...oh and before i forget....

COMING SOON...

Merry Christmas

Howdy y'all. Given that the festive season is upon us, updates of the blog may fall off with with Jordan heading back to Canada and me having to work every breathing hour to keep people liquored up (in my spare time I will be watching Laurel and Hardy in true Christmas fasion). Anyways, in the meantime I hope you enjoy this pun based doodle I did . Merry Christmas. If this were JC he'd include God bless us everyone.

People I Know Presents: Angela Lansbury Week!

I had the privilege of meeting a very pleasant fellow during my time spent wandering away from our Water Closet/Biz Horne table at Thought Bubble last month. Timothy Winchester, was his name, author of the adorably simplistic People I Know. Standing behind his colourful table, he beckoned me from across Sevilles Hall so he could compliment my mutton chop sideburns. That was nice. And then, without having ever seen anything I'd ever drawn (presumably his faith was instilled by the facial hair alone), he asked me if I wanted to participate in his upcoming Angela Lansbury week for his blog. That was nice too.  And THEN, still without having ever seen anything I'd ever drawn, he bought an issue of Ladies & Gentlemen I had under my arm, right on the spot (again: sideburns). What a friendly man, Timothy Winchester.

So, here is a sneak peek of my contribution. When I think Angela Lansbury, I'm reminded of some of my fondest on-screen childhood memories and the armour finale scene from Bedknobs and Broomsticks has to be one of the best. If you've seen the movie, you'll remember that Substitutiary Locomotion is the name of the incantation Angela's character is trying to perfect throughout the film in order to  animate  objects... 
and it makes a catchy  little musical number too!  Go check out Mr. Winchester's blog at timothywinchester.blogspot.com to see a whole bunch of other People Tim Knows' doodles of their favorite incarnations of Ms. Lansbury.

In other news, issues of Ladies & Gentlemen seem to be just-about-nearly flying off the shelves of our local comic stores, which is swell. Richard and I are also going to be filmed this very evening for a documentary on young people breaking into the art scene in the UK. But I'll leave it to my fine writer Mr. Worth to describe this all in more detail later. Until then, keep it real. Or, stay something or other. I don't know how to sign off a blog post.

Jordan

Small press Leeds!

Having been talking about trying to build up the small press scene in Leeds, our buddy Biz Horne made this poster. It's fantastic and features our scottish ginger darling Sarah Cooperthwaite. They all look hot and this is frankly fantastic!

At some point in the near future the Water Closet will do a little FML strip in return but for the time being Biz nailed it! Nasty Bizness and the Water Closet Wenches!

Another little comic

Hey guys, after yesterday's little doodle of Flyboy I came up with another vaguely upsetting image. In other news Ladies and Gents goes on sale tomorrow in OKComics who are having a massive small press push. Why not check it out

A quick update

Hello, just a quick update here to let you all know what's going on in the Water Closet. A bunch of you have bought issue one which is greatly appreciated and so far the feedback has been great. In other news we are currently working with Biz Horne in a documentary being made about people trying to break into the comics industry so I'm sure the upcoming weeks will be filled with news of that. Since we're on the subject of Biz, she is working on one of her FML comics but is going to feature our character Sarah from Ladies and Gentlemen. The hope is that we can do a story for her in return and really get some camaraderie going in the Leeds comics scene.

Also Ladies & Gentlemen is available to purchase in all comics shops in Leeds, so if your in Yorkshire you can get a first hand look at the issue in Travelling Man, OK Comics or Forbidden Planet. I think that's all for now.

Although I did draw this today and hoped you guys would like it.

Good Day to you Sirs

Rik

Special Thanks

Here is a document uncovered in the special collections section of the Leeds Public Library. Rather unbelievably, it details all those whom we are indebted to for their support, encouragement, and generosity. All these fine folks made it possible to print Water Closet's first ever comic, Ladies & Gentlemen...  

Thank you all, and we are presently endeavouring to put together all your well-deserved rewards packages!

Have a little read.

Howdy all, you can now read the first few pages of our comic for free just by clicking on our Gallery and if you like it and want to find out what happens you can go to the Emporium and buy an issue via paypal. Hope you guys like what you see.

Have fun folks and remember if you like us tell your friends, share the link, tweet, whoop and holla. It helps us out so much.

Cheers Rik

Thought Bubble, or "Our First Convention and What we Learned."

Day One: The day of optimism and uncertainty

Richard Worth and Jordan Collver losing their convention virginity.

Well, here it is our Thought Bubble blog post. In summary, it was one hell of an event. We were stationed over in The Royal Armouries (my former employers) on a table with the lovely Biz Horne. Our comics couldn't have clashed more. Ours is a classic comic affair promoting Victorian action adventure and moustaches, whilst Biz is trying to raise awareness of the very real and serious issue that can arise in forced marriages. Recipe for a comedy sitcom you say? Well yes. I think both team WaterCloset and Team FML had a good time and we got to get some exposure at our first ever con. Also Biz brought biscuits. My hero!

The lady Biz and myself on day one.

