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.


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