie loving home

Indeed. My main man Dec 'Aswad' Shalvey is now drawing the second volume and it looks top notch so far. I've done my Freak Show all digitally and what a learning curve that was, I only had Corel Painter 9 a few days when I began work on it meaning that I had to redraw alot of the stuff recently when I had figured out what I was doing. Next one will be quicker ( I swear Rob!).
I hate lettering and usually hate colouring but the cols on this have been enjoyable. I'll post a mini step by step of the whole process after the comic is out.

Heh looking at the second page now and just realised how much the bottom panel looks like Castle Greyskull

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Oooooooooo what’s that sound? Sounds like frantic backpeddling to me. Nah, here’s the thing, having received a call from Mr Mannix Flynn about a few posts I have on this site, I’ve agreed to remove the offensive and damaging ones

But as far as the larger Arts Council thing goes I have no regrets. Wankers.

He’s extended the hand, said that he likes my work (when I’m not slandering him) and offered to meet so I’d be a complete and utter cunt not worthy of anyone’s attention or respect if I declined. I definitely want to hear his side of the story. More on that when it happens.

It’s not the first withdrawl I’ve made on this site, I got an email from a friend of Topper Headon’s asking me to take down my post about him as it was damaging and I complied. Don’t get any ideas Bono.

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In other news Steve’s porn.ie story is getting major press attention. Big write up in the Sunday Times. It’s really gathering momentum and I feel a LiveLine appearance coming on! The article featured the worst example I’ve seen in a while of what Scratch said about Photoshop now being used to lash together cheap in-house graphics instead of commisioning an artist. My scanner finally realised that it should have died years ago and did on Sunday so no image but I’ll get it up this week. That scanner was 7 years old, time to make a little cross out of ice pop sticks and dig a hole.

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