About a week ago the episode of the BBC's Secret Sussex featuring me talking to Simon Furber about the Brambletye ruins was put online. I believe it will air on the radio sometime in February but you can listen to it now here.

It's short and sweet so I didn't really get into the nuts and bolts of its history. We perhaps played up the mystery of its demise a little, which is all good, even though research shows when it came into the hands of the Biddulph family, in the 1670s, they focussed on their other properties and it just gradually went to ruin, with portions of it carted away for other local building projects. But the intrigue remains!

I also mention a painting of the ruin from 1782 - that's the date you see everywhere for it, but I've subsequently pinpointed it more accurately to 1773. In the wake of this interview, fresh with all my research, I wrote up my big Genealogy of Brambletye piece, where you can learn much more about its thousand-year history.

Thanks to Simon Furber for the interview on a very pleasant day and his magical editing to make it all sound good, and also to BBC journalist Fiona McCarthy for the contact request and organisation. Check out the Secret Sussex website for much more!

Just getting in a brief final post of 2025. It's not been my most productive year - a lot of personal stuff going on, health family, work, both good and not so good, but we're still here!

More progress was made on The Brambletye Box, though not nearly as much as it should have been. However, it was just not possible under the circumstances - I intend for 2026 to be way better on that front.

Work was difficult, especially as AI 'images' continue to stamp all over human creativity and spread itself to every corner, polluting the internet. Work did pick up a little more towards the end of the year, but my career definitely needs a rethink in the face of these new challenges. I have some ideas, we'll see where they lead.

The world is really taking a hammering at the moment, but we can keep doing what we love, creating, taking control of the things we can control and not letting the things we can't dictate our outlook. Acts of art, acts of kindness - the small things matter.

I wish you all a successful, healthy and happy 2026.

Last night I watched Spikes Lee's remake of Kurosawa's High and Low, Highest 2 Lowest, and wanted to get some thoughts down on it.

As previously mentioned on this blog, High and Low is probably my favourite Kurosawa film, in fact one of my favourite ever films, so I come at Spike Lee's interpretation with some biased baggage, I admit.

It's different enough to be interesting in its own right. I liked the set up of King being a record company executive rather than for a shoe company, and I liked the whole cultural shift into the area of US black music. As you might expect, the soundtrack is rather good though it dominates the film, sometimes a little too much. Denzel Washington is great to watch, as he so often is, and his performance marks a lot of the movie's high points.

Some of the story changes didn't work so well for me. Making King and his chauffeur close buddies makes it less of a sacrifice when King finally decides to give up a large part of his fortune to save his friend's mistakenly kidnapped son. I also felt that decision came too easily - at first he's totally against it, which seems out of character for someone who appears to have such strict family values, then he relents and ... that's it, unlike Mifune who seems to carry some agony at the cost throughout much of the rest of the film.

With Kurosawa, the kidnapper's associates are explained and dealt with, but with this modern telling the associates are useful for one scene - the moped chase - and then they disappear for good. Related to this, King's dropping of the bag of money from the train is slightly ridiculous as it's dropped by accident right into the arms of one of the associates - was that the plan? And the police accompanying King on the train are very obvious - maybe they're not even trying to be undercover, but that does tone down the tension somewhat.

As for the kidnapper, Yung Felon, the motivation is interesting and I didn't mind it - in fact it's more specific than the more general hatred of Takeuchi. But that hatred seems more real in the earlier film, more visceral - the kidnapper is tortured by it. I didn't get the feeling of Felon coming from the absolute depths of society as in High and Low - he's in a relationship, he's talented, he has a nice recording studio. He didn't appear to be hiding away much after the successful kidnap.

And then it's an American film so, of course, the hero has to be the one to save the day, as King goes in himself (with his trusty chauffeur sidekick) to confront the kidnapper where, rather ludicrously, they engage in a kind of rap battle. It's true that in the original Ed McBain story, King fights the kidnapper, but he's accompanied by the police and his violence is a result of anger at them trying to steal his fortune.

Most of my criticisms are plot-related and comparing it to Kurosawa. Taken as it's own thing, it's a decent enough film with solid performances, stylistic and entertaining.

