Roger Langridge's Blog, page 160

Criminy Pre-ordering Info

Tiresome (but necessary) heads-up regarding the usual wacky, illogical, counter-intuitive direct market pre-order nonsense: Criminy, the graphic novel by Ryan Ferrier and Yours Truly, is now available to pre-order through your local comic book store.

Because your pre-order directly affects the number of copies your store will order, it could make a world of difference to the book's chances – and, indeed, whether or not you even see a copy on the shelves. So, if you have the slightest interest in picking it up this September, I urge you to do the necessary and ask your comic store to order it for you from Diamond Distributors Previews catalogue. There's a handy link here giving you all the information you need. (And if you're not a comic shop regular, Dark Horse Comics have links to some other ways you can order it right here.)

Thank you!

Comicdom Con, Athens

I'm flying to Athens later today to be a part of Comicdom Con this weekend! I'm taking part in various events throughout Saturday and Sunday, including a presentation on Sunday where I'll be trying to improvise a short comic live, with suggestions from audience members. Never tried this before, so it could be a triumph or it could all end in tears. We'll see! Regardless, it should be loads of fun. Do come along if you're able. More info here.

Happy 100th Anniversary Spike Milligan

Spike Milligan, the greatest British comic talent of the 20th century*, would have been 100 years old today. So I thought I'd post this three-pager I did in 2003 for an anthology called Spark Generators, the theme of which was for cartoonists to draw a piece about an artist who had inspired them and their work.

It looks a bit strange, I'm afraid. This is because I was travelling around New Zealand at the time the story was due; my daughter had just been born and we were visiting my family there. In those pre-broadband, pre-WiFi days, that meant I needed to create very small digital files so I could e-mail them from an internet café, and the best way to create artwork with a really tiny file size was to use vector art. So I created the whole thing in Adobe Illustrator on my laptop, and never really got to grips with it. As a consequence, it's piggin' ugly. Consequently, this will be your last chance to see it until Spike's 200th anniversary.

(* Opinions differ, but this is the only correct opinion.)

Work In Progress

Here are a couple of recently-pencilled pages from Criminy, in the interests of sticking my head above the parapet and waving. Not much time for anything else for a bit...

Ramona Fradon

Here's a Ramona Fradon Metamorpho drawing I found on the internet, which I inked for fun last year. (Fradon is one of my top five all-time favourite superhero artists, and has been since I was a kid.) Original pencils and my inks posted together for comparison.

Criminy Incidentals

Here are some random characters from Criminy. Some of these I designed before it was green-lit, some I'm designing on the fly as I draw the book, and some have changed a bit since these drawings were done.

Pigmalion

Ancient sketch

One from the vaults here, no idea when I drew it... posting now because it made me laugh.

Criminy Criminals

Some more character drawings from the Criminy pitch material.

The Wedding

An unposted commission from last year.