It certainly has been busy on the news front lately, hasn’t it? Lot’s to get through in this update too, so let’s crack on. First the one bit of bad news – E-merl got hacked this week, which cost me a day of fretting and much annoyance as I patched and updated and repaired things behind the scenes. Fingers crossed that I’ve fixed all the problems and won’t be getting re-hacked anytime soon. Now on to more exciting matters – a whole chunk of San Diego panels got announced yesterday, including the two I’m going to be on. Here’s a quick cut-and-paste of the details of panel one:

Thursday 1:00-2:30: Comics Arts Conference Session #3: Digital Comics. Nick Langley and Ron Richards ask whether the move to digital comics will doom paper or help comics reach a new audience. Thomas Thrash and Tommy Cash discuss the balance that digital comics strike between being a necessity to continued publication of comics and an existential threat to comic book stores. Daniel Merlin Goodbrey considers the different directions potential explorers of digital comics – locative, sonic, generative, game, architectural, and AR comics – might pursue. Room 26AB.

Should be interesting, I hope. And coincidentally I just did an interview with Alex Fitch for his Panel Borders show on Resonance FM that covers some of the same territory as this talk. So for those unable to make it to San Diego, check out the podcastof the interview here. Now onward to panel two:

Thursday 5:00-6:00: First Comics: The First of the Great Independents Is Back with a Fury! Legendary ’80s independent publishing powerhouse First Comics is returning when the world needs it most, not unlike the promised return of King Arthur. And the assembled Round Table of extraordinary comics creators are here to tell you how they will once again be rocking your world with comics entertainment from the cutting edge. Panelists include Ken F. Levin, Joe Staton and Nick Cuti, Bill Willingham, Max Allan Collins, Brian Mullens, Alex Wald, Susannah Carson and Daniel Merlin Goodbrey. Moderated by Larry Young. Room 23ABC.

Well now. Why would little old me be on the First Comics panel? Here is a clue: Necessary Monsters. Yes, the Monsters website is back up and our long time in the wilderness without a publisher is almost at an end. Keep an eye on the Monsters site to see a special re-broadcast of chapter one, complete with writer’s commentary and the original script for each page. New pages will be going up daily through July and all the details of the new print edition will appear as soon as we’re allowed to release them.

And that’s your lot for now. If you’re in San Diego and want to say Hi, the best place to look for me will be at booth #2001, where First Comics have borrowed some space to setup shop from AiT. I’ll also be keeping an eye on e-mail, Facebook and Twitter throughout my stay, so do give me a shout if you’re at the show.

Jack’s Abstraction is my first stab at making a hypercomic app for Android smartphones and pads. I built it in Flash via the wonders of Adobe Air and hopefully it’ll be the first of many more such experiments to come. Go to the Android Market for more details of the app, where you can also grab your copy gratis, free and for nothing. At some point there may be an iPhone/iPad version in the offing too, but first I’ll need to figure my way around Apple’s slightly less welcoming approach to app publishing.

For those keeping score, Jack’s Abstraction would be the first of the dark plots I hinted at last week. The next few revolve around what I’ll be up to at San Diego Comic Con in a month’s time.  Stay tuned for more news on that in the weeks to come.

Hi everybody! It’s been simply forever since I wrote a news post here, hasn’t it? So here’s one big post to bring you up to speed on stuff I’ve been up to since last November. In reverse chronological order and starting right now, the comic project I’ve been working on for Sony to promote their new videogame, inFamous 2 has just gone live. I was brought onboard by Margaret and John Doe to design the Flash interface for a series of comics written by the great Pat Mills and illustrated by a whole host of talented illustrators. Go take a look and be sure to check out the credits for the full list of everyone involved.

Next up is Comics Launchpad which I was at yesterday, delivering a talk on the new frontiers of digital comics. The talk went very well and the event as whole was a real eye-opener. Met a lot of new and interesting comics folk who I hope I’ll be seeing again somewhere soon around the scene. I also got lots of requests from people for a copy of the presentation that accompanied my talk – any interested parties I haven’t got back to yet should drop me a tweet and I’ll send on a copy of the pdf.

Turning the clock a little further back to April we have the release of Paper Science 4, for which I created a rather dark little tale entitled When She Sleeps. Copies should still be available for purchase via We Are Words + Pictures so do drop by for a copy if you haven’t picked one up already.

And lastly way, way back in December last year I was invited by the British Council to give a talk and presentation of my work to a visiting delegation of comics folk from the Strip Turnhout comics festival in Belgium. This was a great opportunity for me to get a window into the Belgian comics scene and should hopefully lead to another exciting project I can’t tell you about yet. But in the meantime if anyone’s interested, a full report of the delegation’s visit has been published here.

In between the above I have been busy learning ActionScript 3 and hatching various dark plots which will hopefully be coming to fruition over the course of the summer. Expect to hear a lot more on such matters soon.