Thanks Due

The excellent Gosh! comic shop on Great Russell Street

Thanks to everyone who turned up for our signing at Gosh! on Thursday night - Ian and I had a terrific time. Particular thanks to all you nice Gosh! staff for looking after us so brilliantly (especially my old mate and collaborator Will Kane for being our minder during the event).

Left: the window display for our signing, including three separate cut-outs.

Gosh! has been a favourite haunt of mine since my days as a spotty fanboy, so it was a genuine pleasure to do a signing there. The signing had been threatened as Ian was forced to delay his arrival in London due to an illness in the family, and my trip home was complicated by a rail strike; but in the end, everything came together. Ian made it in good time, and I made it home without either having to skip out early or suffer excessive delays. My arms are about a foot longer from lugging carrier bags full of books home, though. I thought having Page 45 as my local comic shop might inure me to Gosh!'s charms, but no such luck; that place is just too good...

Above: sample pages from The Murders On The Rue Morgue from the Nevermore anthology
Written by Ian Edginton, drawn by me

The Nevermore launch at the ICA (including a talk on Horror in comics hosted by Paul Gravett) went well; it was great to catch up with old mates and to meet a few new ones; I also had my first chance to see the book. It's an anthology of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, featuring work by Jamie Delano, Steve Pugh, Shane Oakley, John McCrea and Natalie Sandells as well as Ian and myself.

The cover to the Nevermore anthology, published by Selfmadehero

Though I completed my story back in March, I've held off publishing details here until the book was out. Our segment is an updating of Ur-detective tale The Murders On The Rue Morgue, and it was the first thing I worked on following the first series of Stickleback. Given that the latter was so reliant on digital jiggery-pokery, I decided to do Rue Morgue "straight" - ie no grey tones or effects (except for a couple of bits where I simulated the use of white Letratone). I wanted to see if I could still tell a story as if I were just using pen and ink, and I'm pretty pleased with the results (see above). Working this way forced me to think a lot harder about drawing and composition.