ELEPHANT WORDS - Tangahl Unbowed, and the Water Boat Beneath His Notice.

The flash fiction website Elephant Words - where six writers offer daily stories inspired by the same weekly image - has been overhauled and relaunched, and I'm pleased to have been able to again write the first offering. My story, Tangahl Unbowed, and the Water Boat Beneath His Notice, was posted earlier today and can be read here.

New stories will follow every day this week, until Sunday when a new image will be posted. The new setup means that more than six writers can be published, all you need to do is register with the website to apply.

THE WHALE HOUSE progress report.

Just a quick update post to record the midway point in the drawing of The Whale House issue three. Here is page 12, the point at which Diggory meets Granddad Whale and events take an odd turn. Well, odder than usual.

Twenty four pages will also be the longest single comic I've ever drawn by myself, much less also written. This is a milestone in itself, and while I can see that I'm learning as I go, I can also see tiny elements coming together and, I think and hope, getting better in the learning.

I hope the next twelve pages are as good, if not better, and certainly a bit quicker off the drawing board.

WEST: DISTANCE reviewed at Forbidden Planet.

Richard Bruton has offered a very favourable review of West: Distance (and a reread of West: Justice) over on the Forbidden Planet Blog.

From the review:

"Everything in these two books works, and the more I read, the more impressed I am, the work transcends genre trappings, becoming that simplest of things, a mythology..."

The entire review is here.

West: Distance and West: Justice are available to buy from either our Big Cartel or Comicsy storefronts.

WEST: THE TRAIN LEAVES AT NOON at the MCM London Comic-Con.

This weekend (May 22nd-24th) sees the latest MCM London Comic-Con at the Excel. Our friends John Maybury and Siobhan Hillman (with whom we did The Newspaper Strip Collection of Charles Oscar Drayton) will be exhibiting, selling Space Babe 113, and they have kindly offered to take along copies of West: The Train Leaves at Noon to sell at the event.

THE WHALE HOUSE continues

Just a quick update, to report that my illustration of The Whale House, part 3 continues, and has even accelerated in pace a little - I'm getting much more comfortable with the drawing of it, and am beginning to enjoy myself a little. This is the longest single comic I've ever drawn (not to mention all the issues to come after), and building up a momentum seems to be key.

Also, although the next few issues are already written (and have been since Chris Doherty was illustrating the series) drawing it myself would seem to relieve the need to fill the scripts with the sort of minute details that Chris needed to know, so I'm probably saving myself hours of writing down the line too!

WEST and THE WHALE HOUSE, in progress

Both Tim and I are now well into drawing the next issues of both West and The Whale House (that is Mississippi Shuffle and Part Three: Ordinal, respectively). Below is a page of West, showing the setting of the next storyline - the Deep South, riverboats (which Tim has been aching to draw for years), and some faces old and new - and a Whale House panel of Diggory discovering he may very well be in the wrong place at the wrong time. At time of writing, both these issues are scheduled for the ICE International Comics Show in September.

WEST: THE TRAIN LEAVES AT NOON now available

Our latest West title  - the newspaper-strip style The Train Leaves at Noon - is now available through our usual online stores.

Kansas, 1891. While travelling across state, Jerusalem West and Wilton Frohickie encounter a mysterious and bedraggled figure, a man who hands over a tattered journal before dying and wasting away in front of them. The journal may lead to treasure... or it may lead to damnation. 

So begins a journey between life and death, this world and the next, as West and Frohickie are drawn into a surreal, nightmarish adventure in the dark side of the American West.

The Train Leaves At Noon is a unique entry in the ongoing saga of Jerusalem West - told entirely in the form of a daily newspaper strip. Previously featured in John Maybury’s “The Newspaper Strip Collection of Oscar Charles Drayton”, and collected here for the first time, this edition now features the never-before-seen conclusion to the story.

