If you prefer you can download the pdf here.
My unending gratitude to Matt and John Yuan (deputy publishers of 1First Comics) who volunteered way back on issue 1 to proofread (off the back of a plaintive twitter plea) and ending up both being great proofreaders and even better editors - constantly encouraging and giving little notes that never alter the fabric of the story but always help.
Stories this issue:
Notifications, Memories of War, Cold Caller, The Civil War, The Monster, Sign Unseen, Ghosts.
A4 Issue Four Notes!
Gah, two stories with War in the title. So annoying. Hadn't spotted it until now, but there it is. It will be my eternal shame.
There were two things drilled in to me from English lessons in secondary school (which I did rather enjoy, I loved writing, and was told to apply for O-Levels early, so I did, and then I didn't do any work because I was fundamentally lazy - so failed it) anyway, the two things: never use the word got/gotten (I think this was my teachers personal bugbear, with teenagers writing "I got given a book then got a clip round the there and got out of there, before he got me" even I'm uncomfortable seeing the word "got" in anything I write) and never repeat a word if you can help it (obvious "I", "and" and so on are all fine). So two wars. Not good. Am annoyed. (Should point out, this is entirely a quirk of my own making!)
From hereon in there will likely be spoilers!
I had planned on a halloween all horror special - or at least as best as I'm able, but of course, I couldn't quite come up with every single story as a horror, so let's start with the least horror like story:
Notifcations
I suppose this and Ghosts share a very common through line, rejection and knowing the person who rejected you never even thinks of you. For a full exploration of this idea, watch the amazing "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind".
Memories of War
There's a lot going on in the world, and much of it can be traced back so far that you'll never find the beginning point (hello from Northern Ireland!) - and the question is, if everyone lost their memories would those wars still continue. (this story optimistically says we'd all stop, I have a horrible feeling we wouldn't)
Cold Caller
Phew! Lighter fair! Actually there's a different story that uses the same sort of idea (the no-hawkers caveat that many people have at their door) I've been sitting noodling as a short comic for a few years (how many? oh man, it's embarrassing to tell - but let's say I first thought of it pre-pandemic) it would be far too long to do as one of these stories, so this slightly different version of it popped in to my head.
I am pretty proud of that title though, it came late - after I'd written a bunch of the stories and I was thinking "gah, now i need a title" and ping! there it was!
I did want to do stuff that was just a smidge lighter than last issue, because I've been told some of this stuff is DARK. I think of it all in the abstract, words on paper rather than real monsters. But we're haunted by the real and the imaginary, I suppose.
The Civil War
I saw a writer (a good writer; it'll be a good book) talking their new Zombie book and it got me thinking, that zombie stories tend to be the ultimate "yeah of course I was the assehole prepping for the end of the world, and look, I WAS RIGHT" and I thought "what if instead of it being zombies, it's that everyone was just really really nice to each other ... oh... those asseholes wouldn't change..."
The Monster
I'll be honest, andI bet readers can tell, I shoehorned frankenstien in too this (because I wanted monsters, dammit)
Here's my orginal story idea from the apple notes app:
He had fragmented himself, Pumping his entire written and audio corpus through AI Large Language Models, and created an army of bots, one for each of the balkanised social media platforms. And he was finally free. Free to get on with work.
Is it better? it might be.
Sight Unseen
This could be policitical satire, I suppose. In the hands of a better writer. Instead it's simply a piece of fiction.
Ghosts
Gotta be honest, I just loved the shape and sound of the story. I love that it works on a couple of levels. It pretty much came out fully formed, and so short. Honestly this is the joy of these shorts, there's not an ounce of fat on the idea, there's no point trying to extend it, and there's a sort of poetic quality to it. Anyway, might be one of my favs.
Hope you enjoy it, I would love to know what you think - you can fire me off an email to pjholden at gmail dot com if you like!
I was pleased with how this page turned out from Episode 2.
