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Hi, this is Lettuce here! Vern's busy getting his wool in knots trying to figure out what he could wear to Tozo's party, if he's invited. Have you seen the annual Tozo competition? Vern applied yesterday, and maybe he will get lucky and Dave will draw him in a little box with holes in it, so everyone can look through to see he's sleeping.

Except he won't be sleeping, he'll be very cross and trying to get out of the box.

I've been picking away at this picture for nearly a week, in the little gaps between my work, and finished it this morning! It features my take on Josette and Eloise, the lovely and capable French Tayaut twins from Garen Ewing's remarkable adventure comic, The Rainbow Orchid. Here, they've just uncovered a slightly dishevelled French-made Spad XIII aircraft in their hangar and get set to fix it up. Thanks to _w_o_o_d in Brest for advising me on the French text, which roughly reads:

-So, Josette, what do you say?
-Just need to put in a bit of elbow grease and we'll get this baby off the ground!

I was very pleased to learn the French also use the phrase 'elbow grease', and on the word zinc, our good Frenchman commented:
"Zinc" means the same thing as in English, but is also an old slang term for a plane, in use since World War 2 at least. But in different contexts, it can mean the counter in a bar (which used to be covered in zinc).

Hooray, Garen, and good luck with your continuing work on The Rainbow Orchid!
Keep an eye out for the first of three parts of this book, which Egmont will unveil sometime this year! Garen's also doing a remarkable story called Charlie Jefferson and the Tomb of Nazaleod for the DFC. Don't forget to subscribe so you can catch that story and all the other amazing things coming out in the weekly comic! Lots of good things happening in British comics these days... it's all very exciting!

Edit: Note from Garen: By the way, Tayaut means "tally-ho!" (which is why I chose it) - though more precisely it's used to alert hounds during a fox hunt. I'm using it more in the context of "here we go!" or "the game's afoot!". French pilots did use it in WWII, apparently.

Fridays are the best days, when the stripey red and yellow DFC envelope pops through the letterbox. Hurrah to wilburonline for taking more liberties with the DFC logo lettering than anyone's done yet!



As you can see, Vern and Lettuce has taken a bit of a turn to the dark side in their abandoned underground station escapade:



This morning I had tea and lemon drizzle cake up in town with my picture book editor and designer. That was fun, and they're excited about the way the book is going. It is TOP SECRET at the moment (woooo!), but I can hardly wait to tell you! Hope to see you Sunday in London at the Alternative Press Fair!

Hooray, DFC issue 33 arrived today, and Vern and Lettuce take the Tube!



I've always wanted to show the London Underground in a commissioned piece of work, and now it's happened! Except, even better, in the Pickle Rye parallel universe, the transport engineers don't put those annoying barriers on the metal runners next to the escalators, it's all ONE LONG SLIDE. Whoosh! What a perfect world.

Edit: Hey, here are some nice words about the DFC from Paul Gravett in his Best of 2008: Graphic Novels & Comics:

The DFC: What does this "DFC" stand for? Well it is "Delivered Fridays Consistently" and it's "Definitely First Class". The DFC actually stands for The David Fickling Comic, and he is the determined publiser, backed by powerful Random House, who has made the most significant injection of new ideas and creative talent into British all-ages comics in a decade. You can't buy it in any shops, you have to subscribe online and every Friday it arrives in your morning mail. There's lots of quality here, even a sea-faring serial, John Blake, written by Philip Pullman of Golden Compass fame, but if I had to pick just two stand-out series they would be Sarah McIntyre's charming sheep-and-rabbit duo Vern and Lettuce, and Mezolith, a caveboy drama written by Ben Hegarty and drawn by Adam Brockbank, concept designer and storyboarder for the Harry Potter movies. Are you ready for their monstrous giant blue baby or their naked, overweight she-creature? This is easilly the most vivid, arresting children's adventure I've come across anywhere all year, a masterpiece in the making.

Thanks, Paul! Woodrow Phoenix's book Rumble Strip also gets a good mention. article link

Cool thing I've seen lately: the work of Chicago-based illustrator and comics man Chris 'Elio' Eliopoulos, or elio. Have a peek at some of the lovely work on his website.

