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With the wizarding world returning to the big screen with a movie called Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, not only will the magic return but so will the many magical creatures we have come to love. But which ones will we meet again, and how many new ones will we be introduced to for the first time?

There were many different types of magical beasts that were mentioned and introduced throughout both the Harry Potter books and movies. We all have our favorites, the ones we’d want as a pet, and now, the ones we want to see return in the Fantastic Beasts movie. I’ve decided to explore a few of my personal favorites. I’ve got my copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them here to help us rediscover these fantastic beasts.

Shall we start with the obvious? Probably the most popular and most widely known throughout the wizarding world as well as the Harry Potter fandom. Terrifyingly beautiful, they are the hardest creature to conceal from muggles.

Dragons

We were first introduced to dragons in Harry’s first year, when Hagrid began raising a Norwegian Ridgeback in his cabin. They were mentioned many times from that point on, finally making a reappearance in Harry’s fourth year as the first task of the Triwizard Tournament. Since the four wizards each had to face a different dragon, we had the pleasure of being introduced to four new breeds: the Hungarian Horntail, the Chinese Fireball, the Swedish Short-Snout, and the Welsh Green.

There are ten different breeds of dragons known in the wizarding world but they occasionally interbreed, producing rare hybrid dragons. They have just a few different uses among wizards, namely for their wands. One option for the core of a wand is a dragon heart string. Other aspects of dragons are also useful in brewing potions or as fertilizer for plants.

As full beings, they have been known to be used as obstacles, sort of like guard dogs. Aside from the triwizard tournament, we see them used this way in the lower levels of Gringotts Bank. The Golden Trio even lived my dreams by flying a Ukrainian Ironbelly, the largest breed of dragon, to safety.

Moving on to one of my personal favorites.

Hippogriffs

A Hippogriff is a beautiful creature with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a horse. They first appeared in the books in Harry’s third year, when Hagrid took over the job of Care of Magical Creatures professor. Hagrid owned a beloved Hippogriff named Buckbeak. Luckily, Hippogriffs are one of the creatures Hagrid owned throughout the books that are actually able to be domesticated.

Hippogriffs are very sensitive creatures. One must be very careful when attempting to approach them, bowing low and keeping eye contact at all times. If the Hippogriff bows back, it is safe to approach farther. Also, it’d be wise to remember “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” otherwise you may end up with an injury or two.

Phoenix

Very few people have been able to domesticate these birds, but it is not impossible. Phoenixes are grand birds, with rich scarlet feathers and a golden tail. They are very gentle creatures whose tears have powerful healing properties. The Phoenix song is quite magical as well, it is believed that it can increase the courage of the pure of heart and strike fear into the hearts of the impure.

Ablus Dumbledore was one of the few able to domesticate a Phoenix. Harry, along with the rest of us, were quite confused when Fawkes suddenly burst into the flames the first time we saw him. Phoenixes have a regenerative ability that let’s them burst into flame when their body is weakening and be reborn from their ashes once again. They can also disappear and reappear at will, taking anyone holding onto them along with them. Kingsley Shacklebolt had it right, Dumbledore’s got style.

Acromantulas

I’ve never been one for spiders but I think if I ever came within 100 feet of an Acromantula I’d probably soil my pants. It may not be the prettiest magical creature that I know of but it is definitely one of the scariest and most interesting. An Acromantula is a large, eight-eyed spider that is capable of human speech and has near-human intelligence.

Hagrid raised an Acromantula from the egg, creating a profound bond between the two. The Acromantula, Aragog, inhabited the Forbidden Forest until it’s untimely death in 1997. Within it’s life, Aragog established a colony within the forest where it’s children still live today.

Since the latest trailer for Fantastic Beasts was released, we have caught a glimpse of two new beasts: the ever-adorable little trouble maker, the Niffler, and the Swooping Evil. The Swooping Evil isn’t in the Hogwarts textbook, so Warner Bros. will be including Beasts fans would never have expected. The Niffler, the creatures listed above, as well as many others, you can learn more about in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them book!

Leave a comment about which fantastic beasts you’d like to see in the movie!

This week we celebrate the artwork of comics legend Paul Smith! The 600th issue of Uncanny X-Men hit the stands this week and I was very pleased to see that Smith contributed one of the variant covers for this landmark issue. X-Men was really the reason I got into comics as a kid. In fact the very first comic I picked up and read(besides the Bob’s Big Boy comics they used to give away when you ordered a kid’s meal..) was Uncanny X-Men #166 with that glorious Paul Smith cover of The X-Men battling the Brood!

