CHOKER #3 And THE WALKING DEAD #69

Here's the CHOKER #3 cover in all it's glory. Yes, I have a ton of progress shots and commentary, but they'll be in the back of the actual book before anywhere else. Remember, being a smaller indie book, you have to make sure your friendly local comics retailer is going to order a copy or two in. Tell em you want one and that it's order code is: FEB10 0391



And CHOKER #2 should be out in March. If you didn't already make sure you're getting a copy in it's order code is: JAN10 0458

Remember, the books don't magically show up on the shelves unless it's something like Spider-man or Batman. The indie stuff you really have to make sure you ask for in advance so they know to get a copy or two in. Yes, tis a hard life. Cue the violins. Always has to be noted though.



Huge thanks to Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard for letting us have a wee little CHOKER #1 preview in the back of Image comics THE WALKING DEAD #69 ( My favourite issue number of any book! )

WALKING DEAD is out next week...not that you guys wouldn't know that, since TWD is such an insanely popular book and rightly so. Huzzah!

A President For Haiti

Not only are Obama, Clinton & Bush doing things to help out Haiti but I figured Zachary Taylor should get in on it too. You all remember him right? Ol' "Rough and Ready". First President never to have held an elected office before, last Southern President until Woodrow Wilson, a Southern slaveholder who opposed the spread of slavery to the new territories. killed by a bad case of gastro after 16 months in office. Interesting stuff!

Anyways, I did an art/info book on all the US Presidents up to Obama. ( I don't have any copies to include with the piece so you'd have to buy a copy, sorry ) I've only ever sold or given away a very few of them but I put Zack up on ebay with 100% of the profit going to the American Red Cross to go some way to doing something for the devastated people of Haiti right now...but let's hope after the catastrophe too, something like a stable country can one day emerge from that horribly poor part of the planet. The history of Haiti is a sad and tragic one.

It's watercolour on letter sized paper.

Original Art!

If you're ever wondering where some of the bigger pieces of original art I do go, ( I get a bunch of queries so hopefully this takes care of a few in the future, ) like covers and stuff as much as the regular comic pages, all the WFH ( Work For Hire ) things generally get sent ( eventually, heh, as I am slow at mailing complex packages! ) to Mark Hay over at www.splashpageart.com who handles all those sorts of projects. ( not to mention a bunch of other great artists, my section being here, ) Just sent off a big ol' package to them and here's a few things I included. Amongst the things, GI Joe art from the Baroness one-shot I recently did, Some Dead Space, Groom Lake, the proper big painted Dracula cover I did and a ton of other works. You can contact Mark direct here if you want to try and get anything before it eventually goes up on his site.





Apart from the few bits and bobs I whack on ebay, I generally keep most of the more personal art I write and draw myself and much of the creator-owned work ( my precious babies that they are, ) are things I hold on to as well but bring a few pages of to cons and maybe, will have on the new online store that'll eventually be up. More on that later.

Could Have Died+Acting Role+CHOKER=Strange Week

2010, you are one big bloody tease.

Teasing me with death in car accidents.
Teasing me with acting roles I cannot take.
Teasing me with some bloody nice numbers for CHOKER #1 ( Cheers all! )

And that's not even covering the interesting Hollywood type stuff that is potentially going on that obviously, I'm not saying anything about here.

So, probably one of the weirdest weeks of my life. ( We're going to call it a week because it's all within the space of 7 days. Hell, technically it's not over yet, shush. )



Last Saturday me and m'lady survived and walked away from an SUV running a red light, hitting us and pushing us into another lane, hitting that car too. Airbags went off, we got thrown around like lies on a Fox News TV show and all the buttons on our dashboard got popped out. First real major accident for both of us. We both have the bruises with colours you should only see when you do too much acid.

Certainly makes you happy to be alive & live to the fullest. Now more than ever I'm determined to do what I have to do. Also, I had a religious epiphany in the moments of the accident. I'll be doing artist renditions of exactly what I saw later, of what the Squid God told me, how it saved me and how I must spread his tentacled message to all those of the false religions.

We probably wouldn't have been so lucky were it not a Mini Cooper, with it's raft of glorious safety features and excellent ratings. If you get a chance, buy one. The SUV came off second best against my little tank.

Here's pictures of how it looks now, in the cold light of day. Not bad for having an SUV T-bone us and we still walk away *relatively* unscathed I'd say.











Already, dealing with insurance have come to realize the US way of doing things has apparently been invented by people who must like drinking from a chemical toilet. It makes little sense, is hugely inefficient and overly complex but hopefully, since we're most definitely not at fault, we'll not be too out of pocket. Hell, why should we be at all? A new car would be spiffy, thanks.

