January 2024: Plots and Plans

Howdy, folks!

We’ve made it through the longest month and 2024 is well and truly underway – I’m particularly looking forward to a holiday in a couple of weeks (sunshine, beaches and lots of rum are in my immediate future) so I’ve been trying to get my ducks in a row before that! Let’s get to it…

The Usual

The earlier part of the month brought about a sudden flurry of movement on one project – Mad Cave Studios have opened up their creator portal for submissions, so Tango and I decided to take the plunge and send them our pitch for NO SPACE LIKE HOME (previously working-titled “Space Cowboys”). We have some pitch pages, with colours by JP Jordan and letters by Rob Jones (who both did an incredible job getting these together at short notice) and I’m quite happy with the pitch itself – it’s always hard to try and explain any story (particularly a very emotional one for you) to an unseen audience, but I think we made a strong case for why they should pick it up. Now I just have to cross my fingers and hope..!

On top of that, Rebecca turned in the final coloured pages for Brigantia #6, which means we can get those over to Hass for lettering. That’ll be in a few months, which gives me time to get the design work done on the book – the pages are looking absolutely beautiful already, and I’m very excited to share them with everyone. I’ve been reaching out to various folks for pin-ups/prints to go with the inevitable Kickstarter campaign, and I think I have a very strong line-up in place – I figured it was worth pushing the boat out given how much time, effort (and money 😬) I’ve poured into this story.

And on top of that, in a bizarre twist which hopefully bodes well for the rest of this year, I can now add “featured in the Harrogate Advertiser” to my CV: https://www.harrogateadvertiser.co.uk/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/harrogates-greatest-loo-inspires-new-book-by-famous-comic-book-writers-and-artists-4486034

I found out about the story thanks to a message on the Kickstarter campaign, and it was a wild couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon – a bit of digging later and I discovered that the hotel’s marketing team found out about the book and asked their PR firm to write a press release, leading to this coverage. I’m mostly extremely glad that they’re not going to sue me for doing a comic about their toilet..! 😂

The Record

Given all the above, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that I’ve had a very unproductive month with actually getting pages down. But in my defence – I’ve got more than a few irons in the fire and I’d like to get some of them fully forged before I dive into writing anything else!

The Tunes

We’re kicking things off this month with some of that old-timey music – Bobby Darin with Beyond the Sea, which got inexplicably stuck in my head for nearly a week. Not complaining, mind! From there it’s into dungeon synth kinda territory – Arcanist make music that sounds like the soundtrack to a fucked up fantasy game but with some black metal touches. I can’t really describe it, but I think you’ll enjoy it! After that it’s The Night Watch with some proggy instrumental metal, before we take a hard left turn into mainstream territory – Tribute was one of the songs I played on this month at an event called Sparstock, where some of my best friends organise a whole evening of scratch cover bands to play all sorts of tunes, with nobody knowing the whole setlist except them. It’s always a delightful time, and it was fun shredding this on an acoustic and doing Jack Black high kicks across the stage! Oasis are up next because shut up, I like Oasis, okay? This song in particular is my favourite of theirs, despite having Liam Gallagher on lead vocals. Even a broken clock can sing twice a day..! I saw a great little documentary on YouTube with Keanu “The Internet’s Boyfriend” Reeves talking about his bass playing, which led me to actually check out his band Dogstar – and you know what? It’s good stuff – clearly not just a vanity project for him. Following that it’s another Keanu-adjacent track – I’ve been sucked into Cyberpunk 2077 and this track, PonPon Shit, remains the catchiest song on the soundtrack by far. Lastly we get a l’il trio of extreme metal to close things out – Japanese folk metal from Ryujin which is actually heavy, featuring Trivium’s Matthew Heafy on vocals; followed by Strapping Young Lad with another song I played at Sparstock (and a lot of fun it was too) and finishing with some crushingly heavy doom from Lee Dorian and With the Dead.

The Links

Here’s an article about why the modern Internet is fucking shit: https://gizmodo.com/interview-with-geocities-founder-on-the-new-web-tiktok-1849179509

We had it SO GOOD, you guys. I had a Geocities page (it was a little shrine to manga that I liked, and I would painstakingly scan some of my favourite pages from manga I was reading and then write about them and why I liked them. It was wholesome as fuck) and I genuinely miss that whole vibe every time I think about how bad social media is these days.

I’ve actually got the beginnings of an idea for a mystery/horror story with Geocities pages as the delivery mechanism, so at some point I need to sit down and work that out (and how possible it is to approximate the style, with Geocities itself long gone to the big LAN party in the sky), but in the meantime – enjoy the nostalgia!

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That’s all from me for this month – Barbados beckons, and hopefully when I get back I’ll feel like I’ve actually caught up on all the relaxing I failed to do over Christmas/New Year. Here’s hoping..!

Take care of yourselves,

Chris

December 31, 2023

December 2023: Time Goes By

Hey folks,

It’s that time of year again! As is tradition, this month’s newsletter will be more of a “2023 round-up” one – a place of reflection on what I’ve done this year and some thoughts for 2024.

The Usual

Re-reading last year’s entry for December, I was clearly in quite an introspective mood, but I feel confident in saying that I’ve taken my own advice to heart – I deliberately tried to avoid focusing too hard on what I have and haven’t achieved this year, and while my list of comics-based “wins” is shorter as a result, I can still point to a number of items ticked off the proverbial to-do list.