A good friend of mine at the time(probably ’83/’84) had an older brother who collected comics and he had an big, old chest full of them(no bags ‘n boards, mind you..). So, when I’d go over there for a sleep-over, I’d get to rummage through his treasure trove of funny-books and then pull a few out for some late-night sleeping bag reading! Those Paul Smith issues of X-Men were truly magical, and always will be to me. There have been many great artists to work with Chris Claremont on his classic X-Men run, including legends like Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, Terry Austin, Bob Wiacek, John Romita Jr, Barry Windsor Smith, Arthur Adams, Alan Davis, Jim Lee, etc. etc, but for me, my favorite X-Men artist will always be Paul Smith. 

Smith is mostly a self-taught artist. He worked as an animator on Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings and American Pop before working at Marvel Comics in the early 1980’s. After establishing himself on titles like X-Men, Doctor Strange, and Marvel Fanfare, Smith would go on to do more independent, critically acclaimed series like Leave It To Chance and The Golden Age, both with writer James Robinson. He continues to work in mainstream comics for special projects, and cover illustrations, while also staying very busy with private commission work.

The best place to get updates on what Paul Martin Smith(PMS) is up to and to see more art is on his website here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

The discovery of water on Mars has been claimed so often that I’d forgive anyone for being skeptical about the latest announcement. Frozen water, ice, has been proven on Mars in many places, there are lots of ancient canyons hundreds of kilometres long that must have been carved by rivers, and much smaller gullies that are evidently much younger.

The post NASA discovers water on Mars again: take it with a pinch of salt appeared first on OUPblog.

May Contain Spoilers

Review:

I loved Fireborn, so I was eager to dive into Wicked Embers.  While I did enjoy it, the non-ending was a letdown for me.  I prefer at least the illusion of completeness, even if I know that the larger, more complicated plot threats won’t be wrapped up until later in the series.  I didn’t even get my faux ending here; instead, Emberly, Jackson, and Rory manage to survive a no-holds barred battle with some vampires and bam!  It’s the last page.  So the grade did take a knock for that.

Emberly has a lot to keep her busy.  She keeps having dreams about a mysterious creature with backward feet that sucks organs from corpses, there is a passel of nasty vampires after her, she’s made more werewolf enemies, and Sam, her love of this life, still hasn’t forgiven her for not being honest about what she is.  All of this keeps her on her toes and fighting for answers.  As the frequency of her dreams increase, she’s desperate to track down the creature before it moves from the recently deceased to killing its own victims.  She and Jackson are also looking for a backup of research notes, which may or may not exist, about the Crimson Death, which turns its victims into mindless killing machines.  The red cloaks, victims of the red plague, are controlled by a psycho wearing a gray cloak, who is also after Emberly for nefarious purposes. She is thrust from one precarious situation to the next, with hardly any time to catch her breath! 

Even though the book is almost 400 pages long, the pacing is such that I polished it off very quickly.  I was reluctant to put down my Kindle, and I was happy I waited until the weekend to start this, because I stayed up past my bedtime reading away.  While we learn a little more about phoenixes and the fae, I wish the world building was a bit more robust.  Details about the creatures populating the series are slowly teased out, which can occasionally be frustrating. 

I like all of the characters, especially Emberly and Sam.  Emberly is tough, and I get a real sense that she isn’t human.  She’s a spirit, a creature made of fire, and in order to survive, she needs Rory, her life mate, to recharge her energy and ensure that she reborn from one life to the next.  Because of their symbiotic relationship, phoenixes are cursed.  They need their life mate, but they will never be in love with their life mate.  Instead, there is one person that they are fated to fall in love with every lifetime, only to have their love rejected.  Emberly’s love is Sam, but he, understandably, just can’t wrap his head around the need to have Rory in the picture, too.  It didn’t help that Emberly wasn’t up front with Sam about herself, so Sam just thinks she’s cheating on him with Rory.  I can see how that would be a relationship breaker!

I’m hooked on this series, and I can hardly wait to see what happens next.  Thanks to Signet, I have a copy to give away to one of you.  Just fill out the widget below to enter!

