The Secret of the Samurai English edition has sold out. BD Must gave me three batches of forty books in all - the first batch, almost exactly a year ago, sold out in three days or so, the second in a couple of months, and third more slowly over the past 7 or 8 months.

Actually I do have one copy left, and my plan is to do a nice drawing in it (rather than just a quick sketch) and put it on ebay in the near future as a little fund-raiser. Watch this space.

The online webstrip preview of The Brambletye Box has come to end today with 55 strips in all. That takes it up to the end of page 18, though pages 10-12 and-a-bit are also cut out of the preview.

If you want to see more than this then you can become a Patreon supporter, or it's waiting for the book. I can't yet say when that will see publication, but I can tell you that The Brambletye Box will be two volumes, and vol. 1 should be completed well before the end of the year - all being well!

Today I posted the 50th strip of The Brambletye Box online, which you can see here.

Last year was a good one for getting on with the new Julius Chancer adventure. This has partly been thanks to my Patreon supporters (who are a few pages ahead), which provides just enough of a sense of obligation to keep going with things. I now feel I've reached a tipping point - I'm in this far, so let's keep going!

I began 2025 by completing page 20 - that's now as long as The Secret of the Samurai (a few copies still available, by the way). For The Brambletye Box I'm looking at two volumes, each about 40-48 pages long. I really want volume one to be done this year, so that's a lot of work. I don't know how some artists produce so many pages - on BlueSky Matthew Dow Smith just said his goal is to produce 1000 pages this year. Yes, I know some pages can't be compared with others, but even so. Tezuka apparently averaged 10 pages a week. Sigh.

Still, the important thing is to keep going.

Wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas and lots of good things for you and yours in 2025.

Here's a little comic strip I made last week.

A quick post to let you know that, after a bit of a hiatus, The Brambletye Box comic returns online today.

You can read the latest strip here, which resumes after a four-page scene cut from the online preview, but available to Patreon supporters - and, of course, in the book when it comes.

As before, there is no update schedule, but there should be a few strips uploaded in the coming weeks (work and life stuff permitting!).

Late last night I started to see a trickle of Facebook posts claiming the great bande dessinée artist André Juillard had passed away. I couldn't find a source, but some of the announcements were from well-connected European BD figures, so it seemed to be correct, and, indeed, this morning it is, sadly, being more widely reported.

My first introduction to Juillard was with his self-written After the Rain (Apres la Pluie, 1998), translated into English by NBM in 1999, and then via his masterfully illustrated Blake and Mortimer albums, seven in all, written by Yves Sente, from 2000's La Machination Voronov (The Voronov Plot), to 2016's Le Testament de William S (The Testament of William S). On one of my visits to Germany, in Colne in 2014, my German publisher very kindly gifted me two volumes of Juillard art books (Péle-Méle) - I often flick through them when inspiration is running a little low!

Juillard's beginnings included drawing classes from the likes of Druillet (Lone Sloane), Mézières (Valérian) and Jijé with his first published work in 1974 for Formule 1 (previously Cœurs Vaillants, the first home of Hergé's Tintin and Jo, Zette and Jocko in France). He soon established himself as a devotee of the historical comic, adapting Romeo and Juliet and debuting his 13th-century set story, Bohémond de Saint-Gilles.

Widespread success was slow to come, but did soon arrive with Les Sept Vies de l'Épervier (The Seven Lives of Sparrowhawk, seven volumes from 1983 to 1991), written by Patrick Cothias and set in France at the beginning of the 17th century. This lead onto the series Masquerouge (Red Mask, ten albums from 1984 to 2004, written by Cothias and then Marco Venanzi). Juillard also teamed up with Jacques Martin (creator of Alix and Lefranc) for a Napoleonic series, Arno (three volumes, 1983-1987).

Juillard's reputation was now without question, and more work, both in comics and illustration followed, with portfolios and art books released to continued acclaim. He won the Grand Prix at Angoulême in 1996. His last few albums included Léna (with Pierre Christin, three volumes, 2006-2020), Double 7 (with Yann, 2018) and a return to Les Sept Vies de l'Épervier (with Cothias, 2014 and 2021). Before his death he had been working on a new Blake and Mortimer album, the series' 30th, Signé Olrik (Signed Olrik), set in Cornwall, and scheduled for an October 2024 release.

