SPIRIT OF HOPE!!!

Just in the middle of a nightmare house move, but I wanted to take a few minutes to promote the Spirit Of Hope charity comic that I'm proud to be a contributor to.

After the terrible Japan tsunami and New Zealand earthquakes occurred, The Comic Book Alliance reached out to the professional comic community, and the end result is a beautiful comic anthology featuring stories and pin ups by 92 creators to be released in June, with proceeds going to Japan charity Second Harvest, and the New Zealand Red Cross.

Readers here will know that I have wonderful memories of Japan, as Tokyo is where I proposed to Niki last November. The illustration I donated is at the top of this post.

The book will have two fantastic covers to choose from, also seen at the top of this post. You can order it online from The Comic Book Alliance here, and find more about the book from the Facebook page here.

I've seen the pages myself, and you won't regret it ordering it.

Take care,

L

LONDON MCM EXPO 2011 THIS WEEKEND!!! (Updated)

 Helloooooooo.......OK, so even though I'm smack bang in the middle of moving house, I'm still coming to this weekend's LONDON MCM EXPO!!! Not been for a couple years and really looking forward to it.

I have my own table in the Comic Village for Saturday, where as usual, I'll be doing free head sketches and giving grooming tips. On the merchandise front, I'll have some copies of the original Defoe collection ( still awaiting Book 2 out in October!), BUT ALSO I've permission from the great THARG himself to do limited edition prints of some of my favourite 2000AD covers!

Each A3 print is on shiny, shiny card stock and limited to only 25 copies, priced at £10 each, all signed and numbered by me. Once you buy it, you're free to frame it, or glue it to your chest, or eat it in a sandwich....up to you!

The three new prints are as follows.....

2000AD prog 1643(click for info)

2000AD prog 1709(click for info)

                          
Defoe 1666 Book 1(click for info)

On Sunday I'll be spending the day at 2000AD's booth and may do one of those big ass drawings to give away in a raffle. (See the recent SFX Weekender post for an example!)

Also on Sunday, I've signed up for the writers vs artists Pictionary contest at 3pm, where astonishingly the artists have NEVER won! We shall see about that....

(Not really, I'm crap at Pictionary...)

There's a link to the floor plan where you can find me HERE.

See you there!
(UPDATE: Afraid the print quality isn't really what I'd hoped on some of the prints I just picked up, so I'll just have a handful of them to sell this Saturday, sorry.)
L

MAKING OF A DREDD PAGE THAT DOESN'T HAVE DREDD IN IT!!!!!

Hey guys,

Sorry for the wait on these. You know how it is: you start looking in the mirror at "The Most Handsome Man In Comics", and before you know it, two weeks have gone by! Weird...

OK, so here's the making of one of my favourite pages from the two part Judge Dredd story, "What The Hitler Saw" that I worked on from the recent 2000AD Prog 1729. As you know by now, it all starts with a script. This one by the very beardy Al Ewing....

Next up is my VERY rough layout. What I like about the opportunity to work on Dredds is that I'm allowed to go wild with the compositions on my layouts, as opposed to the strict panel grids I use on Defoe. I think this layout works well depicting the sense of struggle between the chubby bloke and the Hitler lookalike.

 No reference photos on hand to show I'm afraid, so here's the pencils....

 Yup, you guessed it, inks...

 And here's a scan of the final printed page with colours by the lovely Eva De La Cruz, and lettering by the seductive Annie Parkhouse (I've never met Annie, but I'm guessing she is.)

 Another post coming up in the next couple days about a piece I did for a Japan charity book coming out soon.

Bye bye.

L

NEW JUDGE DREDD STORY OUT TODAY!!!!

Helloooooooo.....

Ok so in this weeks 2000AD Prog 1728 begins the two part Judge Dredd "What The Hitler Saw", written by beardy Al Ewing, art by me, lovely colours by Eva De La Cruz, and sexy letters by Annie Parkhouse!

It's bloody great to have another crack at Dredd! I'll do a making of a page post soon, but for now, there was a nice surprise hidden for me on the first page....

 A closer look at the credits box....

 Finally proof of what you've known all this time, but were too afraid to admit....

(A big kiss to 2000AD's Simon Parr!)

GENRE FOR JAPAN CHARITY AUCTION!!!

