Crikey, lot of stuff coming up this year. Some of the dates are approx or subject to change, because, well, isn’t everything subject to change in the plague-ridden twenties?
(If you’re curious – I certainly am this amounts to about 212 previously unpublished pages this year – and the year ain’t over by any means!)
ISSUE #4 OF SOUL PLUMBER
Lion and the Eagle #3 Date / Cover TBC
Lion and the Eagle #4 Date / Cover TBC
I tend to make new year’s resolutions every year, they don’t hold for long, but I like to do them. The last couple of years, unsurprisingly, my resolutions have largely been of the form “just do something”
Also, there’s a tiny part of me feels resolutions are a young man’s game – when you’ve yet to be beaten down by the world with it’s harsh reality and your inability to meld it to the shape you really want. BUT… but… I still like the discipline.
Last year, I noted:
Next Year?
Get more organised. Stay organised. Try not to work all the time (or, rather try to limit work + worrying about work to 5 days out of seven). Keep on top of the boring tax stuff and invoices.
How’d I do? as expected I stayed organised for a few weeks of every month, I spectacularly failed to try not to work all the time – ultimately I’ve ended up working more this year than any years previously (normally I’ll find myself with gaps between projects, this year I’ve found myself with projects piling on other projects)
Keep on top of boring tax stuff and invoices? er… invoices, check (uhm except for two invoices I’ve just realised I should have done mid Dec). Boring tax stuff? Nope. All last minute as usual. Try better next year Paul, for God’s sake.
So, this year:
Keep better notes on work done – I wanna make sure I know how much work Ive done at the end of a year – I’ve been trying to do that, and been reasonable happy with the results, but it’s a slog. I suspect a good system might be at the start of every month to put a post it note on my cintiq, tick off page after page and then stick it in a book when it’s done. We’ll see.
I’d like to get some more work at DC – not entirely sure how to turn that into a resolution though, I mean I’ve no control over whether they give me work, but I can control how often I badger them with updates/looking for work emails. So I should probably do that. I think I’ve a gained a bunch of good will at DC stepping up doing Soul Plumber and helping it stay on track.
More Chimpsky – that’s just a question of me badgering Ken Neimand and hoping 2000Ad have a window. That’s a pretty nice place to be.
Write some more – I wrote a couple of shorts, both had great feedback/reactions, and I’d like to do more. I’ve a bunch of half written horror shorts for pitching to 2000ad and I need to polish one of those up (having had one already accepted, I’m hoping that’s not just a fluke/a mercy commission). Maybe when I’ve put Lion and the Eagle and Soul Plumber both to bed.
Creator Owned work! I’d like to do something Creator owned at Image. I mean, it’d be from a standing start if it were to happen, but even getting a pitch seriously considered at Image would be good this year (and this is not me writing/drawing something, purely art).
Avoid COVID – man alive, I’m doing my best. Triple jabbed (and I’ll take a fourth, fifth and sixth if they’re offering) I do not want covid. At this point it’s the fear of Long Covid and what it can do, I’ve seen how other’s have been impacted by it and that is something I just don’t want.
AND… you know… that might be enough. Come back next year and we’ll see how far any of those things have progressed.
Have a great New Year’s Eve and an even better New Year!
As I write this, it’s my birthday. One of those non-numbers, the important ones are everything up until 18, then 21, then 25, then 30 then you’re counting in 10s – 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, and then 85, 90, 91, 92, and up it goes year on year until you’re dead. Happening as it does in the nothing-time between Christmas and New Year.
Anyway, I’m 52 this year. New 52, if you’re a DC Comics reader that’ll mean something, if you’re not it won’t. It’s a non-year. Only thing of significence I can say is I think I started blogging around ’99, aged 29, and broke in to comics about 2001, so this has been the the 20th year as a professional, but I left my day job in about 2008 – so have spent far more of my adult life as a working comic professional than not – but it’s weird, your brain sort of locks in things you know about yourself as “facts” when you’re in your twenties, so in my head I’m still Paul-wants-to-draw-comics (I’m also still a 32” waste, and fit enough to run everywhere a normal person would walk – sadly none of those things are true any more). Some deep part of me hasn’t fully accepted that this is my day job now and that no-one will take it away from me (though they might just refuse to give me more work…)
This past year though, has been pretty good to me, I started off not sure how it was gonna go, I think I’d started the drawing of the Lion and the Eagle, but I’d also got some 2000ad work out of the way, having done two covers that came out last year (doesn’t sound like much, but I’ve only really drawn about 6 covers for 2000ad in my career…!)
