Issues One and Two are there too, as is the brilliant Christmas special from last year

Anyone that would like to keep up with what I’m doing can check out my Tumblr which I’ve been using to post sketches and doodles - alotron.tumblr.com

The way people use and access the internet is changing at a vertiginous rate, it seems, from the open web-browser, dedicated website model to the mobile internet model of linked app-silos (Facebook. Twitter, Tumblr etc), and we creators have to move with it, I think.  I’ll probably start posting full comics on those sites as well as here, so give me a follw if you feel like it! This site will of course remain and I’ll continue to update it with new stuff as and when, and it serves as a nice archive.

The web is dead, long live the internet!

Michael asked me (and others in a wide variety of styles) to do a pin-up of Sherbet to accompany the launch and book, so here’s a scaled-down version for your viewing pleasure:

Update: The book was funded well ahead of schedule! Congrats to all.  There’s now a 10k stretchgoal to get the book in partial colour, which means colour pin-up pages! Well worth backing!

‘MOOSE KID’, the amazing new humour comic for kids has gone live! Volume 1 is  free to view online or download and features 36 pages of amazing new characters and fantastic artwork.  It’s been put together by comic-champ Jamie Smart and a few of his pals as an attempt to inject new life and original creator-owned content into a kids comic market that is (Beano and Phoenix aside) largely dominated by licensed properties based on TV shows and movies. Have they been successful? By gum, yes!

I’m lucky enough to have a page in it called ‘Gimbal and Chug’, about this rusty pair of obsolete robots:

I put a lot of thought (probably too much!) into Gimbal and Chug and have lots of background info and origin stories for both of the characters and the crumbling industrial world they inhabit.  I was reading a lot of Jim Woodring around the time I was creating this strip, so the opportunity to create a ‘silent’ or wordless strip was too tempting to resist, and it was a nice opportunity to do something a little different to ‘Faraday’ and my work for the Beano

As for the comic itself – there’s a mad range of creators and styles on show – a handful of familiar faces from the pages of the ‘Beano’, a few from ‘The Phoenix’ (how I wish that title was available in Ireland), the world of book illustration, webcomics, Tumblr and much more.

The artwork and design is consistently beautiful across all 36 pages, so you’re bound to find a something you love.  My favourites after a first read are probably ‘Sir Loynstake’ by Rick Eades, ‘Flora and Fauna’ by Laura Howell, ‘Airlock Homeboy’ by Nigel Auchterlounie (‘when will he see me for the beautiful woman I am’ is probably the best line in the whole comic), and ‘Young Tank Girl’, which reads a bit like Charlie and Lola for slightly-more-grown-ups.  Having said that, I love pretty much everything between the two covers and am looking forward to seeing MORE!

It’s worth noting that personal hero Tom Paterson’s in there with ‘Beelzebaby’ a sort-of reboot of his famous Sweeney Toddler character – always a pleasure to see new work from a legend like him; one of the biggest influences on my own particular development as a cartoonist alongside Jeremy Banx and Raymond Briggs.

Anyway, enough waffle – Click here to read and be amazed –> MOOSE KID

I’m in there with fellow Beano scribbler, Steve Beckett and the guitarist from Good Charlotte ( a comic book artist in his own right – who knew?) amongst others.  It’s fun. My strip allowed me to draw one of my favourite bands in a couple of compromising scenarios, sample below!

Check it out if you like rock, Metallica or comics, yo.  If you don’t like any of these things… I dunno, there are no words.

It’s in the shops ’til next Thursday or so.

Here’s a link to the segment if you’re interested:

Click to embiggen!

Apart from yours truly it features a raft of great-looking schtuff from Irish comic talents including Phil Barrett, Eoin Ryan, Fintan Taite, Maeve Clancy, Bob Byrne & loads more.  Well worth checking out.

It’s published for school-age  kids, so if you know a kid learning the language, or even just interested in it, it’ll make a great gift!  You can get it in newsagents throughout the country, and it’s available on Kindle and iPad and for online purchase too – check it out here.

I’ll put up an English language version of my contribution on this site in the new year so look out for that!

Le grá,

Al

Issue 5 Cover

This is a bit of a dream come true, and goes part of the way to explaining why there’s been little or no activity on this site for a while.  If you’re in the UK or Ireland (and possibly elsewhere, I’m not sure…) why not pick up a copy and check out the mini-strip I’ve got running for the next six weeks starring ‘Danny Diddly O’Donoghue’; it’s a leprechaun-themed parody of rock-star incongruence told via the 3-panel medium! I’ll be doing a few more things for them after that as well too

If you’ve got young people in your life, you could do a lot worse than gifting them a copy of the comic – while its new direction may have upped the pop-culture references, it still retains its humour and trademark mildly anarchic charm.  All the old characters are still there, and some have been given timely makeovers to bring them more into the 21st Century – in particular Jamie Smart’s hilarious and energetic reboot of Rodger the Dodger (who seemed weirdly anachronistic even back in the 80s when I was a kid), and Alexander Matthews’ fantastic re-imagining of Ball Boy.

In the meantime, Faraday lives on in my sketchbooks, forever threatening to make a return.  I don’t feel like this site is moribund, or even on hiatus – life moves at such a fast pace that sometimes even I get a shock when I realise the last ‘new’ Faraday was in December last year!  Faraday is a labour of love, and each strip takes a bit of time to produce from script to screen – so I’ve decided to launch a sister-site (EmbassyofMars.com – don’t look, there’s nothing there at the moment!) asap where I can put sketches and non-Faraday stuff including the B&W comics  that appear on this site as ‘intermissions’.  There’ll be a proper announcement when it’s up and running & I promise I’ll do my best to get something going again here soon!

Cheers all,

Alan