Grade:  B

Review copy provided by publisher

Keri Arthur, New York Times bestselling author of Fireborn, presents the thrilling new Souls of Fire Novel featuring Emberly Pearson, a phoenix that can transform into a human—and is haunted by the ability to foresee death….

Crimson Death, the plague like virus spawned from a failed government experiment to isolate the enzymes that make vampires immortal, continues to spread. Emberly and her partner, Jackson Miller, are desperately seeking the stolen research for a cure before the virus becomes a pandemic.

But their mission is jeopardized by another threat uncovered in Emberly’s prophetic dreams. A creature of ash and shadow has been unleashed on a murdering spree. Now Emberly must summon all her gifts and investigative knowledge to put an end to this entity’s brutal rampage—even if it means placing herself in harm’s way….

Enter to win a copy of WICKED EMBERS!

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Commission Sketch of Chris Hemsworth.

After a whirlwind tour of the southwest, I am finally home and ready to take a nap. Yet there is no rest for the wicked, new art to do, a book to illustrate, shows to prepare for, and generally going crazy… in a good way. So where to begin? Let’s start with a short recap of the shows I attended.

First up was there was the Long Beach Comic Expo which this year expanded to two days this year. This turned out to be a great move as attendance was great this year and everyone had a great time. We had an odd placement for our table that had me a bit worried, but it all worked out quite well. Lots of great costumes, fun panels for all ages, plus perfect Long Beach weather, what more could one ask for? Next year they are holding it earlier in the year on February 28th and March 1st, plus they are moving into the larger halls, roughly about five times of the space they had this year. So they are going bigger and better, hopefully they are not expanding too big, too fast as I love this convention and want to see it continue for years to come.

Maleficent and Evil Queen looking good… I mean evil.

Then it was off to the surface of the sun… I mean Arizona for the Phoenix Comicon, which was a fantastic show. There were over 77,000 fans in attendance that kept me and Shawn busy through the weekend. I was amazed at the cosplayers that braved the heat in full costume, brave dedicated fans they are. On a note about Phoenix, I love this show so much that next year is a big thing is happening. Drum roll please… I am moving out of the artist alley into a booth for the show next year. It is amazing and nerve wracking at the same time, but the correct move as my business moves forward and grows.

The minion of Mystical Apothecary

Shawn and I stayed in Phoenix for the week (thank you Keith), as we had a show the following weekend, Mad Monster Party. This was a small horror convention that took place in downtown Phoenix. It was a fun little show (lots of fun because we were next to our friends from The Mystical Apothecary) that has promise if they bring it back next year, lots of cool fans of horror showed up and there were some great celebrity guests to meet. One of the problems was that since it was the week after the comic con and there might have been some fans that were too worn out to come to this event. There were also some people that seem to find out about the event by happenstance and were unaware of the Mad Monster Party before hand. Their main show is in Charlotte, NC and that one has a great turnout; so maybe with some patience and love, the Phoenix show will grow to attract more attendees.

Taking Bumblebee down… plus Justin and Hilary Orr photo bombing.

Finally we headed north to the Amazing Las Vegas Comic Con, a show I vended at last year on their inaugural show. Taking place at the South Point Casino (which is quickly becoming one of my favorite casinos), this year it was bigger and better organized in the placement of tables and booths. Attendance was up this year, but sales were down slightly, but overall a successful show. Thanks to our booth neighbors of Abe Lopez and Stuart Smithee; also thanks to the photo bombers supreme of Justin and Hilary Orr from across the aisle.

With Abraham Lopez… and Nic Cage?!?

I have a few weeks off before San Diego Comic Con (sadly still no booth, but I will have art up in the Sails Pavilion gallery there), so I must go work on some new art pieces for the upcoming shows.

Have fun and keep creating…

–Diana

The post Home once again, at least for a moment… appeared first on Diana Levin Art.

May Contain Spoilers

Review:

ZOMG! I loved this book!  It’s got a more than capable protagonist, an ill-fated love interest, and, quite possibly, a world ending plague.  Yeah!  I can’t resist this stuff.  There’s great action, three sexy guys, and an interesting murder mystery.  The only thing it doesn’t have?  An ending.  So, yes, it got a knock for that.