All this is in the face of a world that seems to continue sliding into the shit, both here in the UK (where we’re still, somehow, suffering under an utterly corrupt Tory government) and across the rest of the planet. War in Ukraine (still), attempted genocide in Palestine, the ongoing climate crisis and the continual existence, somehow, of fascists in every corner of the globe. It’s overwhelming sometimes, and it’s been a real struggle to keep trying to write and create against all of that noise and a continually worsening economic background here in the UK. Hopefully we can kick out the Tories this coming spring (and replace them with a Labour party who are almost as bad, wheee, isn’t it fun not to have a viable left-wing party to vote for??) but even with that, I don’t know how many more comics I have left in me. I’m definitely shortening my mental project list and trying to focus on what’s achievable to stave off burnout.

On the agenda for next year:
– Crowdfunder for Brigantia Volume 2! Very excited to share this one with folks!
– Complete and release Secrets of the Majestic at Thought Bubble 2024!
– Exhibit at a couple of conventions
– Hopefully release two EPs (one with Powerhouse, one with Ba’al) and potentially even an album, if we can secure a good record label for it…
– Play some gigs in places I haven’t played before!

The Record

Pages written: 62 (2022 total: 71)
Pages lettered: 84 (2022 total: 78)
Anthology pitches: 1 (not counting the one I’m running myself!)
Miscellaneous: Ran two successful crowdfunding campaigns (the Art of Professor Elemental, a hardback collection of a huge chunk of comics written/edited by me and Secrets of the Majestic, a very niche anthology about a toilet). Recorded one album and one EP with Ba’al (totalling about 90 minutes of music) and one EP with Powerhouse (another 30 minutes). Played multiple festivals with both bands, plus went on tour with Ba’al in October across England, Wales and Scotland.

Again, my lettering output has outpaced my writing this year thanks to a chunk of work for The Phoenix and a few anthology shorts (including, for the first time, one that I didn’t write!), but I’m quite pleased that I’ve finally managed to finish up a first draft for SENGOKU – given how long I’ve been working on/thinking about it, it feels good to finally have a completed story, much as it will need polishing up and refining. My next challenge will be to find someone suitable to edit/act as a sensitivity reader – it’s very important to me that this story feels authentic, and doesn’t make the kind of mistakes that many stories about Japan written by white people make. That means this one will stay in the pot for a little while longer yet..!

The Tunes

The playlist this month is a mixed bag – some of it has been on my rotation for December, the rest comprises tracks that I’ve particularly enjoyed this year. We’re starting off hard with metal from Naeramarth, Svalbard, Atheist, Crypta and Wounds of Recollection, before it segues into synthier territory with Gunship (this song is impossibly catchy), Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan and The Ocean – we then close out with Naoki Sato’s phenomenal theme from Godzilla Minus One and a big finish from Masayoshi Soken (from the FFXIV soundtrack).

2023’s Top 5 Things

Because I had fun with this last year, we’re bringing it back – my top 5 things of the year, whether a movie, comic, album or an experience. Let’s go:

5. Golden Rage Vol. 1 (comic) – Here’s a thing that people may not know about me – I really, really like Golden Girls. We started watching it a little while back for some wholesome sitcom entertainment and it has quickly endeared itself to me (plus the theme song is a banger). So when I saw that the pitch for this comic was “Golden Girls meets Battle Royale”, well… I don’t think I’ve ever slapped my money down faster. The writing is fantastic, it’s great to see a collection of older female protagonists, and Lauren Knight (who I collaborated with on a story for Sharp Wit & The Company of Women, which is now in Previews, AHHHHH) knocks it out of the park on art duties. Get on it!

The album cover for Unicorn by the band Gunship

4. Gunship – Unicorn (album) – I’ve listened to A LOT of albums from this year (around 207, to be precise) but this one is squarely at the top. Synthwave beats and a truly stellar list of guest stars (including Carpenter Brut, John Carpenter and HEALTH) are the starting point, but this has stuck with me because it’s absolutely rammed full of extremely memorable hooks and uplifting choruses. The production is beautiful (big, glistening, neon-soaked) and it keeps serving up bangers well into the runtime. Don’t sleep on this if you haven’t already heard it!

The poster for the movie The Saint of Second Chances

3. The Saint of Second Chances (movie) – I was curious about this purely because I’ve enjoyed a few movies about baseball in the past, even though I don’t really follow the sport – little did I realise that it’d leave me an emotional, sobbing wreck on the sofa. It’s a documentary about Mike Veeck, the son of a famous baseball owner who invented the concept of promotional nights (most notably the ‘Disco Demolition Night’ for the Chicago White Sox that ended in a riot) and later went on to run an independent team in Minnesota. I won’t spoil anything else about it here, but I can’t recommend this enough as a story about second chances and trying to do the right thing.

2. Blasphemous (game) – I’m a bit late to the party with this one, but what a party it is. Blasphemous is a Metroidvania type game (where you run around a 2D map, exploring, platforming and smiting enemies) – what makes it unique is how incredibly gothic and Catholic it is. The premise is essentially that a mysterious Miracle has unleashed judgement on a medieval world tormented by a corrupt Church, turning it into a hellish domain full of tortured souls seeking repentance or oblivion – and you, as the Penitent One full of clemency, must embark on a pilgrimage across this land. Honestly, the worldbuilding in this game is intoxicating and I love how incredibly grim it is – it’s full of phenomenal writing and characters that made me go “what the fuck is THAT” on multiple occasions. If you’d like a challenging (somewhat Dark Souls-like) gaming experience in a truly compelling world, I can’t recommend this highly enough. Now watch Blasphemous 2 be in this list next year..!

