Rainbow Orchid Prequel In The Phoenix This Friday

Artist and writer Garen Ewing’s latest adventure of Julius Chancer, The Secret of the Samurai, a prequel to his three book Rainbow Orchid saga, is starting a four week run in The Phoenix beginning this weekend. The twenty page adventure will be published in five page segments over four weeks beginning in issue 75 due on Friday 7 June and concluding in issue 78 due on Friday 28 June 2013.

The Secret of the Samurai takes place several years before the events depicted in The Rainbow Orchid. Talking about it in his blog, Garen says, “My plan is that one day I will do a connected but equally stand-alone story of the same length, so there's the possibility they could be published together as a complete book. This will not derail the full-length (60-80 pages) adventure I have plotted and ready to start - hopefully this summer.”

Despite recently becoming a father for the second time, Garen continues to attend conventions. He will be attending Stripped, the comics ‘festival within a festival’ at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, where he will be taking part in three events on Sunday 25 August 2013. The full programme for the Edinburgh International Book Festival and Stripped will be announced on 20 June on the BookFest website. In addition, over the weekend of 19-20 October 2013, Garen will be selling, signing and sketching at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival’s Comic Clock Tower in Kendal in the Lake District.

• There are more details of all Garen Ewing’s work on his website and more details on The Secret of the Samurai and The Rainbow Orchid on his Adventures Of Julius Chancer website.

• The Phoenix comic is available from Waitrose supermarkets, Travelling Man and Forbidden Planet International stores, as well as a selection of other comics shops and book shops around the UK.

• There is more information about The Phoenix on the title’s website including a location guide to stores that sell it. Subscriptions and back issues are also available for those who do not have a local stockist.

Radio interviews with Warren Pleece, Denise Mina, Garen Ewing and Simon Barnard

I'm ready for my close-up: The Scarifyers

As we enter Doctor Who's 50th anniversary year, I'm ready for my close-up investigates a radio drama series tangentally connected to the franchise. The Scarifyers is a horror / black comedy series, with new installments broadcast each year on BBC Radio 4 Extra (formerly BBC 7) and released on CD and concern the adventures of an elderly horror writer and his retired police sidekick as they investigate supernatural crimes and occurances in 1950s Britain. The cast includes Terry Molloy (Doctor Who's Davros), Nicholas Courtney (Doctor Who's Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart) and David Warner (Time Bandits et al.) with supporting cast including actors famous for roles in Doctor Who and other Sci-Fi dramas such as Gabriel Woolf, Philip Madoc, Gareth David-Lloyd and Brian Blessed.

Alex Fitch talks to series writer and producer Simon Barnard and CD cover artist Garen Ewing about the genre crossing narrative, their love of old SF and horror and the use of iconic actors in new serialised roles.

5pm, Friday 25th January 2013, repeated 8am, Tuesday 29th January, Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com / podcast at www.panelborders.wordpress.com

Panel Borders: Around the country with Constantine

In the third of our trilogy of shows looking at the 25th anniversary of John Constantine: Hellblazer, Alex Fitch talks to creators of the comic book from opposite ends of the UK. Scots novelist and playwright Denise Mina discusses her year long tenure as writer of the title from 2006-07 and remembers the challenges of penning her first comic book scripts; Brighton based artist Warren Pleece talks about pencilling and inking 9 issues of the comic in 1997 and '98, plus collaborating with Philip Bond for SF spin-off Bad Blood at the turn of the century.

6pm, Sunday 27th January, repeated at 4.30pm, Tuesday 29th January, Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com / extended podcast after broadcast at www.panelborders.wordpress.com

The Rainbow Orchid Supplement Now Available

The Rainbow Orchid Supplement, the latest publication in Garen Ewing's world of The Rainbow Orchid, is now available from his webstore. This is a 'DVD extras' style publication acting as a bonus for Rainbow Orchid fans that Garen has published through his own Inkytales imprint.

The 46 page, A4 softcover, perfect bound book, with a colour cover and black and white interiors, is designed to sit on the bookshelf alongside the current Egmont published three volume set of The Rainbow Orchid and is made up of bonus material none of which is included in Egmont's recently published The Complete Rainbow Orchid. It is a limited edition and only 250 have been printed.

The Supplement includes the covers to every Rainbow Orchid publication from the small press Imagineers to the foreign publications of the books, a long section of annotations to the full published story, a selected bibliography that Garen used as reference material, a selection of initial cover sketches for the Egmont editions, three different interviews with Garen from different sources and, perhaps the most intriguing for hardened Orchid fans, a selection of abandoned ideas for the story.

The Rainbow Orchid Supplement was launched at the Thought Bubble comics convention in November 2012 and is only available directly from Garen Ewing at events or via his webshop. The cost for a signed copy of the Supplement from the website is £7 including UK postage.

There are more details about The Rainbow Orchid on The Rainbow Orchid website.

The Rainbow Orchid Supplement is available via The Rainbow Orchid webshop which also gives buyers the chance to purchase signed and sketched versions of the Egmont editions of the book.

Creator Talk: Six Questions For Artist/Writer Garen Ewing

When The Rainbow Orchid creator Garen Ewing began writing and drawing his ligne clair style Adventures Of Julius Chancer in Jason Cobley’s small press BAM! black and white anthology in 2002, he would have hardly have expected that a decade later The Rainbow Orchid trilogy of books would be available to buy in colour in both British and Dutch editions with French and Spanish versions in the works.

