Season's Greetings!

Hope that Christmas brings you lots of wonderful surprises…

Maddaddam

Here's an illustration from a few months ago. This was to accompany a review in Nature of Margaret Atwood's latest novel Maddaddam.

The piece went through a few changes as the art director, Barbara Izdebska, checked details against the review copy of the novel in the Nature offices.

I wasn't totally in the dark as Maddaddam is the third book in a trilogy and I had read the first novel in the series Oryx and Crake a few years ago and was able to speed-read the second book After the Flood while I was doing roughs for the illustration.

I was pretty happy with how it turned out in the end and Barbara very kindly sent me on the review copy so that I could finish the trilogy!

The trilogy is a captivating and terrifying depiction of a world after a pandemic has wiped out most of humanity. A handful of human survivors manage to cling on to a perilous existence, along with the Crakers, a tribe of bio-engineered humanoids bred to populate this brave new world (on the left in my illustration). Both groups must contend with the pigoons, ferocious and intelligent creatures who are the descendants of genetically modified pigs bred as human organ farms.

The whole trilogy is great but Oryx and Crake remains my favourite. Start there and see how you get on.

The difficult second issue

Well, it took the Stone Roses and Elastica five years each, right? So, we're not doing soooooo badly.

Yes folks, Hitsville UK issue 2 is finally with us.

It's colourful, it's psychedelic, it's funny, it's sad, it's strange, it's even better than issue 1, it's 36 pages long and it's yours for just £3.50 in print or 69p(!) digital from Great Beast comics.

In issue 2, spiv-hop pioneer Jack Spatz competes in the local rap battle, Gerry comes to blows with his eccentric genius producer Greg Pastis, and The Dreadnoughts and Carrie Nation's Revenge face down neo-nazi agitators Aryan 51. Meanwhile, Greg sends Gwillum on a dangerous mystical mission to find THE SONG.

Forbidden Planet International's Richard Bruton described Hitsville UK 1 as "a bloody great accumulation of inspired madness, musical insanity and general chaos... a pure, unadulterated hit of a comic".

Andy Oliver of Broken Frontier said it was "a riotous, frenzied whirlwind of a comic book. I'll be pre-booking my tickets for the next gig!"

And cult comics writer David Hine wrote simply "Hitsville is a hoot!"

You can order issues 1 & 2 from the Great Beast store.

While you're there, check out other ace new comics from (deep breath) Robert Ball, Dan Berry, Warwick Johnson-Cadwell, John Cei Douglas, Isabel Greenberg and GB's founders Adam Cadwell & Marc Ellerby.