GAREN EWING
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This is the blog of Garen Ewing, writer, illustrator and researcher, creator of the award-winning Adventures of Julius Chancer, and lover of classic film, history, humanism and karate.

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BLOG : WEBBLEDEGOOK
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Archive: 01/11
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CAPTAIN POWERCHORD 3 - BIG DUDEY
Fri 28 Jan 2011

The third Captain Powerchord strip appeared in the local entertainments guide 5D in June 1994 (issue 23). Can you name all the comic and cartoon characters that appear in the first panel?

See here for an introduction to Captain Powerchord. In a couple of days I will post the fourth strip: The Castrator!


Click to open and read
posted 28.01.11 at 9:32 pm in Captain Powerchord | permalink | comment |
CAPTAIN POWERCHORD 2 - HAVE THIS ROBOTS
Wed 26 Jan 2011

The second Captain Powerchord strip appeared in the local entertainments guide 5D in December 1993 (issue 21). In this episode the Captain takes on the early-90s phenomenon of boy bands! Note the introduction of pathos at the end. And robots at the beginning.

See here for an introduction to Captain Powerchord. In a couple of days I will post the third strip: Big Dudey.


Click to open and read
posted 26.01.11 at 9:39 am in Captain Powerchord | permalink | comment |
CAPTAIN POWERCHORD 1 - LAMPSHADE MAN
Mon 24 Jan 2011

The first Captain Powerchord strip appeared in the local entertainments guide 5D in November 1993 (issue 20). It's pretty basic fare, including the Captain's origin and a damsel-in-distress storyline. I'd forgotten that I actually wrote this first episode with my brother, Murray.

See here for an introduction to Captain Powerchord. In a couple of days I will post the second strip: Have This Robots.


Click to open and read
posted 24.01.11 at 9:56 am in Captain Powerchord | permalink | comment 2 |
INTRODUCING CAPTAIN POWERCHORD
Sat 22 Jan 2011

I'm not doing much blogging at the moment due to workload, so I thought I'd post up some old stuff. Captain Powerchord was created in 1993 for the back page of a local entertainments guide called 5D, which had a print run of 10,000 copies and was distributed across a wide area covering parts of Surrey, Sussex and Kent.

The strip was a music-based humour comic, very much in the British comedy tradition, though my golden rule was to not resort to sexual innuendo or toilet humour, something all too easy to do when you're trying to be funny (I was about 92% successful!). It appeared between November 1993 (in 5D issue 20) and August 1994 (in 5D issue 25). I wrote and drew a further three episodes that did not appear in 5D, but did appear in a small press collection I produced in 1996, of which only 100 copies were printed - long sold-out.

I'll post the first strip next week, then another every two or three days or so. I'll also post up some of the extras that appeared in the collection, which included a theme tune, a board game, puzzles and a poster. In the meantime, here's the introduction as written in 1996...

"Somewhere in the cosmos of comicdom, blown together by the mighty solar winds, where Max Fleischer meets Asterix for a sit-down cup of cocoa, where The Dandy does lunch with Robert Crumb, where Walt Disney goes down the pub with The Goodies and bumps into Woody Allen - who's just joined Spinal Tap - arm in arm with Stan Laurel ... there you will find the origins of Britain's most rock-n-roll superhero. If you look really hard that is."

posted 22.01.11 at 10:57 am in Captain Powerchord | permalink | comment |
THE SCARIFYERS SALE
Tue 4 Jan 2011

Cosmic Hobo productions are currently having a 20% off everything sale until 31 January 2011. All you have to do is enter the discount code 'january' at the checkout.

Cosmic Hobo produce the excellent and highly entertaining Scarifyers audio adventures (which you may have heard on BBC Radio), featuring occult investigators ghost-story writer Professor Dunning (Terry Molloy) and his colleague from the Metropolitan Police, Inspector Lionheart (Nicholas Courtney). The five tales (so far) have included a variety of brilliant actors, including Brian Blessed, Leslie Phillips, Nigel Havers, David Benson... and many more. The stories started out brilliant and have just got better with each new release. (If you're wondering what my involvement is, I designed and illustrated the CD inserts for the series).

They also have two other fantastic releases in the form of Peter Cushing's own reading of his autobiography (Past Forgetting) and the never-before released audio version of The Return of Sherlock Holmes, also read by the wonderful Peter Cushing. All marvellous for listening to while spending long hours at the drawing board!

posted 04.01.11 at 1:22 pm in Work | permalink | comment |
JULIUS CHANCER IN 2011 AND BEYOND
Mon 3 Jan 2011

The question I get asked most often, sometimes more than once a week, is when will the next book be out? Some of you may have noticed The Rainbow Orchid volume 3 is now listed on Amazon with a first draft version of the cover (not final) and a publication date that has variously shown April, October, then May, and which now says September 2011.

As it currently stands, September is the correct publication date for volume 3. Yes, that's a long way off, and yes, I know for much of 2009 I have been telling people it was to be April or May. So why has the date changed? It's simply because I have taken longer on volume 3 than expected - the script took longer and the art is taking longer. I've also had more interruptions - promotional events took more preparation than I thought they would, I had to take on illustration jobs to have some money coming in, I had some hospital stuff to take care of, and I've had (and continue to have) some quite big creative struggles with RO that have prevented me from zipping along as I would like.

I sincerely apologise for this - I'm very disappointed that I'm not able to be a super-disciplined page-a-day-no-matter-what man and, especially to those of you who have been following RO since the beginning, this must seem a ridiculously drawn out process for what is, essentially, not that big a book. I am so very aware of all that, I promise you!

So anyway, that's the answer - September 2011 will see the conclusion of the story published. To make it up to you, if that's possible, before volume 3 hits the shops, I will be returning Julius Chancer to the web-comic format, possibly sometime in April or May - so there will be new and free material for you to read online well before September. And looking ahead, early 2012 will see publication of The Rainbow Orchid in one complete volume, as always intended.

Working on The Rainbow Orchid over the past 10 years has meant changing some of my ideas and focus, but also keeping to a plot that I created a long time ago and having to see it through to the end. I'm very proud of the work I've done (and am doing) on RO and have learnt a lot about writing and drawing comics in that time, but I don't see it as the pinnacle of my work by any means. The next Julius Chancer book (which will not be in three strung-out parts!) will reap the benefit of my experience thus far and I'll keep learning and growing as I get better and better at what I do.

So here's to 2011, a very happy new year to you, and a big fat thank you for all your support so far - it means a lot and keeps me going.

posted 03.01.11 at 12:19 am in Julius Chancer | permalink | comment 4 |
Webbledegook, Julius Chancer, The Rainbow Orchid, story, artwork, characters and website © 1997 and 2021 Garen Ewing & inkytales.