Alex de Campi: Gojira!

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FILM & TV

COMICS & BOOKS

30.10.04 Remember This Name

Last Saturday we had a small comics convention in London, but it feels like years ago already. Conventions are always fun, for seeing old friends and meeting new ones. At this convention, I was quite surprised to meet three excellent artists - of which by far the most stellar is Jean-Jacques Dzialowski. Click on the Batman picture below to see the full page.

JJ has done a back-up in DETECTIVE COMICS and some X-Men samples, all of which are stunning. One meets a lot of artists at conventions; very few stand out. JJ was the best I'd seen in a very long time. Remember his name, because he'll get picked up by a big publisher, and soon. His website will be up by the end of the year, and then you can see more of his work than the three pages I link to here.

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28.10.04 Don't Say I Never Do Anything For You

I've been working with the very talented young Belgian artist, Rob Croonenborghs, on 6 CHARCTERS, a short story for Volume 2 of the VARIANCE anthology. The anthology isn't due to hit shops until late January 2005, but if you click on the picture below, you can download a pdf of the entire story (3.8MB, dial-up beware). It's a meditation on what happens to unfinished ideas, in the guise of a horror story. Rob has a fabulous and very unique style, and I'm sure he'll be snapped up by Oni or Top Shelf. It's really gratifying to see a young artist who is confident enough to do their own thing, and Rob's style enhances my script to no end.

I'm also doing a 16-page sci fi horror story, HIGH + LONESOME, with artist/colourist Len O'Grady for Variance. I'm not going to give you a free download of that, because otherwise you'll have no reason to buy the anthology, but I will put up a page or two later this week as Len has drawn one of the coolest spaceships ever for it.

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27.10.04 Buggity Buggity Bug, Begone!

A few friends pointed out earlier this week that the Comments function was not working on this site. And I just thought you all didn't love me. After a midnight coding frenzy last night, I think I've managed to fix it now, as well as the Archive function. I am ridiculously pleased about this, as all my html coding is self taught and I find Blogger's codes particularly byzantine. Email me if anything still doesn't work.

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26.10.04 And Now A Word From Our Scenester

I heartily endorse this product and/or service.

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25.10.04 The Pimp-O-Rama

I pimp Mark Waid and Leinil Yu's SUPERMAN: BIRTHRIGHT in Ninth Art's weekly forecast.

Rich Johnston pimps COMMERCIAL SUICIDE in Lying in the Gutters.

My co-editor Kieron Gillen pimps pages one and two of Juan Arteaga and Felipe Sobreiro's "The New Adventures of Sigmund Freud" from COMMERCIAL SUICIDE. Clicky for bigger versions. The final panel of page 2 is worth the price of admission alone:

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Am I Blue

My hair is now bright turquoise. My body image has yet to catch up. I pass by mirrors and think, who the HELL is that?

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24.10.04 Suicide Cowboys Go To London

We sold 107 copies of Commercial Suicide yesterday at London's Wintercon. That's over half our European print run. We're thrilled, and I may even be able to pay my credit card bill from the printers', when it comes. What? You still don't have your copy of Commercial Suicide? Run, don't walk, to purchase this fine 102-page compendium of wrongness for only £5 of your Earth pounds (or $8 of your Earth dollars) from this site right here. When it sells out, it sells out, and don't say we didn't warn you.

Wintercon in general was a great success. Tokyopop came (hurrah!) and had a fantastic table at which I spent too much money on manga. They also announced a UK Rising Stars of Manga contest, which is great news for the UK's quite vibrant small-press manga scene. I'm told some important DC people were at Wintercon, but I was selling books or hanging out with my mates, so yet again I failed to meet Dan DiDio. Oh well.

I did meet a number of interesting new artists, most of whom don't have websites (GET WEBSITES, PEOPLE!), but I'll try to post some of their samples later this week.

( 11:30 AM ) (0) comments

The Gemini Incident

The N29 night bus to Camden. At Tottenham Court Road, two women get on. They are identical twins - small, with birdlike eyes, and at age 45 they still dress exactly alike. It is very late and I am tired, so when I see them it seems for a moment as if reality has stuttered. They both have the same short, practical hair, dyed the same shade of burgundy. They wear the same black Timberland parkas with turquoise lining, and I know without looking that they wear the same delicate leather lace-up shoes, with slightly pointed toes. They believe in long walks, disdain alcohol and cigarettes, and know what to do with wheat germ. It is 1.12am on a Saturday night, and I cannot think what could possibly cause them to be up at this hour. They glance at me as if I am a zoo creature and, in perfect sync, turn to go upstairs.

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22.10.04 The New, New Pornographers

COMMERCIAL SUICIDE has been banned from sale by GOSH Comics on Great Russell Street, for reason of being filth. I am at once both annoyed and quite proud.

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21.10.04 I love Paris when it's raining...

Exhausted. Back from a one-day trip to Paris yesterday. Hell IS the last Easyjet flight from anywhere. Saw some friends old and new, and as a bonus got taken to the vernissage of FIAC, Paris' big annual contemporary art fair. There was the usual dicks-and-fannies shocko/yawnorama, and the "I'm so clever that just by photographing an advertisement I raise it to the status of ART!" stuff, but also a lot of excellent, innovative, and disturbing work. Inspiration for SMOKE covers, ahoy. Also, I've come to the uncomfortable realisation that I mainly know Paris from where events in Melville films occur. The Place Vendome is the heist scene from CERCLE ROUGE, etc. Oh, and girls: never, ever walk down the Rue de Faubourg du Temple in a miniskirt, unless you want to be propositioned by lots of very shopworn-looking men.

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19.10.04 Creative dogwalking

9.30am this morning, Hyde Park. A young, plump Filipina sedately pushes a white drinks trolley - the kind you'd use for patio parties in Darien, Connecticut - out of the park entrance. On the top shelf of the drinks trolley lie two aged black-and-brown Pekinese. Two more lounge on the bottom shelf. It is cold enough that their wheezy breath is visible as little puffs of mist. A final pair of Pekes trail behind her on leads. They make no attempt to walk; instead, their claws scratch the pavement as they drag. They bark indignantly at my bicycle. Pulled up outside the gate is a silver Mercedes sedan with its hazard lights blinking. In it, an aged, bleach-haired Knightsbridge matron waits to receive her six darlings from their morning promenade.

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18.10.04 New Ninth Art column and review

At Ninth Art today: I sound off about death and decompression in the Comment column, and in the Ninth Eight I preview the American debut of one of my favourite French comics.

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17.10.04 Daisy does downloads

Commercial Suicide goes to the printer tomorrow at 9m, to be ready for its lanch at the London Winterfest on Saturday. Just £5 for 100+ pages of sick and twisted humour! But right now you can download a pdf of my 4-page contribution, Daisy Cashes In, and marvel at just how badly I draw. Note: the story is NOT WORK SAFE, and the file is circa 1MB because Josh sent it to me at print resolution.

( 7:47 PM ) (0) comments

All change please; all change

I'm in the middle of a very large website update, so please let me know if anything isn't working. I'm deeply indebted to my flatmate Dave for helping me integrate Blogger into my index page; I was too damn stupid to do it myself. Hopefully the site is a bit better organised now. If you're looking for the old Life During Wartime dispatches, they are now in Amphigory along with other strange gain.

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