New Comic Surprise!!

Well I usually joke that when its quiet here it means I'm working on something but its true! Here in all its glory is my newest comic featuring an old friend, The Curious Chancer! Featuring two short stories of my reluctant escapologist character, told in three episodes, the longest of which is coloured by Owen Watts of Hocus Pocus & David Copperfield fame - yes that one!.

I'm pleased with how its turned out but as usual dashing off for another event, the splendid Asylum Steampunk Festival, so no time for further details or to tell you how my recent events have been but maybe next time when time allows, I've a few boxes to unpack!

"Is it Dusty in Here?"

Last few years I've been honoured to be invited as a guest artist to a number of steampunk festivals and events which are great fun with my good lady and I really enjoying them, getting dressed up, meeting friends and making many inspiring creative discoveries along the way, not to mention the gin!

We made several comic strips inspired by the people we met at the UK's (and arguably the world's) largest steampunk festival, the Asylum, held annually late August in Lincoln and this comic page is from the second of them, titled Heart's Desire about a romance which may or may not run smoothly..... 

Colours again provided by the excellent and adaptable, Matt Soffe.

All the characters in the comics were based on real people and their respective steampunk personas encountered at the festival and used with their permission. We were always though a little nervous anticipating their reactions when the comics were released, but luckily everyone seemed to enjoy them and were pretty pleased seeing their alter-egos in the comic spotlight!

The comics were published by Accent UK under various 'Asylum' titles and became nice little souvenirs of the event. The first one quickly sold out and I have limited supplies of the second and third titles available directly from me - see convention appearances on the right, or from contacting or visiting Scott's Pops & Comics comic shop in Warrington, UK.

Return To The Asylum!

Well that was fab! Very busy and very hot, but a full on Return to the Asylum Steampunk Festival was splendid fun as always. A lot to digest and with an immediate trip North, I'll have to make do with just a few of the many photos and familiar faces I caught up with again for now. Many of whom are featured in our comic of the same name, freshly released at the festival where, flying solo, I was busier than normal, conducting comic chats and a well received drawing workshop - more later, when time allows!

Full Steam Ahead!

Anna Schiraldi's Lincoln Cathedral artwork from our Enter The Asylum comic

It doesn't seems 3 years but it is since the previous full blown Asylum Steampunk Festival and we can't wait for it to return next week!

It's fast become one of our favourite events with it's friendly atmosphere, immersive environment, packed inspirational programme, attractions and of course all it's splendid people. This will be our 5th time attending and each event has been different, either in it's themes, locations, headline acts or weather! But the constant has been the fun and creative inspiration encountered on almost every corner of the streets of Lincoln where the festival is held, all under the wide all embracing umbrella theme of 'Steampunk'!

There are many definitions offered for 'Steampunk' but for us it's become a fun, friendly way of sharing creative ideas, imagination (and gin) with like minded folk!

A Glimpse of the Steampunk Festival fun!

This year, our regular comics crew are a little depleted but teaming up with our long time pals - and fellow Asylum 5th timers - at Time Bomb comics we are delighted to return and provide a little creative comics corner at the festival with our latest art and releases. This time though, for our sins, we've been 'banged up' and find ourselves, innocent or not, displaying our wares in Lincoln Castle's Old Victorian Prison under the event heading 'COMICS in the CELLS! '.

We will also - parole allowing - be presenting a couple of sessions/workshops during the event;

SATURDAY 27^th August 

Heritage Skills Centre – 12pm     

COMICS CHAT ROOM!

Join comic creators Steve Tanner (Time Bomb Comics) and Colin Mathieson (Accent UK Comics) as they are temporary released from their Victorian Prison Cells to reveal the secrets behind their latest and forthcoming comics. Including the dramatic conclusion of the Flintlock series, the origins of the mythical Asylum Q, the exciting return of an iconic favourite, Captain Scarlet and a graphic novel inspired by one of Michael Caine’s finest! May contain freebies and surprise guests!

