Latest Comics

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!

Linkin Park

Posted on 26th January 2020 by pj

I love twitter, I’ve been there since 2006 -so just over 13 years. In that time a lot’s changed about the quality of discourse on there (driven in part by the wider world, and in part by twitter userbase growing unfathomably big) but I still largely love it. I love the curated list of people I follow (just over 4k as of right now, though that list could really be only be about a hundred since they’re the ones I mainly see in my feed) and I love the list of people that follow me (many of whom have become real life friends, but there’s 11k of you now, and I’m sure some follow me for reasons I’ll never be able to fathom).

Anyway, I think though, we’ve chucked some stuff away that was good about the pre twitter days. Specifically blogging, newsletters and linked lists.

Newsletters are starting to make a come back – every writer I know now has started building a newsletter. Many artists are following suit. And they make a great deal of sense. There’s no gatekeeping there, your audience sees what you say (well, assuming they don’t just bin it or it gets buried under a ton of other stuff).

Blogs, too, make a lot of sense. You can expand your thinking, really open it up, but also you can get a good historical record of everything that you’ve said. And while that’s sort of true with twitter, twitter is also somewhere where you can go to just sort of vent (I mean, the ideal twitter situation is you say something and once you’ve read it it disappears in a cloud of logic, vented into the digital ether). So, finding something you’ve said that really is worth rereading is almost impossible (in fact, I ended up creating a separate twitter account purely for my Clip Studio Tips as I wanted it to be just good sensible useful information instead of the normal brain farts I sully my own twitter with)

Anyway, newsletter – check (subscribe to mine: http://www.tinyletter.com/pjholden – new newsletter coming next week)

Blog – check.

Linked list. Well, I’m rebuilding it. If you want to be added to my linked list (which will also go out with my newsletter) please get in touch here or on my twitter feed.

Linkin Park? Geddit? I’mma park your links here…

2020 Week 4 Recap

Posted on 26th January 2020 by pj

So, last week, my schedule went like this (day in bold, plans in italics) I try and keep my plans manageable, working within deadlines. 2000AD Work tends to grant you two weeks for six pages (If pushed I can do a page a day, but if I keep it light, I can do other things…)

Mon : Dredd Layouts

Did layouts and I ended up pencilling a page and a half as well. But, of course, I felt like I could’ve done more, which is why I should’ve stuck to my original plan of only doing things I’ve written down (and if I do extra make sure they’re unrelated)

Tue: Pay Tax. Pencil two pages (1,2)

Ugh paying tax always a headache, this was sorted though. I need a lie down afterwards, but it’s down. In the end I got nothing pencilled either (well, I finished the half page from Monday) so basically back on track.

Wed: Pencils two pages (3,4)

Woops, I think I also ended up drawing another folklore thursday tale here (pencils/inks/colours), because they rejigged their themes and we needed to get back to their current theme (so we banked the one I drew for this week). Honestly can’t remember if I did any pencils of Dredd here… but I think I must have done because…

Thur: Pencils (5,6)

Finished! It was a hard slog, lots of crowd scenes (and I KNOW I’m gonna need to rethink some of the pencils when I ink it, but sometimes you just need to finish) Pages 1-5 felt like I’d forgotten to draw, page 6 went like a charm then I realised page 6 didn’t have any crowds on it. So that tells me I should avoid crowds…

Fri: Channel Hex Day.

Still waiting on script revisions, but Spent the Thursday night/Friday morning with stomach pain (didn’t get to sleep til around 5am friday), which left me out of commission all day. (I get this on a regular basis, docs have narrowed it down to IBS with a WHEAT trigger, but that doesn’t do much good, I avoid all wheat/gluten which helped some, and it’s not as fearsome agony as it has been but it’s still pretty sore and regular)

Sat: Project D pencils 1,2

Got nothing done. Was another bad night (though not as bad) unusual in that I don’t normally get two bad days in a row, so this completely keel hauled me for the day. And a bit on Sunday.

Sun: Project D pencils 3,4

Nothing done here either. Still recovering lost sleep. DID this thursday’s folklore Thursday though, so that’s something. Plus some of the day left and gonna sit and do some work right now.

And that’s last week.

Next week’s schedule looks like this:

27 Mon : Dredd inks 1,2
28 Tue : Dredd inks 3,4
29 Wed: Dredd inks 5,6.
30 Thu: Email Catchup. FOLKLORE THURSDAY.
31 Fri: Newsletter. Channel Hex.
1 Sat: “D” Pencils 1,2
2 Sun: “D” Pencils 2,3. RECORD PODCAST.