With the three individual books now collected and released in the United Kingdom as The Complete Rainbow Orchid omnibus, Jeremy Briggs talked to Garen about his work and the future of his characters.

downthetubes: The artwork and story style of The Rainbow Orchid would suggest that you grew up on Tintin books. What comics did you read and enjoy as a child and which ones do you like now?

Garen Ewing: Yes, Asterix and Tintin were the mainstays, in fact the obsessions, of my childhood, and they still remain my favourite comics. I also read various humour weeklies, such as The Dandy and Whizzer & Chips, but I preferred adventure comics - The Victor, Tiger, Warlord, Battle, and later 2000AD. I was also a big Oor Wullie fan thanks to my Scottish grandmother. As my teens approached I moved onto Warrior, which I loved.

Currently I'm enjoying the greater availability of European comics in English, especially Blake & Mortimer and Yoko Tsuno - both of which I'd had the 1980s Comcat editions before - and Leo's Aldebaran series. As well as the Cinebook range, books from NBM (love the two Miss Don't Touch Me volumes) and Fantagraphics (especially the Tardi and Tillieux reprints). I'm really looking forward to Bryan Talbot's third Grandville album and also catching up with the more recent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books.

DTT: Where did the original idea of The Rainbow Orchid come from?

Garen: As far as the story goes I think it originated in my research for what was initially going to be a Victorian vampire tale, and looking into that era's obsession with orchid collecting. That, amalgamated with my love of classic lost world adventure stories by such authors as Rider Haggard and Jules Verne. Add a dash of Franco-Belgian graphics and we're there!

DTT: How much has it changed over the years from your initial concept?

Garen: Hardly at all as far as the plot goes, I pretty much kept to my original plan. Quite a few details changed, as they must, and the character of Meru was a bit of a surprise to me - he just popped up, but plays a major part.

DTT: Now that The Complete Rainbow Orchid is available, how would you 'sell it' to someone who hasn't yet bought one of the individual books?

Garen: Probably the best shorthand, courtesy of a friend's description, is it's Tintin meets Indiana Jones only a bit more cerebral. I'd like to hope that it's the kind of story you can settle down with on a Sunday afternoon, a mug of tea at your side, and get totally lost in for an hour or two. It's 1398 panels of pure adventure, good for kids and adults alike.

DTT: You have recently had several strips in The Phoenix comic. Can you tell us a little about them and if they will continue?

Garen: I was the illustrator on two of Ben Haggarty's Silk Roads strips, The Legend of the Golden Feather (left) in issue 1, and a four-parter, The Bald Boy and the Dervish, a few months later, both Arabian Nights-type tales and great fun to do. I'm not sure if I'll be doing any more of those, but I will be doing something for The Phoenix again at some point, if plans work out.

DTT: What's next for Rainbow Orchid's Julius Chancer character?

Garen: I'm writing the next Julius Chancer adventure now. I don't want to give too much away this early on, but I can say it involves a stage magician, a ruined seventeenth-century house, an uncharted island and an ornate wooden box.

DTT: Thank-you for taking the time to talk to us.

There are more details of The Rainbow Orchid on Garen's Rainbow Orchid website which includes a shop with badges, t-shirts and signed and sketched copies of the books available.

There are more details of Garen's other work at his own website.

The downthetubes reviews of the three Rainbow Orchid books -
Book 1 review
Book 2 review
Book 3 review

In Review: The Rainbow Orchid Volume 3

By Garen Ewing
Publisher: Egmont
Out: Now

The Book: At the beginning of Volume Three, Julius Chancer and Lily Lawrence are recovering from the electrifying end of Volume Two. What does the future hold for Evelyn Crow and her gang of desperate villains? Do Julius and Lily have the strength to prevent evil millionaire Urkaz Grope from enacting his evil plans?

The Review: The third and concluding volume of Garen Ewing's The Rainbow Orchid was published last month by Egmont UK, picking up almost immediately after events in Volume 2 but quickly reuniting Julius Chancer's expedition - perhaps too quickly, given the dramatic conclusion to the previous episode.

(Maybe author Garen is not just drawing on the storytelling of TinTin but the weekly classic 'film serials' of old with their glorious cliffhangers to keep their audience coming back for more).

For those who came in late, The Rainbow Orchid tells the story of an expedition to find a fantastic, possibly mythical, orchid, rumoured to grow somewhere in the depths of the Hindu Kush. It’s set in the 1920s with the main characters being a young historical researcher, Julius Chancer, and a silent-film actress and her agent.

As Garen recently described it: "I’d say it’s a sort of lost-world adventure, Rider Haggard meets Tintin!"

It's a gripping conclusion, with the kind of to of the hat to Herge (and Haggard) we've come to expect from this wonderful ligne claire series, but with a modern take of action, adventure and intrigue that leaves plenty of openings for further adventures and returning villains.

The production quality of the book is again superb, with glorious 'fly leaves' of fictional souvenirs from the adventure (newspaper cuttings, film posters, exhibition tickets etc) complementing Garen's well-honed, beautifully-realized ligne claire art. It's a shame the book hasn't also been published in hardback, which would do these even more justice.

Ten years in the making since its first appearance in indie comic magazine BAM, fans have waited a long time for the conclusion to Chancer's first epic adventure, but they won't be disappointed - even if it might prompt an unusual interest in learning the Kalasha language in some households. Garen skillfully wraps many threads, both in distant lands and in Britain, as Julius finally nears the object of his expedition, again pitted against the deliciously iredeemable villainess, Evelyn Crow.