Yesterday Woodrow Phoenix came up with a ruse to see our local DFC man, James Turner (eruditebaboon). Unfortunately James's day job got in the way, but we found the Super Animal Adventure Squad moping around his house, bored out of their skulls waiting for James to come home from work. We felt a bit sorry for them and took them out for lunch. I don't think we'll be going back to that cafe, it was SO embarrassing. James, please teach your animals some table manners! You can't take comics anywhere.



London: I just realised there are only four more days of this exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery: What are you like, featuring work by Mini Grey, Quentin Blake, Andrew Marr, Brian Eno, David Adjaye, David Shrigley, Donald Urquhart, Eric Clapton, Jack Penate, Lauren Child and more.
From the website: The idea is taken from a Victorian game of describing yourself with images of your favourite things: like a self-portrait. 45 people in the public eye have been asked to illustrate their 8 favourite things from a list of 12 – their favourite animal, book, clothes, comfort, food, pastime, place, possession, music, shoes, weather and pet aversion (the thing they love to hate!)

That exhibition ends on the 18th, and I'm not sure I'm going to make it, but I'd still like to see their other exhibition, Saul Steinberg - Illuminations, which runs until 14 Feb:
Born in Romania, in 1914, Saul Steinberg originally studied as an architect in Milan, before turning to cartoons and illustration; making his name as a contributor to The New Yorker magazine. In a career spanning six decades he created over 1200 covers and editorial illustrations for the publication. A master of many trades, he also worked as a propagandist, a fabric and card designer, a muralist, a fashion and advertising artist, a stage designer and was the tireless creator of image-jammed books.
The exhibition covers the whole range of his work, from high art to low, from murals to magazines, from caricature to cartography. Political, satirical, witty and whimsical, Steinberg:Illuminations is an intelligent sideways glance at the energy and contradictions of the 20th Century; entertaining and enlightening for Steinberg followers and newcomers alike.

I first heard of Steinberg when my art college tutor cryptically included at the end of an e-mail to our class, 'Oh, and if we're lucky, Steinberg might be coming to our party'. No one could figure out who this Steinberg was, and I found this Steinberg on a web search and started marveling at his illustration work. And I also realised we wouldn't be so lucky if he showed up at our party because he was dead. In the end, we never did find out who Steinberg was, our tutor couldn't remember mentioning him.

I forgot to pull out my camera, so here's a rough amalgamation of the people I saw last night:



The party had a great turnout and it was so good to meet so many DFC colleagues, many of whom I'd met before but quite a few I hadn't, including Dave Shelton, Wilbur Dawburn (wilburonline), James Turner (who turns out to live just down the street, hooray!), Ben Haggarty, Faz Chowdhury and John Welding (You can read their bios here.) And most of the office staff (David, Izzie, Andrew, Laurence, Will, Tom and Pete) came down from Oxford, so it was a very jolly event. Afterwards, Stuart commented (possibly with some surprise?!), 'that was such a nice group of people', and I had to agree. Stuart is slowly getting sucked into the comics world but I don't think he minds too much.

Please don't forget to subscribe to the DFC so we can keep drinking beer.

Hee hee... this week Vern and Lettuce are busy torturing the moles on Primrose Hill. Or somewhere thereabouts in the Pickle Rye parallel London universe.

I'm still grinning at the inept fish and cow-head ninjas in Fish Head Steve by Jamie Smart (foo5) and the pirate dress-up session in Super Animal Adventure Squad by James Turner (eruditebaboon).

We get the second installment of the beautifully rendered Frontier by Jason Cobley and Andrew Wildman (with its own lovely website). And Mezolith never fails to surprise me; it's not drawn in a style I normally like, but Adam Brockbank somehow totally manages to suck me in to both the story and the remarkable artwork. And I'm just dipping in, there's lots more going on that's sooo good! Simone Lia's naughty food items, Dave Shelton's volcanic sweets, the Woodrow milkshake machine with more lush artwork, the Etherington evil twins going nuts as always...

Go subscribe to the DFC if you haven't already, crunchy credit be damned!



And why, oh why, did I ever give that sheep a tuba? Tubas are so annoying to draw! (... Or a sousaphone, I should say, but 'sousaphone' doesn't fit so well into a speech bubble.) Vern could have taken up a pert little piccolo, but no... I like to make life hard for myself.

