Romeo, Romeo, where had we got to with Romeo?

It may not look much to you, but this picture (above) marks a significant step forward with my books. We're moving again, creatively. 

After a busy time with schools, and the only really productive thing on my desk this year being the colouring of Richard The Third (did it take as long as drawing the book itself? It felt like it), this week I got back to the writing, and eventually drawing, of Romeo And Juliet.

It was over a year ago that, buoyed up by my new agent Emily, I started working on new graphic novel material in the same vein as my Richard The Third. I began by taking another stab at Midsummer Night's Dream, a fresh look at King Lear, and my twisted version of Twelfth Night, aka Twelfth Thing. And, following a meeting with one (rather big) publisher who showed some interest in my Shakespeares and suggested I tackle this most popular play, I began a version of Romeo And Juliet.

Because they were thinking of printing books in just one spot colour, I drew up the first 27 pages of my Romeo with red only colour, looking for all the world like the strips I used to do in the Viz lookalike comics thirty years ago. I had completed these pages by the end of May last year (so my worksheet tells me).

Feedback in June told me they weren't so keen on Romeo & Juliet, but would like me to try redrawing the others in a slightly different style. So I redrew Midsummers and recoloured it and tweaked and recoloured a bit of Twelfth Night. This led to some sample art tryouts on different books, with another publisher, which was followed in October by another art tryout, the verdict on which I'm still waiting to hear. So I've had meetings with three significant publishers, which is great. But none of this has furthered my Shakespearian ambitions very much. So...

I started colouring the pages of Romeo and Juliet in the Autumn. I did this to show the potential publishers at the Lakes Comic Festival Rights Market. Of course nothing came of those meetings so all my Shakespeare works in progress have lain dormant for six months or more. 

Now with the success of Richard The Third as a self-published book - 1000 copies sold last year, 450 already sold this year - I'm looking to putting Romeo and Juliet out under my own steam. I'll need to discuss this with Molly and Emily (Emily is on maternity leave, Molly is standing in for her right now, and at time of writing will be at the Bologna Book Fair) but hopefully this won't stand in the way of me finding a trad publisher.

Romeo and Juliet Kickstart anyone? Watch this space. When I left we had 27 pages written and drawn. I've only drafted a tiny bit more, but we've already met Nurse and Juliet, had the Queen Mab speech, and I'm about to do the Romeo and Juliet Meet Cute. Wish me luck.

My Books And Where To Find Them...

Richard  The Third Paperback • signed	Findlay  Macbeth Paperback • signed	Prince of  Denmark Street Paperback • signed	Midsummer Night's  Dream Team Paperback • signed
Shakespeare Omnibus Paperback • signed	Comic Tales From The Bible Paperback • signed	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories Paperback • signed	Space Elain Paperback • signed
Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Sweet Smell Of Sockcess	Attack Of The Sausages
My 1975 Diary Calendar	Colouring Books Paperback • signed	Scottish Falsetto Socks Annual	Tales Of Nambygate

Colouring Books: Doctors Who, Hollywood Legends, Punk, Cult TV, Eurovision Vol 1, Eurovision Vol 2, Eurovision Best Of British & Irish, 1960s Pop, 1970s Pop, 1980s Pop,  1990s Pop, 2020s Pop, Bowie, Scottish Pop, Royalty, Rom Coms  

Know your enemy: this is an AI image

 Know your enemy: this is an AI image.

I know the technology to make this image has been stolen without permission from actual working artists and I apologise for participating in its production. But I cannot turn my back on the existence of this technology and researching where it is now at is something I felt I had to do.

The result is both impressive, amusing, and worrying. Impressive for obvious reasons - look at it, it made a drawing better than I, a professional artist, can do in that style, and in under 60 seconds; amusing - look at the mis spelled words and how it has reinterpreted my drawings of faces as different things, in one case turning a full figure into a barbers pole; and worrying - a non-artist can make a comic book this way, and they are doing, and it’s only just the start.

We should fight for some kind of compensation based on our past published work, and we should move forward with our artwork, proving that we creators can do stuff machines cannot do.

But machines can do this and we cannot be King Cnut and pretend we can stop people utilising it to do so.

 This is what you get if you ask it to draw Studio Ghibli style. As is this...

And here's what's happen when you give it a photo and ask it to draw it in the style of Neal Adams...

My Books And Where To Find Them...

