This blog began in 1997 as a single news page called Nucelus. In 2005, during a long wait to move into a new house, I decided to learn some php and MySQL and write my own blogging system, which became inkyBlog and which now powers this, my own Webbledegook blog.
Thank you to my brother, Murray Ewing, for help with some of the more challenging aspects!
How can I read The Secret of the Samurai?
You can take out a subscription to The Phoenix here. Alternatively, if you have an iPad, you can get the digital version with The Phoenix app. You can also wait for the individual issues to become available in the back-issues section of the online shop and buy them there (The Secret of the Samurai will appear in issues 75 - 78). The Phoenix is available across the UK in various book and comic shops, as well as many branches of Waitrose - find a stockist here (there's even one in Dublin). If you're in the US then you can contact Big Planet Comics who will order The Phoenix in.
Update: There is now a Samurai bundle available at the online shop.
Will The Secret of the Samurai be available as a book?
That is my intention, but as Samurai is just a 20-page story I have a 'stand-alone sequel' in mind to join it in order to make a complete album. This means a book will be some time off yet. Samurai will not be the next book - that is already planned and I will be starting it soon.
Will The Secret of the Samurai be available as a webcomic?
I'm hoping to make the first couple of pages available as an online preview, but I doubt it'll be much more than that. Its main home is The Phoenix and I do urge you to try and read it there - you'll discover a whole host of great British comics alongside Julius. Don't worry though, there are plans afoot for new Julius Chancer online.
Update: A preview is now available online.
Does The Secret of the Samurai have all the old characters again, Lily, Nathaniel, Evelyn Crow etc?
No - this story takes place a couple of years before the The Rainbow Orchid. The only characters you'll recognise are Julius Chancer, Sir Alfred Catesby-Grey, and Charlotte, the housekeeper.
What is The Secret of the Samurai about?
I don't want to give too much away, but I will say it has a bit of a detective story feel to it, a dash of mystery, and - of course - some good old historic artefact adventure! Locations include the Victoria and Albert Museum, an old library, some cavalry barracks, a women's ju-jutsu class, and a misty forest. All in twenty pages!
In the meantime I can tell you that The Secret of the Samurai will debut in issue 75 of The Phoenix (no. 73 came out today). To make sure you don't miss it (and a load of other fantastic stories), visit the Phoenix shop right here.
In other news, I'll be selling, signing and sketching at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival in Kendal, which takes place 19-20 October. I'll also be at this year's Edinburgh International Book Festival - taking part in three events on Sunday 25 August - more on that soon.
Right ... back to the drawing board!
As already stated, this is a shorter adventure of 20 pages (four episodes of five pages each) and it takes place a couple of years before the events depicted in The Rainbow Orchid. Look out for more information soon, and in the meantime, go and check out The Phoenix's brand new website!
This is a shorter adventure (20 pages), though my plan is that one day I will do a connected but equally stand-alone story of the same length, so there's the possibility they could be published together as a complete book. I will try and post more art and more details over the next few weeks. This will not derail the full-length (60-80 pages) adventure I have plotted and ready to start - hopefully this summer.
Some recent Rainbow Orchid press has included a lovely review at Dancing With Skeletons, and an overview of the Spanish edition at Lina Clara Hoy. The French language edition has been out for a month now and I've seen mentions on Klare Lijn International, BD Zoom and Génération BD.
Two marvellous posters have been made, and both include Julius Chancer - on the left by Grant Perkins and on the right by Phil Buckenham.
Not much other news at the moment except to say that I am busy drawing a new (20-page) Julius Chancer story - more details to come in a month or two. In the meantime I'll point you to this very nice review of The Complete Rainbow Orchid by Lew Stringer on the final post of his Blimey blog (and do check out his new blog here).
The collector's pack is limited to 1000 numbered sets, with each hardback volume containing a signed bookplate. There is also a 16-page Dossier - a shortened version of the Supplement I published last year.
Brigitta Pekelharing made twelve in all - below you can see photos of the Julius and Lily models. They're going straight into the Readers' Art page (where you can take a closer look and see Nathaniel and Evelyn too). They're beautifully drawn and terrific fun - thanks so much, Brigitta, I love them!
I actually finished drawing The Rainbow Orchid in October 2011 (with the cover completed the following month), and volume three was finally published in April. It was a fairly low-key launch, with the nearest event being the following month at a quiet Bristol Comics Expo, but the reaction and reviews were still very nice - the best being May's Graphic Novel of the Month in The Observer:
"... I couldn't like it more if I tried ... It is all so beautifully done: the historical references are spot on ... the dialogue is pitch perfect ... the result is one of the most satisfying comics around, whether you are a small boy, or a grown woman."
Receiving an endorsement from comedian Rhys Darby was the icing on the cake:
"... I really love your Rainbow Orchid books. They fuel my hunger for classic adventure!"
One of the nicest things has been the lovely emails I've received from readers, not to mention the in-person comments from people at various comics shows - where they can actually see me blush!
In September The Complete Rainbow Orchid came out - for me, the book that really matters, and the way I would like most people to read it. I still haven't read it all through myself yet, I'm waiting a while so I can at least have a partially fresh look at it. But Egmont did a wonderful job on the book, and I'm especially chuffed with all the extras. It even made a few best-of lists for 2012:
The Observer best Graphic Novels of 2012 - "... timeless adventure stories that fans of Tintin will adore."
Forbidden Planet Best of the Year: Zainab - "... Ewing's adventure of a search for a rare, possibly non-existent flower left me more excited than that sentence possibly can recount. I have no further words for it: it's just a fantastic comic."
