This blog began in 1997 as a single news page called Nucelus. In 2005, during a long wait to move into a new house, I decided to learn some php and MySQL and write my own blogging system, which became inkyBlog and which now powers this, my own Webbledegook blog.
Thank you to my brother, Murray Ewing, for help with some of the more challenging aspects!
Some of the images are a little small, so row by row, left to right: The Property (Rutu Modan), The Great War (Joe Sacco), Napoleon - Abel Gance's Classic Film (Kevin Brownlow), Goddamn This War! (Tardi), The Storytellers (Rob Jackson), Widdershins - Sleight of Hand (Kate Ashwin), The Adventures of Jodelle (Guy Peellaert), Trick or Treatment (Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst), The From Hell Companion (Eddie Campbell), Napoleon (Alan Forrest), Ralph Azham (Lewis Trondheim), Return of a King - the Battle for Afghanistan (William Dalrymple), Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson), Saga vol 1 (Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples), and The Whale House (Andrew Cheverton and Chris Doherty).
Volume 1 - Die Wette ('The Bet') will launch at Comic Action in Essen, Germany, which takes place 24-27 October 2013, and I will be there on Sat 26, and maybe for some of Sun 27 as well, depending on travel timings.
I'm very grateful to Eckart Schott, proprietor of Salleck, and also to Hélène Ferey and my agent Oli Munson at A M Heath. A special thank you also to César Espona, my Spanish publisher (NetCom2 Editorial), for initiating contact with Salleck. And I must give a special mention to Michael Beck, of Letter Factory, who is working his socks off to get the book ready in time for the launch.
I do not envy the job of the BCA committee to whittle down the books to just five - when you look at the longlist then you could quite easily and legitimately replace any of the shortlist books with other titles - Teenytinysaurs, Pirates of Pangea, Corpse Talk, Porcelain, etc. It just makes my own inclusion even more of a (nice) surprise.
I honestly couldn't say who might win - all my fellow nominees bring excellent books to the list, with a refreshing diversity in subject matter and of publishers. I think my own chances are low, but that might just be natural, defensive pessimism! Still, you never know, and it's a lovely thing to have got this far - I'll bask in it while it lasts.
The British Comic Awards is something that is good for all comics in that it raises awareness, gets people talking, and celebrates the medium. My huge thanks to the BCA committee for the vote of confidence, and my thanks to all those who have sent congratulations.
Sequential City is an exhibition of comic art featuring London, hosted by Baxter & Bailey design studio. Alongside a whole raft of top UK comic creators will be an original page of mine from The Rainbow Orchid. I wonder if you can guess which one? Well, you could always pop along and see. It runs from 16-22 September (in other words, it's on now!).
I will be a guest at Nerd Fest in Nottingham on Saturday 5th October. This is a rather late addition to my events list, but I'm delighted to be able to go. Here's a little interview with me on the Nerd Fest blog.
On the 19th and 20th October I'll be at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, an event for which anticipation seems to have been building all year. Will it be the UK's answer to Angouleme? That seems to be the vibe they're going for and the guest list, events and organisation are certainly looking very impressive. It's a bit of a trip for me, but I'm very much looking forward to it.
Edited to add: I will now also be at Comic Action in Essen, Germany, October 26-27.
In other news ... Mrs Tinks are doing a fabulous children's books giveaway. Many fine tomes are up for grabs, including The Complete Rainbow Orchid, so have a look here to see how you can enter.
I'll end off with some recent reviews that have popped up, one at Broken Frontier, another at Droplets of Ink, and a third at Cherry and Cinnamon.
"One of the most exciting and dynamic graphic novel sequences of recent years, it is to be hoped this is the first of many, many similar exploratory adventures featuring the inimitable Julius Chancer. It is, without doubt, a triumph!"
"What Ewing has fashioned here is a rare example of that seldom seen breed: the genuinely all-ages title ... An absolute humdinger of an adventure story that will appeal to the child in all of us, its absence on the bookshelves of anyone who calls themselves a true aficionado of the medium would be a conspicuous and telling one indeed."
