The Sunday Morning Report 23/10

I'm back once again for a new edition of The Sunday Morning Report. He's what I've been up to throughout the week...

I’ve done a hell of a lot of reading this week… I had some form of stomach bug that lasted three days (two of which were not manageable at all) and it had me laid up with a lot of time on my hands. I decided to read a few comics and discovered an absolute gem in the to-read pile, that being Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston’s BLACK HAMMER from Dark Horse Comics… I read three issues of it back to back to back and absolutely loved it. I have the fourth issue here to read but I’ve had other commitments and haven’t got around to it yet. As you can probably tell from me only just reading that book, I am way behind on some of the stuff I’ve picked up in recent months from the comic book shop. I made a list of everything I need to read and it came in around 88 different titles, some with multiple issues. To say I’m a bit behind is an understatement… I’ve also read a few pages of The Hepatitis Bathtub this week and I realized that Mark Frost’s new Twin Peaks book is out now, so I’m going to have to acquire that at some point. I love me some Twin Peaks…

I didn’t manage to get another draft of my Nemesis script done this week, I tampered with some panel descriptions but that’s about it. I’m hoping I get my arse in gear soon enough and get it finished because it’s starting to get away from me and once it does, I’ll end up not bothering to send it in at all. It hasn’t been a difficult script, and looking at it, I am quite pleased with what I have so far. I’m just having trouble finding the motivation to get on it again.

Obviously amongst the writing part I’ve wrote this post and I wrote two reviews for Comic Bastards on Monday (leaving it a bit late there but the site was down and we’ve switched platforms so I’ve been adjusting to it), I’ve got another two reviews to write for Wednesday, too. I’m also trying to put together some posts about elements of writing that aren’t so much about the actual writing process… There’s a lot of stuff that goes on outside of the writing that you’re going to want to know how to handle if you want to write comics, so I thought I’d touch on them. I want to start writing some posts about guys I know in comics, too. It’ll be like ‘follow Friday’ on Twitter but solely focusing on one person in comics each week who I think is worthy of your attention.

Artist situation at FutureQuake

Last week, I told you about an artist dropping out of drawing one of my stories for FutureQuake. I thought I had it sewn up with an artist and I thought I’d cleared it with Bolt that I’d found a guy and he was going to draw it. So, imagine my surprise when Bolt emails me earlier in the week to tell me and the artist that the strip has been commissioned and I open it to find the artist’s name is not the name of the artist I’d been speaking to… For the sake of reference, the guy I’d been talking to and trying to work with for ages was Jim Lavery. Jim has a good, fun art style that I thought would fit great with the story and having tried before to get him to draw something, I thought I’d lucked out.

Now, I have a different artist working with me. One who I wasn’t familiar with and one whom I hadn’t chosen… I’m panicking. I’m used to picking my own artists. Now I’m staring at an email where that privilege has been taken from me… It also hits me that I’m going to have to talk to Jim to tell him that another artist has been commissioned for the story and I’m feeling like an asshole for it.

Jim was the first guy I spoke to. Jim was alright with it (as far as I’m aware) but if I’m being completely honest, I still feel like an asshole for it. It was a situation I wasn’t expecting to be in and I am sorry, Jim.

Back to that email and the new artist I had no clue about. I did what anyone would do in that situation and I began searching for the artist like a man possessed on social media. I found him and when I looked at his art, I was blown away. “This guy can fucking draw!” I thought to myself, immediately followed by an email to Dave Evans/Bolt-01 asking him how he’d swung it. The opening line of Dave’s email said, “You’re Welcome.” Ha-ha…

He then followed up by telling me how he’d managed to acquire the artist, which was through the 2000 AD forums… The artist had posted pages he’d drawn from their sample script. See below…

The artist’s name is Nicolò Assirelli. He’s extremely talented and I’m extremely lucky to have him on-board for the story. I’ve spoken to Nicolò briefly over Facebook and he said he likes the script and told me what he has planned for it. It also surprised me when he pointed to one particular part of it, saying it was good and knowing who/what I was talking about! He said he loved the idea of it. Anyways, that’s my new friend and collaborator Nicolò Assirelli. He does good art. You can find him on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr to check out more of his art.

I've really landed on my feet here with Nicolò, haven't I?

That’s about it for another week… This one seems a bit shorter than my other posts but I guess being ill didn’t really help me productivity-wise.

See you all next week…