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A4 Issue Four
Posted on 28th October 2023 by pj

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!

It begins again (A4)

Posted on 3rd October 2023 by pj

I opened my notes app on my iphone and typed A4 Issue Four. Somehow I’ve still got ideas.

(For those that don’t know, A4 is my monthly ‘zine with micro stories in it and you can download it free, and, ideally print and fold it to make a neat little standee – it’s a pretty clever idea if I say so myself)

The writer/educator Una McCormack is taking copies of A4 along to her writing workshops in CERN. Which… I might be wrong here… but I think that makes me… a… scientist? I’m unsure.

It’s cool, right?

Anyway, the way it normally works is I’ll be driving somewhere, start thinking about stories for A4 and then hit upon some idea that I think might be a nugget of something and start figuring out how I’ll tell that story – like telling a joke. Nice to know nearly 16 years on twitter was all worth it. (Not really)

++++

Friday last week is possibly one of the most expensive days of my life, early at 8:46 I phoned the dentist, luckily the had an appointment free, so I wandered up the street (it’s very close) only to find that they’re making the shift to private (theoretically keeping NHS patients, but the reality is all of their resources are moving to private, so you’ve no mission of getting an appointment) and introducing a monthly charge (along with regular charges for the various procedures) at 9:20 the dentist told me I needed a tooth out (I’m not proud of this, I blame a certain level of foolhardiness in my twenties when I’d go days without brushing my teeth) so he yanked that out. But, luckily it was NHS still – so only cost me £14. Reeling from this, I went home, whereupon the guy who did our kitchen had arrived to pick up the rest of his money for fitting it. Then, not an hour later, the guy who had done the maintenance check on our gas boiler turns up, figures out there’s a fault and then tells me to repair it is gonna cost the guts of £1000.

Honestly, I’ve had better days.

++++

On the work front, I’m waiting on scripts, I’ll normally not talk about stuff coming up because I’ve always been superstitious about work – until it’s finished and in print it may never happen. (I’ve had things that I’ve been paid for not come out, luckily not many, but enough to make me wary) but right now I’ve a six months worth of work waiting on turning up, it’s the sort of platonic ideal of work for me – just enough to give me something to do, but not so much that I can’t keep my tinder dry for the odd short that might crop up. Of course, if it’s the only work I do for six months it’s gonna be a cold, cold winter. So we’ll see.

++++

Catch up on the old Inktober nonsense. Thought it would be fun and add a bit of something different if, as well as doing the helltober sketches instigated by Ben Templesmith I added an appopriate motivational message to them. Of course, this was a stupid idea. I could have told you it was a stupid idea. AND YET. Here we are.

I missed yesterdays, so here it is:

Pen and ink drawing of the spider head monster from The THING. Beside it it’s written “If a thing is worth doing - it’s worth doing right.”

OF COURSE, this is the sketch that took three attempts and is still bloody awful looking. Ugh. Anyway, more success with todays…

Pen and ink drawing of the The xenomorph from Alien, beside him is an egg. Also text, the text reads “Mighty Oaks from Little Acorns Grow”

Altogether much better, granted I started with a known image of the xeno morph and then I just tried to PJ it up. (In a good way)

Also, man alive the idea of doing a motivational message was stupid, originally this was going to be “Blood is thicker than water” and then I added the egg and it just popped into my head. And here we are.

Related posts:

  1. On AI Comics

Well, I wasn’t going to…

Posted on 2nd October 2023 by pj

But then I accidentally had a spare minute, so I decide to join in with the October inking. Who knows if I’ll do one a day. I decided I wasn’t going to go the batober route (Chris Samnee has that locked down) the robotober month (Ian McCaig will destroy you) or Dreddtober (that’s my day job!) so I went with Ben Templesmith’s Helltober, 2023.

I did something similar the last time I did Inktober, though, but tried to find obscure horror old b&w horror movies (which included Creature from the black lagoon and a few others from this list)

Yesterday I banged out a little Noseratu, and I added a funny little motivational poster sound byte to it and I thought I’d spread it out to all my social media what have yous and see where it does best. And. Well. At time of writing on X (the formerly useful social media platform known as twitter) I’ve had 22 likes, on bluesky, that was outpaced early on with low numbers and then… then Neil Gaimen reskeeted it and boom – I’m currently sitting at 1.2K likes.

I’ve been on bluesky for a bit (certainly not as early an adopter as I was of twitter) but there really has been a remarkable ramping up of the numbers over there. It’s also – at least for now – filled with comic pros. I’m not saying twitter isn’t still a useful platform, but as musk shaves off the features reducing any chance of a decent reach (I have 14k followers on twitter, and that image has been seen by 888 people, 22 of whom have liked it) making it much much less useful. If that had happened without some viable alternatives I think we’d be sunk. I do wish mastodon had gained traction, but it’s slightly sticky techy start and extant userbase of linux-beards and complexty around picking a server made it … unattractive for people who just wanted a quick alternative to twitter. Bluesky, despite or because of the invite system – who can say – seems to have picked out a lot of the creative industry and is only growing. Sure they’re not the people who buy your work, but it’s just nice to be surrounded by people you know again.

Anyway, blogtober day 2!

No related posts.

On AI Comics

Posted on 1st October 2023 by pj

Well, it’s been coming and it’s finally here. The AI bros are now insisting that the ai content mills can make comics.

Imagine a blender where you can churn every single piece of art until it’s a sort of unrecognisable mush, and then you say “Give me some batman” and it reconstitute a batman from that mush, pulling out the most batman bits it can find. If it’s pulled in enough batman artists you’ll maybe struggle to recognise where bits of this new frankenstiened batman drawing have come from, but if you’re any sort of comic fan you’ll look at it and go “ah! it’s clearly Mike Allred Batman from Batman ’66”

You know what you can’t do with something like that? Get a Kelly Jones batman, unless they’ve already mushed up enough Kelly Jones art. Or Mignola batman unless you’ve similarly ripped every Mignola batman drawing you can find. In fact, the thing hasn’t got an original cell in its body. But man it can imitate and flatten and deaden almost anything.

And of course, a lot of what comics is is what’s NOT there. White space, the panel gutter, the writers and artists intent leaving space for the reader to interpret. But no interpretation required in these the dead spaces.

To be honest, I have much more respect for someone who photocopies the same comic art to produce new work, because that is truly transformative and done with intent. (Tracers are still rotten)

The biggest danger with this stuff is it it totally destroys a generation of kids wanting to do comics, misdirected to think this stuff can do it, it will rob them of their voice and any future career. It’s slop and we can all do better.

Will it get better? No doubt, the dataset will expand. The prompt stuff will get smarter, maybe even the ability to keep consistent within a single comic strip will happen (right now you’ll have an Allred Batman for one panel then a Bolland batman for another) but it will never be able to create something from whole cloth, it will never suddenly become the next hot artist, it will never be anything but shitty zombie art.

+++++

I’ve no time to do inktober this year – too busy and, if I’m totally honest, the thought of putting art up on twitter for it later to be grabbed by the content mills and churned into unrecognisable pap for it to be later extruded into a plagiarism patty with no nutritional value isn’t grabbing me, so, for a laugh I jokingly suggested everyone do a blogtober. Let’s get back to blogging. Let’s forget the mini thoughts of twitter where immediacy is all that matters, where, somehow the pushback against ai “comic art” has meant that the ai “comic art” is being seen by more people than real art is and where you can never truly give yourself time to think – let’s try and roll it back to when blogging ruled supreme (hah, I kid, that won’t happen, but still, it’s a nice thought). Anyway, I’ll still be posting on twitter and bluesky (and maybe mastodon) but I will also be trying to blog through the month. Let’s see when I lose track… I give it three days.

No related posts.

Introducing Null Space

Posted on 30th September 2023 by pj

So, the cat’s out of the bag, as it were. Over at Comicon.com Richard Bruton has the scoop and much of the lowdown on what it is.

Null Space is a new weekly webcomic beginning on Friday the 6th of October, featuring a veritable feast of big name writers from scifi/fantasy – for many of whom this will be their first credit as a comics writer!

Each story will be self contained, set in its own world and be a delicate little gem of a one pager. This is my tribute to the Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Black Mirror and Inside no 9. I love an anthology.

The project started because I wanted to do another weekly thing, and I just happened to know a few scifi writers and so I propositioned them and suddenly I had a bunch of scripts. What was especially interesting to me was working with people who hadn’t done comics before. I figured this would be my one way to get them to write something for free!

To date, I’ve fourteen scripts in hand, of which I’ve already drawn ten. That’ll take us in to the new year, and depending on how things go, we might get beyond that. We’ll see.

Owing to the number of writers involved, it’s likely this project will only ever be web based. You know, like the old days, and as such you should point your bookmarks at https://www.pauljholden.com/series/null-space.

See you Friday for Adrian Tchaikovsky’s delightful “Spider-Killer”.

No related posts.

Corkage

Posted on 18th September 2023 by pj

I was at the Cork Comic Expo this weekend. Invited by Cork’s favourite son Will Sliney (I’ve known WIll a long time, and it’s been slightly baffling and yet not entirely surprising to see him rise to be a major celeb in Cork and Ireland and when his TV shows get bigger, eventually the world – you’ll see) (And the guys from The Big Bang)

It was lovely to see Declan Shalvey, Stephen Mooney and Nick Roche (as well as the guys from Rogue Comics and Limit Break and lots of other people whose names I will mangle so I will say it was nice to see you all).

