On a personal note, FPI have been very supportive of The Rainbow Orchid and, in fact, if you look at the blog's contributors, I'm privileged with generosity from all. Joe Gordon, captain of the ship, has regularly featured RO news and tidbits; Richard Bruton positively reviewed volume one; Matthew Badham conducted something of a 'master' interview, while Pádraig Ó Méalóid did a spot-on book-focussed interview; and Wim Lockefeer made my day with the following comment on his own blog, The Ephemerist:

"As a Belgian, and therefore assuming that I have anything to say in things ligne claire (which I don't), I think this is one of the best comics to step in Tintin's footsteps, along with Dirk Stallaert's Nino and Peter Van Dongen's Rampokan…"

I've been waiting for ages to quote that somewhere! One contributor who we don't see so often (hopefully it's the success of Blank Slate Books that has kept him away), but whose rare posts are always insightful, is Kenny Penman, and I'll leave you with the Forbidden Planet International advert he commissioned from me in 2007 (click it to see a larger version).

You can see the FPI birthday post here. Thanks for all the great reading, Joe and team. Here's to the next five...

And finally, a little mention of a superb comic I just read, A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. It's an autobiographical tale that focuses on the author's journey from manga fan to manga professional, coming of age in the 1950s golden era of Japanese comics. It's one of those books where I just had to keep reading 'one more chapter' - and ended up reading several late into the night. Highly recommended, especially if you make comics or love manga.

The second great thing is the impending publication by Blank Slate Books of Darryl Cunningham's Psychiatric Tales, compounded by the marvellous fact that Bloomsbury will be publishing it in the States. As I was reading parts of this book on Darryl's blog I remember thinking 'crikey, this could do really well', and I think it's going to. I've always thought that about Darryl's work - ever since reading his Uncle Bob adventures in Alchemist, and especially when reading his more recent Super Sam tales on the Forbidden Planet blog - I loved that so much that I sent it to Ben and David at The DFC and said they should be publishing him.

Both these stories are excellent news for British comics, and I'm really pleased to see two such talented writing-drawing comic creators get wider exposure for their work.

The bad part of this post is the news that legendary French comic creator Jacques Martin died in Switzwerland yesterday (21 January). He wasn't very widely known in the UK, (as far as I'm aware, only two of his Alix books were translated into English in the early seventies) but was a titan of Franco-Belgian comics, having worked as an assistant to Hergé and then going on to have his own work published in Tintin Magazine. While Alix was his biggest success, I was more drawn to the Lefranc books, though my lack of any recognisable French meant I had to make do with a very rudimentary comprehension of the stories - though that was good enough for me as the best I could get. I don't know if any of Martin's works are within the sights of Cinebook, but it would be wonderful if a wider acceptance of bande dessinée beyond Tintin and Asterix opened the door to that opportunity.

There's other comic interest in the issue with an article on the work of Fred Holmes, and there's some lovely art on show in an article on Pearson's Magazine.

While I'm here, a quick plug for three other good things you should check out... Jason Cobley has a brand new Keiko Panda story that he's previewing on his blog, with super art from super Mitz. And Sarah McIntyre and Gary Northfield are doing a sheep swap with their chucklesome woolly counterparts, Vern and Derek. You can see the results at either of their blogs - Sarah's or Derek's (who knew Derek had a blog!?). And lastly, Paul H. Birch has been running his Carter's Column strip over at the Birmingham Mail's Speech Balloons blog. I inked four of the strips in the early/mid 1990s which are now playing, pencilled by the most excellent Gary Crutchley. All worth reading!

The pace of the film is wonderfully slow and steady, giving you time to eat up the details of residential post-war Tokyo (almost all low-shot interiors), as well as to reflect on the scenes as you're watching them. Another technique that pulls you into the lives of the characters is the unusual view of people talking directly to you, as if you were the other person in the conversation. This is an Ozu trademark and can, at first, be a little jarring with the dialogue sounding somewhat staccato (because of the cuts), but you quickly become used to it and I find it engaging.

