Garen Ewing Interviewed

Forbidden Planet International has a very special treat for you today, as Matthew Badham sits down for a good, long chat with The DFC and Rainbow Orchid artist Garen Ewing, looking back to what drew him into creating comics, his early work in fanzines, self-publishing and then moving into being a professional write/artist.

Garen has been drawing for fun ever since he could hold a pencil. Since 2003 (-ish) he’s made his living full-time as a cartoonist and illustrator. Read the full interview on the Forbidden Planet International blog here

Hi-Ex in the Highlands This Weekend

Hi-Ex 2, currently Scotland's only comics festival, will be "bigger and better" this weekend when it opens in Eden Court, Inverness, tomorrow.

Organisers Richmond Clements and Vicky Stonebridge are determined to make Hi-Ex and annual event, even though bad weather and heavy snow forced some of the event's star guests to call off their planned appearances last year, the response from the public easily justified the return of the festival for 2009.

"Even with the bad weather, we were surprised by the number of people through the door," Clements told the Inverness Courier this week.

"We had no choice, but to do it again."

While pressure of work and other factors have forced some comic creators who intended to come to the Eden Court event to cancel their appearances, there are still some top guests to entice fans to the Highlands event, including appearances by Strontium Dog writer Alan Grant and artist Frank Quitely.

There will also be a major charity auction which includes signed art from Charlie Adlard and Simon Coleby, workshops and more.

While there have been some guest cancellations, almost a dozen artists and writers who cannot make this year's event have pledged to come to Hi-Ex 2010 if possible.

"We don't want it to get too big," Clements told the Courier, which features a full schedule for the event.

"It's a family event and we want to keep it that way. A lot of big festivals can become a bit impersonal."

The details of the items in the Hi-Ex charity auction are available here.

More details of the convention and its guests are on the Hi-Ex website.

The downthetubes reviews of Hi-Ex 2008 are here and here.

Shades of Milligan

(with thanks to Reuben Willmott): Yesterday, we gave passing mention to Peter Milligan's new project for DC Comics' Vertigo crime line, The Bronx Kill, working with James Romberger.

Coincidentally, Milligan, whose past work includes 2000AD's Bad Company and Shade: The Changing Man and is currently wirting Hellblazer for Vertigo, has just been interviewed on Standard Attrition, the group blog for Vertigo creators.

There, he enthuses about his other new Vertogo title, Greek Street -- a creator-owned title which Vertigo has been developing for six-to-eight months with Milligan and David Felice, which Milligan describes as an "edgy, violent, very sexy re-imagining of some of the classic tales of ancient Greek drama seen through the prism of a tough modern-day London."

Featured here is a promotional image for the book which Felice drew for the New York Comic Con but was not used during the Vertigo panel where the series was announced.

Milligan also talks his approach to writing comics in the short interview and, in passing, about the controversy caused by his Marvel project, Xstatix, remarikng "...I was disappointed with the people higher in the food chain when the uproar about the Princess Diana story broke, and we had to f*** around with it. I thought, you Americans had a revolution so you didn’t have to worry about what our insane and largely inbred bunch of Royals thought..."

• Read the interview by G. Willow Wilson
• The first issue of Vertigo's Greek Street will be oversized and cost just one dollar. Davide Gianfelice (please note, this blog is in Italian and features adult images), whose credits include Northlanders, will draw the series. "It's fantastic art," Milligan said during a panel at the New York Comic Con

Doctor Who: The Anime

(with thanks to Frank Garcia, via Topless Robot and Japanator): Expect this stunning piece of work to go hugely viral -- and if BBC Worldwide don't pick up the phone to Sheffield-based artist and animator Paul "Otaking" Johnson and offer him a job, they're mad.

Paul is in the process of writing a Doctor Who-inspired anime short -- "It's taking me b***** ages," he says -- and has posted some progress footage from it on YouTube, including the penciling and inking process. The sequences so far feature the Third Doctor roughing up some would-be muggers with a bit of Venusian karate, meeting scantily-clad anime girls, and getting caught in a battle between Daleks and Cybermen.

Anime site Japanator notes Paul tried to create a stir a while back about fansubs -- the practice of creating a fan-produced translated, subtitled version of an anime program, which began back in the 1980s -- with his own brand of animation, and this taster, which also features The Master looks great to us, especially the climactic fight between the Doctor and the Master atop the Tokyo Tower.

• The work as it progresses can be seen, as always, on Paul's "Mightyotaking" Deviantart page