Books. Actual books. Click the images for a closer view.

Spot UV varnish!

I haven't blogged much this month, things have been somewhat hickeldy-pickeldy. June will be a time of intense work and will include the 40th of June, more of which in a week or so. I've been collecting so many links to share and comics I want to write about that my head's a bit over-full, so for now, here are some recent sketches I've been doing for Rainbow Orchid volume two.

I love drawing elephants - they're like two old men in baggy trousers.

This past week began on Sunday with a trip up to Watford to take part in a full day karate open course led by Shotokan legend Hirokazu Kanazawa (with his son Nobuaki), and very nicely hosted by the Watford SKKIF. Despite the large number of attendees it was a great experience and a very enjoyable day (there's some photos here).

On Monday Elyssa and I took the chance to go off to the Cotswolds for three days. Our first stop was a very windy Blenheim Palace where they also happened to be filming a new version of Gulliver's Travels. We watched as Emily Blunt filmed a scene while the other star of the film, Jack Black, looked on from the sidelines. Elyssa took this photo of the Lilliputian Guard waiting around for their next appearance.

The best part of Blenheim was a very informative guided tour through a few of the rooms, which contrasted starkly with a section of animatronics, video and 'interactivity'. I just can't get excited about these attempts to try and make history 'more exciting', when I think marvelling at the actual objects and stories behind them is a far more rewarding experience (as I've said before).

We stayed in the village of Broadway, and on Tuesday morning had a lovely 5 mile walk up to Broadway Tower and back (by a different route). The tower has strong connections with William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites, so was very interesting for that, but also we were lucky to have a fairly clear day, and from the top of the tower you're supposed to be able to see thirteen counties - it was certainly quite a view.

We went to Cheltenham in the afternoon and saw Coraline in 3D in the evening. The animation was gorgeous and not at all showy-offy, it served the story very nicely. I did think a few parts of the plot were resolved due to some rather convenient events, but that's a minor criticism of a very enjoyable film. And the trailer for Up looked fabulous.

On Wednesday we drove back through Stow-on-the-Wold (mostly closed on a Wednesday it seems, though a second-hand bookshop made it worthwhile) and Bourton-on-the-Water for a lovely lunch.

So - batteries somewhat recharged, brain reset, it's now back to work on The Rainbow Orchid with plenty to do for volume two to get it into shape for publication. I'm working on the cover right now. And I also heard that a copy of the printed volume one has being doing the rounds at the Egmont office - so I'll hopefully get to see that soon.

Yesterday Elyssa and I went to the Royal Academy to see the Kuniyoshi exhibition. Masterful prints of beautiful images with a bold line and generally flat colours, all very reminiscent of that lovely ligne claire style. In my early teens I used to copy and colour such images from Stephen Turnball's Book of the Samurai. Now I've added the Kuniyoshi catalogue to my bookshelf as well. Inspiring stuff, so do try and see it before it closes on 7th June.

And last week The Bookseller ran an advert for The Rainbow Orchid (see below). Huge thanks to fellow comic creator Paul Harrison-Davies for letting me know and sending a scan - you can currently see his fabulous work gracing Huzzah! and Huzzah! Noir.

On Saturday I went up to Crystal Palace and hung around with some lovely comics people and some lovely book people for the Children's Book Festival. I won't give a long report as I missed some of it, and I can point you to some excellent write-ups, with photos, from Sarah McIntyre, David O'Connell, Candy Gourlay and organiser, Alex Milway.

It was a lovely day, and Alex is a true superstar for putting it all together. I hope there'll be another one next year.

The full web version of my comic strip, The Rainbow Orchid, is going to remain online for just one more week!

Book publication of volume one is set for 4 August 2009, so after the bank holiday weekend (Tuesday 5 May) the online strip will become a preview, with certain sections removed and the full story available in print only.

You can start reading the comic here and you can pre-order volume one from Amazon.co.uk here (it'll be available to buy from this website in August).