One of the things I love about Japanese cinema from this era is the restrained emotion under dramatic circumstances. I find it also in many classic black and white-era British films, and masterfully done in some of the later silent-era pictures, A Woman of Paris being an excellent example. There is so much over-acting these days and, to me, most television acting is rendered almost unwatchable as yet another character sighs heavily, stutters their words or rolls their eyes in order to hammer their emotions into the viewer. In films such as Tokyo Story, when real emotion does eventually spill over the barrier, it has veritable impact. The same goes for the camera, it just observes, it doesn't need to fly around all over the place, but when it does deviate, it has greater effect (a philosophy I adhere to in my own comic storytelling).

The NFT are currently showing a season of Ozu's films which runs until 27 February 2010.

Woody Allen: "I have a very realistic view of myself. Some people think it's too much or even fake humility when I say I haven't made a great movie. When I dramatise my observations of life, they say it's cynicism. But in neither case is it either. I'm telling the truth. I don't see myself as an artist. I see myself as a working filmmaker who chose to go the route of working all the time rather than making my films into some special red carpet event every three years. I'm not cynical and I'm far from an artist. I'm a lucky working stiff."

It's not exactly what I was talking about yesterday, but it nicely follows the theme. And highlighting a problem with talking about this kind of thing, we're using the word 'artist' in a different way. Actually that might bring me back to Travesties, where Tristan Tzara says "Doing the things by which is meant Art is no longer considered the proper concern of the artist. In fact it is frowned upon. Nowadays an artist is someone who makes art mean the things he does. A man may be an artist by exhibiting his hindquarters."

That's enough of the quotes!

For a while now I've felt slightly inadequate among the artist bloggers community, guilty even, that I'm not providing daily sketches, little odd one-off strips and funny drawings. These are the things, after all, that that can really build your readership - cute or funny work that gets linked to and loved (by me, for one). I've tried to, every now and then, and almost always failed. In a similar vein, I am not in the habit of keeping a sketchbook and putting my life and all I observe into it. I look at my fellow pensmiths with benign jealousy at their glorious jottings full of characters and observations. "Keep a sketch book with you at all times!" the text books say. But it's just not me. I wish it was, because if I was that committed I'd be a far better draughtsman - and I'd like to be that.

Pages from my sketchbook - I take ages to fill them up, and when I have to sketch my figures are impatiently rendered and minimally functional, but quite lively.

It seems terrible to admit it, but I love not drawing. Drawing is terribly hard work. I only draw when I absolutely have to, and I only have the patience to draw exactly what I need to do to complete my own work. This is key, I think. I've never been a very good collaborator and have seldom indulged in making comics with others. Indeed it was the realisation that I didn't enjoy the commercial aspect of drawing comics (from someone else's script) that led me to create The Rainbow Orchid - if I was going to be drawing a comic strip (all that hard work!) then I'd want it to be stuffed full of all the things I loved - it would be tailored just for me.

I think I used to love drawing as a kid, but then we all do. I guess I carried on because I didn't want to lose that escapism - and though I didn't necessarily have talent, I probably did have some ability in the discipline (or maybe I had some talent, but not the ability - I'm never sure which way round it is). My school reports, where art was concerned, were generally lukewarm. I liked drawing, but could never get to grips with painting or any of the more arty disciplines (sculpture, ceramics, etc.). I wasn't interested. In my final exams, taking art at O-Level, I got a distinctly average 'C', and when I eventually applied to a couple of art colleges, I got refused at both. As it happened I lucked into a place at the second one after someone else dropped out - just because I happened to be there on the day as I was signing up for a part-time graphics course. I didn't last long though - I dropped out myself after six months of patchy attendance, not enjoying the arty stuff as I thought I should.

I'm very aware of my limitations as an artist, not only in ability (or talent, or whatever) but also as far as passion goes. Passion! That's what you're supposed to have, isn't it? I've known this for a while, but hadn't wanted to admit it publicly - what would my artist colleagues say! But actually, coming to terms with this has helped me to understand the kind of artist that I am, rather than the kind I am not.

