Thought Bubble! New Comics! Fun Times!

Here is the cover for THE CURSE OF BARRY STARKEY, a brand new comic by the amazing Adam Murphy and myself, with colour covers by the also-rather-amazing Lisa Murphy, which will be available exclusively from our table at this weekend's Thought Bubble comics festival in Leeds! Which table is that, you ask? THIS table:

Table 61, Royal Armouries Hall! THAT table.

(Thanks to Adam for the handy map there.)

Adam and I are sharing a table this year and we thought it'd be fun to do something new for the occasion, and... this is the result. 

Come find us to check out a copy. Witches! Tentacles! 2 x D20 rolls! THIS ONE'S GOT IT ALL. 

As well as that, I will of course also have a big stack of How To Make Awesome Comics:

and Adam will have a similar stack of the British-Comics-Awards-Nominated Corpse Talk:

So we'll be selling those, and doodling in them, and generally hanging out having AWESOME COMICS TIMES. We're in Royal Armouries Hall, surrounded by other awesome all-ages comics folk like Sarah McIntyre, David O'Connell, Gary Northfield, Emma Reynolds, James Turner, Daniel Clifford and Lee Robinson, and... just loads more, ok? What, you think I have all day to sit here linking to websites? I have comics to draw! COME BUY OUR COMICS. Thank you.

Comics at CBBC Live! BIG Comics.

My esteemed colleague Adam Murphy and I - with able support from Lizzie Payton and Joe Brady of The Phoenix, were recently doing our ambassadorial bit by representing the medium of comics at the CBBC Live event in Newcastle / Gateshead. We ran loads of workshops for kids over three days of the event, worked with countless amazing young artists, and generally had a grand old time. I was doing a bit of this....

...and also a spot of this...

...all in general furtherance of my belief that, you know...

We ALSO took advantage of the kind nature of our hosts, the brilliant Baltic Mill centre for contemporary arts, by basically drawing comics all over their lovely building. And because I am a generous soul, I present them here for you to read!

Here's some festival goers reading the whole thing!

Anyway, that seemed to go quite well, so over the remaining couple of days we decided to have a go at making a REALLY big one. Which I now present here for your enjoyment!

THE END!

In fairness, I told you it was big. Here's a couple of shots of the whole shebang:

Anyway! Lots of fun to do, and a huge pleasure to work with Adam, spending a couple of days writing the story into ludicrous plot holes and then scarpering, leaving the other to dig their way out of it somehow. 

Did you know Adam has a new book coming out? He does! The first collection of his frankly brilliant strip Corpse Talk from the Phoenix is to be published in paperback form, ooh, any day now, but you can pre-order it already! And you absolutely should, because it looks amazing and is highly educational and very funny and honest and, look, I could spend all day gushing about this one, frankly, when what you should really probably do is just go ahead and...

Talking Lost Tales with Adam Murphy

Artwork from Strong Wind and Little Scabs (c) 2013 by Adam Murphy

I recently read a comic so astonishingly good - so cleverly made, perfectly judged, emotional and frankly beautiful - that it took my breath away. I mean this quite literally; I turned one page and GASPED FOR AIR.

It was really quite a good comic, is the point I'm trying to make. Anyway, the comic was called Strong Wind and Little Scabs, and it was by Adam Murphy. You may know Adam as creator of the weekly historical zombie-interview strip Corpse Talk in The Phoenix, and Strong Wind and Little Scabs represents, I am delighted to learn, merely the first entry in Adam's ongoing new series under the umbrella title Lost Tales, in which he will be adapting various strange, little-known or just spectacularly odd folk tales from around the world and putting his own unique and highly personal stamp on them.

Anyway, immediately upon finishing reading, I had  a thousand questions about the strip and, fortunately for me, I know Adam and he agreed to let me ask him said thousand questions. I recorded our chat as a podcast, and you can listen to it here. We primarily discuss Lost Tales, but also take in Corpse Talk and Adam's forthcoming, absolutely-categorically-NOT-for-children comic Fever Dreams, covering such issues as Adam's artistic influences, his goals in telling these stories, the challenges of making a living as a comics artist, and the sheer uncomprehending cosmic horror that is being a child.

If you're remotely interested in creating comics, or specifically in comics for children, I hope you'll give this a listen, as Adam is very much a person worth listening to on those subjects.

 

Link to podcast | iTunes link

(A quick disclaimer: there was a lot of white noise during sections of the recording, I've done my best to clean it up but there are a couple of sections where the sound gets a little fuzzy. Do stick with it, it generally clears up pretty quick and I hope is worth it.) 

Page from 'The Grateful Dead Guy', (c) 2013 by Adam Murphy.

You can learn more about Adam's work on his website, at www.adammurphy.com 

'Strong Wind and Little Scabs' appears in issues 88-89 of The Phoenix, and 'The Grateful Dead Guy' appears in issues 96-97. All back issues are available from the Phoenix shop or through the Phoenix iPad app.

In case I haven't made this clear: I RECOMMEND THAT YOU READ THEM.

Thank you for your time.