Forbidden Planet Best of the Year: Rob Jackson - "... this is my best of the year, it's such a beautiful book. It was great to read the whole story all the way through in one go."
Jason Cobley - "... the pages just zing, enthralling kids and grown ups alike. Proper all-ages storytelling. ... if you're looking for something to get youngsters away from TV and reading something that also gives them visual appeal, here it is."
And a couple more from Laura Gomez and Jonathan King. There was also this very nice review from coNZervative in New Zealand. I wouldn't be aware of most of these nice mentions if it wasn't for Linda Wada, who maintains a Rainbow Orchid fan-page. Big thanks, all!
Another nice thing that happened this year was The Rainbow Orchid getting distribution in the United States, resulting in a number of positive reviews and mentions, including this one from Comics Worth Reading ("... "a great example of what "all ages" really should mean"). There was a good interview with me on US comics website The Beat back in January.
In November I published The Rainbow Orchid Supplement (Down the Tubes review and Forbidden Planet review), and the Spanish edition of RO came out, La Orquidea Arcoiris from NetCom2 Editorial. A few months earlier Silvester Strips brought all three volumes of De Regenboog Orchidee into a lovely boxed set, or cassette.
January 2012 saw the launch of The Phoenix, a brilliant weekly comic for kids that has been quite rightly receiving praise and plaudits from all quarters. Due to other work commitments I haven't been able to be a big part of it (yet!), but I was delighted to appear in the first issue with The Legend of the Golden Feather and in the middle of the year with The Bald Boy and the Dervish, both written by Mezolith author and storyteller, Ben Haggarty. It's chock full of the very best of British comic creators, so give yourself a present for 2013 and subscribe!
On a personal level the year has been a nice one, though with one low point when I lost my dear cat, Tansy, on her 14th birthday in August (you can see a photo of her in the back of The Complete Rainbow Orchid as I tried to get her to pose for the cover of volume two!). A good innings, but she's terribly missed. On the up-side, my daughter saw her first birthday and is turning into such a lovely little person - I feel very lucky.
I had a good Christmas - my comics presents were Bryan Talbot's third Grandville book (completely terrific) and the Commando: 50 Years book (have yet to explore, but looks wonderful). I got a beautiful Japanese print (which I may blog about soon) and I'm looking forward to watching Jigokumon, which i got on DVD.
So what can I say about 2013? Firstly, the French language editions of RO, L'Orchidee Arc-en-ciel will be published in February by BD Must, and I'm really looking forward to seeing those. I can also say there will be new Julius Chancer, though with no contracts signed, as yet, I'm reluctant to say any more. But even if every publisher suddenly abandoned me you'd still get new Julius Chancer - on this website. Still, the greater likelihood is that it will be in print, and I'm looking forward to getting stuck into that.
Here's hoping we all have a fabulous 2013 - happy new year!
Very little is given away about Evelyn throughout The Rainbow Orchid. The only hard fact seems to be that she works for Urkaz Grope. We can see she's resourceful, often using deceit as a weapon, though she also keeps a handgun and a pocket knife handy. That's if she even needs them - her unarmed combat skills have evidently benefitted from training, possibly karate from the style of some of her techniques.
She's a careful planner and a strong leader, as well as incredibly loyal to Grope, even going so far as to kill those who would get in her way - she doesn't seem to be too troubled by empathy. Her self-confidence knows no bounds; she's genuinely shocked when the tables get turned on her (a rare event). She's smart, classy, and probably a little vain.
Evelyn may have a blank on her character's history in the story, but I can at least offer something regarding her creation. Like Lily Lawrence her origins lie in the abandoned short comic I wrote in 1996 called Stage Fight - a story that would eventually be produced as Sword of Fate, Lily's origin tale, in The Girly Comic. Stage Fight featured a character called Evelyn Saxon, a Victorian vamp with a wine bottle in one hand and a couldn't-care-less attitude in the other (I renamed her Eleanor Saxon for Sword of Fate). You might see a future echo of her in the character of Josephine Bolan from my episode in Blank Slate's Nelson, and if you happen to know some of my much older work then you might see a more distant version of her as The Sorceress from my fantasy story Realm of the Sorceress.
Physically she is a 1920s modern woman with a straightforward yet stylish hairstyle that matches her character, inspired by some of the more self-determined figures of the silent screen: Louise Brooks, Clara Bow, Pola Negri, and a little Theda Bara for good measure. Another more recent similarity has been noted - with that of Irina Spalko, played by Cate Blanchett in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (though Evelyn predates her).
I mentioned earlier that Evelyn Crow carries a handgun and I'd like to say something about my philosophy of gun use in The Rainbow Orchid (and in my stories generally). When Evelyn fires the gun it has consequences - people get hurt, and I don't just mean cartoon-hurt (even though this is a cartoon strip). I hope you feel that Tayaut is in real danger from his bullet wound, and you can also see the effect it has on his friends and loved-ones, not to mention the death that also occurs. And, of course, Evelyn becomes a victim herself later on, again with consequences that affect characters and story.
For me, when a gun is introduced into the plot, it is not as a solution - it does not enable the hero to solve the problem of his antagonists; it is a complication. I hate films where a gun is just a toy-device that blasts people away with no effect on lives or story. I'm not against action films with guns, even fairly violent films to some degree - as long as there are consequences. It's a matter of the weapon having weight, a weight that reflects what can happen in the real world - I think that's important.
My Christmas card to you this year consists of two reader favourites from The Rainbow Orchid, the exoptable yet deadly 'dark angel', Evelyn Crow, and barfani chita - the snow leopard (click picture to see a bigger version). You can expect a blog post about Evelyn in the next couple of days!
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