The pattern seems to be that there’s just not enough wiggle room in my intended schedule. If I do anything in my time off from the day job aside from work on the comic the schedule falls over and I don’t get the page done on time. Guilt-inducing for me, disappointing for you.

So I guess that’s a roundabout way of saying that I’m going to be moving away from the weekly update format for the time being. My goal will now be to update every other Wednesday. This should give me time to actually hit my deadlines, and means I can actually put in a little more polish as well – so rather than pages that have been rushed right up to the last minute to make the deadline, you’ll get artwork that’s been given the time and attention it deserves.

Rest assured that this is every bit as frustrating for me as it is for you – I really want to tell these stories, and the one-page-at-a-time thing is pretty agonising.

Sorry, no page update this week; between work and a very busy (and enjoyable) weekend away there just weren’t enough hours in the week.

Next Wednesday for certain, though! Seriously.

Things will be in a slight state of flux for the next week or two – I’ve recently landed a part-time job at my FLGS, so there’ll be a period of adjustment while I balance that and the comic.

In the meantime it’s likely that I’ll be needed for more than part-time hours in the immediate future, so there may be some disruption in updates for the duration. My apologies in advance for that, but be certain that Dark Places will return once things settle down.

EDIT: Since interest has been expressed and print-on-demand makes things easy, the Bear With Me t-shirt has been added to the selection of eminently desirable merchandise in my my Zazzle store. It’s available in light and dark flavours.

High in the Plains of Gwethyas, travellers wandering from the King’s Road may encounter what looks to be a strange outcropping of rock, grown over with lichen and heather. Many such stones lie fallen and half-buried across the rolling landscape, but enough still stand to trace the outline of a massive circle fully ten leagues across.

No one knows who brought the stones to Gwethyas, only that they are incredibly old – ancient when the Fey Courts raised the rings and avenues of Kollmoor to serve as gates for their armies, long predating even the hilltop caer-tombs of Koghbrannow. That many of the stones are worn smooth by time and exposure only hints at their vast age, as no tool forged by man or dwarf can mark their surface. Despite this many of the stones still bear carvings of grimacing figures, hunched and threatening.

The hardy folk who graze horses and cattle on the plains shun the lands bounded by the “Gurnstones”, claiming it to be a blighted and unclean place. They refuse to take their herds within sight of the stones, as any animal straying into the forbidden region is abandoned, or even driven off should it attempt to return.

Just got back from the London Small Press Expo, where I was tabling with Peter Vine – scholar, gentleman, writer of of Hard Graft.

So, hello and big thanks to everyone who stopped by and perused my wares – and even more big thanks to everyone who bought something! Welcome to the site, do check out the archives (and the store ), maybe even leave a comment. I love hearing from people who read and enjoy the comic, and it was especially gratifying to have several existing readers of the comic come up and say hi. I liked that a lot.

I should also mention that you can Like the Dark Places Facebook page or follow @darkplacescomic on Twitter to get up-to-the minute information on page updates, Livestream broadcasts, future convention appearances and all that good stuff.

I’ll be at the London Comic & Small Press Expo on Saturday March 12th, sharing a table with the doughty and dependable Peter Vine of Hard Graft. Table 55, straight ahead of you and a bit to the left as you come in.

Doors open at 10am and close at 5pm, I’ll be there all day with comics, minicomics and posters for sale. Come and say hello (and buy stuff).

No comic this week – I got a new computer last week, and it’s taken a while to set up and get things transferred across. In addition, I discovered that my trusty old Intuos2 graphics tablet wouldn’t work with the new machine (on account of it using a serial port, and the new machine not actually having one of those). So I ordered a whizzy new Intuos4 to arrive on Saturday, giving me plenty of time to get this week’s page done. At least, that was the plan.

Unfortunately the couriers decided that “Saturday delivery before 1pm” meant “don’t bother, just say no one was home”. So basically the driver was made of filth and lies, because I was in all day and no attempt was made to deliver. The consignment was rescheduled for Monday and eventually showed up in the afternoon, which left me without time to get this week’s page pencilled, inked, lettered and ready for the Wednesday update deadline.

Long story short, postponing this week’s update to next week. On the plus side I do have a whizzy new computer and tablet, which means I’m able to Livestream stuff again. Keep an eye on the Twitter feed to know when that’s happening.

Coe’s Quest, then, is a series of Let’s Play videos on YouTube in which a guy called Coe wanders around having blocky digging-crafting-building adventures and falling off stuff. It’s fun to watch while I’m drawing the comic, as enjoying the game in this vicarious manner staves off the cravings long enough for me to do actual productive work, rather than building big blocky castles that look pretty but don’t get the comic drawn.

A few weeks ago the series hit 100 episodes and Coe put out a call for fanart, to which I responded with this piece of epic high-fantasy silliness:

It’s now the title image for Coe’s World, a new multiplayer Let’s Play series he’s doing with a bunch of other Let’s Play people. Pretty awesome.

Things have been unsurprisingly busy over the holiday period, as I suspect has been the case for a lot of people – visiting relatives, being visited by relatives, eating, drinking, being merry, that kind of stuff. While very much enjoyable, it’s taken its toll on my drawing schedule so Dark Places took a bit of a break between Christmas and the New Year. Matters are settling down now, I’m back at the drawing board and updates will resume on Wednesday January 12th. Put it in your diaries.

