STEEPLE – A Scary Go Round Comic

I realise that three or four comic pages a week, the occasional mailing list email, and cursory appearances on podcasts are enough of me for almost anybody. That’s why I keep myself to myself. But a career in the arts, like Pilea Peperomioides, thrives with plenty of sunshine. So I am doing a handful of appearances and events around the release of the Great British Bump-Off collection. Two in the north of England, two in London. And here they are:

Wednesday November 8th
In Conversation: John Allison and Kristyna Baczynski
The Leeds Library, Leeds (tickets £5, available here)

Kristyna and I have been friends for a long time, she is a wonderful cartoonist and one of the country’s foremost zine makers. Her latest is a Star Trek: The Next Generation-themed zine of such dense brilliance that it took me immediately to the notorious “pleasure planet” Risa. We will go deep on creative matters but leave plenty of room for mirth.

Saturday-Sunday November 11th-12th
Thought Bubble Festival
Harrogate Convention Centre (website here)

I will be sharing a table with another of my most gifted friends, Warwick Johnson Cadwell. I like to spend as much time as I can with people who make me look artistically pedestrian. I’ll have a few Steeple and Giant Days Library Edition books for sale, plus a big stack of the new Giant Days “Snooker Could Be Better” mini. This (along with the two events below) will be one of the very limited opportunities to buy this hot outlaw item.

Saturday November 25th
HCF Goes LDN
11am-7pm, Space Station Sixty Five, London SE11 4PS (website)

I will have a table at this event, with Giant Days/Wicked Things/Bump-Off artist Max Sarin. We will also have an in-conversation panel together. This is an event put on by the Helsinki Comics Festival with an opportunity to meet and discover work by some of their wonderful, daylight-deprived artists. There will be a range of comic making-driven talks and panels by London luminaries which I think will be very interesting. 

Saturday December 9th
Gosh! Comics Great British Bump-Off signing
Gosh! Comics (website)

I don’t have firm details of timings on this but I will update you closer to the time. I’ll sign your books for you, there’s a bookplate to go with them, and I will greet you warmly for I am a professional but also genuinely pleased to meet my readers. Last time I did a signing at Gosh, I met the classical music writer John Allison. I’d been waiting since the late 1980s to meet my doppelgänger. He did not disappoint. This is the social milieu you will only get in Soho. 

That’s it for events. Any questions? Put them in the comments.

FURTHER MATTERS
ITEM! Giant Days Library Editions are emerging, one a month, in all good bookshops. If you’ve not completed your library of John Allison university comics, perhaps stopping before the later issues featuring guest appearances by Charlotte, Shelley and the game of cricket, now is the time to invest.