Stand Up Part Deux

Discussing "Ballbags and Buttplugs: How to stick things in your body...and retrieve them"...

The first time I tried standup (post here) I didn't tell anyone I knew in case I was shite. This time I told a load of people who on the night all brought friends I had a whole side of the room that knew me and whiney ranty geeky shite I come out with, thankfully I didn't suck and it went well. Thanks to Labhaoise and Pete, the Belgian Monk crew, Joe & Jen, Tim & Lucy, Dan, Clare & Pierlugi, Aaron and Nathan, and anyone else who survived my perverted ramblings.

The Belgian Monk crew, Staz looks pleased but I have seemed to sent Rach to sleep...

Dale and Danni are aroused and embarrassed, respectively...

Pietari K is a)wrongly accused of being my cousin and b) made to act like a dwarf by compare John Kearns.

Tom Moran looking very rock and roll

...and relaxing with a post-gig fag and sauv-blanc

Photographic proof of me once hugging a pretty lady...

Not so funny now, are you funny man....

Jimmny finally meets a certain Bobbity Byrne...

One of personal highlights of the Birmingham International Comics Show was meeting Bob Byrne of Clamnut Comics fame. As we both knackered/hungover on the Saturday morning we spent a pleasant few hours sitting out in the drizzle and talking whilst making occasional attempts to beat the geek queues. It was a genuine pleasure to meet him after a year and half or so of email rants and blog madness. I surprised at how dark and demented Mbleh is check out pdf samples here or shell out a tenner to buy issues 1-3 from his site.

Iz it becauz I am a Mug?...

In the youth hostel we stayed in I decided this would be a fun mug drink my morning coffee in but it had a really annoying voicechip in it that was running out of batteries which sounded like the most unfunny drunkard in the world doing an Ali G impression while simultaneously having a stroke.

A display of Bob's MBlehs at the Olive Press table. One of the other highlights was minding the desk for a bit while the lad's attended Matt Hollingsworth's colorist masterclass.

Me talking to Mike Conroy, the new editor of Comics International and author of 500 Great Comic Book Action Heroes. Don't think I was making much sense at this time. Interview with him here from the Forbidden Planet blog. Pic from Bob.

A pic from Bob's camera of the last ones standing about 4am or so.

I'm looking at the man in the revolving door, I'm asking him to chhhange his ways.

Give it up for the Clammaster

Comic Geeks Unleashed!! Untold Birmingham Tales!!

Comic Conventions... this is the sort of shit you want, right!...

When telling folks I was going to a comic convention they all asked ...'hehe are going to dress up?' But the most visible people in costume all seemed to be paid actors for promotional purposes with prebought costumes, if you want to dress up as a superhero...make the costume yourself. Like these ladies above they were promotional models for a City of Heroes stall, with a sign that said things like 'Talk to the Girl: 5 Pounds, Stand Next to the Girl 10 Pounds'.

So here is my photoessay of events of the Birmingham International Comics Show. Warning this may bore you to tears if you weren't there, but it was a lot of fun. Have added links to the relavent talented folks under the pictures so check out their amazing work.

12 October, Opening night event. This was hilarious as a whole plush bar had been reserved for us geeks and people kept trying to get in and then peered in an went, no actually you're alright...

Artist Declan Shalvey and a young lady.

Will Sliney and Stephen Thompson

Shalvatron keeps it real...

Esad Ribic and Dec.

Day Two, Saturday October 13, 2007, and a certain Clamtastic young man arrives...

A certain Bobilicious Byrne arrives

Bob basking in the glow of his MBlehs

Jimmny and Bob, with young Fran Johnson in the back there.

Dec and Wil want you...

Will, Stephen Mooney, Lisa Jackson Stephen Thompson

D-Shalv practices his choking techniques

It's getting late...we somehow got into the residents' lounge of the Britainnica Hotel.

Whilst Dec explained some stuff to fans

Meanwhile I was more transfixed by this painting, wondering what this gentleman uses his cane for after he's walked his lady friend home.

Where all Irish people abroad end up, the chipper, for chicken burgers....

Birmingham Comic Show Highlights: Erotic Comics and Hunt Emerson

One of the panels at the Con that I was sure to make was Tim Pilcher discussing erotic comics. The panel, unfortunately cut a bit short was based on his forthcoming book on erotic comics from Ilex Press and went into some of the connections between comics and erotic cartoons. Notably the genius and tragic life of Jack Cole, more famous in comics circles for creating Plastic Man. It's weird with cartoonists there is this public preception that they are all going to be wacky fun-loving guys, but I think Cole's work and also the recent Charles Schulz

biography are interesting for looking at the darker areas of comic artists minds.

Had a quick chat with Mr. Pilcher the next day was glad to see the work of John Willie and Eric Stanton will be in later chapters of the book that he didn't have time to discuss.

Whilst in the queue for the the erotic comics panel, I got chatting to a very nice couple that turned out to be Hunt Emerson and his wife. I was reading a MBleh in the panel and he had just been talking to Bob so we had a nice chat about British and Irish comics and the Comics Britainnica Series.

Hunt Emerson

Brimingham Comic Show Highlights: Jamie McKelvie, Leah Moore and John Reppion.

Jamie McKelvie.

