Let us know what you’re reading this weekend!
Looking for inspiration
But this is about educating me as much as it is about educating others, so I’m reaching out to everyone and asking them.
Could you name 5 recent creators (with links) whose work you admire that are working in the arts and publishing themselves or being published through small or alternative presses.
It would be great to have a line or two about why you like the work as well.
Use the contact on the site, or use social media DM’s
twitter – @iestynpettigrew
instagram – @_zinelove
facebook – @zinelovechat
Question for the morning!
What one work of visual publishing would you like to own the original art from?
Post pictures if you can, please – links even better
I’d love one of the silent pages from Reverbstorm by John Coulthart – this page or the one with the trolleys filled with the dead.
Horrific and disturbing but moving and emotional.
Just some thoughts
I don’t know how many of you followed yesterday’s twitter event but I had fun and was reminded of so many accounts I haven’t seen come up for such a long time.
We make so many complaints about how there’s an algorithm controlling what comes up in our feed and yet, just going in for a second and scrolling through my list of my followed accounts has brought me instant access to all of those people.
It’s easy to complain about how we’re prisoners of algorithms, but it’s easier just to break out – you simply have to go and look for yourself.
To make a terrible analogy, what’s better, food from scratch or ready meals from the microwave?
Today we’re 1!
To celebrate we’ve spent the day tweeting out links to accounts, creators, zine libraries, shops, distros and all sorts of other things and peeps we love
If you’ve got twitter – go to https://twitter.com/iestynpettigrew (@iestynpettigrew) and have a look through – there’s got to be something you like, we sent out 200!!
Go Fund – 2020 publications from Birdcage Bottom Books
Campaign finishing Wednesday, March 11 2020 3:00 PM
There are 5 books in total. Every one of them looks like a great book, with great cartooning, great character design, even the single pages shown are intriguing storywise
The artwork is all very individual and exciting
I really wish I had more money so I could back the whole lot and get copies of their previous publications – that an option you can choose!
Really, really exciting comics here!
(click on images to follow links)
2020 publications from Birdcage Bottom Books
Here are some examples from the campaign page
Little bit of site news
We’re very nearly a year old and in celebration of this fact we’re putting together a little bit of fun over on my twitter account that will run for the whole of february 14th.
If you’re interested, here’s a link to my accout so you can follow along.
This will STAND THE GENERATIONS
This will STAND THE GENERATIONS award
There’s an urge in me to make this contrarian and go look for the more obscure option here. But that’s just daft because the whole point of this is to put out the work I most immediately feel has lasted, has maintained a relevance to the world and to those that are working here and now.
So – this one goes out to Nick Abadzis for Hugo Tate – details on Nick’s site here
And I sort of dealt with all this a while back on twitter – thread here and another here
I was having a conversation with someone and was reminded of Hugo Tate by Nick Abadzis
It’s such an incredible piece of comics. It’s not a work that blew my mind, it’s a work that formed a small part of me, at points visualising what was hidden in me. It also made me think about life and about comics and stories, how to tell them, what they’re worth within this world.
In particular, the scene with his father, early on in the series and just after his father’s death struck me then and continues with me now. It’s nearly 30 years later, but I can still see that page, with its stick figure characters and how rawly, openly and cleverly it details that emotional situation. That truly was and still is a high-water mark for comics storytelling.
Kenny Penman did the world a huge service bringing the book back into print and in putting it out in such a suitable format, a manner that evidences it’s worth very clearly. I don’t know how easy it is to get hold of copies of that book currently. I do know my library has a copy, as I’ve flipped through it many times, settling in to read 5 or 10 pages of I have a moment of quiet with my kids when there.
This is one of those things that episodic or chaptered comics does so well that doesn’t really exist in any other medium. You can grab 10-15 minutes with a work and get an excellent bit of a story in that time.
That string of tweets initiated a fair amount of feedback from UK comickers on how influential in opening their minds to what comics could do Hugo Tate was.
It’s a work that needs reprinting and distribution to as wide a base of readers as possible, both because of it’s worth to the medium and because of the great beating heart of humanity that lives within the work.
iestyn
Paper Underground Awards – Originally, I said that this would be – Best discovery I made in November (but it was really just being sarcastic) Then I received something in October that fitted the bill.
Originally, I said that this would be – Best discovery I made in November (but it was really just being sar
Originally, I said that this would be – Best discovery I made in November (but it was really just being sarcastic) Then I received something in October that fitted the bill.
Which is an odd title for an award, but there we go.
Download from here
The winner is Nick Prolix with his Pannonica series (and experience)
Originally, I included this as a dig at all those bests of lists that come out in December thereby blowing off everything that comes out in December.
Then in October and again In November I read part of an ongoing series that struck me as amazing and original, but also as something that concretised a feeling I’d had for a while about UK comics and zines and where I’m seeing work that I would consider vital and important.
Petrichor, our initial award winner, is part of that wave. A wave that drives its visuals with non-representational art married to real life thoughts and emotions. It has narrative, but not story. Structure but not linearity.
Sort of a comic slipstream fiction, but nothing like it.
Anyway
Why name it?
Pannonica was something very surprising to me, considering Nick’s normal mode of comics are very representational and timebound. Here’s this printed and hand made zine with abstract images. A zine related to tweets and Instagram posts. World building by building in the world rather than the fictional page. Yet, amazingly, it’s a work that still manages to be structured, human and about matters of life. Dealing with the humanity of his thoughts, his present concerns, his art history and art future. Not necessarily universal, but personally meaningful to me and timely – like it froze a wave and made a statue for generations to come to look upon.
