A trailer for Accent UK's WESTERN...

Last year, Frontier TV put together a trailer for Accent UK's WESTERN, and I thought I'd share it with the world again to try and help promote the book. And, you know, because it's cool...

WESTERN is available at Accent UK's own website now.

The book is 192 pages long and costs £7.99 ($11.99).

It features a plethora of new and established talent, including Kieron Gillen, John Reppion & Leah Moore, Andy Bloor, Dwight MacPherson, Kirk Manley and Steve Bissette. You can find a the complete list of contributors at the Accent UK website. Go and buy a copy or two, and tell 'em I sent ya's!

WESTERN Preview Part 2: "I don't think it's funny, you laughin'..."

With Accent UK's 2009 graphic novel WESTERN now available (go and buy a copy at their website), I've decided to indulge in some more shameless self-promotion for the the strip A Fistful Of Steam Valves (by me and Bryan Coyle) which features in the very pages of that book.

One of the key features the strip would need was the ridiculously over the top technology that you'd expect from a Steam Punk world, but, obviously, it had to be more Wild West, rather than Victoriana, so it fell to Billy Armstrong to see what he could come up with...

A rough sketch of an alternative 'iron horse' design... (click for larger view)

Another rough sketch of some weird Steam Punk tech... (click for larger view)

WESTERN is available at Accent UK's own website now.

The book is 192 pages long and costs £7.99 ($11.99).

It features a plethora of new and established talent, including Kieron Gillen, John Reppion & Leah Moore, Andy Bloor, Dwight MacPherson, Kirk Manley and Steve Bissette. You can find a the complete list of contributors at the Accent UK website. Go and buy a copy or two, and help the UK independent scene!

And remember, Accent UK's previous anthology, ROBOTS, is also still available (Previews order code: MAR083379), which features a piece called Loose Ends from me and Bryan Coyle!

Accent UK's WESTERN available NOW!

The 2009 Accent UK anthology WESTERN is available to order direct from their website NOW!

For those of you who don’t know, Accent UK is an independent comic publisher based in Cheshire, in the United Kingdom. This is the second AUK anthology I've had the good fortune to appear in, the first being last years ROBOTS (still available to buy!).

For WESTERN, I hooked up with Bryan Coyle, my collaborator from ROBOTS and the FutureQuake strip Mindfields, and brought along Billy Armstrong to lend a helping hand with some of the character designs for a piece we had to call A Fistful Of Steam Valves, a Steam Punk Spaghetti Western.

To whet your appetite, I'll be posting some of Billy's original character designs on this here blog, and, courtesty of AUK, here's a sneak preview of the first page of the strip (click for a larger view)...

I'll be posting some more of the original character sketches tomorrow.

The book is 192 pages long and costs £7.99 ($11.99).

It features a plethora of new and established talent, including Kieron Gillen, John Reppion & Leah Moore, Andy Bloor, Dwight MacPherson, Kirk Manley and Steve Bissette. You can find a the complete list of contributors at the Accent UK website. Go and buy a copy or two, and help the independent comic scene!

WESTERN Preview Part 1: "A man's gotta do..."

With Accent UK's 2009 anthology WESTERN around the corner, I thought - purely in the name of shameless self promotion - that it would a good time to offer up some previews of A Fistful Of Steam Valves, the six page strip featuring in WESTERN from myself and Bryan Coyle.

The strip was originally conceived and written by me as a Steam Punk Spaghetti Western (hence the lack of dialogue on the preview page), but when Bryan got into the art, he drew on the influences of various DC Western comics of yesteryear. The finished strip is a strange mix of the two styles that somehow works...

However, Bryan and I can't claim sole credit for this strip. It's a long and convoluted story of how this came about, but a friend of mine, Billy Armstrong, stepped in to help out and did some original character designs for the main players in the strip, as well as providing some weird and wonderful technology designs that would populate this world we were creating.

I've been sitting on those since last year, dying to show them to the world, and over the next few blog posts, I'm going to do just that.

Unfortunately, not everything made it in to the finished strip - hey, we only had six pages! There's only so much you can cram into them! - but here, for the first [and probably only] time are the first of Billy's designs...

An iron horse... Seemed obvious in a Steam Punk Western... (click for larger view)

A rough sketch of our 'hero'... (click for larger view)

WESTERN will hopefully be available via Previews (more on that as it happens) and Accent UK's own website. It features a plethora of new and established talent, including Kieron Gillen, John Reppion & Leah Moore, Andy Bloor, Dwight MacPherson, Kirk Manley and Steve Bissette. You can find a the complete list of contributors at the Accent UK website. Go and buy a copy or two, and help the UK independent scene! And, you know, lie and tell me how much you love A Fistful Of Steam Valves...

More sketches will be coming very soon.

FutureQuake #9 Sells Out!

News from the FutureQuake Press Blog is that FutureQuake #9 has sold out! The issue featured the strip Mindfields, written by yours truly, and it also represents three things for me:

• My first collaboration with Bryan Coyle (we teamed up again for Robots and the upcoming Western, both from Accent UK)
• This features the second cover to be based on a strip I'd written
• My third appearance in FutureQuake (but, God willing, not my last!)

The strip is now available to read over at my ComicSpace page. Admittedly, it's not the best thing I've ever written, but it - like all of the strips I've been fortunate enough to have published - was a valuable learning experience, that I hope has helped me to become a better writer.

The entire issue will be available to read on the FQ Strip Viewer over the summer.

And speaking of the FQ Strip Viewer, the complete FutureQuake #7 is now available to read there - which includes the strip Box by myself and Lonny Chant, which, incidentally, is my first ever published strip.