At midnight last night, on the dot, I put the names of everyone who entered the 40th June competition into a tin and asked Elyssa to pick one out. So congratulations to Russell Stearman - the signed and sketched cover proof will be on its way to you within the next week or so.

And a huge thanks to everyone who entered - I'm sorry you couldn't all have prizes just for entering! There will definitely be more competitions to come.

There's still time to enter the competition to win a signed and sketched cover proof! The deadline is midnight GMT on 7 June (Sunday night). See the previous post for details.

And talking of competitions, Sarah McIntyre decided to celebrate the 40th of June by holding her own competition - you have to draw a suitably extravagant moustache on this terrific portrait she's drawn. See Sarah's blog for details - and again, the deadline is Sunday evening (7 June). What a great idea!

The 40th June turned out to be a very successful day thanks to all the wonderful supporters and friends of The Rainbow Orchid. I don't know how many people sent out emails to tell their friends about the book (enormous thanks if you did), but I can mention some of the blog posts that I was alerted to - please give them all a visit and check out the rest of these wonderful sites...

| Jason Cobley | Sarah McIntyre | Sean Kleefeld | Gosh! Comics | Speech Balloons |
| Toonhound | Forbidden Planet | Paul Harrison-Davies | Neill Cameron | Kelvin Green |
| Linda Wada | Graeme Neil Reid | Richard Bruton | Matthew Badham | Alex Milway | Jenni Scott |
| Rocket Llama HQ | Down the Tubes | James Turner | Jez Higgins | David O'Connell |

I hope I haven't missed anyone out - please let me know if I have and I'll add it on. There were also some lovely comments and messages through Facebook and Twitter.

I must also share this brilliant piece of artwork by Simon Doyle with you. Thank you Simon - that's going straight up into the Readers' Art gallery (where you can also read the hilarious text that accompanies it).

I don't usually make a big fuss about my birthday. It's not through any kind of false modesty, I'm just genuinely not a big birthday person. However, this year I thought I'd mark the event with something more than a nod, as I'm turning forty, a decade that tends to have a certain significance attached to it.

And so I'm going to be very cheeky and ask you, my dear Rainbow Orchid readers, if you'd be so kind as to give me a little present! On my birthday, which is this Thursday, 4th June, I would be most grateful if you would do something to spread the word about The Rainbow Orchid and its approaching publication. If you have a blog, perhaps you could write a line and give a link, or maybe you could post something on a forum, or tweet on Twitter, or even just email a couple of friends who you think might be interested in giving the comic a look. You could point them to the online preview, or maybe the shop. No obligation, just a little awareness raising. It would be enormously kind of you!

In return, I am offering up a little competition to win one of the two cover proofs I received from Egmont a few weeks ago - signed by me and with some original little character drawings down one side. To enter, log in to the members' area (anyone can enter as long as you're a registered reader - it's free to sign up) and click the 'competitions' link, where you will find three simple questions to answer in order to have a chance at owning this unique Rainbow Orchid goody.

In addition to all this, to continue with the Fortieth of June celebrations, a new interview has gone up online, though this one is a little different in that it is my first audio interview (so please be gentle with me, I know I get a bit rambly sometimes!). I talked to researcher and author Linda Wada for her first Table Chat podcast, and the result is a one hour and fifteen minute wander through the creation of The Rainbow Orchid, from Imagination to Print, as Linda has titled it. If you give it a listen, I hope you enjoy it!

Here are a few notes on some comics I've read over the past few weeks...

I'll start with Three Shadows, by ex-Disney animator Cyril Pedrosa, which I first heard about from Sarah McIntyre's blog a few months ago. It's published by First Second, and as with all of their titles comes in a package of very pleasing dimensions. I love the organic rough-edged pages as well. The art is beautiful, gracefully sketched and flowing with movement on every page - masterful. The story bubbles with fascinating characters, but I did feel it was written purely with the goal of bringing a tear to my eye upon its conclusion (which it did, well, a lump to my throat anyway), thus there's a rather honeyed melancholy throughout which I found a little suffocating. It's good though, and I can see myself keeping it around for another read.

