I’ve been quite remiss in updating this website. Blame it on the great creeping malaise of 2019, the working away from home, the pandemic, the lockdown, the attempted coups, the general decline and inevitable demise of western civilisation; yes, blame it on some or all of that, I guess.

Thought I’d document some of the stuff that was released in that time but wasn’t posted here.

Gentlemen Ghouls volume 3 was such an epic that it had to be published over two volumes of David Lloyd’s long running digital comic Aces Weekly, appearing in late 2020 in volumes 47 and 48.

Rumour has it (started by me) that a print edition of the entire Gentlemen Ghouls saga might be coming sometime soon.

Written by Martin Hayes.
Art by Alfie Gallagher.
Lettering/design by Bram Meehan.

Unremitting steel work has me all at sixes and sevens. Bereavements drain the heart. Now-perennial house renovations suck the very lifeblood from my neck like that mad-eyed Lugosi fella in the old black-and-whites. Time marches on and I am left behind, like so much dust-encrusted meat. Basically, I haven’t had time to take a piss let alone do anything like update the website to let people know that I had a new comic out.

Don’t Feed the Pigeons ran for three weeks in Volume 32 of Aces Weekly. A tasty little slice of near-future SF, with wonderfully frenetic art by Hugo Hughes Doherty and lettering/logo work from the always superb Bram Meehan.

You can buy Volume 32 here.

And here’s a little taste, because you’re not all bad.

Written by Martin Hayes.
Art by Hugo Hughes Doherty.
Letters/logo by Bram Meehan.

That’s right, slags. Shut yer cake-holes and listen up while I tell you the brilliant news… the Gentlemen Ghouls are back!

It’s nine months since they kicked seven shades out of the most monstrous vampire of them all, and now things are about to get a whole lot worse. It’s still 1972. London is still awash with supernatural naughtiness. The clothes and cars and music are still better than they are now.

What Is and What Should Never Be!

Unholy plots will be revealed!

Cosmic forces will be unleashed!

Almost-new leather shoes will be ruined by vomit!

Right, I’m off for me dinner, but don’t forget that it’s all kicking off again in Gentlemen Ghouls Volume 2. Serialized from Monday the 4th of December, exclusively in the pages of Aces Weekly.

Written by Martin Hayes.
Art by Alfie Gallagher.
Lettering/design by Bram Meehan.

Alfie and Bram have surpassed themselves on this one. Just real top-notch art and lettering. So glad to be working with these guys. Here, have a little preview…

It’s not even Christmas but here’s an eight page comic for you to read right now.

The Corner of Some Foreign Field.

Generous to a fault, that’s what everyone says about me.

Genesis: me and my old pal Alfie Gallagher were both between larger projects and looking for something quick to scratch that old creative itch. Sometimes Sudocrem just won’t do the job. It wasn’t long since we’d finished our run on Gentlemen Ghouls for David Lloyd’s digital comic Aces Weekly, and we’d enjoyed working together on that immensely, so why the hell not?

We got Bram Meehan, Santa Fe’s finest letterer and designer, on-board. He was the only choice having done such an outstanding job on Gentlemen Ghouls. And we were lucky enough to get the brilliant Chris O’Halloran to work his colour magic for us.

Alfie threw out some loose ideas: things like Moore/Bissette/Totleben era Swamp Thing, rural folk weirdness, Alan Garner, and Nicolas Roeg films. I took all that on-board, adding in my perennial WWII and folk horror obsessions before turning the brain blender up to full blast. Here’s what oozed out…

You can read the whole thing here: http://goo.gl/owtC4Y

If you like it, give the fellas a follow…

https://twitter.com/AlfieGallagher
https://twitter.com/ChrisOHalloran
https://twitter.com/BramMeehan

My next story for David Lloyd’s digital comic Aces Weekly is called Deophonic; or, The Old Sow That Eats Her Farrow.

Deophonic will run for seven weeks, launching in Aces Weekly Volume 22 on Monday, May 16^th 2016. Readers can subscribe at www.acesweekly.co.uk/shop

Written by Martin Hayes. Art by Brian Corcoran. Lettered by Bram Meehan.