A post on Andrew Wildman's blog sent my mind racing... where could that stray speech balloon have come from? Here's my take from an imaginary comic, and because it's Andrew, I included a robot - though perhaps a little more old fashioned in style than he usually draws!

Cross posted at the Super Comics Adventure Squad.

Today I received the 'wet proofs' (proofs printed form the actual plate) for the cover and a handful of pages from The Rainbow Orchid. They look fabulous, as you can see for yourself in the photo below (along with note from Faye, the designer).

Last night I trained it up to London to meet comics friends at a pub just a short walk from London Bridge, mostly DFC'ers, but some others too. One of the others was Ellen Lindner and I was able to buy a copy of her book, Undertow, which she signed and sketched in with a pen borrowed from one of the other others, Mousehunter author, Alex Milway (who's organising the Crystal Palace Children's Book Festival). I started reading Undertow today and it's completely fabulous. As was last night, which I enjoyed so much that I only just managed to get on the last train home!

I've only had rather long blog entries in mind recently, and no time to write them. I'll cross one off the list now though, as I've had quite a few comics come my way in the past couple of weeks, and will write a little on each.

The first comes from Denmark, and is from the same publisher as for the Nofret book I bought last year, Eudor Comics. This is Frank Madsen's Kurt Dunder in Tirol, which I believe is currently the only English translation from this series. And it's good stuff - the art is fluid and attractive, quite cartoony, and the story is my favourite kind, a mystery adventure (quite commonplace in Europe, but still a rare beast as far as comics in the UK are concerned). It has some good daft humour, mostly in the shape of Attilia, a mischievous though useful monkey. Kurt Dunder himself is described as a 'globetrotter and adventurer', which gives fair license for his exploits, and the other main supporting character is his sidekick, a rotund Tintin-quiffed fellow named Bill.

We need a translation of the next book, The Fifth Gospel (which I'm not certain has been completed yet), as the adventure continues there, though this volume does provide a satisfying read in itself. The translation is largely very good, but there is the odd error that stands out. I look forward to more English translations from Eudor, and definitely urge you to support them and buy their books to encourage this - both Nofret and Kurt Dunder provide marvellous reads.

Next up is Rick Geary, someone whose work I have been meaning to get hold of for years, but have only recently done so. Part of the reason I have only just dived in to his oeuvre is because so many of his works interest me, especially the treasuries of Victorian murder, and I wasn't really sure where to start. In the end it was the relatively recent release of The Adventures Of Blanche that hooked me in - and I think I have indeed been hooked!

Blanche is based loosely on Geary's own grandmother, with tales set in the early years of the twentieth century. The Adventures... book is a collection of three stories, a cthulhoid tale set in New York in 1907, a silent film yarn set in the Hollywood of 1915 (my favourite), and a mystery set in Paris in 1921. Blanche has a touch of Adele Blanc-Sec about her, though she is more a victim of circumstance rather than a driving force herself.

The other Geary book I bought is also fairly recent, and forms the first in his new series of treasuries of twentieth century murder, it being a documentary tale of the kidnapping of The Lindbergh Child. The case is told in the author's customary careful laying out of the facts, and similarly clear graphical presentation, to give a very decent yet unbiased overview. I'm looking forward to his next in the series, a case I have had some interest in before through Taylorology, the William Desmond Taylor murder.

The Linbergh affair gives a link to the next work I have, Rivière and Solidor's bande dessinée adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, a tale that was written just two years after the Lindbergh tragedy which heavily informed the backdrop of this Hercule Poirot whodunnit. The adaptation is cool and stylish, though sometimes a little stiff, and lacks the air of mystery the story deserves I think (perhaps something is lost in the translation). It's a nice volume though, and is one in a series of Christie adaptations from Harper Collins (I'd link to the series website but the the URL on the back of the book leads to a page error).

Entirely coincidentally, but just to further the link I've mentioned between Lindbergh and Christie, while colouring pages over the Easter weekend I listened to an audiobook version of Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, an excellent and intriguing book that follows the case of a child murder in 1860 and involving one of England's original eight Police Detectives.

