The Cattle Raid of Cooley is still on holiday, but the prequel, Ness, is going back to print as my stock is down to single figures. I thought I’d take the opportunity to do a new cover, as the old one isn’t very dramatic. Here it is. Hopefully the new print run will be ready for the 2D comics festival in Derry at the end of the month.

No page this week – my mind has been unavoidably elsewhere. There is light appearing at the end of the tunnel, finally – my kitchen no longer looks like an episode of Time Team, and soon I will no longer have to use other people’s bathrooms, but will be able to return to my own.

In other news, the panel at the Dundalk Book Festival went well – here’s a cutting from the local press with our photy in:

This Saturday coming sees the launch of Courageous Mayhem – the follow-up to last year’s Romantic Mayhem, this time parodying old boys’ comics. I have a strip in it called “Heroes from Bible Days”, and it’s full of great work from a lot of the same creators, and a few more. Gar Shanley is once again overseeing proceedings, so it’s guaranteed to be funny, and perhaps a bit sick. Anyway, the launch is at The Little Green café bar, 13 High Street, Dublin 8. Here’s the Facebook Event Page – invite your friends!

I’m appearing at the Dundalk Book Festival tomorrow as part of a panel on Irish Comics and Graphic Novels, alongside Tommie Kelly, Hilary Lawler, Rob Curley and Al Nolan. It’s at the County Museum, starting at 2.30.

Probably ought to call this comic “two-weeks-out-of-three-ly” – but I’d miss that deadline too. Ah, what the hell. This is a serialised graphic novel, and when it’s done nobody’ll care about the odd missed week here and there.

In the meantime, you can always go to Will Simpson’s exhibition at W5, opening tomorrow. Will used to draw comics like Transformers and Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper and Hellblazer and Batman. In more recent years he’s been doing concept art and storyboards for film and TV, working on Rob Bowman’s Reign of Fire, John Simpson’s Freeze Frame, Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto, HBO’s Game of Thrones, David Gordon Green and Danny McBride’s Your Highness, Dickie Attenborough’s Closing The Ring and the Tom Hanks-produced City Of Ember, among many others. The painting below is of Hayley Atwell from the 2007 Irish film How About You.

Tomorrow, Sunday 9 December 2012, there’ll be a Comic Book and Collectors’ Fayre at Avalon Arts in the Haymarket Arcade at the top of Royal Avenue. Entrance is free, and it runs from 12 noon to 6.30. In attendance will be such luminaries as myself, Andy Luke (who made the above poster), and editor Eoin McAuley, writer Ciaran Marcantonio and artist Daryl Cox from the Dublin-based anthology Lightning Strike Presents, as well as hopefully a few surprise guests. Oh, and I’ll be launching issue 7 of The Cattle Raid of Cooley. Don’t, as the immortal Jim Megaw might say, you miss it.

A few things I probably ought to draw your attention to. A couple of weeks ago I appeared, being interviewed by Ciaran Flanagan, on the 2D Festival Podcast episode 11. We had a nice long chat about my work, the Ulster Cycle, improvisational comics,  Hergé and so on, which went on so long that the standard questions Ciaran asks all his guests had to be cut.

One question whose loss I think is a shame is my favourite individual comic ever, which is an issue of Stinz by Donna Barr. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Stinz is a series set in an alternative world reminiscent of the early 20th century, the principal point of difference from our world being that there’s a community of centaurs in rural Germany. Stinz Löwhard is one of these “half-horses”, as they’re known. There are stories of his youth, and stories when he’s a mature farmer and mayor of his community, and there are stories of him as a young man when he joined the army and went to war. “On A Pale Horse” is one of those. The war’s just started, and Stinz and his comrades, just out of basic training, none of them having fired a shot in anger, are on their way to the front, when the unit’s horses get sick and have to be put down. It makes me cry every time I read it – it’s the It’s a Wonderful Life of comics. And Donna has been putting her comics online, so you can read it for free at this link. Here’s a sample:

The other thing I’ve been doing lately is appearing at TitanCon, the science fiction, fantasy and in particular Game of Thrones convention at the Europa Hotel last Saturday. I and PJ Holden assisted with The Magnificent One Day Comic Book Factory, run by Andy Luke (who’s also done an interview with Ciaran on the 2D Cast), in which participants created a comic from scratch over the course of an hour, which was then printed up as a limited edition and and sold in aid of Action Cancer. It went really well I thought. Here’s the two pages I did for it. Bit of nonsense, made up as I went, but came out all right.

Next weekend I’ll be at the Dublin Zine Fair, a two-day event organised by Sarah Bracken of Baby Beef Art Press. I’m printing frantically and should have the first copies print edition of The Cattle Raid of Cooley issue 6 for sale!

No comic today, sorry. There’s a Black Box Bazaar on Sunday, I need to print some comics to sell and it’s taken most of the evening to get my printer to work. It’s going now, and I’m making the most of it while I can. If you’re in the vicinity of Belfast on the afternoon of Sunday 11 December, and you’re interested in buying some home-made arts and crafts – ideal for Christmas presents – why not come along to the Black Box on Hill Street in the Cathedral Quarter and patronise the various stalls?

There really won’t be an instalment of The Cattle Raid of Cooley this week. Too much going on.

Tomorrow evening I’m a guest at Waterstones in the Fairhill Centre in Ballymena for their comic book evening, alongside Andy Luke and Stephen Downey. I’ve been doing a lot of printing in preparation, and I’ve more to do, so I haven’t had any time for drawing. If you’re in the vicinity of Ballymena tomorrow from 7 to 9 in the evening, why not come in and say hello?

There will be no update of The Cattle Raid of Cooley this week. I have a table at the 2D Comics Festival in Derry at the weekend, and I’m afraid I’m too busy wrangling my recalcitrant printer to get anything drawn. It promises to be a great show – click through for the programme.