Aces Weekly celebrates three years

Yesterday marked the 3rd anniversary of the award-winning digital comic Aces Weekly, published by David Lloyd, co-creator of V for Vendetta. For those of you who often ask "Why aren't there any new anthology adventure comics anymore", Aces Weekly is for you. Six all new strips every issue by a wide variety of creators that have included John McCrea, Herb Trimpe, Kev Hopgood, Yishan Li, Rachael Smith, Henry Flint, David Leach, Shaky Kane and many more. As for those who claim that online comics aren't real comics because they're not on paper, that's as illogical as saying music isn't music if it's not on disc. It's the 21st Century, baby! Like most media, comics can come in different forms these days. 

The line-up of the latest volume.

Here's what David Lloyd had to say about the anniversary of the comic...

"I am pleased to tell you that today Aces Weekly marks its 3rd birthday! It's  entertained readers with some of the best comics creators from around the globe in 18 Volumes of fantastic storytelling, and there are no plans for it to stop. Aces Weekly will be celebrating this happy event with a very special deal for buyers that will be announced very soon today! Meanwhile, we raise a glass to all our current readers and subscribers to thank them for their continuing custom and support, and to all our terrific Aces, who have made Aces Weekly the most amazing and varied, and radical and revolutionary, and extraordinary anthology of comics that can be found anywhere in the world! Cheers! www.acesweekly.co.uk."

As for the special deal that David mentions, they're Birthday Box Sets. You'll find it revealed on the Aces Weekly website at the line above.

As a sometimes-contributor to Aces Weekly myself with all-new Combat Colin strips I'm pleased to see it celebrating another anniversary and I look forward to contributing again in the future.

Psycho Gran is back this week!

Artist/writer David Leach has created an all-new five page Psycho Gran strip for the latest edition of award-winning digital anthology Aces Weekly. The story, entitled Psycle, sees Psycho Gran encounter the bane of pedestrians, - a selfish cyclist who rides on footpaths. It won't end well... for him!

It's a great little strip that's sure to entertain fans of Psycho Gran who have followed her since the days of Oink! comic. You'll find it in this week's issue, Aces Weekly Volume 16, No.7.  Don't forget that Combat Colin was in last week's issue, so if you subscribe to Volume 16 for just £6.99 you'll get Psycho Gran, Combat Colin, and a load of other all-new strips too. Why not give it a go? Here's the link:
http://www.acesweekly.co.uk/   

Don't forget that Psycho Gran also appears in her own one-off digital comic, available on Comixology. More info here:
http://comiconline24h.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/psycho-gran-returns-in-her-own-comic.html

Aces! Combat Colin returns again!

Early this morning I completed a brand new Combat Colin three page strip and thanks to the wonders of technology it's now live online in the latest issue of Aces Weekly! (Vol.16 No.6).

As most of you will know, Combat Colin was a strip I did for Marvel UK's Action Force and Transformers comics in the late 1980s and Marvel returned the rights to me when the strip ended. I've used him in a few places since, including two earlier issues of Aces Weekly. This latest new adventure sends Colin (and his loyal assistant Semi-Automatic Steve) into space to deal with a giant asteroid shaped like a bottom! The Ass-Teroid! Yes, the strip's as daft as ever!

For those of you wishing there were more British anthology weeklies around, Aces Weekly is just for you. Six all-new stories every issue from an ever-changing line-up of top comic creators. All the strips are creator-owned and we receive payment via a percentage of sales so subscribing means you're actively helping the creators not a big company. Each volume of seven issues costs just £6.99, so you're getting each issue for a quid. Bargain!

The onscreen comic is now up to volume 16. Here's how the Aces Weekly website describes it...

ACES WEEKLY- the multi-award-winning, exclusively onscreen - NO PRINTING - comic art magazine published by David Lloyd - the guy who brought you V FOR VENDETTA. We come to you every Monday in seven-part volumes of serials and short stories by some of the finest comic creators on the globe. We've won the Best Digital Comic prize in Pipedream Comics annual poll, and Best Web-Based Comic in the True Believers Awards, inaugurated in celebration of the legendary Stan Lee!

Volume 16 is our latest, seven-week extravaganza! Subscribe at BUY right now!  And grab any or all our Previous Volumes there, too!  See tasters at STORIES and listed contents via BUY. Each of our Previous Volumes has over 200 pages plus Extras, and features our exclusive Week-to-Week facility, which transforms any volume's serialized content into a continuous narrative - comic-book length, but without the advertising!

Our terrific Aces include, JOHN MCCREA, PHIL HESTER, MARK WHEATLEY, MARC HEMPEL, DAVID LLOYD, SHAKY KANE, DAVE HINE, KEV HOPGOOD, YISHAN LI, HERB TRIMPE, BATTON LASH, VAL MAYERIK, JAMES HUDNALL, KAT LAYNO, HENRY FLINT, PAUL MAYBURY, ALAIN MAURICET, LEW STRINGER, DAVID LEACH, RACHAEL SMITH, LAURA SCARPA, and many more.