Chimpsky and Dept K came out, two series co-created by me – and ran concurrently in 2000ad for a while (this is beginning to be the story of my life, work I do running at the same time and effectively competing with itself, if you think it’s bad now, wait til the new year – oh boy!)
Now Dept K and Chimpsky are both Dreddworld tales, but it’s still cool to have actually made something that hopefully will have long term legs in 2000ad. Next stop I’d like something wholly new, but that’s a hard task to master.
Most of the year’s has been spent drawing Lion and the Eagle, and, 120 pages in I’ve still 40 pages to go. But I’ve also found something at DC – wasn’t the plan at all, and my fortune comes from my good friend John McCrea’s misfortune, so it’s tough to enjoy the opportunity knowing it’s born out of that, but John got hit by long covid – he’s fine, but one of the major effects of long covid seems to be a sort of brain fog that can make working/thinking hard – and contrary to rumours, drawing comics DOES require a certain amount of brain power. John was still able to ink, but had found pencilling slower going, so asked me to help, slowly this has gone from a couple of pages of pencils to peniclling and inking most of the book – again wasn’t the plan (John is getting better and back to work though). In the plus column, it’s meant this year I’ve had Soul Plumber in print, and hopefully it’ll be collected next year. It’s a fun book. It’s also helped me show DC that I’m a man with a pencil and an ability to both do the job and do it in a timely manner, something I’m hoping will lead to more opportunities down the line.
Other things of real note: I finally wrote and sent a script to 2000ad, one quick rewrite later it was commissioned and I drew it. (It’s a short four page horror tale) I’d also worked up about half a dozen other ideas to varying levels of fit-and-finish. I’d like to do more writing, but honestly, the past three months has been the busiest of my life for drawing. I also wrote a fun little one page horror script that may lead to something fun eventually, we’ll see.
I wish I could put a number on how many pages I’ve drawn this year, I THINK it’s in the 200-300 realm. I know next year there should be about 240 pages of my work in print, albeit I still have to draw about 80 of them (and I’ve drawn about 100 of them in the past three months) I feel like it’s safe to say I’ve drawn 200+ pages of comics this past year. A good haul, I’ve never had a year with as much work. I’m hoping I can keep the pace, and find projects rather than have projects stumble on me.
On a personal note, I’ve let the blog slide, I have a patreon, I’ve also let slide a bit – I’ve used it to post stuff I’m currently doing, since so much of it has to be kept generally hidden until launch, so patreon is a good way to just … talk about it.
I still would like to get blogging back on track and twitter – well, every year I feel like this I suppose – but twitter feels like it’s evolving beyond being something I enjoy, but I’ve said that before and stayed with it. Anyway, last dregs of birthday gone now. New Year’s Eve coming up, and I’ve said it before, it’s easily my favourite time of the year. New beginnings, things you’ve done wrong you can get right, new habits can form, you can believe you can change (even if you can’t actually change).
You lucky, lucky people! Thomas (now aged) has been hard at work on his new Christmas special, and so you get to spend time with all your favs, Mean Dean, Space Dogs, Time Thief and more!
Hope you enjoy it!
(Thomas would very much like you to buy his first volume from amazon!)
Artist PJ Holden will draw DC HORROR PRESENTS SOUL PLUMBER #3 with John McCrea this December.
The press release follows:
Media Release — DC HORROR PRESENTS: SOUL PLUMBER ramps up the stakes, and starts to assemble a new horror… and a human body. Blorp, a strange creature with an unsettling affinity for the human race has been unleashed upon an unsuspecting world, and to try and blend in is putting together a human body for itself. This invader from beyond the veil has one mission…but what is it? And how can Edgar and Elk put a stop to it?
