A big thank you to all the Caption team who put on yet another marvellous event in Oxford this past weekend. I could only make it up on the Saturday, and thanks to motorway congestion and misty rain-spray I got there halfway through the DFC panel (which had the room packed out and was very good).

As is usual with these events, it was great to meet and talk with everyone I did, and I'm disappointed at missing many more. My original drawings for the Comics A-Z did quite nicely in the auction, so thank you to everyone who put in a bid. I'll try and find out how much they raised (edit: £181), but the important thing is that the auction total was over £600 - amazing stuff. If I'd have been a bit more flush myself I would have definitely gone for the Lee Kennedy sketchbook... a wonderful thing to own.

Elyssa came up with me, which reminded me that our first sort-of-date involved dropping in at a proto-Caption at the Red Sun Institute in Reading in 1992 - I don't think it was called Caption then, but I might be wrong.

Selina has put together a terrific Caption video report, and Sarah has bashed out an amusing comic strip, both suffice as excellent overviews of the day, and there are more links here.

(from Sarah McIntyre's Caption strip)

The latest issue of The DFC (no.11) has just seen the final episode of Super Animal Adventure Squad in 'The Teatime of Doom' by James Turner. Every single episode has given me hearty chuckles aplenty, but one of my favourites was in issue 8, which featured Beesley taking on a giant mutant ant all by himself.

As with Neill's Mo-Bots, I thought I'd have a go at James' 'Learn to Draw Beesely' (download the sheet from this link) and here are the results!

A funny thing happened to my mobile phone the other day... it suddenly started blipping and downloading something odd. The next thing I knew I was being challenged to a duel by a 14-year old girl who appeared to have a huge digital robot standing right behind her. This is what happens when you go to Mo-Bot High, a school with a rather unusual break-time activity, and the name of the comic strip created by Neill Cameron that has been running in The DFC these past few weeks.

Recently Neill put up a 'How to draw a Mo-Bot' sheet on his blog, so I thought I'd quickly get one together, as per his instructions. After all, I've got a 14-year old girl to fight!

(Click on the pic to see the finished version)

The A-Z project turned out to be more successful than I expected. It started just because I wanted to do some daily drawing to get the creative essence flowing in the morning, but needed some kind of theme rather than just conjuring up something new out of thin air every day. This led to the idea of drawing a comic character a day, working through the alphabet, and that quickly led to the idea of having those characters suggested by others.

And that led to the idea of using Facebook, which turned out to be surprisingly well-suited for a project such as this. A Facebook group has a discussion board for user participation, a wall for announcements and a gallery for showing the results, which could then be commented upon. One element I didn't consider, originally thinking that I'd end up with a small group of 20 or so friends making the suggestions, is the network aspect - where friends of friends see what their friends are doing, get interested, and join up too, so the group ended up with about 175 members during the voting process (I tried to avoid using the word 'voting' as it brings to mind all that is horrible about modern 'entertainment' - but that's what it is, and it's a successful format, I guess).

I'd already made my own list, but once the suggestions started coming in, I decided to keep out of it in case I influenced anyone's thinking. Top of my list for A was Asterix, but I ended up having to draw Axel Pressbutton - no problem, I was a subscriber to Warrior and it remains one of my favourite comics to this day. At least I got to draw Obelix later on (I had Oor Wullie on my list). And I felt sure I'd get to draw Judge Dredd - a character I've never drawn properly before - yet I ended up having to draw Judge Death instead. Funny how people's minds work!

There were one or two I had to struggle through with less enthusiasm. While I did go through a phase reading Peanuts paperback collections, mainly for Snoopy as the rest of the strip was too culturally different for me as a 9-year old English child, I can't say that I was massively pleased to see I had to draw Linus for L (I had Luther Arkwright). The other main character I balked at somewhat was Professor Xavier - mainly because he's actually just a bald man in a wheelchair, but also because it was the fourth Marvel character, and I was always a DC kid! But it's good to be made to go beyond your comfort zone, and apart from that, the finished alphabet was refreshingly diverse. It could possibly have done with a bit more 'ethnic' diversity, maybe a few more females, and an underground comix character would have been good, but it did lead me to buying a volume of Ranma and a volume of Usagi Yojimbo after I'd read more about them while getting reference. I was actually enjoyably familiar with the majority of the characters, and had enough reference at hand.

Out of the 26 characters, 3 are from Warrior, 2 from The Beano, 4 Marvel, 1 DC (I don't count V) and 4 are from 2000AD. 6 are women, the rest male (5 are non-human). 12 are British creations, 9 American, 4 Franco-Belgian, and 1 is Japanese (though 3 characters are Japanese).

