So, the BICS (Birmingham International Comic Show) was this weekend. It’s taken me a couple of days to claw back the sleep that I had to forgo to really enjoy the event. 

In lieu of an actual report on what I did, here’s a couple of links:

Paul Cornell (writer of Dr Who, Captain Britain and MI:13 and more…)

Said this: 

But most importantly, and I really think this is some sort of breakthrough, and something that kept making people go ooh and ahh all through the convention, if you have an IPhone or an IPod Touch, I’d like to direct your attention to this on ITunes:

http://tinyurl.com/4qjr4p

This being P.J.Holden’s [..] comic for children, on the IPhone, for 99c a go, or the British equivalent. The oohs and ahhs (and P.J. got serious people from various serious organisations I shall not name coming over to have a look at his phone as word of mouth spread) were because this is the first comic project that I’ve seen that really takes advantage of the mobile form. 

 

John Reppion and Leah Moore said this:

The main buzz at the table, and the con in general was the Eyecandy iphone application created by PJ Holden and written by Al Ewing which is so innovative, and cool and fun to use, it made everyone at the con immediately start thinking of things to do for them. Download the first issue for 99c (0r 50p)here, and watch them like a hawk in case you miss a second of their meteoric rise to fame and stardom!

TouchTip writes about EyeCandy

This week, Infurious released EyeCandy Issue One - Masked Marshall, an interactive comic book featuring content to appeal to broader audiences, especially kids. Comic book aside, the Infurious comic reader platform takes advantage of the unique iPhone and iPod touch to deliver cool interactive features that we just love.
…pick up EyeCandy even if you don’t have kids. It’s totally worth a buck, just to check out how some creative thinking can leverage the iPhone into a new kind of interactive reading device. We’re looking forward to future comic titles from Infurious.

Wouldn’t have put it better ourselves!

I’ll be one of the guests at BICS this year. I’m sure I’ll be wearing one of the patented Murderome T-Shirts (though maybe not the same one for the entire con…)

I’ll be getting in at 9:00pm on the Friday (not ideal, but the bloody airline decided to change my time to this later time) so you’ll all be getting drunk by then. But don’t be afraid to say hello and ask if you can see ‘Murderdrome’…

See you there…

In answer to this and this

The handing out of t-shirts were NOT a protest (silent or otherwise) - we just thought it’d be kinda neat to hang out with everyone queuing at the opening of the new Apple Store in Belfast and to give out some free t-shirts (and, heck, we’re Apple nerds too - we wanted to see the new place). A jolly time was had by all, we passed out t-shirts, we showed off EyeCandy and we had, generally, a good laugh. 

Now back to your regularly scheduled stuff.

Oh: re the t-shirts, we have no more, but we’re looking at getting some new ones printed up, we’ll get them up asap…

Once youtube have finished encoding, you should find, below, a 2min 56sec video of some real, genuine reaction to EyeCandy - sadly, my camera ran out of storage after only half a dozen people - but have a look at this:

(WARNING: This video contains a little bit of potty mouth - I’ll try and correct it - but be warned…)

Great little video from the BBC about the people waiting in line.

But what’s this?

And… this? 

And… uhm? 

And… more? seriously?

Is that the last one? Oh thank god. I’ve promised ALL of those people artwork.

That’s Murderdrome Official Merchandise, you maggots!

These are works in progress, but, if you’re in the Belfast apple store queue on Friday night/early Saturday morning, you could well be getting a freebie…

UPDATE

I’ll be at the Apple Store either late Friday night (around 11ish) or early Saturday morning (around 6ish) (or maybe even both times). Take a FREE T-Shirt (limited numbers!), get your photo in the local press (if they’re there!) and let me know about it (at our usual address) upon verification, I’ll send you some of my 2000AD artwork - ORIGINAL, PUBLISHED 2000AD comic art. Bargain.

(*One entry per person!)

So, just received a much anticipated email that tells me that… yes… project codenamed ‘Little Ducks’ can go ahead (I’m starting to think that my ‘Secret Project Name Generator’ should be on the App store).

What is it? I can’t say. I’d love to say. But I can’t. But… it’ll be free. And brilliant.

Now we now we can go ahead, it shouldn’t be too long before we have a working mock up. And from there, a final comic.

Hello, big interview with me (PJ) on Newsarama here.