What’s striking about Pannonica is how it creates narrative structure in the same manner as Nick’s story work, with call backs, shadowing plot points and running a theme through its paces.
iestyn
Paper Underground Awards – Work that is something I’d never want to make, but really appreciated anyway
Work that is something I’d never want to make, but really appreciated anyway
Star Bright by Rob Zwetsloot and Alice Clarke – buy it here
This may be the most controversial award. I’ve had feedback that it might feel like a backhanded compliment. So, to clarify.
This award recognises a work that inspired me to recognise its impact upon me. Rather than inspiring a creative reaction it stirred me by being a great read; moving and affecting. It’s about enjoy things not for what they drive me to do, but for the enjoyment of experiencing them.
I hope that makes sense.
Star Bright is a low stake look at teenage life. It is a strong argument for acceptance. There is no melodrama, no angry railing at society, no big story moments. Yet it forcefully makes an argument for it cause. It’s a beautiful and emotional work that relies on creating empathy with the reader, quietly telling a meaningful story about people, loneliness and eventual acceptance.
It uses simple methods with, what one could almost call a utopian spirit, to make a big argument about life, diversity and accepting differences.
The art has a strong personality and communicates emotions and relationships extremely well. It works perfectly with the story to deliver its argument for equality by showing a world that is accepting and how it essentially functions the same as our world but without the hating. It delivers a window to another world and shows you that it won’t hurt or damage you, in fact, its existence will not affect your life at all, but it will make the life of others much better.
Cute and simple looking artwork that communicates the human experience and a simple and eloquent story that shows how the world can be rather than raising a fist to the world as is. I completely respect anything the raises the quiet voice of reason to make its argument to the wide world.
iestyn
Paper Underground Awards – Work that I wish I had published in a large deluxe limited edition
Work that I wish I had published in a large deluxe limited edition
Aorta – by Sarah Horrocks (buy physical or digital)
I literally only know Sarah’s work from online – but god I wish I owned everything she has ever made.
I love her colour work; her choices of texture and pattern; her colour combinations are so vibrant, living and communicative I’d sink deep down into their glowing acid power like people claim to do with a Rothko.
What she achieves with computer textures makes me want to grab a pen and a brush and get that physically down on paper. Her art affects me the same Bill Sienkiewicz’s affected my childhood mind. I want to cut out and paste, to splash paint and hatch and scratch and design the page into perfect life. I want to perfect what they’ve put on paper, with my own hand because then I’ll have achieved a skill and greatness I could easily respect.
Which, I suppose, makes my choice either odd or contrary.
When I saw her post this double page from her current comic Aorta I contacted her straight away because it was just so impressive. All that texture to lose myself in – I actually put it up across the double screens I have at work. I saw it and just imagined holding a big – A3 page size big – hardback book; textured paper, almost like watercolour paper and that image crisply set into that paper, so deep it stretches beyond the edge of vision, like an IMAX movie. Comics suffers to keep itself cheap and avoid ‘being elitist’. But I don’t see why we can’t have expensive, deeply beautiful objects as vehicles to portray these works. I think this art deserve engaging with in a manner that let’s you obscure the world around and just sink into this glorious world of marks, movement, design and texture, like you’re climbing through a dark forest.
Being able to immerse yourself into the reality on paper and letting the work argue for the respect it so readily deserves.
iestyn
Paper Underground Awards – Most Romantic Work
Most Romantic work
Petrichor – by Gareth Hopkins (shop here)
This is my book of the year, no quibbles.
Until I read Gareth’s work, I would never have said that either romance or auto-biography would be the most important and urgent style I’m encountering in comics.
Yet, when I read this book I was moved nearly to tears, to rethink my own attitudes and to a sense of admiration for what was being said on these pages. I think Gareth’s work is amazing. I always have, from the moment I first saw it. But, generally, I’ve admired the images and the textures, structures, marks and sequencing. His work was very much visual pleasure.
Then he wrote Petrichor and later worked on Intercorstal: Extension which I’ve previously reviewed. Intercorstal: Extension was published prior to Petrichor, even though it was created after it. In both works the writing developed an elliptical, poetic and rhythmic style that dealt with life and memory as experiences rather than narrative. It’s almost poetry, but it’s not. I’d say it’s a clipped version similar in style to JG Ballard’s early novels, like The Drowned World. But somehow warm and human and emotionally affecting, whereas Ballard’s words are the experience of ennui.
Many works are labelled as being about love and death, it’s a great review cliché – this work is truly about the experience of both, of how living life comes with waves and troughs, how we change whilst staying the same person, maybe with altered priorities.
To be fair – it’s not going to be for everyone, it’s not narrative, it’s got no images of things, there’s marks and short, clipped lines of text. But if you let yourself experience it, it’s like being in the heart and mind of that person as life happens around them. Beautiful and poignant. Ultimately, it’s satisfying to see a book dedicated to sharing an individual’s humanity and love.
iestyn
comix economix – an interview with Nix Comics publisher Ken Eppstein
Kickstarter live here
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Intro
We’re back with a lovely long interview with cult comics publisher, maker and general poetry aficionado Ken Eppstein.
