Nick Bryan

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Late-2018 Anthology Comics Extravaganza!

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In one of those weird coincidences that might later turn out to be a conspiracy, it appears every short anthology story I’ve written in the last year or so is coming out within the same few months. I’ll add all these to the ‘Other Work’ page as well, but if you’re here looking for the latest hot updates, her’s a tasty wedge (with a bit more ramble about each one).

Something Wicked 2018

I’m a big fan of the team at Futurequake Press, as they made one of my first published comic stories happen in the form of The Half-Baked Sacrifice, now available both in the relevant issue of Something Wicked and in my quickly homemade anthology Comedy & Errors.

So it’s good to be back there this year with a new story called ChitChatChum, which I wrote last year, and if you head on over to FQP’s blog, you can see a snippet of the lovely art by Mike Walters.

I wrote this quite a while ago, so I was pleased to revisit the finished version and discover that, yes, I still find it enjoyably grim. Particularly if you enjoy some Black Mirror-esque tech/body horror, this might be right up your alley.

You can buy the anthology from FQP’s website here, or on Comixology in shiny digital.

‘Work’ Anthology from Work In Progress comics

Beginning around the start of this year, I’ve been going to the Meetup group Work In Progress comics, where a bunch of London comic creators meet up to chat about comics, creation and their feelings about both.

It’s been a great group to get to know, thanks especially to the excellent Joe Stone for his work running it, and as luck would have it, this year they put together a group anthology which I was able to get into.

This is a collection of stories on the theme of ‘Work’, and I contributed a two-pager called Retirement Plan with art by A.I. Miller, who I met through my work with The Comic Jam. I like our story a lot, it’s got some strong robot melancholy, and I also think it’s a really strong anthology as a whole which is definitely worth your time.

I’ll add the buy-online link when I have it, or, again, if you’re at Thought Bubble, Joe should be selling it form his table.

If Anthology – ‘Horror’

Lastly, I’m also in the 2018 If Anthology, collecting a group of stories on the theme of ‘Horror’.

For this story, I decided to reunite the 2017 Christmas story team of myself, artist Robert Ahmad and letterer DC Hopkins for a five-pager about the dark underside of cute-seeming internet cats called Jenny & Max.

It’s a story which threads the needle between adorable and scary in a way I’m quite pleased with, helped by the art really selling the cute kitty and DC Hopkins going above and beyond to make the fiddly mock-Instagram layouts work.

I’m aware it’s part of a much larger anthology, but if you want to grab the book to read my story, it’s up on Amazon, or you can order it from your local comic shop using the info here.

“Comedy & Errors” – New anthology zine out now!

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So, if you follow me on social media (which you should, obviously), you’ll already know about Comedy & Errors, the 17-page black and white anthology comic-zine I created from scratch to sell at the South London Comic and Zine Fair communal table.

Well, that event happened, and now I have around twenty copies left from the small print run I did. If you want to own one of these, I have lashed together a small online store (so small, it contains one item) for the purpose of selling it at £2.50 a pop.

Again, I stress – there are twenty of these. Unless demand is off the charts, I may not go back to press for a while. (At the earliest, not until I next need something to sell at an event.)

So if you passionately want this thing, I would grab one. And yes, if you’re unlucky enough to see me in person, you can probably pre-arrange to buy one IRL and save the postage.

So, what’s actually in this comic? As you can see on the cover, there are seven stories:

So there we go. Get it here. As you can see above, yes, many of the stories are available online, but especially with comics, I think there is something about the printed object. I’m definitely excited, but I wrote it and it’s my first one, so…

Hobson & Choi Case Five – Angelina’s Choice – OUT NOW!

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Okay, as threatened as far back as this blog post a month ago, the fifth Hobson & Choi book Angelina's Choice is now on sale at your ebook outlets of choice.

Buy links available at the dedicated page here, or I'll try and add them to the bottom of this blog post, but basically - it exists!

I started writing this fifth book at the start of 2017 and after a few delays, partly caused by the editing pedantry of myself and others and partly just a few life readjustments I've had to factor in over the last few months, it's finally here.

As I'm sure I've said in a few places before, the series ends with Case Seven, so at this stage, we're definitely closer to the end than the beginning, meaning I get my chance to do some of the long-term arc-wrangling stuff I've wanted to do since the beginning.

We also finally do a decent length of time jump, after the first four books took place within a slightly compacted timescale of about three or four weeks.

