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Excellent work SIP

Feedback is an interesting motivator, like everyone else I enjoy praise, and I do post art for attention, I mean if I didn't want to draw attention to the art I wouldn't post it publicly so feedback, even if its just some one saying 'Nice Work!' is encouraging and important. I have had strips that took hundreds of hours of work disappear without comment and that can be dispiriting.

I'm pretty secure in my technical skills (reasonable artist, good colourist, and OK writer) but it's still important too me to know if people like what I do. 

Yes, also a4 sketch originals do well at comic shows for about £10/£20 each. Your work is really good, you just need to find the right people to sell it too. 

Colin MacNeil talked about art going from a paying hobby or passion to just a Job after America. In many ways it is just a job when you are working on commissions and not a very well paying job at that. Unless you are at the top of the field or insanely fast it tends to work out below minimum wage in my experiance.

The real problem is that once you put the ability to time travel into a story, it causes huge problems with the "finality" of anything. Most likely why it's played down in Strontium Dog post the 1980's.

No it doesn't. Time travel can be used as a lazy fix all but that just introduces more problems then it fixes until, inevitably if you go down that rout, every story is just a complete mess of fragmented continuity and alternate realities.

Bringing charters back from the dead does cause huge problems however as if you do it once fans and future writers will keep asking 'why not this character too'. It's something that Wagner tried to head off in strip in the resurrection story with an in strip explanation, but once the Genie is out of the bottle you can't put it back in.

I can identify with this.

I spent the last 6 years with a serious case of artist block. pretty much everything I was working on stalled, and although I still produced the odd illustration or script. The quality of my work dipped and I started to become frustrated with my lake of progress. I wondered for a long time if I really wanted to keep drawing or if I only did it out of habit and because I had let it define me. My whole life I had wanted to be a professional comics artist and in my mid 30's it became apparent that that was never going to happen. One of my primary motivators for producing work had been generating sample and proving I could produce professional quality art at a reasonable speed. Without those motivators I lost direction and motivation. Even the small press scene has changed and rather left me behind.

I haven't given up drawing but I have started to reassess why I draw and what I want to draw. I had a list of unfinished project and ideas that I have set as goals now. once I cracked my creative block I drew a strip for Zarjaz and one for Dogbreath and I've started one for Something Wicked, I have an unfinished Chopper story and I've embarked on a Rogue Trooper fanzine that's long been something I've wanted to do. After that I'll probably take stock again.

The only thing I learnt from my midlife drawing crisis is that at some point you have to decide if you are going to keep drawing to try and build a career (and draw what other want) of start drawing for yourself and only draw the things that interest and excite you. I chose a mix of the two because I'm an obtuse and indecisive twat. 

Getting a Colin Macneil cover for Dogbreath is the second highest 'grail' choice of artist for me.

Simon Harrison being the number 1 choice, obviously.

What like you guys, trying to wash away the unemployment figures.

No. The exact opposite in fact. if someone had just responded with 'project spin' and then refused to elaborate or back their argument up then maybe, but as the pages of responses, reasoned arguments and cited information not only don't fall into that category but represent the antithesis of 'project fear' as a response I would have to say you analogy is a particularly poor one.

'Current estimates' needs citation.

'Project Fear' is just a buzz word used to dismiss any criticism of fact that do not fit into a particular world view. often the favoured retort of the braxier. their is no project fear beyond the one created by the people citing project fear every time they see something they disagree with or would like to whish away.

BICS and later ICE is probably my favourite show.

good luck getting to it, and long may it continue.

Old Tankie is impressively resistant to reason or facts and will continue to drop his oblique non sequiturs as if they were mic drop truth bombs.

He either knows that the unemployment figures are a poor metric to hold up as an economic or social positive or genuinely thinks they are and is incapable or understanding why, in isolation,they are not, or thinks they do mean something in isolation like a magic totem of some sort and things like in work poverty and constantly changing the criteria for who is 'unemployed' is unimportant.

It does not help that every (quarter?) the press publicise the latest unemployment figures at face value. There may be the odd story talking about what these jobs are or how many people have been classed as 'not looking for work' or in work when they are functionally unemployed or how many people have died from the cruel and pointless poverty that chasing these metrics has created. 

There is absolutely no need for Wagner to acknowledge any of the stories post the final solution.

The flashbacks worked fine, but the moment they chose to undo Alphas death the cleanest way address any continuity issues was to simply wipe every post Final Solution story from current continuity. 

if it makes you happy just think of them as happening in a parallel universe.

(I would be happy to see Colin McNeil draw alpha if Carlos ever decided to pass the torch.)

Wasn't it mentioned in one Anderson story that she couldn't re-juve  or take anti aging drugs as they interfered with her Psi abilities? I think it was one of the Arthur Ranson Illustrated storied in the Megazine.

Traditionally comics has denoted middle age by drawing the person exactly the same but with grey hair around the temples. I can't really draw women anyway so it's never been a problem for me.

I think Karl Richardson's Art is the best it's ever been on Mechastopheles, but tend to agree with the intent of Franks post.

The drawings in my school books were awesome! (I also read it as a shorthand for a type of drawing and didn't think it was particularly insulting. I mean it would be harsh in a review but not in a conversation)

Another Warm up Drawing.