The grimy, gross body horror and humor of SOUL PLUMBER has hit a chord with its audience of comic book fans who grew up on PREACHER and THE INVISIBLES:
“A wild action-horror hybrid with an unhinged premise and even crazier characters.” – CBR
“It seems a little strange to call a horror comic rooted in religion and populated by uncomfortable characters with art and colors that make one feel like they need to wash their hands after reading them a masterpiece… but that’s what Soul Plumber is.” –Comicbook.com
“Soul Plumber #1 is a grimy, hilarious, and deceptively smart opening to this blasphemous mini-series.” – Monkeys Fighting Robots
Now, in Issue #3, on sale December 7th, artist PJ Holden (JUDGE DREDD) steps up with John McCrea to draw the scuzzy, scummy world of SOUL PLUMBER. DC is excited to preview inks from the upcoming issue:
AfterShock Comics have announced “The Lion and the Eagle,” a prestige format miniseries by writer Garth Ennis, artist P.J. Holden, colorist Matt Milla, and letterer Rob Steen. Set during World War II, the book will tell the story of the Chindits, a British special forces unit that were active in Burma during the Japanese occupation in 1944. It follows Colonel Keith Crosby and Doctor Alistair Whitamore, two veterans of the British retreat in 1942, who are eager to reclaim the colony. “But neither the jungle nor the foe have gotten any less savage, and when the shooting starts and the Japanese descend on the smaller British force in their midst, every man will be tested to his limit.”
Ennis said, “The conflict between the British and Japanese in Burma is almost lost to history now; indeed, the British soldiers who fought there came to refer to themselves as The Forgotten Army. That’s partly what drew me to their story, a chance to keep alive the memories of the men who faced Imperial Japan. There’s also the political aspect, as the two warring nations find themselves fighting for possession of Burma and India, two countries who by and large would have preferred to have neither of these foreign powers on their soil.”
P.J. Holden, who has collaborated with Ennis on other war comics like “World of Tanks,” said, “as ever with Garth, as long as I’m sticking to the script it’s a joyful experience, it’s only when I veer off it that I land in trouble. The team at AfterShock have just let me get on with it. My job has been making sure I tell Garth’s story to the best of my ability, and they’ve allowed that. It’s been a long process bringing this one out, any book of this length will be, but I think it’s really stretched what I’m capable of doing and I think it’s the best thing Garth and I have done together.”
“The Lion and the Eagle” #1 will be released online and in comics stores on February 16, 2022, and will retail at $7.99 for 48 pages. The (currently unreleased) main cover will feature art by Tim Bradstreet, while the incentive cover (pictured) was provided by Keith Burns. For more from the creative team, check out the official Q&A after the preview below:
This is a relatively unknown part of the war, can you talk a bit on what the book is about, why this story resonated with you and why you want to tell it?
GARTH ENNIS: “The conflict between the British and Japanese in Burma is almost lost to history now; indeed, the British soldiers who fought there came to refer to themselves as The Forgotten Army. That’s partly what drew me to their story, a chance to keep alive the memories of the men who faced Imperial Japan. There’s also the political aspect, as the two warring nations find themselves fighting for possession of Burma and India, two countries who by and large would have preferred to have neither of these foreign powers on their soil.
Finally there’s the sheer intensity and savagery of the combat. The British made what seemed like a bold strategic play in airlifting a massive force of highly trained men behind enemy lines; unfortunately they failed to reckon with either the tenacity of the Japanese or the sheer lethality of the jungle itself. The war in the Far East was famously lacking in humanity, with none of the occasional civility that leavened the slaughter of the Anglo-American-German conflict. The Japanese neither gave nor asked for quarter, and the British force soon found themselves in an unusually vicious struggle to the death.”
Can you talk about working with Garth and the team at AfterShock?
PJ HOLDEN: “Well, as ever with Garth, as long as I’m sticking to the script it’s a joyful experience, it’s only when I veer off it that I land in trouble. The team at AfterShock have just let me get on with it. My job has been making sure I tell Garth’s story to the best of my ability, and they’ve allowed that.
It’s been a long process bringing this one out, any book of this length will be, but I think it’s really stretched what I’m capable of doing and I think it’s the best thing Garth and I have done together.
Can you talk about the relationship between the two leads and how that friendship will be tried/tested during the plot?
GARTH ENNIS: “Keith Crosby is an English officer of great ability and experience, albeit a tad young to command the large force he’s been given. Alistair Whitamore is his Chief Medical Officer, a very decent man but not a natural soldier by any means. As Keith says, on paper the two shouldn’t really be friends at all, but they share a certain sense of humor and they’re united by a grim experience during the retreat through Burma a couple of years before – when Keith helped Alistair survive in quite hellish circumstances. This is what’s now going to cause them problems, however, as both officers are determined that the men under their command won’t suffer as others have – but with very different priorities (military command vs. medical care), the two soon find themselves in serious conflict. When things get truly desperate, Alistair starts to find the choices he has to make simply unbearable.”
