If you pick up the xmas issue of the Dandy Xtreme this week, you'll find a massive Desperate Dan minibook (massively mini. up yours :p) bundled along with it. They've filled up 32 pages with some of the best Dan strips from the last coupla years, and i gotta say it's humbling to see my *sniff* beautiful grizzly boy in his own minispecial. so if you haven't seen his adventures yet, or wanna nab it before it disappears from the shelves, go grab it now! NOW! fucks sake. HURRRGHHHLE! ^_^



Also in the xmas Dandy is the Dan xmas special, a pop out reindeer thing what i did done, and loads more of the usual face-slapping cartoons. also a reindeer doing a poo. brilliant.

BTW, if you like toast, and you like tshirts, pick up my new TOASTED t-shirt design up now on the ultra-hip and ultra-ethical Limited Ink label HEEEEERE. Who doesn't love toast? i mean really, its like crunchy sex (sorrrta).



Lastly a MASSIVE thank you for all the support and kind words about the relaunch of bearfoo.com, as well as the new Bear strip up yesterday. it made my bobbly bits all warm. i'd love to do more Bear, i feel like the break has been good and i've built up enough bilious world-hatred and made-up swear words to start afresh, but in reality i just don't have time. The next three months are going to be ridiculously busy for me (for something i can hopefully announce before xmas), and after that there's gonna be piles of other work to get sorted. So all i can say is if there's a break anywhere, i'll try and do more Bear. but it may be a little while.

For now, bearfoo.com updates every wednesday with another take of woe and cat-pokery. next week we start on issue 2!

ppHHHHHEWWW. i'll shut up and you can get back to your lives now. i'm off to Brussels for a long weekend, and if i don't find a chocolate factory to ruin i'll be MOST sulky.

jx

page one of four

And there we are, back on Bear-drawing duty after four years. Just a one-off, note, to celebrate the launch of bearfoo.com, but exciting enough to wonder if there's room (or time) to do some more. My head started filling with ideas, but I'll have to supress them till the opportunity arises.
For now, please enjoy this all new Bear escapade. I hope this one lives up to the previous material, i tried to keep it looking as tight as it use to, though i notice a fluidity in it that i think has come from doing Ubu Bubu. I quite like it. TO READ THE WHOLE FOUR-PAGER, COME TO BEARFOO!

Yayyyy*bonk*

I am VERY proud to say that bearfoo.com is now online! Updating every wednesday with Bear strips, from the first to the last, along with a few extra new things thrown in. If you've enjoyed Bear already in de comics, then come and rediscover the horrible ookness online! Or if you've never seen Bear and you found this journal from my more child-friendly work, have a look, scream a bit, tell an authority and vow to never go near animals again! Bearfoo does contain swearing, violence, and a lot of poo and sick. Be warned.

Yayyyy! Come and enjoy the fuzziness! I'm so chuffed to be able to share Bear online, he deserves a home on the internet :)

********************
Correction, bearfoo.com opens tomorrow (tuesday) morning. See you there! ^_^
*******************



The bodies have been hidden, the fur has been shaved and arranged into crude hairy pictures, and the pigs have been over-revved. Yes, i think bearfoo.com is very nearly ready. What I of course mean is the site has been kicked into place, the exclusive NEW Bear 4-pager is drawn and finished, and all thats left to do sort through the Bear issues and prepare the artwork.

I'm hoping it will go live on monday. Hoping.

Hey, do you like webcomics? do you believe in time? do you like things more when they're naked? if you answer YES to any of these, then you wanna pick up the Tastefully-Done 2010 calendar ho yus. Filled with tasteful nudes of some awesome webcomic characters you may know, you'll also find a cold and lonely WHUBBLE shivering over on December! Ahh cold weather, you always make a man's shares go down.
Best of all the profits go to Cancer Research! So please do go buy a copy, it looks proper mint. ^_^

also, these are the last few days for international shipping from Topatoco. So if you fancy any of my tshirts, bear books and toys, the panda poster, the Skull Rock pin badges, whatevvvver, and you live outside the US, better order now if you want em before Xmas! Thank you if you do! You get +20 HP!

