It's a year to the day that I first announced The Rainbow Orchid is to be published by Egmont. I've just seen the final proofs and it's all looking terrific - the Egmont team (particularly designer Faye Dennehy and editor Peter Marley) have worked their socks off these past few weeks. And now I'm allowed to give you the first glimpse of the cover...

I've also noticed the book is listed up on Amazon UK and Amazon Japan, with a release date of 4 August 2009. Almost there... what's another four months, eh?

Upon learning that I'm to have a book published this year, a friend recently said to me "you don't seem very excited about it." And last week, in an email about something completely different, a colleague wrote "you've been plugging The DFC on your blog for over a year now, is there a reason you haven't commented on its demise?". Today, Friday 27 March 2009, sees the final issue of The DFC, so now I will write something about it.

I am, of course, excited about the imminent publication of The Rainbow Orchid, but I think I have an inner defence system that subdues anything too overt. You see, I don't actually believe it's going to be published until I see it in a bookshop. Until then, until I hold a copy in my hands, I'll just remain calmly and optimistically hopeful.

the dummy, the first issue and the final issue of The DFC

In the late 1980s I had my first professional comic work accepted for publication. It was a three-page comic based on the song Iron Man by Black Sabbath, and it was to appear in the comic/lifestyle magazine Heartbreak Hotel. After the editor had phoned me and told me they wanted to print it and pay me, I did a few happy leaps around the room, maybe even jumping on the sofa. Sadly, the next issue of Heartbreak Hotel that was to contain my strip didn't appear - it had folded.

I carried on, happily self-publishing, and then another opportunity for professional publication arose, this time working on two titles for a U.S publisher, Blue Comet Press. I did the pencils on a couple of issues of a fantasy title called Zorann Star Warrior and full art and lettering on a superhero/horror title called The Devil's Workshop (written by the fabulous Paul H. Birch). Unfortunately, the black and white indie boom that enabled Blue Comet Press was dwindling, the company collapsed, and my issues never saw print (except for some art on an advertisement in another title).

Working as an illustrator I do quotes, rough sketches and even finished art for many jobs that never actually come to fruition. They probably outnumber the projects that do get completed and see print. I still learn loads from them and I don't feel great sadness or regret that these comic jobs didn't happen (at the time I did, of course, but there's always been new stuff to look forward to). So, you know, it's par for the course.

Having The Rainbow Orchid up on the web has brought a lot of good things my way, and one of them was The DFC...

27 September 2006
Dear Garen,
Do you have a phone number we can reach you on? We love your work on Rainbow Orchid and wondered if you might be interested in being involved with a project we are in the process of developing.
With best wishes, Ben Sharpe, David Fickling Books, Oxford

So I got involved in a project that did get me excited, though in the calm-and-optimistic way, not the jumping-on-a-sofa way. I tried out for one of the strips, got the job and saw three pages appear in the dummy issue. Then, as happens with these things in their early days, I got moved off that strip and offered another one or the opportunity to write my own - even better. I worked on a couple of stories, and then for many reasons, some avoidable, some not, I spent a long time doing my chosen DFC strip (Charlie Jefferson and the Tomb of Nazaleod) and I didn't quite make it in time before The DFC ended.

I didn't think The DFC was going to end - I always believed in it, right from when I saw the dummy issue. Yes, I was fearful it might end, but didn't really think it would. The DFC didn't fail, it's just bad timing. As far as I understand it, Random House were quite prepared to give The DFC at least a couple of years to grow its roots, to find its avenues, but were not prepared for the economic slump that saw them having to return to core business in order to ride the storm.

A lot of people, while being supportive, have criticised the subscription system. Personally, I think it was a great idea. It was the idea that made The DFC possible, that meant it could subsist on a budget that would not get eaten up by newsagent distribution, and meant it did not have to contain adverts, licensed characters or stick free plastic rubbish to its cover. And I'm a great believer in the power of the internet, which would be its starting base. People asked why wasn't it in WHSmith, why wasn't it in comic shops, why wasn't it in schools? It would have been - eventually. It couldn't do everything at once - it was going to be a slow yet sturdy grower.

Another impressive aspect of The DFC was the editorial input. They weren't controlling. Their attitude was "you're the experts at making comics, you make them". I saw some rather mean criticism of the fact that 'non-comic' authors were brought on board, a completely fresh and wonderful thing to my mind. Of course, as a children's book publisher, David Fickling Books had storytelling and marketing experience that was invaluable to every creator. The freedom and scope offered to the writers and artists on The DFC made for fertile ground, and a unique and wonderful mix of strips. It's true the balance wasn't always right, and the title cast a wide net as far as its readership was concerned, but it made for an excellent menu of stories, and, again, time would have seen it stabilise. Storytelling was always the most important thing.

from Charlie Jefferson and the Tomb of Nazaleod

I'm sad my own strip didn't get to appear, but I have at least had The Rainbow Orchid to work on and look forward to (and I am excited about it, honestly!). But when that red and yellow striped envelope plops through my letterbox later today, it's going to be unbelievably sad. I don't mean for me, I mean for everyone, the David Fickling team, readers, creators, and British comics in general. The DFC was - is - a brilliant brilliant thing. That's why I haven't written about this until now, it's just rather depressing to have to focus on the demise of such a marvellous idea.

