Accent UK gets advert in Kick Ass 2 no. 4

Well, it's been quite the week for us at AccentUK.

Due to a favour done by Andy Bloor for Mark Millar, Mark has given us a page advert in Issue 4 of Kick Ass Vol 2. It's great exposure for us and we're really grateful to both Andy and Mark. We're lucky that Andy is such a talented designer type person ... as well as damn fine artist. In other news, Owen Johnson (writer up My Maker & I, which is a fabulous full colour one shot that is in production, with artwork by none other than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Dan Duncan and colours by Matt Soffe) has been interviewed in Issue 1681 of Comic Buyer's Guide. It's always a challenge to fit everything into these interviews and mention everything but Owen does a great job. You can see more over on Owen's blog.

PREDATORS has hit the shelves of UK Comic shops, I've seen it with my own eyes, so if it's not in yours and you want to pick up a copy then have a go at the store manager. Sales were a little down on the books that have come before it, due I think to it clashing with DC's relaunch of all of its titles, so chances are you might not find it very easily. We will have copies for sale at the Leed's Thought Bubble event but it would help us out a lot if you'd get your comic retailer to get some copies through Diamond Distribution.

ZUMBIS !!!!

We'll, following on from PREDATORS, and with ZOMBIES 2 pretty much completed, the next Accent UK will actually be the Brazilian edition of our first ZOMBIES anthology.

Mauricio over at Gal Editora, the company that translated and published the Brazilian edition of Whatever Happened To The World's Fastest Man ?, has selected tales that he feels will best appeal to the Brazilian reader and has been busy getting these translated over the last few weeks. Under a new cover by a Brazilian artist which Andy Bloor has given the same overall feel that he gave to Steve Bissette's cover for the UK edition. Mauricio was keen on bringing onboard some well known Brazilian creators to help generate interest, which seems a good idea.

This edition will also have a number of new tales from Brazilian contributions and also Marleen Lowe's story collaboration with her brother Stephen from ZOMBIES 2.

I'll keep you posted on progress, the full list of UK contributors can be found in a previous posting.

PREDATORS is getting good feedback from the contributors who have now received their copies, and the Small Press Big Mouth podcast has reviewed it already, you can hear what they think of it in Episode 33.

PREDATORS hit the Birmingham Comicon.

It's been a lean year for Accent UK with regards UK Comic Conventions. With one thing or another, clashing dates with MOCCA and Library commitments, we just seem to have missed out on them all. So it was great to be able to make the Birmingham Comicon, the little sister of BICS, on Saturday. B.C. would also be the first Comic Convention to see our troubled PREDATORS anthology, which was to be printed and collected the week before. The book seemed to have been really cursed though as Friday passed and no books were delivered. Fortunately for us though we use UKOMICS and Stuart promised to have some boxes couriered to the venue on the Saturday morning, and true to his word they were there waiting for us.

and very nice they look too ... oh ... and the smell .... anyway ... where was I?

B.C. is very much the little sister of BICS. It was a one day event, had a smaller list of stars and consequently a small attendence. We sold a good number of comics but nothing like the numbers we sold at BICS.

So, was it a good event ?

Absolutely. As is typical at these events we got to speak to a good number of Accent UK contributors about current projects. We got to speak to a number of potential contributors and maybe some one shot creators. We spoke to people who enjoy reading our books and were very happy to see PREDATORS at last, Colin read some comics...

I attended an Independent Comics Panel and talked about Accent UK and how difficult it is to get comics out there. This conversation moved into the world of digital comics (and if you are interested in following up on LUSH comics then there's a link top right of this page) and it was interesting to see people clinging on to the past. Best of all though, we got to see the smile on Ken Mullins' face as he picked up a copy of PREDATORS sporting his amazing cover art.

Yep. A great day.

Next Con for us is Thought Bubble in Leeds, a two day event.

Thanks mostly to my daughter for taking the photos. Jemma has discovered that the sure way of not appearing on any is to keep hold of the camera and point it at other people.