Not to mention what the US laughingly calls 'health care'. Even with insurance, it's more bureaucratic and costly than anything I know I'd experience back home. Should I have anything really actually wrong with me, no doubt I'll do a Barry Windsor Smith and be on the first plane home to get it fixed properly. ( Read it, it's shameful what happened. )

A couple days later I get an offer to star, *as myself*, in a US TV ad for a major corporation. Yes, they wanted to link in comics to what they were doing. Which is not only fantastic in itself but apparently I won't scare the little old ladies tooo much to exclude my mug from being a spokesman.

I had to turn it down.

Filming was outside of the US and I can't leave until some immigration stuff is processed. It nearly killed me worse than the SUV. In brighter news, hopefully someone even better gets the role and is a bit of a face for comics to the masses and more power to them. I'll have another, slightly smaller acting role in something else later this year I'm not allowed to talk about yet.

Then we get initial numbers on CHOKER #1 ( you know, that new comic I'm doing with Ben McCool...right? Riiight? ) Numbers are awesome and in the top level of what I normally do. Many many thanks to all who've ordered so far. There's still time before FOC I do believe so if you want in on one of the more interesting comics for the year, take note of the flyer below. Order code is DEC090342. I'll harp on issue #2 soon enough because you can get that now too. Retailers, if you want to see a PDF of the full first issue to see how you'd feel about #2, just ask Image and they'll sort you out right proper. (Or I can to. ) Preview of a new special retailer variant cover to the first issue below.



Next week, off to LA a little bit for some interesting hollywood stuff.

Oh and officially, there's no room at the inn already, our house will be completely packed with guests for San Diego Comic-con 2010!

New Wormwood on PSP

Am told there's new Wormwood books up online for the Sony PSP today.

Among them, the ONLY book you should get first...if you've never tried Wormy... THE TASTER. I'd wanted it to be free for new readers but apparently that's wishful thinking on my part as the creator I guess. It's .99 cents, which is still cheap. Give it a go and see if you like the madness. There's 3 graphic novels worth if you do.

Other than that, the rest of IT ONLY HURTS WHEN I PEE is now up. All these books btw, come with a little added extra audio commentary from some Australian bastard, ie ME.

Dracula cover prelim

Found this in a pile of stuff while looking for something else! Quick painting I did up to see if I could get the pose right for the actual Dracula cover done for the IDW version of Bram Stoker's book I did illustrations for.

And yes, I whacked it up on ebay.

The Ben Templesmith FANCY PANTS group takes shape.

Ideas for....things...for my spiffy new Facebook FANCY PANTS group. Yes there will be dedicated things just for it. I now acknowledge I need to be on FB. I gave up resisting.

Car Accident.

So tonight instead of a bit of food and a movie, we got T-boned, along with another car, by an SUV driver who ran a red light. ( luckily there were multiple witnesses. ) No major injuries ( that we are aware of ) just a couple bruises and aches probably tomorrow. Could have been a lot worse really. A LOT worse. I/we could be dead. Quite happy to be alive. Not everyone gets to be when SUV's ( or moron-mobiles as I call them because *most* people don't actually need them except for "status" or inadequate genital size, ) run red lights...

Here's some rather bad pictures that don't really show the full extent, but no corner of the car is left undamaged and luckily, a mini cooper is made of strong stuff, with the airbags and other safety features doing everything they should have done. Never been happier owning a decent made vehicle compared to the cheapy crap...definitely paid off. Always been mindful of the features on the mini so rather chuffed at that. Weirdly, none of the windows were even smashed, just a spider pattern on the windscreen.

Further proof I guess, that living in car dependent cities indeed sucks for so many reasons! Cities with functional public transport look better by the day, when you consider the probabilities on car accidents vs bus/train/plane stuff really. At least to me. Kinda miss the UK/Australia now for yet another reason.

Oh, and for the religious among you, the One True God, the Giant Space Squid definitely saved my life. All the tea and brownies paid off. Obviously, my religion is now validated.

Beginnings of a new picture

A little something... Wormwood.



Oh yeah, apparently I'm twitter famous now.

Apparently my twitter is noteworthy enough to get a write up in a new twitter directory print magazine ( which seems a little oddly backwards to me but hey, it's nice to be included ). Just had to share some pics of it. Cheers to whoever it was that thought I was worthy enough to be included. If I'm a celeb that means Paris Hilton can act?

