No they didn’t.

Loyal Clamnutoid, Kyle spent waaay too long making an animated version of my 24 Hour comic STOCK CAR NINJA. It’s a little stretched but it relates the story well. I really like that comic still. Cheers Kyle! Now come over to my place and re-grout my tiles.

Best watched with this audio playing; the Granny version of Buzzbomb. Let her rip

I posted this last week and here is the background to the story. I used to do comic diaries like this, just meandering waffles and doodles that would take a lot of explaining. But this is a good one.

In the year of our lord 2000AD, my life was a mess. I was drinking way too much and generally just wasting my life with a vengeance, weekdays for were drinking and skanks and the weekends for bad hash and flarn.

One Monday I went up to Quinner’s where me,him and DC smoked our brains out. Quinn had just gotten 3 massive reptile tanks made, two of which where under his bed, raising it to the height of bunk beds. They were uninhabited. So we took turns sitting in the air tight tanks where we had to smoke a full joint to yourself and sing a song into a mic which was broadcast by speaker to the two sitting on the bed. Childish but funny times. I sung ‘ Should have known better’ by Jim Diamond. I love that crappy song.

I left around 1 and begun the 40 minute walk home. I was walking through Watergate park when I saw what looked like a bended tree going all wobbly, as I got closer I saw that it was alive and coming towards me, it revealed itself to be a Heron with it’s big bendy neck. I laughed out loud. Way up ahead I could see two bus inspectors coming towards me. I continued along staring at the ground and the Inspectors stopped me. They were Garda.

I had been stopped and searched once before but that was with other kids and it was during the day. I was alone in the dark with these two. I was wearing a bomber jacket thing and a hat which is meant to deter troublemakers from approaching but the other side of that coin is that you look like a troublemaker. They asked me a series of where what and whys? ‘What are you doing out this late’, ‘Do you have anything in your pockets that you shouldn’t have?’. I agreed to the search but then remembered the half smoked spliff in my pocket.

Thankfully I hate littering so my pockets were FULL of crap, dozens of bus tickets, an empty can of 7up, a video tape, an audio tape and two dead mice. I told them that I had two dead mice in my pocket and one of them looked ready to hit me. I produced them and explained that I was meant to give them to Quinner to feed to a snake. One snarled the other one laughed. I palmed the joint and they never saw it. I spoke as eloquently as possible to show that I was in fact a decent member of society. They handed me back all my stuff but the angry one had popped the lenses out of my glasses.

They let me go and told me that they don’t want to see me around the park ever again. I walked off and blazed up to calm my nerves, thinking what nazis they were, all I was doing was walking home. Why were they skulking around without their hi-viz jackets, why were they hassling me?

Then I realised why they were patrolling that area. *Somebody* committed an awful act of street art vandalism a few weeks before around there. And I still think it would have been the universe’s just revenge if they found the joint. But off I went, free as a heron.

Fuck the police.

So I didn’t win the Eagle award. Neh. Great weekend though, will post about it this week.

Here’s some more gick from the archives

From 1998. Roughs for some Clam Land story that never happened.

Recentish, about 3 years ago. Wobots…

1997. Clam Land stuff. Chunswick the Prune Horsey yolk

Anybody seen BARAKA? Watched it over the weekend and it rocked my world. Absolutely inspiring, depressing and thought provoking.

So here are some more ancient sketches, rather than call each post Ancient Sketches Number 134 or whatever, I’ve decided to name them something odd to see if people are searching for these terms.
Leave me alone.

From 1999, I was so lazy then. I took a job in a bakery working 8pm to 8am 3 days a week telling myself I’d have loads of time to work on comics. But no, I smoked dope and beat my dick like it owed me money.

Not too ancient from 2005. This will be a great comic when I figure out what I’m doing, have tonnes of it written but I really don’t want to be described as having done a comic about elves in a mystical Dark Crystal knock off world.

1998, a prototype Amperduke in some kind of stiff, badly drawn trouble.

Hewwo fwends! I finally got my PC reformatted and can now use my scanner and printer. 6 months after I bought the thing. So last Saturday I scanned in loads of crap, 563 pages to be precise and now you’re going to be regularly subjected to the archives.

View the larger file of this here

One of my early attempts of computer rendered and lettered comics. This crappy printout is the only copy of it. 1998

1997

1997

I’ll expand on the above soon. A nutty story how I was stopped and searched by the Garda and I had 2 dead mice in my pocket. The pricks broke my glasses.

Fuck it.

I’m sick of it. It’s over. Enough with wasting of zillions each year on a lame duck. I’m sure by now you have received your ‘Preparing for National Emergencies’ handbook in the post. I got mine and read it on the jacks,fancy graphics and great print job. It got me thinking about how much of a waste of tax payer’s money it is that the government don’t own a largescale dedicated printing house and bang out all these things themself and not put it out to public tender. Then I get to halfway through the booklet and it turns into Irish and it was good thing that I was sitting down. On a toilet. So I could crap with hate and puke in the sink.

I would love to be able to speak my native language. I wish everyone spoke it. But nobody speaks it. I don’t know why, we study it for what? 15 years in school? Jesus Christ. My secondary school, Saint Aidan’s in Tallaght was so fucked up that certain students were deprived of certain subjects. There were three tiers, The Brainy, The Okay and The Gicknoids. Only the top tier were taught French and Science, the others got makey-up ones like Technology. They were deprived of key subjects but of course they got to do Irish. We all did. Waste of time and resources. Especially for kids who could really do with a bettter education.

