Slaughterman's Creed advance reviews!

We've been hearing word back from advance copies of Slaughterman's Creed we've sent out and one of the most exciting came from Punisher artist Laurence Campbell who has written the foreword to the book. You can read the whole foreword on Cy's Blog but here's a brief excerpt:

"It’s Stephen Downey, the artist, who I feel so sorry for. This may be because, being an artist myself, I know what he’s going through. You see, people are going to readSlaughterman’s Creed and will be going to the artist saying, “How do you come up with this dark stuff? What goes on in that scary mind of yours?”

And Stephen Downey will say, “It’s not my fault - it’s the writer, Cy Dethan. He put it in the script." 

Advance reviews have been popping up on the internet and here are a few snippets and links to what people have said:

Geek Syndicate:


"The story is a violent one and art matches it but I never found the violence to be over the top. It felt real, visceral and horrible, as true depictions of violence should be. The second thing is this book is for adults in both the aforementioned violence but also in the plot, the themes and the characterisation. "

Hi-Ex blog:

So, all in all, I’d say this book is a bit of a triumph for all involved. With a strong narrative, well realised and rounded characters, strong visuals and a wonderful seam of oh so black humour this deserves to be a hit for all involved. And not turning it into a movie would be nothing short of a travesty.


Everything Comes Back to 2000AD blog: 


I was a big fan of Stephen’s Cancertown art but the improvement between this and that is marked and has me excited to see how his next project looks. Cy’s writing is very tight and the book has a real British cinema feel to it.


There are great reviews on the Small Press Big Mouth and the Sci-Fi pulse podcasts. 


With so many words in this post, I thought I should share another panel from the book:

Red Ghost

I was asked by Stephen Coffey to provide a variant cover to his upcoming Red Ghost comic that he's working on with Rob Carey and Patrick Burton. Working off Rob's designs, and incredible looking preview pages I created the following cover:

Rob also worked on 'The Indifference Engine' with my Slaughterman's Creed collaborators Cy Dethan and Nic Wilkinson, as well as being coloured by Cancertown's Mel Cook. The indifference Engine is out now as a digital comic on the Playstation network and Graphic.ly now and I believe will be out in print late Summer.

Keep an eye out for both Red Ghost and Indifference Engine. I'll definitely be picking them up myself.

Slaughterman's Creed is Open for Orders!

Slaughterman's Creed is now available for pre-order, to be either delivered by post or picked up at the launch in May at the Bristol Comic Expo! This was a huge project for me, with 110 pages that I either pencilled or fully inked and coloured. It's a great, complete story by Cy Dethan who's blog I'm going to quote ordering details from because I'm too lazy to reword:

"Things are ramping up towards the launch by Markosia comics of the hardcopy edition of Slaughterman's Creed at Bristol Comics Convention in Mid May.

There is going to be a convention special edition, signed by all the creators, on sale over the launch weekend at the special price of £10.

Everyone who buys it on the day, or pre-orders it before the 14th May to be sent out after the show will be entered into a competition to win an original piece of art pencilled by Stephen Downey and coloured by Vicky Stonebridge.

We know that not everyone will be physically going to the con, and some people will only be there for one or other of the days, so if you would like to reserve a copy to be held behind the stand, or posted out to you, please then you need to get in touch with us now and we will add your name to the list, and email you to let you know the options for how to pay.

If you are not coming to the show there will be postage added to the £10 which is £2 in the UK and £4 for overseas delivery."

So there you go. You can always get in touch with me about pre-ordering a copy instead if it's easier for you.


Here's a gory little panel, with colours by Vicky Stonebridge and inks by Andy Brown to whet your appetites:

Slaughterman's Coming, Cancertown's Back!

It's been a great few days for my creator-owned projects.

From yesterday all 6 chapters of Cancertown: An Inconvenient Tooth are back on the Playstation network as a digital comic, published through Markosia and complete with audio commentary from Cy Dethan and I. Well, Cy does most of the talking, clocking in a couple of hours of facinating insights spread over the chapters, while I chip in with a few art process snippets. The first chapter is free, so if you have a PSP why not check it out. Markosia have also announced that Cancertown will be coming back into print sometime later in 2011.

Look at that beautiful cover! Harry Markos at Markosia has also let us announce that Slaughterman's Creed will launch at Bristol International Comic Expo! Above is the all-but-finished graphic novel cover (pencils by myself with digital paints from Ryan Brown). Cancertown went down a storm 2 years ago at it's Bristol launch so we're hoping things will go as well for Slaughterman's Creed. It'll also be in stores some time after that. Must book some flights now...

