THOUGHT BUBBLE 2014

I'll be at Thought Bubble comics festival this weekend in Leeds, Saturday 15th to Sunday 16th November .

Dan and I will be on table 62 in the New Dock Hall, along side our fellow Great Beasts Adam Cadwell, Marc Ellerby, Rachael Smith and John Cei Douglas. Here's where we are on the map. Rest assured that we will be much happier to see you than Gwillum looks here.

We'll have copies of Hitsville UK 3 hot off the press as well as copies of 1 & 2.

We'll also have A3 and A4 Hitsville prints and I'll be selling my AOI-award winning graphic poem  Capital City.

Come and say hi if you're about!

Secret 7"

I'm very excited to be part of this year's Secret 7" exhibition, and I'd like to share my design with you.

I'd like to, but that would defeat the object of the project!

My love for visual art is equalled only by my love for its sonic cousin, music (see also my comic Hitsville UK) and Secret 7" is an ingenious way of combining both and raising funds for charity.

The organisers have got 7 artists or bands to release new 7" versions of their songs, and invited artists (a mixture of famous bods and open submissions) to design the record covers. They then print 700 one-off covers (100 for each record) and sell each record for £45 on Record Store Day.

The twist is that the artwork on each cover doesn't explicitly tell you which record it is or who the artist is, so you only find out once you've bought the record.

You can browse all the designs on the Secret 7" website, and peruse them all in person on April 12th and 13th Downstairs at Mother, 10 Redchurch St, London, E2 7DD.

See anything you like? Recognise anyone's style? Mine's up there but I can't tell you which!

You can part with your hard-earned cash on Record Store Day, April 19th and it all goes to the brilliant charity Warchild.

Gosh!, a new Hitsville print

Thanks to everyone who came to the Great Beast spring party at Gosh! Comics last Friday.

Gosh are absolute heroes in supporting new, indy comics in the UK and it was great to hang with the other Beasts and see friends new and old.

Special mention must go to Rich of Comics Printing UK who took it upon himself to donate more beer after the thirsty hordes had drunk Gosh dry in record time.

I produced this new Hitsville UK print for the party. It shows Ruthie of Carrie Nation's Revenge and Horace from the Dreadnoughts getting on down with Gwillum, who has been possessed by THE SONG.

It's A3 (297 x 420 mm) on archival matt paper, and is now available from the Great Beast shop for £15 plus p&p.

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.

AOI Illustration Awards

I'm currently living in a small igloo made of half-drawn comics pages, but I thought I would crawl out from under the Bristol board for a few minutes to write about the AOI Illustration Awards.

I won the New Talent (student and recent graduates) prize for the Editorial section with two pieces from my MA project Capital City. Here's an excellently composed picture by Sally Kent to prove it.

Tuesday night was the awards night so Sally and I went along to Somerset House to hobnob with other illustration types and I picked up my certificate from John O'Reilly, editor of Varoom magazine.

We had a great time and met some lovely people, including Edd Baldry, who won the Professional prize in the same section as me, Anna Cattermole, who won the Professional prize in the Self-Initiated section for her beautifully observed drawings of boat building, and judge, cartoonist, illustrator, author and new dad Stephen Collins.

It was all a bit of an enjoyable blur and as ever with private views I was too busy talking to people to properly take in all the art. My two pictures are in the first room, sharing wall space with Anna's afore-mentioned boat pictures and some striking digital collages illustrating The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by the sartorially impressive Nate Kitch (he's the one who loos like Jarvis impersonating Elvis Costello in the picture below). I only got a chance to have a quick whiz round beyond our room, but I saw enough to tell that it's a well put together exhibition in a beautiful space, and (as you'd hope) there's a fascinating variety of approaches to contemporary illustration on display.

We're going back to have another look at the weekend and I'm really looking forward to it. Below is a picture of all the winners taken by Sara Thomas. As ever, I appear to be arseing about!

More info on the AOI Awards to be found here and here.

Right, I'm off to draw comics again. The long awaited Hitsville UK 2 is on its way!

Hitsville UK from Great Beast comics

This is a belated post to announce that Hitsville UK has been relaunched by Great Beast Comics.

Appropriately we launched in the very musical surrounding of Manchester at the MCM Comic Con on 20 July, and you can now buy issue 1 as well as some classy Hitsville UK pop art prints from the Great Beast online shop. I'm really excited that for the first time you can buy an instantly download-able digital version of our comic.

You can also pick up Hitsville UK issue 1 from Gosh! Comics, Orbital Comics, Foyles books and Sister Ray Records in London, as well as OK Comics in Leeds and Gnash Comics in Devon, with more shops to follow.

(If you're a comic, record shop or indeed any shop who would like to stock Hitsville UK then please let me know.)

As some of you know we originally brought Hitsville UK out at the tail end of 2011, so it's taken us a bit of a while to get here. It's basically my fault for going off and doing an MA in Illustration after issue 1 and getting swamped by the workload. Dan and I are pleased as punch that we're getting to relaunch and continue the series with Great Beast. To those of you who have been stoically waiting for issue 2 to materialise (yes Alex, yes Camila) I promise promise promise that issue 2 will arrive in November in time for Leeds' Thought Bubble festival.