I’ve known about Nix Comics since its first being mentioned on The Comics Reporter and been intrigued by how grass roots and open it seems as a publisher.
Then I saw a blog post where Ken went into details on sales and breakeven and knew I had to dig into this. Ken was incredibly helpful and polite throughout this whole process and comes across as a genuine and honest person – it made it great fun to be in touch and sort this out.
Interview
Hi Ken
Hey iestyn!
ZL – I’m going to start all sensible and check my facts out first. My understanding is that Nix Comics started around 2008 as a publisher, is that right?
KE – More like 2010 for Nix proper. I started doing some cartoons and submitting them to Roctober Magazine around 2008, though. They were adaptations of interviews that I had conducted a few years before that as part of a newsletter for Evil Empire Records’ regular customers. I couldn’t mentally have gotten to “Nix Comics” without Roctober. Advice/help from Jake Austen was pretty instrumental to me, though, so I wouldn’t quibble if you called 2008 the start in that sense.
ZL – I’ve read that you had decided to end your record shop and find new adventures. That went with coming back to comics and finding there weren’t many comics that suited your tastes, so you thought you’d make your own. Does that sound about right?
KE – Hahaha…. “Decided” is a generous way to put it. The brick and mortar Evil Empire Records was a flop. Not enough people in Columbus who want to buy Billy Childish records, I guess. (Town full of fuckin’ heathens.)
By the time I was starting to do comics stuff, my retail efforts were limited to on-line sales, which didn’t bring me the same joy: the only part of running a retail operation that I really enjoy is meeting people and making recommendations. I was at a point where I needed more personally. I can’t tell you why all the pieces of Nix Comics snapped into place specifically at that point in time, but long stifled creative urges were finally bubbling over in my brain.
And yep… My perception was that there weren’t a lot of comics to my taste when I started making my own. And there hadn’t been for many years. I felt that way and said as much at the time, but I do feel like qualifying that opinion nowadays. I hadn’t had my ear to the ground for a while and the only experience I was going from was my knowledge of what was coming to stores that only sell Diamond distributed products. If I had bothered to actually go looking instead of shooting my mouth off, I would have found stuff. What I should have said is “there is never enough” stuff that I personally want to read.
ZL – When you started, did you expect that you’d be able to make a good living – well, as good as selling records – from doing comics, or do you have an additional set of income, so it’s more of a moot point?
KE – A good friend of mine once ribbed me by saying it was “awesome” that I based the Nix Comics business model on the tiny, mostly defunct, independent records that I loved. I had to laugh, because it was definitely true… My plans had a lot in common with how outfits like Estrus Records and Get Hip Records operated. Those labels were distribution efforts created to be vehicles for the Mono-Men and the Cynics, respectively, but they grew to include other acts that fit into that 90s garage punk scene. Anyways, I figured it would be a way to make a little extra side cash with the potential of it becoming a fulltime thing if all the streams converged properly.
I also was aware of the worst-case scenario, that maybe Nix would never would catch and I would blow a lot of money on something that only a handful of people appreciated. I mean… How much mass appeal can there be for a comic whose main distinctive feature is that the lead writer likes to include oblique references to Kasenetz & Katz Super Circus songs? I was (and am) cool with that in the sense that I don’t really have any other vices these days. Don’t drink or smoke or gamble outside of the occasional lottery ticket. Making comics keeps me out of trouble.
I should add for the record, Get Hip = NOT defunct! (Record pun intended.)
ZL – Is that lack of commercial need aided by you living somewhere cheap or do you just have low expectations for cost and lifestyle?
KE – Ah… you know… My expectations are always butting up against my pragmatism. Expectations are my Mr. Hyde: furious, sad and confused that I can’t sell a couple thousand of the comics and zines that I feel are good and different. That’s what? 50 copies per state in the US? Even accounting for the relative paucity of people in Montana, that’s not an unreasonable goal, right?
My pragmatic Jekyll knows all too well that it’s never been easy or likely for artists to make a living. My guess is that it’s harder than ever because thanks to things like crowdfunding and print on demand services, the bar for entry into the field is lower than ever. That’s great in the sense that I believe that all artists should have access to means for creation, but it’s a drag in terms of an overcrowded field.
The funny thing is I sometimes feel like I’m by default Hyde and I need to take the potion to turn into Jekyll.
ZL – Yeah, I know what you mean. I’ve got to a point where I feel like I’m so likely to fail it just doesn’t even matter anymore, not sure what that counts as but I’m going to coin the phrase ‘entropic pragmatism’ I’m so despondent it seems like it doesn’t actually matter so I can justify giving it a go. That sounds quite messed up when I say it out loud! Moving quickly back to you then…
When you first started up Nix comics what did you think you’d be able to achieve, in what timescale?
KE – Ack. You ask hard questions. Tough to answer because the immediate goal has always been the next book or next few books, whatever they may be. Everything else was (and is) pretty experimental.
I had a good day job at the time I started and spent year one throwing money at Nix, hoping it would jumpstart things. My goals were pretty standard, I think, for wannabe publishers: I wanted to make sure all the artists got paid and to print enough copies that I could make some money if they all sold. I thought I would pick up distribution and get to the point where it was at least self-sustaining. I was also hoping to get a core group of artists locked down… Like, so they could plan on having X amount of work every year from me.
It was pretty clear to me by the end of the year that things just weren’t going to work out that way.
