Remember letters? Those things we used to write before the magic of email? I love email, it's fantastic, it saves trees, it's cheap and instant (in theory). But there's something to miss about letters. The flop of a big pile of post in the morning that was mostly interesting, not junk. Pages of handwriting, or even typing. Postmarks and international stamps. And quite often, especially when writing to dozens and dozens of comic strip-types, lovely doodles!

I loved getting doodles, and while looking through a letter file recently I noticed a little batch of them and thought I'd put them here.

I think I'd better start off with Andy, as I'm sure anyone who has received letters from him knows they rarely come without doodles, often on the envelope too, and they're all marvellous.

Here's an interesting pair, the one on the left is from Gavin Burrows, and the one on the right from Nigel Lowrey, both circa 1996-97.

These next are from a 4-page letter by a certain Warren Ellis, before he'd made it as a comic god, but was definitely on his way.

Here's a nice little batch of three; Adrian Bamforth (before doing anything for 2000AD), Steve Harrison (newspaper cartoonist and letterer) and Stephen Prestwood.

You might recognise the one on the right as it's on my Rainbow Orchid readers' art page, and comes from Colin Mathieson of Zulu: Watercart Rescue fame. The one on the left is a rare sketch from Paul H. Birch, I think asking me to make a demon I'd drawn a bit more hairy. Paul's letters are like mini scrapbooks and I'm often as fascinated at the back of each 'scrap' page as I am at what he's writing.

And lastly - on the left is a drawing by Tunnels & Trolls author Ken St. Andre's daughter (then aged about 12, I think), Jillian, and on the right a quick lesson from the excellent Tony O' Donnell, helping me to make some figure drawing a little more dynamic!

I love them all, wonderful stuff.

I've just finished reading Bruce D. Clayton's fascinating and highly readable book about the origins of Shotokan karate, 'Shotokan's Secret' (Ohara Publications, 2004). In it, Clayton builds up a new theory for the origins of karate which does seem very plausible, logical even. Most of our karate history comes from the stories told by the Okinawans who taught karate once it went public in the early twentieth century. We're already aware that, though these stories may have some truth in them, they should be taken with a large grain of salt. They have the air of myth, and it is a martial tradition that a student is very loyal to his own teacher, which can often include exaggerating their accomplishments.

First of all, some of the good stuff about this book. It's very absorbing and the tantalising possibility of the theory presented keeps you reading. Clayton looks at karate history from a fairly new angle, examining Okinawa's history at the time of its principal developers, as opposed to solely karate's oral history as presented in early published works from the 1920s. It centres around two main areas; the fact that Matsumura and Itosu worked for the Ryu Kyu Kings, and the visit, in 1853, of the American Commodore, Matthew Perry, and his 'black ships'. Perry's visit was fairly well documented and happened at a time when Matsumura would have been in his mid-forties, and Itosu in his early twenties. The book presents several illustrations from the expedition's report and suggests, quite viably in my opinion, that Itosu and Matsumura could be among the shadowy figures of Okinawan officials shown. One is a startling portrait of the Regent with two assistants, and Clayton makes a case for this actually showing Matsumura and Itosu, an idea I would not immediately dismiss. Quite frankly, they could be two out of hundreds of royal advisors, but I do see a resemblance with Miyagi's well-known sketches of the two teachers. Clayton thinks about how a fighting system would develop if its prime creator (or adapter) was one of the king's bodyguards on an island where weapons had been banned and there was an influx of possible dangers; from its samurai overlords, Chinese traders and American might. In the kata he finds bunkai that would exactly deal with a fight in Shuri Castle's main hall against visiting dignitaries and their armed soldiers.

History is an odd thing. Quite often a theory is built and as you get used to that theory, it becomes more and more reasonable and you start building other theories that balance precariously on top of the original supposition. Before you know it you have a complete narrative, but if the foundations are weak it can sway around wildly and even come tumbling down completely. I do think that Clayton has an interesting foundation, but I'd be nervous about building too high from it, especially as one of his main building blocks is the fact that weapons were banned in Okinawa. This is a myth and, in fact, provably untrue. On top of that he seems to be saying that Shotokan is practically a product of Perry's visit to Okinawa and was designed specifically for the imaginary battle that could have taken place had negotiations turned sour at Shuri Castle. I don't believe that. The king's bodyguards must have had to deal with hundreds of variable situations, in the marketplace, dealing with the Japanese, on the waterfront, on country roads. The core of karate's developers weren't just bodyguards but administrators too, and they would all have been in potential 'situations' as they went about their various diplomatic tasks through the years. The Americans weren't the only visitors to the Ryu Kyu islands, despite the historical importance of Perry's expedition (the British and French were there in the 1840s).