Why are we so excited to be with Great Beast?

Comics and graphic novels appear to be on the rise in blighty and beyond. Existing publishers and newer upstarts have released some great books at the artier, more literary end of the comics spectrum over the past few years. I think Great Beast could fill what has so far been a gap in the comics landscape (at least in the UK). GB's comics are intelligent, sophisticated, produced with great craft, but also crucially they are POP!

GB's founders, Adam Cadwell and Marc Ellerby have published their own comics under the imprint, notably Adam's vampire slacker comedy Blood Blokes and Marc's droll Chloe Noonan: Monster Hunter. They've also published collected editions of their autobiographical web comics The Everyday and Ellerbisms. I just finished Ellerbisms and am still reeling from the subtle but emotionally devastating storytelling contained therein!

Then there's Robert Ball's stunningly beautiful Winter's Knight. Im a bit angry about Winter's Knight. The artwork is so flipping amazing I don't actually think it should be allowed. It makes the rest of us look rubbish! Robert is teaming up with the equally talented Warwick Johnson-Cadwell on Dangeritis, which you can see taking hilarious form over on its Tumblr and which will be published in book form at Thought Bubble in November.

Just announced from Great Beast is Isabel Greenberg's Tall Tales and Outrageous Adventures, witty retellings of classic fairytales. Isabel won the Observer/Comica competition a few years ago and has a graphic novel coming out from Jonathan Cape soon. She also has a piece in the V&A's current exhibition Memory Palace, which I wasn't sure whether I would like but is BRILLIANT! (Go see it).

And then there's us... continuing the tale of Hitsville UK, the indy record company with the weirdest, coolest, freaks in pop music; the best (though possibly only) musical-pop-art-soap-opera in comic form.

Now published by Great Beast.

Which is why we're a bit chuffed.

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!

Spiv Hop Pop Art Print

Here's the final Hitsville UK print, featuring Spiv Hop pioneer Jack Spatz. 

We can't get all the prints on our web shop at the moment (hopefully they'll all be up there in the future) but if you'd like one of Mr Spatz printed on lovely posh paper for £10 plus p&p then let me know.

I've gone back to college...

...it's like one of those episodes of Neighbours where someone's Mum goes back to school and really embarrasses the kids. Well, it's a bit like that, I should have waited until I had offspring.

Anyway, as opposed to the first time round, I am not, thus far, spending all of my time drinking myself into a slough of depsond, I'm actually making work!

Here are highlights so far: twenty faces on a sheet of A1 paper, followed by another sheet of A1, concentrating on one face. Faces are my thing so this was right up my street, so I decided to muck about with some new techniques, loosening up my drawing/inking style and having a right laugh with some really basic printing techniques. The kitchen looked like I'd murdered the cat*

I'm in there, with current Movember lip slug, and there's the obligatory reference to William Blake in the form of his Ghost of a Flea, top right. The big face turned out like a particularly angry Aleister Crowley, not sure what happened there. We put our A1's up in the corridors of Camberwell on the day that a bunch of prospective students were visiting, so I hope I didn't scare any off!

This Monday, Chloe Cheese took us through some more established forms of those printing technigues, in the form of mono printing. Brilliant fun! It was like primary school art class all over again. Potato printing for the artistically ambitious! Hoorah!

Here's the culmination of my day's experimentation, Hitsville UK's Gwillum, in process and finished version.

I'm really enjoying trying out these new techniques, and I'm really keen on incorporating some of them into my big project (which I am writing the proposal for now, I am I am honest!) 

I get to try out etching tomorrow, hope William is watching over my shoulder.

*I did not murder the cat.

Mo-town 'tachebusters vol. 1

John has been bullied into taking part in Movember and, not to be outdone, Ruthie from The Carrie Nation's Revenge has followed suit. 

That's Feminism in action!

If you can spare a few quids/dollars/euros/yen please donate at http://mobro.co/johnriordan

Thoughts on the bubble

Thought Bubble was ace, and bloody knackering. It was straight back into college stuff when I returned so I'm still collecting my thoughts.

I've not been to Thought Bubble before, and I have heard literally not a bad word about it, so I was convinced that I was going to ruin it! 

"D'you remember that comics convention in Leeds?" 

"Oh yeah, it was really good for the first four years, then that big-headed twat with the crap 'tache came along..." etc.

I am pleased to report that I did not manage to hex the Bubble. It was the first time they've done it as a two-dayer and opinion was divided as to whether they'll do it that way again. It was certainly quieter (and foggier!) on the Sunday but it was nice to actually be able to wander and talk to people, without feeling like it was totally hectic.

We were sharing a table with our good friends Underfire Comics (that's Dan on the edge of the picture above), and stationed in the smaller of the two halls, part of the amazing Royal Armouries (it's actually full of armour, who knew?) 

