Posts Tagged ‘Bernadette’
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Ah the glorious sight of cowboy mercenaries and their untimely demise! There is no easier and quicker way of destroying local trust and respect than having a bunch of idiots driving around randomly shooting at people. It draws attention and also makes the people you’re trying to help hate you in the process. There are stories of rival mercenary outfits attacking each other from time to time in order to secure lucrative contracts.
It isn’t all like that however, the norm is usually some very good chaps who do their job successfully but I thought I’d seek to highlight the difference between the good and the plain bad.
Its been a few busy weeks here at Hard Graft towers and we’ve more or less finished it. I’m going to order ten books and when they’re all printed and sent out to me I’ll send them out to the nice people who ordered them! 
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Click here to pre-order!
And in true shambolic fashion Hard Graft is BACK!
Sorry but I forgot to do anything beyond adding the page which I did last week when Jules delivered the page to me. I’m making up for it now so chill winston. Happily we have another 7 pages of this arc to go yet
A lot of this advice is true. A lot of people think of chaps wearing mostly black with large flack/kevlar jackets with sunglasses toting expensive looking assault rifles screaming around in armoured 4x4s.
The reality is actually completely different. Competent private security people tend to be ultra low key, tend to spend days and sometimes weeks scouting their surroundings before the start of a job and many prefer to use whatever weapon they can get their hands on. The more expensive, the more likely someone (Taliban or Afghan Police) will want to kill you for it it seems.
If you want some advice, go pick up “The Circuit” by former SAS man Bob Shepherd. The man has spent a lot of time escorting various people around in the West Bank, Iraq and Afghanistan and knows exactly what he’s talking about.
And so thats why you shouldn’t lie to ol’ Uncle Alan. Because he’ll make sure that you’ll be limping for the rest of your life.
Another week and another page in what is turning out to be my favourite side story yet! Its been really enjoyable so far but there is more joy (and woe) on the horizon. First the joy.
The books should be arriving either sometime this week or the beginning of next week. If you want a book you can either buy one from me in person at the 2010 Webcomix and Small Press expo in Mile End, London on the 27th of March or you can just e-mail me and we’ll sort it out. I’ve only got 35 so £2.50 in person or £4 to be posted abroad. All orders should (fingers crossed) get a free postcard, badge and fridge magnet! Everyone loves fridge magnets.
Now the bad news. Recently the UK has been buffeted by what can only be described as political indecision. And its this which has spooked the financial world which in response to this indecision has been gradually devaluing Sterling against the Dollar and the Euro. Last year the Dollar was worth about $1.65 to the Pound which was a great rate and enabled me to run this comic. Today however it is barely $1.48 to the Pound which is frankly hurting me.
Obviously despite being almost near parity, switching to the Euro is not an option as the exchange rate between the Euro and the Dollar is even worse at $1.30 to the Euro.
I’ve had a chat with both German and Jules and we’re going to wait until the 24th of March when the UK Budget is announced and see how the markets react. If there is serious action to deal with the UK’s economic woes and the markets give it a thumbs up and the pound gains strength against the Dollar then happy days. If not then I’m going to have to put the comic on hiatus until things improve.
In any case, because I’m flying off to Japan for three weeks I’m going to put the comic on hiatus in May anyway. This is all very tough for me as I really want to keep going with this and I look at the scripts every day and dream of how awesome they’re going to be when I share them with you on this site. I’m going to get my books and I’m going to show them to my Mum and Dad and say “look what I’ve been doing with friends” and they’re going to love it. So its killing me that I have to stop it because of the current situation.
If the exchange rate improves over the next 10 days I’ll keep you updated and so on. Until then, lets hope things improve eh? 