"For those seeking new comics for children I heartily recommend this as an excellent starting place! ... It's fast paced and exciting ... The imagination and attention to detail in all of this just speaks to how much Ewing loves his work - and I have a feeling you will too."
After an early bus ride into Edinburgh and a cup of tea and a pain-au-chocolat in Starbucks on George Street, I headed for the author's yurt and an interview with Craig Naples of Writer Pictures. Craig dumbfounded me by bringing out a copy of one of my old fanzines - Demon Issue from the mid-1980s - a nice surprise actually.
My first event was Seeking the Rainbow Orchid - an illustrated talk on how I made the book, character development, research, inspirations, and even a bit of comics history thrown in too. With The Complete Rainbow Orchid out for a year now, not being a big name, plus a rather limited age-range suggested for my very all-ages book, I was nervous about attendance, but actually the auditorium filled up very nicely and it all went really well, with a good crop of questions at the end. I was surprised at the queue for my signing afterwards; I'd allowed half an hour - it went on for an hour and three-quarters. I missed an interview (sorry Emma!) and I was 45 minutes late for a lunch appointment.
Photograph courtesy Jeremy Briggs.
So things were a little bit of a rush for my next event - Comic Consequences with Vivian French, Nick Sharratt and Dave Sutton. This was a live drawing event where audience members shouted out various things - an emotion, the weather, a place, etc. - and the three of us would have to make up and draw a story on the spot, each given 30 seconds or a minute before Viv rang the bell and the next person took over. It was an absolute blast. Our main story had a robot falling in love with a penguin at a zoo in Switzerland and flying off to Edinburgh where it was swallowed by the Loch Ness Monster, who was emerging from the city's dormant volcano, before being burped out back to Switzerland and becoming an exhibit back at the zoo, now combined with the penguin thanks to a bolt of lightning (I think). My high point was probably Nessie emerging from the volcano, my low point was attempting to draw a hyena, in public, without a safety net.
The four of us had a signing afterwards, as well as giving away some of the flip-pad drawings from the event. I managed to get a book signed by Nick, for my daughter, before our event - we have quite a number of his books in our house. Viv, Nick and Dave were excellent company, I really enjoyed it, even if I originally thought myself bonkers for agreeing to do such an event!
Despite the weekend crawling with comics people, I managed to not see most of them. A quick wave and a hug with Sarah McIntyre, a brief handshake with Philip Reeve, a few words with Paul Gravett and Joe Gordon. I did get to sit down for half-an-hour with Graeme Neil Reid and Jeremy Briggs, and then it was off to my final event, a reading for Amnesty International's Imprisoned Writers series.
Photograph by Elyssa Campbell-Barr.
I had no idea what I was going to read (I thought it was going to be an excerpt from a graphic novel) until some slides arrived at my aunt's the evening before, but that all changed anyway, as at the last minute everything was swapped around and I was given a two page piece penned by A. L. Kennedy to read. My co-readers were Hannah Berry and Rutu Modan, and again, it all went well, including a discussion with questions on getting messages across graphically. Not being very well prepared for such a discussion, I nonetheless managed to add some relevance with a bit about the Tintin book The Blue Lotus, and both Rutu and Hannah had much of interest to say (see the Stripped report here).
All done for the day, Jeremy Briggs kindly walked me to my bus stop, and I had a 20-minute ride back to Colinton before I was able to completely unwind and collapse on my aunt's lovely big sofa. The whole visit was very nice, and both my aunt and uncle, as well as my wife and two year old daughter and four-month old son saw the Comic Consequences event, so that made it a little extra special too.
Congratulations to all involved in the Stripped line of events at the Edinburgh Book Festival - Kirsten Cowie, Hannah Trevarthen and Janet Smyth and others - it was a triumph and a real boon for the UK comics scene. I've heard such good things about so many of the other events.
You can see my Stripped blog interview here; the Stripped overview of The Rainbow Orchid here; and my Stripped RO director's commentary here.