Ok, bit ambitious maybe (esp given these are all crowd scenes, but I do sometimes find them easier to ink than pencil)

Thursday I’ll be catching up on people I owe emails to, and maybe .. maybe sending some submissions out further than my own network (these are more than likely just going to land and get nothing back, but you’ve got to cast if you want to catch)

Friday I’ll be sending out my monthly newsletter, and then catching up with the channel hex stuff, I’m rejigging the paper size I’m working at, so it’s a bit easier on old man Holden and my biggest struggle is finding the right art style. Normally I have a vision in mind but it can be hard to hold on to that when you’re doing something piecemeal.

Anyway, look if you’re enjoying the blog, please let me know in the comments.

Folklore Thursday: yedua

Posted on 23rd January 2020 by pj

Any resemblance to creatures living, dead or fictional is entirely coincidental.

I wanted to do a one page short story, there’s a variety of cool muck monster things in fiction, and I love the pairing of god with streetwise magician (who is named here Jack)

The pencils on this show though, that it took a fair amount of fiddling to get something that I thought would work.

(And even now, having written the dialogue and then stripped it off just to upload it here, I think dialogue-free might be better?)

I’m sure John won’t mind me saying I’m taking full blame for the comic strip, John’s tweet (as contained in the captions) is all I had to go on.

I think the story element of this works well paired with the info captions. And I suspect this might be the direction I start pushing more of the strips in. It doesn’t feel like writing, though, of course, it is.

There’s a alternative version of this which is much more of a kids comic one, I started drawing and abandoned it fairly quickly.

Anyway, hope you like it!

don’t forget John writes great little essays to accompany these comics over at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/26-yedua-33330838.

I broke my system…

Posted on 20th January 2020 by pj

Yesterday I’d planned out my week, then rejigged it. It was all based on the first week I did this, where I laid out the foundations for doing six pages of pencils in a week (which is, honestly, about half my normal speed) but gave me time to relax and do other things. The following week six pages of inks (again I’m capabale of six pages pencilled and inked in a week) which left me time to do other stuff.

This week I thought, ok, let’s ramp it up – which was idiotic because the point was to avoid that feeling I get to every night where I’ve done a decent amount of work and yet, it still feels like I could do more. Where the targets are undefined and so you always fall short.

Defining nice easy to achieve targets meant I’d get stuff done and then have time to relax and play in other fields, as it were.

Today, for example, I did some layouts, did a pitch image, did a page of pencils and that’s it. My plan was to do layouts (even for six pages I find this exhausting) and pencil two pages – the last layout day I planned to do layouts and nothing else.

So now, I feel like I should either spend the rest of the night frantically drawing another page of pencils (doable, but I’ll be working til 1) and still feel like a lazy pos, or I should just not bother and feel like I missed my target.

Goddammit.

Anyway, tomorrow I try and go back to my original first steps, got some tax to pay and will sort that out, and maybe get one page pencilled.

2020 Week 3 recap

Posted on 19th January 2020 by pj

UPDATE: Yikes. Rethought it, next week’s got too much on. Pairing it back. If I get more done, brilliant, but it’s gonna look a lot like the last couple of weeks instead.

Ok, I think this is gonna be a regular series, life inside comics, I suppose.

Plan last week was to ink 6 pages of Dredd, pay my tax, and take three days to do some other things. Project D and Channel Hex stuff.

WHAT HAPPENED:

Ok, in the plus column. Inked six pages of Dredd. And pencilled, inked, coloured and lettered a folklore thursday strip. In the negative column, put off tax til next week (honestly, I find this draining, but it’s literally just paying tax), and Project D and Channel Hex got short shift as my wife and I took ourselves away for the night. We had babysitters, and so, off we went to the Galgorm hotel and Spa. As ever, when I think I’m going to relax, I start hyperventilating and have a panic about what I could be doing instead. (When I’m working I’m wonderfully relaxed). But we haven’t had a break away with just the two of us for over a year, so off we went.

Channel Hex and Project D will still get some time, but probably next week. Inking is more time consuming than pencils (certainly the way I do it) and next week is gonna be a pencil day.

Here’s how it’s shaping up:

2020 Week 4 Schedule

Mon 20: Dredd layouts page 1-6, pencils pages 1-2
Tues 21: PAY TAX (ugh). Pencils Dredd pages 3-4
Wed 22: Pencils Dredd 4-5
Thu 23: Pencil Project D: 1-2
Fri 24: Channel Hex
Sat 25: Pencil Project D: 3-4
Sun 26: Folklore Thursday Drawing Day

Ok, so there’s a LOT more going on in this week. I’m faster pencilling, so gonna see if I can hit three pages per day pencils, Project D is 8 pages and will require some futzing in 3d software too, so these pencils will be very rough in some areas and detailed in others. But it means come

Have reconsidered, and scaled back. Far better to plan for less and get more done. Part of the point of all this is to not leave a day feeling like I could’ve done more when I’d already done plenty. Better to feel like “Yup, I did what I had to do, PLUS I DID SOME EXTRA.”