Jamie McKelvie: Suburban Glamour

Round the corner from young Bob Byrne and Declan Shalvey at the Con was a certain Jamie McKelvie who effortlessly combines comics and a fashionable hip sensibility which is hard to pull off, Suburban Glamour is like a British Betty Page/emo-tinged Black Hole.
One of the happy accidents of my Con experience was when I was waiting to get my copy of Watchmen signed was when Leah Moore and John Reppion sat down beside him with their stuff. I got a copy of their Raise the Dead signed.

Leah Moore and John Reppion: Raise the Dead 2.

Birmingham Comic Show Signings: Dave Gibbons.

hurm...

It's kinda weird but I haven't been to many comic conventions, so I haven't experienced the sketch book phenomena where fans go from comic artist to comic artist and get them to draw sketches, (eeeh couldya do me a Wonder Woman with big jugs, that sort of thing) some have themes like a certain character, or all the 2000ad guys. Being decent sorts comic artists usually enthusiastically comply to a sometimes industrial style conveyor belt churning out of artist gems where people in other industries would tell the fanboy to go feck themselves.

For me at the Birmingham International Comics Show, the main thing I wanted was to have my almost falling apart and much loved copy of Watchmen (1987 US edition) signed by Dave Gibbons. He was extremely nice and chatted to fans while I was waiting in the queque about the progress of the movie, saying he had drawn three extra pages (alternate ending maybe?) to be used as storyboards and that Zach Snyder is using the original artwork as storyboards more or less which is heartening news. Anyway he signed my copy and did a Rorscharch sketch so I was a happy geek. I also brought some of the great 1993 mini series inked by him and written by Alan Moore, still criminally not collected in a trade paperback. 1963 was a great spoof of early Marvel with some great spoof ads.

Pot to kettle department....

Ah the old saying: "People in Shit Robin Williams Film Making Houses shouldn't throw stones...at Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino and Robert de Niro."

"You know, even in those days after The Godfather, I didn't feel that those actors were ready to say, 'Let's do something else really ambitious."

This from the man who bestowed, Captain EO (1986) , Jack (1996) and (parts of) Supernova (2000) onto a poor undeserving world....

is this some sort of bizarre suicide bid?

Give it up for Glycon.

Glycon

Good interview with Alan Moore by Susanna Clarke in the Telegraph today here. Mostly on Lost Girls but bits and pieces on Watchmen and V For Vendetta. 

Ending with some wry observations on:

LIFE 'It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography, if you're lucky.'

HOLLYWOOD FILMS 'If I write a crappy comic book, it doesn't cost the budget of an emergent Third World nation.'

LOVE 'I'd recommend to anybody working on their relationship that they should try embarking on a 16-year elaborate pornography [project] together. I think they'll find it works wonders.'

Fist of Fun and This Morning with Richard Not Judy

Full series up from Google video on Stewart Lee's great site. There's also a lovely interview of Lee by Johnny Vegas. 

The 6.55 to Lowestoft

It's hardly the 8.15 to Manchester, but two days a week (Thursdays and Fridays) I find myself on the 6.55 to Lowestoft to teach 'contextual studies' at an art college. See above that's exactly how I look too after about 2 hours sleep and a 40 minute walk to the train station to catch said train and look forward to a 30 minute walk to the college to teach for 6 hours. While beginning I had a strange thought, well I've finally got to art college, but not in a way I ever envisoned. Before media studies I had an interview with both the art colelges in Belfast and Dublin. Being an obsessive comic geek back then (quelle surprise) my portfolio was a collection of demented madness so I understand why I wasn't excepted. Artefacts from this leather bound beast included much John Hinkleton inspirsed sci-fi perversity, a screen print series based on the Spider-Man 2099 logo, a reimagining of the creature from Split Second (1992) and I dunno some still lives thrown in there in a vague attempt to convince them I wasn't a comics and sci-fi obsessed lunatic. Ironically one interviewer in Belfast had a Roy Lichtenstein print tie while poking in disdain through my 2000ad-inspired doodles.

It's a lot of work but fun and is inspiring me to do more drawings. In the mean time, looking forward to going to the International Comic Show on Saturday/Sunday 13-14th October and can't wait for the dweebfest, meeting up with the notorious b-boy and Declan Shalvey

Oh, and I'm doing stand up again on October 22, site here, and report of my last go here. Last time I didn't anyone I was doing it, this time I have told a load of people, making it similarly nerve-wrecking to the first time. It's all new stuff and I'm having a good laugh writing down my various rants for public consumption rather than letting them festering as normal. My friends normally have to hear them anyway so it'll probably be best for all of them to get the vile business all over in one go. Have been being inspired by Stewart Lee good bits here on the Incredible Hulk, Joe Pasquale and Princess Diana and an ET or was it an Alf. Oh and he interviewed Alan Moore and Ted Chippington.

RANDY TARTT

a little decication to all the art students out there...

Sparks -

La Jetee (1962)

"He was prepared to face a mad scientist, a Dr. Frankenstein, instead of whom he met a reasonable man who told him, in a relaxed manner, that the human race was doomed"...

Primer (2004) by Shane Carruth , amazing sci-fi for $7,000 that's probably less than a spidey suit