:3

You can visit this area in daytime in Google Street View … I have no idea what it really looked like in 1998, but decided to take some liberties here.
Wait, it’s actually 1999 now … Early January or so. As I recall that winter was mild (i.e. a normal 1990′s winter).

I added the two frames at the top of the page because I realised that I had not yet included a pony anywhere in this chapter. :(
Random horses were an essential part of central Gateshead in the 1990′s.

As far as I know, right now I’m in Stockholm. So this page was posted by the Comicpress robot!

The wondrous building they are hanging out at is the CWS Soap Works in Dunston, Gateshead. There really were rotting carcasses of boats in the river around it. Now it’s been demolished and replaced by condos, and the river has probably been cleaned up a bit.

I tried to avoid every part of Tyneside that could be seen in the cute film Purely Belter (2000), which was a bit too much plagued by the “OMG we have to put in all the famous landmarks!!” urge (especially the way the Angel of the North was inserted into the storyline was rather strange). But here I made an exception, because the soap works were too nice to not include.

Purely Belter focused more on the Dunston Staithes, anyway. Here are some screencaps:

The story is about two boys with no money and messed up family situations, who want to get football season tickets. They try all kinds of schemes to raise the money, and encounter both hilarities and tragedies.

Here they try to salvage sellable scrap from the mud by the soap works. (That’s the same spot that can be seen in panel 3 above!)

In the end the film totally fails to get the class perspective, and claims that the reason why some people are poor and messed up is because they didn’t have “a good dad”. Mistaking a symptom for the cause. Sigh.

Next weekend I will be at the comics festival in Stockholm selling books and zines. I still have to print Tunguska #10 (and especially I need to buy a new suitcase, since the old one got destroyed by all the trips hauling heavy books and zines).

Here is the cover. Sadly, Robinson’s pit bull doggie Emma has a kind of limited role in the comic, and her name isn’t even mentioned, but now she gets some extra exposure on the cover for this issue. :3

Doggies on the beach. :3

That’s Tynemouth, where the Tyne flows into the North Sea.

In the background are the ruins of Tynemouth Priory. The site was already occupied by Romans, and the priory was founded in the 7th century. It was fortified to protect it from Viking raids, and still in WWII it was used as a coastal defence installation. The ruins and graveyard surrounded by fortifications and guns look a bit eerie.

Bordering to Tynemouth to the north are the seaside towns of Cullercoats and Whitley Bay. Whitley Bay was once famous for its permanent fairground, the Spanish City, which that Dire Straits song is about :3 …

Oh, and the railing on the Tynemouth pier has now been painted black. It took me immense research efforts to figure out whether it was still rusty white in December 1998. V°(oo)°;V
I found photos with the old rusty white railing from 1991, then 1997, then early 1998 …  And finally, when I was almost despairing and considering a frame that didn’t show the railing, one from 2001, where it was still white and rusty!

Psychologist Alice Miller is pretty relevant in this installment, and I guess Bob has read her books. :o/ There are some good articles available on her website.

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Anyway, keep an eye on the tumblr. :3 I just started a 30 day sketch challenge, and I also post other stupid random stuff there that’s more or less related to Driftwood.

I’m posting this page one day early, because I’ll be spending tomorrow building a new fence in the back of my garden. I haven’t been there since December, and maybe the old dilapidated fence fell apart by now … The new fence will be some kind of cheap wire fence, but I plan to eventually reinforce it with blackberry brambles on the inside. V^(oo)^V

As we speak I’m making a print PDF file of the interior of the Swedish book, and then it’s going to the printers. V*(oo)*V

I’m almost finished with the book. I only need to proofread it a few dozen times …

I asked my publisher a long time ago when the exact deadline for file delivery to the printers is. He hasn’t replied yet, and since they usually require four weeks until delivery date, I’m assuming that I’m still on schedule. (I would think that he’d tell me if the date was approaching, unless he’s being really exceptionally passive-aggressive right now … V`(oo)´;V)

Anyway, here is the whole cover as it looks now:

I had no idea what else to put on the back cover except this Karen Blixen quote (or paraphrase, if one is to nitpick) that rather nicely sums up Driftwood: “The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.”

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In other news, Swedish Comic Sin 3 went to the printer and will be out at the end of April. :3 There are some previews of my contribution on my blog …
Now it will be exciting to see if I can somehow get some copies of it in time for SPX in Stockholm.

A British reader expressed surprise at the fact that there was a working lift in the building in the beginning of this chapter, so now they are all broken down in this end of the building …

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Against all odds, I actually finished drawing the comic the other day. Now I just have to letter and edit the book, and it looks like that should very well get done in time for the file delivery date to the printer. So, yes, there will be a Swedish Driftwood book at the end of April. V*(oo)*V
(That book will only have the main story, because the short stories are too weird. I’ll make a separate Swedish book with short stories and extra artwork next year or so.)

Last night Ilan and I celebrated the feat a little with sushi … I got kappamaki + avocadomaki and then even more avocadomaki at Musashi (best sushi in town :3).
Yeah …