The government pushed for Irish to be to recognised as an EU language? It cost the EU 30 million Euros in 2007. All government literature and street signs have to be translated into Irish. For who? I couldn’t find it online but I remember hearing a lad on Marion Finnucan pushing for the removing of Irish from schools and he said that there are more deaf or blind people in Ireland than Irish speakers. That’s a killer. Nobody speaks or understands the stuff. Yeah I know there are thousands of people who speak it, but does it warrant spending all that money? There’s a county hall in Tallaght and it says
‘County Hall Block 6′ in massive raised letters on one side then it has the same in Irish on the other side. I know how much that shit costs. It’s criminal.

I understood a few words but have no idea what this ad is about. How much does all this crap cost the State?

I have friends who pursued learning Irish after leaving school, really embraced it and they will pay the cash to send their kid’s to an Irish school. Fair play to them. They’re footing the bill. So let’s remove Irish from normal national schools. If you want to learn it you can choose to. But it shouldn’t be compulsory. It has no practical worth. A fair percentage of school children are non nationals now so it’s pointless teaching them a useless language.

There’s a few good points about it all boards.ie. A recurring point is that in the 13-14 years of compulsory learning, very few become proficient but in 5 years of French or German you can nail the language.

So fuck Irish in the ear. It all comes down to pride I suppose but I have no major pride about being Irish. There I said it. The Potato Famine nearly wiped an island surrounded by fish. We have no culture, drinking doesn’t count as a national culture. Our world embassador Bono is a fucking gaylord. Irish children’s televison was woeful. People die in hospital waiting rooms but there’s enough cash to translate Power Rangers into Irish for TG4. So many things.

Here are some new doodles. Man I was buying a Wacom Cintiq yesterday, filled out the whole thing, ready to pay 1200 Euro with paypal but at the final step it wouldn’t let me pay because my account is frozen until I provide anti-laundering info. Yes, I have that much cash in my paypal. No, when you hit over 1000 clams in payments you have to validate your account.

So I didn’t order the Cintiq. And I was thinking about it all night. Should I or shouldn’t I? They are brilliant but I have no room for it on my desk. I don’t know, maybe I’ll do it later. Look at it:

I’m reading Collapse by Jared Diamond, it’s about why societies collapse and it’s good stuff. I’m fascinated with the world ending. It’s a crazy subject.
There’s a chapter on Easter Island and he asks ‘What were the two guys who were chopping down the final tree saying to each other?’. I can’t stop thinking about that.

There are many reasons why societies choose to fail including the introduction foreign species of animals and plants, I’ve always loved the idea that one small insect can fuck up the entire food chain of an ecosystem. There’s a Groo story where he keeps introducing new animals to eat the vermin but they eat the native animals too so he introduces a bigger one to eat the other ones and so on. Ecosystems are delicate little things and can collapse rapidly. This brings me to a subject dear to my heart, Polish people eating all of our pike.

The massive influx of Polish and East Europeans has brought many changes to Ireland, stone washed jeans are everywhere, weird Polish food has crept into the shops, good looking girls work behind the counter in Spar and shout ‘CUT IN HALF??!!!’ when they make my roll but a serious effect has been the declining pike stocks.

My Dad lives for Pike. Heh, years ago when the internet was new we were putting in things like ‘looking for pike in Dublin’ into search engines not realising that this was paedophile lingo. All his post (Pike and fishing magazines) was opened and tampered with before coming through our letterbox. Funny but scary. And did he stop molesting kids? Of course he did.

Big into Pike. I’m a fair weather fisherman, even a little scared of putting the waders on and catching a big one. They are nasty bastards, they eat everything, they’re just a torpedo shaped mouth that sits happily on top of the food chain. A worthy opponent compared to all the other faggy fish in a lake

The whole idea is to catch them, weigh them, take their picture and then pat them on the bum as you release them back into the lake. But the East Europeans don’t return them. They eat them. Pike is a ‘delicacy’ to them. What? Is all the crap in ALDI not good enough for you, you hungry bastards? It’s wrong, the word on the lake is that numbers are really down over the past couple of years. So cause and effect. The introduction of a bigger predator has messed with the food chain. It’s sad really.

So is this the collapse of society? No, not yet. When the next generation of kids don’t know what a Smurf is, then it’s time to start worrying.

I’m going to start structuring my posts so we’ll have one rant, one art post and one illustrated blog per week. Maybe on Fridays I’ll do the illustrated blog, a little story from my silly life. When Frank can spare the time we’re going to have a new webcomic feature for the Uncle Spunk Nugget comic. I still can’t learn Dreamweaver, I really tried but just can’t.

Here are a few snippets from The Apartment, a new Twisted Tale. I was going to pitch this story as a 28 page book to a US company but manged to squish it into 6 pages with 16 panels per page. I love this comic, it has everything I want in a story; love, revenge, anger, humour….s’all there.

Finally saw Cloverfield, liked it but wasn’t impressed with the Rancor-like monster. I was expecting this lad

Hey piggy wiggy winkles! Just getting over the most agonizing viral infection of my life. The doctor I go to (Dame Street in Dublin) is a clown. Usually when a doctor tells me I’m sick because I’m run down I believe them but I’ve never been fitter, getting regular exercise and eating tons of fruit, so I tell him it can’t be that and there must be a reason why I’m getting the same infection over and over again. He mumbles something and just gives me pills. I think I need my tonsils removed.

So I got through to the short list for the Eagles! Thank you so much to everyone who voted and please do the same again. And of course, spread the word to all your friends and let’s see if we can get a semi-illiterate hack artist nominated as the Best Artist/Writer.

Vote for me here. Vote for Declan Shalvey And Sancho too

Have no new stuff to show so here are some pages from the Freak Show comic I drew a few years ago.

I really like some of these pages but find alot of it cringemaking. It was my first time drawing humans and my first big Corel Painter project. Theres some behind the scenes stuff here