Manga Jiman Comptetition 2011

The Japanese Embassy in London have published details of this year's Manga Jiman Competition. They offer big prizes and attract high-calibre entries. I stumbled across last year's late in the day, so there was not time to enter and anyway I just wasn't ready for this challenge. But this year I'm going to tie on my Hachimaki and ink in one eye of my Daruma and go for this one.

This year's theme is "New Beginnings" which has stirred up some thoughts that have been going round my head of late. I think I've mentioned before that I know in my head how Policy Police will end, though I don't know when. Having that in my head, I've left myself with the niggly thought, "what happens next". So this seems to be an ideal opportunity to take a bold step forward and try to answer that question with a pilot for the sequel.

It also offers me an objective test  for whether it's worth pursuing this idea. If I win a prize, I have a direction for the future. If I don't, then the idea can sink without trace and I go back to the drawing board.

Policy Police: Return of the repossessed #6

I'm a few days late this month. There are a couple of reasons for this which I'll tell you about below. You can find the comic in THE STORIES tab, under the heading, Return of the Repossessed.

First reason is that my wife submitted her PhD thesis at the end of June. A PhD thesis is a kind of black hole that sucks in all the available time from several parallel universes. So in general I've been “time-poor” as they say.

Second reason is that I had this idea to try something a bit experimental (for me). So in the middle bit of this one you get a bit of Brechtian alienation or something. In fact it's me under the influence of Japanese comics where characters often get more cartoonish when they're under the sway of some heightened emotion. Anyway, I nearly bottled out a couple of times, but now I'm glad I did it that way.

Three reasons. I wrote the above this morning before my battery gave out. Last night some bonehead(s) stole the copper connectors off the overhead power cables to our house. Who would have thought that scrap metal was worth risking your life for... Anyway, I've had no power or connectivity all day. So that has delayed me some more.