Now onto a couple of self-published titles. Rol Hirst has produced PJANG number two, and if I tell you that PJANG stands for 'People Just Ain't No Good', then that may give a clue to the direction Rol's tales can often take. He's an excellent writer of character and observation, and the story here - '24 Minutes' - is nicely constructed. I've liked Dave Metcalf's artwork ever since the days of The Jock, and the atmosphere of the story is well reflected in his bold lines, but I did feel some slightly clearer scene setting would have benefited the comic in its early pages. Mind you, if I was the artist, I wouldn't exactly thank the author for situating the entire comic in a crowded railway station, and Dave has risen to the occasion. A good read with a lovely cover from Nigel Lowrey, and I recommend it.

And David Baillie has produced a lovely hardback volume of Tongue of the Dead, a fantasy tale that took me back to the days of White Dwarf magazine and Robert E. Howard's Conan, the novels of which also turn out to have been David's prime inspiration. The well-told story more than kept my interest throughout, and the clear illustration is easy on the eye and uncluttered. Extras come in the form of a series of one-page Zombie Interviews (as seen in Accent UK's Zombie anthology) and a few pages of story annotations, which I always appreciate, plus a short prose story to end with. A nice addition to your bookshelf.

I have two more comics in my pile, as yet unread, so I will leave Jason Lute's Berlin volume two (City of Smoke), and Osamu Tezuka's Mw for another day.

It's been ages since I visited the Tintinologist forums (I designed the logo, and its predecessor, The Cult of Tintin, was one of the first websites I visited when I first got onto the internet in 1996) but I found myself there the other day and reading a post titled 'Pastiche identification'.

"In some greek newspaper, I've read an article about Tintin, that had a few illustrations - one of which is very unfamiliar, and, strangely, makes me think of a fake. It's a front image of Haddock looking very angry, eyes closed, losing his pipe and waving his fist, while his cap hops out of irritation. The drawing style is very very close to Hergé (or de Moor, or Jacobs), but strikes me as odd for some subtle reasons - a bit too detailed and too realistic. In fact, it reminds me much more of Jacques Martin than Hergé."

The description immediately made me think of the Captain Haddock I drew for the A-Z of Comic Characters I completed last year. But it couldn't be could it? I suggested it, to which the reply came...

"I've just dropped an eye on your website, and I'm not sure if it could match your style: the lines are 'thinner' than yours, making it look more Jacobs/Martin than your vaguely more Floc'h/Riviere style."

I'm quoting that bit only because it delighted me to be compared to Floc'h! The forum poster kindly sent me a scan of the page in question, and sure enough - it is indeed my Haddock. Did the paper think it was by Hergé? Was it just a convenient image? Rather naughty of the paper in question, but not something I'd ever chase up due to it just being a blog sketch of someone else's character, plus it's a rather flattering mix-up.

For more Greek, you may be interested in the updated and now linguistically correct Notebook of Theophrastus page, complete with a new sound recording from Latin scholar, Quintus.

I did a short phone interview with Caroline Horn of The Bookseller earlier this week, mainly on the back of the Super Comics Adventure Squad press release, but she also kindly gave The Rainbow Orchid a plug in the resulting piece (though she called it 'Orchard', something I have seen elsewhere too).

And finally... I love this Yahoo Question. Mrs Cullen asks:

"Where has the rainbow orchid originated? NOT the comic. The flower. Where did it come from? NOT the comic***!!"

I think perhaps the title of my comic is frustrating her Google searches. My apologies, Mrs Cullen, allow me to offer some assistance. Wikipedia gives the rainbow orchid the term paphiopedilum wardii, and seems to suggest it originates in south-west Yunnan and Myanmar. One newspaper article, from March 2008, declares that the rainbow orchid, first discovered in the valleys of Putao and Nagmung in the late 1980s, has not been seen since November 2007, and is probably extinct in the locality. This, of course, is not my rainbow orchid, a name I didn't know existed when I started the story back in 1997.