Carter's Column: Shang Ri La La La Feature

NEW YEAR won't be so much a celebration as a promise of danger aplenty, a treachery too far and fiendish foes hidden behind every snowy mountain in Carter's Column when 2010 gets underway!

Next Sunday sees the debut of an event-packed new adventure saga titled Shang Ri La La La for Speech Balloons's intrepid investigative reporter.

Carter, Lauren, and another familiar face from the series are sent by Joe Stone to do an expose report on Dragon Brand Cigars.

Alas, and perhaps not unexpectedly, they get cut off in their prime - Midflight over the Himalayas! Thereafter it all goes downhill... without a pair of skis in sight!

We're more than pleased to welcome on board Gary Crutchley for the full duration of this epic!

During the horror comics boom of a decade and a bit back, Gary's prolific output could be found between the pages of such scary tomes as Gore Shriek, Shriek itself, and Killing Stroke. He illustrated Stratosfear, a series published by Caliber, has contributed to 2000AD in more recent years, and is doing his bit to keep the independent British comic industry strong these days, as well as drawing a graphic novel for Insomnia Publications, that we'll be getting him to reveal more about here at Speech Balloons in 2010.

Gary is pencil artist on the entire Shang Ri La La La series. This feature includes an early characte sketch he did of our leading characters, and one of a, ahem, interesting character we'll be seeing before too long!

Garen Ewing, author of The Rainbow Orchid graphic novel series published by Egmont helped give the new series a look of its own by inking the first four episodes. Then Gary stepped in for a couple, after which you will see Seek & You Will Find series artist Mats Engesten taking over as inker, as he and Gary climb to new heights creatively, seemingly inspiring each other.

Mats actually starts the series as our colourist, a role he's played well before, and The Princess of Tsyzac's letterer John Robbins returns to help us uphill and should our heroes survive not freezing to death, the return of Andrew Dodd and Donald Jackson as colourist and letterer respectively.

Hold on, it's going to be a bumpy ride... At time it might get scary, but you know how that can be at the fair, it's likely to be fun too!

For more on our featured artist visit: www.gcrutchley.blogspot.com