Not only do you get the new Julius Chancer story, but there's a whole host of other excellent strips that regularly appear in The Phoenix, including Corpse Talk, Gary's Garden, Troy Trailblazer, Simon Swift, Bunny vs. Monkey, and more. Click here to get yours!
I won't say anything about the concluding part as I don't want to give anything away, but I will say that I'm enormously pleased to have Julius Chancer in The Phoenix - an idea I first offered to Ben Sharpe back in August 2011 to his immediate and generous enthusiasm. Since then, both Tim Jones at Egmont and Will Fickling at The Phoenix have been enormously supportive of the idea, and with my agent Oli Munson untangling the contracts, I'm very grateful to all for helping to make it happen.
Don't forget that you can still enter The Phoenix's exclusive Rainbow Orchid competition to win an amazing bundle of comicy prizes - the deadline for entries is 6.00pm on Sat 29 June.
In other news, tickets are now on sale for the Edinburgh International Book Festival, including all their amazing 'Stripped' comic events. You can see my events here - hope you can come along!
If you haven't had a chance to see any of the story yet then you can read the first three pages online - right here. If you like that, then you can buy back issues of The Phoenix to get the whole adventure - issues 75-78 for the complete thing.
I have also put up a character page for The Secret of the Samurai. With The Rainbow Orchid I think I only had one character who was also a real-life person (Mr Banerji), but in Samurai there are four or five.
Albert Koop was the Keeper of Metalwork at the Victoria and Albert Museum, a department that included Japanese armour (he was also editor of the Japan Society's Journal). I don't know what he looked like, so his appearance is from my own imagination.
Another real person was Major Lockett - Vivian Noverre Lockett, to be exact. As well as a Major (later Colonel) in the 17th Lancers he was a gold medal winner for the British polo team at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp. Incidentally, although he doesn't appear, Charles Edward Hay was a real person as well, killed in France in 1918.
A minor character, but one I really like, is Mrs Whitley. To find out who she was, watch this short instructional video.
And lastly, Tanegashima Daizen was a real samurai general. He was the commander of the left vanguard of the Satsuma army during the Shimazu invasion of Okinawa in 1609. I couldn't find much about him, so plenty of artistic license used beyond that!
In the meantime, don't forget this fabulous competition in which you can win a copy of The Rainbow Orchid plus loads of excellent Phoenix goodies.
The plot concerns an ingenious method for accumulating gold from the sea, and an even more ingenious method for encoding that secret. Needless to say, nefarious forces want to get their hands on it, and Daisy, and her little brother, Co, get entangled into proceedings, determined to make sure that things turn out right.
The story was written by Trevor, an architect and founder of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford. Eileen is a children's illustrator; she pencilled the artwork and then Trevor would make a clear-line tracing - an interesting collaboration!
The artwork is very much in the school of Hergé and has a lovely kinetic quality to it - the detail is absorbing from first page to last. And the story keeps you going, with equal measures of humour (whether puns or physical comedy - plenty of both) and drama, excitement and suspense.
Have a look at their website here, and go and get yourself a copy of the book right here. And the good news is there's more to come as a second book is planned, The Souvlaki Mechanism.
I returned here to a location that appeared in The Rainbow Orchid, the breakfast room of Sir Alfred's home and headquarters.
Back then, in the early days of the story, I hadn't really mapped out the room which is something I now quite often do, so this time I sketched up a plan on a page of the script. Even if I have a good idea of how a room looks in my head, it still helps with consistency when you're changing the direction of view, so I find putting it down on paper enormously useful.
You can see a related post on planning interior locations here.
A couple of other links for you - here's an interview with me at The Beat about the new Julius Chancer adventure. And if you want to get hold of the first episode of Samurai, then it is now available as a back issue from The Phoenix online shop.
By the way, following on from last week's Tintin tribute - do you recognise which comic this little fellow, who sits on the sideboard in the breakfast room scene above, appears in?
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