Much of this final chapter takes place largely in a lost world where ancient technology offers the possibility a frightening development in the arms race, should those secrets fall into the wrong hands, but also the location of the Rainbow Orchid itself.

Be warned: there's a lot of exposition in this final chapter, as we find out more about the mysterious Meru, who has helped guide Julius on his quest, and the secrets of the Kalash are revealed. But if you're prepared to weather that - and full marks to Garen for carefully crafting a complex and intriguing ancient civillisation in so few pages - then you won't be disappointed by the outcome. (It certainly hasn't put off fans who have kept the book in Amazon's Top 100 Children's Graphic Novels chart over the past month).

Credit should not just go to Garen for creating this wonderful adventure - and news that more are in the works is welcome - but also to Egmont UK, for their faith in the project and bringing it to bookshops. Let's hope success for The Rainbow Orchid prompts them to publish more original graphic novels.

• There are more details of all The Rainbow Orchid books on Garen's Rainbow Orchid website which includes a shop through which you can order signed and sketched copies of the books.

• The downthetubes reviews of the previous volumes are here: Volume 1 - Volume 2

• Garen will be promoting it at various comics conventions this year. He is current scheduled to be at the Bristol Comic Expo on 12-13 May; Stripdagen in Holland on 2nd - 3rd June 2012; and and Thoughtbubble in Leeds on 17-18 November 2012.

• The original version of the story and its artwork has gone through various stages over those ten years since BAM! and Garen explains some of the differences and his reason behind the changes on The Rainbow Orchid blog. This also includes a few brief images from the new book and roughs of the cover and some other pages.

- You can also read an interview with Garen about Volume 3 and his art here on Comics Beat, where he reveals some of his plans for the future.

The Scarifyers jumps from audio adventure to comics

(with thanks to Matt Badham): Artist and illustrator Simon Gurr, whose credits include 2000AD and Brunel: A Graphic Biography, has announced he is working on The Scarifyers, a brand new comic based on the audio series aired by on BBC Radio, written by series co-creator Simon Barnard and sporting a very handsome cover from ligne claire legend Garen Ewing.

Set in 1936 London, the comic follows Detective Inspector Lionheart’s investigation of a mysterious death at the home of academic and ghost author Professor Dunning.

"The spookiness is laced with plenty of humour and witty cultural references," says Gurr, "and, as you would expect from an audio play, the dialogue sparkles."

The Scarifyers audio adventure series is produced by Cosmic Hobo Productions and based on stories written by Simon Barnard and Paul Morris. Set in 1936 and 1937, it follows the exploits of DI Lionheart and ghost-story writer Professor Dunning, as played by Nicholas Courtney and Terry Molloy.

Each adventure is a self-contained story and is released on CD and direct download. The first two stories, The Nazad Conspiracy and The Devil of Denge Marsh, were broadcast on BBC7 in 2007. Guest stars have included Brian Blessed, Leslie Phillips and Nigel Havers.

In 2011, after the death of actor Nicholas Courtney, David Warner joined the series with The Magic Circle, centred around the disappearance of Lionheart, and introduced new lead character Harry Crow, Lionheart's former police colleague. It was released in November 2011 and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra earlier this year. The seventh Scarifyers story, The Horror of Loch Ness, will be released in June 2012 and features the final performance of the late Philip Madoc.

"The Scarifyers is already a successful audio adventure series," Simon notes on his blog. "The comic adapts part one of the first audio adventure: The Nazad Conspiracy, and Simon has skilfully re-written it for a visual form."

Garen Ewing has drawn all the covers for the seven Scarifyers audio releases so far.

- Both Simons will be selling copies of #1 at the Bristol Comic Expo on 12th-13th May and at Kapow on Saturday 19th May, so look out for the Scarifyers banner if you are at either of these events.

The Rainbow Orchid Volume 3 About To Bloom

The third and concluding volume of Garen Ewing's The Rainbow Orchid will be published tomorrow, Monday 2 April 2012 by Egmont UK.

Marking ten years since the European ligne claire style mystery began in black and white in the small press BAM!, this third volume in The Adventures Of Julius Chancer has been long awaited and by Garen's own admission a little late due to "a bit of illness, the priority of paying work, and also the rather more pleasant interruption of the birth of my daughter in 2011."

The original version of the story and its artwork has gone through various stages over those ten years since BAM! and Garen explains some of the differences and his reason behind the changes on The Rainbow Orchid blog. This also includes a few brief images from the new book and roughs of the cover and some other pages.

With the third volume available Garen will be promoting it at various UK comics conventions this year. He is current scheduled to be at DemonCon in Maidstone on 22 April, the Bristol Comic Expo on 12-13 May and Thoughtbubble in Leeds on 17-18 November 2012.

There are more details of all The Rainbow Orchid books on Garen's Rainbow Orchid website which includes a shop through which you can order signed and sketched copies of the books.

The downthetubes reviews of the previous volumes are below:
Volume 1
Volume 2

Happy Birthday, 2000AD! From artist Garen Ewing

Name: Garen Ewing

Web site: www.rainboworchid.co.uk 

Currently working on:

I've just completed The Rainbow Orchid volume 3 which is to be released on 2nd April 2012, published by Egmont (Dutch edition from Silvester Strips is out in May). That completes the story.  

First memory of 2000AD?

I can't remember when I first started getting 2000AD, but I know I read irregular issues from early on. Looking at a cover gallery online I remember having Prog 18 and then a few from Prog 47 onwards with the Dan Dare covers.