Second year I tried to just do titles where I paid artists a percentage of sales. Only two titles in 2012, Nix Western Comics and Nix Comics for Kids. It worked OK… Nix Western actually made both me and Bob Starker a little money. (Sad story: the little bit of money Bob made was by his account more money than he had made in his entire three-decade musical career.) Nix for Kids was a bomb and I went into the red for it and only paid Brian Kraft a pittance for a 20-page full color comic.
Kind of hated the extra work for not a lot of money involved in that whole process and, with the exception of the Belligerent Kitties minis, haven’t done anything but a flat rate for a maximum number of printings since. Like if I give somebody $150 for a Bus Stop Ned, that’s good for printing 2000 copies of that comic. Any other publications or merchandising would require a new deal. There’s potentially a lot more money on the back end for me than the artist gets up front, but I think that’s fair.
I also changed my plans for reach. After being rejected by Diamond and a brief relationship with Ubiquity Magazine distributors I adopted a “Columbus first, then the world” mentality. I’ve really tried to concentrate on being a notable publisher here in town in hopes that I can spring off of that into something more broadly notable. I have NO IDEA how to get that done, so no timeline on that goal.
For a long time, my focus was just on getting books out. I was pretty resigned to them not making money, but I really wanted them to get made! A couple of years ago I was forced to leave that “good job” and since have had sporadic employment. This has led to more of a focus on the books making money, or at least all of my side hustles making money. I miss the days when I could do whatever-the-fuck I wanted.
ZL – It seems like many creators have to flit about, scraping pennies together, more so than ever. I can’t really say why that is, I’m not sure anyone can, really. It seems like society is moving more and more to the job and side hustle and the hustle to the hustle. It’s like everything is just too much for even the basics to be affordable.
ZL – I skipped this in my fact check, sorry for going back but, for those who don’t know anything about you, could you give a brief history of Nix comics; where you’re based, and the kind of titles and creators you publish? Am I right in saying your based in Columbus, where CXC and the Billy Ireland started up in the last few years?
KE – Yep, I’ve lived in Columbus for the past 30 years, minus a brief stay in Boston in the early 90s and a brief stay in San Francisco in the early 00s. I think this is the 5th year for CXC coming up and the 7th for the current Billy Ireland digs. (Those numbers should be right within a year or so.)
The Billy Ireland had been around as a library and archive for many years prior to that: divided up between a warehouse and a tiny library in an Ohio State University basement… I think one of the great shames OSU should feel is that they kept such a great resource buried in a basement for fuckin’ decades. I’m glad now that it is starting to get the space and recognition it deserves.
Wait… This question was about me and Nix Comics. Like we said, I started working on Nix in 2010. My idea was to make the kind of comics that would sell well in record stores in addition to comic shops. The old saw is true: you write and publish about the stuff you know. There was also a certain amount of math to it, too: There were, I think, 3 comic shops in town at the time and 8 record shops. I knew the people at record shops but didn’t really know the comic shop folks at the time.
Digging down on that a little, I’ve always focused on music themed comics…. Whether that connection is something obvious like stories about bands and record stores, doing biographical material or just based on the artist also being a musician. That has led to a lot of different genres, artistic styles and book formats, so I don’t know how successful I’ve been in communicating that to readers. Sometimes I feel like no one else gets it and sometimes I feel like people get it and are just quietly nodding until I shut the fuck up.
ZL – I was doing a bit of research on you and was very impressed by your commitment from the very start to have open books, particularly for the sake of the artists working with you, so they understood what had been achieved. As well as ensuring everyone was paid as fairly as you could.
Has that worked out positively for you, or not made any real kind of impact?
KE – Well, I think that the answer to that has more to do with anecdotal experiences leading up to my deciding to pay artists. I guess first up, I am a recovering Stan Lee True Believer. I bit hard on the Stan mythos as a kid and it wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I really read up on him as a subject and was forced to examine the reality of the person behind the myth. I still idolize the mythic figure in ways, but I want to be a better person as an actual collaborator, editor, and publisher. Same goes for Bill Gaines and Jim Warren…. I’d like to take the good from their careers and improve on the bad.
Along those lines, right before I started Nix Comics I had read Eric Davidson’s “We Never Learn” about 90s punk and garage. There’s a great part where Danny Kroha from the Gories relates about he had the most respect for Tim Warren from Crypt Records of all the record label folks because Warren always sent a sales report with a check every year. Kroha admitted that he sometimes doubted the accuracy of the numbers, but that Warren was the only label/distro that even bothered with regular reporting.
For more musical context, Nix Comics was also formed right on the heels of the Dead Kennedys’ royalty lawsuit. Not that I was ever a huge fan of the band, but I ended up losing a lot of respect for everyone involved in that mess. Like, how on earth do these self-identified leftists end up fighting about royalties? It didn’t help that in addition to actual court, they tried the matter in the court of public opinion in the opening days of social media connectivity.
All that said, the experience that most fixed my point of view on all that was a personal one. Bear with me, because I’m going to tell a story without mentioning any names because it involves people I like on all ends and I don’t know the whole actual truth… But there’s a guy I know who worked at a local record store and is in a garage rock band of note. Not like Mudhoney level famous or anything, but beloved by a lot of people who are into such things. This fella and I were talking record store business when a specific distro came up, and my friend melted down. Like a full-on fist waving and red-faced vein-popping out of his forehead screaming meltdown.
