A new webcomic starts today: Tommie Kelly’s The Holy Numbers! It’s about a guy who wakes up with a vision of enlightenment and sets out to change the world. Is he a guru or a fraud? What happens when a movement overtakes its founder? The comic launches with six episodes in one go, and will update Monday to Friday from now on. You’ll want to follow this one. (If you’re at work or have a problem with that sort of thing, there’s some nudity and bad language.)

I forgot to mention, but last week’s page of The Cattle Raid of Cooley was the final page of chapter 6, and you may have noticed that production of pages has slowed to a trickle lately. I’ve been at this since August 2008, over three and a half years, and I think I need a wee bit of a rest. So I’m going to take a few weeks off to do something different, recharge my batteries, and then come back and plunge into chapter seven with renewed vigour. I hope you’ll indulge me.

In the meantime, may I suggest you subscribe to the rss feed, the easiest way to follow webcomics, particularly serial ones, and most particularly serial ones with slightly unreliable update schedules? Here’s a link to an article I wrote for Irish Comic News on how to follow webcomics using rss feeds via Google Reader. If you’re interested in webcomics and don’t know about this, you will thank me.

Cover art by Tommie Kelly

Romantic Mayhem, the new anthology from National Tragedy, is out! Edited by Gar Shanley, with a cover by Tommie Kelly, it’s full of fabulous satirical romance strips by the leading talents in Irish comics – including Alan Nolan, Deirdre de Barra, Archie Templar, Elida Maiques, John Robbins, Hilary Lawler, Davy Francis, Ian Pettitt – and me!

A detail from "What's Roy Thinking?", the first strip in the book, written by Gar Shanley and illustrated by meself. I've tried to imitate the style used by the great Spanish artists who drew British girls' comics in the 60s and 70s, people like Jesus Redondo, Purita Campos and Santiago Hernández.

The standard version was launched in Dublin last weekend and will be onsale at zine fairs and the like across the country, including Independents Day in Dublin this afternoon. There’s also a deluxe edition designed by Archie Templar, available in hardback and softcover from Blurb.com, including an 11-page online preview.

There’s also an interview with Gar about the book on Irish Comic News if you’d like to know more.

I haven’t got this week’s Cattle Raid of Cooley drawn in time again. I wasn’t too busy or too tired, there was no creative block. I was off work (the day job) for the Easter holidays, and… I forgot what day it was. Duh. You may throw things at me if you wish.

Ronantic Mayhem, a very funny and gorgeous new romance comic (that I have a strip in) has a launch party in Dublin the weekend after next (flier by Elida Maiques).

No comic this week. I postponed updating in the hope I could get the page done later in the day, but it’s not gonna happen. Apologies. Hopefully be back next week.