Can you talk about your approach to the artwork?
PJ HOLDEN: “Well, Garth and I have worked together a few times now (actually, I think this will be 10 years of various war stories in a variety of settings), so I have a system. Largely it’s heads down and do the homework, research the period, find 3D models of things and get the costumes right, then characters – characters are really important and much trickier when you’re working in a war story. Primarily because, well, you might have a cast of thousands but the upshot is that the characters you expect to spend a lot of time with are dressed nearly identical, often have similar body types and need to be identifiable up close (which is relatively easy) but also at a distance – again, much harder. It’s a tightrope. My normal art style leans a little cartoonier than most and so my characters, even when drawn realistically tend to be a little warmer and more open (I think) than anything too hard edged, and it means I get to push their characteristics a little further. But again, all caveated by the fact you’re drawing real situations, real people (in some cases) and real things.”
How has it been so far working with artist PJ Holden?
GARTH ENNIS: “Working with PJ was a terrific experience, as usual. This is our fifth or sixth war story together, and his storytelling, sense of character and ability to capture action are all as finely tuned as ever.”
PJ HOLDEN: “This book is a long one, too, so I’ve been trying to do it in bitesize chunks. Penciling 15-20 pages then inking those 15-20 pages, 40 pages per chapter is a heck of a long book. Plus I’ve gone entirely digitally with this book, so the pencils are actually digital pencils and the inks digital inks. But I come, like Garth, from a background of British war comics, printed on newspaper and with a gritty texture, which I try and keep in mind. Even when digital inks allow me to be needle sharp, I still want that rough edge.”
Do you have a favorite page/panel and if so, why?
PJ HOLDEN: “This is tough, because, well, picking any favorite is always a hard choice. I think there’re some spreads in the book that are pretty impressive – even if I say so myself – I think I’ve been able to do both scale (hundreds of planes, thousands of soldiers, miles of jungle) and personal, close up faces, tight, important character work and, importantly, carry them off. So I’m pretty proud of everything in the book, easily some of my best work to date, I think.”
Saw this tweet on twitter and so I tweeted out some thoughts, added them here cus it’s really more of a blog post anyway.
Here’s my advice on writing: Future shocks are stories with a sting in the tail, but that’s not the limit. Look for a twist every single page – more if you can. Change your scene, make time jump, do something interesting, the comic four pager has a very specific grammar, and you’ve got to use that.
Grab the reader as quick as you can, jump in to the action, then start revealing elements, and on each reveal say something about the story, make the reader rethink it.
The twists can be big or small. Keep the reader thinking they’ve worked it out then BLAM hit them with another twist until the final when, they suddenly realise they’ve been staring at the answer the whole time.
I did a “create comics workshop” and we’d play with writing futureshocks, talking through twists, taking a basic concept and playing with it, turning it around and figuring out what goes where. Future shocks tend to be plot driven, but you should tie it with something that means something emotionally.
If you have a story already written start thinking about how you can ramp it up – both by adding more twisty complexity to it and by making it much more emotional. What is the theme of the story? figure that out and reinforce it (the theme might be “families can be suffocating” or “you’ve got nothing without your health” (I mean it can be literally anything, so don’t limit yourself to these trite ones I’ve written).
Another thing I love is trying to fit as much story in to those four pages as possible. Cross vast distances, bring the reader through decades. Or slow it down, four pages that tell a story of 11 seconds.
The great thing about the short story format is you can deliver an entire world, so do so!
What I’m saying is they should be fun. Have fun. Then write your synopsis, a good synopsis will be your lodestone guiding you through lots of rewrites, making sure you’ve not padded the story or lost your way. You’ll be amazed to, after writing the story and writing the synopsis how much of the script isn’t germane to the story and that’s an opportunity to go in, excise those bits and add extra stuff that really emphasis the emotionally stuff.
Now, my advice on drawing…
Make the story understandable and readable without dialogue.
Show your finished art to someone who doesn’t read comics and ask them to explain to you what’s happening – if they can do that then you’ve done a good job. If they can’t then there’s something you need to fix. If they go “where did that guy come from” that’s a problem. If they say “are they indoors” you’ve done it wrong – if they can’t tell where / when the story is happening you need to fix these things AND storytelling is MORE (SO MUCH MORE) important than whether your art “looks nice” – I’ve seen amazing art that can’t tell a story for toffee and incredible storytelling that actually when you dig in to it is pretty crude looking.
