Ex Astris heads to Spaceship Away

A bit of self-promotion: artist Mike Nicoll is at work on a ten page Ex Astris strip of mine, "Homecoming" which will appear in black and white in UK Indie title Bulletproof #2, which is edited by Egmont editor Matt (TOXIC) Yeo in his spare time (check out the web site at www.bulletproofcomics.co.uk). Mike's also working up a colour version of the same strip and there's an early draft of a panel of the opening page here, right.

The good news is that the early visuals for this so impressed Spaceship Away editor Rod Barzilay that we are now also working up a three part story for that Dan Dare-inspired prozine, which will run from Issue 16, on sale Autumn 2008.

Mike and I are also contributing a three page story to the next Misty special, an anthology inspired by the 1980s British girls title. This is being published with the full blessing of Misty copyright owners Egmont. Check out the official web site: www.mistycomic.co.uk

ROK Comics, the comics to mobile project I am Managing Editor for, is going very well. We 've now had initial sales figures from China where strips such as Garfield, TMNT and Crazy Mary are appearing on mobile in translation and these are looking good: we're about to publish a lot more strips in Chinese there including David Fletcher's Crumb.

ROK Comics now has partner WAP subscription sites in Pakistan, South Africa and the UK via retailer Claire's as well as the main site (www.rokcomics.com) and more are in the pipeline: we've had interest from elsewhere so the future for mobile comics - already huge in Japan, where they are known as ketai - looks very encouraging.