Stacey Garratt / David Quady

Chris Shields of cIndyCenter was kind enough to take a few minutes to talk with yours truly about NO FORMULA and other things (but mostly NO FORMULA). Check it out!

http://www.cindycenter.com/

Direct link to podcast: http://www.cindycenter.com/JimDouganFINAL.mp3

Sorry guys, due to a computer fritz up and a weekend away, The Gloom will be slightly late this week, not going up tomorrow, but more likely Monday / Tuesday.

But this just means less time to wait until the next issue!

And so we have the introductions to the Eleventh Hour - as The Gloom finally gets the assistance he needs! And now we start to build up to the ‘wonderful Act Three obligatory explodo fight scene and plot twist’ that I promised!

And what is going on with the Professor and Ungawa in page 5…

In other news, if you’re in the US don’t forget to go buy Doctor Who: The Forgotten, out from IDW next week - as I wrote it. And in the UK remember to buy next week’s 2000ad as my 15 part tale Stalag #666 starts in it with a ten page introduction!

And most importantly, if you subscribe to the wonderful children’s comic The DFC, next Friday Dan and I start our 16-week adventure serial ‘The Prince Of Baghdad’ over there - it’s well worth getting hold of!

Anyway, here’s your two pages of Gloom goodness…

Well, it’s finally here - and there have been some changes… Let me explain the wait and the revised styles…

Basically it’s like this. When The Gloom #3 was cancelled, we’d pretty much finished the story, and inked / coloured the pages - but Rich Emms, who was the APC publisher (and the letterer) decided that due to APC closing and the book effectively dying, it wasn’t worth lettering the rest of the book (he’d lettered issues #1 to #3 already), and issues #3, #4 and #5 were never seen to the public.

Until now, of course. Which meant that when we reached the point of getting to #4, the first of the unlettered issues we had to letter it up ourselves , and this would involve lettering in a similar style to the first issues to keep in line with Rich’s earlier stuff.

But here’s there the delays and the style changes come in. Because yesterday (Thursday 7th August) we received an email from Rich telling us that as The Gloom was one of many comics still owned by APC (hence the fact it was never put back in print) it had taken until right then for APC to finally roll over and die. And, as part of the contract, when APC died? We got all rights to The Gloom back.

Which means that we now have the option to re-solicit it as a collected trade GN. And of course THIS means that we’ll be re-lettering the entire comic in a different style, closer to the letters in Hope Falls, as there were some early parts that we were never wholly happy with - which means that starting this week? We have new lettering and a new ‘Chapter’ guide for the last two issues.

I hope you enjoy. :-) Remember, NOBODY has ever seen these pages before today. Tell your friends. Tell publishers. Let’s gain some interest in this book, let’s have it printed!

Oh, and finally we can lay to rest the rumours that we may have stolen the idea of a group called ‘The Eleventh Hour’ from Orang-outang comics, considering that this comic was written in 2005… :-)

So enjoy the ‘Season Premiere’ of #4, a special, three page starter…

What, you thought we’d forgotten you? Well shame on you, children!

What we didn’t expect was the amount of madness and confusion that would hit our lives with The Prince Of Baghdad, the series we’re doing for The DFC / Random House, and the Doctor Who: The Forgotten series that I’m writing for IDW with Pia Guerra…

But normal service will be resumed. And here’s your teaser… See you next Friday.