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!

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”.

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.

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)

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.

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)

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)

I’ve had three deliveries of comps (complimentary) copies over the last week. One box every few days and it’s been fun!

First issue #2 of Knight Terrors: Harley Quinn wherein I do my best “Ok., I’m not Ben Templesmith but I’ll try” (Ben had drawn part one and I was drafted in for part two)

Next, a big ol’ box of the paper back of Soul Plumber – I’d forgotten entirely it was coming, but it was fun when it arrived.

And then, today, “Catwoman Uncovered” a collection of Catwoman covers, which I drew some images for which I assumed where for a backup article, but nope! turns out they were for a little connective tissue between pin ups, genuinaly gasped out loud to see my catwoman on page 1.

I’d forgotten how fun it was to get comps, and how quickly you feel buried by them.

Roll on the next delivery.