I got invited to the Lingua Comica closing reception at the Japanese Embassy in London last night. First time I’ve been to an official embassy function and I guess technically I can now say I’ve set foot on Japanese soil. Well, carpeting. Good fun was had by all, not least because every time I downed my glass of wine a waiter passed by to top it up. You can check out the Lingua Comica collaborations at their website over here. Well worth a look, I’d say.

Oh, go on then – let’s talk about Douglas. Mr. Noble has just begun a new interview series under the catchy title, Let’s Not Talk About Comics. Kieron is the inaugural guest, set the near-impossible task of not talking about comics for the length of almost an entire interview. Does he succeed? Only one way to find out.

I almost, almost, almost got my 24 hour comic finished on time but then didn’t. All the actual art, words and layout were finished by 12:39pm, which was cool, but then I had to drive my housemate to the train station and I still needed to add the registry panels that make the Tarquin Engine work. So I went over by an hour or so all told, which isn’t too bad, considering.

Anyway, take a look see: Never Shoot The Chronopath

Now I’m off to have a shave and then go jump on a train to get to the ICA for my talk at 4pm. Sleep depravation plus public speaking! Yay!

This Sunday I’ll be giving a talk on webcomics as part of ComICA 07 at the ICA in London. Here’s the blurb from the ICA website:

Comica Collaboratories (4pm – 5pm)
Webcomics wizard Daniel Merlin Goodbrey (Last Sane Cowboy & Other Stories) guides you through experiments in online comics, including cutting-edge blog collaborations by Lingua Comica’s participants.

You can get the full low down on all the rest of this year’s ComICA related events from Paul Gravett. I’ll also be taking part in 24 Hour Comics Day starting on Saturday and going through till Sunday, just before I’m due to give the talk. It may be worth turning up just to see what nonsense I come up with following 24 hours of comics enforced sleep deprivation.

I’ve made 24 hour comics three times before (here, here and here) but this will be the first year I’ve participated in what now seems to be the official annual day of 24ing. Hopefully I will not mess up too badly while everyone is watching.

This weekend it’s time for the now hopefully annual Birmingham International Comics Show. I’ll be there once again, sharing a table with Douglas and Dave. I’ll also be on a panel on Sunday morning called “Small Press – Big Future” which will be about… oh, I dunno, small press comic stuff I guess. You should come along, it’s bound to be a hoot.

I just heard that my hypercomic, The Formalist is currently on show as part of the “Infinite Canvas: Art of Webcomics” exhibition at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in New York.

The show runs till the 19th January and, judging by the list of webcomics folk involved, should be well worth taking a look-see if you’re in the area.

In unrelated news – ooh look, Strip For Me has gone and got itself a redesign.

Written by C.B. CEBULSKI, MATT YOCUM, DANIEL MERLIN GOODBREY, DOUGLAS NOBLE, T. CAMPBELL & SCOTT GRAY

Penciled by PAUL NEARY, BRIAN DENHAM, NELSON, DENIS MEDRI & ROGER LANGRIDGE

Cover by BRYAN HITCH

As the Avengers battle to take down the Serpent Society, the team recalls never-before-told tales of their past! Watch as: Spider-Man tries to integrate into a team and learns a thing or two about history, Luke Cage and Wolverine go toe-to-toe against a terrifying cosmic foe, Henry Peter Gyrich becomes an unlikely hero on an unlikely world, and Jarvis the butler cleans house…after some robot Vikings drop by unexpectedly.

On top of all that—it’s the return of the critically-acclaimed Fin Fang Four by Scott Grey and Roger Langridge! That’s 55 pages of all-new comics, PLUS classic reprints from Avengers history! 96 PGS./Rated A …$4.99

The above is the solicitation info for the Avengers book containing my first story for Marvel Comics – Emperor None & The Sky Full Of Moons. The bit where it says “Luke Cage and Wolverine go toe-to-toe against a terrifying cosmic foe” is me. Spider-man is actually in it too and it’s drawn by the rather talented Brian Denham.

The book will be out on 19th December, but if you could all run out and pre-order it from your local comic shop now, this would be much appreciated.

Just finished getting AKiS set up on Modern Tales, so now you can pop over there if you want to find out how to tooncast the strip to your own website. Also, since it’s Friday, I should really mention my other weekly strip The Rule of Death over on Serializer. Two pages left to go in Chapter Four and poor old Pete Colby has just been shot in the chest, so things aren’t looking too good for him.

I also managed to finish writing all of Chapter Five this week – I try and stay a chapter ahead of Douglas so that he doesn’t run out of things to draw.  Chapter Four seemed to keep getting longer and longer in the writing and ended up being done in smaller chunks as time allowed, so it feels good to have a full chapter of pages under the belt again.

This was a comic I wrote a while ago in collaboration with John Barber, although I think most folk may not have seen it before as it was sat behind various pay barriers. Now that it’s been a few years, I asked John if I could lob it up at E-merl for free and he said “absolutely yes” so here you go.

If memory serves, it was the first comic I ever wrote for someone else to draw, and I remain pretty pleased with how it turned out. John is of course kept nice and busy these days editing for Marvel Comics. I hear there may be more news on that front in the next edition of Previews…

And we’re off! Not much to the official launch other than me saying we’re officially launched, but still. It’s official! We’re launched! Yay!

Welcome one and all to E-merl version 6.0. The new site design launches officially on Tuesday next week, but I decided to get everything up a few days early so I could test stuff out properly. As you can see we’re fully tricked out in WordPress now, which I guess means I’ll be doing a bit of – gasp! – blogging in this space here.

You may also have noticed the big ol’ strip taking up the top of the page called All Knowledge Is Strange. This is the series that’ll be replacing the much-missed Brain Fist. It’ll be updating – second gasp! – twice-weekly here at E-merl on Tuesdays and Thursdays starting next week.

So be sure and tune in on Tuesday for the new design’s official launch and the first instalment of the new series. And some more blogging, I guess. If I can think of anything else to say.