I long ago accepted that I have a natural tendency towards the superstitious, seeing signs and portents in every little thing. Unfortunately, I also have a natural tendency towards anxiety-filled neurotic pessimism. As such my personal list of superstitions, carried with me from childhood on, ran roughly as follows:

…and so on. As you can imagine, this becomes pretty hard to live with. There are an awful lot of cats wandering around the place, and if every time you see one it is going to cause you to feel the ICY GRIP OF DEATH UPON YOUR HEART for the rest of the day, things can get to be a bit of a drag.

And so, I grew up and embraced a healthy rational emipiricist snootiness about such ideas, acknowledging the truth that all these happenings are essentially meaningless, in and of themselves.

The thing is though… that that’s not really the point. It’s not about the meaning these events carry in and of themselves, it’s about the meaning you ascribe to them. And while you can know something rationally, somehow it is still possible to feel very differently. In short, to still freak out whenever you spill some salt, even though you rationally know perfectly well that the only bad thing is that you’ve wasted a small amount of salt. Which is fairly cheap after all, and let’s face it you probably ought to be cutting down your salt intake anyway.

And so I pressed on through early adulthood, desperately attempting if never entirely managing to suppress my own irrational panic-mongering. And then one day my son was born, and – well, to cut a long story short: my head melted.

Suddenly things were very serious, and very important, and all the bad old cognitive habits came flooding back and I could barely enter a room without seeing five or six urgent and troubling Portents of Oncoming Doom.

Fortunately, I came to a helpful and indeed life-changing realisation, which in order to improve the mental wel-being of the nation I shall selflessly share with you here. It can be summed up as: “ah, nuts to all that.”

I may not be able to do anything about the fact that I am, deep down, an emotionally superstitious person. But I can at least turn that tendency to good. Given that superstitions are entirely arbitrary, I simply decided to create my own equally arbitrary new ones, but in such a way that they would cheer me up rather than stressing me out. And so, in this spirit, I give you my own Brand New and decidedly Super set of Superstitions…

…and I don’t even play the lottery. That is the power of superstition.

You’re welcome.

Neill Cameron lives in Oxford, writing and drawing comics and generally being delighted whenever he sees a squirrel. 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

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. Read the rest of this entry »

All 9 of our beautiful DFC Library books will be on sale at Comica Comiket this Saturday.  What’s more,  4 of our brilliant creators will be signing copies of their books, as below:  

 1.30-2pm:   Sarah McIntyre (creator of Vern & Lettuce)  

2.30-3pm:   Adam Brockbank (illustrator of MeZolith)  

3.30-4pm:   Neill Cameron (creator of Mo-Bot High)

4.30-5pm:   James Turner (creator of Super Animal Adventure Squad)

See you at the DFC Library stall!

See you there…

My embarrassing moments happen almost every time I do an event where there’s live drawing. Drawing on a big flip chart in front of people is SO different than drawing in the privacy of my own sketchbook or creating illustrations with all my favourite materials in the cosiness of my studio. In events, I’m drawing with fat markers (which usually work) and trying to draw fairly quickly so it stays entertaining and not like watching paint dry. So my flipchart pictures are anything but polished, and still, there’s usually someone who wants to keep the drawing to hang up at their school or library. I’ve had to learn to overcome the urge to say, ‘But wait, I could draw you something so much better!’ and be happy letting them have it. It still makes me blush sometimes, though.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last Friday, to celebrate the launch of Neill Cameron’s DFC Library title, Mo-Bot High, Blackwell’s Children’s Dept played host to a GIANT MO-BOT PARTY!

….Needless to say, it was awesome.

Neill had prepared some fantastic mo-bot activity sheets and  a ‘card-bot’ that was collectivly decorated by his fans, friends and family. Bot-tastic! He even led a comic drawing session that involved lots of audience input, with some pretty hilarious results..

The MO-BOT HIGH dedication includes ‘anyone who’s ever daydreamed of having a giant robot to smash up their school.’  Enough said.

1. Buy your copy of MO-BOT HIGH here.

2. Investigate all the extras and juice on the MO-BOT HIGH website here!

3. Check out Neill’s post about the evening(and generally snoop around his blog – it’s always chocker full of sparkling ideas, insights and illustration..) here!!