Tori Amos SDCC launch

Promoting the release of Comic Book Tattoo (which we're in!), Tori Amos has scheduled a couple appearances at the San Diego Comic Con. Plans begin with a Comic Book Tattoo panel, hosted by comics and music critic Douglas Wolk, and featuring discussion between Tori, editor Rantz Hoseley and several of the contributing creators on Saturday, July 26 from 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM.

Shortly thereafter, 2:00 pm to be exact, Tori will be doing a signing on site. Fans wishing to meet Tori can receive tickets to her signing, limited to 200 fans, by purchasing a copy of Comic Book Tattoo at the Image Comics booth.

Tickets will be made available in increments with 20 given out on Wednesday, July 23, 75 on Thursday, July 24, another 75 on Friday, July 25 and 30 on Saturday, July 26.

Comic Con takes place at the San Diego Convention Center. More details to follow once specific locations within Convention Center have been determined.

Keep an eye on http://www.toriamos.com/ for regular updates.

Spring-heeled Jack Visits Liverpool in this month's Fortean Times (#238)

This month's Fortean Times Magazine (#238), which officially goes on sale tomorrow, features an extract from my forthcoming book 800 Years of Haunted Liverpool. The article is all about the elusive Spring-heeled Jack and his reported appearances in Everton.

The magazine costs £3.99 and is available in all good newsagents.

Eva, The Darkness and Benny Peiser

It only seems like yesterday (well, maybe a month or so ago) that we were doing all the press for the launch of our Dynamite/Top Cow crossover The Darkness vs. Eva - Daughter of Dracula. Sadly though, all things must come to an end and the concluding part of the four issue mini is on sale now at your local comic shop or internet retailer.
Of course, if you've missed out on the mini, you could always head over to our PayPal Shop where you can purchase the full series, signed by Moore & Reppion, for only £6 plus P&P.

In either case, you might like to take a look at some exciting preview pages over at http://www.wizarduniverse.com/061608darkprev.html

D vs. E has been a really fun series to work on and we've got really positive feedback from the Top Cow fans especially. We've really enjoyed working with artist Edgar Salazar too and hope to be able to team up again on future projects.


On a completely different note, back in March 2007 I interviewed lecturer, Spaceguard member, neo-catastrophism expert and all round good egg Benny Peiser for The End is Nigh #4 which, sadly is yet to surface (it's okay Mr. Molcher, we know that you're very, very busy). Benny emailed me a little while back to ask if it would be possible to publish the interview elsewhere and I passed my transcript on to him.
The full interview can now be read over on Die Achse des Guten ("The Axis of Good") and is a must read for anyone who is interested in the end of the world, asteroids, religious fundamentalism and all that good stuff.

Thoughts on Bristol (long overdue)

Cast your collective minds back to the second week of May and the Bristol Comics Expo 2008. We were there and we had too much to drink but a grand time over all. What's more, as ususal, we promised a report of sorts that never really surfaced. Well, consider this a far too late, sorry excuse for said report.

First of all, we completely failed to take any pictures of the convention despite having our fully charged camera and several spare memory cards with us. We did however have an iMac in our hotel room with free internet connection (which we utilised only to listen to Last.fm really ;-/ ) and therefore can offer the following evidence of our visit.


Now obviously I can't really remember what happened very well now suffice it to say we met up with lots of lovely people including Oliver Redding, Matt Timson, James Fletcher, Paul Cornell, Caroline Symcox, Al Ewing, Misako Rocks, Sonia Leong, Emma Vieceli, Ian Whelan, Al Nolan, Bob Byrne, Colin Mathieson, Dave West, Andy Bloor, and seemingly millions of others. Thanks to everyone who bought stuff and got stuff signed by us and, of course, to everyone who set us on to new, exciting things and/or bought us a drink.

We did come home with a massive haul of stuff as ususal and this was due in no small part to Mr. Mike McLean of Asylum Books and Games (a very fine establishment) who pressed a big pile of (mostly zombie related) comics into our hands as soon as we ventured near his stall. Though we were very grateful to receive them, it has to be said that many of these books (without naming names) were, to be perfectly honest, awful. The standard of zombie series out there is, sadly, pretty uniformally dreadful with occasional blips of good stuff and the odd true gem. Why do people think they can get away with just putting a load of crap out? Anyway, enough of that. Mike also saw to it that we got our Elephantmen and Goon fix so we really couldn't fault him. Top chap!

Other noteworthy items which traveled home with us included...

The Art Of Cake Diving- by Cliodhna (www.ztoical.com)

Rock and Roll Love- by Misako Rocks! (www.misakorocks.com)

The Hookah Girl and other true stories Vol 1- by Marguerite Dabaie (www.hookah-girl.margoyle.net)

Robots- by various (including us) (http://www.accentukcomics.com/)

Mister Amperduke a story in pictures- by Bob Byrne (www.clamnuts.com)

Sancho the Life and Death of Jose Maria Garcia- by Alan Nolan and Ian Whelan (www.20000-leagues.com)

Duke Etrange's World of Weird One Step Beyond- by various (with us, again). (Nova X-press)

Omnivistascope Model 4- by paul scott and various (www.omnivistascope)

Marraquai The Forest and the city- by Ben Disckson and Joames McKay (www.scarcomics.com)

Other favorites included Finland Finland Finland- by Philip Barnett Bevis Musson and Tony Lee (http://mrtonylee.blogspot.com/) and Al Ewing presents- Iron Man noble defender of fascism in "hippy Trouble"- by Al Ewing (beatgirlcomics@gmail.com).

*PHEW* So then, there you go; we did go to Bristol and we had a great time and we loved meeting both new folk and old friends and the comics were better than ever.

Here's hoping we see you at the next one, or perhaps Leeds or Birmingham? Cool, see you there.

Haunted Liverpool Launch next month

800 Years of Haunted Liverpool will be officially launched at the Unity Theatre in Liverpool on Saturday the 5th of July 2008 between 6 and 8pm. The Unity bar is fully licensed with Cains Bitter on tap.

I'll do my very best to give a short talk giving a bit of background on how the book came about and what it was like to work on. Limited edition copies of 800 Years of Haunted Liverpool will be on sale for £9.99.

If you do plan on coming, please drop me an email at haunted_liverpool@btinternet.com as places will be limited.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

More info and updates over at www.hauntedliverpool.blogspot.com

Message board down

In the early hours of this morning there was a small explosion outside the place where ProBoards' (our board providers) servers are kept. The explosion caused a power failure and, as a result, ours and many other message boards are temporarily offline.

We expect the board to be back online within the next few days but, initially, it will not be fully restored and may be missing data including posts and accounts/log in details. This will only be a temporary situation until ProBoards can restore the data from their backup servers.

For updated information see http://support.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=status&action=display&thread=244738

We apologise for this and if things aren't sorted out soon, we'll look into the possibility of getting a temporary alternative board just to keep things ticking over. In the meantime, you'll just have to find somewhere else to occupy yourselves... but what are we going to do?

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UPDATE, June 2nd 2008: The board is now back online and working but currently missing the last two month's worth of data (posts, newly registered members' details, etc). Hopefully, this will be resolved soon.