Our Latest Release...

Meet Sasha Joyce Tanner, the latest addition to the Time Bomb Comics line-up! Released on Sunday 31st January 2010, Sasha could be considered our latest one-shot, but unlike any of our previous titles won't be available for purchase in any format as she comes in an extremely limited edition of just one copy, and is of course considered by her creative team of Steve and Suzanne Tanner to be priceless!

Those of you who encounter us on the convention trail can expect to meet up with Sasha before too long, although she probably won't be running the table on her own this year, or for a few more years to come!

Disturbing Horror Stories In A Twisted Vein...

Bomb Scares, our long-awaited horror anthology one-shot, is the first big 2010 release from Time Bomb Comics!

Those of you who follow such things will know that Bomb Scares was originally slated for October 2009, but a catalogue of mishaps and problems ensured that the finished copies arrived back to us one day after Thoughtbubble - thus ensuring it had missed the 2009 convention season completely - and will therefore kick off our 2010 convention season at Hi-Ex in March.

(Of course, the ingrained curse that Bomb Scares seems to have come with isn't quite finished with us just yet - at time of writing Time Bomb's appearance at Hi-Ex is till a bit up in the air, due to my wife Suzanne's imminent onset of labour! Should things all go smoothly over the next 10 days all three of us will be travelling to Scotland as planned, should things get more complicated then none of us may be fit to travel. So we're crossing our fingers at the moment!)

I know it's traditional for publishers to big their own releases up, but Bomb Scares is a pretty special piece of work and at 56 pages for £4.00/$5.50. Ten stories, eighteen creators, and one anthology that contains as wide a range of styles and horror themes as you would want. I reckon there's pretty much something for every horror fan inside - from psychological terror to gruesome body horror and of course a liberal sprinkling of zombies - and the finished package lives up to the book's strapline: disturbing horror stories in a twisted vein.

The eighteen creators that are featured in Bomb Scares are equally diverse. We have a story by respected comics creators Gary Crutchley and Shane Oakley, and rapidly up and coming writer Richmond Clements. Then there's the rest of the creators - John Cahill, Katja Lindblom, GM Jordan, Alec Robertson, Chis Young, Rachele Aragno, MC Carper, Montos, Anglada Kamarasa, Andy Dodd, Gordon Robertson, Scott Mitchell, Jonathan Darque, Dino Caruso and Steve Tanner. Some of those you may recognise already, but all are names to watch out for in the future.

The good news is that nobody has to wait until convention season starts up again to own a copy. Bomb Scares is already available through the online shop at http://www.timebombcomics.com/ from anywhere in the world and we will be looking to get the anthology into some of the more indie-friendly comic shops before March. Nostalgia and Comics in Birmingham has already sold out of their first batch!

Another Couple Of Bites!

Following on from Keith Page's wonderful colour promo for London Calling last time, here's a couple of Keith's quite wonderful interior pages from the upcoming one-shot. One thing that was a pleasant surprise was Keith's traditional approach to lettering - all carefully written onto the pages themselves. In this day and age of computer generated lettering fonts and captions it really stands out as something special, don't you agree?

A LITTLE NEW YEAR TASTER!

So welcome to 2010!

To hopefully whet your appetites for what could be Time Bomb Comics' biggest year yet here's a little taster about our big 2010 release: More details coming very soon!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2010!

Yes, the blog has been extremely quiet of late, but we have a whole flurry of Time Bomb Comics news updates on the way in January - including details of some brilliant releases over the coming eighteen months or so.

So until the New Year I'd like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a very rewarding 2010!

Cheers!

Time Bomb Comics at BICS 2009

It's that time again!

Time Bomb Comics will once again be exhibiting at BICS and will of course be marking the occasion with the release of the 100-page graphic novel The Furies, written by Steve Tanner with artwork by Andrew Dodd.

We'll also have previews of a few of our forthcoming projects including:

Bomb Scares - An anthology that promises disturbing horror stories in a twisted vein. Ten stories from a mix of brand new and established creators (including Shane Oakley of Albion fame) that have been carefully blended into a chilling cocktail of both graphic and psychological nastiness.

London Calling - Ealing Studios meets Hammer Horror in this uniquely British one-shot featuring artwork by well-known DC Thomson "Commando" artist Keith Page.

Primetime - An outrageous murder mystery in a media obsessed future city where everyone wants to be caught on camera. Written by Steve Tanner with art from talented newcomer Paul Thompson.

Of course as well as The Furies all of our previous releases will be available at BICS 2009 too, and we'll be more than happy to meet and chat with any existing or aspiring creators all weekend about future project opportunities.

Enthusiastic PR aside, I'm personally really looking forward to another weekend of total comics indulgence in the heart of Birmingham! Not one who needs an excuse to buy some more comics, I'm looking forward to getting my hands on all the latest releases from the wide and diverse creators and publishers who make up the UK comics industry. Accent UK, Markosia, Insomnia, Renegade, C2D4, Cinebook, Orang Utan, Fallen Angel and of course Time Bomb are just a few - every year the full list seems to be getting bigger and bigger!

See you at BICS 2009!

Silence is Golden?

Well, it's been quite some time again since the last Short Fuses update. That doesn't mean that nothing much has been happening since June - far from it - but more that what has been going on has been taking up all our time and focus. And I must be honest, I thought it best to keep schtum until I had something to say!

So since June Time Bomb's focus has been making sure that The Furies is finally done and dusted. We've been going over the pages again and again, fine-tuning where we could and making sure that all our intended revisions have been done, and doing those last minute tweaks that no creator can resist on the eve of the printer's deadline!

I'll be the first to admit bias, but when I received the completed printer's proof back the other day I thought it looked like a great little package. A perfect-bound 100 page graphic novel in a bookshelf friendly A5 format. Unlike our previous one-shots we've printed The Furies with Bristol-based Fallen Angel Media, a very indie-comics friendly set-up headed by Mal Smith, who's also instrumental in organising the Bristol Small Press Expo. I'd recommend FAM to anyone after our experience of them - and I can see us using them again in the not too distant future.

So, barring some as yet unforseen catastrophe The Furies will be this year's BICS release from Time Bomb Comics which maintains our BICS batting average a treat. Of course, that's not to say we don't care as much about the other conventions - it's just that as we first launched Time Bomb Comics with Ragamuffins at BICS 2007, and followed that up with Dick Turpin and the Restless Dead for BICS 2008 the Brum show has become our unofficial anniversary show.

There's also a chance we may have another one-shot debuting at next month's BICS as well - but those unforseen catastrophe's that avoided The Furies have hit our Bomb Scares horror anthology book with a vengeance. Vanishing files, missing creators, exploding laptops - the gestation and publication of Bomb Scares is turning into a fair horror story in itself! So with the best will in the world we may be saving that for November's Thoughtbubble.

Still it does seem appropriate in saving a release titled Bomb Scares for the last big UK comics event of 2009 - that way we finish the year with a bang!