Oh hey, and some fab drawn instructions for how to make a sock monkey by Vivian Schwarz, yessiree.

Apologies if you've seen this already in my locked entry. It was a Christmas prezzie, commissioned by my Glasgow Auntie for my cousin's daughter, so I couldn't post it publicly! But here it is, I hope she liked it. I took inspiration for Vern's haut couture from these lovely historical golf costumes:



I must make an effort to do a morning sketch tomorrow. I have SO much work on at the moment that it is doing in my head a little bit. I went for lunch with my agent yesterday and we had an intense discussion of 'my career', which was really helpful. I'm going in to see one of my publishers tomorrow with some artwork, but I need to have a whole lot more done before then, not to mention finishing the book for the other publisher by Monday. Ack. Please send lots of good vibes my way!

Awhile ago I sent in a print for Zine Fest, an exhibition of zine work by female UK comic artists: Saturday 24th January 2009, 12-4pm, The Women's Library, 25 Old Castle Street, London, free entry. You can see some sneak peeks at the material here. This list of contributors sounds like a who's who of the female comics scene, including Lizz Lunney, Charlotte Percival, Sarah Lippett, Rosie Brice, Karrie Fransman, Erica Akerlund, Lady Lucy, Flo Brooks, Carolyn Alexander, Kate Dickinson, Jenny Linn-Cole, Kate Evans, Liz Greenfield, Leonie O’Moore, Carol Swain, Tanya Meditzky, Francesca Cassavetti, Isy Morgenmuffel, Sarah Ray, Jeremy Dennis, Sally-Anne Hickman, Laura Stimpson, Karoline Rerrie, Ellen Lindner, Sarah Lynch, Lucy Sweet, Siobhan Bowers, Rachael House, Lee Kennedy, Jess Bradley, Heather Middleton, Jackie Batey, Iro Tsavala, Siobhan Britton, Mireille Fauchon, Emma Welch, Susie Rumsby and others. Have a look here for an action-packed workshop programme on the day.

...or, I should say, Klikker meets the bunnies! Here's my guest comic for David O'Connell, or tozocomic, posted on the ultra-stylish Tozo website. It was inspired by the second panel in this strip, where Klikker is 'helping' a drunk party goer with his bottle. I wasn't going to give Dave a Christmas prezzie because we already did a Secret Santa exchange at our comics 'office party'. But I just couldn't resist this one!

Go have a look at Dave's work if you haven't seen it: his Tozo work, his illustration work and also our Airship comic jam. Meeting Dave and getting to know him has definitely been one of the highlights of my year.



Tomorrow my book club's discussing Empress Orchid by Anchee Min. I was doing some quick research and came across this fascinating hour-long interview. Have a listen if you have the time, I think I'm going to listen to it again while I paint.

YouTube link

I've been getting some Christmas photos from my American relatives, and these two are my favourites; Uncle Roy in his new hat and digging out the car. He looks very stoic with his broom:

Just heard from the web mice at headquarters that they've come up with DFC Preview site where you can see whole comic strips from the DFC! They assure us the strips will be changed on a regular basis so you'll be able to see more than one from each contributor.

Here's a good festive link flagged by writer Benjamin Scott: How to make an origami reindeer, with photos

For a laugh, have a look at Cartoon Museum artist-in-residence Mark Stafford's gallery of British comics artists with a magnifying glass.

I hope everyone has a great time over the holidays and, as my Glasgow Auntie just told me, don't get too stotious!
(Yes, I had to look it up.)

Today Vern and Lettuce met up for a quiet little comics office party, while Garen, Dave, Ellen and I went streaking through the streets of Brixton.
... Ha ha, no, the other way round (shame, that). The DFC Christmas double issue is HERE! And it looks fab!!! You can get lots of little peeks at it on the DFC website! Gary Northfield's Little Cutie gets a full double-page spread, and you can read a newly posted interview of Gary on Anna Mondo's blog. Ooh, and another one with Gary about Derek the Sheep on the Forbidden Planet blog.



And the other exciting thing today, I got to try quince jam! The reason this is exciting is that it was one of my four goals of things I wanted to do in England, the other three being animal sightings. (Seen a meadow lark, still need to see a live hedgehog and a badger.)

