Happy Halloween 2007

Compliments of the season to you all from ourselves and Mister Jeff "Blood" Zornow. (Above image taken from our collaboration "Into the Woods" from Gene Simmons' House of Horrors #1).

If you fancy a bit of seasonal listening then we recommend the Halloween edition of our favorite web radio show The Retro Cocktail Hour (October 27, 2007)

Have a good one!

Nevermore Anthology coming this Halloween

The works of Edgar Allan Poe have enthralled and terrified readers for over 150 years. Their macabre blend of doomed romanticism, gothic melodrama and ghoulish destiny earned him a place at the top of the list of fiction’s greatest authors. Famous for his poems and short stories Poe, who was born in Boston in 1809, virtually created the detective story and perfected the psychological thriller.

Legendary writer Jamie Delano, the man who launched DC's Vertigo line with the critically acclaimed Hellblazer, reunites with frequent collaborator Steve Pugh (Animal Man, Preacher) to deliver a chilling modern twist on Poe's tale of arbitrary torture and imprisonment, The Pit and the Pendulum.

Ian Edginton and D'Israeli, having previously brought us the gothic delights of Kingdom of the Wicked, Leviathan and the War of the Worlds sequel Scarlet Traces, take us to a fantastical Paris of the future where genetic technology complicates the infamous case of Murder in the Rue Morgue.

The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar, an eerie story of life beyond death, is brought up to date by screenwriter Jeremy Slater and artist John McCrea, whose credits include high profile work for both Marvel (Spider-Man) DC (The Demon, Hitman, Superboy), 2000AD (Judge Dredd) and Wildstorm (Jenny Sparks).

Leah Moore and John Reppion, fresh from working with Alan Moore on the Wildstorm-published Albion, lend their unique vision to The Black Cat, along with artist James Fletcher (Negative Burn). Meanwhile, Leah and John's Albion artist, Shane Oakley, joins forces with writer Dan Whitehead (Star Wars: Attack of the Clones) to bring The Fall of the House of Usher screaming into the modern day, in a skin-crawling tale of madness, mania and decay.

You can order a copy today for only £7.79 by clicking on the link below.

 

Unseen Albion from Shane Oakley

To coincide with the release of Titan's Albion Origins Shane Oakley will be posting (and selling) some as yet unseen character designs for Albion.

Make sure you keep an eye on shaneoakley.blogspot.com, 'cause you don't want to miss out, do you?

Albion Origins winners

The winners of our Albion Origins competition are...

raymond

&

Ms. Darrk

The answers we were looking for were

Fred = Faceache AKA Ricky Rubberneck
Martina = Martha from Martha's Monster Makeup

Thanks to everyone who entered and, if you didn't win, don't worry; you can now buy a copy from Amazon. ;)

Buy Albion Origins.

Witchblade - Shades of Gray #3 out this week

So, after a bit of a delay (sorry about that) Witchblade - Shades of Gray #3 is finally hitting the stands this week with the concluding issue coming very soon. We're very pleased to have Walter Geovani as our new artist and can't wait to see the series wrapped up and "set free".

More info on the Dynamite site HERE.

Birmingham 2007 report

Firstly, apologies for the lateness of this bit of Bloggage; things seem increasingly hectic here in Moore & Reppion towers (AKA the spare room) and the days seem to be getting shorter both literally and metaphorically.

Anyway, we arrived for our flying visit to Birmingham late Friday afternoon. Drawing on past convention experience, we found somewhere to eat immediately (Wagamamma: lovely but very, very spicy this time for some reason) in an effort to line our stomachs. After checking into our hotel and getting ourselves sorted we headed off to the party which was being held at Bennet's Bar as a joint launch for the con and Markosia's new book Hope Falls.

Hunt Emerson's band performing.

Yes, this really is a comics party. Who'd have thought, eh?

We had a grand time hobnobbing with the likes of Ben Dickson, Paul "the nicest man in comics, film, television and writing generally" Cornell, Leigh Gallagher & Niki Robinson, Bryan Talbot, Declan Shalvey, Lew Stringer and loads of other vastly interesting folks. And, of course, we drank...

Niki & Leigh.

Leah and Lew.

After a frankly crap night's sleep we were awoken on Saturday by someone playing the bagpipes outside our hotel window. No matter how hard we looked we couldn't see them but we could %$&*ing hear them! Leah was feeling a bit too delicate for the hotel breakfast so I opted for the "last night's cold pizza" option; breakfast of kings!

We arrived at the con at about 10:15 AM and were amazed at the size of the queue outside the entrance. Inside the place was already mad busy and, after saying a few hurried hellos and lining up to get a sketch and signature from Mike Mignola, we found ourselves sitting between Dave Gibbons and Mark Buckingham doing a bit of signing.

Leah and Dave.

We had to run and catch the coach back to Liverpool at 4 PM so spent most of our time trying to say hello and goodbye to as many people in as short an amount of time as was possible. We bumped into James Fletcher (who has done a fantastic job on the art for our contribution to the Nevermore anthology), had a quick gab with the Accent UK and Engine Comics chaps and generally went into a kind of comics related sensory overload.

Dave "Springheeled Jack" Hitchcock.

