A couple of years ago, I entered Shades in the Favourite Web-Based Comic category of the UK's prestigious Eagle Awards. Not surprisingly, we didn't win. (The award, if I remember rightly, went to some decades-old gag-strip)! Anyway, this year, I thought it was about time we tried again!



To help us, please click on that image there to reach the Nomination Form. You don't have to complete the whole form. Just complete your name and email address at the top and you'll find the Best Web-Based Comic category right at the bottom. Nominate Shades and, if we make it into the final five, we'll do something special to celebrate!

Thanks for your help, guys. It's a long-shot, I know. But it's about time the world realised the web has story comics too, isn't it? ;-)

So - Saturday, 2 May 2009, is Free Comic Book Day ... Does this happen in the UK? I don't know. It seems to be a big thing in the US, though, so at Broken Voice Comics we felt we ought to participate somehow. Unfortunately, we don't have any of our titles in print, and so - as Ryan so neatly puts it below - we decided to make Volume 1 of our graphic novel Shades available as a free PDF instead!



So, if you're one of those techy types who likes that sort of thing, for the next few days only, you'll be able to download all of Shades Volume 1 (that's the Prologue, plus Chapters 1 - 8 ) for free. Just click on that link there or the picture above!

Oh, one more thing - you'd better be quick! We're using the YouSendIt service which, apparently, only allows 100 downloads so make sure you're at the front of the queue!

The bad news is the Broken Voice Comics website crashed for a couple of weeks just recently so, if you've been trying to visit us, you'll have found us, well ... not there! The good news is, we not only got ourselves up and running again this week, but we've also finally added a new RSS feed so, in future, you can be alerted every time we update. Hooray!



Apart from that, what updates might you have missed during this, our first week back? Well, I'll tell you!

Shades - "I hate snakes!"
Our first update since the Big Shutdown saw us visiting Shades where we'd previously left a group of naked men standing around a pit muttering something about serpents ...

Odd really. You'd think the last thing a naked man would want to see would be a long wriggly thing with big pointy fangs at one end! Oh, well - check in on the latest instalment and see if they found any!

Thy Will Be Done - war, eh? What is it good for?
Then, on Good Friday, we celebrated with a very appropriate visit to E.C. Nickel's and Alexandre Lobao's Thy Will Be Done where poor old Daniel is being shipped off, possibly to make the ultimate sacrifice?

Yup - in the latest instalment he seems to be closing in on those pesky insects and you know what? I don't think a can of bug-repellent is going to be enough!

Aah, London in the 1880s ... a time of Empire, horse-drawn carriages and naked men who could conjure up spirits and call down lightning. Well, according to the online graphic novel Shades it was, anyway!

Okay, okay - so, that's not the way they taught it at school. But this version is much more fun. See for yourself in today's instalment at Broken Voice Comics!