This is not a negative or angsty post - not at all. I know I'm not a great original artist, but I do, after all, have a talent. It's where my drawing skills and my story-telling skills and my comic-making skills meet, and it's unique to me. I'm master of none of these disciplines separately, but I'm quite good in all of them, and they come together to produce something I'm very proud of, and that I do have a passion for. Enough passion that I will sit and do the hard work of drawing. Enough, even, that I'll get lost in that drawing and forget that I don't enjoy it, and find myself actually enjoying it.

Lucky bastard!

The Rainbow Orchid volume one was very well received. Out of 36 full-length reviews (that I've seen) just three were negative. Even if you multiply the negative reviews by 10 (which is a true reflection of how the author's brain perceives them), then the good reviews still outweigh the bad.

The two main aspects that people have been critical of are the 'prologue-like nature' of volume one, and artwork that is sometimes a little stiff. I don't actually disagree with either of these. To quickly answer the criticisms, I'd say that the story was always conceived as a single full-length work and the pacing is exactly how I want it (even if it is a little unfashionable to not have explosions and fight scenes, or at least a zombie, every couple of pages). It has been the book's fate to be published in three volumes, and maybe it doesn't show the story off as well as it could, but it is nice to have it out and available now rather than sometime in 2011. As for the artwork, I'm improving all the time - volume two will be better, and volume three will be better still. The art in volume one is actually six years old, and I sometimes struggle to promote a book that I know is such old work - but it's got my name on it, and I can only present the book as it is, flaws and all.

Conversely, the good reviews have been very nice about the artwork, and the flipside of the comments concerning volume one's introductory nature is that people have got to the end and have immediately wanted to know what happens next and when they can get volume two, which means there must be something in the story that grabbed them after all.

Coverage within the online UK comics press has been wonderful and very supportive. Wider mainstream coverage has been almost non-existent, except for a lovely review in the Financial Times, a nice mention in The Independent just before Christmas, and some super support from LoveReading.co.uk. There have been a few big articles on comics in the press in the past few months, but unfortunately The Rainbow Orchid didn't get a look-in, which is a little disappointing, but you can't have everything! I'm really grateful for the fantastic coverage I have received.

I know I'm the centre of my own universe, and so I naturally view the world from that very biased perspective, but I did think that maybe RO would get a little bit wider coverage than it did, the main reason being that it's still not very common for the UK to have a brand new comic work published by a mainstream book company. The real heart of the UK comics industry is most definitely the independents and self-publishers, and the big wider world of book publishing - while getting more and more interested in comics - is still a tough nut to crack.

As a matter of interest let's take a quick look at the Amazon graphic novel charts as they appear on 31 December 2009 (not very scientific, but an interesting reflection of what's selling now). In the weeks immediately after its launch, The Rainbow Orchid troubled the number one spot in the Children's Comics & Graphic Novels category two or three times and has been in and out of the top 50 and 100 many times (it changes hourly and the Christmas period saw it back in the top 25 on a regular basis). It also got into the top 100 general Comics & Graphic Novels a few times, though that is a harder chart to break.

What do these charts consist of, and how many of the titles are original UK comic works? If we don't include reprints or collections, foreign works (i.e. US, European or Japanese manga - which are pretty much all reprints and collections anyway) or adaptations of literary works (i.e. not works written originally as a comic) then the numbers are interesting.

In the Children's Comics & Graphic Novel chart I count four titles in a hundred (six if you include the 2008 and 2009 Beano Annuals, but I'm not certain of their content): Salem Brownstone (Walker); The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby (Scholastic); The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch (Bloomsbury); and The Rainbow Orchid (Egmont). (When I did this count a couple of months ago, it was pretty much the same).

In the General Comics & Graphic Novels chart I count two, though I am being rather strict: Logicomix (Bloomsbury, though the book is not by UK creators) and Dark Entries (Titan). There are also two books that are difficult not to consider original-works UK books, despite having US publishers, because of the creative teams: From Hell (Top Shelf) and Scarlet Traces (Dark Horse). When I analysed this chart a couple of months ago, Bryan Talbot's excellent Grandville was also a mainstay of the chart (and will no doubt be in and out of it again in the coming months).

