Warhammer Wednesday: Inferno! classic reprints

Black Library have released the next batch of classic Inferno! reprints. Each issue is a facsimile of the original magazine, available to print on demand for two weeks only, and you can purchase them as a single collection that will get you issues 26-35!

The period covered by this collection just happens to be the time when I was at my most prolific, in terms of making contributions to Inferno! magazine. Of these ten classic issues, six contain short stories or comic strips by Yours Truly, and they are...

Inferno! #26 - Firestarter! – Necromunda short story

Inferno! #27 - The Nagenhof Bell – Warhammer short story

Inferno! #28 - The Executioner’s Tale – Warhammer comic strip

Inferno! #29 - Bad Medicine – Necromunda short story

Inferno! #32 - The Miner’s Tale – Warhammer comic strip

Inferno! #34 - Mark of the Beast – Warhammer short story


To order the collection of ten issues*, or just the edited highlights, follow this link.

* These issues are available to order until 6:00pm GMT on Saturday 18th July 2020.

Warhammer Wednesday: The Ten-Tailed Cat T-shirt

Back in the day* I wrote a number of comic strips for the Black Library that were published under the 'Tales From The Ten-Tailed Cat' banner. They were...

The Executioner’s Tale

Inferno! #28 (2002) – re-printed in the graphic novels Tales from the Ten-Tailed Cat Volume 2 (2003) and The Complete Tales from the Ten-Tailed Cat (2005)

The Miner’s Tale
Inferno! #32 (2002) – re-printed in the graphic novels Tales from the Ten-Tailed Cat Volume 2 (2003) and The Complete Tales from the Ten-Tailed Cat (2005)

The Tale of the Hound
Warhammer Monthly #79 (2004) – re-printed in the graphic novel The Complete Tales from the Ten-Tailed Cat (2005)

The Farmer’s Tale
Warhammer Monthly #80 (2004) – re-printed in the graphic novel The Complete Tales from the Ten-Tailed Cat (2005)

Well fans of The Ten-Tailed Cat (the tavern in Talabheim where these tales were ostensibly told) can, for a limited time, purchase this limited edition T-shirt.

So don't delay, get your order in today!

* 'The day' being the time when Warhammer Monthly and Inferno! magazine were still being published.

Y is for Yeowell... Steve Yeowell

I first became aware of Steve Yeowell's work when I started reading 2000AD in the early nineties. (I know, I was a late starter.) The most vivid memory I have from that time was of his work on Zenith and I was later to enjoy it in the long-running Devlin Waugh six-month story-arc that was comprised of Chasing Herod, Reign of Frogs and Sirius Rising in 1999.

So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I discovered in 2004 that Steve would be illustrating my comic strip The Tale of the Hound (part of the Tales from the Ten-Tailed Cat series published in Inferno! and Warhammer Monthly).

Steve's currently hard at work on more Red Seas for 2000AD but he kindly took some time out of his busy schedule to answer my questions for this blog.

1. How did you start out as a professional artist?
I started writing and drawing a strip for small press SF stripzine “Totally Alien”, moving on to drawing episodes of “Lieutenant Fl’FF” in “Swiftsure” for Harrier Comics, all the while sending out samples.

2. What was it that gave you your big break and led to what you are doing now?

I helped out John Higgins on a half-page strip he was producing for a music/lifestyle mag called “The Street”. That led to a cover for “Spider Man And Zoids” at Marvel UK then a fill in on the Zoids strip. When regular penciller Kev Hopgood moved on to “Action Force” I was offered the strip full time.

3. What is your preferred method of working? Which medium suits your style best?

I work traditionally, pencilling and then inking the pages. I use Photoshop for minor corrections and deliver files of the pages digitally.

4. You have created and illustrated all manner of famous comic book characters. Which are your favourites?

My favourites are the characters I grew up with – my very favourite American title being the Fantastic Four. However, I found when I had the opportunity to draw an appearance by them in “Skrull Kill Krew” that I didn’t want it to be me drawing them – I wanted it to be Jack Kirby...

5. How does working for 2000AD compare to working for Black Library?

Apart from the invoicing procedure, pretty much the same!

6. What is the appeal of working creatively within the Warhammer setting?

It is its own unique and internally consistent self-contained world.

7. How did you find the process of illustrating The Tale of the Hound for Warhammer Monthly?

Clear and straightforward – nice work, Jon!

8. Of which piece of work are you most proud?

“67 seconds” – a graphic novel James Robinson and I produced for Epic. James gave me a script like a screenplay so I had more freedom than with a normal full script.

9. Is there anything you haven’t illustrated that you would still like to?

I’d like to draw a straight historical adventure.

10. What are you working on at the moment?

The last series of “The Red Seas”.

11. What advice would you give to any aspiring artists wanting to follow in your footsteps?

Keep a sketchbook of real things – not an ideas book – it’ll give you a feel for what looks right when you have to make them up. And be persistent!

Thanks again to Steve for taking the time to answer my questions, and remember to keep an eye out for his work in forthcoming issues of 2000AD.

W is for Warhammer Monthly

Warhammer Monthly was an anthology comic published by the Black Library, from March 1998 to December 2004, running to 86 issues in total. The final two issues were published bi-monthly as the Warhammer Comic, and it remains the only comic book ever to win an Eagle Award and get canceled in the same week. It featured stories set within Games Workshop's fictional universes of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000.

The first ever comic strip I had commissioned was a Necromunda tale called Kill Confirmed (1999). It was the story of a Spyre Hunter's hunt and was illustrated by Paul Jeacock. My second comic strip was also set in the Necromunda underhive. This one, Slavebreak! (2002), was one of P J Holden's early pieces of paid comic strip work, for which he created a number of character studies.

In December 2002 Warhammer Monthly became Warhammer Warped Visions, just for that month. It featured one-shot variations of Black Library's most popular comics, but with their settings reversed between the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 universes. For example, the Dark Elf Malus Darkblade was portrayed as a Dark Eldar, while the Titan Imperius Dictatio was shown as an Empire Steam Tank. I contributed the lead story which turned Battle Sister Ephrael Stern, of the hugely successful Daemonifuge strip, into Ephrael von Stern: Sister of Sigmar, transplanting the character to the damned Warhammer city of Mordheim. The strip also featured on the cover and the editor told me that if he'd had the budget for some colour pages that month (as he had the year before) it would have been my strip that received the colouring treatment.

My other strips were all Tales from the Ten-Tailed Cat and were collected, along with the ones I'd written that appeared in Inferno! magazine, in The Complete Tales from the Ten-Tailed Cat (2005).

My total contribution to Warhammer Monthly is as follows:

Kill Confirmed – Warhammer 40,000 science fiction comic strip – Warhammer Monthly free issue given away with White Dwarf Magazine #232 (1999)

Slavebreak! – Warhammer 40,000 science fiction comic strip – Warhammer Monthly #57 (2002)

Ephrael von Stern: Sister of Sigmar – Warhammer fantasy comic strip – Warhammer Monthly #63 (2002)

The Tale of the Hound – Warhammer fantasy comic strip – Warhammer Monthly #79 (2004) – re-printed in the graphic novel The Complete Tales from the Ten-Tailed Cat (2005)

The Farmer’s Tale – Warhammer fantasy comic strip – Warhammer Monthly #80 (2004) – re-printed in the graphic novel The Complete Tales from the Ten-Tailed Cat (2005)