Hopefully you're well aware of one of the best comics to appear on the web - Tozo, by David O'Connell. If not, you've got a lovely bank of archive material to get through where a fantastic tale of the city of Nova Venezia will unfold, all starting with the murder of mercantile inspector, Luco Lello. And I have just completed a great interview with David which is now online... so please go and read it!

Now, two things connected with Philip Pullman. Firstly, he gave a terrific overview and argument against the proposal to age-band books at the Society of Authors' Conference at Robinson College in Cambridge this last weekend, and you can read his well-reasoned address right here.

Secondly, my brother is taking him to task for repeating the tired old criticism of saying David Lindsay's classic science-fiction novel, A Voyage to Arcturus, is a badly written work of genius. Go and read his learned opinion right here.

A few quick things to mention...

Jonathon Dalton has completed his A-Z! He didn't waver once, and even while being away for a few days continued to draw and post the winning vote - whoever it had to be. His A-Z has turned out to be a superb collection. Highlights for me including Vampirella, Tamara Drewe, Asterix, Luther Arkwright, the Yellow Kid - and not forgetting Julius Chancer. Don't forget that there is still Mitz's A-Z of Villains, currently up to the letter N.

And speaking of the Yellow Kid, the Caption auction a few weeks ago included a set of prints of my A-Z, but I needed to go and get some better quality prints done. As a thank you for the auction winner's patience I asked if they wanted a sketch, and here's who he chose...

And there is more excitement still to come. I have just completed a great interview with David O'Connell, the creator of Tozo, and that shall be posted in a couple of days or so. So check back soon!

Currently running at Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery is a small exhibition of art by my great auntie Edyth, this being the centenary of her birth (she died in 1980). I believe it is to run until the end of the year.

Edyth was the eldest child of a coal miner, and when her talent and ambition became evident, the family put their financial resources into sending her to the Royal College of Art in London - indeed, she was the first girl from Doncaster to go there. In the 1940s she ended up in Shrewsbury and married into an artistic family, the Coles. Her husband's uncle Edwin was quite a famous local artist, and I have mentioned him before, with a gallery of his postcards here. Her husband disappeared one day (it is thought he took his own life when the family business foundered), and she lived the rest of her life struggling to make a living, but did survive thanks to her art.

Detail from a theatre scene and a street scene (Doncaster market)

The only work I have of hers is a pencil portrait of her brother, my grandfather, which must date from the 1930s. My grandparents used to have a large oil painting over their fire-place that was by Edyth - a forest and river scene, if I remember correctly, and I was always fascinated at how dark and brooding it seemed. The Doncaster Museums Officer very kindly sent me some photographs of some of the work on show, which includes some of the glass etching she did later on in life. If you happen to be in the neighbourhood in the next few months, why not drop in and take a look?

Edyth (c.1924) and her portrait of my grandfather, Ben.

About a month ago I picked up a few pages of Ella Cinders comic strips from the Dallas Morning News of 1927. They're lovely comics - very nicely drawn and wittily written. Ella Cinders immediately comes across as a strong and sassy girl who makes her own unique way through the world as an underdog that constantly comes out on top thanks to a quick mind and a not bad right hook (if required).

The strip was written by Bill Conselman (1896-1940) who also scripted for the silver screen, including an Ella Cinders film in 1926 starring Colleen Moore (with a cameo by Harry Langdon as himself!) The artist was Charlie Plumb (1899-1982), who continued with the strip into the early 1950s, though latterly with other artists ghosting in his place (I'm not too keen on the 1940s and later incarnation of Ella, who survived into the 1960s).

Here's my collection of Ella Cinders sheets (they measure 15.25 x 22.5"), with Ella herself keeping guard. There are some beautifully drawn mastheads (eg. the ogre above).

There are some lovely high resolution Cinders strips to be found at Digital Funnies, and a great archive also at Barnacle Press. Below we see Ella at the museum... which reminds me that a recent Charlie Jefferson panel (my DFC strip) has a similar view - I just noticed the coincidence while putting this post together.

I bought some new pens a couple of days ago with one of them being a brush pen - something I've heard lots about but never used before. This is just a quick sketch to try it out (grey-washed with the water from my rinse-pot!)

In other news, go and watch this video - it features Hergé, Goscinny, Uderzo and Franquin! (via)

A couple of days ago Kenny from Blank Slate Books sent me a handful of little pin badges that feature their logo (which I designed). They're small, neat and stylish.

Neat and stylish would be a good description of the two books that Blank Slate have so far published - Mawil's 'We Can Still Be Friends' and Oliver East's 'Trains Are Mint' - both well worth picking up. They've also got some very exciting stuff on the horizon, including the one I'm most excited about - the publication of Nigel Auchterlounie's* Spleenal (read more here and here. Edit: and now here on the Blank Slate blog).