I know I'm being very skewed here, and for me 2009 has been one of the best for fantastic graphic novels (thank you NBM, Cinebook and First Second!), but from the point of view of a UK 'graphic novel' industry, it's a revealing exercise.

Overwhelmingly, the UK comic book industry is made up of reprints and collections - and I'm in no way questioning the value and quality of these books, many of which I own and love. 2010 will certainly see comics go from strength to strength with more strong material from David Fickling Books, Escape Books, Blank Slate Books, Jonathan Cape, Walker Books and many more.

2009 saw the graphic novel book charts dominated by Watchmen, riding high on the wave created by the film adaptation. The other big-sellers (though nowhere near the Watchmen numbers) have been various Batman titles and manga, mainly Death Note. The arena of children's graphic novels is dominated by Egmont thanks to Tintin and Ben 10, with Asterix making up much of the rest and Artemis Fowl and Buffy the Vampire Slayer getting a look-in.

The Rainbow Orchid sales started slowly and suffered slightly from distribution problems with Waterstones (still not fully resolved, but getting there), but it was spotted quite widely in Borders (R.I.P). My local independent bookshop sold a fantastic number, and I've done really well with sales through my website and at various comics festivals. In the weeks just prior to Christmas it seems RO did good business on Amazon, with plenty of chart action almost daily. So, although I don't know exact sales figures for The Rainbow Orchid, in the 20 weeks since launch, and comparing with the recent 40-week Nielsen top twenty charts published by The Bookseller (which don't include every outlet), I can be pretty happy with how things have gone so far.

A big part of sales is the marketing, and I've not been able to market the book as effectively as I'd like due to the fact that when volume one came out, I had to spend my time working on volume two. I'm very lucky to have Egmont as a publisher who, along with my agent, are taking a long view with The Rainbow Orchid. When all three volumes are completed and available then I can't wait to get out there and get promoting, and though it's not a flash-in-the-pan success, I've every reason to feel optimistic about the future of the book.

Thanks for all your support so far - I'm so lucky to have it. Here's to 2010.

Since finishing volume two I have been busy completing some commercial illustration work, so apologies for the lack of posts here recently. There will be an Adventurers' Society newsletter before Christmas, and a round-up of how volume one has done since its launch in August, here on the blog.

We were up early on Saturday and braved thick fog to carry on up to Leeds, having to divert twice due to traffic accidents, but we still made it in good time. I was delighted to find that my table was right between two very talented artists - long-time RO friend and supporter, Graeme Neil Reid (aided and abetted by Jeremy Briggs of Down The Tubes), and manga artist extraordinaire, Sonia Leong. Both had their sumptuous art on display for the crowds, and I spent my few idle moments admiring the utter professional quality of their work - outstanding stuff.

There's not too much I can comment on regarding the substance of Thought Bubble, as I spent the entire day behind my table, selling and sketching in books, and talking to people about The Rainbow Orchid. As ever, it's such a boost to talk face-to-face with readers, both old and new, and I'm still taken aback by the generous enthusiasm people show for my comic - it really keeps me going after all this time.

What I can say is that Thought Bubble had a really nice vibe and a wonderful variety of attendees. And for a one-day event, I did very well, selling almost as many books as I did over two days at the MCM. I was really impressed with the friendliness and organisation that went into the festival - I can see why so many people have such good things to say about it.

I didn't attend any of the after-show events, I'm sorry to say. Elyssa and I found our hotel (the City Inn, which was really nice) and then went out for dinner, getting back to the hotel just as we really started to flag. It was nice to be able to take our time getting home on Sunday, stopping off for lunch once again in Belton, then driving on back down to Sussex (another hour added to the journey with the M11 closed, but Radio 4 kept us company). Some take-away fish and chips ended the weekend very nicely. I have no doubt I'll be at Thought Bubble again next year, a truly wonderful comics festival.