There is no doubt the world of comics has lost one of its master creators, but André Juillard leaves behind a legacy of incredible work, a treasure-trove of bande dessinée art of the highest quality.

Work on The Brambletye Box, which had been enjoying a pretty good flow of progress over the past couple of months, has come to a bit of a halt at the moment. It's just one of those things - work, life, family and stuff has all combined to slow things down. But it's by no means permanent, and I'll be back to it as soon as possible.

When things get going again - at the beginning of July I expect - I will once again be posting strips here on the website for the next scene after the previous one being available only on Patreon.

There have been a few changes in plans for The Brambletye Box as well, with the eventual book now being planned as two volumes instead of a single, big album. While this has meant a bit of re-jigging of the plot and script, it also means a book is likely to be appearing sooner rather than later (next year?), even if it is just a part one, but, after thinking about it quite a bit, it makes the most sense.

The next scene to draw is one that has been in my head since I first came up with the story several years ago and I'm really looking forward to getting into it. As ever, I greatly appreciate your patience and support - thank you!

AI art is pollution, infiltrating, poisoning the creative environment, spilling out and infecting search engines, timelines and archives. AI art is a lie, another step in the flood of disinformation and dilution of truth and facts.

AI art is not created, it is not made. It is churned out in a mechanised production line largely by those who do not have the ability or the patience for craft - organ grinders expecting applause for the complex sonata that emanates from the lever they push while not understanding a scale, chord or key.

AI users have to reign themselves in, for producing so much would reveal too readily what it really is - machine-produced mass content. It's the plastic tat of the gift shop, shiny but valueless, tawdry, throw-away.

AI art is for that friend who wanted to be your agent, your manager; you'd be the talent, do the work, and they'd rake in the cash. Now they've got AI there's no pesky artist in the way wanting creative control, just an acquiescent machine with which to overpopulate Amazon, Etsy and Ebay with colouring books, calendars, notebooks and art prints.

Some fall victim to the machine completely, believing they are the artists themselves. They will claim the 'text prompt' is a hard-won skill only a handful have mastered. Then some will claim there is no AI in their art at all. Out of nowhere they are producing full paintings, two or three a week, one a day if they're not careful, merely adding the flourish of a signature to make it theirs. Perhaps a previously amateur artist, now bursting with a brand-new style, but we never see the roughs, we never see the sketches, there is no video of their process.

Here they come ... festival brochures, event leaflets, book covers, comic strips, movie posters. The incredible wood sculpture made by a six-year old, the amazing historical photo no one has seen before, the viral video narrated by someone who may or may not be Morgan Freeman. The compromising picture of a loved celebrity, the off-mic comment made by a political opponent ... the video proof to justify a war.

AI art is trash and in that there is some hope, because those that use AI to promote their book festival, or their children's fun event, or their new novel, are broadcasting a certain set of values that most would reject if they knew: low-quality, cheap, insincere. The danger lies in an audience whose senses have been bludgeoned by a constant scrolling stream of thirty-second videos, forty-word posts, deepity-memes, and an internet media already full of charlatans, grifters, and conspiracy-pushers (it's no coincidence they are some of the biggest users of AI images).

Art is beautiful because it has been made by a fellow human being. Life is infused into human art. It is the mind laid bare for all to see. When you see art you like, you immediately think of the person who made it, you wonder about them - it is connection. Machine art is devoid of everything we relate to in human life. AI content is a climate disaster for the internet, an invasive species, a complete corruption of humanistic values. Reject it.

The English language edition of The Secret of the Samurai is now available to buy in the online shop.

This is the second batch of stock I've had from publisher BD Must. The first, back in March, was offered to Patreon supporters first and sold out within a week.

Note that this is a much shorter story than The Rainbow Orchid but does also include two back-up strips (The Sword of Fate and The Girdle of Polly Hipple). It was first serialised in The Phoenix Comic in 2013 and you can learn more about it from these old blog posts here.

The Secret of the Samurai in English has been very difficult to get hold of since publication in 2020, and I'm grateful to BD Must for making stock available for me to sell here in the UK.