A photo of a band on stage lit up by blue lighting as a crowd cheers them — Ba’al on the main stage at Sheffield Corporation for the Heel Turn Festival

1. Playing gigs – I’ve been trying to figure out which gig this year was my favourite, and honestly, there are a number of strong contenders for that crown. Playing some big folk festivals (Whitby and Towersey) with Powerhouse was a lot of fun and meant I got out to rock some very big stages, while a number of Ba’al shows this year hit the triple sweet spot of great venue/big crowds/solid performance. So instead of choosing just one, I’m giving this slot to the overall experience of playing live – much as I sometimes feel shattered afterwards, I love playing gigs and connecting with an audience. It’s a chance to embody the emotion in the music and manifest it, and I sincerely hope I can continue to play bigger and better shows next year.

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And that’s a wrap on 2023, folks! Thank you as always for reading my rambles this year (if you made it this far) – I hope you’ve enjoyed them. As another chapter of the heavy, heavy book of history closes, remember: you made it to the end of 2023, and that means you can do ANYTHING.

I’d like to close things out with one link for you – a list of actually good things that happened this year, because while it’s important to be realistic, it’s also important to have hope for the future: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/12/28/24003198/10-good-things-that-happened-in-2023

Have a good evening, whether you’re celebrating or tucked up at home with a good book, and we’ll speak again in 2024!

All the best,

Chris

July 31, 2023July 30, 2023

July 2023: Sunshine & Showers

Good morning, folks!

Another busy month has flown past and I find it hard to believe that we’re already into the back half of 2023 – I haven’t watched Oppenheimer yet, but I’m sure Chris Nolan has something to say about time (on the atomic level) that would explain why this year has gone both faster and slower than expected.

Anyway, let’s crack on!

The Usual

After last month’s recording adventure, I’ve spent most of my weekends this month doing music as well – a gig in Cheltenham (roughly a 3 hour drive away) was followed the next week by three gigs in 48 hours, not an experience I’d recommend! First, my ceilidh band played a wedding in a medieval tent that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Tudor times, in a field, in the middle of a huge rainstorm, to a crowd comprised partly of drunk French people; the day after that, I played two sets at an all-day doom/metal festival in Sheffield with two different bands. Le Menhir (a solo project by a good friend of mine who has occasionally recruited me and some other friends for live performances) opened the show, and later on Ba’al played what was probably one of our strongest ever sets to an absolutely packed out room – I was absolutely exhausted afterwards but it was a fantastic experience and we got some great feedback afterwards.
A very large crowd watches a band bathed in blue light on stage. Beside all that I’ve even managed to get some writing done! The wheels are starting to spin up on SENGOKU, my attempt at writing an authentic and mature samurai story which deals with themes like familial duty over personal happiness and casts a justifiably critical eye at the bushidō cult of the samurai. As anyone who knows me will know, I’ve been a huge fan of samurai stories since I was about 13 – from Kurosawa and Miike in the movies to Hiroaki Samura, Goseki Kojima/Kazuo Koike and Takehiko Inoue in manga. But I’ve been holding off on this idea until I felt I could do it justice and actually interrogate the concept, rather than just doing a “cool samurai” story riddled with inaccuracies and calling it a day.

I’ve teamed up with a fantastic artist for this story – Andrew “Monomizer” Browne, who as well as loving samurai movies as much as me (and being the only other person I’ve met to have seen Kihachi Okamoto’s “The Sword of Doom”), actually lives in Japan and speaks fluent Japanese! Here’s a test page (not from the story itself) that he’s put together as we figure out the right artistic style:
A page of comic/manga art. A confident samurai is surrounded by ruffians. Close-ups on three of them show them preparing to attack, then the samurai dramatically pushes his sword out of his scabbard with a 'CHIK' sound effect. I’m very excited to start putting this one together – expect more news as the project progresses 🙂

And lest I forget to mention other projects that are currently moving: Alaire has now finished all the inks for Brigantia #5 (the middle part of the second volume) and is cracking on with the third and final part. I was going through her thumbnails yesterday on the bus on the way to work along with the script, and I’m so overjoyed with how well she’s capturing the emotion and power of this part of the story – even just the thumbnails got me a little choked up! It’s been a very long journey but we’re approaching the end and I can’t wait to share it with the world.

The Record

• 14 pages written (SENGOKU)
• 8 pages lettered (The Phoenix)

As the above spiel probably made clear, I’ve dived into writing mode with SENGOKU – at this point the goal is to get a first draft nailed down so I can move bits around or rewrite later. I already had about 10-11 pages written so the page count is creeping up, slowly but surely!

The Tunes

Actually not that much metal on this month’s playlist! The first few tracks are all on the light end of the spectrum – I’ve had a bit of a Ghibli appreciation month, so the Totoro theme opens things up. Try not to get it stuck in your head..! Next are a few pop starlets – Taylor Swift with my personal favourite track off her re-recorded version of Speak Now (not an album I got into when it first came out – my Tay-Tay journey started with 1989) followed by the divine Lola Kirke (who I have a MASSIVE crush on) with a track off her newest album. After that we have new music from the mighty Metric – I’m looking forward to the new album! My writing soundtrack for SENGOKU has obviously skewed towards traditional Japanese music, and here’s probably the most famous piece in that repertoire – Kojo-no-Tsuki, a certified banger. After that, something completely different to kick off the brief metal portion of this month’s list – it’s a death/thrash song by a band called Pizza Death about being eaten by zombie olives. Perfect. We follow that with some more atmospheric/serious stuff – Wounds of Recollection make lush blackgaze that’s a joy to listen to, and Lowen were a particular highlight of the festival I mentioned earlier in the newsletter with their blend of middle eastern vocals and big doom riffs. Lastly, we close out the list with some more electronic sounds – Mega Drive are a pounding bridge between metal riffs and vapourwave synths, and Carbon Based Lifeforms wrap things up with some big ambient space electronica, perfect relaxation music.

