AND NOW, THE END IS HERE...

(The Valley of Fear ©SelfMadeHero)

Have just finished The Valley of Fear!! The last of the Sherlock Holmes novels!

I started out on this awfully big adventure back in August 2008!! And in a little over 2 years and 505 pages later (excluding the 119 page sub-expedition to Antarctica for At the Mountains of Madness earlier this year) here we are!! DONE! Thanks to everyone for their kind words and support along the way! It's been quite a journey. And as old blue eyes would croon... "I did it my way".

(The Valley of Fear ©SelfMadeHero)

(The Valley of Fear ©SelfMadeHero)

(The Valley of Fear ©SelfMadeHero)

THOUGHT BUBBLE!!!

Okay - I will be at the SelfMadeHero tables at Thought Bubble - the Leeds Sequential Art Festival, signing copies of my latest graphic novel, an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. There will be also sketches for sale - a selection of creatures from a Mythos Menu which I'll be drawing throughout the day.

Gug

“It was a paw, fully two feet and a half across, and equipped with formidable talons. After it came another paw, and after that a great black-furred arm to which both of the paws were attached by short forearms. Then two pink eyes shone, and the head… large as a barrel… eyes jutted two inches from each side, shaded by bony protuberances overgrown with coarse hairs… That mouth had great yellow fangs and ran from the top to the bottom of the head, opening vertically instead of horizontally.” (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kaddath)

THOUGHT BUBBLE THOUGHTS

I will be attending Thought Bubble this Saturday and will be shackled to the SelfMadeHero tables like Kong. People may approach (with caution) and would be best advised not to use flash photography. If you pick up a copy of At the Mountains of Madness I will sign it for you and scribble in it too (a Mythos entity of your choosing or character from the book). And I will be doing that pretty much all day.

Rob Davis (keep an eye out for his upcoming adaptation of Don Quixote - its an incredible comics opus) has written his recommendations on what to buy at Thought Bubble this coming weekend (as he too will be attending and will be promoting Solipsistic Pop3 to which he's contributed the excellent Torturer's Garden) and he's also written a review of At the Mountains of Madness:

Ian's adaptation is perhaps the best of his SelfMadeHero books. Here "Britain's answer to Darwyn Cooke" works in double page spreads and uses the broader space to give us snowy vistas, frozen oceans, alien cityscapes and vast mountain ranges. The writing is stripped down and the book zips by, in stark contrast to the heavy going Lovecraft texts. All is rendered in Ian's trademark style, a kind of Yves Chaland/Frank Robbins lovechild.

As I know from struggling through my adaptation of The Dunwich Horror (which Ian has drawn and, in my opinion, is his best strip work yet!), voice overs are pretty inevitable in Lovecraft comic adaptations. Here the best sequences are where Ian shakes off the voice over and lets the characters play off one another or the action move seamlessly. If I have any criticism of the book, it's really a criticism of the source material - and that's the characterisation. I didn't really care about them. Lovecraft's characters are flat; he's all about ideas and the characters too often become cyphers. What Lovecraft excels at is spiking the imagination with his poison and enveloping the reader with a sense of menace beyond our ken. Ian's version loses non of that. You won't buy a better Graphic Novel or comic at Thought Bubble, don't hesitate to get it.

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS!!! GRAPHIC NOVEL OF THE MONTH!!!

Just picked up a copy of The Observer and Rachel Cooke has picked my adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness as GRAPHIC NOVEL OF THE MONTH!!!!

It is not only that Culbard has so cunningly boiled down Lovecraft's rather weighty novel, leaving its exciting plot free to breathe; it's also that his superb ligne claire drawings so effortlessly evoke both the world of Tintin, and the Edwardian science fiction of HG Wells and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. If you are a fan of the golden age of polar exploration – if you still hanker after Boy's Own stories of derring-do – I promise that this is the graphic novel for you.

Here's the online version of the article.

WRITING ABOUT WRITING AND DRAWING AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS - OH, AND A DOC FATHOM UPDATE!!

Just finished writing three blog pieces for SelfMadeHero - the first is about the inspiration for some of the .... design work for At the Mountains of Madness.

The second article is with regard to some of the architecture in the book.