Wormwood Apparently Goes Insane on PSP

Well, I didn't see this coming but as of right now, my wee little book Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse is the number one comic on the new Sony PSP Comics thing. Both on the UK store *and* the US store. These are stores that have all the usual big, licensed properties too, you know, Marvel stuff, 2000ad and what not.

So consider me blown away. Cheers to anyone who bought it!

Got sent these via some twitter followers who also broke the news to me...see, proof!

The UK store.



The US store.



Mind you, I owe huge props to the UK PSP guys who are doing the whole operation as they've really been promoting the book on site too. Pretty much more promo than the book usually ever gets apart from my rantings. Hopefully, the price point remains 0.99 cents US, and the special #0 one-shot issue ( The TASTER as it's even called ) will be made available for FREE to further entice those of you not yet familiar with the books to give it a stab. I have been informed though, that SEGUE TO DESTRUCTION doesn't meet the legalesey content requirements ( Something to do with the Pope masturbating to young boy-love magazines, who knew? ) so that issue will probably never be up, alas.Understandable though.

Is it huge news that indy books can have such success in an online format vs the known "staples" of the comic world? I'm not sure. I have no idea of the figures behind the actual rankings etc though I'd be keen to know. I'd guess numbers are still relatively small at this point.

And yes, here's the obligatory links to WORMWOOD:BIRDS BEES BLOOD AND BEER and the next arc, WORMWOOD: IT ONLY HURTS WHEN I PEE is now starting to go up as well. Also, like the last arc, with some rambly audio commentary from me as something a little extra.

If you still prefer the print editions, I'm happy to say at least for now, they're in stock over at places like Amazon. Here for Volume 1 and here for volume 2. They even have a few copies of the special hardcover Deviant edition, though I know for a fact it's down to minimal copies everywhere.

I should have some sort of iPhone news sometime soon too.

An odd confluence of events...

I don't actually tend to regard what I do as all that great. I've even 'gotten in trouble' in the past for giving honest opinions on my own work but hey, I'm one lucky SOB that enough of you nice people *do* seem to like what I do, which I'm hugely thankful for and hope never to take for granted! I still prefer to try and be my own worst critic though. It's a good day indeed when I really truly like a piece of art I've done.

But over the holidays, I realized it was apparently the end of a decade and duh, a new year anyway, so everyone started making those list things, and apparently my name or work came up a few times, which made me thoroughly chuffed. It's not about awards and crap like that, who needs them ( unless I win, then forget I said that ) but having your name brought up enough times is definitely some sort of sign you're on the right path hopefully.

So cheers to io9.com for thinking 2 of my covers are worthy enough to be in their top 100 for the decade! Aintitcool.com reckons 2 books I did are the best ( or almost ) of the decade and Newsarama apparently thinks I'm worth watching this year for some reason. Horribly honoured when people say nice things about me since...well...most of you see what I write on twitter!



Oh yeah, after listening to me waffle on, here's a work in progress shot of the special cover to CHOKER #1 just for the Emerald City Comic-con.

If you want to see more, I'll have a 'how I do the art' section in the back of the book, not online!

CHOKER PEEK!

Quick shot of a half finished CHOKER page... more to come in the lead up to issue 1 hitting stores in February.

Dracula & Doctor Who ( Not uh, together )

Capitalist whore that I am, I put a few new things up on ebay.

This was a frontispeice basically for the actual Dracula book I did illustrations for.




Basically some character roughs I did up as prep for starting the DOCTOR WHO: THE WHISPERING GALLERY one-shot I did.

Since Tennant is gone, I can also lose this and not feel too bad.



And Martha Jones!

Welcome to the Madness.

Not all the dates/events are final yet. Mostly though, am looking at adding even more. The things I do to help give CHOKER, the new comic mini from Ben McCool and I a push! I'm not going to be home much at all Feb-May it seems.

Yes, I am insane. By hey, it means you might get a book signed and have a chat and I'll get alcohol poisoning somewhere along the way, so we all win.

VARUS

My new company. Well, my old company, I just legally changed the name late last year. I've used the corporation for over 6 years now but this year I plan on kicking it up a notch and delving into some other areas. Expect to see this logo within all my books and maybe on some other stuff!

And yes, PTY LTD is aussie. Stands for "propriety limited". Which is the same as being fully incorporated in the US. Makes things like taxes much easier.

Varus. Roman Governor. Tax collector. Bit of an old tit. Militarily, ended up being rather incompetent and failed to subdue the new roman province in Germania.

So naturally, I'll associate myself with it.

Actually, think of it more like trying to conquer new frontiers and make them financially beneficial for myself? Hmm.