Early on in the book Clayton informs us how lithographs are based on photos, but actually, the only true lithograph based on a photo in the book is the one of the regent. The others are from sketches made by Perry's expedition artist and were possibly open to some interpretation. I know this from my own research into the Afghan War of 1878-80; the woodcuts that are from photos show people standing stock still in a pose, anything with movement is from a sketch made 'on the battlefield' and worked up properly later, usually with a little imagination thrown in. That's not to say the Perry illustrations are incorrect - the job of the sketch artists was to faithfully record the expedition, but we all have our agenda to some degree. The book has a strong bias in favour of Shotokan (obviously) but it leans slightly distastefully on the side saying that Shotokan is the true descendent of Okinawan karate, and others are treated as corruptions, if they're not different martial arts all together. I once visited a leisure centre and stood outside watching a karate club in progress. The sensei, assuming I was a curious beginner, invited me in telling me that "Shotokan karate is the original karate, the proper one". I declined his invitation and moved on. The Shotokan that most people practise today is the result of the Okinawan art being quite Japanified and then exported to the west. Nothing wrong with that, and I'm sure it's seen some improvements thanks to this process. I do happen to think that Shotokan does contain a lot of the original traditional Shuri-te, and some Karate styles are practically different martial arts - for instance Goju-Ryu, and Clayton acknowledges this. Another somewhat black-and-white view is revealed in the caption to a photograph of nineteenth century samurai, labelling them as 'evil puppetmasters'.

Overall the book is a valuable addition to the study of karate's history, and I'd welcome more research into the people and places of the nineteenth century Ryu-Kyu kingdom. It is a very sad fact that most of Okinawa's history went up in flames when the islands were bombed out of all recognition during an American attack on Japanese bases in 1945, which also happened to flatten almost 100% of the cities of Naha and Shuri. For me (and I admit that Clayton has researched all this far more deeply than I have, and my view of his theory is not a fixed one), too much of the book is based on supposition designed to fit the theory and I feel uncomfortable about the statement on the back cover that blurbs "Shotokan's Secret explains, once and for all, where karate really comes from and what its purpose truly is". It hasn't done that, but it has discovered a couple more pieces to a jigsaw, a jigsaw of which most of the pieces will never be found.

Things have been rather quiet recently concerning The Rainbow Orchid, and although I've been trying to ignore it, that's turned out to be impossible (in a pretty nice way). Without going into detail, I have not been able to continue the comic in the past few weeks, but it will continue, of course. I am taking a step back from it to script and plan this episode more carefully than I had been doing, so your patience is begged, and appreciated. I don't want to announce a timescale, but we're talking just a few weeks - not months.

In the meantime, I've had a lot of positive stuff in regard to the strip come my way, which I'm very thankful for, including a wonderful drawing from Rachel (see readers' art). Thanks Rachel!

I got my Canon MV600i returned today and it appears to have been fully repaired, free of charge. This was in response to the so-called 'black screen of death' syndrome as discussed on the AV forum (currently up to 11 pages) and in my previous post. When I wrote to Canon explaining the problem, I was able to print out specific forum posts so they could not deny there was a manufacturer's fault. Most people are getting their cameras fixed free of charge, and while Canon are not admitting liability, they've earned some happy customers through their actions.

Frames from an animation for video.

The short filler tale, Sword of Truth, has ended after two weeks of daily updates. I hope you enjoyed it, giving an insight into the career beginnings of Lily Lawrence. It will remain as part of the main strip for a few more days before becoming part of the members-only section (register here), and then the main storyline of Rainbow Orchid will continue.

Thanks for accepting the diversion!

Last week Ellie and I went away for a few days, staying in Harrogate and visiting in and around York. One of the most interesting days saw us visit the Bronte Parsonage Museum at Haworth in the morning and the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford in the afternoon.

The Bronte Museum was wonderful. Haworth is a very picturesque village atop a brick-paved hill which has changed very little in 180 years (with the exception of the tourist shops). The museum is run by the Bronte Society and exists in the Bronte's actual home, the parsonage. One of the main reasons it succeeds, I feel, is that it has not relied on interactive displays, animatronic or posed models of its past inhabitants, or loud recordings and 'fun' activities. Walking through the house is like travelling back in time. There's the desk that Mr Bronte read his bible at every night. There's the couch that Emily Bronte died on. These are the floorboards that creaked as the sisters walked on them and discussed their stories. Each room had some text to accompany it, and your imagination did the rest.

What I also found amazing was that it's almost 150 years since the Bronte's lived there and their goods were dispersed, thrown away, or lost, yet the Society has managed to collect back so many of these items, some of them very fragile, yet surviving time. Whether you know any of the Bronte books or not, I highly recommend a visit to this wonderful place.

