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!
This was a silly little idea that I had simply from the notion of a hard boiled detective describing some really long legs (you know the sort “she was the kind of dame whose legs had their own zip code” sort of nonsense) believe it nor, page 2, the punchline, didn’t occur until I was describing the story to my son, Thomas (even at age 14 a prolific maker of comics) and then I realised that oh my god, I could make that joke – it was all there! And he literally said “oh my god dad, you can’t do that joke that’s terrible” (but he was laughing and aghast, the perfect reaction). My describing it as “and that’s how the dream ended” is a bit of a fib, it wasn’t a dream, obviously, just a silly idea – but that sort of justified all of it.
I definitely enjoy cartooning and feel liberated to do so when I’m the central character, almost like it’s a license to be silly – or at least be less precious. Once I’m writing another character I tend to clamp up and over think, but when it’s me its] just flows out (even when it’s super ridiculous).
over The course of the week doing these has been pretty valuable, I think, I went from “i dunno if I can write something bup it doesn’t matter if it’s a bit crap looking” to “actually I think I could write any stupid story I can think of and draw it quickly as a comic and it’ll look decent”. Certainly it’s not something I’d expect to send to 2000ad, but actually if it turned up in the right venue I’d not be offended by it (Laurence Campbell has suggested some of them wouldn’t have looked out of place in deadline)
I know I’m gonna lose momentum though, holidays coming to a close (three days at home) and then Iol be on holiday again in Paris, but I won’t have any opportunity to work then, though I might still bring my sketch pad and some pens in the off chance.
Decided to pare back and try and just enjoy doing something silly again. I don’t think it’s terribly clear in this strip that I’ve been drawing all of the comics in a large A4 sketchbook, so there’s always a sketchy quality to them (I don’t even have a ruler with me, for goodness sake!) and I dunno if it’s obvious that that the big joke here is I’ve shifted perfection away from quality and on to quantity, which is just as unhealthy really.
Still they’ve been fun to do, and this is the first one that I’ve really liked how I’ve lettered it…
Last day of holidays tomorrow, I have an idea for a strip, it’s a bit silly, and hopefully I’ll have time to do it. But even so, six pages of free comics so far. That’s not bad!
So, this comic clearly follows yesterdays, I was thinking “what would I do if someone did come back in time and shout “Buy Apple Shares!” at me, and the reality is… not much really.
Time travel element aside, this is entirely autobiographical – in 2006 I did legitimately think “I should buy apple stock” and then … didn’t. I literally had no idea how to proceed. This unnerring sense of not buying stuff that will go up in value has also stopped me buying shares in Google when it did its IPO (I was using google from university around 95?/96? so had come to really much prefer it over things like Yahoo, and thought “Well, everyone will eventually use google…” oh how little I could know) I did not buy shares in google either.
Somehow, I think I got distracted while writing it “Buy apple shares” became “Buy apple stock” and I’m two minds – do I go back and add in panel three “I should say “BUY APPLE STOCK” – which introduces the idea that I DID go back in time and I’ve got another chance and I think changing the word to “STOCK” will work where “SHARES” didn’t – or do I just replace any errant use of the word “SHARES” with “STOCK” – not sure, a decision for the inevitable non-collection!
Anyway, hope you’re enjoying these. I’m getting a little too caught up in how to make them look good instead of just goofing around. My son (Thomas, now 14 and maker of his own comics) quite likes ’em, and said they remind him of some art I have on the wall – that art, dear reader, is from my first published work – Holy Cross, published by Fantagraphics, that was drawn in a not disimilair style, which makes me wonder have I been lying to myself about how I draw all these decades?
Holiday Comics Day 5
Script, written in notepad , looked like this:
Panel 1: soldier hacking through jungle
Caption alone
Panel 2: close up of arm. Bubbles around a festering bite mark.
Caption I think I’ve been bitten.
Panel 3: standing in jungle. Being him statues of ancient Burmese gods.
Caption totally alone.
Panel 4 his face as he looks up skyward. Night.
Caption you can see the star s from here.
Panel 5 amazing sit from the web space telescope.
Caption it’s glorious.
-ENDS-
I wrote this at 5am, It’s only notable because I don’t normally script them at all. Mulling over a few things I wanted to do, one was do something with all the Chindit stuff still floating around my head – I learnt how to draw those bloody hats, so I’m doing more of it, dammit.
