So last thursday night I turned up at London’s Forbidden Planet store to sign some Ubu Bubus. I’ll confess I spent the day kinda nervous, successfully transferring these nerves onto Sarah through a hurriedly scoffed sushi dinner, before slinking into the store and being welcomed into the bowels of the FP megastore itself. With a sensible haircut and sharpies i was ready to say hello. HELLO.

Thank you to everyone who came out, it was a real good turn-out and we ran over our time slot by an hour. You were all quite exceptionally warm and lovely.

I didn’t just sign like this. I swear.

Thank you to Lou, Jon, and everyone at FP for being so welcoming and even preparing biscuits which, through some kind of madness, i turned down. and now regret more than anything in my life ever.

Me attempting to draw Space Raoul. I’ll happily admit, I’m shit at signings. Turns out I can’t socially interact, talk, and write my own name at the same time. I have no idea what I wrote in people’s comics, though I seem to remember making endless mistakes. brain no work so gud. apologies if i ruined any worth of whatever I signed!

(thank you to Frankie for the photos!)

After the signing I finally got to meet some fellow DFC-ers, including the exceptionally and almost-sickeningly talented sarah mcintyre and gary northfield, along with some lovely people from the Cartoon Museum, not to mention the few good friends who still talk to me. Oh and the angry drunk growelling man, who was from the north and would have killed someone if his limbs could understand his brain.

For the next four days after that I was enjoying Frightfest, london’s annual horror film festival. And it was so much damn fun. Highlight films that I’d thoroughly recommend were Dead Snow (of course), It’s Alive (terrible, but good), Trick R Treat (one of the most fun films of the year) and Human Centipede, which is possibly the most bizarre and disturbing movie you’ll ever wish you didn’t see, yet somehow it works.

And now I am home. Ahead of me, two weeks of practically being a hermit again. In about two weeks time I’m upping sticks and leaving Brighton after 18 months living here, to go and live with the alarmingly tolerant Sarah. I’ll be very sad to leave, but excited for what may come, and keen to find a thorough working schedule again. So i’m up to my teets in boxes and duct tape trying to pack everything, and still trying to get some great new secret Chaffy stuff ready as well as keeping on top of other work. it’s gonna be a mad coupla weeks.

sensible news update ends. back to your meatballs.

jx

Sad news to report, as children’s comic Toxic have dropped Count Von Poo with immediate effect from today. The Count has had four(?) adventures so far in their pages, with maybe 7 or 8 left to print. These however won’t be shown.

The reasons why CVP has been dropped, were an unease with the kid-playing-with-poo interface, which i always anticipated but we’d been tweaking the strips so as to be careful, and I thought we’d found a nice groove. CVP was an immense amount of fun to write and draw, obviously. It’s a vampire who has imaginary adventures with faeces. How could that not be fun?

As to why it’s been dropped, a fair few people I’ve mentioned it to have suggested the recent wacky e coli outbreak over here in the UK this weekend, making the subject of kids handling poo maybe a bit sensitive. I dunno. What I can happily say is that Toxic said there’d been no complaints about CVP. NONE. Again, it’s a vampire. Who has imaginary adventures with FAECES. and NO ONE complained? Brilliant ^_^

Anyway, I don’t know whats going to happen with the remaining strips, Toxic own the copyright but hopefully there may be someway to show them online or summat. And in the meantime, I’ll be discussing other potential ideas with Toxic in the near future, so lets hope the relationship can continue. They are very lovely people.

But for now, farewell Von Poo. Proper sad you’re going.

Phew. thats the sound of all of my possessions duck taped up into boxes around me. pheee-yooo. tomorrow morning at 8.30 am the hopefully not criminal man with a van turns up and helps me move everything i own two hours up the road into sunny kent. he won’t just drive off with it all. repeat, he won’t. always weird seeing your stuff in boxes and wondering quite how you built up such a vast collection of rubbish. also, when you die, will it just get stomped on? probably.
tomorrow night i relax, in my new home with Sarah, presumably being stuck to my seat by the ginger wizard on telly (your Lottery predictions were a sham, ginger wizard). The weekend will be unpacking and arranging, and then i have a new home! It’s actually pretty exciting, I’m really looking forward to it.
That said, I’m pretty tired of moving house. i’ve done it nearly every year now for the last decade, and more so before that. i’ve got used to not settling anywhere, and even get a bit restless if i’m in one place too long. but i’d like to find a place and call it home now. i’m like The Littlest Hobo. although more accurately The Bitter Hairy Shouting Hobo. With Issues. And Not A Dog.
this winter once settled, i plan to really bunker down and churn out a lot more work than i have been doing the last year or so. paid work has really disappeared over this summer so i’ve been spending a lot of time working on projects i hope to really nail down before the end of the year. obviously it’s worrying not getting paid, but creatively it’s been such a buzz to have this enforced free time.
There will be some new things on the horizon relating to Looshkin, Chaffy, some new comics i’m SO excited to start drawing, and fiiiiinally a Kochi announcement before the year is through. Amongst that the usual shit. really, toss. you wouldn’t believe the artistic bum nuggets i’m going to abuse you with.

So see you on the other side, y’all. If you want a more up to date following of my rubbish, come and banter on Tweeetter (twitter.com/jamiesmart) although usually it’s just full of shouting demands that people fight me. welcome to the FUTURRRR.

jx

wotcha.

the house move all went well ta, surprisingly well, apart from a box packed full of monitor, scanner and all other computer periphs falling from the top of the van onto the drive (thanks man with van!). now i have my new workbase and while i’m adjusting to finding a schedule again, it feels comfortable. i think this will be very good, and i will be very productive once more.

just a note to say Topatoco, they who not only distribute the finest array of webcomic tshirts but also mine as well, are opening their doors this weekend for a tag sale. so if you live in Mmmerica check out details HERE (what do you mean you don’t live near, Mmmerica can’t be THAT big! stop making excuses!). Not sure yet if they’ll have any of my Bohda Te, Ubu, ALR or Whubble tshirts in the sale, they may do, but they got so many great tees anyway certainly worth checking out!

Incidentally, i’ve been working on a nice handful of AWESOME coming your way for christmas thanks to the sexy angels at Topatoco. more news when we can!

Lastly, science is the TITS!

jx