lastly, theres two things happening at the moment that i really want to announce, but not sure i can. but they're so exciting my head might explode (that would be a third exciting thing)

jx

****NOTE - the FWAP contest in the previous post is now closed! all winners nabbed, prizes sent out soon! if you wanna get in late feel free, i may have a few things left i can send :) thanks to all who entered!*****

Alright maybe its an unflattering analogy, but it was a really great sandwich. And even though its green and moving, there's still a bit of egg or something egg-shaped in it, and it tastes pretty nice mainly because it brings back nice memories of what it was like when you ate it before. then you feel a bit wonky for a couple of days and have to keep excusing yourself. brrrap. sorry. brrrap. sorry, really sorry.

I sat down to write some new Bear today, something I haven't done for about 3 years? maybe more? I will quite happily admit Bear is far greater than I what does write him, he and Loosh became their own entities and I owe them a great deal. But inevitably, towards the end of the series, writing their ladel-based hittings was starting to become 5% less enjoyable than when i started. After 300 or so pages, i guess you expect that. Which is why I pulled it to a halt, and wanted to leave it while it was still interesting.
But when you're so fond of a character, you never want to leave him alone anymore than you want to needingly poke his corpse for ideas. Writing Bear was writing me, it was probably the most honest I've ever written, the closest to what's in my head. That probably sounds pretentious, but i paid a therapist every week to tell me the same thing until I worked it out. So the idea of writing and drawing new Bear has always been appealing, but not something I wanted to rush out with. Besides, I've got a bazillion other sandwiches in my head that need finishing.

I've been rebuilding bearfoo.com from scratch for the last two weeks, and it's looking good i think. the main site is built, now i just need to get all the comics on there. It will update regularly with a Bear story taken in chronological order from the comics. But clearly, this was a chance to do something new and immerse back into Bear for a little bit, and working on the site made me really nostalgic for the furry bugger. So I'm working on an all-new four-pager, exclusive to bearfoo.com.



It was strange stepping back in, it took a little while to get my head back into the right mindset. Most notably, making the words flow rather than just slamming a couple of 'buhhh' 'wheeee' and 'rahh gumba's in for effect. But the story itself rambled along pleasingly well, and I gotta say it feels like I've never been away.

'Welcome Back You Poor Bastard' will go online with the relaunch of bearfoo.com, hopefully next month. It features child slavery, snapped limbs, cat clowns and pig sick. Thank fuck ^_^

Well it's been a busy year filling up the Topatoco store with some lovely gubbins, but now we're circling the Christmas shutdown already they've posted up their final delivery dates. if you want something and you're outside the US, make sure you order before november 22nd (for cheapest delivery), if you're in the US its december 15th. you can leave it a little later if you wanna pay for priority delivery, all the details hhhherreee

and here's a reason why you might wanna bag something soon! The first TEN people who order the Looshkin 'fwap' tshirt, will not only receive their fwappy fwappity tshirt...



but as a chrimby present i'll also send you the EXCLUUUSIVE bohda te Skull Rock Death Army gold badge


(seriously this badge is the tits, and i'm running out for good now. they're about 3.5 cm wide and satisfyingly heavy)

Also i'll throw in a signed copy of Ubu Bubu issue 2 (arguably the best one :p), and if i can find anything else to chuck in i will. not sure if i got anything though, i'll look.

If you wanna win these things, email me (sixtyfootmonkey@yahoo.com) your order confirmation email which proves you've ordered a Looshkin Fwap tshirt. Soon as I get ten confirmed, i'll post up here that the competition has ended. If you've already ordered the tshirt, email me your order confirmation email and you'll be one of the ten winners. i'll try and send all the prizes out before xmas, but don't blame me if post is y'know, all bananas and ting.



blam! BLAMMO! That aside, there is some awesome stuff piling up in the Topatoco store, we gots Bear toys, books, a whole range of tshirts, and the massive 1,242 panda print poster! Come have a look in the store, and if you wanna get anything for christmas make sure you order soon! Yay! Fuck yay!

