The latest Rainbow Orchid volume 3 preview strip is up - see it here. We're just over half-way through!

Also just posted online is the third Adventure Films Podcast discussion, this one is about the 1948 John Huston film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Click here to listen to it, and be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think of the film or the podcast.

Lastly, a little thought ... who is Batuk waving to as the train pulls away from Karachi Cantonment railway station? Do we see them again in volume 2?

The latest preview strip for The Rainbow Orchid volume 3 went up this morning. Don't forget - Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays! Today's contains much roaring.

Also this week, a short interview with me appeared in local free magazine East Grinstead Living - you can read it on the interviews page.

Yesterday I posted the second Adventure Films Podcast. This one sees Murray and me talking for an hour and a quarter on the excellent 1975 John Huston film The Man Who Would Be King. Give it a listen and leave a comment on the podcast blog to let us know what you think.

Finally - let me draw your attention to a couple of great comics that have come my way recently. Nick Foulger has used photography and Playmobil toys to tell the adventurous tale of Professor Thomas Swift in The Green Man - it's really impressive and the amount of work that has gone into it is incredible. You can see a free preview here and then go on to read more - which you should!

I can also highly recommend Jonathan King's lovely ligne claire comics over at Eel Noir, especially his latest, the wonderfully drawn Threat Level - terrific stuff!

The Rainbow Orchid volume three preview starts today! Click here to see the first strip, with further strips appearing every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next five weeks or so.

Apologies this is up rather late today - my website database was down this morning and I couldn't get round to it until this evening. Usually it will be up before lunchtime (GMT) - depending on how busy things are. Hope you enjoy it!

What's this? A blog post? Yup - sorry it's been such a long time (just over a month). I work from home and getting used to my wife and a new baby being around all day while I try to work has been somewhat harder than I perhaps naively imagined! I've also had a visit from my dad who lives in the States and various other things here, there, and all over the place. You know what it's like! So to ease myself back in, here are a few Rainbow Orchid bits and pieces.

I've updated the shop to include the new badge set. At 38mm (1.5 inches) these are larger than the old set (25mm - sold out) and there are five designs in all. I also had some mugs made, but I'm afraid these are not for sale. I created them primarily as presents for my agent, editor and designer, but I did get a couple spare for a competition at some time in the future - so look out for that.

I believe De Regenboog Orchidee (deel twee) is out this month (I've yet to see it myself) and Silvester Strips are having a special promotion where you can buy volume 2 along with Olivier Marin's beautifully drawn De Godinnen van de Weg (The Goddess of the Road) for just €29.95.

Last week the Christchurch Kids Blog featured three posts on The Rainbow Orchid as part of their Reading Crusade. In part one I answer the question 'what are graphic novels?' and in parts two and three I explain the process of how I make my own comic from script to drawing and lettering.

To end off, something nice! On Monday I will be posting the first strip of a four-page preview of The Rainbow Orchid volume 3. A new strip will be going up three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for five weeks. There will be more preview later in the year and in a few months time a brand new Julius Chancer story will be made available on the web as well. But for now - make sure you come back on Monday!

This month sees the publication of The Rainbow Orchid volume 2 in Dutch (De Regenboog Orchidee deel twee). Here's the cover ...

It's published in hardback by Silvester Strips in a translation by Mat Schifferstein, and as part of the publisher's 20 year anniversary celebrations I believe you can buy both volumes for 29.95 Euros.

The latest issue of Eppo reprint off-shoot Por Dios (no. 5) includes the first January Jones adventure in its entirety, newly coloured by Dick Hines. This is fantatsic news as the story is almost impossible to find now in album format.

Dodenrit naar Monte Carlo ('Death Ride to Monte Carlo') was serialised weekly in Eppo Wordt Vervolg in 1988 and published as a book later in the same year. It was written by Martin Lodewijk and drawn by Eric Heuvel. On his blog Eric mentions there are possible stirrings in the direction of a new January Jones adventure (after a couple of short stories in 2009) ... we'll have to wait and see!

Special thanks to John Wigmans for the heads-up.

Edit: The latest Silvester Strips catalogue lists De Regenboog Orchidee vol 2 as being scheduled for April 2011.

There is a short interview with me at the Birmingham Mail's Speech Balloons column by writer, Paul H. Birch.

It's been a while since I did a post on some of the good stuff out there, so here are some things that have bounced across my path in past week or so ...

