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!