Roy Huteson Stewart’s pages are starting to come in thick and fast as he works on Crowley: Wandering The Waste, our collaboration for Insomnia. Here’s a couple of unlettered panels from the prologue…

I’m really enjoying working with Roy, he’s bringing plenty of strange and brilliant ideas to the project that I would never have thought of.  Can’t really ask for much more than that.  He’s also doing a great job capturing the frailty of Crowley in old age.

I don’t know who took the above photographs, possibly Kenneth Grant (one of them does appear in Remembering Aleister Crowley, Grant’s very interesting memoir of his friendship with AC).  Taken in the garden at Netherwood, Hastings. Probably in or around 1945, which would make Crowley approximately 70 years old.

The book is looking like it will end up containing about 90 pages of actual comic, plus 30 or so pages of notes at the back. There may be a gallery at the back too, showing other artists interpretations of AC.

Out towards the end of the year, with any luck.

Unlettered. Top notch work as always from Jim Boswell, who has made me promise not to write any more crowd scenes.

I signed contracts with Insomnia Publications last week to write an original graphic novel based on the life of Aleister Crowley. This has meant I’ve had to crawl around the attic like some kind of giant, malformed silverfish to gather up all my old Crowley books.

Here’s a few for some light bedtime reading…

It will be done in a similar style to Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s  magnificent From Hell - as much as possible based on historical fact but with some fictionalised elements to provide a framework for the story and to really make it sing. Crowley wasn’t averse to fictionalising his own life anyway, so I’m sure he wouldn’t mind too much.

Crowley - Wandering The Waste will be published under Insomnia’s Vigil line of historical graphic novels, probably in 2010.

Not sure yet as to who the artist will be.

Pleased to say that I placed a short ghost story with Supernatural Tales and a five page horror strip with an upcoming Insomnia anthology.

Both out next year sometime, I should think.

Got my contributor copies of Wasted issue 2 today.

68 full colour pages including Holmes Has It Large by me and Adrian Bamforth.

The Bad Press/Wasted lads also have  a spanking new website up here.

Here’s another teasing peek at what Jim Boswell has been up to while working on our graphic novel . . .

Our story “Intergalactic Bank Robbing Teenage Space Aliens On The Run” appears in issue 12.

Story by me, art by Jim Boswell.

Lots of other good stuff in there too!

Jim Boswell has started work on Project Luna: 1947.

Here’s a tiny peek at what he’s been up to . . .

I especially like the fact that the fellow on the right somehow ended up looking like HP Lovecraft.  This makes me strangely happy.

More images over on Jim’s blog.

Project Luna: 1947 will be an 88 page original graphic novel written by me with art by Jim Boswell, who I worked with a little while ago on a four page sci-fi strip for Futurequake.

Contracts with Markosia are signed and we’re good to go.  Above is Jim’s first mock-up cover, a try out as he gets to grips with the characters, sorts out their hair colours and builds, designs the ships and what not, and it looks rather splendid.

Jim’s a great artist and I’m really looking forward to seeing his pages as they come in.

So, some good news to end the year on.  Who knows . . . next year might not be complete shit after all.

Crossed by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows.

It has everything the regular Ennis reader expects from a comic: murder, rape, cannibalism, infanticide, nuclear explosions and, of course, copious amounts of buggery. And Burrows’ art is, as usual, brilliant.

Issue two just came out from Avatar.

Lonny Chant has started work on our 6 page strip for Accent UK.

This is the first page, spotted blacks.

. . . will be providing the art for a six page strip for Accent UK.  He sent me some layouts for our story, they look great.

Here, pay him a visit.

Dave Evans emailed me last week to say that FQP have accepted my five page script, Bad Static, for publication in their horror title, Something Wicked.

I have a lot of respect for Dave and everyone at FQP, they work their arses off to put out three quality titles.

No word on who’ll be providing the art yet.

. . . is providing the art for the four page story Alan Grant accepted for Wasted. His comic work includes Zarjaz and Futurequake and he has drawn Dredd, Sinister Dexter and Future Shocks for 2000AD.

Go check out his site here and if you’re a publisher, go and hire him.

So, a few weeks ago I mailed a six-page script over to Alan Grant in Scotland, he’s starting up a new comic called Wasted.

Alan has always been one of my favourite writers, particularly his work at 2000AD and on Batman. One of my favourite issues of his long stint on Batman was Detective Comics #583 which was co-written with John Wagner and illustrated by Norm Breyfogle. This issue not only included the first appearance of The Ventriloquist and Scarface but also had a brilliant cover by Mike Mignola.

Anyway, back to my script, Alan wrote back with a very encouraging letter pointing out a few problems and asking me to cut it down to four pages and try him again.

So, I did, and then he emailed me and said “Congratulations, this should look good in Wasted!” and I emailed him back saying “That’s great. You just made my day! Thank you very much,” and then I decided to celebrate but it was midweek and all my friends had work the next day and so I just got really drunk by myself.