And lastly there's a reasonably lengthy article about the actual process of adapting, which compared to the other two is relatively spoiler lite. But that said - these articles are otherwise spoiler heavy - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!

In other news: I was pleasantly surprised by some of the response that DOC FATHOM* has been getting! Now, if only I could find a way to make it so....
*For those only just tuning in....

DOC FATHOM!!

(Doc Fathom ©2010 I.N.J. Culbard)

Yet another pitch never pitched for Zuda - this time Doc Fathom which supposes quite simply that Atlantis never sank (and that it existed in the first place naturally). Very much a pulp adventure story of rather ridiculous proportions. These pages here are sans dialogue - the first page did at one point sport a Doc Fathom logo with the sub heading of Chapter 1. The Beast of '33.

MONSTROUS

(Monstrous ©2010 I.N.J. Culbard)

This is a really old never pitched Zuda Pitch I was trying to get together. One of many. I'd work up a few pages/panels and then get sidetracked with the day job drawing Holmes. Eventually Zuda closed its doors and I missed my shot. Time waits for no man.

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS NOW AVAILABLE!!

This is the bookplate I produced for Gosh! A portrait of H.P. Lovecraft sitting in Miskatonic Library. You can get the bookplate edition in the next couple of days. They do have copies of At the Mountains of Madness in stock and if you want a bookplate edition I am reliably informed they will put one aside for you.

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS REVIEWS!!

My adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness is out this Thursday and here's the first three reviews to come in.

The first comes from Ernesto Priego's blog, Butterfly Hunt.

The second comes from Barry Nugent and Geek Syndicate.

And the third from Richard Bruton and the Forbidden Planet International blog.

Additionally there will be a bookplate edition from Gosh! in London.

COCKED, LOCKED AND READY TO ROCK!!

The chap in the middle of this pick, Professor Armitage, has a starring role in The Dunwich Horror (adapted by Rob Davis with art by me), which will appear in Volume 1 of the Lovecraft Anthology coming out next April from SelfMadeHero. He has a cameo in At the Mountains of Madness too, as does the Miskatonic library. I chose to do Dunwich Horror for the Anthology because I wanted to do more with Armitage - Lovecraft's stories are so wonderfully interconnected so my interpretation of Armitage and the Miskatonic library remain consistent.

THE HORROR, THE HORROR!!

Just some of what I've been coloring today from pages I drew for the upcoming Lovecraft Anthology...

In other news, At the Mountains of Madness will be in all good book shops on October the 28th!!

ONE HUNDRED BROKEN FIGHTING MEN

(The Valley of Fear @SelfMadeHero)

Round up the usual suspects.

I have been drawing a lot of criminals today. The Valley of Fear certainly does have its fair share, including head bad guy number 1, the greatest fictional villain of them all, Moriarty!

I do quite enjoy drawing extras - characters that won't likely appear again in the story. Here we have a line up of unsavory associates of that Napoleon of Crime. Pickpockets, blackmailers, cardsharps... each and every one a ne'er-do-well of some description or other.

MORE VALLEY

(The Valley of Fear @SelfMadeHero)

ANOTHER PANEL FROM VALLEY OF FEAR

(The Valley of Fear @SelfMadeHero)

DOWN IN THE VALLEY

(The Valley of Fear @SelfMadeHero)

I have been drawing a lot of square panels lately for our latest Sherlock Holmes adaptation, The Valley of Fear. Here's one.

CERTIFIED MADNESS!!

My advance copies of At the Mountains of Madness arrived today!! Very excited!! Must calm down!! Maybe later!!

Rather pleased with the gate fold cover which means you get pretty much all of that cover I did ON THE COVER!! and not just on the outside but on reverse side too!!

The book is out in just a few weeks time and you can order your copy here!!

KALEIDOSCOPIC & A SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION

(The Valley of Fear @SelfMadeHero)

I'll be attending Kaleidoscopic this Friday where Edginton and I will be talking about Sherlock Holmes.

Have also been in discussion this week with SelfMadeHero about future projects... exciting times! Also I noticed quite a few people have cottoned on to this MEME that's spreading... called an Influence Map. So, without further ado, here's my seven-per-cent solution.