He ranted on about how the distro in question was a bunch of crooks who owe his band money. I know the distro folks in question, and while I don’t doubt that they may have owed my friend money, I don’t think they are nefarious. I do think they are capable of fucking up and not communicating well about it. I think all parties concerned are capable of blowing up and ending an argument before its resolved, creating a feud. Anyways, I hated suddenly being in the middle of a fight like that and can only imagine how much I’d hate being actually a participant in the fight. Pretty much I want to avoid ever having somebody blast me like that, and the only way I can think of is to be as transparent and forthcoming as possible.
So… you know… Some altruism and some being chicken-shit was involved in setting those policies.
Has it had an impact? Maybe, but I think that’s not the right word for it. It’s bought me a lot of leeway with artists as they always know where I’m coming from. Maybe a little too much leeway as I still owe Rick Brooks a couple hundred bucks for his work in Nix Western #4. Similar, I feel like I owe Andy Bennett some extra money for Jenny Mae ‘N Jerry Wick because the page count went up on him between start and finish of the project. I don’t think and wouldn’t expect those guys to give me any leeway on all if I didn’t have open books and a history of making good. I feel like I’m in a little bit of abuse of that goodwill at the moment and am working on making it right.
ZL – This interview came about partly because of I follow you thanx to the mentions on Comics Reporter, but specifically because I picked up on your post about breaking even, and I wondered if you’d met with any increased interest because of that post? Has there been any kind of feedback at all really, or just some tumble weed and me going, ‘Oo, oo, that’s really interesting!’ because I’m nosy like that?
KE – I do that kind of essay periodically and do get feedback and interest on them, mostly from people who are interested in the nuts and bolts of the industry. You’d have to ask him to be sure, but I think that kind of material is part of why Tom posts about me on Comics Reporter.
I guess the column I did for the Outhouse for a year or two had some fans. I look back on those writings, though, and kind of hate their tone… They read like I’m trying to “establish myself as an expert.” Maybe I was trying to do that, but nowadays I don’t like the idea of trying to turn experience into social currency.
I do keep beating head up against the notion that sharing information about my finances and how much money I pay to artists is a “big” selling point. It’s not. There are a few people for who that is true, but by in large, hardly anyone cares.
I also get a lot of fellow creator-types saying, “wow that’s really brave of you,” which is weird to me. I don’t understand what’s so scary about it. Like is it a big secret that making small press comics isn’t a moneymaking effort? Is money so personal that I’m breaking taboo by talking about it? Like revealing how the magic trick is done or wrestling match is choreographed or something? I dunno.
ZL – In my experience, money is always a risk area of conversation, I don’t tend to care about it, but then in my first few weeks at current job, I mentioned my pay rate around a colleague who’d been there longer, was more experienced and more senior and earning, it turns out, thousands less than me. They got quite personally upset and that shook me. I mean if they’d just been mad at work, I’d have felt vindicated, but that was personal for them, so it was really ‘urgh, why didn’t I shut up!’
I think it’s the same in most fields. Maybe, in the arts, it’s almost like having to admit you’re not a REAL artist if you can’t pay your way, you’re a hobbyist or something? I’m going off track and casting wild aspersions here.
Back to tack, I mentioned the reasons for why I follow you, because I’m always intrigued to know the causality of relationships, what led to what led to what etc. I wonder if part of what you’re trying to do is to create a space where work you can admire can start to flourish, where people can see it has a place to exist? Essentially, trying to create a place that suits you and then attract others to it. Or are you making stuff because you can’t stop yourself?
KE – Yes to both.
ZL – What are your feelings about the lack of honesty about numbers in comics in general – were you surprised by your numbers when they started coming in, or were you clued in early to sales and sales barriers within comics?
KE – Is there dishonesty or just a deafening silence amongst the people involved? I guess that would be lies of omission, but I don’t feel like anyone out there is being particularly deceptive about the financial realities of making comics.
Going back to an earlier answer, an expectant Hyde was surprised and dismayed by sales numbers and the ever-pragmatic Jekyll wasn’t.
ZL – You make a fair point there, that’s a mis-characterisation, maybe it’s more accurate to say what are your feelings about the lack of a wider discussion about financial realities.
I’m guessing there will be many that haven’t read your article, so could you briefly describe where your sales are in terms of break even, just a sort of, ‘this many titles made money, this many titles are within 1-20 of making money, this many have a loooong way to go’?
KE – Sorry for a bad interview answer here: They should just go read the essay! Or at least lookit the graph that answers your question!
ZL – That’s more than fair I think. It’s a good article, I enjoyed it very much.
Getting back to the start of Nix Comics, I’m interested to know how you decided on your initial numbers, was it based on a marketplace assessment, segmented by a target audience, more of a finger in the air, or the more hopeful, well if I sell this amount it’ll cover all the costs and it doesn’t seem that unreasonable to expect these sales figures?
KE – For the first couple of years a lot of it was pretty much dictated by where the price breaks were on print runs. Since I had aspirations of getting distribution in year one, I had to print quantities that would get me to the point where selling at 40% of cover price made sense. While I was working hard to get my books in stores sans-distributor I was shooting for whatever print run quantity made sense to sell at 50% of cover. I guess I’m still at that point, but I have cut back my wholesale activities a lot because it’s a lot of work with crappy margins. I’d rather make the sale myself at cover price than sell a copy for half that only to see it slaving away on a forgotten shelf in some store. That shit is debilitating.