I know I didn't read 'The Cursed Earth' first time around but was definitely a mostly-weekly reader by the time of the 'Judge Child Quest'. For a couple of years, cira Judge Death's second appearance with his Dark Judges, I was totally obsessed ... enough for my mum to voice her concern that 2000AD was getting in the way of my school work!

Favourite Character or Story?

My absolute favourite story from 2000AD was the Judge Dredd tale 'Block Mania' and the 'Apocalypse War', with the 'Judge Child Quest' coming a close second. Alongside that would be 'Portrait of a Mutant', the Strontium Dog story. I remember reading, re-reading and re-re-reading that.

I loved Nemesis - both the Kevin O'Neill and Bryan Talbot versions. I also had a strange fondness for Ace Garp!

I must also mention the brilliant 1982 annuals (2000AD (red Bolland cover) and Judge Dredd (green McMahon cover) - I don't think I put them down for a month.

What do you like most about 2000AD?

I loved its slightly surreal and often disturbing humour, all mixed in with a great sense of sweeping adventure. Story and art throughout were a real strong-point - it was quality.

What would you most like to see in 2000AD as it heads to its Forties?

 You'll notice in my last answer I used the past-tense, because I have to admit I haven't bought 2000AD for a long time. I've got hold of the occasional issue (sorry, prog!) but haven't stuck with it again for some reason. So I don't feel qualified to answer this question, I'm afraid!

I will say that for a few years 2000AD was a huge influence on me and I harboured (now diminished) ambitions to see my work within its pages.

So a very happy birthday to 2000AD - I'm glad it's still going, and knowing some of the artists that currently work for it the quality must still be right up there.

If you worked on 2000AD, do you have an anecdote you'd like to share about your experience of Tharg and his minions?

I didn't work for it but I would like to add that 2000AD led to me winning my first ever competition - I won a copy of the Titan collected edition of The Cursed Earth part 2, I think for naming the parts of a Lawmaster.

My prize arrived on the morning I left for a week-long school trip to the Isle of Wight, and it came with me! 

• This post is one in a series of tributes to 2000AD to mark its 35th birthday on 26th February 2012. More about 2000AD at www.2000adonline.com

2000AD © Rebellion

In Review: The Phoenix Issue 1

It feels like a long time since the last issue of The DFC appeared - although The DFC Library books have been reminding us what that title was like and, with the Etherington Brother's Baggage, what it might have continued to be given the chance.

So when The Phoenix was first mooted last year, there was some discussion about how this second title from David Fickling Comics Ltd was going to have to change to survive longer than its predecessor. The biggest change that was considered to be needed was it being available over the counter rather than just by subscription and, with their Waitrose deal, The Phoenix has managed that.

As for the comic itself, £2.99 gets the reader 32 pages of semi-gloss colour, which is a big improvement on the matt colour of The DFC. The dinosaur on the front cover leads into Daniel Hartwell and Neill Cameron's The Pirates Of Pangaea. When the first Phoenix image of this was released I e-mailed it around the rest of the downthetubes team saying that if it was available as a book on Amazon I would have bought it there and then based on that one image. Eight pages in, four in issue Zero and another four here, and I stand by that initial assessment - I like both the idea and the execution and I can completely understand why editor Ben Sharpe ran it as the cover and first story in this issue.

Next up are two pages of Jamie Smart's Bunny Vs Monkey which sets up the humorous strip's basic concept and, like Pangaea, continues directly on from the pages in Issue Zero. As the two protagonists didn't meet in Issue Zero this is one strip that seemed a little strange there, but the fateful meeting has now occurred and I can now see how it is going to play out. With Jamie's delightful chibi-style animal characters, this is one strip that I expect will grow on me.

Via two pages of text from the Ash Mistry book due to be published by Harper Collins in March, the next comic strip is the Etherington Brothers' Long Gone Don. The brothers' love of the manic is in full flow here with the main character dying on the first page before being transported to what could only be described as an Etherington version of Alice's Wonderland. Issue Zero didn't give much away about Long Gone Don and it has to be said that you aren't going to be much the wiser after these three pages but, with a hat wearing talking crow and Lorenzo's trademark detailed art, I fully expect this one to become a firm favourite.

Neill Cameron gets another page and a bit to get the readers to interact with the comic in How To Make Awesome Comics before the first two pages of Kate Brown's The Lost Boy. There isn't much to the story in these two pages, an apparently ship-wrecked boy wakes up on a sun bleached beach, finds a piece of a map and follows footprints up the shore. Yet Kate's style is so distinctive in the way she plays with the elements that make up her pages, as it was in The Spider Moon, that it makes these two pages interesting to look at despite the initial lack of action.

Garen Ewing's ligne claire style is much more traditional in the four page complete story by Ben Haggarty of The Golden Feather in which a middle-eastern boy and his grandfather, appropriately, watch the death and rebirth of a real Phoenix.

This is followed by Adam Murphy's Corpse Talk in which Adam talks to the reanimated corpses of famous people, in this instance scientist Nikola Tesla. Corpse Talk really sounds like a bad idea, zombies for kids mixed with history, however when I asked my 10 year old nephew which was his favourite strip in Issue Zero, it was Corpse Talk - and I have to agree with him. It may sound like a strange idea but, remarkably, it works really well.

The final strip in Issue 1 is James Turner's 2 page Star Cat, the beginning of a longer adventure, which does its job of raising a smile. If James' DFC strip Super Animal Adventure Squad was The Avengers for the Fineas and Ferb generation, then Star Cat is their Star Trek.