(It’s an eight parter running in 2000ad right now)
Rob wanted a lot of stars, and I wanted to give it a lot of texture. so there’s about three layers of stars that I gave Pete (doherty) to do with as he will. Also gratuitous butt shot for those that are inclined.
I’m due a studio tour, right?
We’ve been in this house for around a year and there’s still a fortune worth of work to do. Outside of the studio we started by adding a new fence to the outside drive, so we could have private space in the backgarden which was a godsend over the summer (otherwise you can see our backyard from across the road) but it cost a fair bit. And we changed the stair case (money) and then updated the kitchen (more money) which, combined with buying the place has left me sort of broke. But we have a house on a ground floor with an outside which meant I got to do nine barbecues this summer (and if the bloody weather had been more dependable it would’ve been a lot more) including one just as my son finished secondary and him and his mates got their university acceptances and we had a big barbecue with him and nine mates, and the family and my wife’s cousin and her family and one of our friends and one of my brothers and there was twenty people in total. Was great. Worth it.
Anyway, the studio.
Like a big unrelenting thing. Eight days since the last update.
Let’s catch up, got a neat two pager to do for Monster Fun, with a tight deadline just before I went to Cheltenham (which meant I had to crush a bit the couple of days following to get it done for the 16th which was the deadline) full colour. Think it looks good, I’m a terrible judge of these things. Already feeling like my colouring box of tricks is way too limited.
Here’s a panel from it…
Editor liked it, so that’s good. Then spent a few days doing family stuff (lot of family stuff). One of the things with kids is, once they reach a certain age, they’re no longer yours to talk about – I used to talk about my kids all the time (on the blog and on social media) because they were delightful little wonders oblivious of most things but especially the internet (except for youtube videos) but now they’re 18 and 15 and as much as I’d love to share stuff about them, stuff I’m proud of, concerned about or just generally parent things, I just can’t. That stuff is theirs. But know I love them, and know that there’s often lots to talk about and I just can’t.
Have finally begun another Devlin Waugh strip, six parter. No deadlines, suspect it’ll not get scheduled for some time. For some artists this is great, for me, it’s a curse. I know if I attacked it the way I normally attack work I’d get it finished in a fortnight, but instead it’s taken me a fortnight to even open the script … because … no deadlines.
On the writing front, I haven’t really had a chance to open the script again on the WHITE RABBIT story. And again self doubt kicks in and I think, really Paul, this is the story you’re going to spend your precious time on earth drawing, something no-one will likely read, you’ll not likely enjoy (not nearly enough monsters) and something that no-one is paying you for? SHUT UP INNER MONOLOGUE.
As a side note, do you inner monologue? I do a lot. Turns out not every one does. Even as I type this I hear it in my own voice in my head. And if I pause to think of the wording, I’ll hear it in my head. Apparently not as common as I thought. (Also: I will have full on dialogues with other people – as I imagine they would react – play out in my head. Honestly a bit of a curse, because you know this isn’t necessarily what they’d say/how they’d really react, so you play through all sorts of permutations. And it’s always been like this. Voices in my head, but not the mad kind, probably)
I’ve most of the next issue of A4 written. Trying desperately to write something that doesn’t end with death is hard though. (It’s been pointed out, correctly, that these stories are all debbie downers… truth is I’m not sure I know how to write anything else? but I should try) There’s six stories so far and I did have a seventh which might be funny, but it turns out I’ve forgotten it. As soon as I think of one of these shorts I write them in the notes app on the iphone and then get on with things, safe in the knowledge it’s there. Sometimes I take a while to do that, then other thoughts pop up and *pff* gone. This one has gone *pff* (And I bet it wasn’t that funny)
Been chatting to Alec Worley (lovely bloke, comic writer, his newsletter is here) and he’s been bullying me into moving over to substack. (I have a substack account but only use it for reading). He reckons it’s where the audience will be.
