ORANG UTAN EVOLVES IN 2009!

British indie publisher releases two new titles!

Orang Utan Comics are pleased to announce the release of two new comics which are available to order online right now.

FTL#1 is the first issue of their brand new black and white anthology. Featuring thirty-two pages of beautifully greyscaled art, and new stories by Orang Utan Comics veterans Ian Sharman, Peter Rogers and Trey Wickwire, along with a brand new story from the exceptionally talented Dwight L. MacPherson (The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo), FTL is sure to be a hit with comic fans everywhere.

Click here to order FTL #1.

Also released today is the Alpha Gods graphic novel. Previously available to read online in ebook form, in excess of 8,000 views in the three months since its release have persuaded Orang Utan Comics to release the entire 48 page, full colour graphic novel in print.

Click here to order Alpha Gods.

Both titles will be available at the Orang Utan Comics stand at next month’s Bristol International Comic Expo, and also at the London MCM Expo later in the month. You can also order both titles online via the print on demand service, IndyPlanet.

Orang Utan Comics Managing Editor, Ian Sharman, added, “May is going to be a big month for Orang Utan Comics, not only do we have two great new titles to promote, but we’re also looking forward to getting out and meeting our fans.” Indeed, fans will get a chance to put their questions to the Orang Utan Comics crew during their panel at the Bristol International Comic Expo next month. The panel will be held at 4pm in the Park Suite at the Ramada Plaza Hotel in Bristol and the OUC team will be celebrating their second anniversary of creating “comics for a strange new world.”

To find out more about Alpha Gods, read character bios and creator profiles, please visit www.alphagods.co.uk

For more information on Orang Utan Comics visit them online atwww.orangutancomics.co.uk

The Road Less Travelled - Video Blog!

So, rather than write about this week's Elephant Words story I thought it might be fun to try video blogging for a change. You should probably read the story first, you can read The Road Less Travelled here.

Broken Wings

Take these broken wings
Learn to fly again
Learn to live so free
And when we hear the voices sing
The book of love will open up
And let us in

This week’s Elephant Words story, Broken Wings, was something a little new for me. It’s a first person story that moves from being quite stark and realistic at the start, into a very symbolic and internal piece. 

I’ll admit, I was struggling for what to write. I pretty much knew where I wanted to start, a man alone, waking up, the effects of the vodka having worn off, and his attempts to smother his returning pain with more of the stuff. I think the Russian dolls in the picture sparked something too, as it encouraged me to peel back the layers of this character and examine what was going on underneath.

Beyond that, I really had nothing, and so I decided to take a walk, and as I was walking the story pretty much played itself out in my mind. To be honest, it was partly a way for me to work some stuff out that was going on with me too. I was hurting at the time, but as I went on this strange journey with the character in my story it led me back to what was important, and helped me to realise that it’s where life leads us that’s what really matters, and not necessarily how we get there. At the end of the story we see two people making a fresh start, putting the pain of the past behind them, and understanding that they both have something that is incredibly precious and wonderful – each other’s hearts.

I hope the story manages to be hopeful and uplifting without being overly sentimental.

Little Girl

Okay, I’ll admit it, I took one look at this week’s photo on Elephant Words and thought “cannibals.” I know, I know, I should have looked at it and been inspired to write a story about good, hardy people forging a new life for themselves in a new world, with nothing but their wits and some plain old fashioned gumption to help them. But, instead, I just thought, “Oh my god, they’re going to eat that child!”

So, my story this week, Little Girl, is about a man who leaves Liverpool with his family to start a new life on America’s new frontier. However, he’s ill prepared, the family end up near starving to death, their initial hope for a new start turns to despair and they’re forced to eat the child to survive.

Tragic.

Of course…in my head it went a little differently… In my head, they came from Liverpool and were scousers… For the Americans reading this, a scouser is like a red neck, only with a more annoying accent. I’m sure Liverpool has given the world many great things, like The Beatles…and…um…yeah…there was…no, that was rubbish…and so was Bread, The Liver Birds, Brookside, both Liverpool and Everton FC…and…well…everything else ever to come out of Liverpool. I know, I’m being grossly unfair…but I ended up stuck at University with a scouser who thought I was “brilliant” and insisted on talking to me at length about…something….every time I saw him (who knows what he was actually saying with that accent…probably something about nicking the wheels off a car…).

I can so never go to Liverpool after writing that…

So, originally, “Little Girl” was going to be called “They Do Do That Down There Though Don’t They” and was going to read something like this.

“’Ere, Ken, we ain’t got no food, like!”

“Calm down, ma, calm down, we can always nick us some of dat dere food like.”

“Nick some? From where? Dere ain’t no shops or nothin’ like, where yous gonna nick some food from, like?”

“Well, like, I know, we could always, like, eat the baybi.”

“Eat the baybi? Eat the baybi?!”

“Calm, down, calm down, it’s what dey do down in dat dere London, like.”

“Dey do do dat down dere dough, don’t dey?”

“Dey do do dat down dere. Now drink yer milk.”

“Milk? Yuck.”

“It’s what Ian Rush drinks…”

I really wish it was yesterday and I could just claim this post was an April Fools Day prank…