My brain is tired, so I’m taking this week off from drawing The Cattle Raid of Cooley.  As a substitute, here’s a convention sketch I did some time ago of Fergus reminiscing about the old days, which I recently found while having a clear-out.  I’ve doctored it slightly with some digital Letratone-simulation.

You may also have noticed I’ve added one of those spam-blocker things where you have to type what’s in the graphic before you can leave a comment.  I’m afraid the volume of spam has just got too much for me – I went away to Edinburgh for three days and got back to nearly 1500 comments in my spam box to sort through.  Since 2007 I’ve had 348 comments from people leaving their thoughts on the contents of the site, as opposed to 51,258 robots trying to sell me dodgy pharmaceuticals, all of which I’ve had to trawl through just in case there’s been a legitimate comment thrown in the bin by mistake – and there have been a few.

I really can’t be bothered with it anymore. I hope this won’t be too much of an inconvenience to any of you who actually want to leave comments.

This Sunday (7 March) is Black Market day at the Black Box, and they now have a Facebook Group. The Black Panel (me and Andy and a selection of small press comics by Irish artists) will be there as usual. We’ve had a restock from Phil Barrett, one of our best sellers, including more copies of the sold out Black Shapes and the new-to-us Matter Summer Special of 2006. Lots of fine work by lots of fine artists from all over Ireland, north and south, for your delectation. Your attendance is hereby requested.

New articles added to the Irish Comics Wiki in the last month:

• A. F. Blood, 1870s magazine cartoonist
• Ernest Kavanagh (1884-1916), 1910s political cartoonist and trade union activist
• Matthew Lawless (1834-1837), painter, illustrator and cartoonist
• Muddled, webcomic by Matthew Dunne and Simon Fay (2009-)
• NutScrewsWashersNBolts, early 1990s Belfast small press anthology
• W. T. O’Shea, 1880s-90s political cartoonist
• Our Boys, Irish boys’ story paper (1914-)
• Michael Reidy, 1910s-20s political cartoonist
• Tír na nÓg, Irish language comic published as a supplement to Our Boys (1946-)

The featured article this month is on David Norman, an illustrator and storyboard artist from Dublin based near Düsseldorf in Germany, who has created the comic album Luna, Hektor und der Professor: Der Schatz von Aschkor (“Luna, Hektor and the Professor: the Treasure of Aschkor”, image right), an archaeological adventure for the German market.

For my readers in and around Belfast, don’t forget the Black Panel, Andy’s and my stall selling Irish-produced small press comics, will be at the Black Books book fair this Sunday, at the Black Box on Hill Street in the Cathedral Quarter. Here’s Andy’s write-up of the last one on Alltern-8, and a photo of me behind the stall I’ve stolen from said write-up, showing some of the variety of marvellous comics we have on sale.