Written by Andrew Cheverton and illustrated by Tim Keable, The Train Leaves At Noon is 20 pages of black and white story in a special landscape format, with full colour cardstock covers, and is available through our Big Cartel and Comicsy stores.

THE END (again)

A few years ago now, Spanish artist Felipe Navarro and I were working on a low-key science fiction comic called The End - I had a first issue scripted, the series plotted, and Felipe had drawn character studies and a couple of test pages. The idea was to confront the Earth with an unknowable and unavoidable catastrophe, but to then follow a small handful of characters as they went about their final hours in what would seem (especially against all the panic and bombast of traditional Hollywood renditions) humdrum and insignificant. The point being, of course, that these hours would be incredibly significant and, above all, human.

Image from FH Navarro's Instagram.

This all ended when I saw an announcement that Drew Barrymore was lining up to direct a film of the (roughly) same plot and exact same title, on top of such recent fare as Seeking a Friend For the End of the World and Abel Ferrara's 4:44 Last Day on Earth. If my debilitating experience with trying to dig my aborted series Month of Sundays with David Frankum out from under the colossal shadow of Stephen King's book and TV show Under The Dome taught me anything about the creative process, it was in these situations to drop baggage and keep moving.

Time, of course, also moves on, and The End is no longer listed on Drew Barrymore's IMDB page, so I dusted the script off and realised that (as much a fan of grandeur and bombast as anyone) I could have my cake and eat it too. Felipe was still on board, so we started again where we left off.
Almost...

Because then Felipe and I had a short exchange on Facebook that changed the project entirely. It was, I think, the catalyst that moved us from wishing to work towards completing a project we once thought dead to grasping something new with both hands. And by new I mean classic; something recognisable that we hope to shape into something new again - we're telling this sort of comic in that sort of language. We can sum it up in one word, but we're keeping that word to ourselves for a moment.

The first line of dialogue on the first page of The End reads, "The universe always begins with a word." I didn't know when I wrote that how true it would be.

Angry Candy in 2015

It's been quiet for a fair while here, so this is an update on our plans for 2015.

The next West comic will be The Train Leaves at Noon, a completed version of the strip that appeared last year in The Newspaper Strip Collection of Oscar Charles Drayton, and now featuring a never-before-seen conclusion to the story. This comic will debut at Cheltenham's True Believers Comic Festival on Saturday, February the 7th, and a week later (-ish, Sunday, the 15th of February) at DemonCon9 in Maidstone. Also available, of course, through our Big Cartel and Comicsy online stores.

Our only other booked convention so far for 2015 is ICE International Comics Expo in Birmingham in September, and for that we plan to kickstart our regular series with new issues. We will have the first issue of West: Volume III, Mississippi Shuffle, and, also for this event, we will be offering issue three of The Whale House, though one or more of these comics may be available online, or at an as-yet-unbooked convention a little sooner. You never know.

THE WHALE HOUSE - In Progress

Ink studies of Dig and Laura.
(They won't always look so glum.) 

Since the loss of Chris Doherty (amicable but unfortunate) as The Whale House artist, I've been working hard to slightly reorganise the series so that it can be picked up and settled into a fast and reliable schedule. I hope it won't amount to as much as two years between issues two and three, but these things happen, and I hope readers will understand and pick up part three when it makes an appearance early next year.

Why the delay? Simply put, as well as having to take over the drawing of the series, I have restructured The Whale House a little: Chris had committed to six issues, though these issues crept up to 28 pages each; my preference is to make each issue a little shorter, and the series a little longer. This means that I can make each instalment a little less dense and also give each one a theme which forms a more cohesive story rather than simply part of a longer series. Shorter issues also mean a faster publishing schedule.

I've now written scripts up to issue seven, so that I can concentrate my energy on the drawing of them. The ending of The Whale House is in mind (and in notes), but I'm leaving the actual writing of it until a little closer to the time.

Thank you for reading, and for your patience.