Emberly is a phoenix.  She’s working as a secretary at research lab, deciding that in this lifetime, she’ll take things easy.  No derring-do or premature death for her this time around!  She wants to life her normal 100 year lifespan, without the unpleasantness of an early, painful death.  This time, her soul mate, Rory, is the thrill seeker, and they’ve agreed that one risk taker in the family is enough.  If they both die prematurely, that’s it.  No more rebirths, no more re-dos, and no more life.  If both of them are killed, they cease to exist, so they’ve made a pact.  Only one of them is allowed to be reckless per lifetime.

Heh.  Only trouble follows Em like a swarm of mosquitoes on a hot, humid day.  She can’t escape it.  After having a dream that her former lover, Sam, is murdered in the shadiest part of town, she can’t help but go and save him.  While she doesn’t have premonitions very often, and she’s learned the hard way to ignore them, she just can’t sit back and let Sam die.  He’s the love of this lifetime, and even though there are still bad feelings between them, five years after their breakup, she is compelled to save him.  This selfless act hurls her into so much danger that I think she should immediately form a new pact with herself – don’t rescue ex-boyfriends, because the only reward you get is trouble!

Sam and Em broke up because he caught her with Rory, and not understanding her nature, he accused her of cheating on him.  Phoenixes are cursed.  They journey from lifetime to lifetime with their soul mate, but they are destined to never, ever love them.  Instead, they have a love of each lifetime, but those relationships are fated to end miserably.  Sam is Em’s once in this lifetime, and she’s never going to get over him.  I don’t want to give away all of characteristics of the phoenixes, because I enjoyed learning about them so much, but I will say that if Rory and Em part permanently during one of their lives, they simply fade away, so the other is essential to their very existence.  Sigh.   What a major bummer.  Always finding that one perfect guy for yourself, but then always losing him because he can’t deal with what you are and what you need. 

Sam is a cop, and he’s investigating a deadly virus that either kills victims outright, or turns them into murderous monsters.  When Em’s boss is murdered, she’s drawn further into the case.  Her boss, Dr Baltimore, was working on a cure for the virus, and Em was transcribing his notes.  A boring job, but one that paid well.  With a darker, more sinister Sam leading the investigation, Em can’t help but get tangled up in the search for the murderer, especially when the murderer thinks she might have the professor’s missing notebooks.  Soon all kinds of nasty things are after her, but she’s determined to find out who – or  what – is behind the virus and the murder of her boss before they murder her too.  With the help of a private investigator, the lascivious fire fae, Jackson, she’s on the fast track to an extremely short lifespan. 

I could not put Fireborn down.  I even got a little resentful when I had to put down my Kindle to run errands.  I thought the pacing was spot on, and the world-building seemed natural and I found it interesting.  I enjoyed getting the story from Em’s POV – she’s got a great voice and made an entertaining narrator.  The only reason Fireborn isn’t getting an A is because it doesn’t have an ending, and you all know how much I hate that!  I am looking forward to the second book in the series, because this was a winner for me.

Grade:  B+

Review copy provided by publisher

Be sure to check out all of the stops on the tour.

Here is yesterday’s stop – ON STARSHIPS AND DRAGONWINGS

And here is tomorrow’s stop  FANG-TASTIC BOOKS

From Amazon:

From New York Times bestselling author Keri Arthur comes a brand-new series featuring heroine Emberly Pearson—a phoenix capable of taking on human form and cursed with the ability to foresee death….

Emberly has spent a good number of her many lives trying to save humans. So when her prophetic dreams reveal the death of Sam, a man she once loved, she does everything in her power to prevent it from happening. But in saving his life, she gets more than she bargained for.

Sam is working undercover for the Paranormal Investigations Team, and those who are trying to murder him are actually humans infected by a plaguelike virus, the Crimson Death—a by-product of a failed government experiment intended to identify the enzymes that make vampires immortal. Now all those infected must be eliminated.

But when Emberly’s boss is murdered and his irreplaceable research stolen, she needs to find the guilty party before she goes down in flames….

The post Review: Fireborn by Keri Arthur appeared first on Manga Maniac Cafe.

The only cons I like better then ones that I can ride my bicycle to are cons that only take an hour and a half  drive.  Sometimes the commute is intimidating and it's much easier to just stay home.  Amazing Arizona Comic Con gave me too many reasons to not miss this event.

Hurrah! We got comics into this year's Hay Festival! Here are our two fabulous editors (and fellow contributors!) Woodrow Phoenix and Rob Davis, holding a lovely copy of our graphic novel, NELSON.



