The Wolfmen - Did they fall or were they pushed ?

I can still remember the night Andy Bloor came over to discuss our collaboration and let me see his sketchbook, in the hope that we'd come across something that would inspire us. What I found in those pages was a real treasure trove of images that generated a whole host of ideas in my head.

The one that jumped out the most to me then was the image of the Werewolf in a suit, and so we decided to go for The Wolfmen.

It was to be the first full comic that I'd write for someone else to illustrate. It was a real challenge for me creatively as I had to write the script and then step back. I'd have to stop myself from trying to influence the artistic direction it would take.

I had nothing to worry about. When Andy showed me the finished pages I was blown away. He had completely captured that Film Noire feel that we both wanted for the book, and his use of grey tones really cemented the tale in the days of black and white television and newspapers.
So, here we are a few years down the road. Andy now has twin sons, hopefully learning how to draw, and both off us have learned plenty since that book hit the shelves. We're both still very proud of The Wolfmen though, and didn't want a sequel to dilute the impact of that book, or to just be a re-telling of the first story.

I'm happy to report that it isn't.

We see Jack Grey come back for revenge. We see a rival gang, The Ghosts, move in on The Wolfmen's patch taking advantage of events, we see Jenny caught up in the middle and then there's Detective Knight beginning to realise that he is completely out of his depth.

Early reviews have been very encouraging, http://paradoxcomicsgroup.blogspot.com/, http://www.hypergeek.ca/ both rated it highly and Diamond gave it a Certified Cool logo, which all following on from a great launch at Canterbury's Whatever Comics are all very encouraging and are why we produce these books. So, The Fall Of The Wolfmen has been delivered to Diamond UK's offices, and if your local comic store has ordered any copies then it should appear on the shelves over the coming weeks.

We'd love to hear what you think of the book once you've had a chance to read it, and if you really enjoyed it then The Fall Of The Wolfmen is also up for an EAGLE, as is Andy Bloor for his artwork, if you haven't had a vote then by all means pop over to http://www.eagleawards.co.uk/ and give it your vote :o)

The Accent UK Website Upgrade - Phase 1.

It's been a long time coming but Colin Mathieson, Andy Bloor and I have agreed that it's time to overhaul our website and bring it into the 21st Century. I'd been discussing it with Owen Johnson and had received feedback from Garen Ewing and Martin Flink suggesting that it could be improved, and right they all are.

The first step of the process is this blog. I've been running my own blog for a while now and I like the ease with which it can be maintained, and also the way it drives you to make the whole thing a visual record, rather than just a lot of text.

When it comes to what will become the new Accent UK website however, the first step is to design the look of the thing, and how it will flow. This will drive the decision on what menus to have, and how deep to make it. I like the idea of having more sample pages up there, and there are some nice ways of achieving that these days. Andy Bloor will be designing the look of the website of course, which'll ensure that not only does it look great, but also that it captures the same look and feel as the comics themselves.

It's very early days but Andy has already started to pull some potential screen images together...

and it's shaping up very nicely. We've been in discussions with a web developer, so that once we've sorted out the design we can quickly move into build.

This Blog then will replace the News and Events pages within the original website. I won't be migrating all the old entries across though, it'll just move on from today's entry, so I'll have to see if we can keep the archive material available somehow within the new website, as they do bring back fond memories.

News
A few things to mention;

1. Diamond have accepted PREDATORS, from the PDF copy, which is a great step forward for us as it means that we can now print closer to the actual number of copies ordered through PREVIEWS.
   


2. Voting is still open for this year's EAGLES over at http://www.eagleawards.co.uk/, so if you haven't voted for your favourite titles and creators then nows the time to do so, to make sure that they make it through to the short listed 5 per category.
   


3. Jim Schwitzer has been reviewing a lot of Independent Comics over on http://talesfromtheparentsbasement.com/. He's not made them generally available as yet, but I've been allowed to listen to the first 2 of what Jim has called the Indie 500, and they're solid, well balanced views of Jim's on some of the Independent Comics that he's read recently. And 'Yes', the intention is for him to review 500 Independent Comics... a noble aim.