Folklore Thursday: Hidebehind

Posted on 16th January 2020 by pj

We ended up, somehow, out of sync with the folklore thursday account, tweeting our stories on week ahead of theme (christmas, a confusing time all round). So this is a resync strip. John sent me the tweet and I had all sorts of ideas for what Hidebehinds could look like (9 meter tall stick humanoid stick insects stuck in my head) but I wanted to do a goofy cartoony style, and so, this is what you get!

I could’ve gone gory, had toyed with the idea of the a hidebehind suddenly spotting the reader (after despatching the lumberjack) but that would’ve need a creepier art style than what I was going with.

Anyway, here we go – all synced up again!

Remember you can read the strips early and support us on patreon.com/holdenreppion

Job Description: A short story.

Posted on 15th January 2020 by pj

One of those days where I forget that “Top Class Twitter Banter” isn’t part of my job description.
Me

You’ve actually written yourself a job description?
Nixsight

Had to, it was literally the only thing in my job description “Can write Job Descriptions”
Me

Sunday recap

Posted on 12th January 2020 by pj

Last week I thought I’d try a new way of working (nothing to do with drawing, everything to do with organising myself) and you can read about it here.

I’m going to add to that process by doing a Sunday recap, where I just look to see how it worked/what’s next.

Mon 6	Dredd #3 Layouts	DONE	Light day, really, but that’s ok.
Tue 7	Dredd #3 pencils 1 & 2	DONE	Bit of a struggle to get second page done – family stuff tends to eat time. But that’s ok.
Wed 8	Dredd #3 pencils 3 & 4	DONE	Ditto.
Thu 9	Dredd #3 pencils 5 & 6	DONE
Fri 10	CHANNEL HEX DAY	Done	No script yet, but began redesigning elements and thinking about artistic style for the book. Stuff that needed done anyway. I have 5 pages of this pencilled and inked, but was never happy with it. (Maybe this is always the problem with work without a deadline though)
Sat 11	Research “D”	Done	Actually, researched it and layed it all out. 8 pages of strip.
Sun 12	Layout “D”	Did it yesterday, Daniel.	as above

One of the key things to what I’m trying to do is not overburden myself with stuff, even when it seems very possible. And to give myself days where I’d consider them “light” – a full day to do layouts on 6 pages? crazy. But that’s just the target, after that, I have time to do other things. I’m trying NOT to do the other things that are on my task schedule, because what I’m trying to avoid is that feeling that “oh no, I did loads but it was not enough” – I definitely enjoy working more than not working, but, for example, if I’d done layouts on monday and raced ahead to pencil the strip the same day and got, say, a page and a half of pencils done, I’d’ve felt like I didn’t manage to get enough done. Punishing myself for getting ahead. It’s bonkers, but it happens.

As it happens, during the week, because I had room for thinking, I also came up with a kid friendly cartoony style that might be the basis for two entirely different new projects. I conferred with John Reppion on year two of our folklore friday. Which will be the same but different. Very different. I also did layouts for a friend for a strip and laid out the self-written Jericho 5 (a four page strip I’m doing for The 77 – a fanzine based on the kind of British comics that came out before US comics dominated everything).

So in all, did what I wanted and allowed me freedom to do more. (Without it, I’d’ve felt guilt that I wasn’t working and would never have had the brainspace to do more)

So, now, next week, here’s how I see it shaping up.

Mon 13	Dredd inks 1 &2	I’ve already started inking 1, which is me instantly negating everything I’ve just thought about above. BUT, I’m gonna put it away for Monday.
Tue 14	TAX DAY Dredd page 3	Yuck. Just gonna get my tax paid. Honestly, I’ll need a lie-down after this. (Yes, it’s early to pay, but I like to get this stuff out of the way)
Wed 15	Dredd inks 4 & 5	I feel like two pages of inks might be too much, but we’ll see.
Thur 16	Dredd inks 5 & 6	I do love the plain simplicity of those days where it’s just – draw x and y.
Fri 17	CHANNEL HEX DAY	If I’m waiting on a script, it’ll be working on the cover, and the book size
Sat 18	Pencils D pages 1 & 2	Project D I’ll talk about it when I can.
Sun 19	Pencils D pages 2 &3 PODCAST

And that’s my plan. I feel like it’s a little more filled than last weeks and that might be a mistake. Plus I’ve got to make room for drawing Folklore Thursday (which takes approx 3-4 hours) and I’m going to try and up the blogging schedule a bit plus I have to record a podcast next sunday, which eats up most of a night.

Last week I felt like I got everything done I need too. This coming week i feel like it might be a struggle. But we’ll see.

Folklore Thursday: Cray

Posted on 9th January 2020 by pj

Seymour Roger Cray was an American supercomputer engineer. Beneath his suburban home he constructed a series of tunnels. When Cray reached a creative impasse he would retire below. “While I’m digging, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem”
John Reppion on Twitter

“Whether we’re supposed to take it that Cray’s elves were literal Other Folk, or a kind of metaphorical muse I cannot be sure. “
John Reppion on Patreon

I’m fairly sure: Cray was messing around. And I think we’re only just getting by with this as a folklore tale by the skin of our teeth. THAT said, having slept, ate, and breathed computers from an early age and always ALWAYS been fascinated by Cray super computers, I’m not gonna argue the point. If Elves are what he said, Elves is what I’m drawing.

Reading John’s tweets usually fairly quickly pops an idea into my head, and this idea appeared fully formed. Initially though, I drew the supercomputer in Cray’s head with a whole bunch of Elves working away at it, but then it felt wrong – we don’t hear mention of the elves until later in the tweet and so I didn’t want to spoil that fun surprise too early. If anything I regret not making the direction of Cray’s walk follow the reading direction, if I had time I’d redo it (and if a publisher comes along and wants to print the entire run of these things, I’ll certainly look at them all again…)

I can’t remember when I first heard or say a Cray supercomputer, but it was fairly formative. Look at that weird part alien, part Henge computer design (it’s actually more of a C shape, with a gap, but I stuck that in the rear view on this drawing). She’s a beaut. And, as time wears on and Moore’s law keeps progressing, she’s now only about a fraction of the power of whatever device you’re currently reading this on. Ain’t technology grand?

(Now If I can just convince John that Turing got his ideas from pixies, Ada Lovelace from Gnomes, and Steve Jobs consulted with swamp monsters then we could have a full set of technological folklorist…)

Process

Posted on 7th January 2020 by pj

Part of a regular cut-out-and-keep collection of Blogposts about well… process.

(I mean I say regular, the thing that really distinguishes my processes are they’re constantly in flux so it’s less a bunch of steps you should take as a bunch of things I’ve tried that have sometimes worked, sometimes not, but might spark a notion…)

I have a weekly whiteboard and I’ve been using a bullet journal the past three months. The bullet journal got a lot of use in its first two months, largely as I started writing thoughts down in it. But now my week is getting back in to a semi regular shape, so I thought I’d share it with you (and I write it all on my white board)

I’m trying to have reasonable targets for a day – nothing major, but enough to get stuff down and progress, and leave me spare time to do other things.

This week, for example:

Monday: read and layout a dredd script. – This is pretty light, layouts are exhausting, but this is the start of the new school term so the days still a little chaotic. (And, as it happened, I had time to pitch a short – four page – strip to a small press magazine and then write it up, at some point I’ll be drawing it [For the sake of talking about it, let’s call it “J”)

Tuesday – pencil two pages of the Dredd strip. My pencils are pretty loose, so in theory this is doable, but equally wife back at work, kids will be out of school, so there’s some big family to-dos in between times.

Wednesday – pencil two pages of Dredd. Tuesday and Wednesdays have similair structures. The biggest obstacle is usually me. Inertia and other things. Trying to keep other things to a minimum. (But sometimes they impose, like they’re already doing this week, but it’s ok! SLACK BUILT IN!)

Thursday – Pencils two pages of Dredd. No obligations on Thursday, and this should see Dredd pencilled. And I can start prepping for Friday.

Friday – Channel Hex day! Getting back to channel hex. Waiting on script revisions, so if they’re not here I’ll probably go back and redesign some characters and rethink the look of it.

Saturday / Sunday – I’ve another strip (waiting script) and I’ve set aside Saturday and Sunday as research days for it (that’s a light load, but family stuff may end up wiping me out at the weekend)

And that’s this week! Next week I’ll move on to the dredd inks, and try and up the ante.

Latest Comics

A4 Issue Four

Linkin Park

2020 Week 4 Recap

Folklore Thursday: yedua

I broke my system…

2020 Week 3 recap

2020 Week 4 Schedule

Folklore Thursday: Hidebehind

Job Description: A short story.

Sunday recap

Folklore Thursday: Cray

Process

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