If you are a contributor to PREDATORS and didn't pick up a copy at B.C. then email me your address and I'll pop your contributor copy in the post.

Birmingham Comicon 2011

Accent UK have a table at this year's Birmingham Comicon, on August 27th. Yep, only a couple of weeks away.

We will have copies of PREDATORS for sale and look forward to discussing forthcoming projects with readers and creators alike. If you've been itching to see your work published, or just fancy seeing your work in one of our anthologies, then by all means pop along to our table and show us your portfolios.

The table will be manned by myself, Colin, Andy and Owen Johnson this year, and we hope to see some other Accent UK regulars on the day. If you're a PREDATORS contributor then be sure to stop by and collect your free copy of the book itself, and sign my copy.

PREDATORS have made it ...

Great news ... PREDATORS has finally made it into PREVIEWS.
Following a few months of problems at Diamond, with new staff etc, our latest anthology, PREDATORS is in issue 275 of PREVIEWS (August cover date) on page 224.

A great cover image from Kev Mullins with overall design by Andy Bloor accompanies the blurb by Colin, and it all looks very nice indeed.

We'll be going to print over the next week, and will be launching the book at the Birmingham Comics event at the end of August.

Saturday saw us not at Manchester's MCM but at the Central Library in St. Helens.
It's been a bit a repeating theme of the year for us, this clashing of event dates. We had committed to the St. Helens event before we got any confirmation from MCM though and so it was to St. Helens and not into Manchester that we set off on Saturday morning.
Tom-Tom and Col-Col permitting.

It was our first event of this type. We'd presented as the sadly missed Borders before, but we've never really been put infront of 16 kids and been set the task of explaining how to make comics and from there get them to have a go. But there we were, having done plenty of preparation and having sounded out my daughter Jemma, who was the average age for the day, we were in fact pretty confident we could pull it off. And we did, I think. Keeping to a 3 panel story we had all of them thumbnailing, panelling, penciling, colouring, inking and lettering their efforts. And for those who had finished we had them designing super-hero costumes. All of the fids were very attentive, all the styles and stories were very different, and a good reflection on the industry as a whole, and all of teh efforts were very impressive. We had a great day.

A big 'Thank You' to the staff at the Central Library in St. Helens for treating us so well, and to the kids for making the event so enjoyable. We'll be doing more of these in the future I'm sure.

In other news, my old laptop has died, formal ceremonies take place next week, and so I've had to set everything up on a new one. Not a problem from a 'files' perspective as they're all on external disks, but it has caused a problem for the wesbite, as I'm having trouble getting CuteFTP to talk to the web provider. I'm working on it, and am now using their support services, but it has resulted in no website updates for a few weeks, which includes Strange Times. Apologies for that.

It's a good job we now have this blog ... and I'm therefore provided with another way to communicate, along with emails of course.

Accent UK goes digital...

Well, it's happened.
Something that I've been looking to do for a year or so now, and through a new independent comics app available through iTunes you can now download Whatever Happened To The World's Fastest Man?
The Lush Comics app for the iPad can be found by either browsing http://lushcomics.com/ipad, which will redirect you to the app, or by just searching for "Lush Comics" in the iTunes App Store. The iPad version is "Lush Comics HD" as opposed to the iPhone version, simply called "Lush Comics".
Justin, who created the app etc, is a keen supporter of Independent Comics and created this app as he saw a gap in the market and wanted to allow us to have a presence in the digital world that didn't find us hidden amongst the countless X-Men titles.
It is our intention to put our entire back catalogue up there over the coming weeks. If you're a contributor to one of our anthologies can you please give me your permission to use your work for this purpose. As is the case with the paper versions, there will be no actual payment for this, any funds will be put into future anthologies, but we will keep the price very low, to encourage as many people as possible to see your work. If you don't provide permission then we'll keep your contribution off of the app, not a problem, just let me know.
It'd be great to see more UK comics up on iTunes, if you would like me to connect you with Justin then let me know.