Cork’s a fun event, it happens in a major shopping centre, so lots of people just walking through with no idea who you are – with the possible exception of Will, everyone knows Will.

Will Sliney's queue, red-roped and filled with kids.

A fair few people picking up Numbercruncher (over 10 years old, but still new to many people). I wish I had Dept of Monsterology still with me, I think that would’ve done well. Those that picked up books then slightly surprised to find I had anything to do with it (I think they just thought I was a stall selling books)

My son Thomas manning the table while I took a photo.

Good show, stayed with my brother and his family (they’ve been based in cork for years) but man Belfast to Cork was a struggle of a drive.

Hoping to find a contact for Dublin City Con, cus I’d like to do some more local cons. New York is out for me this year, but may be next year.

No related posts.

Mutie Mayhem!

Posted on 13th September 2023 by pj

I don’t often just do a full piece for myself, but I’m off to cork this weekend and thought I’d do a very limited run of prints of a Judge Dredd piece.

The inspiration came from watching the walking dead and that scene in Skull Island where Tom Hiddleston is swatting weird monsters out of the sky with a machete through a green smoke (it’s an awesome awesome film if you haven’t seen it)

Drawn on paper and coloured in Clip Studio (using a whole load of tricks I’ve picked up from “Colour With Kurt” Kurt Michael Russell has a whole bunch of great videos (as well as a paid-for full tutorial) and i’ve been studying those things furiously. Still a long way to go, but I’m gonna try and colour more of my work.

No related posts.

Tardis Time Trap

Posted on 5th September 2023 by pj

Was talking to a writer friend the other day and they asked “if you were to come up with a doctor who game, what would the mechanic be” and honestly it popped in to my head fully formed, so here it is:

You’re trapped in the Tardis, it is malfunctioning and you have to both repair it and solve the mystery. You do so by walking round the tardis rooms and figuring out what you need, but, when you leave a room it becomes locked in a time loop. Meaning, if you re-enter the room, you encounter yourself from your previous play through of that room. You can’t change that time-locked version of you, but you CAN touch them/move them/time lock them for that moment (and if you reneter the room again, now there are two other versions of you stuck in that loop, and same rules apply – no theoreitcally upper limit…). So, for example, you enter a room, there’s a high shelf you need something there, you can’t reach. So you stand beside it for a minute, you leave and you renter, now you see yourself standing in the corner, you go over, timelock your old self (SONIC SCREWDRIVER TO RESCUE!) climb up on yourself and get the thing, then leave with it.

Anyway, that’s my fun tardis time trap mechanic, do with it what you will (but pay me a lot of money) thank you, bye!

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Clip Studio Quick Access

Posted on 4th September 2023 by pj

I’ve refined my use of Clip Studio so much over the years (starting with Manga Studio 3(!) from 2006 – so coming up on twenty years) that sometimes when a new feature hits I don’t even bother with it, as I’m already optimised up the wazoo.

Anyway, a couple of versions ago, Clip Studio introduced a “Quick Access” panel – basically a pop up window that can have your most commonly used tools in one location (rather than scattered around all over the place).

I’ve been studying a bit on colouring in clip studio, and discovered that this quick access panel might answer a few distinct problems I have with workflow, and I’ve played with it and sort of love it. It’s especially useful if you have limited screen real estate. The quick access panel can use tools, menu items, actions or pretty much anything you want. I’ve set mine up for four distinct modes :

Pencilling, Inking, Flatting, Colouring and Lettering.

If you combine that with the ability to duplicate tools and add your own icons, you can have a powerful set of tools for specific modes. Here’s my pencilling set up (I won’t go in to too much detail, though I will answer comments if you have any!)

I’ve also mapped the quick access pop up to a key (Numeric zero on my keyboard or one of the quick buttons on the huion) which makes it really useful when you’ve a small screen with a small set of commonly used tools you want to pop up and down on the screen.

The Pencilling Quick Access

This has tools for Managing a new project, including an action to create page of thumbnails (custom icon on an action)

Tools for pencilling and tools for editing the panel layouts (all things I do at the pencilling stage)

Inking Quick Access

This is probably the simplest and action could be even simplified more. The numbers beside the tools here are part of the names – I coded the number keys along the keyboard with the various common tools I use and then renamed the tools to include the keyboard number so I wouldn’t forget. (Which a handy thing I nearly wish it was a built in feature)

Flatting Tools

Actually, I suspect they’re all simpler than the pencil quick access simply because it’s got most of the starting utilities I use for beginning a new project. One note on colour, I used to use the colour wheel for colour picking, but these days I’ve taken to using the colour slider, which gives you a Hue Saturation and Value sliders for changing the selected colour and takes the guess work out of which colour should I pick next.