If you follow my blog, you will have seen loads about NELSON and our launch events already, but if not, here's a little peek:



NELSON's a comic book for adults, in which 54 of Britain's top creators each took a day in the year of a woman's life and, basically, we created a person. I got 1973, when Nel was five years old. So Rob Davis had taken 1968, the year Nel (and her brother, Sonny) were born, and made a comic, then Woodrow Phoenix took 1969, my studio mate Ellen Lindner took 1970, Jamie Smart took 1971, and another of my studio mates, Gary Northfield, took 1972. I read all of their comics, then decided what would happen in the next year of Nel's life, and created three pages of comics about her first day at school, in 1973. The book continues like that, with creators each taking a year until 2011, when Rob, who's initial idea it was, brings it back to a close.



Here we are on Hay's Starlight Stage - me, Woodrow, Rob and Kristyna Baczynski talking with actor and journalist Lisa Dwan.



There was already lots going on at Hay when we arrived! We met up with Oliver Jeffers in the Green Room, who urged us to come along and paint on his Jumpers wall. We saw MP Tom Watson and got him to come along and paint with us.


Oliver Jeffers, Lisa Dwan, Woodrow Phoenix, Kristyna Baczynski, Tom Waton, Sarah McIntyre, Rob Davis


It was funny, because we'd been having a big debate in the van about the way Oliver always puts matchstick legs on his characters, even the big hefty ones, like a bear. Our camp was very divided on whether we liked that schtick or not. Rob didn't know Oliver's work, so when he looked it up his website on his phone, he laughed to see the very first image was Oliver's book, Stuck, which we all decided was the past tense of having stick legs.



The idea was that everyone would paint a jumper on one of the little bean characters, then sign at the bottom. Here's a Gruffalo jumper by Axel Scheffler, who was just leaving when we arrived. And you can spot a few signatures below, including Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie.



Kristyna (whose name I learned is pronounced "kriss-TEN-ah", like the number ten), Lisa and Rob having a go at painting:



And Oliver drawing up a few new characters for us to paint. I didn't quite hear the directions, that we were only supposed to paint a jumper, so I gave mine a bi

This was the first part of the Gosh! London comics shop window project for Nelson Week, a scribble on a dinner napkin by our Nelson editor Woodrow Phoenix, after we had finished two full days in Leeds at Thought Bubble comics festival. (Well, Woodrow doesn't really scribble, he draws quite carefully.)



And here's an excellent video shot by Gosh's Tom Crowley! You can read all about it over on the Gosh blog! And do come to Gosh tonight (1 Berwick Street in London's Soho) at 6pm for our Nelson signing party, it'll be good fun!



I'll post a few more photos from our Monday painting session. Woodrow has posted a bunch more on Flickr here. I was just going to show up at the shop and paint something, but on the train ride in, I thought, hmm, I think I'd like to do a bit of pre-planning. So here's what I sketched on the stretch between London Bridge and Charing Cross stations.




Woodrow was stuck on messy trains from out of town, so I had a chance to grab a muffin in the lovely coffee shop next to Gosh, Foxcroft & Ginger and work on my Nel sketch a bit more.



When Woodrow arrived and Tom at Gosh gave us our supplies, Posca pens, I remembered them well from my mural painting session at Game City (blog post about that here) and how much they need shaken to get the paint running. Shake, shake, shake. It turned into a sort of dance session, while Hayley Campbell tweeted this photo.



Then Will Morris arrived, with much more polished preparatory sketches. Will studied on the same MA course at Camberwell art college as I did, a few years later, under Janet Woolley, and we're both big fans of her. Will's work is lovely.



We decided the lettering had to come first, before the character paintings. And no one does lettering as well as Woodrow, he's very exacting.



I asked him if 'e' was the hardest letter to draw, and he said, no, that 's' is much trickier, getting the two curves just right.





We were painting on the inside of the window (so passers-by couldn't pick it off) but I did a quick sketch in white on the outside of the window as a guide.



When JAKe arrived, here's the sketch he made, drawing straight from the book:

You just can't keep Nelson within the pages of a book! Here's the most recent contribution to the collaboration with Blank Slate Books, from my fab studio mate Lauren O'Farrell (aka Deadly Knitshade). The story in the book goes up to 2011, but Lauren's taken it to 2012, when Nel writes a book about her little brother, Sonny. We all got to see her creation for the first time at the Cartoon Museum, at the launch of an exhibition of comic roughs and final artwork from our book. You can see some of our pictures on the wall behind Lauren... exciting!



