Busy Week Ahead

After years of inertia, this Saturday Tom Taylor and I will be signing books at our local All Star Comics shop here in Melbourne. The friendly guys down there have organised a full day of guests:

The lineup in the shop for the day is:

11am-12pm Matt Dunn and Andy Isaac

12pm-1pm Jeff Cruz and Hugh Freeman

1pm-2pm Tristan Jones and Katie Houghton

2pm-3pm Tom Taylor and Colin Wilson

3pm-4pm Mike Wszelaki



We will be signing books and generally hanging around for most of the afternoon, so if you are in the area, come on down and say hi.

Tom and I will also be running a Comics Masterclass at the Nexus Festival of Comics, Graphic Novels and Moving Image from May 10-12th organised by NMIT at their Fairfield campus. Our Masterclass will be on Tuesday from 3-6pm - open to the public - We will also be participating in a Sequential Art and Narrative Panel Discussion with Bruce (The Sacrifice) Mutard and noted film illustrator and storyboard artist David Russell.

Bullet to the Head

Originally scheduled for February, Dynamite Entertainment have announced that the tpb of Bullet to the Head will be released on April 20. A multi-page preview of the book is now up on CBR here.

Originally published in France by Casterman as Du Plomb Dans la Tete, the film of the series - staring Sylvester Stallone - is currently in pre-production as Headshot. Principal photography in Louisiana (I hesitate to use the word "shooting") is schedule to start this July, under the direction of Walter Hill. Yay!

Rough Times in Christchurch.

This afternoon my old hometown Christchurch (NZ)took a big hit, their second serious earthquake in five months. Unlike the first one, which 'only' caused widespread damage, todays tremor has collapsed many buildings resulting in significant loss of life.

If you want to help out, please donate to either the New Zealand Red Cross website or via the Salvation Army of New Zealand site. Specify your money is for the ‘Canterbury Earthquake Appeal’.

... oh yeah, and then there's this....

This news just in: "Sylvester Stallone will star in an adaption of the popular 3 volume French comic book series "Du Plomb Dans la Tete", with Wayne Kramer directing", according to The Hollywood Reporter today.

Du Plomb Dans la Tete (aka Headshot) - story by Matz, art by me - has recently seen publication in the USA as Bullet To The Head, a six issue mini-series by Dynamite Entertainment. The trade paperback goes on sale this month.

French stuff...

A project that I've been working on for the last 15 months saw publication last week in France. "Qui a Tué le Président?" (Who Killed the President?) - written by Fred Duval and Jean-Pierre Pécau, and superbly coloured by Jean-Paul Fernandez, is an alternative history story, book 5 in the Delcourt series Jour J.

When I came to back-up my reference material last month I was surprised to discover I'd saved over 800 images during the time I worked on this book, read four books on the subject, and watched three films (again) in the effort to get the details correct. But then I've always been fascinated by the whole Dallas assassination subject - yes, I can remember exactly what I was doing when I first heard the news! - and wanted to make 'our' story as convincing as possible.

The book looks terrific..... I'm very proud of this one.

Gears

Although you wouldn't know it from their current website, last month I finished a one-off issue of Gears of War for Wildstorm. This book ended a very crazy year for me and was fun to do, especially when I learned that the issue was written by Karen Traviss. Already a very successful author (including a bunch of Star Wars novels), Karen is the writer of the next Gears game due, well, some time next year. Gears #15 is Karen's book writing the current comic series for Wildstorm/DC.

I had a lot of fun working on with Karen on this, and I've just seen the wonderful job Wes Hartman has done with the colour on the book. This is going to be one good-looking issue!

Philip Tan is doing the cover, and the book will be in stores on December 29.

Catching up...

After a complicated and extremely busy year (more on that later...), I've finally found some time to start updating my website, which until recently, has been offline for a while. There are still a few links that don't work correctly, but at present the priority is to bring the site details up to date, and then to get some new stuff up there while I've got the chance..

Here's an Armageddon Con commission that I've just completed this week, that (hopefully) should keep another fan happy....

The Example

"and yes, it’s as effing good as the accolades suggest."

"This is an eleven page masterpiece of a comic"

"The Example is fantastic storytelling in a compact form and should be in everyone's pull file."

"It’s a clever device and Taylor does a nice job distilling the debate into a fine focus."

All quotes from the terrific reviews that The Example has been gathering in the States since going on sale there a couple of months ago.
Broken Frontier, The Outhouse, Newsarama, and the Comic Book Resources have all really liked what they have seen, and our little 11-pager that Tom and I produced for Gestalt Comics has going down a treat over there.....