Stop the presses! Those attending the Bristol International Comic Expo will be able to get their hands on an exclusive preview of the first chapter of my new webcomic project, Necessary Monsters. Just wander over to the London Underground Comics table and you’ll be able to find either myself or my artistic collaborator Sean Azzopardi on hand to sell you a copy of our thrilling new pictorial spy-horror narrative.

Those not attending the show may want to point their browsers at the link I slipped into the above paragraph as it will take you to the new Necessary Monsters website. Not too much to see there yet as I’ve still to do a popper design job on the place, but if you poke around you’ll find a few nuggets of info about our new soon-to-be-weekly webcomic serial.

Jumping on a plane in the morning and heading out to New York for the NYC Comic Con. The plan this year consists mostly of just wandering around and seeing if I can track down some more writing gigs. Bonus points and free comics to anyone who successfully identifies me in the crowd and says nice things about E-merl. Oh and if you’re reading this and you’re a publisher (unlikely) or someone I know (more likely) attending the convention, then drop my an e-mail on merlin (at) e-merl.com and I’ll see if we can figure out somewhere to meet up.

A few weeks ago I did an interview with Alexander Danner which he’s now turned into a rather jolly article all about little ol’ me at Webcomics.com. Go take a look for an idea of where my head’s at currently, comic creation wise. Towards the end of the piece there’s also a new little detail about the upcoming Marvel gig and the first official announcement of my other big project this year, Necessary Monsters. Can’t say too much about NM yet, but to whet your appetite here’s a sneak-peak of some artwork courtesy of my collaborator on the series, Sean Azzopardi.

It’s The UK Web & Mini Comix Thing this Saturday and I’ll be there in Mile End selling my wares as usual – do come and say hello if you’re in the area. Alternatively, if you fancy a little comics rebellion, head over to Camden on Saturday where a gaggle of young upstarts will be running a rival stall in Camden Market. Fortunately, thanks to some fiendish political manoeuvring, I’ve arranged events so that my comics will be available for sale on the Camden stall as well. The cutthroat world of British comics ladies and gentlemen – it always pays to think two-and-a-half steps ahead.

Point your inter-browser at these co-ordinates and you can now download the electrical podcast trickery of myself and Alex Fitch ruminating on the subject of comic periodicals and my own pathway into said medium. Huzah!

Oh, and because I mention it in the interview – Yes, I’m writing something else for Marvel at the moment. Don’t think I’m allowed to say what yet, but it’ll probably start appearing in a Marvel comic near you towards the end of the year. More news as it happens.

Two bits of unrelated news linked by the letter R. First off, I just recorded a radio interview with Alex Fitch for London based Resonance FM. I’m convinced I blathered like a crazy person, but Alex assures me otherwise. I guess you can judge for yourself if you’re in London on Thursday and tune to 104.4 FM at 5pm. There’ll also apparently be a podcast of the interview available, so I’ll throw the link up for that as soon it goes live.

My second R of the day stands for Robots, the new anthology book from Accent UK which is now available for order via Diamond in good comic shops everywhere. I mention this because I’ve got a story in the book called Robot Heart about a guy with, well, a robot heart. Head over to the Accent UK site to see further previews from the other contributors. Looks to be a fun anthology judging from all the names involved and the work on display.

Le Dernier Cow-Boy Raisonnable & Autres Histoires will be out from L’AN 2 on the 15th May. Take a look at the cover on the left and you’ll notice it looks a lot like the American version, only more French. Just the cover image alone may not do the new edition justice though – my publisher Thierry Groensteen sounds determined to raise the production quality on the book across the board. Needless to say I’m getting quite excited about the prospect of seeing the thing in the papery French flesh.

Meanwhile, on an island nearer to home, nominations for the Eagle Awards are underway. A better man might not beg for your votes, but I am not that man. Those wishing to stroke my ego could perhaps drop my name in the Favourite Newcomer Writer category. Of course, feel free to shoehorn mentions for me or my work into as many other categories as possible (Emperor None for best comics villain, anyone?). There’s a proud tradition of ballot stuffing when it comes to the Eagle Awards and it’s great to see the whole Internet able to play the game this year.

Cruising my referral logs today I discovered to my joy that Paul “Chiken” Fryer has his website back up and, even cooler, has now finished his long awaited Friends In Spring comic. Go check it out, it’s aces!

In completely unrelated news (and just because I let the cat out of the bag on a thread over at Whitechapel) there’s going to be a French edition of The Last Sane Cowboy coming out later this year from L’An 2. Le Woot! Not much in the way of details yet – it’s still going through the translation process at the moment – but as soon as I know more, so will you.

It occurs to me that I wrote Luke Cage into a comic that came out the week of Christmas and yet at no point in the story does he say the above. I fail! Still, hopefully the rest of the story will prove my redemption, which you can all judge for yourselves as Giant Size Avengers Special #1 should now be out in comic shops everywhere.

If further convincing is needed, I did another little interview about the book over at The Pulse. In fact I did two interviews, the second focusing in detail on All Knowledge Is Strange. Oh, and there’s some preview art from the book up at CBR too. Although none from my story, now I think about it. Why don’t I fix that by putting up a black and white preview of the first page right here? Done!

Did my lettering pass over Emperor None today and, y’know, I’m pretty pleased with it. Everything feels like it’s clicking with the words in place – I thought I might want to tweak quite a lot once I actually saw it on the page, but in the end it all seemed to fit just fine. Although it’s still a shock to see a character I grew up with in Saturday morning cartoons speaking my words (Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends fans represent!).

In related matters there have been of bunch more Giant Size Avengers interviews over at Newsarama. Make with the clicking to learn all about the return of the Fing Fang Four and get the inside scoop on C.B Cebulski and Jim Cheung’s contributions to the book.