Category Archives: Comics

Build your own Stage, Shatner – Storytelling on Twitter

‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn.’ Hemingway didn’t even need 40 characters to tell a whispered story that kicks like a mule. So you’d expect Twitter’s comparatively luxurious 140 characters to have delivered some hammerblows – especially since its fifth anniversary has prompted some useful appraisal of the platform’s non-fiction highlights.

The groundwork’s there. Flash Fiction’s succinct concertinaing of narrative continues to thrive online. A roundup by Wired even gleaned a companion piece to my favourite Alan Moore story -

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time

- Alan Moore

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Bill Bailey Interview Transcript

Here’s a transcript of an interview I did several years ago (think it was 2007 but don’t quote me) with comedian, musician and beard wearer Bill Bailey.  Think of it as a break from all the storytelling articles.  Apart from the bits where we tell stories, obviously.

It’s worth mentioning I think my interview technique has moved on from ‘trying to be funnier than one of the UK’s leading comedians’ nowadays…

Bill Bailey Interview

Terminator Cars

Writing a Terminator concept set in Miami, Chile and The South Pole and it’s required research into lots of cool eighties hardware to smash up. The trapezoid cars and trucks that look like Hajime Sorayama sexbots are indulgent, impractical, silly and a long way away from today’s frugal, beige-coloured world – but the designs also seem to be the closest we came to the brushed chrome 21st century we were promised when I was a kid. And two in particular are mind blowing.

Chevrolet XT-2 – designed by General Motors. ‘Experimental Truck 2′ never got past concept stage when it was discovered people were as happy with the same old cars with extras like CD players and leather ups. XT-2 was an expensive leap in the dark, and despite a similar design making progress as recently as 2008, General Motors filed for bankruptcy a year later and are now part owned by the US treasury. You can read more about it here.

Splinter – designed by industrial design graduate Joe Harmon with all wooden bodywork.  More here and here.

Both the above have already made it into the outline I’m working on, which I’ll upload soon as it’s done next week.

Monkey C – 2000ad Future Shock Script

Here’s the first comic script I’ve written since I was 8, a Future Shock for UK comic 2000ad.

Not sure why but I seem to be using protestors in lots of projects at the moment… As well as the below, I’ve a pitch where a Newbury bypass community discover a mind-bendingly powerful machine of some kind when digging tunnels – and there’s a Greenham common-styled village in the telly pilot spec I’ve been working on.

Anyway, enjoy. Comments are always welcome by the way – the below is a first draft.

Monkey C – Future Shocks