Yesterday saw the release of my latest comic Blood Blokes #3. After debuting at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival last weekend it is now available to buy in print and digitally from the Great Beast store. It will be in comic shops such as Travelling Man and Page 45 very soon. It will also make it’s way to ComiXology at some point soon as well.

It’s probably my best work to date and I’m happy with how the story is being told. This longer format is really letting me stretch my legs in terms of storytelling. The scenes with all four vamps are always my favourite to draw and seem to come out the best.

There’s 26 pages of story in this issue plus back-up illustrations by Tula Lotay, Josceline Fenton, Priscilla Tramontano and Sammy Borras.

And here’s a two page preview for you:

I’ll be updating this whole site pretty soon so the Blood Blokes page will be… revamped updated pretty soon.

The view overlooking Grange Park from our rented apartment near Queen Street West in Toronto. It didn’t stay this sunny all week sadly.

My view of the Los Bros Hernandez talk on Friday evening. Gilbert talked a lot. I got to meet Jaime the next morning when he was signing. It was shortly after 9am and there was no queue. I gushed at him, gave him my comics, shook his hand and ran away.

The Great Beast table.

This photo represents all the drinking Marc Ellerby and I did with friends over the week. Oddly this wasn’t taken in The Pilot Tavern where we spent waaay too much time. Big love to Clark Burscough, Becky Cloonan and Andy Belanger for hanging out, and Ivan Brandon too, what a cool dude.

Oh, this is just Marc and I with Paul Pope after we had lunch with him and Jimmy Aquino on the Monday. No biggie.

The last thing we did was co-host Jimmy’s podcast Comic News Insider which you can listen to here. There were many chuckles.

I wish I had more photos of the show in general, of the new people I met (Liz Prince, Joe Quinones, Ethan Rilly, Ross Campbell, Pranas T. Naujokaitis and Amy, etc.), the Drink ‘n’ Draw, the mad hockey fans (#GoLeafsGo! Oh no, they lost), our 3 hour wait for gorgeous steak at The Keg Mansion, ass-shaking dance offs at the Pilot and general hijinks. But I don’t. But I do have the memories.

In the spirit of FREE COMIC BOOK DAY (which is today) I am offering this exclusive pdf collection of my all-ages adventure comic The King of Things! Click the image or link above to download this 16 page pdf containing the full story ‘The King of Things & the Shrunken Giant Penny’ and the one page tale ‘The King of Things & the One Trick Wand’ plus additional artwork and a teaser for the King’s next adventure.

I’ve never put the full ‘Shrunken Giant Penny’ story online before or offered these comics for download, so please enjoy these comics and spread the word! Pass the link on to anyone you think might enjoy them, especially younger readers!

And don’t forget to visit your local comic book shop to pick up some great free comics before they all go!

Here’s LEGO Daft Punk.

Here’s a LEGO version of the Butterfield Diet, starring Brian Butterfield (based on this sketch from The Peter Serafinowicz Show).

Brian was so kind as to make the photo his Twitter profile pic!

And finally here’s Mr Manchester himself, LEGO Tony Wilson. I came across this hair and head combo by mistake and just had to make him.

In the very first session I asked the pupils “Who here thinks they are good at drawing?” Less than a quarter put their hands up. Over the course of 12 sessions they all learned how to tell stories with simple drawings, design their own cartoon characters, write their own jokes, draw with their eyes closed and in the end write and draw a full page comic strip on the theme of bullying.

For the final workshop on 24th April I presented the class with an A4, full colour comic collecting all of their one page stories with a cover drawn by me based on two of the pupils’ cover design ideas. You can read the full comic below.

I thoroughly enjoyed the chance to teach the Webster pupils and the Loreto students that you can tell fun stories even with the simplest drawings. It was great to try different drawing games and exercises with the kids each week and build their confidence at writing, drawing and expressing themselves.