SUNDAY 28^th August      

Castle Talks Marquee – 12:30pm             

MAKE YOUR OWN PENNY DREADFUL!

Ye Asylum Chronicle editor is demanding a sensational headline and illustration for their latest issue, can you oblige? Have you been attacked by rats or witnessed an extraordinary scene? Perhaps you’ve been party to a shocking failure of fashion or just misplaced the gin?

Comic artist convicts Colin Mathieson (Asylum Comics, Moments of Adventure) and Dave Morris (Flintlock, Norton The Dragon) are on reprieve from the Victorian Prison and will guide you through the process to create your very own Penny Dreadful broadsheet to take away with you.

Remember today’s gossip is tomorrow’s news!

Paper, templates and pens will be provided in this informal workshop, suitable for all. 

Plus a mysterious 3rd session on Monday afternoon in the Heritage Centre at 2pm which may or may not involve 'Dave and Drawing'!

See the full packed events programme here!

It all promises to be splendid fun, so if you're thinking of attending why not give it a go and if so please stop by the prison and say hello to help prevent any miscarriages of justice!

Oh and did I mention a 'Q'? Thought not!😉

New comics work coming along!

Well when I'm quiet, it usually means there's things cooking away in the background, which is indeed currently the case!

Firstly we're gearing up for the long awaited return to the world's largest steampunk festival, Asylum in a few weeks time, which means work is now finished on Accent UK's third in the trilogy of Asylum themed comics, featuring stories and fun all inspired by people and events encountered at the awesome event, edited by Dave West with many fab contributions.

Not sure I should yet reveal Gary Crutchley's enticing cover, but here's a wee look at designer, Andy Bloor's contents page;

We decided not to kickstart this one, allowing festival goers to be the very first to get their hands on it, with subsquent details and appearances to follow. Where best to find us at Asylum is also subject to final confirmation with strong rumours that Lincoln's Castle's old Victorian prison may be the best place, unless we can find a decent lawyer of course!

Gearing up then for an autumn/fall release will finally be the new collected Zulu:Water Cart rescue graphic novel, inspired by true events during the victorian Anglo-Zulu War at Rorke's Drift. It's been a wee while coming but hopefully be worth the wait for everyone!

More details on these releases and future appearance at events, including Asylum to follow!

Steampunks in Space!

 

In a surprisingly busy end to a fairly quiet year for events, we have the middle of our three November events this weekend with Steampunks in Space!

Being held at the National Space Centre in Leicester, a venue familiar to me after I featured it in my popular 'Heart's Desire' story for Accent UK's Return To The Asylum anthology comic! 

The event has run for several years in conjunction with the Space Centre and The Ministry of Steampunk who host Asylum, The Town That Never Was and other splendid events that we try to attend or exhibit at when we can. Finally the stars have aligned allowing us, (well me really as the others can't attend), to countdown our liftoff to space!

Full details can be found at the Space Centre's website but be warned I think they have already almost sold out of tickets!

Back To School!

 

We are delighted to confirm that our comics collective, Accent UK will be returning to the convention scene this coming weekend at The Town That Never Was, the annual Steampunk Festival at Blists Hill Victorian Town, part of the Ironbridge Gorge Museums group!

We've had this event penciled in for some time, but with a change of dates, various ongoing restrictions - and sadly the continuing cancellation of most other conventions and festivals, we'd remained cautious, possibly too cautious in announcing it, but here we are! 

The Cthulu Party's succesful mayoral campaign of 2019

It'll - gulp - be my first event since Copenhagen in 2019 and the first together with Dave West in almost two years. In fact it's almost 18 months since we've last seen each other so you can see why we're getting a wee bit excited about being allowed out in the wild again!

The event is again run by the Ministry of Steampunk, (those splendid people behind the excellent Asylum Steampunk Festival, sadly cancelled again this year despite best efforts) in conjunction with the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust and this will be it's 4th appearance with us attending them all, exhibiting at the last three.

