A Choice Of New Who Sketches Up For Grabs

Scotch Corner artist Graeme Neil Reid is running a competition over on his I Got No Work Done Today Because... blog to win one of three new Doctor Who colour sketches that he has been displaying over the last week.

So that he can enjoy comic conventions himself rather than spending the duration of them sketching, Graeme creates his A5 colour sketches beforehand, displaying them on both his own blog and on the Scotch Corner daily art blog for people to see. His Doctor Who sketches based on the new series as so popular that they regularly sell out faster than any of his other themed sketches at the conventions that he has attended.

However one of these three new sketches will never make it to the next convention that Graeme will be attending because he is offering his Blogspot and Twitter followers the chance of winning one sketch of their choice over on I Got No Work Done Today Because...

Each of the three sketches are inspired by the final episode of the latest season of Doctor Who, The Wedding of River Song, and depict the Doctor wearing his cowboy hat surrounded by skulls, Amy Pond with her suit and eyepatch, and finally a Silent.

The details of how to win your choice of sketch are on the I Got No Work Done Today Because... blog.

More of Graeme Neil Reid's sketches are available to buy at his Original Scribbles webstore.

Scotch Corner: A New Daily Art Blog

While the geographical Scotch Corner is (ironically enough) in England, on the web at least it will be firmly north of the border come Wednesday 1st of July.

Six Scottish artists have grouped together to produce a team blog in a show of Celtic solidarity with, or as the Scots put it "shamelessly inspired and ripped off from", the Eclectic Micks art blog.

The six artists will each take one day a week to post an illustration to the Scotch Corner blog -

Jon Hodgson is fair of face on Monday

Graeme Neil Reid is full of grace on Tuesday

Andy Hepworth is full of woe(!) on Wednesday

Gary Erskine has far to go on Thursday

Thomas Crielly is loving and giving on Friday

and they have yet to announce someone who works hard for a living on Saturday!

Which leaves the Sunday slot and, in a twist, they are offering the day as a guest slot for anyone who would like to contribute. Aspiring artists should contact the team via the e-mail address on their blog if they would like to be considered for one of the Sunday guest slots. You will be pleased to know that being "bonny and blithe and good and gay" on the Sabbath day is not a prerequisite for selection.

The Scotch Corner Daily Art Blog begins on Wednesday 1st July.

Bear Alley Is (The) One

It hardly needs a plug from me here since if you are interested in the history of British comics you have probably already read it but, for those few of you who may not yet have succumbed to its charms, Steve Holland's Bear Alley blog is one year old. If you still aren't sure just why it is called Bear Alley then take a step back one year and look at Steve's very first post.

With its eclectic mix of articles, lists and comment on old comics, magazines, paperbacks and story books, it may not hit every one's mark every time but, even if it is about something you have never heard of, it never fails to impress. From photos of Tharg's futuristic spaceship to D C Thomson's century old HQ, from covers of Hot Dames On Cold Slabs to covers of The Water Babies, from the artists you knew of but didn't know about to the pseudonymous authors of text stories, there really must be something that will pique your curiosity.

Mind you since I guest on it from time to time I may not be the most objective person to talk about it, so why not head over and decide for yourself.

The Top Linked-To Blog Posts In 2006

Those infamous Danish cartoons, US TV channel Comedy Central's news analysis mock-up, "The Colbert Report," which orchestrated a "wikiality" check for Wikipedia, a petition by LiveJournal bloggers angry about interface changes, anti-Bush sentiment and Technorati proved to be the top blog posts of 2006, according to Nielsen Buzz Metrics this week.

From this we can we probably presume that a) you shouldn't mess with someone's space b) bloggers are largely liberal and c) they might be liberal technogeeks?

Here's hoping some comics bloggers like Steve Holland over at Bear Alley start climbing the ladder this year.

The 2007 Bloggies – your chance to vote for your favourite blog – have just started. I've nominated Bear Alley, but Joe Gordon's fab Forbidden Planet International blog topped my comics-related votes, which may sound a bit disloyal considering the amount of work I do for the other Forbidden Planet (well, Titan), but what the heck. There's plenty of comics blogs out there now – many of the links on this page such as David Bishop's Vicious Imagery is a blog, as is Doctor Who and Robin Hood writer Paul Cornell's House of Awkwardness.

Nielsen ranked the top blog posts of 2006, ranking them according to how many inbound links came their way between January and December. There were 18 blogs generating the 100 most popular posts of the year: here's the top ten:

1. 2006 Petition Against Changes in the LiveJournal Interface

2. Colbert Does the White Correspondents' Dinner

3. Keith Olbermann Delivers One Hell Of a Commentary on Rumsfeld

4. State of the Blogosphere, August 2006

5. Keith Olbermann's Special Comment on Bush: Who has left this hole in the ground? We have not forgotten, Mr. President. You have. May this country forgive you.

6. Support Denmark: Why the Forbidden Cartoons Matter

7. Saturday Night Live: If Al Gore were President

8. Milking it? (warning - graphic war images. This item has now been archived and has been superceded by a definitive report on the media coverage of the "Qana" incident on 30 July 2006)

9. State of the Blogosphere, February 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth

10. State of the Blogosphere, April 2006 Part 1 On Blogosphere Growth