Sign of the Hammer!

Wednesday 30 October 2013

Spanish scares for Halloween - MARTILLO is out!

Just in time for Halloween – ‘Martillo: Devil-Smiter’ is finally out!

It is 1948, and General Franco’s fascist government rules Spain with an iron fist. Isolated from the rest of Europe, the country has become a breeding ground for supernatural wickedness – and that’s where Martillo comes in. A servant of the Saint of Labourers, Martillo wields a hammer and smites evil – HARD! In this 52-page comic, Martillo takes on pagan storm-gods, metal-obsessed spectres, sadistic thorn-monsters, gold-eating devil-weasels, hungry bogeymen and Pablo Picasso! But can even Martillo save a nation that still bears the psychic scars of the Civil War?
 
 
Featuring scenes of goat-defenestration and Cubism gone bad, this 52-page US-format beauty is written by myself and drawn / lettered by small-press superstar David Broughton (Zarjaz / Dogbreath / The Psychedelic Journal of Time-Travel) It also features a piece of interior guest-art by none other than Judge Dredd supremo Ben Willsher!

It can be obtained for the princely sum of £5 + P&P, from the lovely Comicsy.
Go buy it and experience some of this:
 

Saturday 5 October 2013

If Only Man Could Moult



PARAGON #14 is out, roaming the streets like a lunatic, and telling wild and improbable tales of action-packed goodness! There are many great things therein, chief amongst which is the jumbo-sized conclusion to Dirk Van Dom and Stephen Prestwood’s wonderful ‘Icarus Dangerous’, which for my money has been the comic’s biggest draw since #7. (Appropriately, its run is bookended by remarkable covers, both courtesy of Matt Soffe.) We also have the start of Tom Proudfoot and George Coleman’s ‘The Major’, which looks gorgeous (in a deeply evil sort of way) and which gets a big thumbs up from me for its Edinburgh setting – as a patriotic Scotsman, I love anything that delves into the myths and legends and indeed entrails of our blood-soaked nation. We also have a dose of laser-whip-fuelled crocodilian lunacy in ‘Jikan’, courtesy of Mr. Van Dom and editor/artist/mastermind Davey Candlish, whose chameleonic art-skills have rendered this one in a Mignola-esque stylee.

For my part, I have contributed two tales, both of which, bizarrely enough, centre around our feathered friends. There’s a Spencer Nero short, ‘Spencer Nero and the Hour of the Heron’, in which our smug hero finds himself dealing with Dartmoor druids and their pagan Heron god, the eyeball-eating Old Nog. Davey Candlish draws this one in a style inspired by ‘Chew’ artist Rob Guillory. The main feature, however, is ‘Spencer Nero and the Locked Door’, in which Spencer’s curator chum William Kitt takes centre stage. Kitt has to deal with a rampaging threat connected with the appearance of a caladrius, the healing bird of ancient Rome. But where is Spencer while all this is going on? Art here is by James Corcoran, and 'tis a dark treat indeed.

At the time of writing, #14 is FREE for download here, so grab a copy – the early bird catches the worm, after all. It is a comic with many feathers in its cap, and we’re as proud as peacocks of it.