Mud, football and Readers Digest

I just illustrated this entertaining piece for Readers Digest by James Brown about the perils of the football pitch in your late forties. I was commissioned by Martin Colyer, who was a pleasure to work with from start to finish.

This commission presented two problems: 1) the unusual shape, across two pages of text, 2) I don't know the first thing about football. However, the closest I ever got to an interest in the beautiful game was reading my brother's Roy of the Rovers comics when I was a kid, so I hit upon the idea of contrasting James' youthful footballing dreams with muddy, squelchy reality.

Thanks to Matt Dooley for the lend of the football comics book.

Below is my original sketch and how the final piece looked in the mag.

Meditato!

World, I give you... Meditato!

S/he is of course a committed Spuddhist.

(This might be my favourite picture that I've done so far!)

GREAT BEAST!

You might have seen last week's very exciting announcement that our comic Hitsville UK is joining the roster of Great Beast comics, home of the UK's best independent comics and creators!

Great Beast is the brainchild of Adam Cadwell (Blood Blokes, The Everyday) and Marc Ellerby, (Chloe Noonan: Monster Hunter, Ellerbisms) and their ethos fits with ours like a sexy, pink glove: "Our comics will be brimming with pop culture, but still retain their heart" and "We don't think pop is a dirty word". Amen to that!

Great Beast will be re-releasing issue 1 of Hitsville UK in July, and publishing brand new issue 2 in November, in time for Thought Bubble comics festival. There will be physical and DIGITAL versions of each issue.

http://www.greatbeastcomics.com/2013/04/new-title-hitsville-uk/

The other artists on the Great Beast roster are Robert Ball and Warwick Johnson-Cadwell, whose amazing Dangeritis will also be published in July. We are in fine, fine company.

To celebrate this great news, here's a picture of the other great beast Aleister Crowley enjoying issue 1. Spooky!

One from the vaults

Far be it from me to jump on the bandwagon that is currently whipping a dead horse, er Prime Minister up and down the street* but here's a vintage William Blake, Taxi Driver strip  that seems relevant again.

This was originally published in Time Out in 2008, when there was a speculative brouhaha about whether Mrs T would get a state funeral. http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2008/07/state-funeral-thatcher-labour

*Apologies for some seriously muddled metaphors