In terms of artist pay the quarterly has maintained a store rate as opposed to a page rate. It started as $150 for a short (1-3 pages) and $300 for a feature (4-8 pages). I offer a little more for features now. This kept things in the range where I could look at wholesale distribution as a viable option. I also wanted it to incentivize shorter submissions, which was a punk rock thing; viewing each issue as a compilation record, I wanted lots of short rippers and fewer drippy ballads. I don’t remember how I arrived at those specific rates.
ZL – It sounds like you were considering breaking even on sales. Would you say that’s what drove you at the start, were you considering this in terms of your own ongoing business concerns or were you aimed more at driving sales or attention to the creator(s) and their published work?
KE – Clearly breaking even isn’t a prerequisite for me moving on to something else! I mean, ideally one project would pay for the next, but that’s just not the reality. Almost all of my decision drivers in that sense are whether or not I want to see the thing happen. More often than not the motivation for wanting the thing to happen is that I think the creators involved deserve an audience or that their work deserves “life.”
ZL – I also wonder after what expectations you set yourself at first and how realistic those sales or rather, your measures for sales, were in the end. I just wonder how much energy over time has been linked to your expectations not being met by reality and what emotional effect that had upon you?
KE – Shit. I’m always disappointed by sales. I’m in love with what I put out and don’t understand why it’s so damn hard to sell. There might be a step on the ladder where I’m satisfied with sales, but I ain’t hit it yet.
I don’t stress about it like some artists and publishers, because it’s not life or death for me, but I definitely feel it.
ZL – This is a tricky one to slip in, but, I wonder after how much emotion and anxiety you expected to be involved in the process and whether you were prepared for how much there actually was?
I particularly wonder after the amount of guilt involved in publishing, around having your own expectations for success and having to reconcile that with reality and having to deal with other creators’ own sense of worth and expectations of what makes that work worthwhile?
KE – Well, I’m here to tell you that the anxiety of no-one-buying-my comic is NOWHERE near the anxiety level of starting and failing at a brick and mortar retail business. I would spend days alone in a shop sweating over how I was going to pay two rents, two electric bills, two phone bills, etc. There were days when I was hoping just one comic or record would sell so I could go buy some eggs for the week. I think that experience for me definitely tamps down any angst I might feel about comics. If a Nix Comic flops, I’m out some dough and I have to decide what to do with the boxes of unsold material, but I’m not sitting alone in a room sweating about how will I be able to pay for one of my two rents. Or worse, hoping for just one sale so I can buy some beans and rice on the way home.
I do struggle with my expectations versus the reality of things, but I find guilt to be one of those angsty emotions. Frustration that I can’t reach more people? Yes, definitely. Anguish that even in a group of noted weirdos, I’m still the weird kid out? Yeah, that too. I guess that on occasion I feel envy of peers who have some success. That in turn leads to guilt over having such shitty thoughts… But that’s not guilt about my lack of success.
ZL – Did you even consider emotions and their impact on you going into the process and did it rear itself as an issue more as you went on?
KE – Yeah, I suppose I did. I’ve always hung out with artist types and was vicariously familiar with the ups and downs of an artistic career. Thanks to that I feel like I can avoid most of the emotional pitfalls of the process.
ZL – Moving away from commercial matters to more community related things, you’re now in something of a comics heartland I believe. I certainly know that I first heard of you from The Comic Reporter site and Tom Spurgeon mentioning you when he’d moved to Columbus and started working on CXC.
Have you seen anything of a change in the area relating to the new festival and the Billy Ireland library opening?
KE – Well, they are big public resources and as such they are what people in the comics community make of them. Some members of the community embrace the Billy and CXC, making the most of their presence, and others don’t.
The Billy Ireland doesn’t have any specifically local bent to its programs, so I have a hard time saying that the institution has made changes to the local comics community. It’s just not part of their mission. The Billy did hire Caitlin McGurk who has been a tremendous friend and supporter of local artists since her first day on the job, so that’s pretty impactful.
I know that CXC has the desire to enhance the local community, but it’s not really their main focus. It’s a cool show: having a cool show in town is good for the community and they’ve been really good to me personally. I think there are some little things they could do here and there to help the local community, like hire a local artist to do a promo poster.
ZL – Is there a sense of change within your comics community, or does it feel like that’s a million miles away from where you are?
KE – I don’t know. I can’t speak for the Columbus comics community. It’s a pretty eclectic group with different needs and points of view. I’ll say this: It’s grown a lot. When I started it was pretty easy to go out and meet everybody who makes comics in Columbus. Now I only know a fraction of the crowd and more kids are starting up every day.
ZL – Thinking about the wider community, are you finding that the nature of the area itself is changing, are rents increasing for example? Does this make you concerned about how viable the lifestyle you can currently achieve is going to remain?
KE – Yeah, like everywhere, rents are going up. Both residential and commercial. It’s driving out both a diversity of people and a diversity of businesses. That means fewer places to sell DIY type products combined with less money in everyone’s pockets. I am constantly ruminating over the increasing difficulty of day to day survival and what that means for art. This city right now is a lot different than the one I moved to 30 years ago and the changes are not “artistic lifestyle friendly.”
ZL – I seem to be hitting with some pretty heavy questions, sorry! I guess, particularly for someone based in the UK, the whole financial situation and publishing situation in America seems hard all round, especially when you’re having to think about medical bills or insurance as well!!