The DANDY annual is out in stores now, and I'm pleased to report it's bragging over 20 pages of exclusive Desperate Dan funs, including one special 8-page story. If you're in the UK (or even abroad, sure it'll be on amazon) please do pick up the book and have a look, its pretty tasty (incidentally, Asda are selling all their annuals for £4. proper bargain!).
I even did a front and back cover for the annual, but alas they didn't make it to the final book (woulda been a real buzz to see them, shame), so here they are anyway.


kfanksisntit!

Also, i'm sorry to say Kochi may not be ready in time for January 2010 like i originally said. i've spent the last five weeks working on this book full-time, not on the drawings (they're all done) but on bringing it all together into a cohesive whole and trying to make it, yuh know, purdy. And I've still got a fair amount to do. Fact is this book has taken about four years to get here, so I want to get it right. I'm determined it'll get out in 2010, and my plan to serialise it as a webcomic still stands, but stick with me a little longer?

jx

ps. thanks for all the brilliant hamster names! ^_^ though we STILL haven't decided!
pps. the Looshkin Fwap t-shirt has been changed last minute to printing on black tshirt, not blue. now even more fwappy!

Great news for Bohda Te today, i'm very pleased to say that we're now stocking Bear stuffs! You can now buy the Bear plushies, books, and even this BRAND SPANKING NEW EXCLOOOOOSIVE Looshkin T-shirt all in the same place!



(if you fancy the Looshkin Fwap tshirt, best put in an order fast to ensure swift delivery! :)

Along with all the usual Ubu, Whubble, ALR and such assorted t-shirts in the Bohda Te store, not to mention my first ever print, the Find Chaffy 1,200 Panda Roll poster!

Yayy. Yayy. FUCKING YAYYY! ^_^

jx

There are over 1,200 pandas rolling down this hill, and in amongst them are hidden 10 Chaffies. Can YOU find them all?



This 22" x 11" print is printed on super-high quality semi-gloss photo paper, and available now exclusively at Topatoco, click the linky to visit the Bohda Te store and pick up your very own Find Chaffy print!

I've been thinking a lot about Bear recently, it started what about 6 years ago now (holy teets! really?) and was obviously what got us all to know each other, so it's safe to say Bear and Looshkin are a huge part of me. Though clearly I haven't done anything new with them for a while, and even now I hear from a lot of people who can't get hold of the individual issues or the books. So it made sense to me to make Bear more accessible, to put the strips up online, all of them. One by one every week, until we've built a complete catalogue of the nearly 300 pages of fuzzy boink boink hitty.

The point would be for those who already know Bear to enjoy them again, and for people who hadn't seen Bear (or had maybe missed issues) to discover it. To breath a little life back into Bear, find him a proper home on the web.

What does anyone think, good idea or no? I've got so much to sort out before i can start it (getting Kochi up for starters) but i'd hope to do it by spring next year, if not sooner.

jx

To celebrate the new Find Chaffy store being open, here's a big ol' pile O' Chaffies!

Pick this up as a poster, postcard or mug, or have a look at all the other great Find Chaffy goodies in the new store, click heeere

If you've not been checking Find Chaffy recently, you've been missing some fantastic sightings from all over the world! Here are some of the highlights, as Chaffies are spotted in..

The UK!



Rome!



Boston, USA!



Taiwan!



Majorca!



Norway!




Check out findchaffy.com for all the photos from each country, and all the new sightings coming in! We're also working on ways YOU can get your hands on a Chaffy, more soon!

jx

ps. The Whubble I.T. strip was listed as one of Gizmodo's top ten nerdy strips? . Suddenly Whubble gets 30,000 hits in 24 hours, what an honour! Thanks Gizmodo!

dunuh dunuh...duh duuh duhhhh...dunuh dunuuh...gonna fight you...and bum crunch your skull...dunuh dunuh...lets all have fish...i've got angry fingers...duhhh duhhh....my hate is a pyramid, a pyrhatemid.

PYRHATEMID. DUHH DUHHH DUHHHH. FEAR THE PYRHATEMID! build it first. then fear it. IT FIRES LASERS.

you write a better metal song. no, you can't. jamie wins already.

