2000AD launches 'Creator Interviews' ebook

2000AD has launched its first ebook collection of interviews with some of the biggest names in the comic book industry.

This first collection includes a three-part interview with the co-creator of Judge Dredd, Carlos Ezquerra, as well as pieces on the creator of 2000AD, Pat Mills, and two of the artists who fundamentally defined the look of Dredd – Mick McMahon and Ron Smith.

In a new experiment for 2000AD, the series is being made available in ebook format, firstly for Kindle only – available through Amazon for just £1.99.

These long-form interviews from the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine offer a unique insight into the life and work of seminal figures in British comics history, covering everything from their childhoods, to their time with 2000AD and their work elsewhere. Later volumes will include interviews with more top flight talent from the world of Tharg.

“These interviews are one of the highlights of the Judge Dredd Megazine and give unprecedented insights into the creative minds behind 2000AD and its characters,” said Matt Smith, editor.

“Nowhere else will you find this long-running series of long-form interviews, and these collections will allow fans to get an in depth look at the people who made 2000AD what it is today.”

Bryan Talbot exposes comic legends with 'engorged' book

The Naked Artist, comic creator Bryan Talbot's prose book documenting the outrageous, daft and occasionally educational tales of the comic industry is now available in Kindle, iBook and several other formats including PDF.

If on the night of a comics convention you were to go to the the hotel bar and buy a few drinks for a comic book pro, you'd soon hear stories about his fellow creators - tales of drinking and drugs, of missed deadlines and missing pants, of maniacal editors and crazed fans. These are the urban legends of the comic industry.

Illustrated by Hunt Emerson, acclaimed graphic novelist Bryan Talbot (creator of the award-winning The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, The Tale of One Bad Rat, Alice in Sunderland and Grandville) saves you the cost of gin and tonics by bringing you this collection of the wild and hilarious anecdotes told by - and starring - some of comicdom's leading lights. This expanded edition includes all the stories from the original print edition and more.

"It’s an updated edition with an extra few thousands words’ worth of stories," Bryan tells us. "In fact, I was thinking of calling it The Naked Artist - Engorged!"


• The Naked Artist is available for the ludicrously low price of $2.99 (approx £1.86, or £2.13 for the Kindle edition in the UK). You can read the first 20% of The Naked Artist free here: www.combustoica.com/NakedArtist.php

UK Readers

• Buy The Naked Artist: Comic Book Legends (Kindle edition) from Amazon UK

• Buy The Naked Artist (iBook) from Apple UK

• Other eBook editions - Smashwords


 US Readers

• Buy The Naked Artist: Comic Book Legends (Kindle edition) from Amazon.com


• Buy The Naked Artist (Nook Edition - Barnes & Noble)


• Buy The Naked Artist (iBook) from Apple US

Tube Surfing: 5 June 2009

• Busy racing between secret locations in an effort to find an internet connection that worked, we missed out on wishing Garen Ewing, creator of The Rainbow Orchid, a happy birthday yesterday (4th June) but there's still time to enter his competition to win a signed and sketched cover proof of the upcoming collection from Egmont UK! The deadline is midnight GMT on Sunday 7 June. See this post on his official web site for details.

• Talking of competitions, Garen reports Sarah McIntyre decided to celebrate his "40th of June" birthday celebrations (along with the likes of Jason Cobley, Gosh! Comics, Forbidden Planet, Paul Harrison-Davies and many others by holding her own competition - you have to draw a suitably extravagant moustache on this terrific portrait of Garen she's drawn. See Sarah's blog for details - and again, the deadline is Sunday evening (7 June).

• Matthew Badham has a brilliant interview with artist John Higgins on the Forbidden Planet International blog, talking about his new book, Razorjack, and how his comics career. "There was a certain element of lucky accident when it came to my art, particularly with colour," he reveals. "I was spending ages and ages on my painted art, probably a week on each page. But what I was doing in those days was learning on the job. You’re experimenting and you’re trying new things and if it goes wrong, then you have to start all over again. Or you discover something that’s completely and utterly wonderful by accident that you wouldn’t have been able to think through." Read the full interview

• Warren Ellis talks about "the dubious virtues of ebooks" in his latest column for wired.co.uk, which you can read online for free on the new magazine's web site. It's titled "The Kindle is a mewling, crippled, pining thing" so you can guess the gist. Warren argues that right now, British book publishers have less to fear from ebook publishing (the Kindle doesn't even work in the UK, apparently): their worry is that "the threat to reading comes only from our education system – and the fact that most children are born to 15-year-old foetal-alcohol-syndrome cases." (Episode 57 of Freak Angels is live now, by the way, just as an aside...)

• Lee Robson reports there's a great review of Accent UK's Robots over at Newsarama where it's compared very favourably to the Popgun anthologies from Image Comics. Read the full review here.

• And finally... Rob Jackson reports that with the arrival an awesome page for the Pasty Anthology from Jim Medway, his long-awaited collection is almost finished, and hopefully he'll be sending it off to the printers next week. It sounds like a fun assembly of creative talent!