The Links

We watch episodes of Somebody Feed Phil (a very good, delightfully wholesome travel/food show) with a friend every Monday night, and recently saw the episode where he visits Korea – which reminded me of the amazing Buddhist nun/best chef in the world Jeong Kwan, and that led me to this article about the restaurant she’s opened up: https://www.lottehotelmagazine.com/en/food_style_detail?no=276

Chef’s Table (the show) is almost a parody of itself (and rightfully mocked in the fantastic film The Menu, when Nicholas Hoult’s awful Tyler suggests that he has an elevated understanding of Ralph Fiennes’ Chef Julian Slowik because he’s watched his episode of Chef’s Table multiple times), but the episode about Jeong Kwan is perfect – not just because it foregrounds her philosophy over her food, but because it makes every other chef profiled in the series look like an immature, petty little child obsessed with status and “being the best”. We could all stand to be more like Jeong Kwan, quite frankly!

Thanks very much for reading this bumper-sized edition (assuming you made it this far) – next month there won’t be a newsletter, since I’ll be on holiday in Athens, eating delicious food and looking at extremely old buildings. I’m sure you’ll cope..!

Until next time, cheers!

Chris

June 1, 2022

May 2022: Moloch the Terrible

Hey folks,

I’ve spent the last week or so positively vibrating with rage at the wider world, and it’s a curious contrast to things actually going pretty well on a personal level – the joy of low-grade anxiety! Either way, I’ll try to keep myself fairly even-keeled for this month’s newsletter…

The Usual

It’s been a quietly productive month, I think – I finally sat down and powered through the last of the bonus content pages for Brigantia Vol. 1, so the only thing left to do is plug in issue #3 once Harriet’s finished work on it, do some final proofreading and checking and then it should be good to go to print. There are only about 14 pages left and she’s keeping me updated on progress – so we’re definitely getting there, as long and stressful as the road has been. I’d been hoping for a little bit of a break from Brigantia before rolling into the second half of the story (with Alaire) later this year/into 2023 but that’s looking unlikely at this point – so I guess I’ll just stay on the train until we finally finish issue #6 and then have a breather! On that topic, here’s a coloured (but not lettered) teaser page from issue #3 I haven’t shared elsewhere:

In other project news, we sadly got our first rejection for the HOCKEYTOWN pitch – it was understandable (it’s a fairly niche sport and setting, and while one editor was enthusiastically on board with the hockey theme, others weren’t so keen) but definitely knocked me back for a weekend – coupled as it was with one of my bands losing out at a competitive show we played to try and win a slot at a massive UK festival called Bloodstock. Still, I’m choosing to take the positives from both experiences (we have some good feedback and can shop the pitch around some more, plus I’ve established a good professional contact with the editor; I got to play on the big main stage of my city’s most famous metal club) so I can get up and back at it! I’ve almost finished scripting SPACE COWBOYS, with just a few pages left of issue #5 to get through, so might be time to build that up into a solid pitch for this particular editor…

The Record

3 pages scripted (SPACE COWBOYS)
4 pages lettered (THE PHOENIX)
Assorted other stuff (see above!)

While I was lettering the other day, I decided to sit down and listen back to the BLACK RUBRIC tracks I wrote/recorded for that comic. And you know what? I’m still genuinely very happy with them, there are some beefy riffs in there and their overall feel is a great match for the comic. I’d better push the graphic novella-length sequel to that comic up my to-do list…

The Tunes

Not a huge amount of metal on the list this month – I’m branching out! First up is a new track from Karl Sanders (the guitarist of Egyptian-themed tech death metal band Nile, a huge favourite of mine) – his solo stuff is dark ambient/atmospheric which maintains the Egyptian mythology/history theme, and I love it. Following that is another track from the new Florence + The Machine album, which may already be my album of the year – just rammed full of great tracks and I will not shut up about it! Wet Leg are apparently in the zeitgeist at the moment – I don’t know why, but this song popped up on Spotify and I enjoyed it enough to include it. The slightly mumbly vocals aren’t usually my thing, but they work here! I’m always up for new Rotting Christ, and this track is definitely a different feel to their usual stuff – more anthemic and with more of a focus on the clean vocals. I guess this month is a “solo artists” month, because here’s Kirk Hammett of Metallica with his new solo album – and again, it’s pretty different to his day job, with a lovely Ennio Morricone vibe that matches the cowboy movie title. Couple of synthwave/chiptune-type tracks up next – Dita Redrum, which caught my eye because I love the SNES isometric RPG game Shadowrun (and this evokes that!) and then chiptune hip-hop from the superlative Supercommuter, one of my favourite acts. Their first two albums are laden with bangers and the third is also very good! Taking a bit of a turn, we have the metal corner of this month’s playlist: first is Nechochwen, a folk/atmospheric black metal project made by an indigenous American musician and drawing on his cultural heritage. I love this kind of stuff! Next is Desolate Shrine, who are just filthy, heavy death metal with a sludgy, apocalyptic edge. And finally, to close things out: an obligatory Eurovision track, courtesy of France’s Alvan & Ahez. I didn’t manage to watch the event this year (I was playing a ceilidh for a friend’s birthday) but caught this one on the highlights and enjoyed it!

