Issue #62 features the start of a new boardgame series I’m doing: MEDIEVAL GAMES! I had, er, quite a LOT of fun making these. First up, we have “Who Can Steal a Scale from the Dragon?” in which you play as knights in a test of valour (and silliness) pit against one another to fetch the Key from the dungeons, and unlock the Door to the Dragon’s lair in order to steal the scale and prove you are the bravest! Will you make it past the traps? Will you avoid being turned into a troll? Can you reach the Door first…?

These games are designed so you can just open the centre spread, and play. All you need is a couple of dice (or dice-substitutes) and something to use as tokens… pennies, jelly-beans, or the downloadable-and-printable tokens I made, available on the Phoenix website. If you play it, let me know how you got on! There are more Medieval Games to come!

Here’s a button to press whilst you peruse these pics: instantboss.org

Cakes! :D~

Some guy who might have been a bit important at the launch party (that’s John Aggs, DON’T YOU KNOW) and a spectacular furry thing atop his shoulder… what IS that!?

There he is again!

Well… he likes the comic! Gentle readers: this is Bob. He used to belong to Sonia Leong, who passed him to Emma Vieceli, who passed him recently to me! His full name is Floppy Genghis-Bob (on account of having three mistresses and three different personas, haha) and he’s accompanied me to all recent comic events. He might also have his own Facebook page… (even I don’t have a Facebook page!)

I will put them up on my site for sale ASAP! I want to get out contributor/special copies first, and then they’ll go up. Don’t forget I’ll be at a few conventions/events this year with a number of copies, so please check out the “news” section on the front page of my site, and maybe see you there! <3

(Ahaha, they look really dull… I was messing about with filters in Photoshop… probably not a great idea but I got carried away! I’ll put the unedited photos on the sale section when they go up. The cover merges from banana yellow at the edges to pale lemon yellow in the middle. I can almost see them in the dark, haha.)

Horribly grainy photo, but it’s a horribly gainy photo of COMPLETION. Almost. 99.9% of completion. (I’m going to re-draft a page from The Cherry Tree entirely, because I hate it and it doesn’t work. But other than that… completion!) According to my wonky note on the last page I drew, I actually finished drawing on 15th November… but then our scanner broke and we had all sorts of fun and japes, and I’ve only just finished scanning in the pages as of this moment.

I’ve completely finished colouring and lettering The Cherry Tree (apart from the page I want to totally re-do), finished all my touch-ups and re-draws, and it’s all coming together how I expected, more or less. I took what I had of it to show Emma Hayley (who nominated me initially for the Arts Foundation Fellowship) and Shelley Warren of the Arts Foundation a couple weeks ago, and I think they liked it. I’m looking forward to giving them the printed book.

Still looking at a late Jan/early February release date. Roll on!

Typically, I got a cold on the plane back from NYC so that, coupled with the cold I had before leaving for the trip, and the actual trip itself, means I’m about a month behind work ;_; I honestly think my immune system is having a laugh. (And then choking on its own phlegm).

I need to say, quickly, that New York Comicon was awesome. Everyone in NYC was so nice O_O; It made me feel like I wanted to be more polite than usual, haha. Also: I’m a real home-person… I stress if I leave the house for long periods of time, even, but I actually felt sad coming home from NYC. I liked it that much there. I really hope I have the chance to go back again!

Neither Paul or I had much of a chance to look around the convention (or NYC itself), but what we did see was great. We had a tiny amount of time to do like an obstacle course race round the Artist’s Alley… which in itself was staggering. The art there was like being in some kind of sweet-shop. It would be good to go there as a punter one time, so we could just look around.

Talking is less interesting than looking (I think), so here’s some pics under the cut…

This was the view from our hotel window. We were staying at the New Yorker, which was a big pile of Deco and I liked it a lot. I just love cities so much. I grew up in a village with no shops, barely anything except a duck pond, a phone box and some houses, with one bus per week (on a wednesday), and it’s not something I’m ever keen to go back to. Cities are brilliant.

Here’s a shot of the Freakangels stuff we were pimping from the Avatar stand. It was good times. The Avatar guys are really nice. It was good to have a lot of support for Freakangels. We made sure we said thanks to those who supported buying the trade editions!

Some of Paul’s CROSSED covers, mixed in with some by other artists ^^

Some CROSSED masks. These were kinda neat.

Paul signed about three billion plates for the SuperSpecial Editions of Freakangels. (The squiggle above is Warren’s). I tried to say supportive things when he reached the billionth one. He did well.

Well… this amused me. I just… it makes me laugh.

On the monday, we had a few hours to look around NYC before we flew home. We spent the time in Central Park (PARK!? It’s a fucking entire country!!) with Emma & Andrew. It was pleasant times. We saw lots of interesting things, including black squirrels! The squirrels in America are nuts. They were hopping about like they were on drugs or something.

One tree received all the love.

I tried to eat as many junk items as possible. On the monday, I got a snow cone.

It wasn’t so great.

But yeah! The whole trip was great. I got to meet a few of my comic-heroes as well, which was pretty priceless. Paul & I did interviews for MTV Geek, but I don’t think they’re live yet. I kinda don’t want to see mine, anyway ^^; The plane flight home, illness aside, was really cool! There was a thunderstorm, and we rode right into it! It was like being in a horror film – surrounded by smoggy-smog and flashing lights, haha.

Sigh… I miss it! I want to go back!

We raffled off a large print of one of the original DFC covers of The Spider Moon, and also of course we had the auction… I was VERY happy with the result! We raised a lot of cash for Mind and also, in a rather cool twist, the winning bidders turned out to be the lovely folk at The Story Museum, which is about 10mins walk from our flat! If you live nearby you should keep an eye on this place. It certainly looks awesome. Oh, I love Oxford so much :D

Lots of my most favourite people were able to come along, so it was just such a cheery event! In a total surprise, some friends from Devon drove all the way up for the evening. It was super-awesome as I’ve not seen those guys for such a long time. My editor for The Spider Moon (a.k.a. Lovely Ben) was able to come as well, which was super-awesome too!

Here’s some pics that Paul took under the cut…

Setting up! I love how Blackwell framed the images. The Bekka-sitting-on-the-moon cover was the raffled image. It went to a lovely family home :D

Books!

All the DFC Library books together! It was great seeing them like this. Please do look out for Vern & Lettuce by Sarah, Mo-Bot High by Neill, and Monkey Nuts by Bob & Lorenzo out later this year! They’ll make great Christmas presents, won’t they? Eh? Eh? *nudge*

Crowd! (Including Philip Pullman! He’s just this guy, you know? somebody I admire a huge amount, so I was totally overwhelmed to meet him. We spoke about a few things, including my boots. I hope that I did not make a fool of myself.)

We had sketchbooks and drawing materials out on the tables! They were well-used! (Would like to point out here that David Fickling was making bowties cool long before Doctor Who ;p)

Paul is probably making a masterpiece! ;D Or could he be drawing a certain shining knight…? ;D

Also! Please do check out my friend Lisa’s collection of photographs from the event. She’s very talented! :D

The rest of the weekend was spent with friends playing video games and MtG and watching silly things on YouTube and eating nice things and talking about comics and books and films and basically everything we all love. Couldn’t be better! :D