This week’s 2000ad (prog 2234) features the first solo outing for Noam Chimpsky – super intelligent bonobo and all round good egg.
I talk a little about doing the cover here and talk to Mike Molcher about Chimpsky and Dept K on the 2000ad youtube page here. Also, you can download some Chimpsky Wallpaper right here. (And if you scroll down I’ve a few treats if you enjoyed that wallpaper…)
But for fun here’s some pencils for the first three pages…
This was the last strip I did pencil and ink, I’ve largely switched to fully digital now. I might return, but I’ve been liking the results I’ve been getting, and for the first time in a long time I feel like I’m getting inch-by-inch better at drawing.
We’re going to see a lot more of the space-mansion as the series progresses, and so – lo! I built a 3d model in Blender.
This has been pretty damn useful for getting fun angles (though you can see I ended up adding extra details when we get closer, and the central fountain in the 3d file lacks the Ape holding a monkey wrench I added as a fun nod to 2001.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the strip, it’s been a real fun one to do, and has some art which I think is amongst my best coming up.
Oh, and finally, the cover to Chimpsky – the pencils looked like this:
And, finally, here’s some bonus material, in the form of lots of wallpapers at much higher resolution with special left/right versions for mac/pc users…
Generally I can’t watch tv when I do layouts or pencils, but I can when I ink, and so, here’s a list of some of the things I’ve been watching this week:
Read MoreBlender, if you’re not familiar, is a free (open source) 3d program. I’ve dipped my toes into blender every few years but it started life with a painful interface (in fact many 3d programs have awful awful interfaces, why – for example – does zbrush put it’s standard menu – file, edit, window, etc in ALPHABETICAL order? madness)
By Blender version 2.8 they’d normalised the interface to something most people would recognise, and I’ve – lately – been pouring more time in to learning it.
If you do 3d in comics at all, you’re probably more familiar with sketchup – sketchup is a brilliantly easy way to build simple 3d models, but it’s ownership has changed hands a number of times (build – ironically – first by a company called @Last Software, then bought by google who made it free, then by Trimble softeware who stopped making it free).
You can still get a free Sketchup, but, largely, it’s hard to find and many people spring for the licence which gives you more features as well as ways to convert sketchup 3d models into other forms.
I’ve been on a bit of a crusade to pursued comic artists to move from sketchup to blender, primarily because it’s cheaper (nothing is cheaper than free, right?), but also I think, more powerful.
In the process of learning sketchup I’ve been following a few youtube videos, firstly, this guy:
Who does a lot of gaming/blender tutorials, building low-poly (ie simple) models in 10 minutes. Which strikes me as the right balance between I NEED TO BUILD A 3D MODEL and I DON’T WANT TO SPEND ALL DAY BUILDING A 3D MODEL.
Blender relies fairly heavily on the keyboard and he says the keys as he’s using them so you very quickly get a sense of how fast you can build when you’re familiar with it (keys you’ll learn : E to extrude, I to insert – you’ll hear those a LOT)
I watched a bunch of these just to get a feel for blender (he’s on video 57 of Build a low poly thing in 10 minutes, which means he’s done it over a number of versions of blender, so i’d start with the later videos to see what it looks like at the moment, before going earlier)
Also this is a good youtube video, take copious notes!
Another great youtuber is Ian Hubert – Hubert makes “lazy tutorials” how to build buildings super quick, very lazily but with lots of details. While Hubert’s focus is for indie filmmakers, there’s lots of good stuff in there.
In my experience, I’ve pretty much avoided worrying about textures, instead focusing on building objects with enough shape so that I can see what they are. I’m still figuring out the best way to work with textures. The end results I’m after are a 3d model I can bring into clip studio (blender saves models in its own .blend format by default) as an OBJ file and put in a scene, I then use clip studios LT render to convert the 3d to simple piece of line art (I like to work this way because it’s super high resolution and I can move the model around on the artwork making it less hit and miss than, say, grabbing a screen shot of a 3d model and drawing over it).
One final youtuber is this guy Paul O Caggegi whose focus is on making comics and using Blender.
There’s lots of free models on sketchfab, and some you can pay for too. If you’re doing wwii stuff it’s pretty darn useful.
I’m still digging my way through it, but largely I’ve been pretty happy with some of the stuff I’ve done, both editing sketchfab models I’ve downloaded and creating whole new things for the new Chimpsky strip I’m working on.
-pj
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