I've been asked which is my favourite, a very difficult question! Character-wise, there are so many there that mean quite a lot to me. The British comic characters from the early eighties coincide with a time when I really enjoyed my comics - so the Warrior characters (especially V and Marvelman) and the 2000AD ones (mainly Judge Death and Nemesis - I've never read Zenith, which came later). The ones I've known longest and have a great affection for would be Captain Haddock and Obelix (see this blog entry) - both sidekicks to title characters. I'm a huge fan of Leloup's Yoko Tsuno. Drawing-wise, I'm happy with nearly all of them... but they all have niggles too, which as any artist will tell you, is all they can see when they look at their own work!

Z is for Zenith, the hedonistic 1980s pop star and reluctant superhero who first appeared in 2000AD in August 1987. He was created by writer Grant Morrison and artists Steve Yeowell and Brendan McCarthy.

Zenith was suggested by Kelvin Green, Neill Cameron, Rol Hirst, Jonathan South, George Xydas, Davey Candlish and Jay Eales - thank you all.

If you enjoyed the A-Z project, the baton has been handed on to fellow comic creator, Jonathon Dalton, and you can get voting over at his Facebook group.

Garen's A-Z of Comic Strip Characters started life as a Facebook group where members each suggested the name of a character beginning with that day's letter. The one with the most votes would be drawn by me that morning. You can see the finished gallery here.

Y is for Yoko Tsuno, the young Japanese electrical engineer and adventuress who operates out of Belgium, often with her accomplices, Vic and Pol. She was created by Roger Leloup and saw her first appearance in Spirou magazine in September 1970.

Yoko has so many terrific outfits to choose from, but I ended up going for one of the Vinan uniforms from Vulcan's Forge. Special thanks to the following for suggesting one of my favourite bande dessinée characters: George Xydas, Irene Mar, Murray Ewing, Elyssa Campbell-Barr and Linda Wada.

X is for Xavier, Professor Charles Xavier, telepathic genius founder of the X-Men. His legs were rendered useless after an alien creature, a Quist named Lucifer, dropped a stone block on him in the Himalayas. He was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and made his first appearance in X-Men no.1 in September 1963.

Well, I have to admit... a man in a wheelchair wasn't the most fun thing to draw first thing on a Monday morning! I've only myself to blame, of course, but the following people can share the responsibility as they voted for him... Jay Eales, Kelvin Green, Rol Hirst, Irene Mar and Thalia Proctor... thank you! :-)

Go and check out Sarah McIntyre's foray into the world of A-Z, as Vern the sheep wasn't very happy at not making the grade for V (despite 2 votes), and this has now been rectified.

W is for Wonder Woman, the Amazonian princess created by William Moulton Marston, who made her first appearance in All Star Comics no.8 in December 1941. Her Lasso of Truth was made from the Golden Girdle of Gaea and her indestructible bracelets are from the shield of Aegis.

Just beating a particular favourite of mine, Oor Wullie (though I also like Wonder Woman!), the Princess of Themyscira was suggested by Linda Wada, Elyssa Campbell-Barr, Karen Leach, Murray Ewing, Irene Mar, Uriel A. Duran and Lisa Naylor - a high proportion of female voters! Thank you all.

V is for V, the Guy Fawkes-masked vigilante who set out to destroy and dismantle the power of Norsefire, the ruling fascist political party in a late-nineties Great Britain, and he was the mysterious inmate in Room V at Larkhill Resettlement Camp, where he was experimented on with the 'Batch 5' compound. V for Vendetta first appeared in Warrior no.1 in 1982, created by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, the story being completed in a series for DC Comics a few years later.

V received twice as many votes as his nearest rival, Archie Comics' Veronica, coming from Davey Candlish, Jay Eales, Frazer Diamond, Rol Hirst, Richard Wainman, Tim Overton, Gústav Sigurbjörnsson, Pádraig Ò Méalóid, Linda Wada, Kathryn A. Laity and Jonathon Dalton.

U is for Usagi Yojimbo (aka Miyamoto Usagi), the rabbit ronin who wanders 17th century Japan in search of wisdom and adventure. He was created by Stan Sakai in 1982, making his first appearance in Albedo Anthropomorphics in 1984.

Each day I will be choosing a character from those suggested by the members of the Garen's A-Z of comic strip characters Facebook group - if you want to suggest any, please feel free to join in.

Usagi was suggested by Frazer Diamond, Paul Harrison-Davies, Jay Eales, Pádraig Ó Méalóid, Chris Cox, Davey Candlish, Elyssa Campbell-Barr, Sarah McIntyre and Jonathon Dalton. Many thanks!