So, is it the end? To be honest, I can't believe it is. The DFC has been put out into this world and has quickly become more than just a weekly comic. The idea has been made real, and I think we'll see the title back - maybe in a few months, maybe in a few years, but there's no way it's gone forever.

As a tribute to that attitude, the Super Comics Adventure Squad has come into existence - a blog, a hub, for DFC creators, and a place where you can keep up with what they're doing. Dare I say it, but it's a place where the spirit of The DFC lives on...if you'll allow me to be a little melodramatic!

Not a lot of blogging recently, my apologies for that. The Rainbow Orchid is within a week of going off to production and I'm making last minute alterations to the speech bubbles.

This is entirely my own decision/fault. I do all my own lettering, but Egmont re-set the lettering in-house, and while I want it to remain just as I set it originally (or as close as possible), the question of foreign language editions has come up. After seeing the first set of proofs, I decided my original balloons were a little too tight, so have spent the last few days re-adjusting everything. I truly hope this is the last time I make myself do this - part one has a long history of re-lettering and balloon adjustment, and it can send you just a little bit crazy, nudging balloons a couple of pixels to the left, shifting lettering a few pixels up, then down...

For the first three pages I used a method I'd devised when doing my comic strip adaptation of The Tempest, namely making up the lettering and speech balloons in QuarkXpress (I'm now an InDesign user), printing them, cutting them out, pasting them on to the original artwork, and using Tippex to draw the balloon tails on. And yes, I think I did indeed use ComicSans for this... it wasn't such a big crime in 1997.

By the time Orchid started appearing in BAM! I was adding all 'speech furniture' exclusively on the computer, and when I put out the first black and white collection in late 2003 I re-set the first three pages too. You can see here some slight adjustments to the look of the characters as they had grown into themselves a lot more since these early pages were first drawn. By now I'd changed my font to WhizBang after it being recommended by 2000AD artist P. J. Holden.

Not wanting to reprint part one, but wanting to make my story available to new readers, I soon started putting Orchid on the web, which allowed me to put the strip into colour at last. In print the lettering had been done at 6pt, so as well as colouring it I enlarged the font to 6.5pt, and adjusted the balloons accordingly.

When the Forum Ligne Claire translated the text into French, I re-did all the balloons too, so everything fitted just right.

With publication by Egmont looming, I realised a long-held desire to create my own hand lettering font, which of course meant I had to re-set all the text once more. I also increased the font size to 7.5pt to make it as comfortable as possible.

Upon seeing the first set of proofs I still felt the lettering was a bit too snug, and wanted a bit more space for the lettering to breathe. Also, it might mean less work if foreign language editions come into play (though some panels would probably still require adjustment). So I've set upon the latest programme of text and balloon adjustment. You know, if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing properly!

Found in the back of The Rainbow Orchid scrapbook... the Tayaut family took their air show to Moscow circa 1925.

The website for the Crystal Palace Children's Book Festival now has more details up, and it's looking rather jolly good! It runs from 24-26 April 2009 and the Saturday will see loads of great events and signings from some of the best children's book creators in and around London.

With no book out yet, I have limited my participation to the exhibition, but it will be great to have some of my work on show as part of that, and I'm really looking forward to being there on the day. Click the poster below to visit the festival website.

There's an interview with me up at the Forbidden Planet International blog that was conducted last November. Huge thanks to Matthew Badham for conducting it, and to Joe Gordon for hosting it - they've both been long-time and generous supporters of The Rainbow Orchid.

c.1981/82

A few days ago I wrote a post giving some details about the Tayaut twins, so today I thought I'd write a little on our main protagonist, one Julius Chancer.

I can't give away too much on his backstory, because parts of it are yet to emerge within The Rainbow Orchid. He works as an assistant to historical researcher, Sir Alfred Catesby-Grey, and we know that he saw service in the Dardanelles. In fact, here's an old photograph of him from those days.

As you might guess from his much younger looks, there's a distinct possibility he may have lied about his age to the recruiting officer. I can reveal that this photo led to Julius meeting with Sir Alfred for the first time, but that's a story for another day.

I have been asked whether I chose his name to fit in with an entire stream of fictional heroes who share the initials J.C. (Jerry Cornelius, Jesus Christ, John Carter, Jiminy Cricket etc.), or even quite a few famous real people too (Jarvis Cocker, Joe Cornish, Johnny Cash... oh, there's hundreds). The answer is no, it's not something I realised until a long time after I'd created him. In fact, if I'd have thought of it at the time, I may even have steered his name away from that area, because I wouldn't like anyone to read anything into the coincidence.