Movie Talk

I’m going to change up the format here, and rather than give you a link, I want to expound a little bit about a movie I watched this month!

I picked up a blu-ray of Metropolis (1927), the German silent movie which is responsible for a lot of the science fiction we know and love today – the full movie was lost soon after it was shown, and it’s only in recent years that archivists discovered some reels of the full thing and have been able to restore it to (almost) it’s original form. I’ve never actually seen it before, and I’m glad I waited for the “full” version, because I was struck by how well a movie from 95 years ago worked. We’re immediately thrust into a strange world that nevertheless looks very familiar – a huge city, of impossible proportions, maintained by an army of nondescript workers who trudge down long corridors to their cramped, brutalist housing blocks beneath the earth. Above them are the wealthy, living in gorgeous art deco luxury. This movie is very, very clear on it’s politics, at least to begin with, and that message has only continued to be relevant in today’s brutally inequal world. By the point that Freder (the son of the city’s overlord, Joh Fredersen) has fantastic visions of the workers being marched into the gaping maw of the terrible machine demon Moloch, I was enthusiastically on board.

As the movie unfolds, we meet Maria (played incredibly by Brigitte Helm) who is inciting the workers to rebellion – interpreting the story of the Tower of Babel as a conflict between the wealthy intellectuals who conceived the tower and the workers tasked with building it. Maria is truly a fascinating role – Helm is tasked with being a religious symbol of inspiration and purity for the workers, a love interest for Freder and, in stunning fashion, the human face of a Machine Man crafted by the inventor Rotwang. In the last one, she’s an evil creature of wickedness, sin and temptation, inciting the wealthy to bloodshed over her and manipulating the workers into self-destruction. Helm is given the most varied role that I’ve seen in a long time, and she manages it with aplomb.

On top of the stunning (even by modern standards!) set design and staging, there are some huge set pieces in the movie, requiring hundreds of actors – it has the feel of a true cinematic epic. I’d highly recommend it!

Anyway, that’s all for this month – we have a long bank holiday coming up in the UK courtesy of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. I will (obviously) not be celebrating it, because I have absolutely no interest in flag-waving nationalism, but I intend to make the most of my time off work with a trip up to Scotland for Glasgow Comic Con! If you’re heading along, I’ll be on table H04 – come and say hello!

All the best,
Chris

December 2, 2021

November 2021: We Are, All of Us, Here

Hey, folks.

At the start of this month, one of my friends, a stalwart of the local music scene and a thoughtful, erudite and passionate person, committed suicide. He was 27, and the Saturday morning when I found out will be forever etched in my memory. It’s been a long, hard month as a result, and I don’t really have the words to write about it.

Things are overwhelming sometimes. I’m reflecting this onto myself as well, but – talk to someone before it becomes too much.

The Record

Finished the last 18 pages of BRIGANTIA #4
Scripted the first 7 pages of BRIGANTIA #5 (we’re getting closer to the end of the first arc..!)
Two anthology pitches put together, one submitted
4 pages lettered

This month was Thought Bubble, which is always a highlight of my calendar, but it felt quite different this year (what with, you know, the pandemic and everything). Normally I come out of Thought Bubble weekend feeling energised and creatively charged – this year, while I had an absolutely wonderful time seeing friends (and taking drunk photos in the toilets of the Majestic), I’m not getting that same buzz at all. Part of that could be that I’d really hoped we could have the first volume of Brigantia ready for the con, so I’d have something to push – that didn’t happen for a number of good reasons, but it definitely made me feel a little out of sorts all weekend. I feel creatively crushed, basically – there are so many people making amazing comics, pushing ahead and building creative careers. And then there’s me, stuck in a rut, constantly exhausted, with a day job that I despise and no confidence in my own work. It’s not a nice place to be!

I’m wallowing in my own misery here, and I’ll surely snap out of it before long, but until that point things are going to be hard. It’s the paradox of creation – I love making stuff and sharing it with people, but I hate not knowing if it’s going to be any good until it’s done (and even then it’s impossible to tell!) Sometimes I just get into a deep enough pit that all the praise in the world can’t convince me I know what I’m doing, or that I have anything valuable to offer. UGH.

The Tunes

Let’s brighten things up, shall we? It’s a double dose of Dio to start this month’s playlist, because I make the rules here. Rainbow in the Dark is an all-time classic, and Bible Black is probably the biggest banger off an album full of sumptuous Tony Iommi riffs. New Maybeshewill! I thought they’d called it a day, so this fragile but strong gem was a treat to discover. Dordeduh have a silly name, but they make great atmospheric BM in the vein of bands like Negura Bunget – very much up my street. Changing gear rapidly, we have a hardcore punk band who write all their songs about ice hockey, Two Man Advantage – Becky Cloonan recommended them to me at Thought Bubble, and she was right, they’re 100% my jam. A twofer of excellent sludge riff machines up next – Green Druid were a Spotify discovery (love that Swamp Thing artwork) and I was privileged to open a Boss Keloid show on my birthday this month, as part of the live line-up for my friend Paul’s band Le Menhir. Like everyone else in the world (seemingly), I’ve been watching Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary Get Back this month – I wouldn’t consider myself a mega fan, but my dad had this compilation album on his CD shelves and I have a real soft spot for them. Seeing them construct this track together was a delight. The new Emma Ruth Rundle album keeps things morose and moody – very recommended if you enjoy atmospheric music. Lastly, our Metal Gear series playthrough has reached my favourite game, Metal Gear Solid (the OG, on the PS1) – this track, which plays over the outro, is still etched into my heart. And how can you argue with such a hopeful title?