The whole comic is packaged up with editorial characters, a couple of humorous shorts, Patrice Aggs' centrespread of a school open day that is just about to go wrong, Lorenzo Etherington's tortuous Von Doogan prize puzzle and a superb Chris Riddel image of a cat restaurant.

So is there a drawback? As with The DFC, getting children and their parents to realise The Phoenix is available is going to be the issue. While the Waitrose deal is heartening to hear, there are only eight Waitrose stores between Yorkshire and John O'Groats, which at least is eight more than Northern Ireland has. For a vast swathe of the United Kingdom, "available at Waitrose" equates to "subscription only". If you have a local Waitrose then consider yourself lucky that you can simply walk in and buy a copy.

The Phoenix Issue 1 is an impressive start for the new title and, based on the contents of this week's issue, it deserves to do well. Time, and hopefully a wider distribution deal, will tell.

• There are more details about The Phoenix comic at their official website where a digital version of Issue Zero is available to read. The various Phoenix subscription options are also available here.


• The Phoenix is available at Waitrose supermarkets. Your nearest Waitrose can be found using the Waitrose Branch Finder.

• The Oxford Mail ran a short article on the release of Issue 1 which includes a picture of The Phoenix team.

Demoncon2 finalises line up with plenty of web comic creators

(With thanks to The Grinning Man, Maidstone): The line up for Demoncon2, taking place in Maidstone in November, is now pretty much finalised and includes comic creators such as Garen Ewing and Dan Boultwood on the guest list, along with many of them creators of web comics you might be following.

The guests that will be packing (and that probably is a fair description, we're told) into the Eden venue on the 6th November are as follows:

• Peter Anckorn (By the Book)
• Chris Bates (Travelling the Wolf Road)
• Dean Beattie
• Dan Boultwood (Hope Falls, The Gloom, Baker St Irregulars)
• Garen Ewing (The Rainbow Orchid)
• Phillip Jackson (Sequential Art, Little Victory, Travelling the Wolf Road)
• Marc Laming (The Rinse, American Century)
• Jack Lawrence (Darkham Vale, Lions Tigers & Bears, Tinpot Hobo)
• Tony Lee (Doctor Who, Starship Troopers, Hope Falls, The Gloom, Baker St Irregulars)
• Sonia Leong (Aya Takeo, Domo the Manga, Love Stuffing, Comic Book Tattoo)
• Morag Lewis (Looking for the Sun, Sun Fish Moon Fish, Ambient Rhythm)
• Chris Phillips (Candleman, The Moose, Travelling the Wolf Road)
• Ian Sharman (Hero 9 to 5, Hypergirl)
• Dave Stokes (Poster Artist for Demoncon2, Blackfriars Webcomic)
• David Wynne (Hypergirl, FTL, Particle Fiction)

Hopefully coming to their first Demoncon will be Cy Dethan (Slaughterman's Creed, Cancertown, Starship Troopers), Laurence Campbell (2000AD, Marvel Universe vs Wolverine, Punisher)

"Space is going to be a real issue even with the gaming presence from last time gone, but we’ll juggle something," say the organisers.

• DemonCon 2 is on 6th November 2011 at the Eden, Bank Street, Maidstone. For the latest info check out this area of local comic shop The Grinning Demon's web site

Tube Surfing: Three-panel Comics, Interviews, Reviews, Birthday Greetings and Fan Art!

(Above: a piece of fan art for Garen Ewing's Rainbow Orchid by Sarah McIntyre.)

Tube surf time again...

• The Forbidden Planet International blog has really gone to town with their reviews of the DC Comics '52' re-boot (re-launch?) Here's a round-up of all their reviews for the first week of that 'event' (several of the titles are by Brit creators).

• Ed Kaye interviews Rob Williams and D'Israeli for 2000 AD Online about the new series of Lowlife. Plus he also has a chat with Kek-W about his new series, Angel Zero. Ed seems to be that site's resident interviewer now and, I have to say, he's doing good work.

• Warren Ellis is hosting three-panel comic strips at his blog. Good to see him supporting other comic creators (as ever).

• I hope I get a birthday card from and drawn by Jim Medway when I hit 40.

• Paul Cornell directs us to a preview of his Demon Knights comic over at Wired.

Sarah McIntyre does great event reports!

And finally, I do like the readers' art page at Garen Ewing's website.

Rainbow Orchid Vol 3 Preview On-Line

The third and final volume of Garen Ewing's excellent series The Rainbow Orchid is due to be published on 2 April 2012 - which does sound like an awfully long way away.

However to keep us all going until then, Garen had just completed putting up a preview section of the book over on his website. The action takes place in England with Daily News photographer George Scrubbs encouraging the botanist Newton to help him rescue the reporter William Pickle from the clutches of Urkaz Grope.

Also helping to tide Rainbow Orchid fans over until next year are a new set of five badges featuring characters from the series that are available on the Rainbow Orchid website, along with t-shirts and the chance to get signed copies of the first two volumes.

The on-line preview for The Rainbow Orchid Volume 3 begins here.

The Rainbow Orchid shop is here.

The Rainbow Orchid: Volume 3

The cover image for the third volume of Garen Ewing's The Rainbow Orchid has just been released showing Evelyn and Julius fighting above lava.

This does seems rather at odds with one of the teaser images that Garen has posted over at his blog which shows off the two characters in what appears to be an altogether cosier situation. However it will be a while before we know exactly what is going on and how the story climaxes as the release date for the book is given on Amazon UK as 8 August 2011.