To be honest, I’m sort of fed up with all social media. It’s so balkanised now, I can’t auto post from the blog to twitter, or blusky (but can to mastodon, which I’ve otherwise sort of left fallow). There’s threads where I’m on but not. Instagram which I have but never really upkeep and half a dozen others I’ve forgotten. My patreon still exists but I’m a ghost on there now. (Though I do appreciate those people who may be seeing me in other places and putting money in to my patreon, believe me, it may not seem much but it helps!)
In the battle-with-my-ego front, enough good quality writers have said words to the effect of “but you’re writing is really good” that I’m starting to think there might be something in that. Or at least I might try and stop shying away from the title of writer. I’m really not comfortable with the title (I’m a comic artist who sometimes makes comics that don’t have writers attached … or I sometimes jot down ideas for stories that I never, ever finish) these are things I need to fix, though I’m not sure how that would happen, maybe writing something that is purely prose? or writing something for another artist? I dunno. It’s an interesting data point for now.
I will say I feel my career as a comic artist has been taken as far as it can really go (which I think I’ve said before, isn’t really a bad thing, I don’t mean “and I give up” I mean “well, I’m never gonna be the hot artist, the in demand artist, the first guy on your rolodex or the guy you know will shift the needle, but I WILL be the guy you phone cus the other guy dropped out and man alive this deadline is tight” and honestly, being the hot-artist is a fractionally tiny part of the industry, there’s not many hot artists. I did wistfully want to be an artists-artist. But I’ll settle for being the editors-artist.
Maybe writing stuff will allow me to move the needle in some other ways. I dunno.
Again, my mood is a little darker than usual, I’ll grant you.
Spent a couple of days in a bit of a funk. The world is just … ugh. My mood has been dark (which, all jokes aside, I partially put down to binging Walking Dead which finally got to Neagan, a character I despised so much on first contact, and the grim never ending awfulness of what the characters are going through that it genuinely has effected my mood, so I’ve put it away – no thanks, not watching that) have turned instead to the delights of Gone Fishing.
I’m in a fairly privileged position (in that I’m in a part of the world that is relatively stable, and safe) and so have decided I can’t watch the news at the moment either – things are too grim and it’s impacting how I think about stuff. I don’t remember when things felt this oppressive (plus the comic industry seems to be going through one of its cyclical crunches where there’s more published work than there are readers, and more talented comic book creators than there are jobs for them)
There’s a guy in fixing my gas (big bill I could do well without) and he’s working in my studio room. So I’ve decided to blow the cobwebs off a script idea I had a few years ago (oh god, just after me and Declan did “M” for Dynamite, in 2017) and start polishing it up with a view to drawing it myself as a commando digest sized comic.
Well, strictly speaking I’ll be drawing it A5, and printing either A5 or some reduction of same.
I wrote a fairly detailed treatment of it, and then I rewrote and rewrote it. It was a James Bond pitch originally, and I’ve turned it into “John Regent” a Bond like MI6 Secret Assassin.
Honestly it came about because in our book M, Bond’s boss – a former british soldier – returns to Belfast, and I thought “Oh, man… if James Bond came to Belfast … he could get stuck in an Orange Parade!” because Bond surrounded by a load of guys in Bowler hats marching to a band while he’s being hunted by OddJob is very very funny.
Of course, what often happens between inception and treatment/scripting is the original idea gets lost as you build your plot. So ultimately, that didn’t make it.
Anyway, I have a detailed treatment (no page numbers, just plot happenings) and 64 pages to do it in. So I’ve been trying to work out how long each section should be and man, 64 pages seems like a lot, but every page is only 1 – 2 panels. So you’re really cutting it up a lot. But that’s ok. Because the treatment basically breaks down into Prologue (it’s James Bond! gotta have the bond bit at the start!) Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 and Epilogue I’ve sort of picked arbitary points for these things to break down, that’s when you really start to feel it.
