Take that, world of webcomics!

The unstoppable Paper Jam Comics Collective have taken over Dennis J Reinmuller's Tumble and Fall, almost certainly the finest webcomic about a man repeatedly tumbling and indeed falling in three panels in various situations. Despite the niche format, it's kind of ingenious and has a sense of poetry and pathos in its absurdity.

To comprehend, start at the start here. To view the Paper Jam takeover, begin here. To sully your eyes with the Oscillating Brow effort, go here.

Take that world of comics publishing!

The Paper Jam crew were at Leeds' Thought Bubble Festival. It was ace. I was rubbishly epic-fail-tastic at both getting to panels AND helping out on the stall, but had a diggety dang good laugh. Official press release from the Jammers here.

Tony Horne makes you yawn [Take that world of prose publishing pt.2]

Paper Jam was at the Durham Book Festival. It was quite a lot like the Whitley Bay shinding a week earlier, and although we made probably a comparable number of sales, the day was somewhat more disappointing because the potential to flog stuff (and more importantly talk to people about comics) was substantially undermined by the fact that most stalls, including ours, were situated in the same hall as the author talks - and when authors were talking, punters were disinclined to come and have a wander round (and those that did, we couldn't talk to).

We didn't want to hear Tony 'local radio personality' Horne try and flog his book about (literally) taking a family holiday to Australia, we wanted to talk to people about comics, dagnamit. To be fair to Mr. Horne, that's what he and the other authors were there for, it was the setup that was at fault. Regardless of how interesting the readings/talks were, it was simply unfortunate that they couldn't have been in a separate room to the stalls.

On the topic of authors, special props to local author of 9987, Nik Jones - his book sounded a little too grisly for my tastes but he seemed a nice chap and bought a copy of something from us, possibly Space Monkey.

Anyway, a few sales are a few sales and a day sketching is never a day wasted. Anyway, onward to Thoughtbubble.

Space Monkey launched into the cosmos of AWESOMENESS

Ladies and gentlemen, the latest Paper Jam Comics Collective anthology, Space Monkey, is now available (stupendous cover image above by Dan Gilmore).

It will be sort of officially launched at the Durham Book Festival's Book Fete on Saturday October 24th (where Paper Jam will have a stall selling all their wares). You can also get it from the Travelling Man comic shop in Newcastle and hopefully other places (such as via online magic) soon.

It's the group's first attempt at something aimed predominantly at youngsters and is an excellent and entertaining read for persons of any age.

The Oscillating Brow contribution to this fine publication is a one-pager called Dinosaur Nigel. The protagonist is a dinosaur who is called Nigel.

Take that, world of prose publishing!

Paper Jam Comics Collective was at Whitley Bay's WordPlay festival. It was subtitled as being a festival about the written and spoken word. No mention of pictures, but we brought 'em. The visitors mostly had no idea of what to make of our enclave of sequential art amongst stalls of local prose and poetry publishers, but we enlightened them. Words and pictures, chumps! Take that!

Sketches and suchlike can be found here.

Paper Jam on tour

Yo peeps! Paper Jam Comics Collective will be representin' at several upcoming things, namely:

Whitley Bay WORDplay book festival

Durham Book Festival

Leeds' Thought Bubble comic convention

Be there or be square, fools!

A Local review for local people

Should you wish to read a review of the rather good Local by Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly, I've written one for the Readers of the Lost Art website. Check it out here.

It's moderately in-depth, but a little dry and lacking in humour (the review, not the book - the book is... well, just read the review, fool!).

There are a bunch of other reviews up there by the Readers of the Lost Art crew, including a few by me, although I must shamefully admit that this is my first for quite a while.

Most notable of my reviews is quite a large review/analysis/rant about Marvel Civil War specifically, and more generally, the problems of mainstream superheroics - it can be found here. If you disagree with it, you're wrong.

How Bob Marley likes sandwiches

The comic-producing juggernaut that is the Paper Jam Comics Collective have a new blog thing whereby the most notable lunatic products of the 24-minute-comic scribbling that occurs at meetings will be posted regularly. It is cunningly known as Paper Jams. It features some fine material. And also some from Oscillating Brow.

The Investigatist Arrives

Ladies and gentlemen, the first proper Oscillating Brow comic is sort of finished.

Tales of Extraordinariness #1: The Investigatist is now available for purchase.

It's eight pages (well, six excluding covers) of spectacular (well, shoddy) artwork telling an exciting (well, tedious) story featuring the Investigatist. He investigates stuff! Like crimes and what-have-you!

It may be available at Travelling Man Newcastle for a mere (well, outrageously overpriced) 30p.

Hopefully Tales of Extraordinariness will be a vaguely regular kind of thing.

Things that have happened previously ...and that

So, although this blog is kind of new, 'Oscillating Brow' has been around a while. This is mainly representative of an utter failure to produce even the shortest comic to be photocopied and produced under this imprint.

However, Oscillating Brow work is out there! The Paper Jam Comics Collective (which has been going for around two and a half years, based in the Travelling Man comic shop in Newcastle) has put out five (count 'em, FIVE) anthologies and Oscillating Brow material has appeared in them all. For those interested, the anthologies have been:

• ...And That - The legendary original. Made for Free Comic Book Day 2007, about 70 copies were made and all were given away free. Now out of print, though it can be found online.
• Halloween ...And That - spooky Halloween themed stuff. Quite nice production values. A few hundred were printed so there are still some available.
• 24 Minutes ...And That - based around a perennial favourite activity of the group (a variation on '24 hour comics', doing comics in, yes, 24 minutes, mostly one page on a randomly-set theme), it was the product of one hectic evening's activity. Surprisingly quite good. Was the first to be launched with a party (bands, cake, and comics goodness). There may be a few of the second print run still knocking around, or maybe not.
• You Will Have To Wait ...And That - a rather obtuse theme, based on odd objects and the phrase 'you will have to wait', but a nice collection. Another tremendous launch party occurred for this one. I think it is out of print.
• Robots ...And That - the current publication, an absolute monster: more pages, better quality work, a larger-than-A5 square format, a giant launch event at the Star & Shadow Cinema. On the shelf right now. If you are ever in Newcastle and read comics, you should go and buy this a.s.a.p.

There will be more of these and hopefully at least a few pitifully tiny comics made entirely by Oscillating Brow will be out soon.

A Bold New Exciting Thing About Stuff!

Would be tremendous wouldn't it? Alas this blog is not that thing. It is another kind of thing, a tedious thing that is not sure what it is doing, but will link to things and clutter the internet up. And talk up projects that are unlikely to come into existence.

Be nice, please.