Business went well, with a few friends coming to pick up their donation prizes and a few strangers buying the odd issue. We gave a couple of statements into the odd dictophone too! The vibe at Though tbubble is always great so although we weren't selling massively we were still very excited to be there. What happened next though was... intense. We hit the after party festivities around half eight having already had a celebratory curry and excited at the thought of being able to mingle with other creators. And that we certainly did. We ran into our omni-present, energetic, flip-flopped printer Stuart Gould of UKomics, and I finally got to meet the devilishly suave Simon Moreton of Smoo Comics who is in fact our very first publisher. We appeared in a Newspaper called The Sorry Entertainer, you should check it out! I also briefly chatted to Kieron Gillen on his way to the DJ booth. I've met Keiron before; I was drunk then too, and looked like this...

Travelling Man birthday celebration costume.

For those of you who haven't read Phonogram Singles Club, that's me dressed as Seth Bingo, Gillen's douchebag DJ. Bumping into a creator dressed as one of his characters is a bit like standing at the front row of a gig in the band's t-shirt. It makes you look a bit crazy. Anyways, Kieron was very nice and dissapeared to go drop a dancefloor bomb. That left us to chat with Cameron Stewart. He was on the next table to us and at the party gave us some valuable tips on how to get our names out there. He also said that the comic "looks good" which will be going on issue two's cover. He's also Canadian, much like Jordan. They bonded.

Cameron Stewart, Eisner Winning well of advice to newbies and sayer of the word "Eh?"

Whilst I'm talking about the afterparty its worth mentioning a number of things. Namely that the Jeramiah Weed Co. table giving away free cups of delicious sour mash and ginger ale helped to get the party started. A number of bizarre events followed. My good friend Nick Robinson (not the news guy) had to take his shoes of too dance as his shoes were hurting him. He's 6'7''.

This is what his shoes look like: Preposterous...

Here's what his shoes look like next to Jordans head:

Princess Leia, but not.

The free drinks, which incidentally was only supposed to be one per guest, turned into several and resulted in me coaxing Jordan into dancing his weird marionette dance as I drunkenly chatted to strangers about any and everything. Photographic evidence can be found over on my facebook page but, unlike the fine beverages of sir Jeramiah Weed, aren't fit for public consumption. Needless to say, much of Team Water Closet ended up looking a bit like this...

Sexy.

Anyway we met some lovely creator-folk who you can find on twitter, @kenkills @lolapoodlegirl and @ailishoctigan are amongst them.

Day two: The day of mist and hangovers

Day two: Hungover... enter: My recovery hat.

The start of day two hurt alot. We'd lost a lot of pep, mostly due to lack of sleep, our new bestfriend Cameron Stewart was missing, and I'd given up trying to look presentable. But on the plus side day two was the day of strangers. Footflow was a bit slower, giving the chance for other creators to wander around in a similar haze, on the look out for something good to pick up. This meant we got to meet a lot of peple and spread our name a bit. Kieron Gillen even came back and bought an issue. Nice guy. Unfortunately Biz jumps ship slightly early meaning we had no biscuit based support, but on the upside when Cameron did arrive he flicked our buddy the bird which was hilarious. We managed to make it through the festival alive which is bonus. We made friends and got to show some strangers the book. We also got a few tips and tricks from the veterans which helped immensely. We're now on the lookout for more cons to hit up and shops that want to shelf our book.

Thought Bubble was my first ever convention a few years ago back when it was starting out. Now being on the other side of the table there makes me feel immensely proud -- its unlike any other convention. Everybody has a good time and whether you're there as a creator or not, there is always a very welcoming feeling. Fingers crossed we'll be there again next year . We've learned that despite the hard work we've already put into creating the comic, we've still got a lot of hard work to do. We've learned that getting hammered mid con isn't always a great idea, and that you should always take a closer look before buying a drink for a guy you only think is Tony Harris (when it really isn't). And most importantly we've learned that other creators are in the same boat as you (or were at some point) and are largely nice people who still love comics and want to check you (and your comics) out.

Coming soon will be news on how to purchase online and a few pages from the comic for y'all to fix your eyeballs on.

Good day to you, Ladies and Gentlemen!

Rik

Thought Bubble update...

Hey y'all, we had a great time at Thought Bubble and got to hang out with some great people. Over the next week i'll be posting up the various pictures and tales from the events, but right now its time for me to pass out.

Rik

For those of you that haven't seen this...

I made this comic about the creative process. Its not true, Jordan and I have a very good working relationship, also note that Jordan's illustrations are a lot better than mine and can be found here whilst my ramblings can be found here . Anyway i hope this makes you laugh.

The first of many....

Hey Folks,

Welcome to the Ladies and Gentlemen blog. This is where we plan to have most of our updates and ramblings about the comic but you can also get information hereand you can follow us on Twitter via @WaterClosetPres .

We've got alot coming up in the next few weeks, namely the launch that will be happening at the fantastic Thought Bubble Festival here in sunny Leeds.

After that i'll be setting up a link to buy the comic on eBay for those of you that missed out on the ground floor.

See y'all in the funny books.

Rik