I’m going to lighten up a bit in a minute, I promise!
But not just yet!!!!
Tell us about your experience with running Kickstarter campaigns. You seem to have had your ups and downs with some failing to meet their target, but your most recent was pretty ambitious and ended up successfully. Have you picked that apart for yourself as to what may have made the difference?
KE – If you’ll permit me to continue to beat the metaphor to death, the two campaigns that failed were run by Hyde and the others were Jekyll operations.
For the 2013 “Big Ask” I was asking for $25K and figured I could get around 300 people to subscribe. There were plenty of people who I considered my peers getting that kind of action at the time. Turns out that they were my artistic peers, but in terms of having an active network of fans I wasn’t even close to them. I don’t remember if I thought I could actually make it or if I was just swinging for the fences. Either way, I whiffed.
The mistake I made for the 2014 campaign was that I knew I was asking for a fairly large chunk, but I figured people would step up for the two artists I was focusing on. Darren Merinuk has done posters and record sleeves on the cheap for literally 100s of bands. Bob Ray Starker has played a million live shows with and contributed on dozens of records for local bands without ever getting paid. I mentally multiplied those “100s” and ”dozens” of bands by number of band members and figured that there were more than enough people out there who owed Darren and Bob a little something and that I would make goal easy. Turns out all of those fuckers are ingrates. Still mad. Fuckin’ fuckface fuckers.
ZL – Are you finding it easier to get purchases now that Kickstarter has become something more central to the comics production cycle? Or has this hurt you, with the money and attention getting spread thinner now?
KE – For me personally? Kickstarter has been nothing but good. It’s a tool I understand, and my results have steadily gotten better over time. For the comic community as a whole, I do worry that it leads to overcrowding in the field since anyone who wants to make a comic book now can. That relationship between supply and demand is a real tricky thing.
ZL – Do you feel like this is a good way to sell and market your comics, along with convention attendance, or are you yearning, actively searching even, for a better way to get comics out there and making you money and getting you eyes on the work?
KE – Ideally people would just go to my mail order site and I could skip the third parties and middle men. It really annoys me that that doesn’t seem to be a viable thing.
ZL – Yeah, I wonder if site like Kickstarter have had an effect on audience expectation, maybe now they expect to find everything in one place, at their convenience. I remember being in love with the idea of subscriptions as a (lazy) kid and as an adult, I sort of feel like a subscription model should be able to work, but, anecdotally, I’ve got the feeling that it’s dead on the vine now as an approach. Unless you’re big enough to get a Patreon running…
I’m veering off subject again! I’ll lighten up on the heavy finance stuff and try for some controversy instead!!
This is probably a horrible question, but not too bad as you write most of your stories yourself, so I’m going to ask it anyway!
What title that you published is:
Your personal favorite?
The work you’re most proud to have published?
More commercially, what was the greatest income made for a creator?
KE – Funny story: I’m horrible at picking favorite anythings. I know I have them, but they don’t often bubble up when people ask me. Like recently someone asked me who my favorite actor is, and I couldn’t come up with a specific one. I went home and told my wife Kate about it and she just shook her head and told me that Vincent Price is clearly my favorite actor. She’s right of course. Unfortunately, for the purpose of this interview, I’m going to avoid embarrassing myself by asking her what my favorite Nix Comic is.
Right now, the book I’m most proud of releasing is Kent Grosswiler’s Beauty Found in Darkness. An illustrated book of urban haiku is about as far as I could push the envelope of “rock n roll comic” as I can imagine.
It was definitely a return to form of using artists peripheral to comics… Kent is an artistic polymath (Poet, painter, drummer) but not a comics guy. The illustrators on the book, Rob W. Jones and Alli MacGregor are fine artists, but also aren’t comic book people. It was really rewarding to work with all of them. Before that I think I was most proud of Nix Comics Quarterly #2. It’s not my “best” by far, but it was proof to myself that comics wasn’t just a one off for me. With issue #2 I knew that I could spend the rest of my life making comics if I want.
I don’t know for sure which artist I’ve paid the most money to. That’s a good question and probably worthy of some research and a personal blog post! It’s almost gotta be Andy Bennett since he has done two full lengths, a zine and a couple of features for Nix Comics Quarterly.
ZL – What is it you feel being published by Nix comics has brought to the creators that worked with you that they couldn’t have found for themselves?
KE – Forgive me, but I’m not going to project on my collaborators that way. It’s got to be different for every one of them. If I can make more work for you, I’d be interested in hearing their answers if you are willing to ask them! (Hah!)
I know that there a few people who had never had their comics published by someone else before Nix. It’s a pretty cool feeling to have done that for someone.
ZL – What is the best outcome you’ve seen for a creator or work that you published?
KE – Three of the contributors to Nix Comics Quarterly #8 ended up winning Eisners last year! (John Jennings, Tillie Walden and Gideon Kendall) I can take exactly zero credit for that, but I’m so proud of them and happy that the world recognizes their talent and hard work as much as I do.
ZL – What do you think your company’s legacy has been in the market place and in creators lives so far?
That’s a slightly loaded question I know! But, I think this is one of those issues of appreciation.
If you sit back and reflect upon that, how does it make you feel about your efforts? Do you sit back and think about that?