In the meantime Garen has donated signed and sketched versions of the first two Rainbow Orchid books plus their cover posters to the Comic Book Alliance eBay auction which is going on at the moment. In addition to these he has also donated some of his original black and white line art that was used to create the Tayout Soviet flying circus poster in the first book.

There are more details of The Rainbow Orchid on the official website as well as Garen's blog.

The CBA Rainbow Orchid auctions are here : Volume 1, Volume 2 and original artwork.

The downthetubes reviews of the first two books in The Rainbow Orchid trilogy are here : Volume 1 & Volume 2.

Tube Surfing : Country Surfing with Commando, Marvelman & Rainbow Orchid

Scotland: One of the latest batch of Commandos, issue 4329 Divided Aces, written by Scot Ferg Handley and illustrated by Argentinian Jose Maria Jorge, is set in and around Edinburgh and includes the familiar Forth Rail Bridge on its cover. Unsurprisingly this was picked up in the Scottish press with a long piece on Ferg and the story in the Edinburgh Evening News.

America: Back when we mentioned Marvelman Family's Finest issue 1, the first Marvel publication of Mick Anglo's Marvelman character, we suggested that it would be interesting to see the difference in the sales figures between issue 1 and further issues to see if readers expecting to read Warrior/Miracleman style stories would remain interested in the juvenile 1950s stories that the comic reprinted.

Comparing the sales figures for July and August on ICv2 shows a 48% reduction in sales for issue 2 when compared with issue 1. Now while ICv2's sales figures are for Diamond US and do not include Diamond UK and we would expect any given issue 1 to sell more than an issue 2, loosing almost half your readers is a big drop.

Holland: Rainbow Orchid writer and artist Garen Ewing reports that the first volume of the adventures of Julius Chancer will be released in Dutch by publisher Silvester Strips under the title De Regenboog Orchidee. There was some debate as to whether the main character would be renamed to Tom Tipps which apparently is easier for the Dutch to pronounce but it seems as if the publisher has decided to stick with Julius Chancer. Of course it could have been worse and they could have decided to call him PG Tipps. In the meantime over on his blog, Garen has started to show specially selected panels from the final book in The Rainbow Orchid trilogy which is due to be published in 2011.

Tube Surfing: Behind the Scenes, Adults Only and Travelling in Japan

A fairly short tube surf today as I'm in deadline hell...

Fans of The Rainbow Orchid by Garen Ewing can get a peek behind the scenes of that comic over at the Forbidden Planet International blog as the cartoonist takes us through his page creation process:

"Writing it out in order like this might make it all seem very organised," he notes, "and it is to a certain extent, but the reality means that it often develops out of order and in bits and pieces here and there."

There's also a chance to go behind the scenes with another comic artist, Oliver Frey, in this interview conducted by Paul Gravett (warning: the piece contains content that means it is stritly for adults only):

"No matter what fantasy figures he is illustrating, whether it’s the dazzling science fiction heroes in Dan Dare, The Trigan Empire or The Terminal Man or the homoerotic hunks Rogue, Bike Boy and others from HIM and Meatmen," writes Gravett in his introduction to the interview.

"Oliver Frey brings a distinctive masculinity and sensuous physicality to his comic art. It was never much of a secret to those who recognised his style and were ‘into the Frey’, although it may come as a surprise to some that this renowned mainstream comics illustrator and newsstand magazine innovator is also Britain’s (and Switzerland’s) greatest contemporary gay porn artist and writer, as accomplished and significant as Tom of Finland before him."

Neill Cameron has recently posted his Japan Manga Diary strip over at his blog. It was first published in Neo magazine in 2006 and is definitely worth a read.

Neill also informs us that he has updated the online shop at his website, which is now selling his various small press comics, including the fantastic Bulldog Empire (written by Jason Cobley).

And finally (told you it was a short one), Joel Meadows, better known as the man behind comics magazine Tripwire now has a website devoted to his photography.

The Rainbow Orchid goes Dutch

Garen Ewing's fab all-ages adventure comic The Rainbow Orchid is to be published in the Netherlands by Silvester Strips.

Marking the first official European collection of the ligne-claire-styled saga, it will be released in three parts, with volume one at the end of September 2010, volume two in January 2011 and volume three in May 2011. (Volume 2 has just been released in the UK: read our review here)

This follows the lead set by the book's UK publisher, Egmont, who acquired the comic in 2008 and published the first volume in July 2009. The third and final volume of the story should appear at about the same time in both English and Dutch early in 2011.

Dutch comic publisher Silvester Strips whose books include Dutch editions of titles such as Dylan Dog and Bone.

"I'm delighted to be working with Silvio Van Der Loo and his team at Silvester Strips, and I understand that I'm lucky enough to have one of their best translators, Mat Schifferstein, working on the books," notes the book's author, Garen Ewing, who has just completed work on the script for the third volume of the adventure story. "I owe huge thanks to Oliver Munson, my agent at Blake Friedmann, for making this deal happen."

Garen will be travelling to the Netherlands to appear on the second day of the major Dutch comics festival De Stripdagen 2010 in Houten, on 26th September, to launch the book, the day after appearing with comic creators Dave McKean and Robin Etherington at the Bath Festival of Children's Literature.

