They Call Me The Believer

In four-weeks-on-Saturday (i.e. 7th February), I'll be exhibiting at the True Believers Comic Festival in my erstwhile home, Cheltenham, where I'll also be sojourning for the weekend & experiencing many frightful flashbacks of embarrassing events of my university days.

I'll be sitting behind table G15 (see floorplan above, on which my stall's location is marked with inimitable clarity); my old uni coursemate Michelle 'WolfSkullJack' Harvey will be situated at E11, and behind table K12 will be sat representatives of the Pittville Press (the publishing concern of the University of Gloucestershire's BA Illustration course, in which I played a minor role during its inception).

In other news, I've updated the Killjoy #1-3 'Bumper Bag' discount deal to accommodate those fortunate enough to live somewhere other than the UK; stroll over to my Shop, where you can pick up the first three issues of Killjoy for £7 within the UK, or £10 including international postage. (At the time of writing, £10 is equivalent to approx. US $15.19 or €12.70 - source: http://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/.)

(The title of this blog post is taken from the chorus of John Maus' wonderful song 'The Believer'.)

Conventions Come as Autumn Leaves

As the autumnal festival season* approaches its zenith, I've sent Killjoy #3 off to print before the Thought Bubble Festival convention in Leeds this weekend (15-16 November). I'll be seated at table 74A in the TB Teepee. You can purchase Killjoy #3 via the Shop page; I've also made available a 'Bumper Bag' deal offering the first three issues of Killjoy with a quid off the combined cover price (which will also be available at Thought Bubble).

* I attribute the recognition of this phenomenon of some UK comic conventions grouping in the same few months, and the term 'festival season', to Andy Oliver, who mentioned it in his indispensable Small Pressganged column.

My Funny Valentine

I'm making headway on the story to feature in Killjoy #3, 'Valentine'. I'm particularly enjoying incorporating text from my personal diary of 1996: I'm scanning the original leaves and rearranging the text to combine with preliminary sketches to merge into 'digital pencils' for the final pages (the left image below shows the text as pasted, before alignment - spelling mistakes to be left unaltered). There will be four such pages in the final quarter of the story. I'm making a concerted effort to finish inking this issue with time left to produce a tone layer which should bring a little more depth to the images.

(l) Laying out diary text on pencils, in progress; (r) Pages from Killjoy #3 in various stages of completion

Also, a new review of Killjoy #1 was recently published on the Small Press Comics Review website.

The Two TBs

Although its full redesign is imminently forthcoming, this site has finally shrugged off my go-to adolescent web handle and now bears a 'real' domain name - robertbrowncomi.cz. (The inspiration for the gimmick of the domain name incorporating the TLD* was the website for Terry Cavanagh's brilliant platform game VVVVVV, thelettervsixtim.es.)

To End All Wars is now available to pre-order at Soaring Penguin's website (at a special pre-release price reduction of 25%), and is also showing up at online retailers other than Amazon (e.g. Hive and Forbidden Planet). All being well, I'll be in attendance at a panel event, To End all Wars: The Art of Editing, featuring presentations by the anthology's editors Jonathan Clode and John Stuart 'Brick' Clark, at The Lakes International Comic Art Festival in Kendal this October.

My next official convention appearances will be at Leeds' Thought Bubble on 15-16 November 2014, and at a new event in my old university town, Cheltenham's True Believers Comic Festival on 7 February 2015. To both, I'll be bringing a third issue of Killjoy, containing a new issue-length story, 'Valentine'.

* Edit 11/07/2014: I've since learnt the name of this phenomenon: 'domain hack'.

The Art of War

I've recently completed a piece for To End All Wars, a timely anthology to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the so-called Great War. It's to be released in July 2014 by ascendant small press Soaring Penguin, and proceeds will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). My strip, The Angel & the Hound, was penned by Eagle Award-winning writer Lex Wilson.

The release of the second issue of Killjoy at the Bristol Comic & Zine Fair last October was very agreeable, as was the subsequent Comica Comiket in November. (I didn't really formally announce its release here; hop over to my Shop and pick up a copy if you haven't already. I'm planning to make digital editions available in the coming months.)

My next endeavour will be finally making headway on planning a book-length work (a "graphic novel") and drawing a postscript to my strip for Solipsistic Pop 5 - which is set to go to print later this year, all being well.