Happy Easter / Hail Satan

Glasgow comic artists ruin their own career by giving away work for free.

Alternative Taking Flight cover by Garry Kelly

Well, it's free if you know where to find it. Otherwise you can actually buy Taking Flight by Garry McLaughlin and Stephen Sutherland in physical formats from the Laser Age Comics website. Here's their rationale behind seeidng the book on Demonoid:

Okay folks, here's an update on 'Taking Flight':

The coloured version is with UKomics for printing, and will be available to purchase at the QMU Comic Mart on April 7th. After that, it'll be available to purchase online, and we'll try to get it out there a bit further afield.

The comic is also currently being seeded on Demonoid. Recently fellow GLoW member and Glaswegian comics creator Gordon Maclean found his brand new comic 'No More Heroes' was being pirated on Demonoid. Rather than wail and gnash his teeth at this, Gordon decided to turn it to his advantage, and has received a lot of press from comic sites and blogs, interested in his take on this fairly new and emerging situation for indie comics creators.

This is something I've been thinking about for a while - is it better to clamp down on this and try to prevent piracy? Is it better to just allow it to happen and make the most of it? Or is it an idea to just put it out there yourself and see what happens?

Stephen and I aren't in this for the money, and from previous experience, I know that it's highly unlikely we'll make any profit from the comic - we're doing it because we love making comics, and because we want to get our stuff out there, increasing our skills and exposure in the hope of getting professional work at some point.

So 'Taking Flight' on Demonoid is *not* pirated, it is a genuine, free torrent, direct from the creators. Of course we'd love for those of you who know us to buy the comic if you can, but if you want to trial it, or if you have no intention of buying it, feel free to download it.

No, I'm not providing links. You'll have to go out there and discover it for yourself. This is an experiment that could backfire on us slightly, but so far, 95 people globally have read 'Taking Flight'. In two days. That's more than ever read any single issue of the Year of Fear titles. And we're already getting constructive comments and dialogue from those readers and it's significantly upped the traffic to the website, www.laseragecomics.co.uk, which is great.

Whether you do decide to buy or download your copy, we'd be interested in hearing from you, and why you went for the decision you did.

Meantime, if you want to pre-order your colour copy, head over to the website now.

Frank Gettin' Telt

"Frank Miller is someone whose work I’ve barely looked at for the past twenty years. I thought the Sin City stuff was unreconstructed misogyny, 300 appeared to be wildly ahistoric, homophobic and just completely misguided. I think that there has probably been a rather unpleasant sensibility apparent in Frank Miller’s work for quite a long time."

Does anyone really think Miller is anything but a scared little geek trying to act hard? Look at his feart wee face, mugging for camera:

You should read the whole interview.

"It’s a completely justified howl of moral outrage and it seems to be handled in a very intelligent, non-violent way, which is probably another reason why Frank Miller would be less than pleased with it."

Excellent Grant Morrison interview

Over at the Mindless Ones comics blog there's a brand new, exclusive interview with Grant Morrison, ahead of the release of his first proper book Supergods (enough of this comics shite now, eh, leave that to the kiddies). In it Grant talks about being a fake gay, the arrival of superhumans in 20 years, the upcoming reprint of Flex Mentallo, ending his beef with Alan Moore (aww!) and much more. It's most definitely worth a listen - here.

Best Of The Best Of The Best Ofs

CBR's Robot6 have compiled a list of the best "Best ____ of 2010" lists.  Robot6 have compiled a few of their own too, including one a few days ago, "The Best (american) Covers of 2010". Seeing as they've included Shallow Rave's super-best-friend* Frank Quitely for his stellar work on AllStarSuperman, it seemed worth a mention. Banter(of limited use) can also be found on ComicsAlliance.com, in the form of a worst of 2010.
 

Seeing as this is the future and all (ONE YEAR LEFT!!!!) and you clearly have internet access, here's a webcomics best of from Mad Ink Beard for the paper-free among you.

*shit's legit.

Axe Cop - A Superhero With A Badge. And An Axe.

You may already know about the chap to the left. His stories have been up for a while. The last day or two I've been absorbed by the action packed adventures of the unquenchably bad-ass officer of the law known as Axe Cop.

With an ever mutating, rotating and warring cast, Axe Cop reads like an alternate universe Jerry Bruckheimer writing comics without an editor.

In reality it's the debut project of writer Malachai Nicolle, with help from his more experienced artist brother, Ethan Nicolle.

Malachai and Ethan take us on a jam-packed journey of righteous crime-fighting fury and chaotic plot twists, ramping up the excitement as the unwavering Axe Cop gains allies in his war against injustice; through zombie infestations, vampires from the moon, unicorn horns and shocking betrayal...

He will cut your head off, unless your neck is really, really strong.

