Back in 2013 I had a table at the first Lakes International Comics Festival in Kendal. Among the many highlights I met David Lloyd, co-creator and artist on the seminal graphic novel V FOR VENDETTA.
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After conversations I pitched an idea for a strip to be included in his online comics anthology ACES WEEKLY. The pitch was accepted and subsequently ran in Volume 9 of Aces the following year.
Over the ten years since, I have submitted numerous pages to the anthology, the latest being the debut of my character RADCLYFFE this year… but other than subscribers to Aces no one else has seen the fruits of my decade long labours… until now!
Collecting the first 136 pages of Aces strips, the GRAFFITTIFISH ARCHIVES VOLUME 1 presents four stand alone tales ranging from pure pulp action to surreal tales akin to graphic poetry, in big, A4, physical format in full colour for the first time anywhere.
Stovepipe illustrations are underway, the Aces Weekly Anthology will be available by the end of the month!!!
As well as this I’ve republished my ‘Pieces of Colour’ art book on Lulu for those who missed it when it initially came out.
A 96 page, 8.5 x 11 inch colour extravaganza, it covers the years 1996 to 2011 during the period I first tried to master digital colours on a desktop computer with a mouse. Some of the later pieces had advanced to a Wacom Bamboo tablet, but all of them together provide a visual map of my progress through a learning curve!
The book fills the gap between my early days producing xeroxed zine comics (a companion volume of these reprints to follow soon) and my final dive into serious graphic mark making, around 2010, and contains the reprint of my 21 page GWENDOLINE comic.
Together with the Aces volume, these three books will provide a pretty full overview of my art from 1992 through to the current day and everything that’s coming from Gweni Press in 2025.
Links to get hold of all the books are below and in the Shop link above, and page examples are…
Fundamentally it was to see if I could write a book, and as it turned out it was one of those experiences that left me with a family of characters that had fleshed themselves into being and a world that is still waiting to be explored further.
A few friends have read it (some of them 20 years ago) and the response was good enough for me to self publish it in 2006 through a DTP site.
That version was totally text based, and I had a strong desire at the time to illustrate it, in the way many books of my youth were illustrated by the likes of Charles Keeping and his kind.
It’s time to rectify that. I’m currently finalising proof reading on the original text and revisiting the designs and illustrations I did twenty years ago for the project.
Among the papers I’ve also found the scant notes for a sequel… ‘Stovepipe and The Skellermen’, which goes to show you can’t keep a good monster down!!
Stovepipe takes place in my home town of Whitehaven, tucked away on the industrial coast of Cumberland during the Second World War.
It is a book very much in the vein of books I read as a boy back in the late 60s and early 70s and is a tip of the hat to all the fantasy and adventure novelists who dragged me through my formative years.
The movies of Ray Harryhausen and Willis O’Brian were also a huge inspiration for the book – and I still love a good Godzilla movie to this day.
Among the fantastical elements there is also a deep ‘heart’ that is the central core of what the book is about, and on reading it again after many years it is a lot fuller and stands up far better than I thought!
So if you’ve already read Stovepipe’s original adventure or you’ve never heard of him… this new, ‘restored’ version might just be up your street!
Something I haven’t mentioned to too many people, but which seems to be springing up more now that time and tide is flowing ever faster…
I have quite a bad case of retrograde amnesia. Caused by damage my brain sustained in 1977 when my family were in a collision with a drunk driver.
Flowing backwards from then, for a period of roughly two years or so, any memories are non existent.
My mum died in the crash, so the memory of those last two years I spent with her are no longer at my fingertips. Though I have tried occasionally in the past to regain something from that empty space to cling onto, it’s only now with the extra time I have that I can perhaps give it the attention it needs.
As a firm believer in ‘art as therapy’, The Gap will be an attempt to stir up something from nothing.
As most folks know, I’m as much interested in the hows and why’s of the creative process as the what it actually produces as an end result.
Sparked by a query about why MORETTA was advertised as being part of the GRAFITTIFISH launch… but did not eventually appear, something strange obviously occurred in my creative juices.
Currently, NAVARRO SPAR and AFTER are the front runners for the next books to appear from Gweni Press – MORETTA, in a totally subconscious and unbidden move, hijacked ‘Navarro’ in my sleep and seamlessly attached herself like a flush fitting limpet to the internal logic of the story and added a layer of depth that until last night I hadn’t even considered!!
and so… MORETTA will make landfall in the first issue of Navarro Spar – coming soon – and totally because ‘she’ wanted to, and not in the way I expected!!!
The remaining copies of Dark Pastoral will be winging their way to the Edward Thomas Fellowship tomorrow. There are very limited numbers so I’d recommend pre booking with Jeremy as soon as you can if you want one.
Dark Pastoral: The Complete Illustrated Poetry of Edward Thomas is now in the planning stage. A series of 24- 32 page booklets, I’ll also be producing a limited, signed and numbered edition of only 75, A3 art prints of the covers to accompany each, for those who like there pictures for framing. The cover image to Volume One ‘Up in the Wind’ is currently available to order now.
Twelve years ago, in 2010, my good mate Scott Claringbold and myself attended the first Carlisle Comics and Fantasy Con.
Memories of the day are hazy, and other than sitting huddled around a table watching Peter Tyler’s showreel on his laptop (in lieu of a serviceable projection screen!) highlights were few… but by heck it was a laugh.
I launched ‘Bulletproof Nylon’ on the day… a rushed short story introduction for a concept that has grown exponentially to become my most fully developed planned project (bulletproofnylon.com) – and also discussed with Scott the progressing of a flip book idea based around an idea of his… a half man, half rat vigilante detective in a ‘Judge Dredd’ style environment.
Half of the proposed book was to be Scott’s take on the character, with a flip side tale from myself.
The project fell by the wayside for some time as ‘Bulletproof’ developed, but in the back of my mind ‘Ratcliffe’ as he was known at the time, mutated into something other than what Scott had initially conceived.
Over the past 12 years the character has changed his name, setting and story drive. As the years have rolled on so has his timeline developed and grown, along with the world he occupies. My interest in Steampunk, Victoriana, British Pulp novels and the Fin de Siecle art movement have come to the fore.
When Peter Duncan put out his request for story ideas for 1900… ‘RADCLYFFE’ (as he was now known) seemed a perfect fit.
And so we are here, as 2023 begins a knocking on the door, with my ‘boy’ ready to debut in the first issue of what promises to be one of the outstanding publications of next year… then I had an idea.
I passed a suggestion past the legendary David Lloyd as to whether he would be interested in another tale from the internals of my head!
Aces Weekly Volume 61 is coming up early in the year – RADCLYFFE will be gracing it’s digital pages and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I’m enjoying producing it!😁
So to recap… Coming up…
1900 – RADCLYFFE: Dawn of the Steamonculus
Aces Weekly 61 – RADCLYFFE: Scream of the Steamonculus.
after a couple of years falling foul of those nefarious types whose true designs always remain shrouded in darkness…
until you realise that your work is only a means to benefit their own agendas – with zero interest in your own…
it’s time for a regroup!
I’ve given the site a spring clean and ditched some superfluous pages, and I’ll be streamlining the ‘About’ page shortly – so if anyone wants to save any images that are on there at the minute now’s the time, before they disappear.
I was told many moons ago to ‘never admit that your art is your hobby’, but most who know me realise that I have a full time job totally unrelated to my art and writing… and that the pamphlets, prints, comics etc. that I release, are all produced in the odd pockets of spare time I get between working shifts.
I will be hitting a point shortly where spare time may very well be a lot more available…
Mal Earl 