I desparately attempted to beg off posting anything this month, claiming to be horribly busy with this comic I’m working on, and also to be possibly the least nautically-minded person in this entire island nation. I think port is left, and I gather that ropes are involved, and that is literally the sum total of my knowledge of or interest in boats.

However, thankfully for us all the indefatigable Tilda at DFB reminded me that, hey, that comic I’m claiming to be so busy working on, has  A LOT OF BOATS IN.

And this is true.

However, and this is quite crucial here, the boats in question make it about three pages into the story before they’re out of that boring old ’sea’ nonsense, and into a milieu I’m much more comfortable with: riding around on the backs of dinosaurs.

These images are from The Pirates of Pangaea, a story I’m working on with my writerly colleague Daniel Hartwell for the brand new weekly childrens’ comic The Phoenix. It’s a story I’ve been itching to draw ever since Dan and I were chatting, years ago, and he said the four most magical words in the english language:

“Pirate Ships On Dinosaurs”.

Possibly there are artists who can hear an idea like that and not spend the rest of their lives filled with a burning need to draw it, but I am not one of them.

I dare say I’ve actually learned a (small) amount about boats from working on this story; principally that there is a thing called ‘rigging’, and that there is a LOT of that thing. I hope that people will be forgiving of any wild inaccuracies in my depictions of sailing vessels; I do think I’m getting (slightly) better as I go along, trying to get the endless thousands of ropes vaguely correct rather than just drawing them any old place and hoping it looks okay.

Anyway, we’re really excited about the story and about the Phoenix and I really hope people will check it out and, indeed, subscribe! As a special bonus here I offer a SNEAK PEEK at next week’s instalment, in which one of our characters faces the deadly prospect of being forced to walk the (dinosaur) plank!

Neill Cameron lives in Oxford, writing and drawing comics and daydreaming about giant robots. His first graphic novel, ‘Mo-Bot High’ is out now as part of the fantastic DFC Library series. Neill is currently working on new projects combining dinosaurs, pirates, monkeys and numerous other Things That Are Awesome for new weekly children’s comic The Phoenix, available now!

Neill’s website: www.neillcameron.com

Neill’s blog: neillcameron.blogspot.com