Once, ages back – like, a decade almost – I slung together an anthology of comics, prose and other media with a couple of dozen mates.
It was called Home Brew Vampire Bullets, and it was an exercise in logistics like few (any) I’d attempted previously.
We managed 2.5 issues before shit flamed out, predominantly owing to uncontrollable work/ life factors, but what issues they were. Over the course of six months, roughly 300 pages of top notch printed matter were curated and released – wild.
I might post them here at some stage.
As editor, wrangler, designer and marketing department, I’d initially thought it’d be a great idea to add comics illustrator to that overly ambitious, heady mix.
So was born BABALÖN SHÖKK, a collaboration with my very old mate (as in duration of knowing one another) Christian Read, of which I tortuously illustrated, coloured and lettered six entire pages in anticipation of the book’s issue Zero.
And that’s about as far as I got.
(This was the song that got the ball rolling, by the way.)
Production got away from me and my abilities leant way harder into digital illustration (AKA bricolage), anyway. Also, prose is infinitely quicker than drawing these bastards.
Regardless, the seeds of Home Brewed, Vampire Bullets live on here.
You know what’s coming next – that dread paywall, under which you’ll discover process gear from the comic, as an insight into precisely why I’m slinging prose, not pics, these days.
Here’s a taste of the cliffhanger– this is the loose layout with colour treatment, then inks over the top; then I laid in with the full, anal retentive colour effort and work the letters over the top.
Apologies to anyone who doesn’t dig some shriveled helmet and unruly muff in their teaser post. Point your browser at cha-ching and there’ll be plenty more after the jump.
Here are the unlettered pages, which went through the above process, kicking off with good ol’ Ed Von Satan (later Satán, thanks to a genius improv from Justin Hamilton).
I rolled back the advanced state of decay for the book, clearly.
No idea why page five never got the interim treatment, but there you go.
Finally, here’s what you’re dropping your buck twenty five a week for – the content. This is the first and only appearance of the Töxxik Shökk lads in illustrative form – drink it in, cos I’m way to lazy to return to the illustration well at this late stage.
Sayonara ‘til next week, pals.
xx