From NBM comes Miss Don't Touch Me (originally La Vierge du Bordel and Du Sang sur les Mains) by Hubert (story and colour) and Kerascoët (drawing). I totally loved this book, from its 1930s Paris setting, to the riveting story and loose yet stylistic draughtsmanship. It's a murder mystery, largely set in a high-class brothel, and featuring a very engaging main character (Blanche). While the story is top-notch, the cartooning adds so much to the whole package, it's just delightful. Very European and very good. (And I discovered the blog of Kerascoët right here - lovely).

One of my favourite political cartoonists is 'Derf' (John Backderf), whose The City I have been following online for a good few years now. I've also been a fan of his longer works - My Friend Dahmer and Trashed, and now, a much longer work, Punk Rock and Trailer Parks. This story follows the remarkable central character, a charismatic trailer-park nerd named Otto, a.k.a 'The Baron', amidst the backdrop of the economically arid city of Akron which became a focal point for the new wave punk scene that hit America at the end of the 70s and into the early 80s. The story features several real bands and artists that did indeed play at 'The Bank' (eg. The Ramones, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, The Plasmatics), the music venue where much of the story takes place. If nothing else, I was introduced to the simply wonderful Klaus Nomi (an album of his coming my way soon). The only (very minor) downside is a few of the earlier pages print extremely close to the edge of the page - on one it actually sliced off a few letters of balloon text - but all in all it's a really satisfying read that had me chuckling out loud in several places.

Books. Actual books. Click the images for a closer view.

Spot UV varnish!

Yesterday Elyssa and I went to the Royal Academy to see the Kuniyoshi exhibition. Masterful prints of beautiful images with a bold line and generally flat colours, all very reminiscent of that lovely ligne claire style. In my early teens I used to copy and colour such images from Stephen Turnball's Book of the Samurai. Now I've added the Kuniyoshi catalogue to my bookshelf as well. Inspiring stuff, so do try and see it before it closes on 7th June.

And last week The Bookseller ran an advert for The Rainbow Orchid (see below). Huge thanks to fellow comic creator Paul Harrison-Davies for letting me know and sending a scan - you can currently see his fabulous work gracing Huzzah! and Huzzah! Noir.

On Saturday I went up to Crystal Palace and hung around with some lovely comics people and some lovely book people for the Children's Book Festival. I won't give a long report as I missed some of it, and I can point you to some excellent write-ups, with photos, from Sarah McIntyre, David O'Connell, Candy Gourlay and organiser, Alex Milway.

It was a lovely day, and Alex is a true superstar for putting it all together. I hope there'll be another one next year.

The full web version of my comic strip, The Rainbow Orchid, is going to remain online for just one more week!

Book publication of volume one is set for 4 August 2009, so after the bank holiday weekend (Tuesday 5 May) the online strip will become a preview, with certain sections removed and the full story available in print only.

You can start reading the comic here and you can pre-order volume one from Amazon.co.uk here (it'll be available to buy from this website in August).

Today I received the 'wet proofs' (proofs printed form the actual plate) for the cover and a handful of pages from The Rainbow Orchid. They look fabulous, as you can see for yourself in the photo below (along with note from Faye, the designer).

Last night I trained it up to London to meet comics friends at a pub just a short walk from London Bridge, mostly DFC'ers, but some others too. One of the others was Ellen Lindner and I was able to buy a copy of her book, Undertow, which she signed and sketched in with a pen borrowed from one of the other others, Mousehunter author, Alex Milway (who's organising the Crystal Palace Children's Book Festival). I started reading Undertow today and it's completely fabulous. As was last night, which I enjoyed so much that I only just managed to get on the last train home!

I've only had rather long blog entries in mind recently, and no time to write them. I'll cross one off the list now though, as I've had quite a few comics come my way in the past couple of weeks, and will write a little on each.

