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!
Now there's quite a few characters on that page (from The Brambletye Box, The Rainbow Orchid and The Secret of the Samurai) I have rewritten it so you can show and hide the various character sets from the stories - let me know if it's not working!
Actually I do have one copy left, and my plan is to do a nice drawing in it (rather than just a quick sketch) and put it on ebay in the near future as a little fund-raiser. Watch this space.
If you want to see more than this then you can become a Patreon supporter, or it's waiting for the book. I can't yet say when that will see publication, but I can tell you that The Brambletye Box will be two volumes, and vol. 1 should be completed well before the end of the year - all being well!
Last year was a good one for getting on with the new Julius Chancer adventure. This has partly been thanks to my Patreon supporters (who are a few pages ahead), which provides just enough of a sense of obligation to keep going with things. I now feel I've reached a tipping point - I'm in this far, so let's keep going!
I began 2025 by completing page 20 - that's now as long as The Secret of the Samurai (a few copies still available, by the way). For The Brambletye Box I'm looking at two volumes, each about 40-48 pages long. I really want volume one to be done this year, so that's a lot of work. I don't know how some artists produce so many pages - on BlueSky Matthew Dow Smith just said his goal is to produce 1000 pages this year. Yes, I know some pages can't be compared with others, but even so. Tezuka apparently averaged 10 pages a week. Sigh.
Still, the important thing is to keep going.
You can read the latest strip here, which resumes after a four-page scene cut from the online preview, but available to Patreon supporters - and, of course, in the book when it comes.
As before, there is no update schedule, but there should be a few strips uploaded in the coming weeks (work and life stuff permitting!).
When things get going again - at the beginning of July I expect - I will once again be posting strips here on the website for the next scene after the previous one being available only on Patreon.
There have been a few changes in plans for The Brambletye Box as well, with the eventual book now being planned as two volumes instead of a single, big album. While this has meant a bit of re-jigging of the plot and script, it also means a book is likely to be appearing sooner rather than later (next year?), even if it is just a part one, but, after thinking about it quite a bit, it makes the most sense.
The next scene to draw is one that has been in my head since I first came up with the story several years ago and I'm really looking forward to getting into it. As ever, I greatly appreciate your patience and support - thank you!
This is the second batch of stock I've had from publisher BD Must. The first, back in March, was offered to Patreon supporters first and sold out within a week.
Note that this is a much shorter story than The Rainbow Orchid but does also include two back-up strips (The Sword of Fate and The Girdle of Polly Hipple). It was first serialised in The Phoenix Comic in 2013 and you can learn more about it from these old blog posts here.
The Secret of the Samurai in English has been very difficult to get hold of since publication in 2020, and I'm grateful to BD Must for making stock available for me to sell here in the UK.
The webstrip version will be on hiatus for this next scene though - it's going to be available only to my Patreon supporters for now. But it's just a little skip and there will be more to come for everyone when I get onto scene 5 - so stay tuned!
