On the Shelf is a short and sweet weekly column in which I discuss whatever I’ve been doing, creating, reading and watching. You know, the sort of thing most normal blogs have.

This week I am very pleased to announce the Inkhead Comics Culture LAB, a weeklong comic creator workshop that I’ve helped develop alongside Metal and Laydeez do Comics. More on that here.

I say helped develop… Due to my ACE grant application for an accompanying Inkhead physical anthology being turned down, and by consequence Metal’s finances being compromised, almost nothing of the 100-plus hours of work I put into planning Inkhead over the past 8 months have made it to the finished event. It’s a bit heartbreaking, but such is the nature of the beast. Still, it’s nevertheless all rather exciting. It’s long been an ambition of mine to start comic-related events here in the South East of England; Southend suffers from being too far from London to travel there regularly for comic workshops, festivals and exhibitions but too close to London for anyone to bother initiating an alternative. Hopefully Inkhead will plant the seeds for future comic events.

This week I was eager to go live with the first pages from my webcomic Tomorrow Will Be Worse. Unfortunately, after yet another horrid week, which commenced with the death of my beloved elderly ratties Rory and Baby Flo and peaked with a £200 Perspex art piece I’d ordered for a client being delivered on cheap canvas, I awoke this Sunday morning with my left eye feeling like it was about to explode. For fear I’ll eventually resemble Sloth from The Goonies I decided to leave the house and watch the dumb but brilliant Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Y’know, from the movie franchise that’s consistently decent but nobody ever remembers until the next instalment appears without warning.

It was a much needed break and the film proved to be much better than I could have possibly anticipated, mostly due to Henry Cavill’s unfairly maligned moustache and Tom Cruise’s life goal to outdo Jackie Chan’s entire career before he’s sixty. Friends who know me as a bit of a film snob are always surprised to discover I’m a Tom Cruise fan, but never have I heard an audience collectively gasp as they did during the Fallout’s nail-biting finale. Cruise may be the epitome of the Hollywood machine but the man commits himself 110%.