THE IRREGULARS IS HERE

Good afternoon Ladies, Gentlemen and everything betwixt,

After a monumental wait due to a shipping error we finally have The Irregulars! For those that don't know Irregulars is our huge anthology book featuring a huge number of creators of huge talent! Just how huge and how talented you ask? Here are the contributors:

Tony La Vella, Rafael Desquitado Jr., Pete Taylor, Lisa Harrison and Matt Watson, Petri Hanninen, Robert Levebvre and Kierston Vendekraats, Chris Redfern and Darren Mullen, Sarah Rowles, Nick Soucek, Matt Duncan, Biz Stringer-Horne, Paul Bradford, Chris Mole and Brendan Purchase and Ben Wilsonham, Mike Pasquale, Dave Evans, Luke Halsall and Gavin Pollock and Andrew Scaife, Jamie Lewis, Alfie Gallagher, Marco Brunello, James Story, Pyrink and of course Richard Worth and Jordan Collver.

The Book itself comes in at a wow-hopping 130+ pages and needless to say we're  proud as any parents could be of this baby. With a mixture of black and white comics, colour comics, prose, poems, tabletop games and a foreward by none other than Master Stuart Gould of UKcomics, we don't mind saying that its a good looking little chap. Head over to the Emporium to pick up your copy.

For those of you that haven't read Ladies & Gentlemen yet, you need not fear; not only can you read the first issue entirely for free over on the Ladies and Gentlemen tab (at the top of the page) or if you're feeling saucy, you want to pick up the first two issues head over to the Emporium Tab. But failing even that, the book itself is full of stand alone adventures and a jumping on point in for new readers

This is just the cover, it's as pretty on the inside and after all that's what's really important.

In other sadder news, Ladies & Gentlemen will be taking a short hiatus. But belay your cries and fears, the Water Closet Press is a strong as ever an we will continue to create comics till our last days. The hiatus is a tactical decision on our part. We are currently working on a graphic novel that will have a lot of the same themes and ideas as L&G but will be much larger in scope. Cutting awayL&G is our way of getting the best out of both projects. We didn't want to split our time between the two in such a way as to thematically bankrupt the larger book or to draw attention and effort  away from the Gentry, who have been very good to us.  Having said that, this is by no means the end of the Gentry but merely a temporary departure. We have much more in store for them.  Furthermore, with the success of The Irregulars at conventions we have been talking about putting together another anthology in the hopes that more people with get to play around in our universe and we can keep the adventures of the team going in a smaller format. 

Other than that, stay tuned for more stories coming your way. We've been talking about sci-fi a lot lately.... Just sayin'.

Redd Rockz and Submission News

So, here it is, our very first paid piece as the Water Closet press. It's a promotional piece that will be appearing in Manic Mosh magazine. We met the editor at MCM in London who was won over by Jordan's cover work. The brief was pretty simple: "A one page comic that promotes alternative model Redd Rockz." I think originally there was talk of some kind of superhero origin story, but I decided that was lame and opted for the more noir type tale. One page really isn't enough to play around with story. It would work fine for a gag or a last panel twist but since we we're being paid to promote I didn't feel comfortable doing that. Similarly I made Redd herself the McGuffin of the tale rather than the protagonist. That free'd us to play with her range in modelling styles and didn't force a character we'd created into her real life repertoire. Originally I wanted Jordan to have a frog in a top hat playing the trombone sat atop panel one as a little nod to our first ever creation The Land of All Sorts , but he claims it didn't fit...

...and instead left an easter-egg to another one of our creations. See if you can spot it. Now without further gilding of the lilly. REDD ROCKZ. 

Click to Enlarge

Don't forget guys we are still looking for artist and prose stories for our anthology book coming out in October. Check out the full details for submissions here. We have so many fantastic teams already on board and the book is really shaping up to be diverse, fun, silly and action-packed so why not get involved. 

This is the Voice of Richard, England Prevails.

MCM London 2013

Good day to you all!

Just a quick update to let you all know what's going on in the Water Closet. We attended MCM London last month and it was our most successful convention to date. In fact at the moment we don't own any issues of Ladies and Gentlemen issue 1. WE SOLD OUT!!! Whilst this is obviously fantastic news for us it does mean that issue one is only available to read on the blog. But dry those tears, we will be getting our fourth run of the book done in time for our next convention.

Happy as clams. Photo courtesy of Paulus Van of Manic Mosh Magazine.

Which reminds me, at our next convention we will also be launching our anthology book. We've had a bunch of great submissions already and there is still time to enter with prose stories and art work. We also have a bunch of scripts waiting to be picked up so if you like making comics, whether it will be your first or your millionth book, get in touch with us. The final deadline for artwork is OCTOBER 1ST so there is still plenty of time to join the Water Closet Press.

Also whilst I've got you, why not check out this interview we did for the 20 Minute Longbox Podcast. We talk about Ladies & Gentlemen and our adaptation of (part of) Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" which can be found under the Weird Planet tab at the top of this page.  It's a great show and Stephen is a friend of ours so why not check it out.

That's all for now. At least all I can remember. See you in the funny pages.

Rik

Issue Three Update!

Ok y'all, here comes an important update... We are closing writing submissions.

We have had an overwhelming response so far and are now in the position where we have a backlog of scripts in need of artists, so if you are gifted with the pen and want to get involved just e-mail us at thewaterclosetpress@gmail.com and we will match you up with an eagerly-waiting story to draw.

Provided we get enough artists to cover all our current scripts, it is possible that we will re-open submissions for solo writers in the future. We'll post an update if this happens, but until then, we are still accepting artist and story + art submissions as usual.

A bunch of our creative teams have gone away to work on their stories and we already have a completed story in!  Furthermore, to give you a little taste of what we have in store for you, here is Ken McFarlane's sketch of The Gent. He will be working on a Hex-centric (see what we did there?) story written by Jamie Lewis.

Moreover, very soon we'll be releasing our latest short story inspired by Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

See you all in the funny books,
Rik