I’m very pleased to be relaunching my website, it’s something I’ve been planning for a long time. The old fumboo.com was nice and simple, but without a blog on it or easy access to my comics I felt it really needed shaking up and making more accessible.

SO at fumboo.com you will now find not only links to all my webcomics, websites, books and tshirts and ways to get in touch, not only my regularly updated blog, but also TONS AND TONS of comics. Loads of work a lot of people won’t have seen before, full strips from Space Raoul, Desperate Dan, Fish-Head Steve, Count Von Poo, Ubu Bubu, Bear, My Own Genie and loads more besides.

At the moment there are a handful of each to read, but over the course of the next week I’ll be uploading even more, including my favourites. AND as a brilliant bonus, tomorrow I’ll be uploading ALL the Count Von Poo strips I drew for Toxic, including the ones that didn’t make it to print.

So bookmark fumboo.com and come visit the site as often as you can, it will be the best place to keep up to date on all I’m doing, and read examples of all I’ve done. And get in touch, lemme know what you think!

****Please note - as a result, I won’t be updating anymore here on Fumblog, so please RSS fumboo.com to keep up to date ^_^ ******

I don’t blog much these days, and i rarely blog about other artists, because I’m a bitter and self-absorbed barking hermit. But i managed to blag myself a copy of Lorenzo Etherington’s DELUXE COLLECTION sketchbook, and i really HAVE to show this to you. It is, quite simply, one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever seen.

I’ve been lucky enough to know The Etherington Brothers (Lorenzo draws, Bob writes) for about 5 years. We’ve got drunk together, worked for The DFC together, they contributed to my Fat Chunk anthology and i’d consider them the nicest two men working in comics today. But more than that, they’re so sickeningly talented it makes you want to give up drawing and live in an upturned canoe. The stories Bob weaves and Lorenzo makes flesh are so wonderfully realised, so exhilerating, it’s the kind of stuff that makes you glad you discovered comics. And yet, they’re not absolutely massive. They’ve built a large following with their self-published comics, and do comics for some big names like Dreamworks, but it always seemed they’re deserving of so much more.

Fact is, prolific doesn’t cover them. The sheer scale of work they’ve produced is mind-blowing, as this 600 page tome will testify. Lorenzo’s work has always been intricate and complex, yet running along smooth fluid lines, and every page of this book is crammed full of such high quality work it’s almost unnerving. For me, the beauty in Lorenzo’s work has always been in the details, the clickywidgets, the fumblywotsits, the cogs and wires and springs and decorations tailoring each drawing, the kind of thing any other artist really struggles to throw out so freely.

So this is why I’m showing it off here, with a select few hasty photos, and a gushing recommendation. You need to buy this book, it’s just stunning. And an inspiration to the rest of us to pull our socks up and work even harder.

The DELUXE COLLECTION will be available at the Bristol Con (UK), and Lorenzo will even sketch in it for ya. And after that it will be on sale everywhere, so do keep checking the Etherington blog HERE. And then badger them into getting facebook and twitter accounts, so we can all be kept up to date :p

ps. as a little addendum, i cheekily suggested to Lorenzo he could sketch a Looshkin in my copy of the book. Talk about going above and beyond, check this lot out!

I think pretty much everything i’ve drawn! (even some i dont remember). Chaffy, Loosh, Whubble, Kochi, Genie, Whubble, FishHead Steve, etc etc. Proper wonderful ^_^

Thank you to Scholastic for letting me show these EXCLUSIVE previews!

i’m SO excited to be able to finally announce this. You may recall me gabbering about my children’s book all round the end of last year, but i couldn’t tell you what it was about, who it was for, or anything! As it turns out, if you saw the Panda Roll posters i was selling last year you’ve already seen a preview of the book.

FIND CHAFFY is a full colour 48-page giant hug of eye-strainy fun! Can you spot the ten Chaffies hidden in each double-page picture search as they try to find their way home, meeting ghosts, cats, ninjas, bears, pigs, octopus, (angry little) robots, pandas, sheep and even dinosaurs along the way! Each picture search is a new stage on their long journey! Only £4.99 available from all good bookstores and y’know amazon n’tings.

So there we go, my first major book release. Fingers crossed it’ll win over a lot of people, signs are already good as its getting attention before it’s even released! And of course, something on this scale can only help the ongoing campaign at findchaffy.com.

And keep an eye out, nearer the time i’ll be not only giving away signed Chaffy posters and books, but there’s also the chance to finally win your own Chaffy ^_^

more to come!
Jx

This week’s issue of The Dandy showcases one of my puzzle pages. I was chuffed to be asked to write and draw some puzzle pages, especially since they kinda let me do what i want. This is the first one i’ve seen, but hopefully the rest will be showing up over the next few issues. For some reason i was proud of this snotty-faced freak, i think it reminded me of the puzzles you used to get on the back of Garbage Pail Kids?

jx

ps. today is wednesday, which of course means BRAND NEW WHUBBLE, as well as Looshkin + fire at bearfoo.com

Hey, you guys do know that WHUBBLE (http://www.whubble.net) has started back up don’t you? updated every wednesday, there are already 9 new strips up to add to the 40-odd in the archives. come over and have a look see! ^_^

i meant to announce it when it returned but events got away from me.

Except THIS guy. I’ve seen quite a few news articles on Chat Roulette and most of them seem to feature him as typical of the Roulette wackybonkers users (such as THIS article -nsfw because it shows that guy in the bra ) . And while it’s lovely having Bear paraded around as an example of internet deviance, i want to hunt this bastard down. who are you? WHO ARE YOU?

