Who could’ve foreseen that a weird graphic novel about Aleister Crowley would sell well and get good reviews and have to be relaunched at London Super Comic Con in a handsome new hardcover edition with an all-new cover by Roy H Stewart. Not me, that’s for sure.

Me and Roy will be signing at the Markosia booth from 2-3pm on Saturday the 20th of February.  And I’ll be there, flying solo (but hopefully not flying low), on Sunday from 11-12. Do stop by and say hello if you can.

It was great to get a chance to go back and fix a few small but niggling errors. And I was very glad of the design skills and all-round good taste of Bram Meehan, who pulled everything together for us on this new edition. This is very much the author’s preferred edition. So if you’re going to buy a copy, make sure it’s this one.

Here’s the skinny…

Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste, the critically-acclaimed graphic novel by Martin Hayes, Roy Huteson Stewart, and Paul McLaren is re-launching at LSCC 2016.

A meticulously researched exploration of the life of Aleister Crowley, with a foreword by renowned Crowley scholar Richard Kaczynski. This new edition has been revised and completely redesigned with a new cover and additional bonus content – fully annotated and complete with bibliography and rarities.

Know then the life and times of England’s most infamous son. Occultist, artist, poet, prophet, record-setting mountaineer, drug and free-love pioneer, spy, scholar, and legendary bad egg. Summoner of demons and loser of friends. An explorer of many realms who conversed with gods and angels but ended his days labelled “The Wickedest Man in the World.” A foolish genius. A much-maligned history. A wanderer of the waste.

Published by Markosia.
ISBN: 978-1-909276-75-8

Praise for Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste

“One of the most ambitious and well-balanced experiments in comics I’ve seen this year.” Hannah Means-Shannon, Bleeding Cool.

“The ending really is something quite interesting and special.” Richard Bruton, Forbidden Planet International Blog.

“Skilfully written and illustrated, leaving one almost dizzy and in mind of Vonnegut’s Slaughter-House 5.” Matthew Stocker, The Green Book.

“Deftly weaves together the spiritual and the mundane, truth and rumour, into what is ultimately a human story about one of the most ambitious people ever to live . . . a work to savour and return to.” From the foreword by Richard Kaczynski. Author of Perdurabo, the Life of Aleister Crowley

Written by Martin Hayes. Art by Roy H Stewart. Lettered by Paul McLaren. Designed by Bram Meehan. Script edited by Martin Conaghan. Published by Markosia.

A few pages from the prologue…

A lengthy and very positive review of my Crowley book appears in issue two of The Green Book, a superbly interesting journal published by The Swan River Press.  Well worth checking out.

This is pretty bloody brilliant. The renowned Atlantis Bookshop on London’s Museum Street will be holding an exhibition of Roy H Stewart’s original artwork from the graphic novel Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste.

The exhibition opens as part of Atlantis’s annual Crowleymass celebrations on Sunday the 1st of December, 2013. 2-5PM. Roy will be there talking about his art and process, and I’ll be there too – chatting, looking shifty, and generally milling about.

There will be over 80 pieces of framed original art on display, along with several grimoire-like sketchbooks which Roy put together while we were working on the book. And everything is for sale. Prices start at £25.

The exhibition will run until the 24th of December.

If you’re planning to attend, the Atlantis Bookshop would appreciate it if you could RSVP at the email address on the flyer. You can also contact them there if you’d like to reserve a particular piece of artwork.

Hope to see you there!

Two new reviews of Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste this week.

The ending really is something quite interesting and special, Hayes and Stewart finding a really involving, and yes, a magical way to end their tale, to end Crowley’s life. But the thing the graphic novel leaves us with, as it should, is that Crowley’s desire to transcend death, and to live in the imagination and the memory of the world, was accomplished. Death took the man, but his legacy lives on.

Richard Bruton on the Forbidden Planet blog.

The impressionistic style often bleeds over into the real world scenes, kind of like how the world of magic often comes into the everyday life of Crowley. I enjoyed both styles but I particularly enjoyed the “Interlude” chapter which was entirely in the first style and was a nice change of pace and break from the often haunting imagery of the impressionist style. Overall, I really enjoyed this book.

David Ferguson on Irish Comic News

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.

AC was know to hold curry parties where he would cook up a pot of his speciality – glacier curry, the recipe perfected during his mountaineering expeditions. It’s reported that during his final days at Netherwood one of his favourite meals to take in his room was a plate of sardines sprinkled with curry powder. That’s why I asked Roy H Stewart to show a tin on the sideboard.

One of his final requests was that his friends gather together to share a curry on the anniversary of his death. On the 1st of December 1948 Lady Frieda Harris, Gerald Yorke and twelve others did just that.

Aleister Crowley: Wandering The Waste

It makes me immensely happy to report that my old pal and cohort Roy Huteson Stewart has recommenced work on our graphic novel Aleister Crowley: Wandering the Waste. Contracts have been signed with Markosia and it’s all systems go. All we need to do now is finish the bloody thing.

The road has not been easy but at last it looks as though we’ll see this book on shelves before we’re all dead and rotting in the ground. It’s nearly two years since Crowley was supposed to be completed and published. It seems longer that that, since the original publisher collapsed in a wholly avoidable and bile-filled fashion, since my first trip to a lawyer’s office, since the long and tedious exchange of emails with a worm masquerading as a man. But that’s all in the past. And we’re back on track. And we will finish this awful cloying bastard of a book.

If all goes to plan Crowley will launch at 2013’s Kapow! comic convention in London.

A little about the format of the book: we’re talking 100 pages of actual comic, with each chapter being preceded by a page of relevant quotes from Crowley and his contemporaries. A 17,000 word appendix to the chapters will also be included. Expect it to be about 144 pages all in.

So, it’s all back on track. All systems go. Thanks must go to Roy for sticking with the project during it’s scrap-heap years. And to Paul McLaren for continuing his lettering work even when the book was without a publisher. And to Martin Conaghan and Nic Wilkinson and Alasdair Duncan, for their support at the beginning and throughout.

I received these unlettered pages from Roy just this week. They’re from a short five page interlude which comes between chapters three and four. Just a little walk in the snow-covered grounds of Netherwood. An easy, ambling lull to decompress after an information-heavy chapter three.

I especially like what Roy has done on the page above. The sun coming out on Crowley. How very appropriate.

I changed the blog header a little while ago. My friend and cohort Roy Huteson Stewart very kindly let me use a cropped image from his superb artwork for our forthcoming Aleister Crowley graphic novel, Crowley: Wandering the Waste.

Page 43 to be exact. Roy’s pages are things of rare beauty and insight.

My friend and cohort Roy Huteson Stewart posted a picture of his desk on facebook yesterday.

It is magnificent.

Roy Huteson Stewart‘s pages are starting to come in thick and fast as he works on Crowley: Wandering The Waste, our collaboration for Insomnia. Here’s a couple of unlettered panels from the prologue…

I’m really enjoying working with Roy, he’s bringing plenty of strange and brilliant ideas to the project that I would never have thought of.  Can’t really ask for much more than that.  He’s also doing a great job capturing the frailty of Crowley in old age.

I don’t know who took the above photographs, possibly Kenneth Grant (one of them does appear in Remembering Aleister Crowley, Grant’s very interesting memoir of his friendship with AC).  Taken in the garden at Netherwood, Hastings. Probably in or around 1945, which would make Crowley approximately 70 years old.

The book is looking like it will end up containing about 90 pages of actual comic, plus 30 or so pages of notes at the back. There may be a gallery at the back too, showing other artists interpretations of AC.

Out towards the end of the year, with any luck.