I mentioned before how much I like Zarjaz!, the 2000AD fanzine. It's got such a good pool of writers and artists that it's barely distinguishable from the real thing.

Well, now Futurequake Press have taken it on, cementing their comics empire. Past and present editors discuss the change in a fascinating 2-way interview available here:

Bolt-01 Speaks to Colin Dinnie

As he mentions therein, Bolt-01 is now lettering Walking Wounded, and an absolutely splendid job he's doing of it. Quite how Dave finds the time to do everything he does amazes me!

And if Zarjaz! really is keen to break the Pat Mills embargo, then I would certainly be interested in assisting. I have a neat little idea for a Slaine story...

The TV ghost story is the humble cousin of the Gothic horror movie, and Britain used to be extraordinarily good at producing both. Sadly these talents now pretty much appear to have passed into history, but we still have our memories, aided somewhat by our DVD collections.

Currently I am at least partially obsessed with the Ghost Stories for Christmas cycle from the 70s, and related title such as the Omnibus M R James adaption Whistle and I'll Come to You and Yorkshire TV's own go at James - Casting The Runes.

I've bought pretty much everything that's available on DVD. There are only a few titles but thankfully they are pretty well put together. For instance:

But there are still many of these glorious small-screen spine-tinglers commercially unavailable. I understand that rights clearance issues prevent further releases for the time being. Therefore it is frustratingly difficult to get hold of all the good stuff that was made.

Thankfully BBC4 often show them around the Yule period (and even made a couple of new ones, although not to the same standard) and some charitable souls occasionally upload their off-air recordings to YouTube:

With the BBC's progressive views on video file-sharing, these day's it's practically legal to do it!

Painting is something I did a lot of in college 15 years ago and not a lot of since. Every now and again I break the old paints out have a little dabble, think to myself ‘this is a lot harder then I remember’ and put them away again. For the last few pages I have coloured I have been using a much more painted style in Photoshop but it’s still not painting, it's a hell of a lot easier. With real paint there is no undo button no layers, no saved file to revert to, there is just you the brush and a million ways to screw up. Painting is more about confidence then anything else and that only comes with practice. So I’m practicing. I have painted a few things that will only be seen by the inside of a recycle bin and then I got a bit better and reduced my carbon footprint. My last painting was for a digital webbing draw off. The challenge is to re-imagine Aquaman, a hero I have no real interest in. There are enormous problems with the drawing and the painting is pretty basic but it’s almost passable. If I’m going to work up some painting skills again then this time I’m not going to let it slip… I hope.

Democracy is a precious commodity, even more so when it enables you to vote for Massacre for Boys in several major comics awards categories:

Eagle Awards 2007

This is the first time we are really eligible for this, with Walking Wounded #1, Bosher's Goals, Holt Bros and Walking Wounded: Hot Air all appearing over the 12 months that count.

Far be it from me to indicate particular categories you might like to back us in, but Best Newcomer Writer, Best Newcomer Artist, Best Publisher and, in particular, Best British Black and White Comic, all look to be good bets.

I do feel it honourable to mention that there are many other fine creators and comics who are also deserving of your vote. I won't list them all here but I enjoyed P J Holden's Previously and the exceedingly lovely output of Futurequake Press.

In the wider comics world, that bloke Alan Moore and his mate Kev O'Neil did The Black Dossier which has to be worth a couple of clicks of anybody's e-time. On the roll of honour I elect Brian Bolland every year and probably will do until he gets it. The man's a genius!

So, no need to tarry here reading this blog, you could be exercising your democratic rights right now!

With the Thing now looming large on the horizon, I've been finalizing the design for our Massacre promo cards. These will be small free handouts that will hopefully enable Thing visitors who make the (very bad) decision not to buy our comics on the day to be able to find our website later.

For a long time i wanted to use the Banzai picture that Steve did especially for this year's Thing. The best I could come up with was:

Just a bit too white, really and far more writing then is strictly necessary. In the end it was back to the drawing board and our current favourite looks to be:

PS Paul Grist in this month's Judge Dredd Megazine says that "If you're going to self-publish, then it helps if you're an idiot". Dead right

One of the best things about the small press is creating names. Comic’s names, publisher names, studio names, you name it and we have named it. obviously our brand name is massacre for boys at the moment and that works for the walking wounded, it’s just about passable for the rest of the boys own cannon we have been building up around it, but it’s fairly limiting when it comes to publishing other projects. We need a new name for our overall company that will publish all our imprints. (incidentally our comics are largely produce by Chris and myself so if we use more then 2 brand names our ‘companies’ will outnumber our creative staff.)

So what’s in a name? well this one has to be the permanent one, the one we self publish all our work under no matter the genre or format. maybe that will free us up to actually work on projects instead of worrying about expanding the line. Massacre so far incorporates the walking wounded, Jimmy Baker Animal Hat Maker, Bosher’s Goal’s and the crusader with the possibility of the Holt Brothers as well. Although I think the Holts Should be kept separate from the Massacre universe… that’s right, the stories are all interconnected, it’s turning into a traditional comics universe. It’s hard enough producing one line of comics let alone a whole range of supporting features as well. For the kind of thing we have been developing the creator base has to be far larger and the output fare more frequent.

Whatever our new ‘Studio’ is called, and it is handy to have a name when you’re registering a website, it’s content will be fairly far removed from the massacre line. That’s the real deal with inventing names, they are to help us group together our different personalities and ideas, they are an organisational tool as well as a creative spring board. I would like to say we’re not going to invent any more company’s after this new as yet unnamed one, but I can’t and I don’t want’ to if I’m honest. Grand plans and divers universes concepts characters and personality’s all represent our creativity. Our well that overflows with ideas and running out of new names is a bit like drying up. in that respect I hope it never happens.

I quite enjoy ComicSpace but I'm starting to feel in a bit of a minority.

Leaving it late to set up our account was probably not such a great idea, as many creators had signed up months earlier and were already bored of it by time I was finally ready to check the place out.

Certainly many of the befriendification requests I've sent out to fellow creators have been ignored. Not, I like to think, due to Massacre's lack of popularity on the small press scene but more because many comics luminaries simply don't check their messages any more.

The core functionality is obviously comic sharing, and that's probably what's letting the site down. The interface is basically a Flickr clone without any particular tuning to aid online reading.

The embedding tools are basic to say the least. The optimistically named "Tooncasting" feature is basically useless because it displays the last page of your strip, not the first! It's also got pretty bad formatting issues, for example:

Still, it's not all bad news. Without ComicSpace I never would have read Paul Harrison-Davies' sublime My Robot. Check it out!