BUT – I’ve adapted tweets into comics, so taking this treatment and going, well, these words have fill 8 pages – beginning on a splash and ending on a splash, giving me roughly 12 panels to tell that part of the story isn’t impossible.
Plus, to be honest, I’m trying not to get bogged down on “what if this is rubbish?” so what. Then it’s rubbish. I don’t think it will be, I think it’ll be not-as-good-as-I-want-it-to-be, which has the same effect as “what if it’s rubbish?” and that effect is to stop you even trying.
So I’m ignoring that instinct and I’m going to write it in to pages, and then draw the damn thing as fast as is humanly possible. And then, if I get that far try and kickstart the beast (I won’t be after big numbers, just enough to get it printed)
But the kickstarter is a long way off, and honestly, I’m doing this because right now, my workload is very very light, and that’s not a terribly comfortable place to be for me. I’d rather have way too much work on.
Sent to kill the super hacker codenamed “White Rabbit” MI6 Assassin JOHN REGENT discovers that she is, in fact, an 11 year old non verbal autistic child. Mission aborted, REGENT and the girl are attacked. Betrayed, REGENT has to go on the run with the girl and her mother to find answers, and to discover just exactly how far down the rabbit hole this goes.
“White Rabbit”
Well, today was the skulduggery pleasant panel day, I sat with Nick Lake (editor) and Derek Landy (author) and watched as the crowd were in thrall to Derek (who really knows how to work his crowd)
I mostly tried to hide behind my ipad and made occasionally funny remarks.
Then we did a signing, and I suppose after doing stuff like this for 16 or so years, Derek has become really really good at crowd work. Good big queue, bodes well for the book. They’ll be doing another yay! with a different artist! boo! (don’t worry if they keep going, at some point I’ll do another)
Derek and Nick and team are keen to see as many different artists interpret that world as possible, so hopefully the next person will be able to turn in artwork very different to me (but if you’re reading this different artist, make it just a little bit not as good? cheers!)
Spent time at the venue then back at the hotel, and I’m learning something not great about myself, I’ve almost no bravery when it comes to exploring. I could’ve got a cab back to cheltenham proper, but I sat at the bar had a dinner (on expenses) and ate and then came to my room and slept.
If my wife were here she be making me get in a cab to go in to town just to see what’s there. (And then heading back for 9:30 to go to sleep, and I’d be sat here blogging and drawing and mumbling about how I could be doing this at home)
Now I want to go home, but won’t be able to do it until tomorrow.
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Did a inktober helltober thing this morning, but drew it in a silly cartoony style, which took seconds so decided to colour it too.
Am I tempted to do this again but make it proper serious? Yes. Will I? No. Because I am lazy. So very very lazy.
Well, I’m in Cheltenham, I think. Largely on my own at the moment, so have taken the time to have some me time. Me time is important, guys. (Me time involves eating some food and having a nap, this stuff isn’t hard – just let me sleep!)
Found this at the hotel:
Which was lovely and made my wife even more regret that she’s not here. I’m gonna use it as a paper weight, as I don’t really drink.
(Though now I think it’s from the hotel chain as a gift because I think we were supposed to be staying at the Queen’s hotel which is dead centre in Cheltenham instead we’re staying at a different hotel which feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere – this would appear to be the fault of the hotel)
Because this place is so out of the way, I’m largely confined to barracks for the moment (the nearest tesco express is 1.4 miles away!)
Still, that means I can sit and do some work (yay!) so here’s an inktober I didn’t think I’d get time to do.
When I do this inktober / monsterober / helltober things I draw them and then try desperately to think of something that would be funny with them. This just popped in to my head whole.
Anyway, depending on how things go (will I open and drink this Prosecco… maybe…?) I might drunken blog later. We’ll see.