The Links

Just one link for you this month – my good friend Fraser Campbell has launched his latest Kickstarter campaign, and it’s sure to be another monster hit. Go and check out (and back) NIGHTMARE FUEL #1 this instant: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/frasercampbell/nightmare-fuel-1

Look after yourselves – if you’re celebrating Christmas this year I hope it’s a good one and that you all get to enjoy some time off. I’ll be downing tools on December 24th and not going back to work until 2022, but I’ve already mentally lined up a few project things which need doing in that time… hopefully I can fit them in!

All the best,
Chris

September 30, 2021

September 2021: Autumnal

Evening, folks!

It’s been an eventful month, but before I kick into my usual self-aggrandisement I want to talk about one of the best films I’ve ever seen, which just came out a week ago. That’s right, you guessed it – gather round, children, it’s time to talk about The Green Knight!

The Usual

On paper, I was already primed to love this film – it’s a modern retelling of my favourite and most familiar Arthurian myth by a director and studio renowned for their intense and beautiful visual sensibility, with a great and charismatic actor in the lead role. All the marketing and promotion pitched it as an intense (verging on horror at times) fantasy drama, and I was incredibly excited to see how they translated the poem for a modern audience. I took myself out to a v. fancy cinema in town last Friday night, grabbed a cider and settled in for the ride. Just over two hours later, I walked out absolutely gobsmacked (and determined to watch it again as soon as possible, which I did on Sunday evening at home – it’s also been dropped on Amazon Prime Video!)

Firstly: it’s undeniably, achingly beautiful. The costumes are gorgeous, the landscape Gawain traverses on his quest is wild and untamed and full of fantastical elements (whale skeletons in the side of a valley, clusters of stone ruins that suggest a rich and violent history, towering giants) and there are so many beautiful shot choices throughout. The cinematography is utterly phenomenal! I was particularly struck by how the landscape itself feeds into one of the central messages of the film (the pervasive power and lasting strength of nature – the green – and how it symbolises both life and death). Gawain’s realm is presented as overwhelming and hostile, with scattered enclaves of humanity stubbornly trying to carve out a place against nature. Beyond that, it felt like home – specifically, like the remoter areas of the Peak District and the Lake District (both vast natural parks not far from my home). I checked afterwards, and it was filmed in Ireland, which makes sense!

Secondly: it manages to be a fairly faithful retelling of the original story, while simultaneously introducing enough twists and turns that I wasn’t able to predict exactly what was going to happen. Beyond that, it gives Gawain much more complexity and internal conflict than I remember from the story (which, granted, I haven’t read in a little while) – he isn’t a purely noble, pious person, and his struggles along the journey feed into that. Dev Patel is mesmerising in the role (although if you want to see him being happy this may not be the movie for you!) and the supporting cast are fantastic. The Green Knight himself is an absolute triumph of practical filmmaking – he looks incredible, and I particularly loved the sounds of tree branches creaking and leaves rustling that accompanied his every move, to really hammer home his role as an avatar of nature. Oh, and the soundtrack is flawless (there’s one song midway through the film with a haunting vocal line that I haven’t been able to get out of my head).

I’ve been amused by the seemingly all-over-the-place response to it – made the mistake of looking at the comments on a 5-star Guardian review which were full of people calling it “boring” and saying they’d turned it off after 10 minutes, which..?! If you go in expecting a big fantasy action movie (like Excalibur, or that Guy Ritchie King Arthur movie), you’ll probably be disappointed. It was notable to me that none of the famous names (Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin, Excalibur, etc) are ever used – Gawain is the only Arthurian name that you hear, and that feels like a conscious choice to detach it from our mental image of the chivalric Knights of the Round Table and to rely on the story itself rather than our memory of the characters for dramatic weight. But if you want a slow burn, atmospheric movie that makes you think about the meaning of honour, about courage in times of hardship and about life, death and rebirth, I think you’ll really enjoy it.

The Record

Another light month when it comes to actual pages scripted, but I haven’t exactly been idle:
-Synopsis/pitch document assembled for an anthology pitch
-Started assembling a huge primer document for issues #4-#6 of Brigantia (including details on the characters/world/monsters/etc)
-Rejigged the #4-#6 synopsis in preparation for redrafting the issues
-Design work for Brigantia Vol. 1 – coming up with a pleasing visual style for all the extra content pages/foreword/etc.

I also spent some time this month assembling the booklet for SHOCKTOBER 2021 – if you’re not familiar with this, every year my partner and I put together a schedule of horror movies for October, one every day and sorted into different categories. We didn’t do it last year (because of the horrible living situation we were in) but we’re back with a vengeance this year, and I’m quite pleased with my design work on the booklet! Here it is if you want to check out the schedule and join in: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iHp1GSVBW8hGC_97xE7WX0N006iUFsId/view?usp=sharing

I’ll be tweeting out when we’re starting each film, but life is very hectic so it won’t be a set time each day!