But anyway, much more than that might be a spoiler. Suffice to say - it exists, I think it's a lot of fun. It's going to be fairly disjointed series by the time it finally finishes, as I suspect my writing approach changed quite a lot between books - possibly even more so than between any other.

Which either means it's way better or the existing audience will just be baffled. Excited to find out.

Either way, I think we can all agree the cover by reliable Design For Writers is another good one - we've replaced the blood drop with a blood spatter element and... yes, there's a road sign. This has a number of meanings within the plot which I'm probably not going to spoil either.

Also, you've got to be impressed at the number of puns within the title.

Anyway - the damn book has only been out for a few hours as I write this, so I should probably refrain from posting a full beginning to end commentary. I'll let you form your own opinions.

Hobson & Choi Case Five! Buy it now!

Angelina’s Choice – Hobson & Choi Case Five – PRE-ORDER NOW!

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Hobson & Choi book five is ready to head out into the world! Which, of course, means pre-orders are live and you all get to look at a lovely new cover by Design for Writers.

As you can see, we've moved the blood on, added a sexy new street-sign element and generally brought things on a bit. So I guess this makes this a cover reveal. Wow.

And yes, you can buy the book as of May 29th 2018. It should now be up for pre-order on all major e-vendors, links on the buttons below.

And yes, a print edition is also coming, but as ever, I don't have the power to put those up for pre-orders.

But what is the plot actually about?

Here's a synopsis!

“Finding my real parents isn’t as simple as I hoped, but after all the trouble Hobson’s past gives us, surely I’m owed my chance?”

After solving other people’s cases all summer, Angelina Choi is itching to look into her most personal mystery - who were her birth-parents? Why did they abandon their infant daughter in a cardboard box next to a pub?

But with her detective boss John Hobson trapped in the dark underbelly of London’s trendy online taxi services, Angelina ploughs on with her investigation alone.

Will her single-minded obsession cause irreparable harm? Can discovering the truth about her family make her happy?

Angelina’s Choice, the fifth volume in the Hobson & Choi series, brings the dark comedy-drama detective saga to a crossroads, with every character forced to question their decisions past and present. But as the end looms nearer, their options are vanishing.

“The Half-Baked Sacrifice” – new comic anthology story out now in print and digital!

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My latest venture into comic writing is out now! It’s called The Half-Baked Sacrifice, with art by Lukas Kowalczuk and features in the new anthology Something Wicked 2016 from Futurequake Press!

Basically, it’s a four page story about a slightly unstable toaster and its important mechanical religious beliefs. There’s also a rodent. I think the story’s pretty fun by itself, but the the art by Lukas is absolutely excellent.

Seriously – buy the comic, look at it. Or there are a few small samplers available in this very post! (Yes, they are quite small samples, but it is a four page story. I don’t want to give away the farm.)

And if you wish to buy it in print, you can go to Futurequake Press’s website here for £6.50 (plus postage)!

Or, for digital comic readers, it’s also up on popular digital comics platform Comixology for the knock-down price of £1.49.

My bit starts on page 74, if you wanted to know.

So yes, check it out. It may not shock you to learn that writing comics is a long-held dream for me, and seeing it realised in such a beautifully drawn way has come close to making my entire 2017 even though it’s only just started.

Oh, and if you want to see more art from Lukas Kowalczuk (and fair enough), his website is right here. Cheers to Futurequake as well, for making the whole process fun and painless. If you’re an aspiring creator and the chance comes up to work with them, absolutely do it.

Hobson & Choi v4 – Blood Will Stream – OUT NOW!

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Today is BWS day! No, not “beers, wines and spirits” (my friend Paul used to work in Sainsburys BWS section), it’s Blood Will Stream!

The fourth Hobson & Choi book is out today, featuring our heroes investigating the locked room murder of a YouTuber. Who did the deed, and can Hobson and Angelina find the killer without making the whole situation much worse? For once? Maybe?

I could type a lot more, but since I’m doing YouTube videos at the moment to tie in with this YouTubey book, I’ll embed a video instead. Here are my release day thoughts. Ready yourselves.

There we go. Hope that stirred something in you. Aside from the thought “Man, that guy needs to stop waving his hands around.”

Anyway, down to business: here are all the places you can buy Blood Will Stream in print and digital! Check it out! Hope you like it! Tell your friends! Etc! Release day woooooooo!