The National Film & Television Museum at the BBC's headquarters in Bradford was not as nice an experience. It seemed to use every trick in the book a modern museum would strive for (that's after we discovered where to actually go to see the museum part of the building) - buttons to press, levers to pull, voice recordings, mannequins (save us from museum mannequins!). It was just dull. The most interesting part, for me, was the animation floor, which had actual film cels on display. The trouble is, most of these had no context, so they were just pictures in isolation. Seeing the scene pictured on a screen would have given meaning to these displays, or at least a reproduction of further cels from the same scene to give some juxtaposition. The animation floor did have some good stuff too and was interesting to look around. One section for kids left me completely baffled - mirrors, levers and lights, most of whose purpose I could not understand. In all the museum wasn't awful, it was educational, but disappointing overall, and not a patch on the Museum of the Moving Image that used to be on the South Bank, which I've visited a number of times and couldn't help but compare it with.

In the evening Ellie and I did go to the Imax cinema - with about 4 other people in the audience - and saw a very good 3D film called Aliens of the Deep, even if it was a bit too Disneyfied for my liking - but still a marvellous experience.

Actually, we did have one more museum experience which was worse than Bradford - the Jorvik Viking Centre in York. This started as an archaeological dig in the late 1970s and has become an animatronic hell. After a laughably bad 'time-ride' (compare with Disneyland's infinitely better Star Tours), you get into a pod that takes you through the ancient city of York (c. 975 AD) and then get off at the end to see a few of the finds, once you get past the bored looking actors playing 'actual vikings' (one of which will stamp a coin for you if you give him an extra £1 on top of the already over-priced ticket you've just bought). Maybe it's aimed at kids, but even as a kid I think I'd have been numbed by most of it. The best section was at the end (and it's not a big place, even including the obligatory shop) where a full skeleton was on display, pointing out the poor chap's various wounds and traumas as seen through the chips and grooves left in his bones.

I'll end with the last fabulous day - Fountain's Abbey - a beautiful place and an enormous ruin to explore. The weather helped, but again your imagination did the work, prompted by the information on a leaflet or a guided walk.

Edit: Best line from the holiday: Ellie noticing a crowd of old ladies outside the famous Betty's tea room in Harrogate - "they're swarming round it like flies!"

Fountain's Abbey, near Ripon, Yorkshire

Last night Ellie and I watched Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. It was like watching a bad play. Every time Jim Carrey appeared I yawned and wanted the film to end (I have nothing against Carrey as an actor, just this film). The baby's utterances would have been funnier without the subtitles. It had no atmosphere, mystery or excitement. Some of the designs were nice. Very disappointed.

On holiday, at the Picture House in York, we saw Crash. This was one of those ensemble films where a series of characters and scenes all intertwine, something like Magnolia. It was very good, with excellent acting and great characterisation. Some of the characters were likeable (the lock-repair chap) and some weren't (the Iranian shop keeper). Others had more shades of grey (the two policemen, the criminals and the TV director). It's a film about race and how complicated prejudice is. My favourite scene, and a turning point in the story, was where Matt Dillon rescues the lady he practically assaulted earlier in the film from a car wreck. Near the end of the film, the younger policeman makes an assumption and discovers he's not as pure as he imagines, echoing the advice Matt Dillon gives him earler, "don't think you know yourself just yet" (paraphrase).

I've had a pretty busy year so far, work-wise, which is great, but one thing I have missed having the time to devote to is my comic strip, The Rainbow Orchid. For that reason, a few months ago I decided to adapt the strip into a webcomic format, with the main intention of giving me a weekly schedule to work to, even if it's just to advance the strip forward only a little. The webcomic is not intended to replace the book, as a printed collection is still my ultimate ambition for the story.

Recently the webcomic version passed 50,000 hits (actually 54,000 at the time of writing), with about 40,000 in July, and 10,000 so far this month. Converting that into unique visitors that's about 12,000 in July, which is very pleasing, especially seeing as I haven't really promoted it much, just dropping a well-placed mention here and there. I know that falls far short of many webcomics, but I also know they're numbers to be fairly happy about.

I don't usually do public forum angst, but I have not been feeling good about my own drawing recently, and I have lost quite a bit of confidence in my own ability. This is nothing unusual, and the good side of it is that it does make me want to try and improve my work and redouble my efforts. I do feel enormously grateful that even one person enjoys my writing and drawing, and the response I've been getting to Rainbow Orchid is wonderful - so, thank you!

I'll end this with a very early picture of my main character, Julius Chancer - I don't think I've ever shown this before, from my sketchbook while developing various characters (1997). Check out his enormous feet!

You might have noticed, if your mouse has lead you into the further reaches of this website, that the readers' corner has an artwork section. This is a call for contributions! If you can scratch out anything with a pen or pencil, and fancy doing some Rainbow Orchid inspired artwork, then send it to me for inclusion in the gallery - it would be great to see some new work added.

In other news: the particularly eagle-eyed among you may have seen that the Pencil Monkey forum was down. A new forum has just been created to replace the old one, and can be found here.

Also, if you haven't yet signed up as a registered reader, do think about it as there will be some great new stuff for members coming up in the next few weeks, not to mention the opportunity to win some original art. You can register here.