Great footage of loads of bands you will have heard of and even more that you may not have heard of. This scene directly influenced my thinking and work as a self-publishing comic and zine artist. It’s not a manifesto, but I wouldn’t be doing what I am today without  it.

Since 2008, Anto Dillon and various enablers have organised a fantastic annual day-long celebration of all things DIY. What I especially love about it is the cross pollination between the DIY punk, zine, alt-comics, lowbrow/underground art and activism communities that happens at this fair. I feel an affinity with all of these scenes to a greater or lesser extent, but it’s only here that they come together in such a special way. I always try to donate some time to put together a poster for it. This year I may be running late, but I’m well pleased with the results.

Anyway, I’ll be manning my stall selling my small press and mini comics (including one newish compilation that I put together in August, but haven’t promoted yet), so do come along. It’s bound to be a great day.

So March 1st is officially ‘Creator Owned Day‘ in the comics world, a day where artists post characters of their own creation on their websites, so in the spirit of solidarity, here’s a rather quick sketch of Daniel ‘Danno’  Kirwan. – a confused and angry young man of 23 who ‘works’ as a self appointed security guard down his local Chinese takeaway. He’ll be the focus of my next self-penned story which will be going into a very special anthology that I’m very excited about. It’s still a bit too early to announce any more details, but I’m excited. I’ll leave it at that.

Dark plots are hatched in  the corridors of power. Larkin is released from prison and delivers another of his rousing speeches, a particular quality for which he was well remembered (actual recital begins at about 1:03). I was rather pleased with this page, although in reflection the second panel will probably be redrawn before publication.

Only 12 pages to go on this project and I can begin to think about some new ones in earnest! Have a very special project lined up to see the light of day before the summer that I’m incedibly excited about, but it’s too early to spill the beans.

By the way, you’re keeping an eye on my Tumblr, right? Diary comics, and extra insights into the Big Jim working process are some of the many delights you might enjoy over there.

Here’s a full page from the Big Jim graphic project. This part if the book deals with a particularly messy incident where the good intentions of individuals actually may have had a detrimental affect on the campaign being run by the perceived ‘good guys’trying to help out the poor and downtrodden. Cryptic? Convoluted? Well it’s another example of the weird relationship between the Catholic church and it’s dominating position in Irish society at the time, and I guess you’ll have to read the book when it comes out or check out those links for your history lesson.

Getting accurate period reference continues to throw up storytelling challenges, but I’m pretty happy with how the setting for this scene came out.

Here’s another short sequence from the Big Jim project. I’m not known for any sort of  ’high octane’ storytelling, so when it comes to action sequences like this (and there are plenty scattered throughout the book) I find the infliuences of my misspent youth reading X-Men and Batman comic books coming into play.

There’s a balance to be struck in a sequence like this. I don’t want to downplay the brutality of  the Dublin Metropolitan Police (who by all accounts acted as little more than hired thugs), but I don’t want to fall into the trap of glorifying the aesthetics of violence, which unfortunately many comics do. Hopefully I’ll strike that balance throughout.

As if keeping one blog updated regularly wasn’t hard enough, I’ve gone and signed up to Tumblr.

For a while, I’ve  felt like I have to have something announce to warrant a post on this blog, so the  tumblog will work as a much more informal outlet for diary comics, sketchbook excerpts, and random personal illustrations updated several times a week. So add it to your rss reader or if you’re on tumblr get ‘following’, ‘reblogging’ and ‘liking’ as one does in these situations.

In the meantime this blog will continue to be updated with works in progress, previews, news and the usual bits and pieces that you may have come to expect up to now.