Richard  The Third Paperback • signed	Findlay  Macbeth Paperback • signed	Prince of  Denmark Street Paperback • signed	Midsummer Night's  Dream Team Paperback • signed
Shakespeare Omnibus Paperback • signed	Comic Tales From The Bible Paperback • signed	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories Paperback • signed	Space Elain Paperback • signed
Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Sweet Smell Of Sockcess	Attack Of The Sausages
My 1975 Diary Calendar	Colouring Books Paperback • signed	Scottish Falsetto Socks Annual	Tales Of Nambygate

Colouring Books: Doctors Who, Hollywood Legends, Punk, Cult TV, Eurovision Vol 1, Eurovision Vol 2, Eurovision Best Of British & Irish, 1960s Pop, 1970s Pop, 1980s Pop,  1990s Pop, 2020s Pop, Bowie, Scottish Pop, Royalty, Rom Coms  

Tardis bird feeder - My March Facebook Noodlings

It’s not every day we go to the garden centre and I immediately say “yes, that would look great in our garden”

But there was something about this bird feeder. Can’t put my finger on what it was.

***

March 4: Sad to lose Jack Vettriano, because it’s sad to lose anyone at only 73. His work was a critical dilemma for people in my fields of work.

To fine art students like me, the pretentious types who follow the Turner Prize and get the art rounds in University Challenge, he was a derivative hack who we had no time for.

To illustrators, the other camp in which I have a toe, he was a competent craftsman with no great originality (find a review that doesn’t mention Edward Hopper and you’re doing well) but who captured the moment.

Love them or sneer at them, his paintings “worked”. People liked them. And just because they liked other artists work less, who we thought they should like more, is just the way it goes.

Like in pop music. I think the famous and rich ones should be They Might Be Giants and The Lemon Twigs, but it’s Sabrina Carpenter and Taylor Swift. What can you do?

So well done Jack Vettriano. A generation or two of Scottish artists celebrate you, however begrudgingly.

Happiness is: new business cards

No, yours are too busy!

****

Sad to read of the loss of David Johansen, of the New York Dolls, aka Buster Poindexter, also known as the taxi driver out of Scrooged, who died yesterday aged 75.

People Matt Lucas could play in a movie: EC publisher Bill Gaines.

***

Just watched Kneecap, which is excellent. Having watched this week’s Apprentice, the idea struck me: has anyone made a green Easter egg and marketed it as Choccy Ar Lar?

Its day will come.

*****

 March 1: Trump v Zelenskyy meeting

The thing that is most terrifying about this is the gaslighting. After the fact you’ve got leading Republicans accusing Zelenskyy of acting disrespectful and starting the argument, when it’s surely impossible to watch this clip and not see that it’s Vance and Trump starting everything. Their bullying, goading, insulting, and then just positively inexcusably rude behaviour is stunning.

Then when Trump ends with “This will make great television” you realise how little he cares about diplomacy. He’s just a bully and a narcissist.

I hope all the sane people can see what happened here. But my big fear is that maga-heads are so biased they’ll genuinely believe the gaslighting.

***

Dear @eBay you’ve been keeping £300 of my money for 10 days after the client paid me and received their package.

This is unacceptable and I shall no longer be selling my art on @eBay_UK

Spotted yesterday in Sainsbury’s. I think it’s Norwegian for “Bottoms Up”

***

March 16: Article about shops taking cash

This. I fell foul of this yesterday in, of all places, a sweet shop in Conwy.

I have pockets full of cash, following a couple of comic cons and schools where kids bought my books in cash. But this shop was card only. Not a biggie, but a bit of a bugger cos I didn’t have my card to hand so Hev had to pay for the (overpriced but that’s not the point) choccies.

I’m loving having cash in my hand. And, of course, at these same comic cons I’m taking payments by my credit card reader (at least 75% of sales are card, often 90% or more) so I’m more than aware of the 1% taken off every sale by izettle. I don’t mind that cut, it’s what I pay for the convenience , but there’s no question that, if people pay in cash, I’m one per cent better off.

So what’s the benefit of refusing cash? And why was that woman in Conwy so arsey about it? (Oh yes, I’m not a fan of attitude in shops, maybe that’s my bigger problem)

***

March 18: Today’s question: was Neil Kinnock a time traveller warning us against Keir Starmer?

“I warn you not to fall ill

I warn you not to get old.”

****

March 19: Adolescence + Gareth Southgate

An interesting discussion being had in these two places (below: Jack Thorne’s Adolescence and Gareth Southgate’s Dimbleby Lecture), on young men and their worldview. The thing for me is that it doesn’t seem that different from the worldview of my teenage generation, half a century ago.

Southgate talks of how influencers “trick young men into believing that success is measured by money or dominance, never showing emotion, and that the world – including women – is against them”. This is how 13 year old me felt.

The success thing is obviously nothing new. The “never showing emotion” was known as “cool” in my day. For us it was The Fonz and Danny Zuko in Grease, for my Mum it was Marlon Brando and John Wayne, for the generation after me it was Stallone and Schwarzenegger. And so on.