The first comes from Denmark, and is from the same publisher as for the Nofret book I bought last year, Eudor Comics. This is Frank Madsen's Kurt Dunder in Tirol, which I believe is currently the only English translation from this series. And it's good stuff - the art is fluid and attractive, quite cartoony, and the story is my favourite kind, a mystery adventure (quite commonplace in Europe, but still a rare beast as far as comics in the UK are concerned). It has some good daft humour, mostly in the shape of Attilia, a mischievous though useful monkey. Kurt Dunder himself is described as a 'globetrotter and adventurer', which gives fair license for his exploits, and the other main supporting character is his sidekick, a rotund Tintin-quiffed fellow named Bill.

We need a translation of the next book, The Fifth Gospel (which I'm not certain has been completed yet), as the adventure continues there, though this volume does provide a satisfying read in itself. The translation is largely very good, but there is the odd error that stands out. I look forward to more English translations from Eudor, and definitely urge you to support them and buy their books to encourage this - both Nofret and Kurt Dunder provide marvellous reads.

Next up is Rick Geary, someone whose work I have been meaning to get hold of for years, but have only recently done so. Part of the reason I have only just dived in to his oeuvre is because so many of his works interest me, especially the treasuries of Victorian murder, and I wasn't really sure where to start. In the end it was the relatively recent release of The Adventures Of Blanche that hooked me in - and I think I have indeed been hooked!

Blanche is based loosely on Geary's own grandmother, with tales set in the early years of the twentieth century. The Adventures... book is a collection of three stories, a cthulhoid tale set in New York in 1907, a silent film yarn set in the Hollywood of 1915 (my favourite), and a mystery set in Paris in 1921. Blanche has a touch of Adele Blanc-Sec about her, though she is more a victim of circumstance rather than a driving force herself.

The other Geary book I bought is also fairly recent, and forms the first in his new series of treasuries of twentieth century murder, it being a documentary tale of the kidnapping of The Lindbergh Child. The case is told in the author's customary careful laying out of the facts, and similarly clear graphical presentation, to give a very decent yet unbiased overview. I'm looking forward to his next in the series, a case I have had some interest in before through Taylorology, the William Desmond Taylor murder.

The Linbergh affair gives a link to the next work I have, Rivière and Solidor's bande dessinée adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, a tale that was written just two years after the Lindbergh tragedy which heavily informed the backdrop of this Hercule Poirot whodunnit. The adaptation is cool and stylish, though sometimes a little stiff, and lacks the air of mystery the story deserves I think (perhaps something is lost in the translation). It's a nice volume though, and is one in a series of Christie adaptations from Harper Collins (I'd link to the series website but the the URL on the back of the book leads to a page error).

Entirely coincidentally, but just to further the link I've mentioned between Lindbergh and Christie, while colouring pages over the Easter weekend I listened to an audiobook version of Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, an excellent and intriguing book that follows the case of a child murder in 1860 and involving one of England's original eight Police Detectives.

Now onto a couple of self-published titles. Rol Hirst has produced PJANG number two, and if I tell you that PJANG stands for 'People Just Ain't No Good', then that may give a clue to the direction Rol's tales can often take. He's an excellent writer of character and observation, and the story here - '24 Minutes' - is nicely constructed. I've liked Dave Metcalf's artwork ever since the days of The Jock, and the atmosphere of the story is well reflected in his bold lines, but I did feel some slightly clearer scene setting would have benefited the comic in its early pages. Mind you, if I was the artist, I wouldn't exactly thank the author for situating the entire comic in a crowded railway station, and Dave has risen to the occasion. A good read with a lovely cover from Nigel Lowrey, and I recommend it.

And David Baillie has produced a lovely hardback volume of Tongue of the Dead, a fantasy tale that took me back to the days of White Dwarf magazine and Robert E. Howard's Conan, the novels of which also turn out to have been David's prime inspiration. The well-told story more than kept my interest throughout, and the clear illustration is easy on the eye and uncluttered. Extras come in the form of a series of one-page Zombie Interviews (as seen in Accent UK's Zombie anthology) and a few pages of story annotations, which I always appreciate, plus a short prose story to end with. A nice addition to your bookshelf.

I have two more comics in my pile, as yet unread, so I will leave Jason Lute's Berlin volume two (City of Smoke), and Osamu Tezuka's Mw for another day.