Wanted to draw abandoned Burmese statues in the jungle (something I didn’t draw for Lion and the Eagle) and I wanted something to marry that up with all the space Web telescope doing the rounds and … well, that was it.
Sometimes you do these things and you edit and rewrite as it goes, and somehow there’s a few ways to interpret some it and so you end up trying to ease up on some and lean harder on others. As drawn panel 3 caption said “But civilisation is out there” and that could lead you to conclude that the chindit didn’t consider whatever he found in the jungle as civilisation (it wasn’t my intent, but certainly I could see how that could be read as that). “I think I’ve been bitten” felt tonally wrong, but I dunno, it could all do with a rewrite. Somehow the little me talking to camera strips are a lot easier to write the dialogue for as they are me writing letters to myself, more than anything.
Anyway, a slight depature and somehow a companion piece to this other story (which I eventually retitled ALONE)
(Holibobs was a word my mum used a lot for holidays, I’d entirely forgotten about it until there now)
So I’m on hols, one week in Rathmullan – this is our regular escape from it all. We book a little holiday house and the kids get their own room, we get a dish washer and a tumble dryer and day trips with me, typically, squeezing work in between it all.
Here’s the first three, with some notes!
Day 1 – an actual conversation I had with my wife, in the car. When she told me we’d be in france for a week I felt sick. Three days in Disney land, three days in Paris. Then I thought – jesus what’s wrong with me. The truth is I love drawing comics, but I’ve spent most of during covid trying to squeeze as much work in as I can. And I’m not sure how to reset that.
Ok, the little one page comic is also work, but it feels like a different thing. An act of defiance. I had fun doing it. I could only lay my hand on one pen and I thought, let’s just use that.
Day 2
It’s early to start getting into toilet stuff, but here we are, eh. Again, another actual thing that happened – I should’ve gone to the loo when I left, and I found walking on dry sand (collapsing, as it did under my feet) was destablising to my tummy and it was a source of constant danger (next time, I bring immodium). We went out of pizza after this (gluten free for me, because cramps and loo visits are the GOOD options …) and it was pretty much the same thing. Basically if I eat, I need the loo 15 minutes later. Regular as clockwork.
Day 3
A prompt from twitter “If you could travel back in time and only tell yourself three words what would they be…” – my initial thought was “Remember don’t ever…” and just leave it hanging there. Saw quite a lot of the “Buy Apple Stock!” messages but surely that would depend on when you see your younger self and how much your younger self is aware of what apple is. (This has sparked a follow up comic, but you’ll see that tomorrow)
Anyway, this has been a fun exercise. I might even keep it up. Day 3 was a pain for the art though, days 1 and 2 I had no really good tools so used the big thick pen I had, day 3 I found a smaller pen and decided to up the quality but that leads to more thinking and more work that needs rescued, so a stupid idea. Stick with simple.
They’re all drawn in an A4 SAKURA sketchbook, pencilled in HB .5 inked with a Winsor and Newton pigment pen 1.0 (except day 3 which was inked with a 0.5) photographed on my phone using a scan app “Scanner Pro” which ups the contrast, and straightens the image up (even if the camera is at a funny angle). Then pumped over to Procreate on the iPad pro where I use the levels to clean it up and export as a decent sized PNG.
I suspect I’ll keep it up for the hols at least, even if I am now super tempted to keep going and then collect 30 days worth in a small press comic… that’d be stupid though…
A brand new Monkey Arms secret origin comic! Thomas (now aged 14) has been working on this for yonks, issue 1 is officially launching at the Enniskillen Comic Festival (assuming the prints arrive on time!) Selling for £5 per issue – BUT you can download and read issue 1 right now!
And, if you’re feeling so inclined, you can paypal Thomas whatever money you like here:
I’ve lately returned to pencilling pages in a notebook. For the past… I dunno … 300 pages? I’ve pencilled and inked directly on to the computer, and I think it’s some of the best work I’ve done, BUT I feel like I’m missing something from not touching paper. Not sure what exactly, it may well be all that I’m missing is the satisfaction of feeling pencils touch paper.