Egmont editions currently available:

• The Rainbow Orchid: Adventures of Julius Chancer Volume One ISBN 978-1405248532

• The Rainbow Orchid: Adventures of Julius Chancer Volume Two

Read our review of Volume Two here

• Official Rainbow Orchid web site: www.rainboworchid.co.uk (blog at: www.rainboworchid.co.uk /blog)

In Review: The Rainbow Orchid - Adventures of Julius Chancer Volume 2

by Garen Ewing
Publisher: Egmont UK
Out: Now


The Book: In Volume Two of The Rainbow Orchid, the intrepid Julius Chancer journeys from Europe to the Indian sub-continent as he steps up his quest for the rainbow orchid. He soon discovers he has enemies more dangerous than he could ever have imagined who are determined to prevent him from finding the mystical flower. The Rainbow Orchid is an ambitious blend of classic storytelling, and cinematic artwork, in which adventure, historical drama and legend are seamlessly intertwined...

The Review: Creator Garen Ewing continues to delight his fans with this second volume of his historical adventure series, pitting earnest hero Julian Chancer and chums against a nefarious bunch of evil-doers working for the clearly bonkers Urkaz Grope, a business man not only trying to seize the rare orchid before anyone else, but prove himself a lord of the British realm to boot. The scoundrel!

Lovingly illustrated throughout - establishing shots such as the Natural History Museum, Karachi Railway Station and some London street scenes, to name but a few, are a delight - this second volume is all-new material. (Longtime readers of downthetubes will know much of the first volume of Rainbow Orchid, reviewed here, appeared in more than one form before being published by Egmont). As such, the volume holds together better, I think: Ewing weaves a careful tapestry of inter-connected plot threads, spanning events in Britain - not least the intriguing activities of the mysterious but cash-strapped Empire Survey Branch - to Chancer and chums continued hunt for the fabled orchid in India.

There's so much to like about Rainbow Orchid. While there is clear homage to past comic heroes, most obviously Herge's Tintin, Ewing has created his own mythos and a huge range of characters. Fans already have their favourites: the deliciously wicked Evelyn Crow (left) continues to prove a thorn in Julian's side, and I imagine her wicked ways will ultimately do her no good whatsoever.

I'm also enjoying the antics of Nathaniel Crumpole, a self-obsessed hapless lover of animals, who successfully continues to cause more problems for the goodies than he solves, right up to the last page. While he's inevitably going to be compared with Tintin's Captain Haddock, he has his own idiosyncracies.

With such characters in the mix, it's strange that Chancer himself is something of a cypher, although Ewing does develop his hero's background in this volume.

There has been such expectation of this second volume of Rainbow Orchid that I feared the final story might not measure up to them. I need not have been concerned: while inevitably, this second volume progresses at a slower pace than Volume 1, it also lays the foundations for a thrilling finale with considerable aplomb.

Ewing continues to bring his growing readership a superb adventure story that leaves you guessing wildly at how the many plot threads will be resolved in the third and final volume...


• The Rainbow Orchid volume 2 is out now, available in bookshops across the land, but if you have trouble finding it, try amazon.co.uk, The Book Depository (free worldwide delivery), Egmont, or you can even nab yourself a signed and sketched-in copy from Garen Ewing's official web site.

 • Read our review of The Rainbow Orchid Volume 1

• The Official Rainbow Orchid web site: www.rainboworchid.co.uk 
You can  read a huge preview of The Rainbow Orchid online here, including an exclusive peek at volume two. Special features include pencils, annotations and more.

Upcoming Rainbow Orchid Signings

31st Jul - 1st August 2010 - Oxford: Caption

23-24th August 2010 - Edinburgh: Edinburgh International Book Festival

25th September 2010 - Bath: Bath Festival of Childrens' Literature

23rd Oct 2010 - London: Crystal Palace Children's Book Festival

20th Nov 2010 - Leeds: Thought Bubble

More reviews:

• Birmingham Mail - Speech Balloons 
"...kidnappings, chases, betrayal, intrigue, several twists and some slapstick from animal-loving Hollywood agent Nathaniel over the 40 action packed pages..."

• The Book Bag
"With a lot of characters and plot strands this is still an admirable thriller. The balance of cartoon comedy (one character and his love of exotic animals, for example) and serious Saturday morning serial stuff is evident, and the settings and 1920s moods, dialogue and attitudes are spot on..."


• Richard Bruton - Forbidden Planet International

"Volume 2 is a success, building, albeit slowly, on the thrills and adventure of the first Volume. Definitely not something that can be read alone though, you really must pick up Volume 1 first. Do that and you’re two thirds of the way through a great adventure, with echoes of the past, classic storytelling and beautifully cinematic, stylish Euro-style artwork..."

• Jez Higgins 

"I've read a lot of comics that I love, but I wouldn't give to someone who wasn't comics-literate. The Rainbow Orchid is not such a beast - it's a really good comic that (I'm trying to avoid the word "accessible" or "appeals") anyone can enjoy."

• Love Reading 4 Kids
"Garen Ewing surpassed himself in the first volume of The Rainbow Orchid and this, the second one, is an absolute cracker.  The panel artwork is beautifully rendered and the storyline incredibly intricate and yet hugely accessible to any reader – child or adult."


• Peter Richardson on Cloud 109 
"...Fabulous artistry throughout and even more assured than Book 1, this really is a book well worth adding to your library."

• All images © 2010 Garen Ewing

Thoughts On The 2010 Edinburgh BookFest Programme

"Widely recognised as being a valuable means of encouraging people to read more extensively, graphic novels have become a sought-after feature of our programme."

Reading such a statement on page 8 of the 2009 Annual Report of the Edinburgh International Book Festival seemed to bode well for the 2010 Festival maintaining the comics content of their programming at the same high levels we have become familiar with in the last couple of years. So the disappointingly small selection and type of comics related events in this year’s programme came as something of a surprise.