I write this as news came yesterday of the death of Tatsuya Nakadai on 8th November, at age 92. He was the Chief Detective in High and Low, but is more famous as the samurai villain in both Yojimbo and Sanjuro. Other major films include Kobayashi's The Human Condition trilogy, Kwaidan, and Harakiri, as well as Kurosawa's Kagemusha and Ran. This is just a tiny part of his film output - a real giant of Japanese cinema.

A few weeks ago I was interviewed for an episodes of BBC's 'Secret Sussex' on the old ruin of Brambletye House at Forest Row. Yes, this is the same 'Brambletye' that features in the current Julius Chancer comic I'm working on.

In preparation I had to brush up on my research and get it all in order - though in the end I didn't need to call on much of it as the push was more towards the atmosphere and feel of the place. But as part of the process I used my notes and expanded it into a full-length article, A Genealogy of Brambletye, looking at nearly a thousand years of history of this interesting Sussex manor.

It starts with the Norman conquest and Domesday, and follows the knights, earls, lords, ladies and gentry as they experienced Agincourt, the Wars of the Roses, the Reformation, the Civil War, the Restoration, then into its ruin in the 18th century, and under the ownership of bankers and solicitors into the 19th and 20th centuries and beyond.

You can read A Genealogy of Brambletye here.

A couple of days ago someone alerted me to a book called The Clear Line in Comics and Cinema, a Transmedial Approach, written by David Pinho Barros. They did this because it had a small section looking at The Rainbow Orchid.

I have to say that these days I do not go looking for reviews of my work - positive or negative. Positive ones make me squirm and feel unworthy, and negative ones make me feel bad - neither is enjoyable (though I am very grateful for the positive ones).

The book looks really interesting, despite the fact I'm a little wary of the overanalysing of an author's works. But the intersection of clear line comics, a highly narrative form of storytelling, and parallel philosophies in film is quite fascinating (and one of the directors Barros looks at is Yasujiro Ozu, a favourite of mine).

cover for The Clear Line in Comics and Cinema, art by Joost Swarte

I am jumping the gun, I have not read it yet, though I do intend to. But I did screw up my courage and skim-read the section on The Rainbow Orchid, and here I saw a statement that I want to address as I do feel it misrepresents my motivations.

Firstly I should say I'm a great believer in the idea that once you've finished a work and it goes out into the world, it is no longer your possession. It belongs to whoever picks it up and reads it, and they can bring all their thoughts, beliefs, prejudices, biases and feelings to that work and interpret it however they want. They may not align with the author's, and they may read things into the story the author never intended or meant, and that has to be the way it is.

In chapter 3, 'The clear line after Tintin et les Picaros', Barros says: "I propose to look at two [authors] in particular: the French Olivier Marin and the British Garen Ewing. In both cases, their use of the clear line is mostly a consequence of a selling strategy, which, by proclaiming a graphic affiliation with the classic series, aims at attracting the nostalgic reader and, simultaneously, surprising him or her with contemporary representations of topics which were proscribed in the youth magazines of the likes of Tintin, such as highly eroticised renderings of the female body."

That last bit about the "female body" refers to Olivier's work more than mine, but I'm a little perturbed that isn't clear, especially as I made the decision not to sexualise any aspect of the characters or story in that book. And that idea is connected to the main point - that The Rainbow Orchid uses the clear line style as a 'selling strategy'.

This could not be further from the reality of the comic's origins. Back in the 1990s I was looking more seriously at working in comics. I had done a lot of fanzine work and felt my art was improving so I was getting a portfolio together and going to comics shows and meeting professional artists and editors.

Thanks to this I went through a process of realisation - I didn't think I actually wanted to get into professional comics after all. While I had enjoyed working with various writers, I knew the main thing I liked doing was creating and writing stories, and being the illustrator for someone else's vision did not fulfil that aspiration. And this wasn't a reaction to a lack of success, in fact it came about when I started to have some succes - having work accepted for Heartbreak Hotel, doing a full US superhero comic for Blue Comet Press, and particularly after having an enthusiastic response at a convention with a DC editor and an invitation to contact them for work on a new black and white imprint they were starting.

I never followed up on that last one because I was coming to the realisation that this was not what I wanted. I found drawing hard, I wasn't naturally talented and I wasn't fast (essential for comics) - but I did enjoy it, and I really loved the comics medium. After some soul-searching I decided to concentrate on a career as an illustrator and leave the comics as a spare-time pursuit, something I could just enjoy for my own gratification.

