Mincey Scattercushion

  A long, long time ago, a sacred relic known as The Bracelet of Nashku was stolen by a man called Steve. However, when he touched the bracelet, he triggered a curse.

He was to live an immortal life as the new Guardian of the bracelet, but as a giant mole. And he had a choice; He could destroy the bracelet and remain as a giant mole forever or he could choose a Bearer to wear the bracelet, at which time demons and evil things would awaken and walk the earth. If the Bearer succeeds and destroys all the baddies, then Steve will become human again and the world will be rid of the demons forever.

However, 4000 years later, and in present day, Steve is still a mole. He hasn't detroyed the bracelet, but he hasn't chosen a Bearer yet, either. Unfortunately for him, and human-kind, a young, feeble loser called Mincey Scattercushion finds the bracelet and puts it on.

The demons are unleashed and the fate of the world now lies in the (clumsy) hands of Mincey and Steve.

When I was in Camden for some reason or another, I was faced with the prospect of getting the tube home. Camden Town tube station is one end of the Northern Line, and Colliers Wood tube station is far down the other. I hate the tube and walk around London as much as is possible, so the idea of sitting on a stuffy underground train for about 45 minutes with nothing to do was not pleasant. So I bought a sketch book for the journey.

I started by drawing a couple of characters as concept art for an idea I had of drawing a comic into a pre-binded sketch book, each page would be a page of one long comic. It began to dawn on me that the image I was drawing looked a lot like a front page. So I decided it would be, and the rest of the sketch book would be the comic.

I had already been developing the characters, and at the time, it so happened that on that tube journey I drew them better than my attempts before then. Obiously, as you can see, the characters have changed and developed a lot.

I liked the whole idea of drawing the comic straight into a book. It meant mistakes couldn't be made. Pages couldn't be taken out. And I liked the roughness of how you would see the characters change in appearance as the comic progressed. It was just for fun and I never even thought of publishing it.

Lots of people (mostly my friends) took an interest in Mincey Scattercusion and encourage me to draw more so they could find out what happened next.

A friend of mine had started publishing his own collaborative comic, Tales From the Flat, and encouraged me to publish Mincey.

So I've been re-drawing the original comic onto larger, easier to copy, paper. Working on making each frame look better, and trying to maintain continuity with the characters' appearances. Volume one is scheduled to be released in Summer 2007.

All characters, names and events in Mincey have been influenced by something in my life. I could be nodding to a manga or even a person I know. I have tried to fill Mincey with layers of meaning. Some of them you will find on this website and some you may learn in future volumes.