If you check the sidebar over on the left you’ll see that The Silver Chain is now available in the Dark Places store. This chapter introduces Adar the hellion and Grakarr the gnoll as they are captured by the Wild Hunt and forced to fight for the amusement of elven nobility.

Also available is the Kobold Propaganda poster, for all your motivational inspirational needs.

Back from the MCM Expo, and it was awesome. I was tabling in the Comics Village all weekend and had a blast, and met a lot of really nice people. Really nice people. Special thanks to Dan and Amanda Potter of Walking the Lethe for letting me roomshare with them, especially given the last-minute nature of things. Go read their comic and buy their stuff. Do it.

I will admit that going from the isolation of my art cave to a giant convention hall with 40,000 visitors passing through over the weekend meant I got a tiny bit overstimulated and exciteable from all the people and action and noise and stuff going on. I probably talked a bit too fast, and I definitely waved my arms around like Kermit the Frog. But oh man, my brain is fizzing with enthusiasm for making comics. It’s what these events do to me, and I love it.

Incidentally, if I talked to you this weekend then please bear in mind that I don’t have a great memory for faces and costumes (mainly because there were so many faces and so many costumes), so don’t take it personally if I don’t remember meeting you straight away. Nudge me with a few more details (particularly stuff we talked about), or just keep talking to me and it’ll help me remember in future.

The next couple of days will involve working like crazy to get the next page done on time, since the Expo basically ate most of my week. Wish me luck.

As requested, the “Kobold Propaganda” design is being turned into a poster – specifically a high-quality A3 poster (that’s 297mm × 420mm, or 11.7″ × 16.5″), full colour on 135gsm silk paper. Preorders are now open through the Dark Places store!

I’ll also be selling this poster on my table at the London MCM Expo; I can’t guarantee how many will be left after that, so be sure to place your order by Thursday October 28th 2010 to have your poster reserved for you. As an extra incentive you’ll also get a FREE copy of the minicomic The Kobold and the Dragon! Bonus!

Fortunately I have just the thing to address this problem – a new item of apparel with which to clothe your upper body and ward off the cold night air, thus allowing you to avoid a tragic and untimely demise!*

The design is available on both black and white shirts, or you can customise it to suit your tastes!

Great news, everyone! I’m going to be at the London MCM Expo over the weekend of October 29th-31st 2010, Table C78 in the Comics Village. Look for the big Dark Places banner, come along and say hello. I will have things for sale, including new things. New things like…

That’s right, The Silver Chain is making its print debut at MCM Expo! It’s at the printers even as we speak, and I am all kinds of excited. Behold:

Here’s something I put together last night, inspired by those old Soviet-era propaganda posters with doughty workers engaged in virtuous toil for the good of all.

This will be available soon as a high-quality A3 print. I’ll let you know when preorders open, so watch this space.

Because I am a giant nerd, I thought it’d be fun to make a custom skin for my avatar. Here it is:

You can see a preview here, and instructions on how to use it as your own avatar can be found on the tremendously useful Minecraft wiki here. Feel free to tweak or recolour or edit it as you see fit, and let me know if you use it.

Click to embiggen.

The influences listed aren’t all necessarily stuff that directly informs the style of the comic, but they are things that have had an impact on me and which continue to make my brain fizz. Some of them are old (The Flight of Dragons is one of my all-time favourite childhood movies), some of them are new (Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener’s Atomic Robo is freakin’ amazing and everyone should read it), all of them have affected my development as an artist, and hence Dark Places.

So, if you enjoy the comic I’d like you to share that enjoyment around. This is pretty easy to do – updates are posted on the Dark Places fan page on Facebook and on the Dark Places Twitter stream, so you can like/share/retweet stuff from there. There are also little icons at the bottom of every single update that make it super-easy to share Dark Places on social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Delicious, StumbleUpon and Digg. It’s a matter of seconds.

As a reminder, there’s also the Dark Places Formspring page, where you can ask me… stuff! Whatever questions come to mind. I enjoy answering them.

Visitors to Eclectic Games may have seen a poster similar to this one on display:

It’s a pretty simple deal – check in here by September 10th (just leave a comment on this entry), then show up at the store (directions here) for D&D “Red Box” Game Day this Saturday, September 11th. Say hi, and I’ll give you a little bundle of loot, including exclusive items you can’t get from the site store! Free stuff! Easy as that!

I’ll also be taking character sketch commissions, and you’ll be able to try out the new D&D Essentials line with demo games run by local DMs.

See you there!

Fortunately for you guys the answers may be closer than you think! I now have a Formspring page set up for the comic, I’d like you to ask me… well, whatever you like. Within reason. Mainly about the comic, for preference, since that’s something I know things about. Oh, such things. Such beautiful, terrible things…

Ahem. Yes. If there’s some point of plot that’s unclear, some detail of the setting that intrigues you, or some technical aspect of the comic-creating process that you’d like to know more about, this is your chance to find out. There’s a box, you type questions in it, I answer them. It’s pretty straightforward stuff. I’ll probably even add the especially popular questions to an FAQ on the About page, to stand as a shining beacon of enlightenment for all.

Click link, receive answers.