A big thank you to Caroline Davies at MMU for organising the whole thing (and giving me a lift every week), Ann Garner at Loreto who was never less than enthused about the project, all the Loreto students for their valuable assistance and mostly to the Webster kids for making some great comics.

Next Monday 25th March, I shall be speaking at the monthly Laydeez Do Comics event in Leeds. I shall be talking about my work in webcomics and self publishing with The Everyday, the formation of Great Beast, the publishing group I co-founded, and perhaps a little on Blood Blokes. As if me and a slideshow wasn’t enough for you, I will also have books and comics for sale, so if you’ve been waiting to buy from me directly and you live near Leeds, this is your chance.

‘Laydeez Do Comics: Leeds’ is held at Wharf Chambers (23-25 Wharf Street, Leeds, LS2 7EQ), runs from 6.30pm – 9.30ish and costs £1.50. Girls and boys welcome.

Also speaking at the event are:

Melanie Maddison – Artist
‘Colouring Outside The Lines’ – a zine featuring interviews with contemporary female artists. http://cotlzine.blogspot.co.uk/

Dr Mel Gibson – Academic, Northumbria University.
What became of Bunty? – The lost history of British comics for girls. www.dr-mel-comics.co.uk

“Laydeez do Comics is the UK’s first women’s led comics forum, that focuses on autobiographical comics and dramas of the everyday. It was started by illustrator Nicola Streeten & artist Sarah Lightman in London in 2009. Laydeez do Comics: Leeds was set up in November 2012 and is run by illustrator Louise Crosby.”

AND

An hour before ‘Laydeez Do Comics’ there’s another comic-related event in the very same city!

Comics Forum presents… Death and the Superhero: Strikeforce Morituri with José Alaniz
Henry Moore Institute, 5-6pm. Free event. To book your free ticket, email: comicsforum@hotmail.co.uk.

“José Alaniz, From the University of Washington, Seattle is author of Komiks: Comic Art in Russia. The talk examines the late 1980s Marvel Comics series Strikeforce: Morituri which took as its premise the inescapable mortality of its superteam’s members, for a consideration of the ways “real” death warps and complicates the routinely death-denying superhero genre.”

Come say hi!

First up a recent commission where I was asked to draw “anything Batman but not Batman.” This is what I came up with:

A black and white version of the inked artwork I sent to the commissioner (Gordon) can be seen on my Flickr here.

Next up is a pin-up for ‘It Girl & The Atomics’ volume 1 which I was asked to do by the writer Jaime S Rich. The book is out on April 9th according to Amazon. I was quite pleased with the colours on this one:

Someone compared my work to an animated show called ‘Ugly Americans’ recently due to my use of solid black. I watched a few episodes and now I’m a big fan. It was created by Devin Clark and developed by Simpsons writer David M. Stern with character designs for animation by Neil Swaabe (author of Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles). I posted this piece on my Twitter and Tumblr and Devin Clark was kind enough to retweet and reTumble it. This started as a wind-down sketch but ended up as fully coloured fan art:

And lastly, I loved the film Wreck-It Ralph and especially the character designs of the confectionery cops so I doodled one of them, Duncan (get it?), and added some colour with markers:

Bye!

I realised it has been pretty quiet on the old Cadwell blog this year, so here’s a silly idea I had a few weeks back. I couldn’t get this idea out of my head until I had made it so here it is. It’s just marshmallows and a LEGO minifigure hat. The background photo was taken from Andrew C Mace’s Flickr.

Warner Bros. were so pleased with my work creating minifigures to send to celebrities to promote the LEGO Batman 2 videogame, that they asked me to create even more for the LEGO Lord of the Rings game! Of course I was thrilled to take up the challenge again and received lots of free LotR sets so I could use the minifigure parts from them. Or to put it another way that would thrill the 8 year old me: Warner Bros. sent me free LEGO and paid me to play with it. It’s a tough life sometimes.

There’s plenty of photos of all the celebrities I made in my LEGO Creations gallery or on my Flickr.

I can’t wait for the next LEGO videogame to come out!