There's Still Room For Writers

The strip I drew for the first issue of Rol Hirst's anthology comic PJANG! is now available to view free online. Not only that, but the far superior strips drawn by Tony McGee and Andrew Cheverton are also available for your viewing pleasure.

PJANG! #5

Rol has just published the fifth issue of his not-The Jock-and-not-Escape Committee-but-still-quite-good comic-for-misanthropes PJANG! and the latest issue has a story drawn by myself. It's not all bad news though, as it also features a story drawn by Paul Rainey. You can order a copy for the bargain basement price of £1.75 by clicking on the image below.

Crime and Punishment

Super Smash Brothers Brawl is brilliant. I knew it would be.

For those who might be interested, my Friend Code for the game is 0388 0323 8824, and my Wii Code is 7714 7295 2393 7107.

I've yet to unlock Sonic the Hedgehog, so I can make that mid-90's Sega versus Nintendo rivalry come to life, but I'll get there. I've waited long enough, after all; the game came out in Japan and the US circa 1758, and when it was finally released here last week, my copy was delivered to Meg's workplace and was then promptly stolen. The building CCTV caught the thief, who turned out to be someone from one of the other firms in the complex; the police have closed the case, however, deciding that there isn't enough evidence. That's despite the following in the footage:

Two people walk by the mailbox. Both can confirm the game was there.
Someone walks up to the mailbox, puts something in her bag, and leaves.
The earlier two people return and can confirm that the game was gone.

However, since the camera is at slightly the wrong angle, you can't see what exactly that third person puts in her bag, so the police have decided that they can't press the case. On the plus side, the building owners refunded the cost of the game, since it was stolen on company property.

This week's post also brought a copy of Rol Hirst's PJANG!, and this was thankfully not stolen. I haven't looked back on the art I provided since I finished it, and seeing it now makes me cringe a bit, but that's pretty common for me. I've heard that such a reaction is healthy, because it means you're aware of the faults in your work, and that's a first step to improvement. I hope so. The other two stories are illustrated by Tony McGee and Andrew Cheverton; I'm a huge fan of Tony's work (I thoroughly recommend Angel Nebula, in particular), but I have to say that Chev's strip is my favourite here. Part of that is down to the writing; it's the best of the three stories by far, a sort of revenge thriller with a creepy, almost Clive Barkerish, twist. Chev's art is what really grabbed me, though; I've not seen his artwork in print before, so I don't know if he usually goes for the Mike McMahon-esque style he uses here, but it's a striking approach and fits the unsettling tone of the story quite well.

Tony's work is good too, of course, and the writing in all three stories is as strong as I expect from Rol, but that one story is really good stuff, and easily worth the (very reasonable) £1.75 cover price. Sir Nigel of Lowrey disappoints by only providing a cover, but it's a great one, so I can't complain too much. And thanks for the Death's Head cameo, Nige!

The Golden Age of My Arse

The Golden Age of Censorship is the worst book I have ever read. I get the feeling that Paul Hoffman wanted to write something about his experiences as a film censor, but realised that some limp anecdotes and half-formed musings on censorship and the nature of film weren't enough to carry a novel, so he bolted on a superficial bit of soap opera nonsense in place of a plot. Said plot only starts to get going about halfway through the book, and isn't worth hanging around for, because it's far too thin and useless to be compelling, no matter how much Hoffman blathers on about destiny and inevitability. There's an absurd twist ending that makes no sense whatsoever, subplots that go nowhere, and the majority of the cast are introduced early on, then ignored for the rest of the book, including the two most interesting personalities.

It's entirely possible that Hoffman is being very clever indeed with this novel, but even if so, he's also a million miles away from being at all entertaining. The worst book I've ever read.

Not the worst book I've ever started, mind. That honour goes to The God of Small Things, which was so staggeringly inept that I gave up about eighty pages in.

In other news, today I finally finished the comic I talked about here. Not the "funky comics project", but the one I was drawing for a friend. Which is not to say that it's not funky, because it is, only a different kind of funky to my funky comics project. Er...

Anyway, it's done, and I'm not too displeased with it at all, beyond being horribly late, of course. Rol, for he is said friend, does some big-upping of the strip here. When Rol first gave me the script, sometime around the abolition of the Corn Laws, I thought it was for something he was going to put on his website; little did I know that he was actually going to be printing and selling it, and I had no idea that I was going to be in such august company. I'm not sure when PJANG! will be published, but I'll give it a plug here when it's out.

Oh! And I almost forgot. Or in fact, I did forget, but came back to add this bit later. The other day, I came home to find that the postperson had delivered my copy of the limited edition hardback collection of volume one of The Rainbow Orchid! It's absolutely gorgeous, and if the completed book is half as lovely, it'll be very lovely indeed.