Ok, my timing isn’t perfect, but might actually be a good thing. I’m off to Cheltenham tomorrow for the book-fest meeting Derek Landy and doing a talk. Will be back on Monday, that means I’m unlikely to get much done beyond reading a book and signing some books (hopefully) so no inktober/blogtober for me (well, I’ll try and blog, we’ll see!)
As I write this, my very basic stats tell me we’ve had 500 visitors to the webcomic, that’s a good start. It’ll shrink, of course, and hopefully pickup again. As I said before I’m not sure what a measure of success is here, but building out the infrastructure and figuring out HOW to do this has been useful in and of itself. As an experiment I’ve also uploaded it to tapas, with a plan to run it there every Wednesday (a few days behind the blog here) to see if there’s a different audience over there (or indeed any audience)/
Anyway, see you monday if I don’t see you before!
Null Space gets a bit of a launch write up here: https://downthetubes.net/launching-today-pj-holdens-null-space (thank you John Freeman!) Let’s see how it goes. I suppose there’s a few valuable lessons I’ve already learnt from a project like this.
One I do like variety, but it’s tempting to draw multiple strips in a week and that produces samey-ness. So I’ve already drawn two fantasy strips one week after another, although one is outright comedy and the other sort of dark fantasy, because I drew them within a day or so I ended up in a similar place art wise. So I’m giving a bit of time between the two Christmas episodes to see if my brain can’t come up with something different.
Organising working with a lot of writers is hard! Anthologies are hard! they’re all lovely, it’s just my level of competence is low for this sort of work.
I need to be a lot better at contacting websites about PR stuff. It’s very much I want people to see it, but I have no idea how best to do that. I should be less afraid of just straight up asking, what would help you to publicise this (because those websites need content as much as I need people to see the thing exists)
Probably my biggest asset right now is my mailing list of 360 people, and so I need to figure out ways to build that up (and ways to offer content in it that is unique and useful)
I think I got the branding nearly right, calling it “PJ Holden’s Null Space” is a little cringe, I admit, but I think I need to brand every project that I get involved in with my name. Because A4 could be anything, Null Space could be anything. But lobbing my name on them in front gives nice clear water between “PJ Holden’s A4” and “A4”. That said, when I talk about these things I’ll be dropping the naming and just going with A4 because otherwise I’ll look like an egocentric monster. And I’m only one of those things.
Self hosting was a tough call, I did – years ago – set up a website for a thing such as this, channelhex.com, but I never used it for anything and over the years the naming has felt more and more pointless. So I’ll probably let the domain go. I did try hosting it there, but it became “PJ Holden’s Channel Hex hosting PJ Holden’s Null Space” (well, not really, but it could’ve IT COULD HAVE!)
There’s a chance I’m going to throw a version of it up on tapas, which I think will bring a lot more eyeballs to the strip. (I’m a firm believer that comics need to be read by an audience otherwise it’s just a very enjoyable four-five hours spent in your own company drawing a comic for no one to read) I’ll likely do it so it comes out midweek, behind this website. We’ll see.
Anyway, bookmark it, tell your friends – tell all your friends! Next week The Victim by Tade Thompson
Well, I’m still trying to figure out the name of my undead detective. Was going to go for Johnny Ghoul, but turns out this is such a great idea lots of people have used it. Ugh. Back to the drawing board.
Today I pencilled a page of it (actually pencilling a second right now too) and here’s a sneak peaky…
Actually very happy with how that pencilled page has turned out. Archangel (the city of monsters) is a sort gothic art deco world, where it’s either snowing, raining or just night time. So if I do more stories there, there’s a lot of lore to explore.