Here I am eating Ellen's mother-in-law's quince jam with hot scones in Ellen's kitchen:


And here is our office party at a fab little pizza place in Brixton market:

(tozocomic, rainboworchid and ellenlindner)


For our Secret Santa gifts, we all made 2"x 2" drawings and I got Dave's! Ellen kindly models with it here:

Edit: You can see my little art piece on Garen's blog here!

And one last thing, this morning I saw a mysterious message scrawled onto the pavement next to my post office. Whatever can it mean?

Oh! Sorry for such late notice, but I just realised there's a DFC Issue 28 Vern and Lettuce poster competition going on here! The deadline's this Thursday and here's the question: What is the name of Serge's assistant?
(I don't actually know which image they're using for the poster, but I'm sure it will look spiffing.)

By Emma Vieceli


Oh, yeah... Vern's chuffed to bits. Simone Lia's Stanley Sausage is tickled pink!
Still needing Christmas prezzies? Why not give a a subscription to the DFC!



News: I don't see it up on their website yet, but the Society of Authors is taking bookings for a talk by Axel Scheffler, author of The Gruffalo and lots of other fab books. (Mon, 26 Jan, 6-7:30, £7.50 for members, £10 for non-members. Book here: 020 7373 6642). Last time I saw Mr Scheffler he was wearing the most fetching yellow jumper imaginable.

And a bunch of us LiveJournal people have handmade stuff up for sale here on The Big Shill!

Yesterday I had the most amazing shaft of sunlight illuminate my desk, just as I was sending in my weekly comic strip to Ben and Will, my editors at the DFC. So I mentioned the sunbeam in the e-mail, and Ben wrote back to ask me to wing some sun over to Oxford because - this is so English - 'It's a bit parky down in the sticks.' I asked if 'parky' was the English equivalent to 'dreich', a word used by my Scottish auntie (which is something like 'dreary', but that deep dreariness you only get during a Scottish winter). According to Ben, 'parky' is closer to 'soggy'. ...Hooray, a new word for my keychain!

Then Will wrote back complaining that they don't get any sunshine in their basement workshop with its one tiny window looking up through the grating to the street, only mushrooms: 'In fact, we are mushrooms.' So we swapped little Wacom doodles of each other in our respective lighting conditions:



Here's my (very messy) desk with the last traces of said sunbeam.



Have you seen Garen Ewing's fab drawing of Tozo and Klikker?. Everyone loves Tozo.

I so wish I could go to the Saturday morning Autobio comics classes with David Lasky and Greg Stump in Seattle. Classes run 24 Jan - 28 Feb. I met David (dlasky) last time I was back in Seattle and it made me wonder what my parallel universe life would be like if I'd never moved away from my hometown and had got in with the Seattle comics crowd. Nice to know it could have been great both ways. I wonder what my artwork would have looked like and who would have been my major influences. Hmm, some musings for a less busy day.

And I don't know much about it, but this FCBG conference could be interesting. Some of the speakers include Axel Scheffler and Julia Donaldson (The Gruffalo), David Fickling (my publisher), Barry Cunningham (the editor who took up JK Rowling's books), illustrator Petr Horacek, and writers Melvyn Burgess, Tim Bowler (who was reputedly very inspiring at the SCBWI conference) and Meg Rosoff. It's in Worth in West Sussex, not far from Gatwick Airport, from 3-5 April.

Hi, everyone! Just a reminder that you can buy this week's DFC for £1.99 at 647 branches of Tesco, from today until Tues, 2 Dec! It's a tester to see how it goes, and I really hope it does well! The teasers on the cover refer to Neill Cameron's Mo-Bot High, the Etherington Brothers' Monkey Nuts, Tony Lee's and Dan Boultwood's Prince of Baghdad and Jamie Smart's Fish-Head Steve.
(I notice the non-Tesco version has a Vern and Lettuce teaser on the front and this one doesn't, but I shall maintain a stiff upper lip...)

Whatever you think of Tesco, I know that almost every single comic I bought as a kid was through pestering my mother at the supermarket, so I'm guessing it's a winning formula to get comics into the hands of the kids who want them.



Don't forget that you can subscribe or buy single issues any time from DFC website.