Hey guys,

Busy, busy, busy here at Gallagher Towers (or spare room in an end terraced house) working on stuff I'll blog about soon.

But in the meantime, please head to the Genre For Japan website, whose charity auction begins tomorrow! You can bid for cool items as varied as signed books, having your manuscript critiqued by an editor, or even appearing as a character in a novel!

I'm contributing the prize of your favourite 2000AD character drawn A3 size (black/white, single character, no background). Item number 99.

The auction ends on Sunday 3rd April.

As you know, I got engaged last November in Tokyo, so I'd really like this auction to go well!

GO BID!!!

L

THE LOVECRAFT ANTHOLOGY!!!

(Cover by Ben Templesmith)

Hey guys, 

Here's a nice surprise I got in the mail! The 120 page Lovecraft Anthology Volume 1!

It's an interesting side job I took on last year for Self Made Hero, illustrating an 18 page version of H.P.Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", adapted by my old, old lovely friends John Reppion and Leah Moore.

Definitely different to my usual style, I was asked to do this in colour. I've only ever coloured covers for 2000AD, so this is my first fully coloured strip, so be gentle on me.

As well as our adaption, the book features another six stories, all told by incredibly talented creators, and they are genuinely all fantastic, making a really nice package.

The official launch of the book is taking place on 15th April at the H.P.LOVECRAFT REANIMATED event, held at London's The Horse Hospital.

So ask for it at your local comic book store, book store, or find it online here!

And look out for a feature about the book with interviews with myself and other creators involved, in next months Judge Dredd Megazine.

Here's a few teaser panels....

THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW ROYAL MAIL STAMP!!!

Right, here we go....hope you've been to the toilet, because this is gonna be a big one...

So today sees the launch of a new Royal Mail stamp collection based on famous stage musicals throughout the years. As you can see, one of them is based on The Rocky Horror Show poster that I did bloody ages ago! How cool is that?!

I should add that the very cool Return To The Forbidden Planet stamp was drawn by my fellow comic creator friend, Garen Ewing (creator of The Rainbow Orchid), and you can read all about his Royal Mail story HERE.

Oi! Back to me! So anyway, folks in Britain can either purchase the stamps separately for 97p, from all good Post Offices, or there's also a variety of collector packs also from Post Offices, or online here for everyone else!

So how the hell did a bloke like me get to have his work on an official stamp that's been approved by The Queen? Well I'm very glad you asked.....READ ON!

Waaaaayyyy back in 2005, in the days before I was known for drawing zombies for 2000AD, I was recommended by my good buddy, John Higgins, to Shaun Webb Design--quality graphic designers and all round lovely people. They were after a new version of a poster for the return of The Rocky Horror Show. Shaun had a very clear idea of what he wanted for the poster and submitted this mock up for me...

 Here's the initial pencils....

 This is the inks for the girl. The background was drawn on a separate layer to allow them to move elements around easily. This wasn't the final version of the face...

 Here's the first crack at colouring her, though we decided against the flat colour style and later went for a more blended airbrush approach. Though I do actually like this version....

 I lost track of the number of alternate faces we tried on her. It got to the point where I'd rubbed out and redrawn her so many times, holes were appearing on my paper. Here's just a couple. One, not pictured here, was so bad, I swear it looked like a sex doll....

 This is the separate background. Such a shame the final version didn't use all the cool Berni Wrightson esque machinery on the top.

 And here's a scan of the final poster!

 We later even did a cool Christmas version of it....

 And as a special bonus because you're all looking pretty today, here's a few panels of the special comic strip I did that was in the collectable brochure...

This was a show that toured the entire country. I was jumping up and down like a girl when I saw it on the side of a bus in Oxford, and it was such a great day when it came to Liverpool and a bunch of us went to see it...

So that's my tale....6 years later I got a lovely call from SWD ( who I occasionally still do the odd job for) telling me that it was being turned into a Royal Mail stamp. The moral...?

I don't care! Just get my stamp! ;)

L

PIMPING MY FRIENDS ASSES AGAIN!!!

Yup, just to show that I'm a kind, selfless, sexy individual, here I am once again pointing you in the direction of a few of my friends new projects....

First up, is Geek Syndicate's very own Barry Nugent. The Nuge wrote a best selling supernatural adventure novel called "Fallen Heroes" that has just been adapted into a comic book series (with further spin offs just announced!)to be launched at Cardiff Comic Expo on 26th February and is accepting pre orders NOW. 