The Tunes

This month’s list is honestly all over the place, and I won’t apologise! We kick things off with (after about 20 listens) the indisputable best song off the new Wolves in the Throne Room album, Spirit of Lightning. Normalise mouth harp in black metal challenge! Couple of “flashback” songs next – I discovered Secrets of the Moon decades ago and this track still slaps. Next up are Amplifier who play fun psychedelic-sounding rock, and whose guitarist owns the biggest and most ridiculously bloated pedalboard I have ever seen. There’s a new Hail Spirit Noir record which leans more into synthy electronics (and theremin) than their previous releases – great melodies throughout! This Nils Frahm collaboration album is great, but I particularly enjoyed the rhythms of this track. Next is hands-down the best cover of Enter Sandman that has ever been done, by Rina Sawayama – I listened to the Ghost cover shortly before this one, and I’m sorry to all the Ghost fans out there, but this version blows it away! Another new discovery this month is Spiritbox, who I can best describe as “what if Taylor Swift did djent?” Great vocals and solid production. New Carcass! They’ve lost some of the immediacy of the earlier albums like Heartwork and Necroticism, but the refrain on this track is catchy as fuck. Hundred Year Old Man are a band from the UK local scene – their guitarist Owen tragically passed away recently, and leaves behind a phenomenal body of work. This song in particular, from their most recent EP, ebbs and flows beautifully. And lastly, to finish off the list – you’ll recall me mentioning the soundtrack to The Green Knight up above? Get this in your ears and prepare to be lost in the windswept, rain-soaked realm of Arthurian legend.

The Links

Look, if you needed any more proof that the nation of England is fully doomed, the rozzers have got you covered: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/27/rare-white-stag-killed-by-police-after-running-through-merseyside-streets

I just… I’m furious, because what a beautiful animal to suffer death at the hands of our disgustingly fascist police force. But I’m also darkly amused at the number of folklorists who must have shot a deadpan look at the camera when this news came out, ala Jim from the Office…

Sometimes it’s nice to be reminded of the brilliance of somebody who went far too soon: https://www.kerrang.com/features/jimi-hendrix-a-tribute-to-a-legend-50-years-after-his-death/

I make no secret of my opinion that Jimi Hendrix was an absolutely singular talent, and if we’re dishing out “best ever” awards he’s at the top of that list. It’s nice to know I’m not the only one still in awe of him!

That wraps up this (long edition) for the month! Thanks for reading, and as ever, take care of yourselves.

All the best,

Chris

April 30, 2021

April 2021: A Towering Pile

Howdy, folks!

The Usual

My pile of “life admin” feels like it’s reached an almost overwhelming level these past few weeks – I won’t bore you with the detail, but I’ve got far too many bits of paperwork to sign, far too many money things to juggle and far too much anxiety over it all. Just need to keep on chugging!

That aside, I also have a rather nice ANNOUNCEMENT to make:

Brigantia Vol. 1 is coming your way in June (exact date TBD!) Collecting issues #1, #2 and the new issue #3 as a chunky 128-page graphic novel stuffed with bonus content!

I’ve been pushing the boat out for this to try and make it into something special – here’s the murderer’s row of talent who’ll be getting involved:
Issue #3 art by Harriet Moulton and letters by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou!
Pin-ups by Chris Wildgoose, Will Kirkby, Rosie Packwood & Elijah Johnson/JP Jordan!
An exclusive limited edition bookplate by co-creator Melissa Trender!
Foreword by Nimue Brown (Hopeless, Maine and tons of books on druidry/paganism)!

Those pin-ups will also be available as reward prints on the campaign, so you can pledge for as many as you like – it’s so exciting seeing other artists’ takes on Brigantia and the rest of the cast, and I’m thrilled to properly share them! We’ll be running some Early Bird tiers as well – ideally, I wanted the option to send you folks (and people who’ve previously bought copies of Brigantia #1 or #2) a discount code so you could get hold of the collected volume at a cheaper price, but Kickstarter doesn’t have that functionality and if I set up a specific tier for previous Brigantia backers I’d have no good way of stopping all and sundry from taking advantage of it.

The alternative, then, is that you’ll all find out exactly when the campaign launches well ahead of the wider world, and armed with that knowledge you’ll hopefully be able to snap up the Early Bird rewards for a discounted copy of the book. I’ve really been agonising about this – I know a lot of people are happy to buy single issues of an ongoing comic and then buy the trade as well, but I feel a bit bad trying to get people to buy the same issues again (in a different format!) The reason I’m jumping straight to a trade now is because it feels to me like there’s a diminishing market for indie single issues on Kickstarter (unless you’re a big moneybags publisher who can already afford to make the comic and just want to use KS for a soft launch, but I digress…), and there’s a solid midpoint in the story which feels like a great “end of volume 1” cliffhanger to me. Plus, purely for selfish reasons – I’d love to have a collected trade of one of my stories! If any of you have questions about the decision to go straight to a trade please do fire them my way, I’m happy to try and answer them.

Anyway, to break up all that text, here’s a very sneaky peek at one of Harriet’s costume designs for issue #3, fresh out of the oven:

The Record

*Pitches for two anthologies worked on – one submitted

Very little actual scripting this month, due to the aforementioned towering pile – it’s been a pitches month! I’ve put something together with Rosie Packwood for the second volume of the Big Hype Comics anthology which I’m excited about, and working on another one with Jamie Keys for a different anthology. I’d love to try and improve my “hit rate” for anthologies – I’ve been rejected for a lot of the ones I’ve gone for recently, and it always batters my self-confidence, so it’d be nice to get into either of these.