Subscribing not only gets you over 20 pages of great comic art every week for LESS than one pound, but also free entry into regular prize draws for collectibles and original artwork!

Check out our  FREE SAMPLES to try us for size, and see us at   facebook.com/acesweekly  for more info and news.  You can also find us at our growing blog :  www.acesweeklyblog  

Join us and enjoy us now : )

http://www.acesweekly.co.uk/

The Guardian plugs Aces Weekly

Top digital comic Aces Weekly has received a nice plug in today's issue of The Guardian in their Guide arts section. Their comic feature Strip Advisor is otherwise about American comics so it's good to see UK anthology title Aces Weekly promoted. The feature is also online and you can read it here:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/21/strip-advisor-comics-review

Any promo for Aces Weekly helps, as it's sometimes forgotten when people talk about modern professional British comics. Each 7 issue volume of the comic is only £6.99 and volume 15 is about to start. You can read more about it at the official website where you can buy and read the issues:

http://www.acesweekly.co.uk/

Don't forget that there's an all-new Combat Colin three pager in Aces Weekly Vol.1 No.1 and Vol.8 No.7, and I'll soon be working on another one for a future issue!

DUCKLESS is coming to Aces Weekly!

Marc Jackson is a humour artist/writer who emerged onto the comics scene in 2011 with his self-published comic Man From Space (which I reviewed here). Then last summer he debuted in The Beano with his own strip Lenny the Lettuce. Now he's set to join the ranks of creators in award-winning digital comic Aces Weekly with a brand new strip, Duckless.

"The strip is about the adventures of a young guy, called Duckless and his friends" says Marc. "Duckless draws the comic we are reading, so he affects the world around himself with his imagination. Everything you see is happening, it’s his imagination running wild to create a more exciting life for himself. It’s kind of like Peanuts mixed with Calvin & Hobbes and Adventure Time I suppose."

Marc's sent me an advance look at a page of Duckless to show above. Very distinctive and stylish stuff. The clarity of line, colour palate and borderless panel design  reminds me of a modern day Gold Key humour comic. Good stuff.  

Duckless starts in Volume 15 of Aces Weekly, available in March.  

http://www.acesweekly.co.uk/

Marc's website: http://www.creativehero.co.uk/

A good week to buy ACES WEEKLY!

If you still haven't tried Aces Weekly yet there's never been a better time! As a special offer this week, publisher David Lloyd is offering Aces Weekly Volume 1 at half price! That's seven digital issues of all-new material for just £3.49! Who can argue against 50p a comic? Go Aces! 

Here's the info David sent me....

Friends,
We love you! Yes we do! And because of that, on this Valentine's Day, and until 12 midnight UK-time on Feb 20th, you can get Aces Weekly Volume One for half-price! JUST £3.49/$4.99/€3.99 for the one where it all began - with the stupendous Mark Wheatley, Phil Hester, John McCrea, David Lloyd, Jeff Vaughan, David Hitchcock, Alain Mauricet, Alexandre Tefenkgi, Lew Stringer, Dave Jackson, Esteban Hernandez, Carl Critchlow, David Leach, Bambos Georgiou, Mychailo Kazybrid, Phil Elliott, and Rory Walker, in over 200 amazing pages!
Go to www.acesweekly.co.uk/shop to buy Volume One, fill in the form, but then DON'T click the full-price pay button. Instead pay half-price directly via Paypal to lforlloyd@aol.com!
If you're a current subscriber who just missed getting Volume One, then it's yours half-price, too, by just purchasing through your usual account.
And then... you get all this and more... with our love... : )

Vote Aces!

If you're a reader of top digital comic Aces Weekly (and if you're not, check it out here) it'd be great if you could take a few seconds to vote for it in the Pipedream Comics Digital Comic of the Year Awards at this link:
https://www.wedgies.com/question/54a1cbc077f94c0200006252 

Publisher David Lloyd constantly works hard to promote Aces Weekly which includes a huge array of comics creators. I've contributed a couple of brand new Combat Colin strips to it myself and will hopefully do another one this year.

Your support would be very much appreciated. The poll closes at midday on January 7th. Vote Aces!  

It's convention weekend!

It's the London Film and Comic Con this weekend at Earls Court and the event promises an impressive array of guests. Amongst the many names there you'll find Carrie Fisher, John Hurt, Bernard Cribbins, Jenna Coleman, Charlie Higson, Emma Vieceli, Jessica Martin, Mark Buckingham, Dave Gibbons, Steve Rude, David Hine, Mike Collins, Gail Simone, Bryan Talbot, Hunt Emerson, Chris Weston, and even the legendary Stan Lee!