Look at all the detail Lauren put into this! She was up til 4am the night before, making these tiny polaroid photos of scenes from the book. The exhibition runs until late February, so do pop by for a look! It's just a couple streets away from the front of the British Museum.
Edit: I just found out that you can bid on Nel at the Gosh Comics party on Friday, and the profits will go to Shelter's charity for the homeless! Go look at Lauren's amazing post about her Knitted Nel.



Speech! Speech! Here are our fab editors and fellow creators Woodrow Phoenix and Rob Davis, the original two who mused about the Nelson book idea on Twitter and then took it forward with our whole gang of 54 creators. (My web designer, Dan Fone, took the photo.)




A lot of us listened to the speeches from the first floor:



Here's Woodrow's mum, proudly holding our new book. Mrs Phoenix is more of a legend than all of us put together: she's fostered more than 200 kids, founded loads of programmes in the community, and was the first black woman in Britain to be awarded the MBE, in 1973, which she turned down unless the council would agree to give her a house for her foster children. And they did. (I once rang up Woodrow when we were both working on the DFC and caught him on the way to Buckingham Palace, where he was taking his mum to collect her OBE.)



Here's my fab studio mate Ellen Lindner signing a copy of Nelson. She tackled the 1970 slot in Nel's life, three years ahead of my 1973 story, with former DFC colleague (and contributor to the new weekly Phoenix Comic!) Jamie Smart and our studio mate Gary Northfield taking the years between our comics.


Photo by Dan Fone

We were all very proud to see our artwork hanging on the walls. I was surprised that curator Anita O'Brien decided to use my pencil rough instead of my inked page. But she made good sense when she explained that the pencil had a lot of life and looked very different from the final artwork, so it was m

“Harry Potter the Exhibition” opened today at New York City’s Discovery Times Square. The video embedded above offers a sneak peek at the show that displays eight movies’ worth of props, costumes, and settings.

Featured costumes include Hermione Granger‘s yule ball gown, Cedric Diggory‘s quidditch uniform, and Professor Albus Dumbledore‘s wizard robes. We spotted three horcruxes, including Salazar Slytherin‘s locket, Helga Hufflepuff‘s cup, and Tom Riddle‘s diary (basilisk fang included). Dobby the house elf, Fawkes the phoenix, and the Hungarian Horn Tail dragon also appear.

The exhibition  includes interactive segments as well. A few lucky volunteers can draw a Hogwarts house assignment from a sorting hat. Everyone can pull out Professor Sprout‘s shrieking mandrake plants and sit in the half-giant’s leather chair inside Hagrid‘s Hut.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Today wasn't as bitterly cold as yesterday, and I went down into one of the valleys of Greenwich Park in hopes it might be a bit more sheltered from the cold. The paths around Queen Elizabeth's Oak were treacherously icy, and as I drew, I could hear early morning dog walkers calling warnings to each other, broken by disconcerting yelps and WHUMPS as they hit the ground.




(copied from the plaque in front of the other side of the tree)

I got a bit of critique on my drawings a couple days ago, when I met up for lunch at Panda Panda with friend and DFC colleague Woodrow Phoenix. He said that I still hadn't found my mark-making vocabulary, that my lines still looked a bit randomly placed, and as though three different people had done it. Which, to me, was unsurprising, because my figure drawing tutor way back in Pennsylvania said almost exactly the same thing. I don't think there's any way to build up a mark-making vocabulary other than keeping on with the drawings. They're not bad, but they could be much better. And as I said to Woodrow, the more I work on one area of image making, the more the other areas of my drawing improve, even if they seem totally unrelated. He said sometime he'd show me his tree drawings that he makes in Hilly Fields Park.

There's a great interview with Woodrow over at The Comics Bureau here, do go have a look! If you read my book When Titus Took the Train and saw the dedication, he's listed (along with Viviane Schwarz & Gary Northfield) for giving me some very helpful advice and lent me a bunch of his Western comics when I was waffling a bit at the beginning.

And don't forget, next Monday, the amazing Posy Simmonds is giving a talk near Brick Lane in East London for the monthly Laydeez Do Comics event. See you there!