It would seem that the decision makers at the Festival have backtracked on the progress made on the subject of comics over the last couple of years with this year’s events falling into two distinct categories - the political cartoonists and their newspaper work for the adults and workshops by the comics people for the children, each workshop with specific age ranges to keep any adults away. This year there are no talks by comics creators aimed at the family audience, none by big name graphic novelists aimed at the teen and adult audience, and no discussions with creators or presentations by academics on the merits of the medium.

That said, what little is in the programme is of a high standard. The If... and Doonesbury combination of newspaper cartoonists Steve Bell and Gary Trudeau is a major coup for the BookFest. It is also good to see that comics creators Glen Dakin, Garen Ewing and Sarah McIntrye can show off their undoubted talents and pass on their enthusiasm to the primary and early secondary school children that their various workshops have been advertised for.

However, where are the evening talks by comics and graphic novel creators that have graced the Festival for the last couple of years? Creators of the calibre of Bryan Talbot and Posy Simmonds appeared in 2008 while Neil Gaiman and Mark Millar were there in 2009. Indeed, the same page of the 2009 Annual Report recognises the quality of last year's comics creators by stating, "Designed to appeal to teens and adults, our graphic novel events featured huge talents including Neil Gaiman, Mark Millar and Ian Rankin (making his debut into the medium)."

It wasn’t as if the comics events in previous years weren’t financially successful for the Festival. In 2009, as we reported here, of the 12 events in the programme that could be considered comics related, nine sold out before the Festival even opened. That sell-out rate of 75% put them well above the overall 2009 Festival average of 45%. As for comics related sales in the Festival bookshops, the 2009 report states, "Neil Gaiman and Ian Rankin's joint event on graphic novels produced a long and enthusiastic queue of fans, resulting in excellent sales."

After the visibility and prestige that comics and their creators have received in recent years at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, it appears that having a new team in charge has set the cause of comics and graphic novels at the festival back by years. Let us hope that things will improve in 2011.

• Edinburgh International Book Festival: http://www.edbookfest.co.uk/

Comics @ Edinburgh International Book Festival

It is the biggest literary festival in the United Kingdom and over the last few years the Edinburgh International Book Festival has taken a very active interest in comics and graphic novels. This year’s BookFest begins in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square Gardens on 14 August and it runs until 30 August.

The comics related events at this year’s Festival are as follows:

Sunday 22 August, 4pm - Comics with Glenn Dakin
This is a workshop for the 12-15 age group on how to create a comic book taken by Glen Dakin whose work has appeared in Paul Gravett’s Escape magazine as well as Marvel UK’s ClanDestine and The Real Ghostbusters and who is now better known for writing children’s books.

Monday 23 August, 5pm - Adventure Comics With Garen Ewing
This is a workshop for the 10-12 age group on how to design a classic adventure comic by Rainbow Orchid’s Garen Ewing.

Monday 23 August, 8pm - Garry Trudeau In Conversation With Steve Bell: The Political Cartoon And Its Place In Journalism
American Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury and British Steve Bell of The Guardian’s If… are two of the best known and acclaimed political cartoonists in either side of the Atlantic and this promises to be an interesting conversation between the two men.

Tuesday 24 August, 12:30pm - A Comic Book View Of Life In Britain: Cedar Lewisohn
The programme describes Cedar Lewisohn as a contributor to a major new book on the subject of how comic artists have satirised and lampooned the politicians of their day and that his talk takes a look at Britain through the eyes of its cartoonists. While it doesn’t say it, this would appear to tie in with Tate Publishing’s Rude Britannia: British Comic Art book, itself a tie in to the Tate’s Rude Britannia exhibition.

Tuesday 24 August, 16:30pm - Sarah McIntyre
This is a workshop for the 5-7 age group from the DFC’s Sarah McIntyre as a preview of her Vern and Lettuce book from The DFC Library. Children are asked to bring their own pen and “a lot of gusto”.

Tickets prices for the talks are £10 and for the workshops £4.

In addition to the public programme, Garen and Sarah will be taking part in the Festival's Schools Programme covering all primary school ages between them. Sarah will start with Monsters and Aliens Let Loose! for Primary 1 to 3 classes followed by a Comics Jam with Vern and Lettuce for Primary 3 to 5 while Garen will be doing a comics workshop for Primary 5 to 7. It should be stressed however that none of the Schools Programme events are open to the public.

The full programme of the Edinburgh International Book Festival is available to download as a PDF from their website. Tickets for the talks and workshops go on sale on Saturday 26 June 2010.

Garen Ewing's The Rainbow Orchid Volume 2

Writer/artist Garen Ewing has put up the cover of the eagerly anticipated Rainbow Orchid Volume 2 over on his blog. This shows hero Julius Chancer and his companions being menaced by a snow leopard and he advises that the book will be available for sale from 5 July 2010.

Garen also gives a list of convention appearances that he will be making this year including the Bristol International Comic Expo at the end of May and Caption at the end of July.

It is also good to see that, in addition to the comics cons, he will also be appearing at two of the major British literary festivals. While both festival's programmes have yet to be published, Garen will be appearing at the Hay Festival in the Hay-On-Wye booktown on the Welsh border on 3 June 2010, while on 23 and 24 August he will be in Scotland at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. It is good to see his bande dessinee style Rainbow Orchid getting this sort of attention from the literati.

More details of Garen's appearances are available in the events listing on The Rainbow Orchid website.