In other news, if you want to hear my sexy distorted confused-cockernee voice, i did an interview with the lovely Comic Racks again, you can listen to it HEEEERE (i start talking about 3/5 of the way in). In this interview i mostly talk about things i can’t talk about, while not talking about them. oh i’m THAT interesting.

Also The Hub magazine did an interview with me, as one of their ‘new independents’, part one is HERE.

thats all.

jx

ps. thank you everyone for your responses to my comic about my dad. it was overwhelming the amount of people it got to, i saw it passed around the internet and back again, and all the people who’ve got in touch, it’s just been really humbling. i’m glad it affected so many people ^_^

So in return I wanted to offer this. I don’t often draw serious or autobiographical comics, but last night i wrote this to try and put into pictures what i felt i’d lost. A lifetime of communication, represented by telephones.

If reading this makes only one person pick up the phone and call their dad, just to talk about nothing at all, then its worth it.

(to see a bigger version, click HERE)

again, thank you SO much for all your kind wishes. lets next week go back to talking about silly stuff again.

jx

Dad died on Friday night, well, around midnight so maybe that’s Saturday. Mum phoned me a few hours previous to say he’d seemed shaky and gone to bed, I told her not to worry. Dad had been getting frailer over the last coupla years, and none of us felt he looked after himself properly. Then I got the phonecall. He had woken up with difficulty breathing, and four ambulance people hadn’t been able to save him. A large part of me had been expecting this phonecall for years and years, and it had sort of prepared me for it. I don’t think I slept, just waited till it was light outside and drove home.

My dad was pretty extraordinary. I know most people’s are, but my dad achieved far more than I ever could. He was born mid-WW2 in sussex, his pram shot at by Luftwaffe on Brighton seafront (so the story goes). When he was in his late teens he became a drummer and joined a band. In the sixties they toured all round the small cavernous venues of Europe, to put it in perspective this was just before the fledgling Beatles followed the same trail. He met my mum while drumming at her sister’s wedding, and convinced her for a year his name was Dave (it wasn’t).

(that’s Dad on the far right)

Most remarkably, I think, Dad built his first house for him and mum. I mean from scratch. He designed it, drew the plans, laid the bricks, installed the plumbing, put the pictures on the wall. Sure he had a little help on the manual labour, and only narrowly averted blowing up the street with the wrong gas installation advice, but that house was entirely his doing. You can see how it looked inside here..

Even the stereo is shag coated! Proper sixties. And a real testament to hard, honest, graft. He even found time to make a scale model as a doll’s house for my sister, with working electrics in it. This is it in early stages..

Dad became an architect and had an office in London’s Fleet Street, employing maybe ten people. Despite being constantly held back at school, he’d turned his life into something successful. He worked incredibly hard for all he had, and spent a lot of money sending me and my sister to decent schools.

(dad in the proper 80s studio, before computers)

In the early 90s, thanks to recession and bad advice, he pretty much lost it all. We ended up moving from house to house (the houses getting smaller everytime), and his feelings of letting everyone down really showed on him. Since then he tried to pick himself up again and again, but it was no use. The world wouldn’t let him get back on again, and he became more and more withdrawn.

In the last few years his health suffered (no thanks to his smoking and drinking, but also from years of stress I suspect), and by the end he had terrible breathing difficulties, trouble walking for too long, and last year even cancer had latched onto him. I’m not quite sure how he put up with it all. Through it all he persisted, working hard on a trilogy of science fiction novels (only 2/3 of which he finished writing though).

Feels weird. I’m not sure its kicked in properly yet that he’s not here anymore. As a grown-up you detach a little anyway, I think, from your parents, but it’s confusing to piece together the dad you knew as a kid and the dad you knew as an adult. I’m not sure which memories should be surfacing, they seem so different from each other.

Now he’s passed, I feel guilty I’m not feeling more. I don’t quite know how I’m supposed to be taking it. I know it’s absolute balls. And I miss him. And I’d like him back, please.

Rest in peace, Pete Eynon Smart. 1941 - 2010
jx

Just as a final note, this is my drawing desk.

Dad bought it for me as a 21st birthday present, since up til then I’d been drawing on kitchen tables or my lap. I’d needed it so badly, especially since I was claiming to be a professional illustrator, and he’d gone out of his way to afford it. I still use it now, and every single thing I have drawn in the last ten years, I’ve drawn on this. Dad’s support of my career was unmatched, both him and his father had wanted to be cartoonists but never managed it, his pride in me was a real motivation. I owe a lot of what I do, and what you probably know me for, to him.

If you’ve been following me on twitter or facebook recently, you may have heard me excitedly gibbering about the notion of working on new Whubble. Now the children’s book is nearly in the bag, my mind started searching around for new ideas to work on to add to the pile of 7 ideas i already want to get done now LIKE NOW. Whubble sprang to mind, i think more people on the internet know my work from Whubble than they do from Bear, and he really captured a humblingly big audience. So it’s about time he came back to his desk.

Whubble Wheek starts 1st March, where new strips will run every day. After that? Hopefully I can update once a week, but we’ll have to see how kind time is. But I’m proper excited to be writing and drawing new Whubble, and I hope people will dig the new strips.

But also, do come check out the new improved WHUBBLE website. The old one was falling to bits, and the comments barely worked if the wind was blowing the wrong way, so to give Whubble the website he deserves I’ve rebuilt it. Now you can easily look through the archive, check out the wallpapers, banners, fanart, and also join the Whubble facebook! Come over and say hi!

jx

ps. oh and check out Bearfoo.com today, for a special bonus 4-page guest strip by Colin and Simon. And then be a bit disturbed.

pps. lastly, i made a Formspring account HERE. if you wanna ask me anything about anything, here’s a good place to do it until we all get bored and find proper jobs ^_^