So I bought a couple of Sakura drawing pads (roughly A4 in size) they’ve replaced my previous love Canson 180 because… well, they’re a decent amount cheaper (£11 vs an astonishing £27 on amazon – price correct at time of writing, and honestly I’m shook it’s that much – brexit? supply problems? amazon algorithem going mad? dunno – it was about £18 before and I’m sure you can find it that price still)
The Sakura isn’t bad, the paper is pretty nice, the book lays reasonably flat (the canson lays totally flat, though the paper is rougher).
I’ve used it to pencil the most recent work I’ve done, so far there’s about 35 pages of pencilled comics in there – it’s nice to have and look at too. Pencils are generally a nice medium. Though I use HB leads, I seem to have two grades of HB leads – a cheap and expensive set and they are different on the paper. Very odd.
I’ll generally pencil, scan them in to clip studio and then resize and rejig the panels – so there’s still a bit more work to do with them than simply pencilling directly into the computer, but the bg advantage is I can pencil anywhere.
I would LOVE to return to old fashioned inking, particuarlyl with a brush, but I now lack the studio space to do that, but it’s a dream, innit (Plus everytime I did ink traditionally, it’s not long before I run back to the computer with my tail between my legs). I no longer have the eyesight, the subtly in the hand or the patience to work with traditional inking media. Real pity.
I think time can correct that – I taught myself to ink with a brush with my first pro comics gig for 2000ad, in 2000 – largely by stubbornly refusing to give up (and computer inking wasn’t an option, plus I’d convinced myself brush inking was the way pros worked – it’s not, they use whatever makes a mark)
I’ve been drawing digitally for a long time (ask me how long ? well, gee, I’d say my first digital drawings where from about 1984 when I literally had to write my own program to draw digitally)
For decades the only game in town for graphic tablet displays was the Wacom Cintiq, so much so, that Cintiq became shorthand for that very grade of device – a digital screen you could draw on. Unlike a tablet (a relative johnny-come-lately to digital drawing) the Cintiq’s require a computer and even then they can be horrifically expensive.
My first Cintiq was a Wacom Cintiq 12 XW. A 12″ Display. I remember drawing my first tentative lines on it and thinking “I wonder if these will look digital?” what I found was that no-of course they don’t look digital. If anything Cintiqs (and devices like them) did tend to make you a little lazier in how you draw a line, so easy to just scribble, and scribble the wrong size. So you have to learn discipline.
My second Cintiq was a Wacom Cintiq 27″ QHD – a massive beast of a thing, 27″ of display and what seems like 12″ of border around that display. But, it’s been utterly invaluable. As my eyesight deteriorates (in that way that it will to most of us as age takes us away from ourselves little by little) the ability to zoom in on a page, and work at a higher than print quality has been great. The resolution of the 27″ is about 110dpi, for comparison the ipad pro 12″ is 260dpi (approx) and laser printers print at 300dpi(roughly) so good enough, but not as high as print, obviously.
Lately I’ve been staying with my brother as a part time carer (he doesn’t need much care, really, just company) and I needed a mobile studio setup. Having moved my desktop over to an M1 Mac Mini some time ago (it’s both tiny and utterly silent, I love it – it replaced a Mac Mini that made a lot of noise, which in turn that replaced a brute of a desktop computer that sounded like a 747 taking off – never underestimate how much silence is worth) my computer was a simple matter of bringing with me, but the 27″ attached to a legotron arm was just not gonna be lifted and fit where I needed to. So, initially I tried my ipad pro as a mobile studio – but I was having trouble with the sensor (I’ve since had it replaced) and as a stop gap I bought the Huion 16″ HD, it was listed on Amazon as £349 and I thought – well, what do I have to lose.
Let me tell you, I have never been as impressed with a piece of computer equipment as much as this in a long time (really I’d say the only things that impressed me more on first sight have been the various apple first-of-their-kind devices).
This 16″ screen (which does have a 1″ border around all sides, except the left which is about 2.5″ but includes some buttons you can program as you see fit) is about 140dpi – a marked improvement on the Cintiq 27″ and the price! THE PRICE!
I ordered this on the Saturday, it was priced at £349, on Tuesday when checking for the delivery I’d spotted the price had changed to £299 and I thought – I’m not having that. Phoned amazon support asking for the price difference, they told me to cancel and reorder, so I did.