Mike from Asylum Books and Games in Aberdeen.

Daley Osiyemi.

Rich Johnston explaining the finer points of selling The Flying Friar.

The Futurequake team; always alert for the call to action.

All in all we had a great time, cheers to James Hodgkins and Shane Chebsey and everyone else involved in organising the con.

I think we'll try and stay for the full weekend next year though, as traveling home and then immediately going to a party might not have been the best course of action in hindsight.

J.

Birmingham Comic Con this weekend

We'll be attending this year's Birmingham International Comics Show on the Friday night ("the party" as it's otherwise known) and the Saturday day time, doing some signing and maybe some panels (if they want us to). No Sunday for us sadly.

If in doubt, look/ask for us at the Accent UK table; Dave an Colin usually know where to find us.

Other guests include:

• Mike "Hellboy" Mignola (!!!)
• Paul "Doctor Who" Cornell
  
• Dave "Watchmen" Gibbons
• Bryan "Alice in Sunderland" Talbot
• Lew "Brickman" Stringer

And literally dozens more. The list goes on and on. Just imagine someone who you might like to see as a guest at a UK comic convention and they're there! It's that good.

Hope to see you there.

Space Doubles #1 in October Previews

Space Doubles is a science fiction series from Th3rd World Studios that features 2 stories per issue, 2 covers ( in flip cover format NO VARIANT NONSENSE), each by a different creative team.

Diamond Order Code# OCT073781

Issue One features our retro styled "Project Obeah" which we wrote way back in early 2006 (if memory serves)
Artist - Jeremy Dale
Cover artist - David Barkmann

Here's a preview (click to enlarge)




The flip side story is entitled "Red Rain"
Writer - Mike Raicht (Marvel MAX Zombie, Deadworld Frozen Over, Savage Tales )
Artist/cover artist - Alecia Rodriguez

Preview pages below (click to enlarge)




Hope lots of people will pick this up as it's going to be great.

Future issues feature the talents of Mike Baron, Dwight MacPherson, Andrew Dabb, Ben Raab, Deric Hughes, Mark Smith, Jason Hall, Justin Robinson, Scott Closter and more!

Diamond Order Code# OCT073781

SubCon 2007 report

www.myspace.com/subcondublin

So, we arrived in Dublin late on Friday afternoon confident that we had our mobile phone fully charged, a list of phone numbers and that we had given our number to everyone who would need it. This was our third trip to the city and I'm completely at a loss when it comes to explaining why we hadn't remembered that our bloody phone does not work in Dublin. We can receive calls and texts (at a cost) but we can't call or text other people. Yes, I know that means we should switch networks or something but, to be perfectly honest, we never use the phone anyway. Getting back to the point, we were so disgusted when we realised that we'd been so stupid about the phone that we turned it off (thinking it was useless). Only to realise when we turned it back on again half an hour or so later that we had loads of texts and voicemails and that receiving them had now eaten all our credit. Rubbish!

Steve Niles, Brian J. Showers and Aly in the Central Hotel.

Anyway, after a bit of getting ever so slightly lost in Dublin we found our way to the Central Hotel and met up with Bryan Talbot, slovobooks and ephiriel who led the way to a very, very nice Indian restaurant. There we met the notable author and general gad about Brian J. Showers who was accompanied by the lovely Aly. We had a great meal and a good old gab and, after saying our goodnights to slovobooks and ephiriel, the rest of us headed back to the central for a pint or ten. There were lots of nice people there including Simon Furman and his very nice missus. I tried to stay off the Guinness for a change...

Leah and Bryan Talbot in the library with the Guinness.

We were up bright an early on Saturday (for comic writers anyway) and we're over the river at the Central Hotel (where the con was taking place) by a little after ten. After bumping into Steve Niles & Sarah Wilkinson, Al Nolan, Danielle Lavigne, Michael Carrol & Leonia and various other astoundingly interesting people (especially for that time of the morning) we were ensconced on a table next to Bryan Talbot who was already dealing with a queue of people all wanting their copies of Alice in Sunderland signed.

Bryan Talbot doing a sketch for us during a very brief period of quiet.

Steve and Sarah.

This was easily the best con we've ever attended in terms of the fans and interest we had during the day. We had so many people coming in looking for our work and bringing in copies of Albion (loads and loads of them!!!) for us to sign. Thanks very much to everyone who we spoke to on the day; you really made us feel welcome and like the stuff we write might actually get bought and read by people (scary thought).

Steve Niles finds himself at the wrong end of an Armstrong-Siddeley "Royal Albert" Vibro-Beamer.

Leah and Pia Guerra getting all feminist.

Leah and Y the Last Man artist Pia Guerra did a great "Women in Comics" panel (yeah, there's alway one of those isn't there?) in which they discussed the fact that neither of them really felt like their gender was particularly relevant to job they did. There were lots of questions from the audience and notably from Father Ted and It Crowd writer/director/creator Graham Linehan who was sat in the front row and is obviously a big fan of Y the Last Man.

The con ended at five. We all got drunk and went for Japanese food then headed back to the hotel and drank some more. It was grand and we'll certainty be back again next year if they'll have us.

Cheers to Rob Curley and all the SubCity/SubCon staff for making it such a great con.

J.