WEST: JUSTICE and WEST: DISTANCE now available through Big Cartel

Both of our latest publications - the paperback of West: Justice and the new limited edition hardback of West: Distance, see posts below for full details - are now finally available through our Big Cartel store.

WEST: JUSTICE and WEST: DISTANCE now available.

Both of our latest publications - a paperback edition of West: Justice and the limited edition hardback of West: Distance - are now available to order. Book details and Paypal buttons are below. For international orders, please see our store on Comicsy.

West - Book One: Justice.

 A name heard in stories, breathed in whispers.

In some tales, he's a lawman who stands for what's right and fair. In others, he's a killer hell-bent on revenge. Yet more tell of a man wronged by evil and denied his true love, of a brave Union soldier and a true friend.

Some say he fought ancient spirits and killed dead men, shot down the righteous and stood alongside the underdog. Some claimed to have killed him, or lost loved ones to his gun.

His name, though, all men can agree on; told around campfires in the cold prairie night, in the candlelit backrooms of low-rent saloons.

His name was Jerusalem West... and these are his stories.

West - Book One: Justice is reprinted in a 120-page paperback edition. It contains issues one to five of Volume I, and is available via Paypal for £10.00, with £1.30 P&P in the U.K.

Written and lettered by Andrew Cheverton and illustrated by Tim Keable.

(Collects Justice, Population 489, High Moon, Texas Drama, and The Last Bounty.)

West - Book Two: Distance.

A name heard in stories, breathed in whispers.

We've previously seen Jerusalem West as a lawman, a wanderer, and a bounty hunter. But now, with a chance encounter on a civil war battleground, we begin to see glimpses of the past that set the man on the path of destiny which will shape his future.

In stories ranging from the killing fields of the Civil War to the swamps of Louisiana, from New York City to the plains of Montana, the fingers of fate - and something darker and far, far older - begin to twist around Jerusalem West.

You think you know Jerusalem West... but you only know half the story.

West - Book Two: Distance is a 192-page hardcover edition, limited to 100 signed and numbered copies. It contains all six issues of Volume II as well as the previously uncollected Issue 0: Tall Tales from Volume I, and features a bonus gallery section of cover art, unused pages, promotional art and sketches. All 100 copies come with an A5 West print by Tim Keable. Both the print and gallery pages are exclusive to the hardcover and will not be reprinted in the paperback. This edition is available via Paypal for £15.00, with £1.70 P&P in the U.K.

Written and lettered by Andrew Cheverton and illustrated by Tim Keable, with guest art from Emma Price, Paul B Rainey, Jenika Ioffreda, Warwick Johnson Cadwell and Andrew Cheverton.

(Collects Tall Tales, Distance part 1, Distance part 2, Stray Bullets, Confederate Dead, Points West, and Autumn Dusk.)

WEST: JUSTICE and WEST: DISTANCE now available through Comicsy

Due to ongoing problems with Paypal and its shipping calculator, we are first offering our newest publications (the paperback edition of West - Book One: Justice and the limited edition hardback of West - Book Two: Distance) through our store on Comicsy.

West: Justice - Paperback

West: Justice is reprinted in a 120-page paperback edition. It contains all five issues of Volume I, though omits the bonus gallery section of the hardcover. This edition retails for £10 and debuts at the NICE 2014 convention this coming weekend (13th and 14th of September), and will be available from our online stores next week.

West: Distance - Ltd Ed Hardcover

West: Distance is a 192-page hardcover edition, limited to 100 signed and numbered copies. It contains all six issues of Volume II as well as the previously uncollected Issue 0: Tall Tales from Volume I, and features a bonus gallery section of cover art, unused pages, promotional art and sketches. All 100 copies come with an A5 West print by Tim Keable. Both the print and gallery pages are exclusive to the hardcover and will not be reprinted in the paperback. This edition retails for £15 and debuts at the NICE 2014 convention this coming weekend (13th and 14th of September), and will be available from our online stores next week.