Here's the view from the stand!

Mike and Mark conducted a video interview with Keiron Gillen for a forthcoming Comic Gosh!p sesh (discussing Phonogram and Hitsville UK) and rumour has it that Gwillum may have got in on the act. We'll get back to you with evidence on that when we see it.

Oh yeah, the comics, eh? So much good stuff on sale, waaaay too much to take in. Here's my haul.

God knows when I'm going to find time to read all of these... Nelson alone looks like it's going to demand some serious (and rewarding) rumination. Still, that's a rather nice problem to have, isn't it, and if that's not a good indication of the wealth of talent in comics in our poor, austere isle at the moment, then I don't know what is!

Les Petit Prints

Here are the Hitsville prints that I've been working on. Hoping to add one of Jack Spatz yet, but I've run out of time for Thought Bubble and my MA is quite rightly demanding that I actually do my work.

These are A4, printed on lovely, posh paper (somerset enhanced, 100 per cent cotton) and signed by yours truly.
We'll have them on sale at Thought Bubble this weekend (19 -20 November) for £3.50 or £6 with a copy of Hitsville UK #1. We'll put them up on the Hitsville shop next week but they'll be a bit pricier to buy this way so snap 'em up if you're at Thought Bubble.

BADGES!

So, let's be honest, making comics and being in a band is just an excuse to do the really good bit, which is...
MAKING BADGES!
These little fellas will be on sale (or, I dare say, free with a copy of Hitsville UK) at the Comica Comiket this Saturday at the Bishopsgate Institute. Click HERE for full details.

I'll be selling limited edition Hitsville prints as well. I'll get some pics up tomorrow.

HEROISM

"A perfect three minute chemical-infused rush of a comic", not my words but the words of Comic Heroes magazine (to paraphrase Alan Partridge.


Hitsville UK gets its review in the new issue (Small Press Round-Up pp 110-111) and it's a corker.


Our humble comic is "an acid-fried report from the edges of sanity" and "a feverishly inventive psychedelic odyssey". 


They seem to think we're on drugs!


We got five stars (out of five), which is better than all of the DC, Marvel and Image fare on review and the same as Morrison & Quitely's WE3, David B's new book and Paul Gravett's new tome. Not that we're counting. (We're not counting.)


Thanks to Rob Power at Comic Heroes, glad you enjoyed it. 


As ever you can read Hitsville UK at www.hitsvilleukcomic.com and buy the whole issue at http://hitsvilleuk.bigcartel.com/

Men Behind Guitars

New Hitsville UK pic showing Marvin from retronauts Men Behind Guitars.


I'm going to do a series of Hitsville prints and we'll be selling them at Comica Comiket, Thought Bubble and through our shop.


Don't touch the brown acid!

VERBOTEN SPHEROID

Big belated love to Forbidden Planet International who named us one of their favourite comics of September.

See here! 

http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2011/propagandas-best-of-september/

Will Kirkby's Tuk Tuk also looks proper good. Can't wait to get my hands on that. Will he be at Thought Bubble I wonder?

We just heard from Comic Heroes mag that they've reviewed us in their new issue, out 25 October. We don't know what they've said (but they told us they liked it).

Oh, and of course, Hitsville UK here: http://www.hitsvilleukcomic.com/

PLANET HITSVILLE!

BONJOUR!
I've just returned from France, and what should greet me in dear old broken Blighty but this very flattering review of our humble comic by Richard at Forbidden Planet International.


ICI!
http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2011/hitsville-uk-a-hit-oh-such-a-hit/

He gets it! The Clash, Phil Spector, Martin Hannett, Scooby Doo, Wacky Races (Dan will love that), Grant Morrison, Deadline... and he says (amongst other things) "it’s 36 pages of out and out brilliance."

(We didn't bribe him, I promise.)

C'EST FORMIDABLE!
Hitsville UK will be in some of Forbidden Planet's shops soon, details to follow.

OR, you could always head to our shop and get yourself a copy.

MERCI!

NUKE ROSS...

I will be selling copies of Hitsville UK at the New Cross Turn Left Comics and Art Garden Party this Sunday 24th July.

Come along and check out not only my stuff but the comics etc of an amazing selection of artists, including David O'Connell, Ellen Lindner,Gary Northfield, John Miers and Julia Scheele, who designed the cool logo above.

Things kick off at 1 PM, full details here.

REEEEEED HOT!

Hitsville UK #1 is back in stop in the Hitsville UK shop.


36 pages of full-colour pop art adventures.

3 and a half squid plus p&p to you sir/madam.

Dedications and doodles available on request.

I'LL HUFF AND I'LL PUFF

Well look at that, through a series of fortuitous events I have a gallery on the launch of the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/07/03/artist-showcase-john-riordan_n_889476.html?ref=fb&src=sp

They also publish some words from my brain on Hitsville UK and a link to the new Hitsville website here: http://www.hitsvilleukcomic.com/

Enjoy!