If you drop by the Aces Weekly table (manned by mighty David Lloyd) you'll be able to take advantage of the subscription incentive of buying a unique hand-drawn sketch card which contains a secret code on the back. Type in that code at the Aces Weekly website and you'll have access to a full volume of the digital weekly to read on your PC, laptop or tablet. You can choose your card by various artists. Here are the 12 recent ones I drew the other day...

I'll have a table at the event but a reminder that I'm only going to be there on Saturday. If you're attending, please stop by my table for a chat and perhaps buy a sketch of whatever character of mine you'd like me to draw. I'll also be selling copies of my 2005 book Brickman Begins!  Here's a photo of me at last year's show, taken at a deliberately wonky angle by Debbie Tate. 

Hope to see you there! 

The all-new comics anthology

Just a reminder that for those of you wishing there was a new British adventure comic anthology out, - there is! The entire first volume of Aces Weekly is available to buy for the iPad via Comixology. Over 200 pages for just £6.99!

What's in it? Tons of all-new and exclusive strips by David Lloyd, John McCrea, Carl Critchlow, Phil Elliott, Esteban Hernandez, David Jackson, Mychalio Kazybrid, David Leach, myself and many more! 

Aces Weekly isn't published by a profit-hungry corporation, but by someone whose name you should recognize, David Lloyd (artist of V for Vendetta, creator of Kickback) whose passion for keeping the project going is something we all appreciate. Those of us working for Aces don't receive a page rate as we do when we work for big publishers, but we get an equal share of the profits, so when you buy the comic you're not supporting some megabucks corporation, you're supporting the artists and writers. Every purchase helps, even if it only brings in a few quid.  

I know many of you would prefer Aces Weekly in print, but the expense of doing that isn't feasible, so digital is the way it is. So if you do have an iPad, give Aces Weekly a try. Hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as we did producing our strips, - which is a lot!

Buy Aces Weekly Volume 1 from Comixology here:
https://www.comixology.co.uk/Aces-Weekly-1/digital-comic/83759 

(There's a new exclusive three page Combat Colin strip in volume 1, and another in volume 8. - And I'll be working on another one for a future issue.) 


After you've tried volume 1, why not subscribe to the other volumes, available as onscreen comics from the Aces Weekly website. A new issue is added every week, building up to 7 issues per volume. Volume 10 has just completed and Volume 11 will be starting soon:
http://www.acesweekly.co.uk/

Combat Colin and co. on Comixology

Today's an important day for digital comic Aces Weekly! Up to now, the weekly anthology has only been accessible to read whilst online on their website, but from today, May 7th, you'll be able to buy Aces Weekly Volume 1 to read on the Comixology app. Hundreds of pages of exclusive strips from David Lloyd, John McCrea, David Hitchcock and more including a new three page Combat Colin story by me. Only £6.99.

Comixology have changed their tech recently so the app is just a reader now and you have to purchase the comics from their website here:
https://www.comixology.co.uk/Aces-Weekly-1/digital-comic/83759

This evening, at Orbital Comics (8 Great Newport Street, London WC2H 7JA), you can meet some of the Aces at a signing / sketching session in the shop. Attending creators will include David Lloyd, Mark Montague, David Hine, Steve Marchant, David Leach, Chris Geary and more! 

I can't make it there myself but if you're in London get along to Orbital Comics between 5pm and 7pm.

*****************************

Then, for another comics fix the same evening, go to Gosh Comics (1 Berwick Street, London W1F 0DR) at 7pm for their latest Process Workshop to see Jessica Martin talk about creating her It Girl comic. 

Aces Weekly signing at Orbital Comics

The evening of Wednesday May 7th will see a group of contributors to the digital anthology Aces Weekly on hand at Orbital Comics in London for a signing and sketching session to meet the readers. Here's the info from publisher David Lloyd from the event page on Facebook:

"The very first in-store signing by Aces Weekly, to celebrate reaching our TENTH volume, and mark our appearance on premier digital comic store, ComiXology, on the same day - May 7th! The great David Hine, David Lloyd, David Leach, Chris Geary, Steve Marchant, Mark Montague, and more will be on hand to chat, sign, and sketch! Never met these geniuses before? Live near London? Come and see us! You'd better - otherwise we'll sic some dinosaurs on you! Wednesday, May 7th, 5-7pm!"

All of the characters in the image above, and more, (including Combat Colin) will be in the incredible, over 200-page, Volume One of Aces Weekly, which will be on sale on Comixology on that day.

Aces at Orbital event page on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/events/232721430261387/?ref=22

Aces Weekly website:

http://www.acesweekly.co.uk

Orbital Comics website:

http://www.orbitalcomics.com/