A quick pre-Christmas post to point everyone in the direction of this here page concerning the new Necessary Monsters trade paperback. You need this book! It’ll be out in comic shops in February but you need to go and order it from your friendly comic shop owner now, because that is the way the gods of comics have decreed it. Go forth! Or alternatively, order your copy from Amazon. Go… er… fifth!

And now I’m off to finish getting ready for the aforementioned winter festival. I’ll see you all in the New Year, by which time I promise I’ll have the new E-merl shop sorted and copies of the Brain Fist trade available for sale. Oh wait, before I forget, check this out – someone let me into a conversation about Science Fiction in comics with Bryan Talbot, Paul Cornell and Paul Duffield. And then they went and recorded the whole thing too! Jings!

Merry, merry everyone!

Two quick bits of business. Firstly, Empire of Odd has completed its run at Ctrl Alt Shift. The instalments are kind of spread out around their blog and rather hard to find so I thought I’d better do a post linking to all them from one place. And here it is.

Part One, Two, Three, Four and Five. Ta-dah!

Secondly, this weekend is Leeds Thought Bubble and myself and Sean will be there, pushing Necessary Monsters and getting folks all excited for the new trade paperback collection that’s going to be out in February. Ooh, did I just let that slip? I expect I’ll be saying more about that soon then.

I’m also going to have a brand new collection of the complete Brain Fist that I’ll be selling at the show. In full colour! With a spine and everything! I’ll eventually be selling this at E-merl too, once I give the shop a bit of an overhaul. Until then, if you want to get your hands on a copy you’ll just have to pop along to Leeds on Saturday and grab one in person.

The first part of my new five-part webcomic serial, Empire Of Odd, went live this week at Ctrl.Alt.Shift. The webcomic is my contribution towards Ctrl.Alt.Shift’s new anti-corruption initiative and will be appearing exclusively on the web to help promote their upcoming print anthology, Unmasks Corruption. The story takes the recent MP expenses scandal in Britain as it’s jumping off point and then gets bigger and weirder from there. Tune in on Monday for part two.

Elsewhere on the web, another webcomic of mine that’s simply brimming with evil and corruption has just finished it’s run. That’s right – chapter five of Necessary Monsters has wrapped up, bringing our tale of darkly-daring-do to a close. Sean has at last been freed from his drawing table to skip merrily through the woods without a care in the world – at least until I chain him back down again to start working on the print edition of the series. Said print collection should hopefully be available in all good comic stores by Christmas – more details to come on that front soon.

And lastly… well, nothing to do with corruption really, but next weekend is The MCM Expo in London and myself and Sean will once again be on hand to sell you our fine comicy wares. We’ll have with us copies of the final Necessary Monsters mini-comic and – provided we can get them from the printers in time – new Necessary Monsters postcards. Yes, postcards! Free ones! Available to anyone who comes past our table and says Hi during the weekend. Hmm… I guess that’s sort of a bribe, isn’t it? Yay! Corruption wins out in the end after all!

Word has broken across the internets this week that you’ll soon be able to read a fine selection of Marvel comics via Sony’s PSP. But why am I mentioning this at E-merl? Well, last year I was hired as a consultant by Sony to help them in the development of their new PSP digital comics service. The project proved a great opportunity to apply some of my more experimental comics ideas to a practical application, and now my NDA has been partially lifted I can at last talk a little about it bit in public.

I was hired originally both to consult on the development of the service and write a comic based on an existing Sony game IP that could be used as a testbed for the possibilities the PSP had to offer. After the success of the initial comic, I was later asked back to write a second comic using a third-party IP. On the second project I got to take a more hands on approach, working directly out of Sony Computer Entertainment’s base of operations in London to implement the comic’s creation on the PSP.

As the projects I worked on were primarily for internal consumption at Sony, I don’t really expect to see either of them make it out into the light of day once the service launches at the end of the year. But should this change, be sure that I’ll post a link to them at E-merl post haste.

It’s that special comics-in-Oxford time of year again and this weekend will find me off at the Caption small press convention. Do come along and say hello if you’re in the area – I will no doubt be propped up somewhere in the bar either doodling or drinking or possibly both. There’ll also be copies of Necessary Monsters and the brand new Rule Of Death issue #6 for sale on the Caption comics table. Worth £2 of anyone’s money, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Meanwhile, on the Internets, I’ve finally had the time to complete the web version of my recent collaboration with David Baillie, The Casita Situations. The last year has seen myself and Dave take several jaunts across to Paris where we’ve been working on a hypercomic installation for the walls of a children’s mental health clinic at the Avicenne Hospital in Bobigny. While the comic is to a large extent site dependent, I’ve tried to provide at least a flavour of the thing in this new randomly generated web version. Take a peek and see what sense you can make of it.

Lastly, as I’m sure many of you have already noticed, I’m now on Twitter. So far I’m actually managing to twit (I know, I know, tweet. But I don’t care!) on a more regular basis than I manage to update this blog, which I guess is sort of the point. So keep an eye on @merlism for blow-by-blow updates on whatever nonsense I get up to between comics.

Usually around this time I’d be busy making preparations for my annual pilgrimage to San Diego but this year things are going to be a little different, as later today I’ll be heading off to South Korea instead. The organisers of the Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival have invited me across to present a retrospective of my experimental webcomic and hypercomic work as part of this year’s festival. My contribution to proceedings will include an exhibition of thirteen specially translated hypercomics and an accompanying talk given as part of the digital comics conference being held at SICAF.