Barry's a good guy, a talented writer, and an incredible dancer, which is why myself, Emma Vieceli and Andie Tong all contributed exclusive pin ups to be include in his first edition.

Trust me, Barry's fought through a lot of crap to bring you this epic, and he and his creative team deserve to come out as winners, so check out his site here!

Next up is Andrew Wildman and "Horizon"-- a graphic novel about " love and loss, fear and freedom, a toy robot, and VERY big robots!"

Andrew's a guy with a big heart that I first met on the Draw The World Together campaign, of which he was the Big Kahuna. He's also an incredibly talented creator, most known for his art on Transformers!

Now he's writing and drawing his own graphic novel, but is using this site to collect funding, in return for lots of cool perks! Please check it out! I'm excited to see what a guy like Andrew can achieve when he cuts loose!

Finally, I'd like to pimp the lovely ladies Iz McAuliffe and Stacey Whittle of The Megacast podcast, a spin off show from the equally great Everything Comes Back To 2000AD with Rich and Flint.  Everyone involved in both these podcasts go above and beyond supporting 2000AD with professionalism, humour and talent, that quite frankly puts  actual paid radio djs to shame. And we love them for that.

But the reason I picked this particular episode, is that the girls have recently interviewed my Nemesis: fellow 2000AD artist and professional midget, PJ Holden.

PJ and my other buddy, writer Si Spurrier, have recently debuted an excellent creator owned series called NUMBERCRUNCHER in the JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE that you should definitely check out.

Towards the end of the interview, the girls very kindly asked PJ the question I had submitted:

"If you were in a terrible accident, and the only key to your survival was if I donated either the top half of my body, or the bottom half of my body, which half would you choose to live with for the rest of your life? Bare in mind that both halves requires daily hair maintenance..."


PJ's answer was unexpected, yet commendable, and I decided to illustrate it for your viewing pleasure...

SFX WEEKENDER 2 REPORT!!!

Ok, ok, I'll admit it: I was a little apprehensive about returning to Pontins for this year's SFX WEEKENDER...because y'know....it's Pontins.

But, guess what? I had an AWESOME time! The convention itself had ironed out most of the kinks from last year, but what made it truly great was the company I was in, the fans we met, and all the new friends we made. 

Too many to name (you know who you are!), but a big manly hug to the Rebellion/2000AD/Abaddon Books family (Keith Richardson, Pye Parr, David Thomas Moore and Jenni Hill) for having me along again this year, and just being you!

Obviously I want to thank the entire SFX team for putting on a great show. Seriously, it takes balls, and talent to create something that cool out of, well, Pontins...thanks guys!

Things I learnt:  I want Geek Syndicate's Barry Nugent and David Monteith to teach me some of their above average dance moves...

That I wasn't the only one that took half an hour to figure out how to turn the shower on.

And I never want to see a certain well known writer in his underwear ever again.

Now....PHOTOS!

The Weekender opened to the incredible music of A.C.D.C as the fantastic Area 51 entertainers recreated the opening scene of Iron Man 2, with one of the SFX Magazine team as Iron Man welcoming everyone to the show!

The 2000AD booth, shinier, prettier and sexier than last year, with designer Pye Parr and graphics novel editor Keith Richardson making it look a bit camp.

The first of the Weekender's big ass drawings I did. This one being donated to the charity auction held that day, along side cool stuff like an actual Doctor Who Cyberman helmet, and a day at the SFX offices. And yes, I'm wearing a hat...

This beardy man is fancy pants 2000AD/Abaddon Books writer Al Ewing, pointing at a half eaten hot dog. Al actually wrote the two part Judge Dredd story ,"What The Hitler Saw" that I recently finished drawing, out in 2000AD come April.  We're all posing with the second big ass Dredd pic I did, that was later raffled off.

But then incredible artist Clint Langley turned up, and made me look bad by doing this gorgeous Nemesis piece...git.

Here's the winner of Clint's drawing! Ah, It's nice when it's a kid. Hopefully he'll be the next generation of 2000AD fans.

And this fine man is the winner of my Dredd! Remember: Take care of my baby, or I'll shave off all that lovely long hair whilst you sleep!