I did a lot of sketching until I settled on his look (he was blonde to begin with). His features aren't strong, it's mainly his streamlined (or Art Deco, as someone once joked) eyebrows and hairstyle that are definitive. His hairstyle was inspired by a photograph of silent film actor Neil Hamilton from D.W. Griffith's 1924 film, 'Isn't Life Wonderful?' I recently discovered that this is the same Neil Hamilton that played Commissioner Gordon in the 1960s TV series of 'Batman'. In The Rainbow Orchid, a small boy asks if he's the silent film director Rex Ingram, but I was originally going to have the boy say Neil Hamilton instead. Unfortunately that name is more famous in the UK for a somewhat disgraced and embarrassing politician-turned-"celebrity", so I avoided it.

I will say one final thing about Julius Chancer, which is that I know the date of his death! I will spotlight another Rainbow Orchid character soon.

An early drawing of Julius from 1997. You can see another one here.

I'm taking a short break from what's turned out to be a long and arduous trek through a Nazaleod page (getting there though) to tell you about the Tayaut twins.

On the way up to a talk in Middlesbrough last October, my agent mentioned how he liked my little tip of the hat to the Thom(p)sons (from Tintin) in the guise of the Tayaut twins. You may find this difficult to believe, but the comparison hadn't even crossed my mind. Because I am already dans l'ecole ligne claire, I have otherwise tried to ignore any further Hergéisms as much as possible. But now it's been mentioned, I actually quite like the idea.

You may be interested to know that Tayaut is a French term for the cry "tally ho!", having its origins in calling the hounds during a fox hunt. It could also mean "the game's afoot", or "let's go" and it was apparently used by some French pilots during World War II.

For those of you who have trouble telling them apart, Josette sports an orange jumper and a cap (she's also a little more happy-go-lucky than her sister), while Eloise has a blue jumper, and doesn't normally wear a hat (and is the more serious of the two). I say she normally doesn't wear a hat, because in the following beautiful image, by children's illustrator Sarah McIntyre, Eloise is in fact wearing a cap like Josette's. I was completely bowled over to receive this masterpiece, thanks so much Sarah! Click it for a bigger view (and see a translation note from Sarah here).

The initial image that jumped into my mind when I created Josette Tayaut (it was just her to begin with) was that of Jackie Coogan in The Kid, Charlie Chaplin's 1921 classic, though, of course, somewhat older and somewhat more female - but definitely in the category of tomboy. That leads me to another wonderful drawing, this time sent by Linda Wada, a Chaplin scholar and the world's foremost expert on his leading lady, Edna Purviance. Huge thanks, Linda!

And I'll just end off with a word or two of advice from Josette herself.

According to the latest issue of The DFC (number 35) it's 'Tell Everyone About The DFC Week', so I thought I would.

Recent issues have had a slightly stronger bias, I think, towards adventure strips, with 'John Blake' returning to the weekly comic's pages, as well as supernatural western 'Frontier', the stone age fables of 'Mezolith' and the Edwardian mysteries of 'Mirabilis'. All these are enjoyable strips, but the last two especially capture my interest with their rich imagination and depth of plot. I like adventure that unashamedly introduces some complexity into its structure, and find such tales highly rewarding. Indeed, it's the kind of thing I like to write myself, and gives me some confidence that my own strip, 'Nazaleod' will not be too far out of place in the pages of The DFC, something I had considered.

That's not to say anything less about any of the other strips, and the more comedic tales have been particularly good recently. The funniest, for me, is 'Super Animal Adventure Squad', and if a jade baboon with rubies for a bottom doesn't make you laugh, then the best joke involving a spoon I've read in ages (if I've ever actually read one before) definitely will. And 'Fish Head Steve' featured a boy milking his own head, which caused guffaws. 'Vern and Lettuce' continues with its high-quality artistry in both illustration and writing, and new-comer 'Bodkin and the Bear' is simple and entertaining. And I mustn't forget 'Good Dog Bad Dog', already a DFC classic with some top-tier cartooning, and 'Lazarus Lemming', the James Bond (or Woodrow Wilkins) of the animal kingdom.

Not every story in every issue's a winner, but from the above you get a taste of the diversity which is becoming The DFC's strength. Rather than spreading itself too thinly in many areas, the richness of the contents mean there's something of quality for everyone in every issue, and its constantly changing shape to surprise you in new ways.

What could be better, really, than a weekly package of such absorbing entertainment flopping through the letterbox every Friday? No adverts, no cheap plastic rubbish taped to the cover in the guise of a free gift. All story. You can see some previews here, and subscribe through the website here. I heartily recommend it!

(Edit: by request, you can now click the photo for a bigger version)

I've just been for a lovely midnight walk in the snow, but before that I watched the BBC's excellent Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life.

Throughout the programme, the Natural History Museum was heavily featured, and at the end they showed a statue of Charles Darwin being placed at the head of the steps inside the main hall in celebration of his 200th birthday. If you look at the Rainbow Orchid panel that features the hall, set in the late 1920s, you'll see the same statue (though quite small) already there. Are these my amazing predictive powers at work?

No, I'm afraid not. What David Attenborough didn't mention in the programme is that the very same Darwin statue was originally in that position from 1885 until it was replaced in 1927 by a statue of the museum's founder, Richard Owen. While Orchid may be set just a few months after this (though I purposefully don't give a precise date within the story), my own preference was for the Darwin statue to remain in pride of place.