Going Dutch

It's a while since I've written a blog - there are a couple of reasons for this. First I've been really up to my eyes in work, trying to get a number of projects cleared before the summer and I've also been in Amsterdam. My family and I decided to take a bit of a break when the children got school holidays and the Netherlands seemed a good place to go. My daughter has been doing Anne Frank at school and so we took ourselves off to see the house. It was a bit of a nostalgic trip for me as I lived in Amsterdam at one point. On the way back home I picked up a copy of the Dutch magazine EPPO which is sitting right in front of me as I write this. I remember the original - in fact I dropped them a couple of scripts - back in the 1970s. It went bust but then was relaunched in 2009 and it still looks well. I see that they still have Storm which was originally done by the late Don Lawrence but looks just as interesting today. Some of us over here had talked about doing something on the Continent but the Continental markets, as well as the Continental comics scene, is notoriously hard to break into. And of course in Britain, we're in the wrong place entirely. Comics in Britain are always regarded as children's material and in Northern Ireland it's even worse. Indeed I was told not long ago by a Northern Ireland politician that children would be far better reading their Bible than reading comics - so that gives a flavour of the general perception. Having said that however, I should be appearing in an Italian comic called Dark Matter sometime in October/November, although I'll be in Italian. The publisher involved is in Lucca, Tuscany and the strip is an old one which I did many years ago with David Lloyd who did V for Vendetta. I don't know how widely it'll be circulated but I'll let you know when it appears. We had hoped to have some more 1949 and Joachim Darke up - there are pages waiting to be uploaded - but we've been having troubles. I haven't been in touch with Adrian for a while as both his phone and computer are down - he lives in a rural area of County Down - and I haven't been able to talk to him since I came back. However, there are pages waiting to be put up so we'll get that done asap. So the Netherlands was great but back at my desk and I'm sure that it won't be so long until I do the next blog. See you then