Hooray! Garen Ewing just posted this drawing on his blog! It was great to see him and Ellen Lindner during my day in central London on Wednesday (even if that funny-looking little green pastry turned out to cost a fiver). I'm really looking forward to Garen's upcoming work in the DFC, Charlie Jefferson and the Tomb of Nazaleod. Have you seen Ellen's latest book, Little Rock Nine? It's well worth reading, and she's currently working on another comic of E.M. Forster's short story, The Machine Stops. You can read her amazing novel Undertow online here.

It's funny, when you get a bunch of comics people together, we always have to get out pens and paper to draw things when we have difficulty describing them. I particularly liked this picture Ellen drew in my notebook during a discussion of historic genetic oddities of the Spanish royal family. (Although I think this must be one of the better looking monarchs.)

I'm off to the SCBWI conference in Winchester today, where in my workshop I'll be giving a first peek at layouts for the picture book I'm illustrating for David Fickling, written by Britain's best-selling contemporary poet, Giles Andreae.

I'll be back in London on Sunday morning for the panel at the ICA with DFC colleagues Adam Brockbank, John and Patrice Aggs and Gary Northfield. Speaking of which, have you been following Adam Brockbank's DFC strip with Ben Haggarty, Mezolith? It's just getting better and better, and I was totally amazed by his swan maidens and the big earth woman in the last couple episodes.

Don't forget, you can buy the DFC in Tesco from 26 Nov - 2nd Dec. (John Freeman comments on the DFC in Tesco here.) But you can also buy single issues at any time from the DFC website.

Issue 23: Can anyone spot the two references in this week's Vern & Lettuce strip in the DFC to works by other artists?
If they're the two I'm thinking of and you're the first to answer, I'll send you a special Vern & Lettuce sketch! (You'll be competing with the Vern & Lettuce club people on Facebook as well, so don't delay!)

Just running off (photos soon, I promise), but here's another picture from the DFC stand at the MCM Expo yesterday: Violet in a Vern costume and Lettuce with a Violet wig! Thanks, Emma Vieceli!

True fact! That composer was a bit of a delicate chappie. (I know hot water bottles looked different back then, but there's nothing like a good anachronism to start the day.)

I've had some people contact me about buying drawings from my blog and I've sold a few for some welcome cash. I'm not sure how many I actually want to part with right now, or how I'd set it up, but I'll have a go with this one: £40 plus registered mail postage via Paypal if anyone is wanting to buy.

London MCM Expo: I'm going to be doing some signings this Saturday the 25th at the DFC stand with Emma Vieceli, who draws and writes Violet. Not quite sure what time yet, but stop by and say hi if you're there!

And the marvellous Garen Ewing used my picture on his Rainbow Orchid blog.

Hey, Dave Goodman just drew a picture of Vern on Dave's A-Z of Anthropomorphic Animals!

This whole comics alphabet thing has really become an internet phenomenon. I sort of lost track of them, so thanks, Garen Ewing, for flagging this one! Vern is thrilled. (Here's his last pirate version.)

Hey, cool, the DFC finally has its trailer up on YouTube, plus more on its own new channel here.



Edit: I think I'm going to be doing something at the DFC stand at the London MCM Expo on either 25 or 26 Oct. Emma Vieceli (who does Violet for the DFC), John Aggs (who draws John Blake and writes The Boss) and Kate Brown (who writes and draws Spider Moon) have said they're going, are any of you coming along?

We had good fun at our comics panel for the DFC at the Bath kids lit fest on Saturday. Here's Bob Etherington (writer of Monkey Nuts) basking in the joy of the liquorice allsorts jar and lava lamp luxury of the VIP lounge. Apparently comics people don't usually get VIP lounges, so we thought we'd better document it.


I got to meet Vivian French in the lounge, which was cool. (She wrote a book called The Thistle Princess, which was beautifully illustrated by my first illustration teacher, Elizabeth Harbour.) The Bath venue was SO lush, this huge room with giant chandeliers and an intimidating sea of seats. (I'll post photos later, they're in my dad's camera, which doesn't seem to load to my computer.) We had a good turnout and the kids there asked really perceptive questions about making the comics, I was impressed. Here we are in the pub afterwards: me, Bob Etherington, Lorenzo Etherington (Bob's brother, who draws Monkey Nuts) and John Aggs (who draws John Blake for Philip Pullman and writes The Boss):



Here's another one of my dad and my publisher David Fickling (the one in the red dickie bow) and our DFC web designer Tom Fickling. They sat off to the side and had a long intense discussion about books and airplanes.


