Monday, December 16, 2013

2013 in Review: Ben Michael Byrne



What have been your personal cartooning/comics highlights of 2013?
More Kranburn! And we published the first Kranburn to have a full colour cover. I did the first 7 issues with black and white covers as that's the way I like to draw, but #8 was screaming for colour so I did it, and now I'm pretty keen on doing colour from now on etc unless the artwork really feels like it wants to be left B&W.

More Job Dun! Written by Mark Hobby, plus I also did a short Job Dun story (full colour by Noelle Criminova) that will be in the next issue of South African/Australian comic Velocity that I'm still happy with the art I did (for now, you hate yourself soon enough... :-P )

Had a short story (written by Tim West) printed in the late 2013 issue of UK comic Something Wicked by FutureQuake Press.

Just recently started co-hosting (with Jason O'Callaghan from New Game Plus) a comic review show which is a blast, acting like a silly billy (tee hee) in front of a camera feels very natural to me.

My new 'Copping A Feel' initiative! When readers pose with writers/artists they enjoy, the writer/artist might do the bunny ears/pull a face/do the tongue in the ear thing, I invite my readers to cup my balls if they wish! What could be more bonding than to feel the warmth of
the balls of someone whose work you enjoy? Not much! So please, if you enjoy my work and ever want to get a photo with me, you're welcome to cup my junk! Any sex etc, just be of age and have asbestos gloves, my nuts run at about 87degrees celcius.

My fifth finished Comikaze challenge! If only I could create 24 pages every 24 hours rather than once a year, that'd be sweet. But it does have a tendency to burn me out for a week afterwards. It's so much fun and I really hope that although the website PulpFaction is now down, it will somehow/someway still exist in 2014.

Doing a mini Comikaze challenge for some students with Ben Hutcho and Martin Nixon, 8 pages in 8 hours! Was great to see teens keens on comics and was fun to do. Not as fun as what I imagine spending a day with my face between Yolandi Vissers legs would be, but quite fun!

What are some of the comics/cartoonists you've enjoyed in 2013?
I'll admit it, I'm a pretty simple chap, the highbrow is not for me and when people try to engage me into talking about coffee I want to pull out my cock and run screaming down the street, slapping old people on the face with it as I pass them. So I admit, I love Crossed, I reallllllly love Crossed. It just does it for me, yum yum.

I've also been squirting further than normal over the new style Prophet, man, its the business. Got to the end of trade #2 (yes I'm a trade waiter, I live out in the burbs and can't get to/afford floppies often enough, don't judge me lest ye be sodomised by an angry dove that thinks you're trying to eat its offspring) and wanted to cry knowing there was going to be such a wait for number #3. It reads/feels very...European? Something I'd be expecting in old Metal Hurlant/Heavy Metal. Again, yum yum yum.

That Nick Fury Max trade. I don't read/care about Nick Fury normally etc, but after seeing some preview panels by the art-god Goran Parlov, I had to have it and I wasn't disappointed. Its feels a lot like the Punisher Max issues Goran illustrated and reads similar. That is the best way I can discribe it to people who might have been kept away from it thinking it was a superhero type book: it isn't. If you enjoyed Punisher Max while Goran Parlov was illustrating it, then do yourself a favour and grab this, its pretty much the same.

What is something non-comics that you have enjoyed in 2013?
My second Daughter was born, so that was pretty awesome, little bit more prepared this time whilst also finding out that babies are all different in a million little ways.

Also, I'm finally building a tank that I can drive, its a 40% scale King Tiger/ Tiger II/Koenigs Tiger and the hull is 3 metres long. Its a slow process and I've only just finished most of the hull frame and built the transmission. I have the gears/sprockets needed to connect the engine to the transmission but first I need to get the suspension built, that's a big job so updates are every few weeks, not every few days!

What are you looking forward to in 2014?
More Kranburn, more Job Dun, More Velocity, watching the kids get older, enjoying the rude bits of the female of the species (and any Thai ladyboys reading, I'm down with you in my pants, pom rah kuhn!) driving a 3 metre tank down the driveway to check the mail, having enough money to get horns implanted in my forehead, the usual.



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