Marc Ellerby

Hey kids,

I've got loads of books for sale at thewebsite.

Hello pretties...



Chloe Noonan: Monster Hunter

Self Published 16 pages b/w

£2.80

Postage Options

UK Postage £2.80 Everywhere else £3.80

Ellerbisms Volume 3

Collects here to here
Self Published 52 pages b/w - contains bonus pull out section - make your own mini comic!

£4

Postage Options

UK Postage £4.00 Everywhere else £5.00

There's a deal on Ellerbisms at the website, which I've been fighting against Dreamweaver and Paypal to get right now for three hours. I HATE INTERNETS!

A quick thanks to everyone who came by at The Thing on Saturday. I'll do a full con report when I don't want to throw a tantrum at my computer.

So there's the front cover for the third collection of everyone's favourite Marc Ellerby diary comic. It'll be out for The Thing at the end of the month, so if you're around London make sure you come along (or just wait till the Monday after when I put it on line.)

With this cover I had to, obviously, keep in tone with the previous ones but also show a new mature side to reflect the strips inside. I think it works better when you turn over to see the back...



As always it'll be printed on recycled card (and the colours are much jucier than on screen - the card sorta soaks things up a little) and this particular volume will come with a special pull out section where you can make your own mini comic. Exciting! More on that later.

Here are the 3 covers together...

You have until the 19th of December to place any order from my webstore for it to arrive by Christmas. I advise you to however, order books as soon as you can as I work a full time job at the moment and it's really hard to get to the post office. Any orders I receive (that means when I check my email, not when you send the order) after the 19th will not be guaranteed, for Christmas.



If you order over £10 for a limited time you will get a free copy of Phonogram The Singles Club #1 which features a two page story written by Kieron Gillen but drawn by me. HOORAY. If you don't want to spend £10 to get the comic (why not, eh?!) then you can buy it for £2 from the store.

The 100th Ellerbism went up on Monday. This is from when Anna first took me to Sweden in July and I sorta fell for her country a little bit. For the next two weeks it's Swede-licious and today's one's a favourite of mine.

Other than that, how is everyone?

Been keeping this a bit quiet but I've been asked to take part in an exhibition at the Brent Museum at Brent Cross. There's a private view on Tuesday 9th December 6.30 - 8pm ish and if anyone wants to go let me know so I can sort out invites and stuff. I'll have some work from Ellerbisms and a few pages from my upcoming story in the This Is A Souvenir anthology.

From Monday all Ellerbisms (past, present and future) will go on ellerbisms.com. I'll have a livejournal feed going for it, but check back on Monday for that and other RSS related stuff.

IT'S EXCITING. I'M VERY EXCITED.

God, I'm all about bringing out books at the moment, aren't I?



Ellerbisms vol 2
40 pages.

International Postage Options

UK Postage £3.25 Everywhere else £4.25

Love The Way You Love: Side B (Songs of Devotion) - collects volumes 4-6
190 pages

International Postage Options

UK Postage £7.50 Everywhere else £8.50

(More items for sale here)

Order any book and I'll sign and sketch in it for you. (Please let me know when ordering, what you'd like your sketch to be) You'll also get a free bookmark/postcard!

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Thanks to everyone who came to the Brum con this past weekend. It was great to see everyone. I'll post more about it when I'm not so grumpy and negative towards the world.

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NEW STOCK FOR BIRMINGHAM! AAAHHHHH!

I am truly excited about my two new books which I'll be debuting at the Birmingham Comics Show this weekend, Ellerbisms Vol 2 and Love The Way You Love: Side B. Two of my finest moments and different ends of the Ellerby spectrum. If you're coming to the Brum con this weekend, make sure to stop by mine and McKelvie's booth at table 160 in the exhibition suite. You can't miss us as we're opposite the guest signing table.

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Speaking of McElfie, if you click here then you get a preview of the first issue of Phonogram The Singles Club. But enough of that guff, if you click HERE you can see a preview of my b-side for the series. GET IN.

Sorry about the lack of 'Bisms yesterday, I was running late for work.