It's in the (body) bag!

The final interior inks, colours and letters (by the talented Vicky Stonebridge, Andy Brown and Nic Wilkinson respectively) have been added to the last page of Slaughterman's Creed and the book is done!

Cy Dethan has added a 12 page lettered preview to his website (and to our Facebook group which you may care to join) so you can finally add a little bit of context to those random panels and works-in-progress I'd been posting early last year. 

It's a little odd seeing artwork that I drew over a year and a half ago only surfacing now, (I finished the interiors of the book about 6 months ago, but it's 110 pages long and the panels below were drawn sometime just before the launch of Cancertown at Bristol '09) but I'm proud of the book and you're in for a gory treat with Cy's cracker story.

Here's the first two pages of the graphic novel (I handled full art duties for the first two chapters, so this one's all me with Nic's lettering and of course Cy's words), but head on over to Cy's site for the rest of the preview:

The story will be released on the PSP as a digital comic through Markosia later in 2011 and other formats will follow. I'll update the blog with all the info as I get it.

Christmas Wrap

A number of things have come to fruition in the last few weeks so this is a bit of a Christmas wrap up.

• I have a new strip up at Talesofthe.com; a creepy retelling of The Little Matchstick Girl. I've used a very different drawing style and I think it's the first comic on he web that I've written, drawn and lettered myself so let me know what you think. This is part of Tales of The Season, which features Christmas Comic from Kevin 'Gio' Logue, Andrew Croskery, Mal Coney and Wayne Simmons so make sure to check them all out.

• All being well, I have some comic work lined up for early next year, starting with a one-shot for The League of Volunteers from Atomic Diner, a pulp adventure team book set in 1940s Ireland. This will be a spin off from the regular series, written by Robert Curley, which is launching now with art from Barry Keegan. Issue 1 of the regular series is limited to 500 copies, so if you want to get in at the beginning, you can order it from the Atomic Diner site here. 

• Cancertown will be returning to the Playstation Network early in the new year as a digital comic. If you can't wait until then, Cy Dethan's Indifference Engine reunites most of the Cancertown team, adding in penciller Rob Carey and was just released digitally on the PSP this week. It gets a featured mention on the Playstation Blog and already gathered great reviews. I can't wait to read it myself. 

• I've been listed as the number 21 NI's 'Reasons to be Cheerful' in this months AU mag (previously know as 'Alternative Ulster'). It was a nice little write up and there's even a little crop of the Cancertown opening splash page in there. Copies of AU mag are free and widely distributed all over Ireland, or you can view the whole magazine online right here. I'm on page 49, but here's a screen grab of the article. Many thanks to Reggie Chamberlain King for the write up. 

I have some other comic news, and I've just started my first video game work, but I'll talk about that when I have more to show but it certainly looks to be a busy start to the new year. 

An Engaging Story

For those who haven't already heard, myself and Aimee got engaged this past weekend which has made me extremely happy. I won't bore you with every detail of the proposal, but there is some artwork involved and Aimee has encouraged me to show a little of it off and it needs a little background summary. Who am I to argue with my future wife?

Aimee has always thought of Rome as her favourite place, and the Trevi Fountain as the most romantic spot in the world (it may have something to do with a Bon Jovi video), so under the pretense of a Christmas present from my mum, that she had supposedly won and passed on to us, I organised a weekend away to coincide with our 4 year anniversary. You may think it doesn't sound plausible that Aimee would believe such a coincidence, but the fake email addresses, phone calls and the fact that it was Aimee who picked the dates (I knew she'd pick our anniversary) and other little things kept it a surprise.

I drew the story of 'The Monkey and the Penguin' who fall in love and turned in into a little children's-style story book (Aimee is obsessed with penguins and calls me her Monkey. Please try not to throw up) and gave it to Aimee to unwrap at the Trevi Fountain. It starts off as a fairly inconspicuous children's story and gets more personal as the book goes on, so I'll just show off a few of the first pages here.

The last spread had the Monkey at the Trevi fountain handing out a box to Aimee as the reader. The box had a flap held down with a bit of ribbon that acted as the box lid and opened up to reveal the diamond ring. I took from the ring from the book, got down on one knee and well the rest is a bit of a blur, but I said everything I wanted to and asked Aimee to marry me.

And Aimee said 'Yes'.

The Beginning...