Veal by Craig Collins

Art by Jacek Zabawa

Gary Erskine in the Guardian

Hey kids! Do YOU want to become an internationally reknowned comic book artist? Well our pal Gary Erskine has some tips for you...

http://careers.guardian.co.uk/behind-the-job-title-comic-book-artist

Omniscient Zorgo

is an excellent comic strip by our friends Craig Collins (script), Iain Laurie (art) and Derek Dow (colouring), which sometimes appears in Wasted.



For full size version click here, and for more strips check out Craig's blog: http://craig-collins.blogspot.com/

Red Trailer

I'm sure it's done the rounds on the 'net enough times by now, but I've just found a few of the trailers for the forthcoming adaptation of Warren Ellis' Red...

To sum up; Red is probably one of my favourite of Uncle Warren's works, in part due to the exceptional tightness of both the script and Cully Hamner's art - it's a three issue comic dealing with how the governments and military (specifically the CIA) go about decommissioning someone trained exclusively to kill. It's grim, ultra-violent, and seriously disturbing.
And here's the trailer.
I'll be honest, I never expected Red to make a smooth transition to the screen, not least because it would make very little money with it's protagonist putting his fingers through people's eyeballs and spending most of the narrative drenched in blood. However, this looks like a fun enough gung-ho YA! action romp, with only the name and haircut of the original protagonist remaining from Ellis' comic. I'm actually glad, considering it gives us John Malkovich playing a paranoid vet, two other awesome leads, and Helen Mirren with fucking gigantic automatic weapons.

Warren has a nice wee justification rant here
"Also, did you see the goddamn cast list that’s signed on for those characters? Bruce Willis as Moses, yes. But also: Morgan Freeman, Mary-Louise Parker, John C Reilly, Helen Mirren, Julian McMahon, Brian Cox, Ernest Borgnine and Richard Dreyfus. It reminds me a bit of those 70s films like THE TOWERING INFERNO, that had in them everyone you wanted to see in a film, all at once. RED is a bit like that, only with more automatic weapons."

Worth it I reckon.

R.I.P. Harvey Pekar

A giant in the world of indie comics has passed. Sad days. More news over at the Guardian. And here's an interview with him from Walrus Comics. The film of his comic American Splendor is perhaps the best comic adaptation so far, it's certainly my favourite.



Seems like it's not a good month for the Harveys. I do hope Harvey Keitel and DJ Harvey are safe and sound wherever they may be.

Pop Music

From the awesome (although sorta on permanent hiatus) Wigu. If you like this, check out Overcompensating by the same dude, Jeffrey Rowland.

MMR Vaccine Scare Comic

Here's an excellent and informative comic strip about the truth behind the Measles/Mumps/Rubella Vaccine scare from a few years back. From Tallguywrites blog - I like this guy's style, so will be checking out his future work.



Needless to say the scare was bullshit, but the worrying thing is how business can manipulate science and the press for its own means. Read on.

Brian Bolland vs Erro

From Bleeding Cool.


Erro, with offending Bolland-sampling print background left.

Brian Bolland is an amazing comic book artist. Erro takes comic book art, samples it, re-prints it and calls it his own. Recently he used one of Mr Bolland's famous Tank Girl covers for a show at the Pompidou Center. Mr Bolland wasn't happy. Now read on...

Christ, what an asshole!

From: http://www.robertsinclair.net/comic/asshole.html

It was recently theorized that all New Yorker cartoons could be captioned with “Christ, what an asshole” without compromising their comedic value. I discovered this is true of virtually all comics, old and new:








Many more at the address linked above.

Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig are in a loving, committed relationship.

A romance, imagined by Igloo Tornado...

"If you've ever wanted to know how the lead singers of Black Flag and the Misfits would maintain a relationship in the face of interference from their Satan-worshipping next-door neighbors Darryl Hall and John Oates, now's your chance."

- Robot 6

(found via LA Weekly)

Invisibles Action Figures

How cool is this?!



"I went to a panel on making customized action figures and I got inspired."

Mirka23

And if you don't know who The Invisibles are...

Iamus Creative

Paul McCann, friend of Team Little Rock and member of The Evil Eye, creates psychedelic, acid inflected comic book art. So cool. He's just posted up this bad boy on his blog iamus-creative.blogspot.com. Some gorgeous artwork and short comics on there.

Blur The Lines

I've been following this webcomic for a few months now and I gotta say it's damn good. It follows the travails of a gay couple, one chubby, the other a chubby chaser, both bears. It's drawn by the artist Robert Kusiak and it's pretty frank. If you squirm at gay stuff, then it's probably not for you. Here's the Blur The Lines take on Calvin & Hobbes grown up (click on it to see the whole thing):



The strip is published three times a week. To see more, follow this link: http://www.blur-the-lines.com/

Exclusive Frank Quitely Artwork!

Nothing to do with comics, but it is indeed his work, with creative input by Jamie Grant. Flyer originally for Teamy's Wrong Island night, tactical defacing courtesy of the Hope St crew.
On a slightly different note, I've been re-reading the tpb of All Star Superman, and wanted to share this gorgeous image of superman the compassionate bodhisattva.