As for women being “against them”, here we come to the hardest part of understanding teenagers. Because they are still working everything out, and sexual relations are the most puzzling thing there is. Fifty years later I can’t be sure I’ve worked them out.

At age 13, as depicted in Adolescence, that boy is like me. He’s vaguely worked out his sexuality, but most likely won’t have any practical sexual or even romantic experience for, in my case, another four or five years. At age 13 it remains a mind-blowing realm of confusion, that no one seems able or willing to explain to you properly.

So I didn’t so much see girls as the enemy, more as an enigma, these people who you were drawn to and fixated by, but incapable of talking to and who seemed to comprehend things you didn’t. Trying to understand women was like trying to talk to cats. It would take a number of years before, in my case, the mystery started to be explained, by the women who, luckily for me, became fellow students and, in a couple of examples, romantic relationships.

But we had no internet, no influencers, no “red pill emojis” and other parts of Adolescence that remain a mystery to me. We were able to become misguided, and undeniably misogynistic, with the help of just TV, tabloids, and our fellow male teenagers.

So what am I saying? That, I guess, the current malaise with disenfranchised young men is nothing new, and that if we’ve ever done anything to tackle it in the past it hasn’t worked yet.

I feel the role models presented across the media since I grew up have improved immeasurably. We don’t celebrate toxic masculinity as much as we did, and our cultural embrace of feminism and other understandings of the world have seen a revolution in society in my lifetime. A momentary retrenchment by the likes of Musk and the Broligarchy are an indication of how far we’ve come. I’m optimistic that progressive common sense will bounce back.

I’d like to think I grew up okay (I’m sure others will disagree).

*****

March 10: As a reminder that you’re not in traffic you ARE traffic, my 3.5 hour journey to Fleetwood is currently predicted to be a 7.5 hour journey, or even 8.5 hours depending which device I believe.

Thankyou the lorry that crashed into the central reservation this afternoon

March 11: The view from my hotel window this morning.

***

March 12: I don’t know much about economics. But. Surely when the economy takes a big dip, cos of tariffs going on or off, hedge funds make a lot of money, yes? And when the economy takes an upturn, cos of tariffs going on or off, hedge funds make a lot of money, yes?

So all Trump is doing is providing grist to a money mill for hedge fund managers, am I wrong?

***

March 13: When do I have a real quandary with AI art? When it’s been used to do something that no one has done by any other methods. For example this movie by Pillart AI

I don’t know how the art is done, but I am fully aware it must include imagery scraped without permission from thousands of genuine photographers and film makers.

They said I cannot lie and pretend these images are not impressive to me. They have the same effect on me as Moebius’s art used to do when I first discovered it fifty years ago.

I dream of seeing images this original and stunning in a feature film, and I know that when it does happen it will be because AI has been used, and I know how problematic that is.

So we have a dilemma, not unlike when sampling first appeared forty odd years ago. Do I condemn artists, as I did then, for making their art from a hodgepodge of found items reassembled, instead of making their own music from scratch? Or do I acknowledge this is a developing art form with genuine merit and make moves to try and reimburse the legacy artists whose work has fed the machine, as we did with copyright and sampling?

I shall be thinking “Barbra Streisand Effect” every time I hear the words “Zombie Deer Disease”

***

March 14 Spinal Tap Trailer

I hate to predict that the trailer and the logo will be the best thing about this movie, but I have a dreadful fear they will.

Spinal Tap is one of my favourite movies ever. I don’t feel I need a forty-years-on sequel.

I also don’t need Sons Of The Reservoir Dogs, Groundhog Day Returns, or Seriously Dude Where Is Citizen Kane’s Sledge?

***

March 15: Someday I aim to win a pub quiz by knowing that Comic Relief’s The Stonk featured Judie Tzuke.

Things I have learned already today, no 1.

***

Top tip for feckless teenagers and anyone planning a robbery: press a crossing button in Bristol and all traffic will stop instantly.

I can’t see anything going wrong with this.

****

March 17: Movies revenues low

“Year-to-date revenues are 5% behind 2024 and nearly 38% behind 2019”. And I confess I’m part of the problem. We, as a couple, no longer go to the cinema. Is it just us?

A combination of lifestyle and streaming has accelerated a weaning-off live movies that we may have begun before lockdown. Knowing a movie won’t be long before it’s on streaming, and in the case of Netflix movies is now launched on streaming, means our hunger for movies in a cinema is so much less.

Remember a few years ago (ok, many many years ago, I forget how old I am) when movies would take literally five years to appear on TV? And when they did, they were panned and scanned on a TV screen that was probably 28 inches across?