The other projects on my list are very much on hold until I can wrestle my way back on top of life! Watch this space, I guess?

The Tunes

My tracklisting this month was arranged purely for aesthetic reasons and I’m not sorry – short song titles at the start, long song titles in the middle and short at the end so it’s a nice sharp bell curve!

We start off with a new track by KAUAN, one of my best Spotify finds – gentle, icy and spacious. After that it’s the opener of my favourite band’s newest album – Triassic by The Ocean. They did a pre-recorded performance of this album at the Roadburn Redux festival earlier this month which was absolutely transcendent – I just can’t say enough good things about this band! Age of Aquarius by Villagers of Ioannina City (what a band name!) is another Spotify find – great proggy metal with some neat riffs. Alien Lip Reading by Hail Spirit Noir makes great use of what sounds like a theremin amongst the black metal shrieks. IOTUNN were recommended by a friend and I’m digging them – cosmic-sounding death metal, yes please. Godspeed! You Black Emperor are a band that I’ve never invested time in, despite knowing a lot of people who are into them – I enjoyed their newest album, so looking forward to diving into the rest of their discography. The Picturebooks did a collaboration with Neil Fallon of Clutch recently, which is how I found them – this is just good old-fashioned blues rock. Mindforce play no-frills thrash metal, and sometimes that’s just what the doctor ordered! Kvelertak are another band I’ve never really put time into, but this is fun – reminds me a little of Volbeat. And lastly, reversing the upbeat tone completely is Body Void – grimy, heavy doom metal which sounds like dying. Please enjoy 😎

The Links

New section this month – here are some Kickstarter campaigns you should check out and some articles I’ve enjoyed:
Alex Automatic Vol. 1: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/frasercampbell/alex-automatic-volume-one-trade-paperback
Lad (Issue #3): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/umar-ditta/lad-the-homecoming-issue-3
Ancient Egyptian discoveries: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/archaeology-discovery-saqqara-ancient-egypt-b1835760.html?amp
Thoughts on comics criticism by Ritesh Babu: https://comfortfoodcomics.com/2021/04/08/the-trouble-with-easy-criticism-by-ritesh-babu/

That’s all for now – I’ll sign off before this gets any longer. Thanks for reading, and keep your eyes peeled for more on Brigantia Vol. 1!

All the best,

Chris

January 11, 2020

2020: Here We Go

It’s been a long time since my last post! 2019 was a… difficult year, to say the least. On a personal level, I went from dizzying heights of happiness to some of the most tumultuous upheaval I’ve had, and I’m still recovering from emotional shocks that the latter half of the year delivered. On a political level… well. I’m not going to spend any more time on that, but suffice it to say that we’re in for an absolutely hellish 2020 on that front.

I’m going to blather on for a little bit about the professional level; 2019 was the year when I decided to just go for it, and set a few projects in motion. At the very end of 2018, after a trip with friends to go and see the excellent Zeal & Ardor (Spotify embed below, absolutely fantastic band) in Leeds, I decided to do something with a project that had been sitting on my hard drive for ages in a half-finished state. That project was THE BLACK RUBRIC, a light-hearted, comedic story about a black metal band who accidentally write a song that’s too Satanic and rip open the gates of hell by mistake.

Art for the cover of THE BLACK RUBRIC, by Benjamin A.E. Filby.

I decided to stop procrastinating and just finish the story and get it made; that created a tiny snowball effect with some other projects, and it’s resulted in probably my most productive year of writing yet. I counted the pages on Twitter a little while ago, and I wrote 120 pages in 2019 – including THE BLACK RUBRIC, my next project HOCKEYTOWN (which was conceived, developed and all-but completed on the writing side within a year- honestly pretty impressive given my tendency to be crap at finishing scripts) and a sci-fi story I’ve been working on with the in-progress title SPACE COWBOYS.

So yes – 2019 was a productive year. It did also see some upheaval, most notably with my fantastic creative collaborator Melissa Trender being unable to continue with BRIGANTIA and us needing to find a new artist to pick up the torch from her. It’s obviously a shame not to get to continue the story that Mel and I created with her on art duties, but I completely respect her decision to step back from the project and she’s currently kicking arse in her new career as an apprenticed tattoo artist. She actually tattooed me in October with a design intended to represent the Fire of Awen, a pagan concept that will come into play in future issues of BRIGANTIA – it was very appropriate to have Mel design and tattoo that piece on me! Her successor Harriet Moulton is a fantastic artist, and we’re both overjoyed with how seamlessly she’s stepped into the role – Harriet’s working on issue #2 at the moment, so that’ll be out this year.

Anyway, onwards and upwards for 2020. The goals this year are to Kickstart and release both THE BLACK RUBRIC and issue #2 of BRIGANTIA, as well as to develop and pitch HOCKEYTOWN to a few places. I’m very proud of the story, and it’s my first time working with an actual editor (Hugo Boylan, most recently the editor on the acclaimed LAD by Umar Ditta); we’re both invested in the project and I think it’s unique enough to hopefully find a home at a publisher.

The world is a cacophonous, horrible place at the moment, so I for one take great solace from retreating into my creative cocoon and only popping my head out when I’m able. Take care of yourselves, everybody – we’re only 11 days in, and already the US has flirted with a large-scale middle-Eastern war and Australia has suffered absolutely catastrophic fire damage and loss of animal life. Donate to Wildlife Victoria if you can and let’s all do our best!