Not only does Battersea in south London boast the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, but it also hosted a comics festival today in a perfect summery setting. Here's my glam studio mate Ellen Lindner at the bus stop.



I posted about the HyperComics exhibition last week here, but I caught a lot of things this time that I missed on my first visit. Barnaby Richards had trouble looking through the masks to see Dave McKean's installations - our specs kept catching the edge of it - but if we took them off, we couldn't see anything. Eventually we sorted it out.



Some fab people from the day: Woodrow Phoenix, Warwick Johnson Cadwell (I got a copy of his new minicomic sketchbook and The No.1 Car Spotter, yay!), Lou Naniiebim Ho and Nikki Shakino Stuart with our Birdsong anthology.


Back to fab Ellen and her amazing printed shirt:


And the tucked-away part of the exhibition that I totally missed last time.


Between Dave McKean's fascinating talk about his work, the lovely outdoor marquee setting and the good company, I think this is the best comics festival I've been to, just for pure comfort and ease. Oh, and I was just a punter - no table - that may have had something to do with it. The organiser and exhibition curator Paul Gravett was saying there was a chance this festival could become an annual thing, and I'm all for that! If you haven't seen the exhibition, be sure to pop along, and bring your kids to the HyperComics family workshop I'm leading on Sun, 19 Sept.

Oh, and one more thing, the yeti meister Alex Milway just sent me a link to this amazing historic Russian photos.

On to Edinburgh! Packing copies of Warwick's book and Geraldine McCaughrean's Pull Out all the Stops! in case I get any time to read on the train. I've already started reading Geraldine's book, it's so well written it makes me rather giddy.

First off, I’d like to point out this question from Ask MetaFilter which asks the age old question “I am trying to automate my small school/church/club library. What software should I use?” I gave a few answers, as did a few other people, but the short answer is “There’s no good tool for this” as near as I can tell. Please let me know if I’m wrong.

A few more links people sent me over the last week or so.

• Toronto Public Library cutting service to Sick Kids [hospital] reading room saying that the hospital should play more of a role in the provision of library services.
• Phoenix is considering closing six public library branches prompting one columnist to ask “Cut all librarians before any cop?”
• Marilyn Johnson has written a book — This Book is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All. Here is an interview with Marilyn and a good looking book review from the Boston Globe

Yesterday a bunch of us from The DFC gang met up in David Fickling's Oxford office to find out what's happening with some of the amazing comics that appeared during the DFC's 43-week appearance. And the news is good! While The DFC as a weekly magazine has been shelved for the time being, readers are going to be able to read whole collections of their favourite strips, in individual books. The first three to appear will be Dave Shelton's Good Dog, Bad Dog (which ran in The Guardian), Kate Brown's Spider Moon (which ran as a play by Playbox Theatre company, photos here), and artist Adam Brockbank (who designed many of the beasts in the Harry Potter films) and storyteller Ben Haggarty's Mezolith.



David Fickling was hugely excited at the meeting, saying he was gearing up to become the lead comic book publisher in the UK, and wants David Fickling Books to take on the huge comics industry in France and elsewhere. So here's the deal: He says it's going to be a struggle, because as of yet with the top retailers, no real comics market yet exists in the UK, so we're really going to have to push to create one. He's going to print 5,000 hardback copies of each of the three books, and we really need to sell all of them so we can afford to go on and bring out more books. So if you want a Vern and Lettuce book in the second round (and boy, oh boy, do I!), please get ready to support these three books and convince everyone you know to buy them, and get everywhere you can think of to stock them! We'll have an overarching DFC Library launch, and then fab events at the launch of each, with Good Dog, Bad Dog being the first to come out in March, then Mezolith and Spider Moon in April and May. (You can even pre-order them on Amazon here!)

Just as we were all meeting, Tilda the office manager, came in with a letter than had just arrived in the post, from a DFC reader named Samira who, even after all these months, was still dead set on seeing her favourite comics in print, whatever it took (Thanks, Samira!):




Here's a few photos from the DFB headquarters yesterday:


David and Will Fickling; editor Hannah Featherstone, Adam Brockbank and Will



Lauren Bennett (the fab publicist I've been working with on Morris the Mankiest Monster) and me; Ben Haggarty


Clare Hall-Craggs, publicity director at Random House Children's Books, and the very messy table at th