The truth about bats

Rummaging through my drawers

I've kind of fumbled and dropped the Eggmen ball. After doing them for a few years now I seem to be in a solid groove and I have more ideas for them than I'll probably ever have time to use. But I'm not feeling any particular urgency to get them done. For the last few days I've been doing almost nothing but gardening. Christ, I hardly know myself any more. There might be a bit of Eggmen action before Christmas but, if not, I'll start again shortly after. Christmas is usually a time for Lego and video games in our house anyway.

One other thing I've been doing is poking into the dusty little corners of my life and seeing what I find there.

The 3 pictures below are from a rather grandiose and over-reaching project I (almost) started a few years ago. I was going to make up the story as I went along and render every page in a different medium - just because. Not surprisingly, I didn't get very far; not only was the whole idea kind of contrived and pointless but I didn't have the skills or the patience to pull it off. I also never had a story although it was going to involve the central protagonist going mental and hijacking a Metro bus in order to go on a nice drive in the country.

Anyway, as much as what you see here is half-arsed, overworked and unfinished, I'm starting to think 2013 might be time to get recklessly ambitious again. But I'm still not going to finish this thing.

Page 1

Page 2

 

Page 3

Diversionary tactics.

No escape

It only just occurred to me that this little story may be getting slightly creepy. Oh well, in for a penny.

Why bother?

Bye bye, bus stop.

Tune in next time for a thrill-a-minute bus ride to God-knows-where.

This is getting out of hand.

For whom the bell tolls.

A few years ago I was chatting with a builder at my house; it turned out he had been a paratrooper in the army and had once seen some poor kid deck out after his chute hadn't opened. He painted a fairly vivid picture of someone dying in agony with every bone in his body broken (they pretty quickly pumped him full of morphine, apparently, and he slipped away peacefully) but the the thing that stuck in my mind - and refused to leave - was the description of this kid screaming for his mummy. Not his mother - his mummy. I read around it a bit later and this seems to be a really common thing when young men die violent deaths. It's not surprising, I suppose, that when death arrives much too soon and much too painfully you might want to return to the womb.

So, in trying to get it out of my system, here is a whirlwind tour of the history of warfare, as seen through the eyes of young warriors staring into the face of death and calling for their mummies.

As for myself, I intend to go out in a comfortable armchair with a good book in my lap, a contented smile and the warm late-afternoon sun on my face (having never experienced any of the horrors of war). 

Singing is better than iPods. Apparently.

I have to stop this. That song won't go away and I'm driving the rest of the household mental. It's like I'm possessed by a demon. If Whitney wasn't already dead I would have to kill her myself.

Yay! Finally!

I'm really hoping this isn't the only thing I post here this week but, at this rate, I'm not expecting a great deal more. I have pieces of paper all over the kitchen bench, all scrawled with rambling, half-arsed threads and all refusing to resolve into something coherent. Most have me striking out confidently from A and I can see B on the distant horizon but I have absolutely no idea how to get there. It's all moving inside my head like cold molasses. But, hey, it's moving. Around the end of the week it will all fall out at once and for a very short amount of time I will appear to be hugely prolific.

Superpowers!

Meanwhile...back at the bus stop.

The End!!!

Finally! The first page of this 15-page story was one of the first pages of comics I ever made (and posted here nearly 4 years ago). It was never really meant to be a story at all - I'm not sure it deserves the label even now - but a succession of daft ideas kind of accreted around it and it just developed a momentum of its own. And now, thank god, it's finished. I can go back to my life. But I don't think I'm quite finished with trilobites.

You can read the whole thing (in reverse chronological order) here.

The veil is lifted (finally)

I am yourself!

Bus Stop #8

The return of 'Pepe le Egg'

Now that this new deity has been born I have to admit to not really knowing what to do with him. I'll get round to it but, for now, here's some mild vulgarity to fill the space between episodes.

And introducing....

Oh dear.

The message

The messenger of the gods is a cheesy beat poet, as it turns out.

This one's finally about to wind up

It's all getting a bit exciting

This dead horse is getting stinky so I will stop flogging it now.

Confessions of a weirdo magnet

The perils of public transport

With apologies to La Monte Young.

A little tweak

Sucked in.

Here's another. Good god, I'm on fire.

There IS a point to "Teddy"...

...and I'll let everyone know as soon as I figure out what it is.

Nobody really, actually asked for this but here it is anyway.

Everyone should have a hobby

And there's more.

I was really pleasantly surprised by how many people told me they thought the contents of "Eggmen Book 1" were "thoughtful" and "existential" and "philosophical". Those people will probably be sadly disappointed by what follows.

Moving right along...

School! Yay!

More blah

It's good to be back at the table with a pen in my hand after Saturday's launch. It was a really nice event and definitely the most intense 2 hours I can remember having for quite a while. Thanks to everyone who came (especially the people who bought books and/or tea towels). And thanks again to Isis and Damien at Milkbar. And thanks to Karina for taking photos.

Book launch people!