Mr Tardy, Mr Tardy and Mr Tardy, The Brambletye Box by Garen Ewing

What did I enjoy? Big fat escapist adventure stories! Also I wanted an antidote to all the gritty 'adult' comics that were everywhere at the time. My art was naturally cleaning up, particularly after adapting The Tempest I was appreciating simplicity, reduction and clarity. I'd had my first paying job, for a newspaper, and was able to complete my collection of Tintin books - the staple (along with Asterix) of my comic-reading childhood. More importantly I had just discovered Blake and Mortimer, and had bought my first Jacques Tardi book.

So, I'd decided. I would not work towards a career in mainstream comics but instead concentrate on working as a commercial illustrator, the comics would be purely for my own enjoyment, self-published for whatever small readership would gather in front of me.

Things changed when the internet arrived. I got on it in about 1998 and started putting The Rainbow Orchid up as part of my website in about 2005. Without much publicity (I was still treating it as a hobby) it started to gain traction anyway and largely thanks to some much larger web-comics coming across it and linking to it, the readership escalated.

It's another story, but this kind of exposure lead to an agent and eventual mainstream book publication and, of course, vast wealth (yeah, joking on that last one). I chased none of these things, they came to me, though I was very happy about it, of course.

That's an overly-long ramble to the statement that my use of the clear-line is the "consequence of a selling strategy". I do resent that idea, and it's explicitly because that makes it seem like the decision was rather a calculating scheme to elicit sales in the marketplace - the opposite of what actually happened.

I don't want to have a go at David Pinho Barros for his remark. Although I have talked about the origin of The Rainbow Orchid I can't expect him to seek out everything I've ever said. He does quote the following I wrote for my website many years ago (still there in my faq) ...

"I wanted to invoke the atmosphere I loved from European adventure albums such as Hergé's Tintin, Edgar P. Jacobs' Blake & Mortimer, Yves Chaland's Freddy Lombard, and Tardi's Adèle Blanc-Sec, to name just a few. Most British readers cite Tintin because not many other ligne claire comics have made it over from France and Belgium, but it is an entire school of comic strip storytelling with many creators working in the style, just like manga often has a certain look to it. The Rainbow Orchid has been compared stylistically to Floc'h's Trilogie Anglaise or Jacobs' La Marque Jaune. The better you know Tintin, the more apparent the differences, but I don't refute the similarities - it was a conscious decision."

... and I can certainly see how a 'conscious decision' to invoke the style of Hergé and Jacobs might be seen as a commercial choice, though actually it was merely one born out of enthusiasm for exploring the form for myself. I guess that's the bit missing - I wanted to invoke that atmosphere for myself.

Art by Exem for the Cartoonmuseum Basel

There's nothing wrong with making an artistic decision in order to maximise revenue, but it does have the feeling of an accusation, and offers the idea that money, not art, is the driving force, something that is generally frowned upon. And not that I'm against making monery off my art - far from it - and I strongly dislike the conceit that 'true art' can only go hand-in-hand with poverty.

Since having the book out, and even being lucky enough to have it appear translated in the Franco-Belgian world that inspired it, I have seen the more commercial side of the ligne claire. It certainly has an aspect of marketability in Europe. In the UK my largest audience was children (although not explicitly a children's book), whereas in France, the Netherlands and Germany, the largest audience I saw was people like myself, older, mostly male, and nostalgist collectors (not exclusively, and also not a problem by any means!).

This is partially due to the publishers, smaller, boutique publishers who cater to that audience with reprints and classic series. With a much bigger publisher in the UK (Egmont) the readership was hugely varied, children, teens, adults, quite strong in both male and female readership.

I actually suspect the style I've chosen to work in has been a hindrance in my own country, as so many people are familiar with Tintin, and nothing else, that I can appear merely as a copycat or fan-artist. While I was making Orchid I purposefully didn't look at a Tintin book - for years - wanting to develop my own ligne claire style. Of course it's always going to be compared to Tintin, and fair enough.

Now I have returned to the point I was at twenty years ago - a new Julius Chancer book and I'm doing it for myself. I haven't signed with a publisher and don't strongly mind whether I do or not - it would be preferable, of course, but I'm happily prepared to self-publish. I'm more aware of the 'clear-line scene' now, and certainly I've changed since The Rainbow Orchid, the comics scene has vastly changed, so my comics have changed.

Anyway, that answers the point I wanted to address about my book's motivations! Whether it's a wise thing to do I'm not certain, but, especially as I get older, I see my creativity as part of my identity, and feel the record should be corrected, even if just here on my blog.

I hope I haven't misinterpreted Barros's writing, and I do look forward to reading his book, which looks fascinating. I'm enormously flattered he even chose The Rainbow Orchid for inclusion, it's a privilege to be part of it whether praise or criticism. You can download the book yourself from here.

Here I find myself on the last day of the month with nothing much to write about. I have done a few bits of work and comics recently, so I'll post a couple of extracts below (I can't show everything as some has not been published by clients yet).

The Brambletye Box had a bit of a pause over the summer due to all kinds of things, a bit of everything in fact - illness, family stuff, work, holidays - all those ingredients of life! Some new art did go up on my Patreon page a couple of days ago, so that's the place to see anything new at the moment.

I'm worried this blog is in danger of becoming a collection of obituaries for the icons of my youth, most of whom are now getting into their last years. In truth, Ozzy Osbourne - who perhaps has survived longer than should reasonably have been expected - was not really one of those icons, but his band, Black Sabbath, was.

Discovering Led Zeppelin directed me to other bands, musical brethren and cousins, with Sabbath inevitably being one of those. Paranoid was my first of their albums, probably still my favourite, though I think Vol. 4 is another of their best alongside their 1970 debut, Black Sabbath.

When I started to learn bass guitar, Paranoid was the first song I worked out and learned on the instrument, going on to then learn NIB and Snowblind. We didn't do any Sabbath songs in my first group as some close friends of ours were in a Sabbath covers band, and we didn't want to stray into their territory, though I did return to Paranoid for a much later band. I also recall learning Symptom of the Universe for a pub jam night where I had to detune my bass by a whole tone so the vocalist could comfortably sing it - my E-string was like a rubber band it was so loose!

Obviously Ozzy was a massive part of the Sabbath sound, and they weren't the same when Ronnie Dio came in (as decent as his albums were), and it was more Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi who I really admired. I did have two Ozzy solo albums (1980s Blizzard of Oz, actually bought because I was interested in Lee Kerslake and Bob Daisley's contribution, both members of Uriah Heep, and 1987's Tribute), but neither got a lot of play, I must admit.

Parts of Ozzy's character were very problematic, but it's sad to see anyone decline, as he has, in recent years. How nice he had such a good send-off at the Back to the Beginning concert just a few weeks ago. I'll definitely be getting some of those early Sabbath records out for a spin over the coming days (and I've also been greatly enjoying Brown Sabbath and their cover versions in recent months).

Here's a little video I made for the weekend showing some of the art for The Brambletye Box from roughs to pencils and then to the finished, coloured art.

Just a couple of weeks shy of his 83rd birthday, Brian Wilson, the creative genius behind The Beach Boys, has left the world.

He was a decent age, he was not in good health, but it's an enormous loss all the same - he really was one of the absolute best of the best when it came to songwriting, arranging, producing - all aspects of musical creation. Many words have been written about him, and there will be many more who will say it better than I could now.

I got into the Beach Boys in the mid-80s - I had a double tape set, the 'Very Best Of' (the one with a lady's bikini'd backside on the cover) which I listened to on rotation. In fact it will have been during the summer of '85, just before I went to live in California for a year myself.

I was attracted, at first, by the vocal harmonies, something that has steered me to much of my favourite music (Queen, Uriah Heep, ELO, a lot of classical choral music from Henry Purcell to Gabriel Fauré and more), but soon became enamoured by Brian Wilson and his creative vision in particular. I got hold of every Beach Boys recording I could, including a number of rarities and boxed sets. In 2004 I got to see him live when he performed Smile at the Royal Festival Hall - it didn't disappoint.

Once described as "the man who heard the last chords of God", he had a troubled life, but what an incredible gift to leave us mere mortals. Love and Mercy, Brian.

I'm going to be running a comics workshop at the Forest Row Festival on Saturday 14th June, from 10 until 12 noon.

Recommended for ages 7+ and teens (or anyone, really!), you can book through the festival website here.

And have a look at the little video for it here.