Angela Rufino is the assistant editor on the Minx books, football fan, and all round good egg. I thought I’d ask her some questions about what that job entails and how much time she spends on trains.

1. Who are you, where are you from, where are you going?
My name’s Angela Rufino and I’m an assistant editor for Vertigo/DC Comics. Originally I’m from Italy but now I call Philadelphia home. Where am I going? Usually to and from work since I have a four hour commute.

2. A four hour commute? Is that two hours each way, do you take the train? How do you pass the time on the journeys, listen to music, do some work, read comics?
Yes, luckily I take the train and don’t have to drive in to New York City. I actually don’t mind it. It gives me time to catch up on my reading and rock out to my sweet iPod playlists. By the way, I have a question for you: Why is it that Brits create the best music and have the greatest bands?
It’s often said that the UK’s generous unemployment benefit has allowed musicians to hone their craft without the pesky interference of working a day job. But I think the days of living it large on the dole are long gone.

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Okay, everyone’s bogged off to San Diego so we can go crazy and make bookmarks. Do we know how to par-tayyy, or what?

So. Print out your sheet.

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Following on from my “Here’s one I made earlier” posts I thought I’d take you through the process of making a page of Glister (out from Image, August, 64 pages, self-contained stories, spine).

Where to start?

First I sit in my “studio”. Because we’re itinerant tinkers and always one step ahead of the law we’re between houses at the moment, so my studio is a small table in the corner of the bedroom.

The wooden box to the left, the one with the knot of cables, is our “technology hub”. The wooden box under my table is my wardrobe. I get my unique crumpled look by resting my feet in my wardrobe while at work. My wife, Phil, has a pathological hatred of my grey chair so it folds up and lives behind the door at night.

The upside is, when it stops raining for a moment, I can look out at the nice view from my window.

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I’ve known of Simon Gane a lot longer than I’ve known him. We moved in the same small-press circles, attending the Caption convention, the Oxford mini-comics gathering, where I’d see him propping up the bar. I’ve always liked his artwork, he can draw a good punk, and anti-establishment tortoise. What really grabbed my notice was the way he drew women in a short strip for Chris Butler (someone really should reprint Killer Fly), about two girls facing a homicidal teddy bear. That was cute. But I never considered myself a writer at that point (and some may not now), and so I admired him across a crowded zine section, rather than introduce myself. Then, one day, I was hanging out at John (Hitman) McCrea’s house, where our respective children were causing havoc, and admired a postcard-sized piece of original art hanging on John’s wall (he also has kick-booty Don Heck Iron Man page which is lovely in the flesh). It was by Simon and we both expressed our admiration for his work. From then on I was determined to track Simon down, gather him into my vise-like half-nelson, and force him to collaborate with me.

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I’ve been working on Glister for a while now and it’s turned out to be an all-ages book. I didn’t make it into one, try and force it into a shape it didn’t want to take, that’s the way it wanted to be so I went with it. The All-ages label is a bit of an odd duck. What does it mean? Go into a book shop and you won’t find an all-ages section, at least not in any shop I’ve been to.

All-ages is one of those terms that is allowed to survive in comics, because, for all the faults of the US/UK Direct Market, it’s an industry hasn’t been marketed to within an inch of it’s life. In the children’s section of any bookshop you’ll find the books chopped up into different sections, picture books, early readers, 8-12, Young Adult. Then the adult books are shelved alphabetically for fiction, then sliced by genre. All-ages books are the odd ducks, the ones that belong everywhere, can sit comfortably in the 8-12, and on the adult fiction. I suppose I see the all-ages book as a kind of underdog, something of the unclassifiable breed in the Crufts of the book world. I thought I’d share one of fave all-ages books with you, and hope you’ll suggest some of yours back to me.

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Here’s one I made earlier: Glister.

You’ve risked an alarming Tony Iommi-like accident while cutting out your Charlotte Brook and feel pretty proud of yourself, I’m sure.

However, Lottie is lonely, she needs a pal to stand with. So, here’s Glister.

You know the drill, break out the scissors and the printer and the stiff card.

Print out sheet.

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Charlotte Brook spends a lot of time on the road, she has no choice as her parents won’t let her back until she mends her ways. So, to create a familiar space for herself between mysteries and weirdness, she has a room in Habbo.

You can find her in www.habbo.co.uk

Where she’s known as LottieBrook,

she has a group called Lottie’s Lot,

and a room called Lottie’s Allotment, which is rather bare at the moment, stop by and bring something to sit on.

You’ve all rushed out and jammed your printers trying to feed stiff card through them in order to take part in the thrilling Build Your Own Lottie challenge, right? No? Well get to it.

It’s the last day of the week and so for “Here’s One I Made Earlier#2″ we’ll use whatever paper happens to be sitting in the office laser printer. If you’re being creative it’s not stealing, right?

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I’ve worked with Josh Howard for more than a year or two and we’ve barely swapped an e-mail. Which is weird, but work trundled along on Clubbing, deadlines came and went, and the book was finished. Now it’s out so it’s a good time to say, “Hello” to Josh and get acquainted.

ANDI: Josh, hi, how are you?

JOSH: I’m good. Very tired, but good.

ANDI: I know that feeling. I understand you’re from Texas? Which part? Is it really all cowboy boots and pick-up trucks, like England is cream teas and double decker buses?

JOSH: Haha…no not really. Of course there is all that, but it’s just as diverse as any other city or country. I grew up in a really small farming community in the Panhandle, and now I live in the Dallas area, so I’ve experienced the gamut of Texas life.

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If you go here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/andicomics/

You can download a couple of PDFs of Clubbing, the early years. It’s an early draft of the script – before that pesky editor cut all my precious words out – peppered with rough layouts. It’s a like director’s cut but with typos and scribbling.

You can also download a 17 page PDF of Glister#1 while you’re at it.

All blogging and no play makes Andi sad. That’s when I turn to warbears, where the world is simple, kind of Tetris-y but with a soothing Kraftwerk-y soundtrack. Hey, where’d my afternoon go?

I’ve managed 215 lines. Beat that.

With Clubbing due out tomorrow, what better way to celebrate than by making your very own Charlotte Brook, star of said graphic novel. You will need:

Stiff card, a printer of some description, a sharp cutting tool, colouring pens, and a small amount of patience.

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Allow me to introduce myself, I’m Andi Watson, and I’ll be blogging here over the next couple of weeks. Why? Because I’m a friendly kind of chap, but also because I have a book coming out this week, Clubbing, written by me, drawn by Josh Howard. It’s one of those Minx books and will be in stores from the 11th of July.

So, yes, I am promoting Clubbing and my other new book, Glister (due out in August from Image), but I’ll sweeten the pill as much as possible with some things-to-make-&-do. So break out the scissors (always have an adult on hand to help you), glue sticks, and sticky back plastic (okay, kidding about that) for my “Here’s one I made earlier” features. All you need to know about me for now can be gleaned from my blog where I’ll be posting sketches and background related to Clubbing:

http://andiwatson.livejournal.com/

my flickr for the eye candy:

http://flickr.com/photos/andiwatson/

and my website that’s in need of an overhaul:

www.andiwatson.biz

Feel free to ask any sane questions in the comments and I’ll endeavor to be as candid as my almost-a-career dictates.