Jonathon Dalton has reached 'O' in his A-Z, and a new one has popped up in the form of 'Mitz's Inevitable A-Z of Comic and Cartoon Villains'. You can tell this is going to be interesting when 'A' turns out to be Armless Tiger Man. See where it all started here.

I've been asked to give Indie Review a mention, and I'm more than happy to do so after a browse around the newly redesigned site. The news section is very good and it's building up a nice bank of reviews (I'm sure I wrote a review for Leonie O'Moore's 'Some Forgotten Part' for them, but it seems to have disappeared) and creator biogs (where I'm described as "more of a mainstream artist compared to a lot of independent UK artists"!?). I would say the navigation can mean you have to click through a lot of pages to see what's in the archives, and a few more graphics, especially on the masthead, would brighten the place up a bit, but it's still a very worthwhile link.

* My gggg-grandmother was an Auchterlonie... her antecedents hailed from Crail in Fife, and included her cousin, Robert Auchterlonie, the "Grand Old Man of Scottish Congregationalism".

Not quite! But I have put up the first new strip since November 2007, and it's something I've been meaning to do for a few weeks now. I stayed up until 3.30 a.m last night to get it done - the only spare time I can find right now.

It was really nice to draw Julius, Lily and Nathaniel once more. It's been nearly a year - I can't believe it's been so long! Thank you again, everyone, for your exceptional patience. I'm getting there - as soon as my DFC strip is done, I shall be back on to Orchid... and this time there's a book in sight. And we'll celebrate with a competition for some original art.

You can see the new strip by clicking the picture below.

A reminder that after I'd finished my comic character A-Z, the project was boldly taken up by Jonathon Dalton, who is currently up to the letter K. You can go and join his A-Z Facebook group here, or view his gallery so far on LiveJournal.

I was delighted that his letter J was represented by Julius Chancer from the Rainbow Orchid, and Jonathon's fantastic rendering of Julius can be seen below.

Just a quick entry, but I thought I'd throw this together as both a little preview of my DFC strip (Charlie Jefferson and the Tomb of Nazaleod) and an illustration of my art-working process...

Of course the script comes first (and that comes after the research and plot workings-out), but while I'm writing the script, I'll rough out the page simultaneously. As Nazaleod is in 4-page episodes, I do these roughs on A4, folded in half to give me four A5 pages.

Then I pencil the page using a Rotring mechanical pencil with a 0.5mm H lead and working on Goldline A3 220gsm bristol board. The page is inked with a dip pen (Hunt 107 nib) and india ink - as you can see from the accompanying image, I scanned this stage for some reason, with pencils still underneath, which I don't usually do. After the pencils have been erased away, the inks are scanned in to Photoshop as a 600dpi bitmap, and it's here I'll do any little corrections and add any 'white ink' (eg. the rain). Finally, the bmp is converted to colour, the black line is lifted to its own layer and colour is applied underneath, before being transferred to an A4 (actual size) master and lettered (not shown).

Click the image for a bigger view. There's a little summary of what Nazaleod is all about reproduced on the Forbidden Planet International blog - my thanks to Richard Bruton for the mention.

With that comics A-Z all focussed on me, me, me, I thought I should do a post about you, you, you... or at least some of you, anyway...

Firstly I want to mention a couple of new projects from Dave West of Accent UK. He's got a great little story on the way called 'Whatever Happened To The World's Fastest Man?', which takes a nice angle on the concept Arthur C. Clarke examined in his short story, 'All the Time in the World'. The project that excites me a tad more, though, is 'Stephenson's Robot', with the lovely artwork of Indio, and you can go and learn more about this at the website.

I also want to give another mention to the sketches of Andy (aka Konky Kru). Whenever I visit his website I can spend ages in his galleries of wonderous art, whether they're the ink drawings of various scenes and events (including several comic festivals), or the beautiful watercolours. I find them lively and inspiring and you'll find them well worth your time. While you're off in that direction, you can lose yourself further in his invaluable Early Comics Archive too.

Finally (for now), I hope you've been following the adventures of Super-Sam and John-of-the-Night by Darryl Cunningham that's been running over on the Forbidden Planet International blog. Darryl is a clever storyteller with an engaging art style. I loved the brilliance of a scene in episode 37 where John stares at a painting, only to see his grandfather appear and give him a warning. My description is clumsy - Darryl presents it as a perfect comic-strip moment, visual and with simple yet startling impact in just a few panels (see? I'm still trying to describe it!). It's language-of-comics ingenuity.