Courageous Mayhem: Irish comic launches Saturday

Courageous Mayhem is a boy's own adventure style compendium, a veritable who's who of the Irish comics scene.

Among it's eighty-four pages are the critically acclaimed Paddy Lynch (Big Jim), Alan Nolan (And The Blood Flowed Green), Phil Barrett (Where's Larry?) and Patrick Brown (The Cattle Raid of Cooley). There are the adept mystics of comicking like John Robbins (The Well Below), designer Archie Templar (The Pants Of), and editor/publisher Gar Shanley, author of Fugger, one of Ireland's best comedy blogs.

Like any good adventure comic, Courageous has true facts and wild fantasies above and below the waves, in the streets and the fields. There's bicycles, bombs, biplanes and bikes and The Bible. If you're in Dublin tomorrow (Saturday 4th), you're welcome to the launch party at: The Little Green, 13 High Street from 4.00pm.

Print and digital copies are available from Gar Shanley in the Republic of Ireland, and from myself, Andy Luke, in the UK. Deluxe copies and extended previews are now available online through Archie Templar at Blurb.

Happy Birthday, 2000AD! from art droid Patrick Brown

Nemesis the Warlock
by Patrick Brown

Name: Patrick Brown

Blog or web site: http://paddybrown.co.uk

Currently working on: The Cattle Raid of Cooley, an adaptation of the ancient Irish epic starring Cú Chulainn, the hero Sláine was partially based on. It's been running at approximately a page a week on my website since August 2008 and is about half finished, and it's also in print, five issues so far. Pros like David Lloyd, Donna Barr, Davy Francis and Malachy Coney have all been very enthusiastic about it.

First memory of 2000AD?

I can remember reading the early issues at my cousin's house, and loving Flesh (I was seven. What seven year old boy doesn't love dinosaurs?) and Dan Dare (I know it's not well thought of by fans of the real Dan Dare, but it was the only Dan Dare I'd ever known, and Massimo Belardinelli's art was spectacular. I wrote a blog post reappraising it here.) I didn't start getting it myself until Starlord merged into it - I'd been reading that and loved Strontium Dog.

Favourite Character or Story?

I think it has to be Nemesis the Warlock. The stories drawn by Kevin O'Neill especially. I was in the early stages of learning how to appreciate art, and I'd mentally divided artists into the "neat" ones (Gibbons, Bolland) and the "rough" ones (Ezquerra, McMahon), and along comes O'Neill and blows my cosy little categories apart. I didn't understand it, but it gave me chills. And I loved the manicness of Pat Mills' stories, the willingness to leap headlong, Douglas Adams-like, from idea to idea, trusting it'll all make some sort of sense by the time it finishes.

What do you like most about the 2000AD?

2000AD is a marriage of the minds of Pat Mills and John Wagner. Pat is a mad polemicist - he's not here to make you think, he's here to make you see - and John crafts precision-timed thrillers with a streak of stone cold evil, and good jokes. On top of that, there's the willingness to be experimental visually. Back in the 1970s, in a marketplace where everything looked like it was drawn by Geoff Campion (a fine artist in his day, but it gets boring when everybody draws like him), 2000AD gave us Ezquerra and McMahon, Bolland and Gibbons, saw the latent madness in a veteran like Ron Smith, repurposed girls' comic artists like Ian Gibson and Jesus Redondo, and of course let the inimitable Belardinelli and O'Neill do their inimitable things. And it continued through the years, introducing us to mad artists like Brendan McCarthy, Simon Bisley, Simon Harrison, Steve Yeowell, Colin MacNeill, all the way to Henry Flint and Jock.

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

Keep unearthing new artists and writers, and keep paying Mills and Wagner whatever it takes to keep them hard at it.

• 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

The Invisible Artist? film released

The Invisible Artist from Northern Visions/NvTv on Vimeo.

The comic booklet: once a mass market media form, some would argue it has all but disappeared from newsagents shelves in the last 20 years - but comic creation continues apace across the UK, including Northern Ireland.

A new film released via Vimeo online, featuring comic artists such as 2000AD and STRIP Magazine artist PJ Holden, explores the hidden heritage of Belfast-centric cartooning that goes back centuries.

More recently, the vibrant underground publishing scene there, from The Belfast People's Comic (1977) to Patrick Brown's The Cattle Raid of Cooley (2011), has begun to attract attention from establishment arts bodies. The Invisible Artist look at the stories of committed creators in this black sheep media and how they have informed our contemporary culture.

The Invisible Artist was written by Andrew Luke and filmed and edited by Carl Boyle of Greater Belfast community group Northern Visions TV. Once a training ground for Channel 4 film-makers, NVTV is free-to-view, and hosts its programmes on Channel 62/799.276MHz in Belfast, with a weekly and omnibus edition, before joining the archive screenings looped rotation.

Shows also appear online in the months after airing. NVTV are hoping to raise their broadcasts to appear on Freeview next year. This film was originally screened on 7 November at 4:30pm, and again on 12th, at approximately 12:30.

"I'm indebted to Carl Boyle for stepping in to cover the editing and production when my workload became too heavy to cope," says Andrew of the production. "The documentary was shot in a short space of time in early 2011 and captures the vibrancy of the time.

"In many ways, The Invisible Artist? is also the story of Davy Francis, a man at the crossroads of four decades of comics creation in Belfast. I'd like to thank Carl, Davy, Paddy Brown, PJ Holden (who called by at the last minute to help out), and everyone who gave their time to make this film happen."

• View the film on Vimeo here