phoenix comic announcement!

Oh look, who are those two odd characters sweeping into a certain office in Oxford?

They are Jinks & O’Hare, Funfair Repair! The Phoenix Comic has just announced that writer and sometimes illustrator Philip Reeve and I will be taking you for a wild ride in an upcoming issue! I knew Philip had drawn some great stuff for Murderous Maths and Horrible Histories magazine back in the days before he became a top award-winning writer, and I was convinced he could make a great comic for The Phoenix. He said that, if I would write it, he’d draw it, and so we were agreed. (Read more here on the Phoenix website…)

How it’s actually working out is that we’re co-writing it, because drawing a comic really is writing it. I came up with a basic first script, but the best jokes and things keep popping up as the pictures start to emerge. And because Philip was doing a lot of the writing work, I agreed to colour it, so it’s very much an all-round collaboration. I was very excited when he sent me these character sketches of Jinks and O’Hare. Aren’t they fabulous?

So are you subscribed yet to The Phoenix? If not, what are you waiting for?! DO IT!

A couple more bits of news: To celebrate the launch of Dave Shelton‘s illustrated book A Boy and a Bear in a Boat, everyone at David Fickling Books is blogging about boats. So here’s my take, including my stint as Ship’s Illustrator for the Cutty Sark.

And The Guardian gave our Nelson anthology a great write-up, and Gary Northfield is in the studio here, still riding the wave of ‘funny and poignant’.