It hardly compares to now where our TV fills as much of my field of vision as some multiplex screens used to, without the danger of popcorn munchers, crisp rattlers, chatterers, spoilers, and just plain other people with all that entails, getting in your way.

I forget the joy of the communal experience, which I have loved so many times over the years, and more often remember the feeling of having wasted more money than it was worth on a boring stinker.

What was the last film you saw on the big screen that you’d say was a must-see in a theatre?

Dear Private Eye cartoonists, a top tip: when you’re doing a pun based cartoon, try googling to make sure no one’s done it before you. Otherwise I just have to do it. Private Eye Magazine

***

March 19: Article says Tesla shares will tank and face a 'margin call'

Wishful thinking dressed up as journalism. Much as we all want it to happen, Musk’s shares won’t tank, he won’t face a margin call, and he won’t be forced to sell Twitter or bail on Tesla.

Tomorrow there’ll be a bounce back and he’ll be gloating about his invulnerability. Remember where you heard it first.

***

March 20: We’ve just finished all four episodes of Adolescence and Toxic Town, by the same author which must be the most frustrating bit of scheduling for him, wouldn’t you think? Whatever, both brilliant. Both on Netflix. (Once would have been on BBC1 and ITV, but that ship has sailed)

Essentially this year’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office and this year’s Baby Reindeer ( not necessarily in that order). Marvellous that such a thing as “must-see” water-cooler-moment TV can still exist.

My big takeaway is that I now need to re-examine the drawings the kids do in my Kev F's Comic Art Masterclasses to see if anyone’s been drawing kidney beans, exploding red pills and love hearts that I may have been misinterpreting. Also that “100” emoji, which I must have seen on this site a, well, a hundred times. Does it always mean something suspect? It’s a minefield.

Happiness is signing a pile of books for kids in a school. There’s been a lot of that this month.

Because there was World Book Day, which spills into World Book Week, and inevitably becomes World Book Month, I’ve visited nine schools as well as doing four days stood behind tables at comicons selling my books.

My main book, Richard The Third, has sold 286 copies this month, every one signed and handed over in person. I know it doesn’t make me the new Dav Pilkey, but it’s better than any of my books has done before now and it’s very satisfying.

Still holding out hopes of my agent finding me a major publisher and getting into those bookshops around the country. But till then, selling books as merchandise for my Comic Art Masterclasses is my modus operandi.

****

March 27: Severance spoilers. Just finished season 2 and I have to say it suffered from one big thing: Severance spoilers.

Too many people were dropping mentions of how good they thought it was, and there were reviews popping up whose headlines were all “you’ll never believe” and “the best thing about” making it too over hyped to live up to in practice.

My takeaway from the ending: what’s the big deal? You know what they don’t have at Lumon? Beds. Mark has to go home at the end of the day, and when he gets there he’ll find Gemma. Happy ending the end.

Anyway, all very nicely done, a rewarding mix of The Prisoner and Orpheus in the Underworld, with a touch of Lost (cos you’re still suspicious they’re making shit up as they go along). And that closing song is one of my all time favourites.

No season 3 please, that would be redundant.

Stories that you’re pretty sure were meant to be released in five days time, not on March 27th

****

Avengers Doomsday announces massive star cast

I know I’m always like this, but why does anyone think a movie with over thirty “stars” sharing the lead will be, in any way, a good thing?

That’s more than two football teams worth of players squeezed into two hours of movie.

They can’t get more than 4 minutes screen time each. And that’s if there’s no villains or, I don’t know, story.

I’m sure it’ll make billions. I look forward to making it all the way through when it ends up on streaming.

I hate to be picky, but that’s portrait

My Books And Where To Find Them...

Richard  The Third Paperback • signed	Findlay  Macbeth Paperback • signed	Prince of  Denmark Street Paperback • signed	Midsummer Night's  Dream Team Paperback • signed
Shakespeare Omnibus Paperback • signed	Comic Tales From The Bible Paperback • signed	Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories Paperback • signed	Space Elain Paperback • signed
Book Of Esther	Who Notes	Sweet Smell Of Sockcess	Attack Of The Sausages
My 1975 Diary Calendar	Colouring Books Paperback • signed	Scottish Falsetto Socks Annual	Tales Of Nambygate

Colouring Books: Doctors Who, Hollywood Legends, Punk, Cult TV, Eurovision Vol 1, Eurovision Vol 2, Eurovision Best Of British & Irish, 1960s Pop, 1970s Pop, 1980s Pop,  1990s Pop, 2020s Pop, Bowie, Scottish Pop, Royalty, Rom Coms