Work in progress photos from the last month, a coupla large scale pieces i've been working on (as wittered on twitter)



first, 1,242 pandas, and then



over 1,000 Angry Little Robots.

They take forever to draw, but so much fun. More to be revealed soon!


jx

wotcha.

the house move all went well ta, surprisingly well, apart from a box packed full of monitor, scanner and all other computer periphs falling from the top of the van onto the drive (thanks man with van!). now i have my new workbase and while i'm adjusting to finding a schedule again, it feels comfortable. i think this will be very good, and i will be very productive once more.

just a note to say Topatoco, they who not only distribute the finest array of webcomic tshirts but also mine as well, are opening their doors this weekend for a tag sale. so if you live in Mmmerica check out details HERE (what do you mean you don't live near, Mmmerica can't be THAT big! stop making excuses!). Not sure yet if they'll have any of my Bohda Te, Ubu, ALR or Whubble tshirts in the sale, they may do, but they got so many great tees anyway certainly worth checking out!

Incidentally, i've been working on a nice handful of AWESOME coming your way for christmas thanks to the sexy angels at Topatoco. more news when we can!

Lastly, science is the TITS!


jx

Phew. thats the sound of all of my possessions duck taped up into boxes around me. pheee-yooo. tomorrow morning at 8.30 am the hopefully not criminal man with a van turns up and helps me move everything i own two hours up the road into sunny kent. he won't just drive off with it all. repeat, he won't. always weird seeing your stuff in boxes and wondering quite how you built up such a vast collection of rubbish. also, when you die, will it just get stomped on? probably.
tomorrow night i relax, in my new home with Sarah, presumably being stuck to my seat by the ginger wizard on telly (your Lottery predictions were a sham, ginger wizard). The weekend will be unpacking and arranging, and then i have a new home! It's actually pretty exciting, I'm really looking forward to it.
That said, I'm pretty tired of moving house. i've done it nearly every year now for the last decade, and more so before that. i've got used to not settling anywhere, and even get a bit restless if i'm in one place too long. but i'd like to find a place and call it home now. i'm like The Littlest Hobo. although more accurately The Bitter Hairy Shouting Hobo. With Issues. And Not A Dog.
this winter once settled, i plan to really bunker down and churn out a lot more work than i have been doing the last year or so. paid work has really disappeared over this summer so i've been spending a lot of time working on projects i hope to really nail down before the end of the year. obviously it's worrying not getting paid, but creatively it's been such a buzz to have this enforced free time.
There will be some new things on the horizon relating to Looshkin, Chaffy, some new comics i'm SO excited to start drawing, and fiiiiinally a Kochi announcement before the year is through. Amongst that the usual shit. really, toss. you wouldn't believe the artistic bum nuggets i'm going to abuse you with.

So see you on the other side, y'all. If you want a more up to date following of my rubbish, come and banter on Tweeetter (twitter.com/jamiesmart) although usually it's just full of shouting demands that people fight me. welcome to the FUTURRRR.

jx

Sad news to report, as children's comic Toxic have dropped Count Von Poo with immediate effect from today. The Count has had four(?) adventures so far in their pages, with maybe 7 or 8 left to print. These however won't be shown.

The reasons why CVP has been dropped, were an unease with the kid-playing-with-poo interface, which i always anticipated but we'd been tweaking the strips so as to be careful, and I thought we'd found a nice groove. CVP was an immense amount of fun to write and draw, obviously. It's a vampire who has imaginary adventures with faeces. How could that not be fun?

As to why it's been dropped, a fair few people I've mentioned it to have suggested the recent wacky e coli outbreak over here in the UK this weekend, making the subject of kids handling poo maybe a bit sensitive. I dunno. What I can happily say is that Toxic said there'd been no complaints about CVP. NONE. Again, it's a vampire. Who has imaginary adventures with FAECES. and NO ONE complained? Brilliant ^_^

Anyway, I don't know whats going to happen with the remaining strips, Toxic own the copyright but hopefully there may be someway to show them online or summat. And in the meantime, I'll be discussing other potential ideas with Toxic in the near future, so lets hope the relationship can continue. They are very lovely people.

But for now, farewell Von Poo. Proper sad you're going.