Hey everybody – notice the new link in the menubar? Yes, that’s right, I’ve now got a shop, so you can pay to have like real paper copies of all the stuff that I give you for free. I know you’re all just itching to shower me with your hard-earned cash. If you’re a UK resident, you can go to this shop (which is hosted on my other webcomic Milton’s Life) and if you’re from anywhere else, you should head to this shop. And if you’re a UK resident and you want to buy stuff not just for yourself but as Xmas presents for all your friends, then as long as I get your order in by Thurs 15th (yes, this Thursday), then I’ll get Santa to drop it off. If you’re from anywhere else and you want stuff for Xmas, sorry, but I screwed up and didn’t get the shop ready in time. You could just buy some really, really early presents for 2012 though. Happy browsing shoppers!

Have I mentioned that I’m regularly contributing to a new webcomic? It’s called Short Attention Span and consists of single panel gags. It’s a group webcomic and there’s six of us at the moment, looking to knock out one cartoon a week – Asher, Ben, Colm, Max, Steve and me. But we are always looking for other comics, so if you want to do a guest comic, just head over to our guest page and check it out. All you have to do is draw a comic (420 X 420px) and email it in.

Blim-ey. I didn’t think that would be quite that hard, but I managed it. I would like to thank everybody who donated and offered encouragement via Twitter, Facebook and the like. I managed to reach my target of £250 for the MS Society and the page is still open for donations at http://www.justgiving.com/Noel-Curry, so let’s see what we can get the final figure to. Also, I think I should make it clear that my challenge to myself was to draw 100 comics in a day and to write as many of them as I could on that day, but I did allow myself to use my ‘half-formed-ideas’ file as support, as trying to come up with 100 new ideas whilst drawing would have poll-axed me completely. (I maybe be crazy, but I’m not completely insane). Here are the results (my favorites are 4, 12, 27, 38, 48, 53, 61, 71-75 & 92 ):

In 2009 I managed to draw 100 bad comics as part of 24 Hour Comics Day. I wanted to do the same in 2010, but life got in the way and I didn’t manage it. Well, I’ve decided not to wait for the next 24 Hour Comics Day and I’m just to do it again anyway. The date I’ve chosen is Saturday 9th April and as an added bonus, I’m going to try and raise some money for charity whilst doing it. There’s a Just Giving Page where you can pledge some money to The MS Society in recognition of my (hopefully) sterling efforts. And, if you sponsor me for £3 or more (about $5), you get to pick a topic for me to draw a cartoon about. Neat huh? I’ll be posting the results to Twitter as I go (so you can follow me if you want to see them on the day) and then I post them all to the site later. Please tell all your friends.

My mate Warren (who’s an architect by day) sent me the first page of a comic he’s been working called ‘Mucho Macho Hombre’. It looks rather marvellous and I’ve been immediately intrigued by it. He says that he may just email pages out to friends as and when he completes them, but I’m going to do my best to persuade him to stick them somewhere on the internet, If he does so, I’ll be sure to let you all know where you can find them.

To have a closer look, just click on the image.

I’ve decided that’s it’s a bit foolish of me to divide my time between two webcomics (yeah, I have another one. Didn’t you know? It’s called Milton’s Life). Even though this one is getting a lot more traffic, I’m going to put it into almost complete retirement and concentrate my energies on Milton and his many, many worries. I enjoy the freedom that DJ Bogtrotter gives me, but I feel that my jokes end up being so varied, that I’m not really building any momentum and, after over two years, I still have no idea what a Bogtrotter type of comic would be. Milton, on the other hand, has a definite style, mood and, I think, potential to grow and hopefully become better and better, as long as I stick at it.

But, although most of my drawing time will be spent trying to produce 2-3 strips a week for Milton, I can’t abandon DJ Bogtrotter altogether and will try to post something here at least once a month. It might be hastily drawn and even more random than usual, but, like Father Jack yelling in the corner, Bogtrotter will bark out some obscenities every once in a while.

There will be regular updates for a few more weeks, and then in April I’m going to relaunch Milton’s Life (I’ll need some guest strips for that by the way, if you fancy doing one, just send it in) and I going to do the 100 Bad Comics Challenge again, as a final flourish before the site lapses into it’s more sporadic update schedule.

I intend to attend my very first convention later this year – Leeds very own Thought Bubble, so I will get a Bogtrotter collection together for that. Hope you can come along and say hello, if you’re in the area.

Just a couple of things I’ve been meaning to post for ages (but keep forgetting to).

First up, last May I gave a talk at a Leeds event call Bettakultcha. These events are for people to talk about their passions. You’re given five minutes to talk over twenty slides. Each slide is on screen for exactly fifteen seconds and when the slides stop, the talk is over. Sounds easy eh? My talk was about the wonderful world of webcomics. Was your webcomic mentioned? Erm… probably not, but have a look anyway, just in case.

Secondly, many people think that if you publish a popular collection of your comics or if your website gets hundreds of thousand of hits a day, then you’ve arrived in webcomics. But the really clued up people know that you haven’t really made it until an obscure Brazilian DJ asks if he can use a comic of yours to illustrate one of his tracks online. Guess what? An obscure Brazilian DJ asked if he could use a comic of mine to illustrate one of his tracks online. Have a listen to “Love Is The Answer” by DJ Chrizz which, unsurprisingly, uses my comic Love Is The Answer to illustrate it. Also, unsurprisingly, he’s chosen to crop off the punchline as it undercuts the whole feeling of the track – I guessed that he would do this and really don’t mind. I’m just tickled that one of my drawings is being used in conjunction with some banging, ol’ school techno on the other side of the world.

Wishing you all a very Merry Xmas (if that’s your sort of thing). A big thankyou to anyone who’s read, commented and shared the site. I’m having a little festive break and DJ Bogtrotter will return in the New Year. In the meantime, here’s a couple of drawings I did for this week’s #tuesdaysketch.

Just to let you know that I have a guest comic up at Mister Woodles (which has humour, heartbreak and misanthropic yupsters) – just click here and check out the archives whilst you’re there. I especially like this one.