Shoot To Thrill.

If I was a superhero that fought crime with a gun that fired vibrators, my superhero name would be Buzz-Kill. Maybe I’d have a sidekick who fired a double-ended dildo crossbow, too. I imagine she’d be like Carrie Kelley out of Dark Knight Returns, and would have a name like Ass-2-Ass(assin) or something.

I could watch people shooting random things into ballistics gel in slow-mo all day long. It’s more calming than watching goldfish or listening to chill-out music.

Dread Teds.

If you’ve been digging the sinister teddies, sadly, I think this is their last shot. I enjoyed drawing them more then I thought I would. It’s a good challenge to try and take something cute, and make it look a little bit evil. But this is where they bow-out. They belong to fan-fiction now… but hopefully not slash.

I’m trying to decide if I should have a bit of a theme for Xmas again this year. Last year, I just stockpiled Dario Argento movies to watch over the festive period. It was pretty awesome, until my DVD player died around New Year. It couldn’t take all that giallo action and choked like a pretty Italian lady, being strangled by an unseen man in a long overcoat, hat, and tight black gloves. This year I’m thinking maybe horror manga? I used last Xmas as an excuse to fill in my Argento blind-spot. Dead DVD player aside, I think it went pretty well. I think horror comics from Japan is the next blind-spot I want to work on. Been checking out this blog lately, and it’s made me realize there’s a lot of great stuff from there I’m missing out on. Tis the season to be putting that right. I just have to figure out now what’s been translated and available in this country. I kind of had a bit of a early start by reading the first volume of Tomie this week. That chick is scary. Like… really scary. She might be the scariest horror comic-book character of all time.

I need to make some horror pen-friends from around the world. Fellow horror lovers to swap what’s hot in horror in their country with me. Do some international Lovecraft style correspondence.

Cthulhu Breath Redux.

Had to scan a load of comic pages over the weekend, so while I had my good scanner out, I thought I’d scan Cthulhu Breath too. Then I found a spare half-an-hour to do a quick colour job on it on Sunday night. I spent way too long trying to get texture and shade on those tentacles, which you can’t really see unless you zoom in really close.

I maybe gave this sketch a bit more time-and-love then a doodle deserves… but I like it… it’s Lovecraft\body-horror… what’s not to love?

Speaking of sketching, what with finishing up Issue #4 I’ve not really had much time to go about setting up these online sketchbook sessions I’ve previously mentioned. I have brought it up with a couple of buddies of mine, but nothing more then that has really happened. So, in an attempt to try and give it a bit of a kick-start, anybody reading this that maybe wants to meet up online, here’s my G+H profile. I think you have to ’friend me’ first, or in Google+Hangout talk, invite me into your circle (which sounds a bit phallic, I know. Kind of sexy, too, though.) I was going to try and do them as a group session, but I’m quickly learning that getting a small group of people online all at once is like trying to sculpt smoke. I need to start using my Google+ account more, so if you’re a fellow artist looking to hangout (or maybe even a beautiful, bewitching brunette with a thing for comic-book horror artists?) Here’s me making the first move. Come say Hi!

Multiverse

I was going for a sexy Sergio Leone vibe with this panel. Instead of an extreme close-up of some cowboy’s craggy face, it’s a young girl’s face.

Was worried it was all gonna go a bit Final Destination, while walking home from work today. Could hear a weird engine noise which I thought was a car somewhere, but as I walked further down the street, I saw a guy in his sloped driveway standing on some kind of mini-hovercraft. The hovercraft was at the top of the drive with the body facing up towards the garage. All I could really see was this massive rotating fan (the owner was standing behind it, and they were pretty much the same height), the protective-cage had been taken off, so it was just these giant exposed blades going around. I just had this vision in my head of this thing suddenly coming loose as I walked past and coming down the driveway at me as I walked past. Needless to say, I quicken my pace and braced myself to pull an awesome dive-out-the-way jump, should one be needed. As you can tell by the fact I’m writing this, the thing stayed put. But sadly, no doubt, that means one of the me’s in a parallel universe met a tragic, but kind of awesome end today. That’s the rules, sadly. If you dodge it, a parallel you has to bite the bullet (or in this case take a runaway man sized fan front on…) I think about parallel universe me’s all the time. The ones that got the girls I didn’t, or took chances I didn’t take. I often wonder where I come compared to my other many alternative selves when it comes to happiness and success. I’m not even joking… I’ve lost sleep over it.

NOTE: I’m gonna file today’s post under ‘things about yourself you probably shouldn’t share with strangers.’

Cthulhu Breath.

Since we took last week off for Halloween, how about something out my sketchbook this week? I’m a little obsess with artist doing work set in the H.P. Lovecraft universe. From short Lovecraft stories being adapted for comics by amazing artist (The Picture In The House done by Mike McMahon is excellent. And that‘s my least favourite Lovecraft story. I hated that story until I saw the McMahon version.), to Alan Moore’s Neonomicon from last year.

Here’s a quick doodle by myself done in that spirit. I scanned it on my crappy A4 printer\scanner, not my awesome A3 one, but hopefully you can still feel the tentacle love ok?

I know some writers can get a bit bent-out-of-shape over fan-fiction, but I think it’s a massive compliment if writers\artists still want to play and expand your writing and characters long after your death. Means you must have done something very right to inspire that in people. I never count work done by people other than the original writer as canon, but who doesn’t like a good sub-genre of an artist work? It either a golden age for all things Lovecraft, right now, or an over crowed bandwagon, depending on how you look at it.

165 Years Young.

It’s not often you’d find me giving Google a shout out, but come on… today’s Bram Stoker 165^th birthday logo is really cool. No word on who the artist is, sadly, but I think it’s an amazing piece of art. You can read more about this Logo here. If anyone knows who the artist is, I’d love to know?

I’d kind of like to celebrate this special day by watching Dracula 3D, but God knows when it’s coming out in the UK. I have been watching the two clips they put out yesterday. I know a lot of people have written this movie off, but it’s still high on my list of must see films of 2013. It’s got enough in the mix, that I’m still intrigued.

Got a real hankering myself to do some more Dracula themed art. Just got to get the other half of Issue #4 out the way, first. 2013 is gonna be the first year in a while where I don’t have an issue of this mini-series to do, so it’s all going to be very up-in-the-air next year. I can maybe be more of a slave to my whims in this coming year. Which is always fun.

Extra Bait.

I know by now that Halloween is as dead as a Zombie with a bullet in its brain (takes a moment to wipe lone tear from eye…), but here’s one last hurrah for everybody’s favourite morbid holiday. Thought I’d put my three Halloween Ecards together, side-by-side, and post them all together. See all three efforts in one place, as it were. I hope you enjoyed this years one. I noticed, looking around Deviantart this year, that you don’t have to look very far online these days to find awesome Werewolf pics. So for anyone who showed it some love, a big thank you (disapproving head shakes and cold-shoulders to those that didn’t.)

Really enjoyed reading Guido Crepax’s Valentina And The Magic Lantern this weekend. I say ’read’, this books actually has no speech-bubbles. It’s an hundred-page silent story, but I still really enjoyed it. I’m debating whether I should hunt down the Italian 70’s movie or not? I’ve heard both good and bad things about the film. I’m not a 100% won over by the trailer.



I hear the release by Shameless Entertainment has a documentary on Crepax, but whenever I tend to buy DVD just for the extras, they’re nearly always too short, and a massive let down. How many DVD\Blu-rays have you bought just for the extras, only to end up with something like a cheap, five-minute talking-head documentary? I do much prefer Shameless’s trailer, though.