Announcing Sea of Spheres - Conspiracy, Conflict and Conscience

 

I've been hinting at it here and there for a long time and now I'm finally happy to announce that a print edition of my Sea of Spheres series, with artwork by the ever amazing Windlass, is finally seeing print.

Conspiracy, Conflict and Conscience collects the first three stories in the series. No Route to Guide You, A Question of Conscience and Matter of State, along with the short comic Night Shift. The book includes all of the artwork Windlass produced for those stories, in high detail and full colour.

For now the print editions will be purely for sale at conventions and possibly a couple of local retailers, but depending on interest the possibility of online purchasing may materialise further down the line. A second volume, collecting the other three stories, will also be going into production very soon.

It's a thrill to finally hold this thing in my hand, remastered and fully tightened up. I can't wait to introduce a wider audience to Windlass' art. As mentioned previously, I'll be at the BFS Fantasycon in Chester this coming weekend and Thought Bubble in Harrogate in November, so if you're in the area and want a copy that is hot off the press, you can find me right there, ready to shove it in your face.

Thanks for reading!

Jack's October Update

 This year has been pretty exhausting and frankly it's going to continue being exhausting. With that in mind, here's what's coming to close out the year.

- First big news: I will be exhibiting at Harrogate Thought Bubble this year. I'm astounded that I've been able to get in at short notice, so I'll be doing my best to try and get as much print editions of my work out as possible.

- Speaking of print editions, an update will no doubt be dropping in a week or so detailing the first print volume of my Sea of Spheres stories, all illustrated in colour by the ever wonderful Windlass.

- Additionally, a print collection of my short comics will also be coming soon, which will include behind the scenes materials and a brilliant new cover by the amazing FlopsComics.

- Coming sooner than all that is Fantasycon 2024. I've detailed this previously, but it's all happening next weekend and I'll have a plethora of art, comics and books to get out there to the eager masses.

- In other news, from the start of November onwards I'll probably be reducing my social media usage, mainly to avoid spoilers for Dragon Age 4, which I'm going to be saving for Christmas. I'll still post artwork and stuff, but conversation will be at a minimum.

It's going to be a busy few months, and I hope the payoff will be worth it. In the meantime, thanks for checking out my stuff, and keep on reading.

My Beef With the Highlander Cartoon and other Tales

 

Good Afternoon Bat-fans. It's been a hot minute over on this blog. A fuller update on what I've been up to will be dropping shortly. However, I've been so busy I was remiss to mention that my guest appearance on the Batminute Beyond podcast had dropped back in August. 

Please accept my apologies and this link, which involves me discussing my history with the Highlander cartoon, anime and discussing action figures with fellow guest Neil Rickatson.

Bat Minute Beyond - Chunkz of The Joker: Chunk 11 - Pie in the Sky (with Neil Rickatson and Jack Harvey)

Jack's July Update

 As mentioned in previous updates, things have been a little quiet creatively this year due to it basically being an admin year where I shuffle stuff around and get my affairs in order, that being said there are a few announcements of things coming up.

- First though, some bad-ish news. In case it wasn't obvious, Obscure Comic of the Month has now officially come to an end. I've been kind of overwhelmed with stuff at the moment and couldn't motivate myself to get out a column each month, and the comics I wanted to cover deserve better than something I was phoning in. That being said, it's had a good run, and may very well be resurrected again someday.

- My guest appearance in the BatMinute Beyond podcast is in the can and I can't wait for you to all hear it. Get ready for childhood trauma and an intense hatred of the Highlander cartoon. Details will be here when it drops.

- In case you missed it my short comic, Damned Another Day with art by Brian McCray, went up last month, you can read it here. It's also planned to be included in a print edition anthology comic that I'm looking to put out later this year.

- I've given all of my Sea of Spheres stories a once over in anticipation for their own print edition. If you've still not read them then there's never been a better time.

- Another convention appearance is right around the corner. August 17th Is Carlisle Megacon at the Richard Rose Academy. I'll be on Table 40. See you there.

Alright, that's all for now. 2024 is very much about wrapping things up, but I'm still putting out artwork and whatnot, so you can follow me over on Twitter, Tumblr and Deviantart to keep up to date with my random doodling.

Thanks for reading!

Damned Another Day

Action! Adventure! Intrigue! Romance!? If you like the look of those explanation points flying towards you at 100 miles per hour, then you're going to be in just the right mood for Damned Another day, a brand new 4 page comic written by me and with incredible art by Brian McCray.

Secret agent James Nicea comes face to face at the card table with the dastardly Angelo De Faust, whose underworld activities are damning souls to Hell's eternal war. Key to overturning this villain's schemes are his sultry second in command Miss Carmilita Roland, but are James' charms enough to win her over?

This is a story that I've had in my head for a long time and went through various iterations, and while I knew Brian was going to be a good fit for the art, I was utterly astounded with how much he threw into bringing this world to life. The entire strip just bleeds 60s cool, and putting the extra details on the tarot cards was above and beyond the call of duty. Be sure to check out more of his work, which is as diverse as it is surprising. Be sure to check out more of his work, which is as diverse as it is surprising.

Jack's April Update

Things have been quiet here of late. I've been working on a lot of behind the scenes stuff, but I expect that this year will be a little dry for new story content. Still, here's an update on where we're at and what's going on.

Conventions

- I'll be at the Leeds Comic and Sci-fi Fair on Saturday 1st June. As ever I'll have copies of all my print stories and comics, along with art and whatnot.

- As with last year, I'll be at Carlisle Megacon on 17th August. It was great to see the event come back from a prolonged absence last year, and here's hoping it continues to grow this year too.