Alex Fitch's excellent Resonance FM show on comics, Panel Borders, has reached its fifth anniversary. Alex interviews a wide range of interesting subjects and always asks good questions, so if you like comics it's a must-listen. The latest programme is part of the Women in Comics month and sees interviews with Selina Lock, Jeremy Day and Philippa Rice. And don't miss the Trina Robbins Q&A as well.

Carter's Column, the weekly strip running over at the Birmingham Mail's Speech Balloons blog, ended its 52-episode run of Sang Ri La La La at the end of January, and this month sees the start of a "thrilling new epic", Brand of the Dragon. Creator Paul H. Birch continues as the series' writer and a new artist, Jon Edwards, is on board - you can see an interview with him right here.

Fans of Gary Northfield (ie. everyone!) should do a jig of delight because he's started a new webstrip, Burp the Caveman. So far Burp has moved into a giant apple, gone to sea on an enormous leaf, and met the cavewoman of his dreams. Each episode has made me laugh out loud, and that's a sure sign of fabulousness.

This news a bit late in, but quality web comic Tozo has had its fourth issue printed up as a comic book and is available to buy. If you don't have any of them, get all four! It's one of the best UK adventure/mystery strips out there, and a rare sibling to The Rainbow Orchid as a British-based ligne claire comic.

Here's a project worth supporting - Andrew Wildman, well-known for his amazing Transformers artwork for Marvel UK will soon be starting a new graphic novel called Horizon, but this one he's doing all himself, writing, artwork and publishing. He's using Indiegogo to accept contributions which will enable the book to become a reality - please check it out, it's going to be really good.

I get quite a few emails asking how to get into comics (and sometimes people are even nice enough to thank me for the time I spend writing back to them with advice!) - but there's never a straightforward answer. The Comic Academy is something that could be of great help to comic creators and aspiring comic creators all over. Phil Hampton, the man behind it all, has set up the Academy to inspire and inform, and he is currently previewing several interviews he's recorded with a wide variety of comics professionals. Yesterday you could listen to the wise words of letterer Rus Wooton and web comic creator Will Turner. Today (3rd March) there is artist and editor Diana Greenhalgh and, oh, me! The interviews are only available for 24 hours once posted, though you can pay a subscription to have access to all of them, and more (there is a special offer until Friday). Do sign up and check it out and spread the word.

Finally, I just had to share this marvellous Julius Chancer fan art with you. It was sent by Mary Lau, from Hong Kong, and she says: " ... he's watching the famous 'Spam' by Monty Python with Blake and Mortimer." And he is! Thanks very much, Mary - that made my day.

Today sees the launch of the Royal Mail's latest stamp set, the theme being musicals. There are eight stamps in all - four first class and four 97p. The first class includes Oliver, Blood Brothers, We Will Rock You and Spamalot, while the Rocky Horror Show, Me and My Girl, Return to the Forbidden Planet and Billy Elliot make up the 97p stamps.

The British comics scene has two representatives in the set: Return to the Forbidden Planet is based on my 2005 design for Josef Weinberger Ltd., and 2000AD artist Leigh Gallagher has his 2006 Rocky Horror Show poster for SWD included.

I was contacted by Webb & Webb, the stamps' designers, back in June 2009. Since the previous November they'd apparently been looking through over 150 years worth of musical posters and had somehow decided that my Return to the Forbidden Planet artwork merited inclusion. I believe it was originally going to be just part of a collectors' pack - not an actual postage stamp.

I didn't hear anything for months and presumed it was one of the many jobs that starts full of enthusiasm and then fades away quietly to nothing - there are a lot of those! Until one day a nice lady from the Royal Mail phoned up - it was all on, they'd finally contacted Bob Carlton, the author, Her Majesty the Queen was looking over the stamps personally to approve them, mine was going to be an actual postage stamp, and they were coming out in November 2010. Somewhere along the line this got put back to February 2011, and here we are - I'm now nationally available to lick for those wanting to send something that costs 97p (eg. a large letter weighing 101g to 250g in the UK or the price of a worldwide airmail letter from 11 to 20g).

You can see my initial sketches for the original job in this blog post and there's another post about the design here. You can buy special sets of the stamps and postcards at the Royal Mail website and in all good Post Offices across the land (the ones that are still open). So go and send some mail! Especially airmail letters to countries outside of Europe! Or slightly heavier large letters to your fellow citizens of the British Isles! And buy a Return to the Forbidden Planet stamp with which to send it!

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!