Since my parents and Stuart came along, we made a weekend of the trip. Here's a sketch I did of a remarkable Vivienne Westwood dress at the Costume Museum:

My parents wanted to go to the sung service at Bath Abbey on Sunday morning, and I drew a couple of the choirboys:


Here's a rough drawing of my parents on the train ride back to London. They moved around a lot, and the proportions are all wrong, but I still kind of like it.


And it was great coming back to this fan pic by John Rowley in my inbox. Thanks, John!

I came back from stomping through the rain to the DFC with a gorgeous cover in my letterbox! Isn't it purdy? This week's issue introduces the new Mezolith story by Adam Brockbank and Ben Haggarty. And Simone Lia's strip on the back made me shout with laughter. Must find a quiet moment with a cup of tea and read the whole issue cover to cover!



Mezolith reminds me of the Jean M. Auel prehistoric series that starts with Clan of the Cave Bear which I found in my parents' library and really liked when I was little. (It was the second book with adult racy bits I ever read. The first book was Forever by Judy Blume, borrowed on the school bus, and the pages were just about falling out in all the steamy parts.)

Don't forget to book your place for the Turning Pages: the art and craft of story SCBWI conference on Nov 22 and 23rd! It's great for both writers and illustrators, and especially for those of us (like me) who are attempting to do both! Here is the bio pic of my DFC editor Ben Sharpe, who is just one of the many fab speakers they have lined up:


ztoical in Ireland reports that copies of the GOAL Anthology have come back early from the printers, can't wait to see it. She'll post order details soon. (I have a one-page strip in it.)


Other stuff:
I haven't had time to explore Paul Hoppe's website yet, but it looks very promising.

And random stuff I stumble upon when I'm doing image research for my work: here's a bizzare bathroom fixture that lets you have everything in your bathroom in a single column. I can't decide it that's very, very cool or just a bit sad that people would have such small bathrooms that they'd need such a thing: Neatorama.

Animal cruelty! But Vern is fighting back (with Lettuce's help, because Vern is not very good with the computer). Now they're a proper team of two online.

LiveJournal is where it really all happens, but if you're one of those Facebooking people, please console Vern and Lettuce by joining their new Facebook club here:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vern-and-Lettuce/29583321262

This was my first-ever visit to Caption, Oxford's annual alternative comics festival, and I had a great time! Thanks a million to Jenni Scott (jinty) and Richard who put me up for the night and did so much, along with a bunch of other great people, to make this event happen. It was my first-ever time on a comics panel, which was a little daunting, because almost everyone in the room has made comics for longer than I have, but it was very friendly and so interesting to hear what everyone had to say. I'm always on a very steep learning curve when I go to these things. We had a great showing of the DFC crew: Kate Brown, Woodrow Phoenix, Nick Abadzis, John Aggs, Neill Cameron, Garen Ewing, Andrew Wildman, Adam Murphy and one of our editors, Will Fickling (did I leave out anyone?).

I forgot about my camera most of the time, so a lot of the photos are pretty random, but here are a few:


The very hospitable Richard and Jenni, at a breakfast with Matt Brooker (aka D'Israeli), where I learned that comics convention people can not eat without at least four computers present at the table.


Woodrow with his erupting hot chocolate with marshmallows. And Bridget and Woodrow at a nearby Brazillian restaurant. Brigdet just sent me a link to an amazing comics jam called Who Killed Round Robin? that Woodrow is working on with six other comics artists. I am going away to read it!) She said it inspired a group in Mexico to do something similar.


With my fab illustrator friend Susan Burghart (who came up to Oxford to surprise me and take me out to dinner with her fiance Mike) and the lovely Rian Hughes.


Susan and I remarked that the most rock-and-roll thing we could do after a comics convention was go to mass, so that is what we did, even though I am not Catholic. And we went for a lavish French dinner and then ice cream and I got a dark purple tongue.

Here's a very, very rough comic I made on the train ride back.