Colouring Quick Access

No wait, this is complex! I have thousands of brushes, but lately, I’ve been focused on Kyle’s Builder Brush (Kyle of Photoshop brush fame, released this for free ages ago) and Daub Pigmentio Dual 02 – both add texture/noise to the colours as I paint them. Lots of great texture in the art.

Also a selection of actions to create different kinds of layers, saves me having to tap a new layer and adjust it afterwards.

And finally…

Lettering Quick Access

Text Edit is basically the object edit tool set up to only allow it to edit text. I’ve duplicated and created a bunch of text tools with the fonts I like, if I had time I’d make icons for all of them with the font in it (but I’m lazy)

And that’s it.

Comments are open, so if you wanna ask me about any of this, please do. (If you ask here rather than on the socials, I can answer where which means everyone gets the answer)

Related posts:

  1. Five things I wish Clip Studio Would Add…
  2. Channel Hex: Testing a cover
  3. Folklore Thursday: Lindwurm
  4. Uniform

If you go down to your comic shop today…

Posted on 30th August 2023 by pj

(or maybe next week, it’s hard to keep track) You can fill your boots with work I’ve done, that, somehow, is all coming out now or next week (it’s largely backups or shorts so even if you’re not a fan of me, there’s probably something else in there to enjoy…)

I’ve mentioned it all in the past, but now it’s all come out…

Harley Quinn Knight Terrors#2 (8 page backup)

Harley Quinn Knight Terrors #2 Cover

Catwoman Uncovered (bunch of simple illos, as a connective tissue for a whole load of catwoman variant covers in a pin up like book)

Drawn by Jame McKelvie
Catwoman Winking.

Ahoy Comics Project Cryptid 10 pager with Paul Cornell (“Wormy and Me” that’s not how I describe me and Paul, that’s the title of the story)

Battle Action #4 “Death Squad” short by me and Rob Williams (I’ve forgotten the page count! 10-12?)

There’s still the Soul Plumber collection to come, The Skulduggery Pleasant Bad Magic graphic novel, The collected Fantastic Folklore, and starting next month (I think) the 8 part Judge Dredd story for 2000AD.

Been a busy old week, really not sure how you’d categorise this style of publication. I doubt even my mum would pick up all of those things, but if you pick up any of them know that I’m extremely grateful. It’s all feast or famine round these parts.

No related posts.

Dreaming Comics

Posted on 26th August 2023 by pj

This morning I woke up having very briefly dreamed I was putting together a comic, and I thought you might like to know what it might have looked like.

As with all my favourite things it was an anthology – it was nameless, but I’m calling it “FLUX” because – well, I remember sitting with some people way back in 1992/93 talking about doing a comic and flux was the title of that, and why not.

Fully formed from the dream was that it would contain a black and white western strip (weird western) stuff … strong potaganist, having strange adventures – drawn by Dan McDaid and here’s a link to his blog (and his Twitter/X account and bluesky). Dan’s a muscular artist, chonky and great to look at and also a fab writer. He could do this. Also: not afraid to draw horses…

(lifted from Dan’s blog, hope he doesn’t mind!)

Secondly, Gustaffo Vargas – a Peruvian comic artist based in Edinburgh (here’s a link to one of his successful kickstarters) and here he is in a couple of the social media places we have to spread ourselves thinly across these days: Twitter/X, BlueSky

I posted about this on bluesky, and because I was just waking my subconcious knew I meant futuristic fairytale but my conscious mind thinks I meant something else. Subconscious wins it though!

Here’s some of Gustaffo’s artwork:

That’s it, when I woke I had a vision but as the day has worn on that vision has blurred a little. I didn’t even give myself a gig in this dream comic (annoying) but come on, this comic looks like it would be cool, right?

I suspect if I’d slept a little longer I’d’a dreamed up something cool for Artyom Trakhanov to do whose artwork has a dream like quality (and if pushed I’d say give him something galaxy wide, far future space opera?)

I mean just look at that!

Given those distinct strong voices, we’re gonna need something much more visually calming (god I hope that doesn’t sound negative, because it’s not!), and my old mate Dylan Teague (bluesky) might be the balm we all need. Dylan’s thing is almost certainly space opera though, so I’d have to think of something else, maybe earth based far future about a vigilante who is taking down the corporations who’ve ruined the earth. Nice political scifi adventure (with a protaganist with a bob, because I know Dylan would enjoy that)

Image

I would probably find myself a job in that book, I’ll take b&w cosmic horror, thank you.

Oh and a final humour strip? (maybe not humour? maybe pulp noir detective?) By Dan Schkade (bluesky)

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