comics tea

Hooray! Garen Ewing just posted this drawing on his blog! It was great to see him and Ellen Lindner during my day in central London on Wednesday (even if that funny-looking little green pastry turned out to cost a fiver). I’m really looking forward to Garen’s upcoming work in the DFC, Charlie Jefferson and the Tomb of Nazaleod. Have you seen Ellen’s latest book, Little Rock Nine? It’s well worth reading, and she’s currently working on another comic of E.M. Forster’s short story, The Machine Stops. You can read her amazing novel Undertow online here.

It’s funny, when you get a bunch of comics people together, we always have to get out pens and paper to draw things when we have difficulty describing them. I particularly liked this picture Ellen drew in my notebook during a discussion of historic genetic oddities of the Spanish royal family. (Although I think this must be one of the better looking monarchs.)

I’m off to the SCBWI conference in Winchester today, where in my workshop I’ll be giving a first peek at layouts for the picture book I’m illustrating for David Fickling, written by Britain’s best-selling contemporary poet, Giles Andreae.

I’ll be back in London on Sunday morning for the panel at the ICA with DFC colleagues Adam Brockbank, John and Patrice Aggs and Gary Northfield. Speaking of which, have you been following Adam Brockbank’s DFC strip with Ben Haggarty, Mezolith? It’s just getting better and better, and I was totally amazed by his swan maidens and the big earth woman in the last couple episodes.

Don’t forget, you can buy the DFC in Tesco from 26 Nov – 2nd Dec. (John Freeman comments on the DFC in Tesco here.) Edit: And _w_o_o_d_ says Waren Ellis has posted about it!. Cool!

You can also buy single issues at any time from the DFC website.