Out for the day
Yesterday I was out for much of the day with two of my sons, David and Jason, and my brother, Paul. My other son, Shaun, was at home fitting a new kitchen.

Now my sons are older, it's changed the emphasis of how we relate to one another and going for a quiet drink around the centre of Hull, where I grew up, shows that they're not children any more. Some of my old haunts have changed beyond recognition, there are pubs now that didn't exist back then, but one pub was exactly the same as when I used to go in there 25 years ago. But that's probably because it has a history dating back to before the English Civil War.

Ye Olde White Hart is tucked away down a narrow alley and serves some of the best beer in Hull. Meetings were held in the pub during the time of the Civil War which led to decisions being made to bar the King from entering the city. I love buildings with character and history, particularly when you can enjoy a beer at the same time.

Web Comic of the Week
I've been criticised in a couple of places for seemingly concentrating on comics that need no additional promotion. But I don't see it this way at all. Megatokyo and PvP, for instance, are very popular, but why should that make a difference to what I include in my choices for WCOTW? I'm hoping to show people what I consider to be the most enjoyable comic strips currently online. Which brings me neatly to my choice for this week, and considering that it is a supplement to an ongoing print comic, it's not what you would call small time.

My choice for this week is the beautifully rich and intriguing Brother Matthew by Arvid Nelson and EricJ.


"Brother Matthew is a stand-alone web comic supplement to Rex Mundi, an original limited series from Image Comics, available now at your local comic book shop."

So says the information on the web page, but for me Brother Matthew came first with Rex Mundi coming along later, not surprisingly, picked up by Image.

I can't remember exactly how I came to find out about this particular online comic, but I remember being astounded by the quality of the writing and artwork and surprised that something so good could be found online and for free. I was hooked from the first moment and although there were already a number of episodes already posted, I read through them in one go and then eagerly awaited each new episode.

The online story is now complete and there have been no new instalments for some time, so to make it my Web Comic of the Week may seem a little strange, but I enjoyed reading it so much that I think it would be more strange for me not to include it at all. The strips themselves are downloadable, rather than viewable on a series of web-pages, but this should not deter you from checking out this quality web comic.

The world that Brother Matthew (and Rex Mundi) is set in is that of France in the 1930s, but in a world where the catholic church has great power and where magic is a real force to be reckoned with. From the very outset, the artwork sets up and supports this parallel world, making the suspension of disbelief a very easy task and you become embroiled in the world very quickly. Eric creates some beautiful characters with the great distiction of being both believable and always easily recognisable. But it is Arvid's marvellous writing that gives the whole piece its real edge. He always delivers the right amount of dialogue, from rich exposition to understated moments where he is more than happy to allow the visuals to carry the drama. Because of this the whole has a very filmic sense with a quality that would be very much at home on the big screen.

Please check this comic out as I'm certain you will find it to be one of the best comics in any medium.

It's all happening in space
The Guardian has a roundup of the projects taking place in space at the moment. What an exciting start to 2004.

Interview
Jim Stead over at The Cult of Rex Mundi asked me to do an interview because the Templars appear in both the comic Rex Mundi and the Broken Sword games. You can find it on the site, here.

Out yesterday
Went out with my sons and brother yesterday. More on that story later.

Yet more colouring
I spent a fair bit of yesterday colouring more Juniper Crescent strips. I would have posted about it yesterday, but for some reason I was unable to update my blog at all yesterday. The newly coloured strips can be found here, here and here.

Aren't you suffering from hangovers?
I've already had fifteen visitors to my site today. Whilst I appreciate the time spent here (or on the other pages), don't you have hangovers to attend to? :)

I had a pretty quiet evening, myself. June has picked up another ear infection which has made her more than a little deaf and certainly wasn't up to going out. So I had to make do with Jools Holland's Hootenany.

Scary down under
Just spotted the following on The Guardian news pages:

You may not be bitten by a snake or snapped up by a shark while visiting Australia but the country is fatal to nearly 400 tourists a year.

For the full story go here.

Happy New Year
I'd like to wish all the visitors to my site a very happy New Year. I hope that whatever the year holds in store for you is what you'd wish for yourself. Best wishes.

In the most unexpected of places...
I was checking through my stats and found that four people had come to my site from the Half-Life 2 forums which seemed a little odd. When I tracked it down I found that Theneb had started a thread where he'd put up links to my site. Thanks for that.

Broken Sword in the lead
After going quiet on the Broken Sword news front for a while, there is news that Broken Sword - The Sleeping Dragon is topping a poll currently being run on the Just Adventure site and the current results can be seen here. Go to the main page if you wish to vote yourself.

New desktop image
Never let it be said that I don't respond to requests. I've added a new desktop image to the downloads page after Peter asked me to put it together. Enjoy. :)

Where the hell did the year go?
It's a time for reflecting on the year gone by and when thinking about what I could write here I was struck by how little of the year I actually saw. If it wasn't for a couple of fairly well-defined moments I would have said the whole of my year was taken up with Broken Sword - The Sleeping Dragon.

The first of the defining moments was, of course, the birth of Caitlin, my first grandchild. It's a weird feeling becoming a grandad - a reminder that time is moving on apace, I'm no longer as young as I'd like to think I am, and there is still so much I'd like to do. It's been a delight to see her develop over the last few months, but it doesn't seem so very long ago that my own children were that age. This is scary stuff.
We had a good day at my parents on Sunday where all the family was there. My parents were looking rather well considering the health issues they have between them. My brother too (who has myotonic dystrophy like my mother) was in good spirits. It was quite a full house and reminded me of the times when, as a child, we all used to visit my maternal grandparents on Christmas day. Now that was a big family - and a very crowded house...

The second moment was when I contracted cellulitis in my foot on the first day of my three week holiday after we'd finished Broken Sword. I've only ever known pain like it once before - when I had tendonitis in my wrist about 15 years ago. So instead of having a beautiful, relaxing break from work I was in agony.

Broken Sword itself really did take up all of my year and if it hadn't been for the support of June I don't think I would have managed to make it through. I'd been working on the design since early in 2002 and when everyone else came on board at the end of that year, much of the disign was already in place but with little else. We had virtually no tools, no engine, no audio tools and none of those things kicked into gear until the beginning of 2003. So, in less than nine months we had to refine the design, develop the engine and tools, implement the game without a complete tool set and finished engine. It's a miracle the game was as polished as it was.
With hindsight we can all see things we would have done differently, puzzles that we'd have altered, or an approach that would have helped the player in some way, but we simply didn't have the time to analyse as we went along. And in spite of its weaknesses the game received some excellent reviews and was nominated for three BAFTA awards. A success in my book, I'd say.

New colouring
I got my crayons out and coloured some drawings in, being very careful not to go over the lines.

I've coloured some more of the old black and white Juniper Crescent strips for those who would like to see them in glorious colour: Strips 71-75 and Strips 76 - 80.

I've also updated the main page with the latest strip, too.