I’ve had this story knocking around the old brain pan for at least five years. Never could figure out how to tie it all together. Turns out all I needed was the right location and a truly brilliant artist. Enter Mr Brian Corcoran. Brian’s pages are things of beauty. We decided not to colour this series at all, not even grey tones, because to do so would only detract from the exquisite line work.

Ireland’s been kicked around more than most these last ten years, and I wanted to take a microcosmic look at how the effects of this lunatic and injudicious austerity experiment might play out.

Here’s the info, and some samples…

Bill and Kitty, Dubliners nearing retirement age, are trying to make ends meet in their hi-fi shop on Amiens Street. But the trouble with living on the edge of a precipice is the fact that it only takes one little shove to push you into the abyss. Deophonic is a microcosmic examination of the effects of relentless austerity, an autopsy on the true meanings of love and loss, and a veracious look into the mirror of modern Ireland.

Written by Aces Weekly veteran Martin Hayes, whose previous projects include the graphic novels Abominable Glory and Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste. @martinhayes and www.paroneiria.com

Art by Brian Corcoran, who has illustrated for the Cork Horror Comic. www.briancorcoranart.com and @ _Brian_Corcoran and briancorcoranblog.tumblr.com

Letters by Bram Meehan, who has worked on titles such as Abominable Glory, Gentlemen Ghouls, and Older Than the Hills. www.bramletters.com and @BramMeehan

That’s Amiens Street railway bridge, just outside of Connolly Station. Connolly, and the street – that exact scene which you can see in the amazing panorama above – was always (and sometimes still is) my gateway into Dublin. Some of the grandest days of my youth began with trudging off the train within spitting distance of that bridge.

The location was all-important, for reasons I can’t really explain. I just hadn’t been able to find a way into the story until I set in a real-world, tangible, touchable location.

It all started to fall into place about a year ago. I’d met my old mate Brian Showers for lunch and maybe a pint and we’d ended up down on Amiens Street searching out a basement-dwelling supplier of embossing stamps and engraved brass plaques. I forget the reason why. But that little excursion out of our way sowed the seeds. And I knew that this story could grow and thrive within that topography.

Deophonic; or, The Old Sow That Eats Her Farrow. Running for seven weeks, launching in Aces Weekly Volume 22 on May 16^th 2016. Subscribe at www.acesweekly.co.uk/shop

(The above photo taken on the day of the embossing stamp excursion. Look at that ten-ton slate-grey Irish winter sky. The kind of sky that can crush all hope and innocence from even the kindliest soul.)

Morning, creeps. I’m very happy to announce that I’ve got a new story launching in David Lloyd’s digital comic Aces Weekly.

Gentlemen Ghouls.

London, 1972. An unholy cesspit of crime, vice and diabolical villainy. And that’s just the good bits.

When a girl winds up dead at the first Ziggy Stardust gig at the Toby Jug pub in Tolworth, it falls to two hard-talking and harder-drinking London coppers to crack the case. But Jack Pike and Paddy Roach are out of their depth, at a loss to explain the strange bite-marks on the dead girl’s throat. And when handcuffs and truncheons just won’t do the trick, the Flying Squad in the experts. The Gentlemen Ghouls to be precise, England’s greatest and most reclusive occult investigators.

A high-camp mash-up of Hammer Horror and gritty seventies cop shows. Lush, lurid, lively, and lecherous. All the L-words, basically.

Gentlemen Ghouls will run for seven weeks, launching in Aces Weekly Volume 21 on Monday, March 14^th 2016. Subscribe at www.acesweekly.co.uk

Written by Aces Weekly veteran Martin Hayes, whose previous projects include the graphic novels Abominable Glory and Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste. @martinhayes and www.paroneiria.com

Art by Alfie Gallagher, who has illustrated for FutureQuake, Zarjaz, and Charlatan Tales. www.alfiegallagher.com and @AlfieGallagher

Letters by Bram Meehan, who has worked on titles such as Abominable Glory and Older Than the Hills. www.bramletters.com and @BramMeehan

Samples…

My next comic project is called Older Than the Hills and will be appearing in volume 18 of David Lloyd’s digital comic Aces Weekly.

