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.

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.

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.