(Note, this was drawn and coloured at the actual time of happening and no, they won't be returning to colour any time soon)

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In other news, I'm at The Birmingham Comics Show this weekend, sharing a table with Jamie McKelvie. We're not in the Exhibitor Hall but in the Exhibitor Suite. I'm in two minds about this (we're in the pros but away from the main & bigger room) but there is apparently a BIG WINDOW that we can look at a car park and the grey skies of the Midlands. But yes, I'll have brand new Ellerbisms Vol 2 to sell and it'll debut at the show. I will hopefully have Love The Way Vol 2 but that just depends on me and FedEx lining up.

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So Minx, D.C's line of comics for young girls has been axed. There are a billion posts out there already about this, but regardless of that, I'll join the fray.

As a bookseller I was really frustrated by Minx, yet was really pleased it existed. Here's a list of reasons why I frustrated by the line...

1) It was billing itself as "not manga" which to me was like saying "not the stuff that girls into comics are buying by the bucket load". In no way should it be called manga but it was hard for some booksellers to say "what, you mean manga?" when talking about "comics for girls." It was alienating itself from all corners and I'm still not sure why. Be a graphic novel!

2) The length of the comics. Because they were so thin, the books themselves got hidden on the shelves. And where to put them?! I have quite a good graphic novel and manga selection at work and luckily I made room for Minx, even giving them their own shelf space where the books were together, so as a unit they looked strong and at eye level too, but I know that the majority of booksellers who do graphic novels/manga wouldn't have a clue and file them alphabetically with Iron Man and Preacher. Look at manga in book stores. The majority of them will have Viz and Tokyopop spinners and it's the brand you're selling as much as the individual titles. A range like Minx needs to be together, not seperated.

3) Where did they go?! They were released last year and for a few months came out quite steadily but then vanished till summer this year. It was like 7 months of inactivity and people forgot about them. What Tokyopop and Viz did really well when they were setting up was to have an aggressive publishing plan, series coming out regularly and in multiple volumes. People don't want to wait a whole year for another Plain Janes book, not when they're used to Naruto popping out every 3 months.

4) Multiple volumes. The manga kids love manga because there's so fucking much of it, in what seems like never ending volumes, so far only one Minx book has had a sequel, The Plain Janes and I'm pretty sure that Clubbing in Tokyo will now be cancelled. I'm not saying every book should be 8 volumes in length and be 200 pages each, but it's hard to look at Minx and the manga explosion and see what's making more money and whats not.

5) Don't pull the plug on something that's still in its infancy! A year and a half is not long enough to build a brand or a readership, also well done guys on pulling the plug in the middle of a advertising push in teen girl magazines.

Despite that, I was excited it existed and was looking forward to the third wave of books.

I loved the idea of Minx, even expressing publicly at conventions that I would love "to do a Minx book." I think the majority of my readers are female and to create sequential art aimed specifically for them is a really good idea and motivator. Hell, it's made me think about my next series and how to approach it a little differently.

Support from the children's buyer was great, with even talk of doing a dump bin promotion for Minx and other teenage graphic novels (i.e stuff with a bit more of a backbone than manga, so Skim, Scott Pilgrim etc) in the children's section. But that idea came and went. We both agreed that putting Minx in the teenage fiction would hide them even more as the general idea is if you're looking for a graphic novel, you go looking in the graphic novel section...

Luckily there are still publishers like Oni Press who still put out books that appeal to teenage girls (and it's worth noting that the majority of the Minx creator list have worked on Oni titles in the past, present and future). Maybe there is still a demand for a girl branded comic line but maybe not from D.C where something like Minx would look quite small in the bigger scheme of things. If it was an independent, I wonder if sales would've been "alright" and justifiable to continue?

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Not sure if I've mentioned this but I'll appearing as a guest artist at the London MCM Expo on the 25th and 26th of October at London's Excel Centre. This is my first show where I'm a guest artist so I'm a little excited about it but also pretty nervous considering that people like Ben Templesmith and Charlie Higson are also in attendance.

I'll also be appearing at The Birmingham Comic Show, Thought Bubble and Handmade & Bound for those who don't want to swarm their way through cosplayers to see me.

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Anna starts her new job today, so she is officially no longer my manager girlfriend and just my girlfriend. Sniff. Good luck, toots!