Everyone welcome from Hopeless Main to Mars (doesn't) Attacks - ack! ack!

It's a remarkable place a town literally rebuilt brick by brick around a foundry to preserve a lost way of life with working printers, blacksmiths, bakers, pub, sweet shop, chippy & much more! Special as all this is, when enhanced by the splendour of steampunk visitors it really comes into its own with attractions, musical acts, dancing, demonstrations, dinosaur detectives, artists, traders, makers & more, really bringing the town alive.

Colin meets his Asylum comic story stars!

This time, we are to be housed in the Stirchley Board School (site 46 on the map below!) dating from 1881 where along with other artists and imagineers we are presenting the perfect Back To School tonic of ABC.....Art, Books & Comics!

We are, as you can see, quite excited by actually having an event to go to and an opportunity to catch up with visitors and the wonderful steampunk community that we are privalged to be a small part of. Please do consider popping in if your logistics and personal situation allows as you are guaranteed a very different, refreshing and inspiring experience and if you visit the school we promise to go easy on the homework!

Get ready to ROCK!

In an explosive end to the year, Accent UK has just launched the Kickstarter for an exciting new comic’s collaboration with industrial post-apocalyptic band V2A!

A continuation of the creative concept unveiled at last year’s Asylum steampunk festival, (in the short story contained within the Return to the Asylum anthology) DOOMSDAY is the first of a two part series involving an exciting team of top creative talent.

V2A with Accent UK's Dave West & Gary Crutchley at Asylum Festival 2019

Scripted by Dave West and V2A’s Drone, the comic is being illustrated by P.J Holden of 2000AD fame, coloured by Accent UK stalwart Matt Soffe (and recent 2000AD & Heavy Metal gigs) and will sport a choice of two covers by V2A’s album cover artist, Vlad McNeally and comics rising star, Ryan Brown, (2000AD, Marvel, D.C etc).

The campaign was fully funded in its first 4 hours and promises to be a bright start to next year. Check out the Kickstarterpage here and Dave’s blog for full information and WITNESS!

A snippet of Ryan Brown's stunning cover!

2020 Gone ?

Ah, in not unexpected news both September's re-arranged Edinburgh Comic-Con and November's Thought Bubble Festival have now been cancelled due of course to the coronavirus pandemic. Both events immediately confirmed their return for 2021 at their respective venues and regular calendar spots. Obviously everyone's health, well being and safety have determined that this was the sensible course of action but does starkly lay bare the massive impact the virus has had on our shared hobby and community with this year's calendar of events effectively wiped out.

There are still a couple of potential events in the autumn/winter timeslots that have yet to make an annoucement, (or to invite exhibitor applications) but it seems unlikely they will be able to proceed for the same health & safety reasons and/or for logistical, economic reasons as the UK, and sadly most of the world, face an uncertain immediate future.

Thought Bubble have quickly confirmed that they will fill their now vacated November dates with a virtual event so we'll see how that goes and there are similar recent announcements about  Asylum, our cherished steampunk festival doing likewise, which should be fun, if the earlier 'Steam Over Ether' event was anything to go by, so there are a couple of highlights to look forward to in an otherwise empty landscape.

At Accent UK HQ, we are, like all independent creators feeling the pinch as planned releases, appearances and of course earnings have taken a hit. We remain though optimistic and with the likes of Kickstarter - still time to check out the current succesful Kia Wordsmith campaign - we are exploring available avenues and platforms to make our future endeavours available and are using the unexpected free time to develop a surprise or two.

Heart's Desire - The Movie!

Ha! Ha! That was truly wonderful! Thhe splendid Steam Over Ether virtual Steampunk Festival has unvieled the world premiere of the first Accent UK comic strip to be animated!

