news | The Intercorstal

I’m currently planning a Kickstarter campaign to launch (and print) ‘The Intercorstal: 683’, which is an abstract anthology-style comic inspired by the British comics I was first exposed to as a child.

The comic’ll be 36 pages in total when finally completed, which includes the front and back covers, and I’ve got 32 of them done — each of the actual comic pages are done, and the cover. All I’ve got to do now is the ‘letters page’, the back cover, and two full page adverts.

I’m very close to fixing a launch date now — should be announced in the next couple of days. There’s a lot of work that goes into these things, certainly more than I’d bargained for.

As a ‘taster’, here’s the first version of the cover I did, which I’ve since rejected for (what I hope is) a better, fully painted cover.

683 Page 01_cover web

As 2015 draws to a close, it’s probably a good time to review what the year has brought The Intercorstal, and what The Intercorstal has brought the year.

Firstly, there was of course ‘After Smith‘, the 10-page sequence produced for inclusion in Projectraum 404’s Abstrakte Comics series. As well as introducing The Intercorstal to Germany, it was mentioned in the German paper Taz, as well as getting a feature on Down The Tubes. Added to that was the gift of Tom Whiteley’s piece which accompanied the show, and can be downloaded here.

683 Page 13 web — Page from The Intercorstal 683

My work on ‘683‘, took a pause whilst I worked on After Smith, and then again as I worked on ‘Neighbours Bring Food’, but is more than half-way finished now, and is working out pretty well. As long as everything goes to plan, there should be print copies available in March 2016. I’m also planning the follow-up to 683 already, after a few thematic things loops closed unexpectedly earlier this month. I’ll go on to that nearer the time.

‘Neighbours Bring Food‘ was completed for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, as part of the Windows Trail. It was displayed in the windows and interior of Iridium Stationers in Kendal, (and is also available to view, niftily, on Google Maps). I’d been thinking of whether doing an Intercorstal version of something I’d never read/watched before would be successful, and Neighbours Bring Food gave me that chance, doing over ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’.

2015 also saw the official close of ‘The Intercorstal 2‘ as a project. Always difficult to define, ‘2’ found me really testing what I could do with the project, eschewing some of the elements that I was no longer comfortable with (the eyes/teeth/hands motif for instance, which had been a defining element when the comic was first born) and developing new tools and ways of working. Without ‘The Intercorstal 2’ I’m not sure how to group the outlying pages that get done — my Deaths Head II or Dungeon Fun reworkings for example. I’ll come up with a name for them, I’m sure. I’m good at naming things.

Here’s some pictures to support this blog: