This just arrived. Drawn earlier this month, after a discussion with publisher Tom Murphy in November last year. That’s more like it – I mean the speed of delivery which is something I like about the small press (in the 1980s, Fast Fiction really was aiming to be fast). Colossive Press has this unique range…
2023 reprint of Illegal Batman, 40pp book with extra pages Another reprint of my “greatest hit”. Originally drawn in late 1989 and published early 1990. Started out at 100 copies I think; it went through a few small reprintings at the time. I put a PDF online for a while, and there was a 2017…
Here’s the original art for one page from “Drake and His Dog Meet Fantômas”, an unpublished Drake Ullingsworth story from around 1997. Fantômas is a fictional character who has long preoccupied me. It started with my love of Rene Magritte; like many other Surrealist painters, he was captivated by the character and at least two…
I received a package of comics from Jason Atomic in November – this was after my recent review of Ugly Mug # 6, in which he appears. So far I’ve read Satanic Mojo Comix #7, a US-sized book with a mini-comic insert. Just by looking at the cover alone you can see the E.C. Comics…
Illegal Batman in “The Forgtten Batman” Book 2 of 3 Continuing from the cliff-hanger of the previous volume, Illegal Batman has just completed his recovery from the strange cloud of infection, and managed to apprehend one of the invaders who has been lurking in the Batcave. He now realises he needs to travel back in…
Herewith we resume our biased, insider-view appraisal of the contents of Ugly Mug #6. I’m pleased to note that I seem to be on the right track, since (thanks to the immediacy of social media) Harley tells me I’ve “really nailed the spirit of what [Ugly Mug] was aiming for”. John Bagnall found time in…
This is a totally biased, partisan, non-objective review of the new issue of Ugly Mug comic, published by Harley Richardson…Harley is an old friend of mine, he helped me with the Fast Fiction service in the 1980s, and we’ve collaborated on other projects too. Also he happens to like my comic strip work, so my…
The review below is by Adam Groves, a writer who’s a specialist in cinema and literature. But he reviews graphic novels too. I’m very pleased with the way he’s engaged with the content of my stories, and the annotations, that were published in the 2010 anthology Magic Mirror. Published on his site The Bedlam Files;…
Astorial Compendium Volume II This volume reprints and collects pretty much all the Astorial Stories I could find for the period 1987-2009, set in the imaginary Astorial Hotel. Some of them first appeared in Fast Fiction magazine and other small press publications. Where Volume I explores space and depth inside impossibly large rooms, the stories…
I’m quite pleased with the cover drawing to this recent Astorial Compendium book. It depicts Tamblyn The Secret Architect dashing through the corridors of the imaginary Astorial Hotel. But the scale, the proportions, and the perspective, are all wrong – no building like this could possibly exist, and no human being could possibly be running…