I’ve wanted to return to my old experimental webcomic stomping grounds for a while now, and the invite to SICAF has finally given me a decent excuse to do so. My renewed musings on the possibilities of the digital comics form resulted eventually in the creation of a brand new hypercomic – a rather odd little thing called Four Derangements. Follow the link and take a look-see for yourself or, if you happen to be passing Soeul next week, stop by SICAF for an exclusive read of the Korean version.

This Saturday I’ve been invited to talk on a couple of panels at Sci-Fi London. The first is on Comics as Sci-Fi Literature and the second is about Robots & Reality. I confess to having little clue as to what exactly qualifies me to talk on either subject, but I’m sure I should be able to come up with some enjoyable on the day (my recent Iron Man story has both Scf-Fi and robots. I imagine I shall just have to repeat this fact again and again until they politely ask me to leave).

May is actually looking to be a rather busy month here at E-merl Towers. In two weeks time on Saturday 23rd I’ll also be attending The London Movie, Comics & Media Expo. At the show I’ll be sharing a table with Sean Azzopardi and imagine we’ll both being doing our damndest to push Necessary Monsters on the unsuspecting members of the cosplay crowd. Free comics for anyone dressed as a Sci-Fi robot… monster… thing. Yes.

Oh, and while I’m thinking about matters Science Fictional, I realise I have been remiss in pointing out Mister Noble’s recently begun comic serial, Complex. A fine slice of apocalypse fiction set within a mysterious complex full of dysfunctional scientists, the strip is currently updating twice a week at Strip For Me. Go look!

I’ve been thinking I should really get a twitter account going, but then I remember how bad I am at both Facebook and keeping this blog updated and I go hide in a cupboard instead.

Anyway! Time for a long overdue update to let people know what’s up in the wider world of E-merl. First off, there have been a few people lately saying very nice things about Necessary Monsters and The Rule Of Death. Thanks people! Sean and Douglas continue to do wonderful work every week and you should all be getting very excited as both series begin to draw towards their conclusions.

Elsewhere, Astonishing Tales is now on its third issue and my Iron Man 2020 story has been meeting with massive levels of critical… well, indifference mostly. But! It’s still awesome! And things get even more explodey in part four so you should totally check it out at your local comic shop or online at Marvel DCU. Oh and I even did an interview about the serial over at the Pulse. Go see!

What else? The LUC X-mas Bash, The Web & Mini Comix Thing and Shmurgen Con have all come and gone. They were excellent events – thanks to those that made them so. I should now take the opportunity to plug LUC176 in June, where I’ll be part of the Baillie-Azzopardi-Noble-Goodbrey Comics Experience. I may even have copies of a new full-colour Brain Fist collection ready in time for the show, so fingers crossed.

Hmm. I think that about wraps it up for now. Speak to you again the next time I get around to making a post in the distant future. Until then – see you every Tuesday and Thursday for All Knowledge Is Strange. Happy Internets!

Word comes from Marvel that my Iron Man 2020 serial, Endless Stolen Sky will also be available to read online via their Digital Comics Unlimited initiative on December 24th. Along with the announcement they’ve popped up a page of preview art from the story and a natty little description of the plot, both of which I can now recreate for you here:

In a not so distant tomorrow, Arno Stark – the Iron Man of the year 2020 – prepares to launch the new heliliner, the Spirit of Free Enterprise. But Commodore Q wants to stop it! Who is he and what are the Endless Stolen Skies?

Ooh, sounds exciting! I got to see Lou’s pencils from part five of the serial last week, which included a splash page of some insanely large-scale action that is just all kinds of cool.

In other news, this Saturday I’m taking part in London Underground Comics Christmas Bash at the Alphabet Bar in Soho. I’ll have artwork on show from Brain Fist and All Knowledge Is Strange as well as the usual mini-comic goodies for sale. Check out this post on LUC’s website for the full details of the event and then take a peek at some cracking previews from the cartoonists involved.

COVER BY: KENNETH ROQUEFORT
WRITERS: C.B. CEBULSKI, DANIEL MERLIN GOODBREY, CHRIS SEQUERA & JONATHAN HICKMAN
PENCILS: KENNETH ROQUEFORT, LOU KANG, CHEW CHAN, NICK PITARRA & JONATHAN HICKMAN
COLOURED BY: IMAGINARY FRIENDS
LETTERED BY: TROY PETERI

The Marvel Universe is about to get even more astonishing with this anthology that delivers super-sized thrills every month! First up, fan-fave C.B. Cebulski and superstar Ken Roquefort (Madame Mirage) get gritty with a no-holds-barred Wolverine/Punisher tale you have to see to believe! You like Iron Man? GOOD! We’ve got a double dose of the Iron Avenger as Tony Stark and Arno Stark, Iron Man of the year 2020, headline two tales of corporate and high-tech intrigue. Finally, Cannonball and Sunspot of the New Mutants get sucked into the wildest adventure of their short lives when they spend their summer vacation in…MOJOWORLD!!

40 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

The above being the solicitation copy for my next outing at Marvel Comics. Astonishing Tales will be the home for Endless Stolen Sky, a six-part serial starring everyone’s favourite alternate-future armoured bastard, Arno Stark: The Iron Man of 2020. The story’s artwork is being provided by the amazingly talented Lou Kang and you’ll be able to read the first part of it when Astonishing Tales # 1 hits the stands on February 4th.

More details to follow soon – I expect there’ll be one or two interviews popping up around the web as we get nearer to the book’s release and I’ll try to keep track of them all here at E-merl. In the meantime, ordering the book at your local comic shop ASAP is probably a good idea if you want to be guaranteed a copy to read come February.

Excelsior!