Rise, Generic Civilians Of The Future!

The kind of 'extras' you might expect to find wandering around a good old-fashioned dystopian futurescape. They'll eventually be seen lurking inkily in the peripherals of a long-planned but temporarily static comic pitch.

"Steroid Twat"

Comics That Will Likely Never Happen #1

Steroid Twat is out with his pals. They're wrapped up in scarves and hats except for Steroid Twat, who is perfectly bare chested and amazed at how hot it is for the middle of January. They arrive at their destination, a warm, gleaming pub, and enter - except that Steroid Twat doesn't enter, no, because he's too fucking wide for the door, so instead finds a window near his pals and watches them from outside.

Hours pass. Cosy and merry, his pals joke and laugh, and you can see Steroid Twat's face at the closed window, watching them, laughing along.

It starts to snow very, very heavily. At the window, Steroid Twat's face continues to watch and laugh, although, as the night progresses and further layers of snow amass upon him, he appears to be in increasing discomfort doing so. Closing time finally arrives, and Steroid Twat's pals spill out into the street, joking and laughing, to collect him.

Sadly, Steroid Twat is dead.

Note: Steroid Twat is not actually a twat. He's an agreeable fellow who was given a peculiar if oddly prophetic christian name by his loving parents Mr and Mrs Twat.

"Monkey Vomiter"

Comics That Will Likely Never Happen #2

Monkey Vomiter is a superhero who can vomit monkeys; wave after chirruping wave of the buggers if he finds himself in a particularly tight spot.

He's accompanied in his adventures by a dour little sidekick whose one and only contribution to Monkey Vomiter's ongoing campaign against the forces of darkness is to disparage this superpower at every available opportunity. Monkey Vomiter has a deep, desperate need for his companion to acknowledge that his abilities are, in truth, extremely pleasing in theory and highly effective in practice. Yet no display of primate projectile, however frenzied and outlandish, seems sufficiently spectacular to pierce the little man's indifference...

Caramel Jack - 1900

This one takes the prize for Most Brain-Meltingly Detailed And Confusing Illustration Your Correspondent Has Attempted, Ever. The album it illustrates - "1900" by Brighton song & soundsmiths Caramel Jack - floated my boat mightily on the first listen a few months back, and then grew and grew. It's not even out until next year, but it's already a valued old musical friend.

It's lyrical stomping ground being London, and the band's visual aesthetic being heavily informed by arcane found imagery, the original notion for the sleeve was a collage of London architecture from different periods, a mixture of photography, old etchings and the like, tumbling together in much the same "river/estuary/sea" composition as above. 'Didn't take long for me to decide to cop out and illustrate it instead, obviously. The lights/ghosts rushing through the streets weren't planned; they pretty much just happened. There was likely a touch of behind-the-scenes inspiration going on there, probably something to do with the - ahem! notebooks at the ready, trivia geeks - twilit Castle Town part of the last Zelda game.

You can treat your ears to "Buttercups" and "Bed" on CJ's myspace page.

Dumb Sci-Fi Fun #2

"Pop Rocks"

A recent job; character design for a club night's promo material.

She ended up looking like the kind of comics princess my geeky 13 yr old self would have once had an insane crush on, which is vaguely chucklesome.

That's my Ibanez, by the way; a gorgeous, glam guitar which deserves, and will get, many more future cameos.

Dumb Sci-Fi Fun #1

You just can't beat it...

Unfinished Business...

Work on this one ground to a halt a while back, on account of it having perhaps taken a stylistic detour away from my other recent childrens' illustrations. I'd been busy rediscovering Arthur Rackham at the time. I'm still undecided. I like it, but wonder if it needs a lighter re-working. "Cheerfully Sinister" is the feel we're after, and I'm not getting an awful lot of cheer from it...

Party Hats and Pensiveness

Odd Lass #1

Potter Stigmata

Expect to see these Devotees of Harry herded into their own illustration sometime soon.

Sabrina

Character studies for a forthcoming six page comic written by Paul "Sound of Drowning" O'Connell.

Sabrina (aka Norma Sykes) was a frighteningly well equipped glamour model who landed a non-speaking cameo on the UK's Arthur Askey show in the late fifties and became, for a time, very, very popular indeed. The aggressive make up and upholstery make for a caricaturised, even frenzied sort of take on womanliness, but Norma was clearly having the time of her life, and oozes bygone charm.

"Magic Venom"

...is what's emerging from the mouth there. Screen Wipe/TV Go Home mainman Charlie Brooker describes himself as having a "face like a paedophile walrus". His is a monolithic sort of mug, for sure. The temptation is to expand this sketch into a fearsome massed rank of stony Brookerliths lining the Easter Island shoreline, glaring balefully into a festering, endless televisual ocean...

Monsters!

Oops.

Lost a couple of years there.

This new illustration is expanding on the premise suggested by this one, which was blurted out as a supposed one-off last November. There's a story there for sure. Maybe even a good one...