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Still churning through the walking dead, I suspect it’s not really a show you should binge, but I’m sort of innoculated against the worst of it because I’m wathcing it while I work, so frequently miss stuff – much as I did with Ashoka, in fact it’s only after I saw someone mention it on twitter I discovered that the storm troopers where zombies??? Flew right past me (much like abolt from a storm troopers weapon would, those dolts can hit the side of a barn dead or alive)
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Tomorrow the site launches. I dunno what to expect? An audience? I dunno. I’ve stuck a kofi link (it’s on every page, god I hope it’s not annoying) it sort of floats at the bottom and you can donate whatever you fancy to me. Obviously I’ve site costs (but, so far, they’re minor) and time costs for doing the work, but you know, I’ve taken that on myself.
What will success look like? Doing it was the real reason to do it, if you see what I mean. But an unread comic always feels sort of sad to me, so I’m hoping we get some numbers. We’ll see.
I’ll be sending out my newsletter tomorrow (tinyletter.com/pjholden) just to announce it on there. My newsletter has gotten a bit of a lease of life since I started the A4 ‘zine, I’ll post on there every time I get one together, and I’ve about 360 people in the newsletter. Let’s hope that bumps up. But I will only send it monthly… except this month, where I’m giving myself an extra bite of the cherry because of the null space…
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Blogtober continues, as does inktober and monstertober and helltober and I dunno what else. Anyway, here’s my inktober drawing for today, Cthulhu….
Or Johnny Ghoul, or Johnny Spade (or, from twitter and Ian Lineham, Johnny Coffin) are all names I’m mulling over for a funny little four page detective story set in Archangel, City of Monsters (where humans comingle with vampires, werewolves, cat-ladies, zombies, invisible women and any kind of monster you’d find in a b-movie).
I’d originally written the part of the detective as a human (this city has ‘em) but it just felt wrong, and then I realised why – he was, frankly, the dullest character on the page. So I mulled it over some more, and I honestly don’t think there’s any story couldn’t be improved by including Frankenstein. So I rewrote it for Frankenstein’s monster as detective, including making all of his dialogue mumbly and murmery and using heavy text captions, which was much funnier (to my eye) but still … not there yet.
Then following a few serious binges of the walking dead, which I’d stopped midway through series one, because I had young kids, one of whom had been in and out of hosptial a LOT when he was younger and I was too squeamish to deal with the tv show after that – but now my kids are 18 and 15 and I no longer lie awake at night worrying about them, so let’s blow up all the zombie children Rick Grimes. Anyway, after a bunch of walking dead, I thought – let’s make him a zombie. And the name Johnny Rotten, Undead Detective popped into my head and I thought “Yup!”.
So I refigured it and scribbled up some detailed layouts for the four page script and it all worked. It all worked lovely. If I’ve time I might spend it drawing this up.
But of course, I’m left thinking … that name… will it be a problem? So I’m in a bit of a limbo state over the name.
I still love Johnny Rotten. But Johnny Zombie has rhyme appeal even as it feels a bit generic, Johnny Ghoul is good, but suggests he investigates the undead or something and he’s not, he’s just your average gumshoe in a world of monsters. Though I did like Johnny Spade, suggesting graves and Sam Spade. Anyway, I will read any comments and take them on board.
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I do wonder if anyone is reading this, it feels like the early days of blogging where you were guaranteed that no one would read it, then slowly, through webrings and rss feeds and just a gradual constant drip drip of blog posts you’d find that yes, people were coming, and then twitter became an massive dopamine mine, you could hit again and again multiple times again. I suppose this is healthier. I’d like people to read it, but not so many I can mess up my career by saying something stupid (I do remember other artists saying they enjoyed my blog but they’d never post any of the things I’d post just in case – these weren’t horrific opinions they were simply me admitting some days I couldn’t draw very well. It’s still the case, but I’m better at keeping it to myself.
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Oh still at the old Inktober thing. Running out of funny things to do with it already. We’ll see… (I don’t check the list until I’m doing that day then I have to read it and go “Oh!”) this was done with pen and ink, not a medium I’m any good at any more (or ever, really) god, I miss being good with a brush. I suspect I need better glasses. And hand-eye coordination. Computers have ruined me for traditional art!!!
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