Heart's Desire was one my strips from last year's Return To The Asylum comic, ably coloured by the very talented Matt Soffe. As stated, the strip was inspired by a truly lovely moment at the previous year's festival, involving two members of the longstanding steampunk community (and Asylum Festival family), which I used as the basis of a story featuring their ertswhile personas, Count Rostov and Lady M.

The story was fun to produce and thankfully well received by readers and the couple themselves and that was more or less that, until a fairly recent online discussion between the Count's alter ego and myself led to a suggestion to apply the 'radio-play' treatment to the comic strip and well that was the easy part, Keith himself and of course Malika did the rest with a wee nod from Mr B.

Well you can now see for yourself how things turned out here where the finished video was revealed in all it's splendid glory, there's even an 'after credits' bonus scene of the moment that inspired the whole undertaking! Oh, the video starts about 2 or 3 mins in but worth watching the whole thing including the Brigadier's short reading before and some Scottish chap chuntering about comics afterwards :)

The SteamPaper Shopping Channel!

As part of this weekend's splendid and fun SteamPunk Over Ether virtual festival, support of the contributing artists, musicians and performers is encouraged, all of whom have had their incomes directly affected by cancellation of events and gatherings so if you are in a position to show them any support, please do so.

There will be a dedicated shopping channel featured on the Steampaper page at or around 3pm today  but please check the channel's schedule for confirmation. Don't forget though that all performances, demonstrations and chatter will be subsquently available for 'catch up' on videos on the Steampaper facebook page.

In that spirit, you can also purchase copies of some of our comics in print or digitally by contacting me or checking out the etsy store, any difficulty, please comment below, thank you.

Asylum Pencils to Page!

Advance copies of our 'Return To The Asylum' comic had a great reception at this year's wonderful Asylum Festival in Lincoln a couple of weeks ago and there's still time to guarantee yourself a copy in the last couple of days of our kickstarter campaign.

This year, I had promised myself that I would write and draw one of the previous year's kickstarter reward stories and was delighted that it had been backed by the curious chap, Count Rostov, giving me a chance to feature both him and the lovely Lady M :)

A fun madcap adventure soon ensued across six pages, taking in stolen airships, space rockets, a Titanic homage, Morocco and more! For those who like a look 'behind the creative curtain', you're seeing here, one panel from my Heart's Desire tale in it's pencilled, inked, coloured (by the ever wonderful Matt Soffe) and finally the finished lettered stage to let you see the different phases involved in bringing the story to life.

 

 

If you'd like to see more, not just of my fun wee strip but many others all inspired by characters and events encountered at the Asylum Steampunk Festival, you can order a copy at our soon to close Kickstarter campaign by clicking on this link. Thank you for your interest and support.  

The Finished cover by Gary Crutchley & Matt Soffe

Return To The Asylum!

Aha, I'm delighted to confirm that Accent UK's brand new comic; Return To The Asylum will launching this weekend in Lincoln, appropriately at the Asylum Steampunk Festival!

This is a sequel of sorts to last year's Enter The Asylum comic which proved very popular and again features comic strip adventures inspired by and starring the alter-ego steampunk persona's of festival goers, who have co-operated with our creators to produce 6 original comic strip stories plus a bonus short in this new all colour perfect bound issue.

I have two stories, one again illustrated by the talented Anna Francesca Schiraldi, featuring a Licensed Elemental Conservationist (aka 'Faery Catcher') and a seemingly cheese-obsessed Professor!

  
Secondly, I've both written and drawn a story featuring the legendary Count Rostov and Lady M, Asylum festival stalwarts and contributors who enjoyed  their own real-life moment in the spotlight at last year's event, which I was fortunate to witness. I therefore just had to come up with a wee story to explain the resulting 'happy ending'!

If all this sounds of interest and sadly you're not able to attend this weekend's festival, then the comic is currently the subject of a pre-order campaign on kickstarter - check out the link here where you can find out further information on the other stories and creators involved!