- I mentioned last time that I'll be at the British Fantasy Society's Fantasycon at Chester on October 11th - 13th, but I'm repeating it again here in case you missed it. It's a three day event, so here's hoping I can use the opportunity to get my work in front of some new eyes.

Blog Stuff

- You might have noticed that I did not upload an Obscure Comic of the Month review for March. This was partly due to it being a hectic month. Easter was earlier than usual and I had prep for Sheffield all at once. However it was also down to me just not being able to motivate myself to write about comics at the time. I didn't want to just pump out something half hearted. You can expect the column to return this month, but I am toying with the idea of making it a more irregular thing, and possibly using my time to write about other subject matters instead. We'll see.

So, only a short update this month, but gears are turning, and I expect to have more significant updates for you very soon.

Cheers

Obscure Comic of the Month - Coal Face

Obscure Comic of the Month is a column where I take a look at a comic or series that hasn't really been talked about. This covers independent comics, zines, weird spin-offs, webcomics and more.

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Coal Face - The Devil in the Smoke by Jay Gunn - MoonAlp Books 2023

Contains 'Miner' Spoilers

There's always been a somewhat oversimplified framing of the 1980s miners strikes as a simplified David vs Goliath story in popular culture, but it's easy to forget that things were much more complicated. Even more so when it comes to the legacy of those strikes and the industry they were connected to.

The book I'm looking at today isn't a comic pre-se, though it did start life as one, and ultimately it's final form as an illustrated prose story is close enough as far as I'm concerned. It's my column and I can do what I like. Written and illustrated video game developer and National Coal Board work-experiencer Jay Gunn, who uses his own past and family history as a jumping off point into this period fable of teenager Tony Gray's maybe real, maybe imagined, adventure into the ancient cursed history of his town's local and currently be-striked coal mine.

Gunn weaves a great deal of tendrils throughout the tale, having Tony not just have to deal with the local strife and uncertainty around the strike, but also, and not limited to, his parent's broken marrage, health problems caused by local pollution, class divides, family expectations and his desire for a future in programming video games.

From these themes weave out the fantastical. From the vampire-esque Fancy Man representing corporate (and personal) greed, to Maybell The Wooden Girl speaking for the blighted rural areas, to the dragon Coal Face itself becoming the nexus of pain from which radiates from the coal industry, long term respiratory problems and premature death.

Gunn plays with a lot of threads and does so pretty effectively for a story that isn't all that long. It's works for the most part given the ambiguity of the fantastical elements, which may be no more real than dreams or part of Tony's imagination, especially given that he is seen working on a video game with a story that exactly mirrors the adventures he is supposedly experiencing for real. This allows Gunn to frame these fantastical elements as a child's rationalisation of the difficult reality surrounding the pit closures.

Whereby the striking workers through noble cause can give in to their worst impulses, it is easier for someone like Tony, who lost his grandfather to the pit and saw his parents ripped apart by idealogical divide, to rationalise the whole thing as the schemes of a legendary beast that can poison the mind as easily as it can poison the body.

In that respect, you might expect that Gunn is going for easy answers here, but in fact he is doing quite the opposite. All through the story Tony shows little desire to follow his father and grandfather into the mining industry, clearly not having the temperament or the physical health to do so, yet he is treated with suspicion and destain for wanting to seek a future in video games. Likewise, Tony's lower class upbringing is mocked by those more well off who never have to worry about work like coal mining, and Tony is tempted away from class solidarity with the promise of luxuries and frivolity.

I love the intricacies and difficulties that Gunn explores here. I'm no stranger to striking myself, and have little sympathy for scabbery, but even I'm not so foolish as to think people slot into easy roles. My town is a former mining town. I have family member who have died due to the health problems their work down the pit left them with. There are constant promises of re-opening the coal mines, and despite the fact that we are in desperate need of more jobs, I absolutely do not want to see that industry return to blight this town.

If I have one criticism of the story, it's that this attempt at showing the shades of gray comes with the risk of walking away from this story with anti-union sentiment. Of course, Gunn makes it pretty explicitly clear that the true villain of the story is the pursuit of capital, but we do unfortunately live in a world where folks will ignore the moral of a story if it doesn't suit them.

However, I've only talked about the text of the story so far, when there is so much more to it with the art. Gunn's illustrations bring to life an already enthralling story, with a vibrancy and texture. The characters are animated and believable, the blighted landscapes drawing you in and cementing you into a specific place and time. The fantastical elements have an otherworldly, uncanny feel to them that emphasises the ambiguity of how much of what Tony is experiencing is entirely from his imagination.

The story's other big subplot, that of Tony wanting to get into programming, is emphasised and reinforced through the illustrations also. The stark, primitive visuals of the Atari days glow in neon green, feeling almost pre-historic by today's standards. This adds to the feeling that Tony's character is no weak and frightened fool, as even just through the visuals we can understand the skill it would have taken to programme a video game in those days. Tony might not want to go down the pit, but that doesn't mean he lacks willpower.

The visuals and the text work in tandem to create a tale that feels very simple and easy to digest in it's delivery but that contains a history with great depth beneath. The story closes with a bittersweet ending. The monster defeated, but Tony's personal strife continues, as he is left still finding his way in the world where he has to try and show solidarity for a line of work he knows is doomed to closure. The story does not let you off with any easy answers, and doesn't sugar coat that the world is not so easily fixed.

Coal Face is a finely executed all-ages tale that creates a perfect snapshot in time to emphasize that while heroes and monsters exist in both fiction and reality, it's only in fiction that these distinctions are so easily spotted. Right now, as it was in the 80s, being a hero is not as easy as simply picking up a controller, and defeating monsters can't be done with simple button presses.

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Jack Harvey 2024. Coal Face (c) 2023 Jason Wilson. Images used under Fair Use.