It’s a story about desire, and history, and the creeping influence of ancient, unseen forces. I’m calling it a “pastoral science fiction story”. Just to annoy people, really.

Very happy to be working with the old Abominable Glory team again. Chris Askham on art, Bram Meehan on letters. And both doing a superb job, as always.

The story will run over seven issues, for the entirety of volume 18, and launches on the 7th of September. You can subscribe here.

And here, just for you, is the first instalment. I hope you’ll check it out.

My next graphic novel is called Abominable Glory and will be launching at London Super Comic Con on 14th and 15th of March 2015. I’ll be there, as will the artist Chris Askham. Check the press release below for signing times and whatnot. There’ll be some reviews and such cropping up in the coming weeks.

Good to see this finally creeping into the daylight. It’s a story I’ve had knocking around the mouldering recesses of my brain for a good few years. A bit of a love letter to the cryptozoology books I read as a boy, and to the war comics I grew up with; Battle Action, Commando and the like.

As always with comics this was a real team effort. A yeti-sized round of applause goes out to Chris Askham for his amazing art, Bram Meehan for his top-notch lettering and design work, and Matt Soffe, for his superlative cover.

Bonus material includes concept sketches, script-to-art samples, an essay about how the books and tv shows of my youth provided the seeds for this project, and pin-ups by Jamie Chase and Marc Jackson.

Abominable Glory is published by Markosia and will launch at the London Super Comic Con in the Excel Centre on Saturday 14th of March, 2015.

Written by Martin Hayes, whose previous projects include the graphic novels Project Luna: 1947 and Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste, and with art by Chris Askham, who has illustrated for Siti’s Sisters, Zarjaz, and DogBreath, Abominable Glory is 80 pages of grey-scale monster mayhem.

Martin and Chris will be signing at the Markosia booth from 10-12 on the Saturday and Sunday of LSCC.

Abominable Glory is currently available to pre-order at amazon.co.uk., amazon.com, and direct from Markosia. I’ll be selling signed copies here as soon as I get them.

Published by Markosia
ISBN: 9781909276475

Written by Martin Hayes
@martinhayes and www.paroneiria.com

Art by Chris Askham
www.chris-askham.co.uk

Letters/design by Bram Meehan
www.bramletters.com

Cover by Matt Soffe
@mygrimmbrother

Here’s the first four pages…

Since getting laid off from the shipyard in mid May I have done just about bugger all of anything. This must change. So, time to kick into gear and push on with some projects that have been malingering in the edgelands for too long.

While I’ve been dawdling things have been chugging along nicely.

The Crowley book is out in the wild. The signed limited edition sold out in under 24 hours. The regular edition is still readily available.

Project Luna: 1947 is out there in trade paperback. Still a few hardcovers knocking about too.

Get It Down & Other Weird Stories, which collects fourteen of my short stories (ten previously published in magazines like Nature, Supernatural Tales and Innsmouth Magazine, along with four stories seeing the light of day for the first time) will be released towards the end of August.

But it’s time to get a move on with the new stuff.

The as-yet-unnamed WWII/horror graphic novel is ticking along nicely. Chris Askham’s pages are always a treat to see and Bram Meehan’s lettering is consistently top-notch. We’re close to a third of the way through it. Here, have a low-res sneak-peek…

I’ve got a few short stories out there, just need to keep them in circulation until, hopefully, an editor likes the looks of one.

There are a few other comic projects to get off the ground too, along with a couple that got off the ground only to then develop bad knees and rickets before collapsing face first into the dirt. Time to kick them back into life. Or kick them to death and have done with it. Better than having them hanging around in limbo.

Not long now until Thought Bubble in Leeds. Roll on November. I’ll be singing at the Markosia table on both days. Times to be announced.

And it’s off to London the following weekend for what promises to be an exciting event involving my old pal and Crowley artist extraordinaire Roy H Stewart. As Roy said to me recently, “Turns out the occult is a very friendly place.” I’ll post details here once it’s all announced.

Right then. Onwards.

I’ll just put the kettle on first.