Look, if you’re a professional comic artist and you work digitally, you’ll know how important it is to keep file backups, well, let me go one further – if you rely entirely on digital art – it’s important to have system backups. What’s your plan if the cintiq breaks?
I cannot recommend the Huion highly enough, for the price it’s a steal. The build quality is fantastic, the driver, on the mac, is pretty simple (download some software, run it and boom it works)
And if you’re not a professional and you’ve a half decent computer setup, it’s a bargain as a first digital tablet for drawing.
I would say this screen doesn’t feature touch (and frankly, touch is a pain, every device with touch I’ve tried to disable the touch aspect of it.)
The pen is battery less – previously, presumbly due to patents wacom held, Huoin pens used a battery. It lacks the eraser button that is common on the cintiq pen, but it’s largely the same look and feel.
And if you’re plugging into a M1 Mac mini you only need one cable, a USB-C.
Honestly I can’t get over it for the price.
The Huion 16″ on top of the Wacom Cintiq 27″
The quality is such that I’m genuinely thinking of just ditching the 27″ cintiq (which, tbh is so big that I have my keyboard to the left and my mouse to the right and I have to shift my body towards either device if I want to use them)
Either that, or splashing out a bit and buying the 24″ Huion 4k, which looks absolutely the bees knees.
Affiliate links on Amazon:
Huion 16″ (as of this writing the price is £330 LESS a £50 voucher, making it £280)
Wacom Cintiq 27″ QHD has now been superseded, so I suppose the closest is the Wacom Cintiq Pro 24 Touch. Which is priced, on Wacom’s website, as £2,399.
Last week, 2000ad prog 2268 had my debut as a writer. Roots is a “Terror Tale” – a four page horror story. Partially inspired by Junjo Ito’s deeply disquiting horror comics, it tells a story of what how smothering a mother’s love can be.
I’ve talked a fair bit about it all over the place notably on Down the Tubes with John Freeman and Mathew Badham.
This blog started in 2000, though I’d had a webpresence as far back as about ’97 – the blog began life around 2000, specifically to talk about my breaking in to comics. As it happened my career began pretty much the following week, but there’s a slightly untold story of my posting a future shock idea to the alt.comics.2000ad newsgroup that was picked up by Andy Diggle who offered to buy it from me. I balls it up in the writing and it never went anywhere.
So here we are, at last, I’m a 2000ad script droid. Well, for that one week. I have a bunch of other story ideas (all futureshock/terrortale/time twister type stuff) which I just need to find the time to develop into a full script. Will I ever do that? I want to, but I’m gonna be pretty busy for a long time.
This week will also see issue 1 of the Lion and the Eagle in comic shops, really excited to see the reaction. There are some bits of the art that make me cringe – but, early reaction to the preview suggests everyone has missed those bits and are focussing on all the good bits – so that’s handy.
I’ve also finally totally finished Soul Plumber (had finished it, but then needed to help John out on a couple more pages). All done.
Should be finishing the art on the Lion and the Eagle and then, I feel like I’m facing a new chapter as an artist. Well see if anyone agrees.
Hey, been a fab month – finishing off Soul Plumber (all done now!) hopefully you’ll see issue 5 soon (it’s been hit by world wide shipping delays apparently). Then the following month issue 6.
Also this month, issue 1 of The Lion and the Eagle, hope you like it – I’m pretty happy how this turned out and Garth Ennis writes a barnstormer of a comic.
Got some work to do to finish it up, but should get that done soon, after that I’ve a couple of prior commitments (a short 8 pages and a long one 40 pages!) then I’ll be snuffling around like one of those truffle pigs looking for work. Possibly. It’s also possible work will come to me.
Kind of looking forward to seeing what this year brings in terms of work.
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!)
JANUARY
ISSUE #4 OF SOUL PLUMBER
ISSUE 4 OF SOUL PLUMBER 4TH JAN
FEBRUARY
ISSUE 5 SOUL PLUMBER 2nd FebruaryThe Lion and The Eagle Feb 16th
MARCH
ISSUE 6 SOUL PLUMBER 16th marchLion and the Eagle 2 16th March
APRIL
Lion and the Eagle #3 Date / Cover TBC
Time Before Time #12 Date TBC
MAY
Lion and the Eagle #4 Date / Cover TBC
JUNE
Battle Action Special, hardback 96 pages, I draw The Sarge.
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