KE – Y’know, I always joke about selling the rights to my epitaph. “For $1000 bucks you can write whatever you want on my tombstone.” Or whatever. The joke comes from an honest, if somewhat morbid, place: I’m not going to care what’s scrawled on a rock after I’m dead. In a lot of ways, I feel the same way about my comics legacy. Such a thing is always written by other people and I don’t have a lot of control over it, so let it be what it will be.
That’s not to say I don’t celebrate my successes or ruminate over my failures as they happen. Each comic I put out is its own triumph. I’m not sure that I care that much about who or how much they are celebrated after I’ve stopped. Recognition for my efforts now would be nice. Same for being called out on my failings, I suppose, in the spirit of letting me know what I’m doing wrong so I can feel bad now and course correct.
ZL – Do you have plans to do anything differently in the future? I’m thinking, for example, of whether large magazines and large crowdfunding campaigns are going to remain viable, have you considered the success of companies like Oily comics and how they published comics through a subscription model, with regular publications and small page counts to keep it cheap and build momentum. Let’s face it, The End Of The Fucking World was published monthly with only eight photocopied pages and it’s done pretty well for itself. There are other publishers adopting this model, skip out on the big social media platforms. Have you considered that as an option?
KE – I do have plans to do some things differently.
For one thing, I am going to make some format changes, which are a response to being sick of those break-even numbers. I’m sick of trying to get “there” five bucks at a time. I need to make more stuff in the $10+ cover price range. One Idea I’m seriously toying with is doing my horror anthology comic as a 12×12 book with an optional LP compilation “de-luxe” version. It’s a pretty natural step, given that in my mind the comic anthology format is a clear parallel to compilation albums.
I’m thinking of doing a quarterly zine that is available for download as well as in print. Ideally It would be more ad revenue driven than sales revenue driven. I need to get on the hog with looking for sponsors for that.
Oily comics mini-comics was a really cool service, but I suspect the reason it’s no longer a thing is that it was a lot to keep in line. I love the idea of taking a classic zine club swap format and turning it into distribution, but there are so many moving parts involved in that and I don’t know if that machine bears up under the pressure of having paying third parties. (I also attribute the success of The End of the Fucking World more to Chuck’s talent and hard work than I do to the format it was released in.)
ZL – Yeah, I should have been clearer in saying that it did no harm to it putting it out in small chunks, but it seems to have made it easier in terms of ‘getting it done and getting it out there’.
ZL – Another question I’m wondering is whether digital would, in your opinion, have a place within your sales plans now, and what platforms would you consider if it does?
KE – I am down for some digital zines, but not super keen on doing digital comics. I don’t personally consume comics that way and that prevents me from wrapping my head around how to make them. I’m not even happy with the way my books look in PDF form when I send them out for reviews… The page turns don’t work the same way!
ZL – What are your sales venues in general?
KE – Crowd funding, shows/events, my website, ebay and discogs. There are a few comic, record and bookstores that carry Nix Comics.
ZL – What are your most successful route to sales?
KE – Crowfunding. Hands down. Lowest cost to entry and the biggest gains. It’s become the default marketplace for self-publishers and micro-presses.
ZL – Do you deal with any distributors for your work and do you have any insights on managing those relationships?
KE – Not right now. Well… Bela Koe-Krompecher distributes his contributor copies of his books as part of the Anyway Records catalog with Revolver and sometimes Matador, so I suppose I do have distribution through his efforts.
I’m not sure that distribution is worth seeking out unless I can sell a few thousand copies. For that I would have to up my marketing budget significantly and the margins are so shitty even at that economy of scale to begin with. Maybe down the road if things grow, I’ll feel different.
ZL – What is an average sales lifetime for a work, as in, are all sales front loaded up to publication date or do you continuing making sales over an extended period of months or even years and how do you manage to generate those sales?
KE – Average lifetime? I don’t know. Another good idea for a blog post! If we’re talking “lifetime” I guess that I would have declare some of them “dead” and I’m not sure that I’m willing to do that while the boxes are still sitting in my basement. They’re just comatose and may comeback, right? RIGHT!!??
The usual lifetime is that there’s a big burst of sales upon release and then a pretty dramatic drop off. Sales at that next level down tend to be steady for a year or so and then drop off again to almost nothing after that year. The only exceptions to that to date have been Nix Comics Quarterly #1, because when you meet new customers they normally want to start at the beginning and Jim Shephard: Negotiate Nothing which kept selling OK for a couple years thanks to Jim’s cult hero status. It has since settled down to the levels of other backstock.
I usually try to push backstock when something new is coming out, because it’s when I’m most likely to have fresh eyes on Nix as a whole. That’s my main strategy. I also try to bring copies of everything-but-everything with me when I’m at shows, because you never know who is going to want what. For stores that carry Nix books I try to rotate stock in and out. Chances are a book is new to someone!
I would welcome a good way to clear out backstock. I keep threatening to throw a small press/tiny record label “Box sale” where people like me vend backstock out of boxes of comics, records, CDs, et. all. at a deep discount.
ZL – Do you do that normally, engineer interest in older works with sales or packing them into bundles?
KE – Yeah! At shows I usually offer the first four issues of Nix Comics Quarterly for $10, which is basically the wholesale rate. I usually sell at least a couple of those packs per show.
ZL – On a practical level, what happens to any stock still left over, is it propping up someone’s bed or hidden away in a storage facility somewhere costing extra money to store?
KE – I have a decent sized house with a big basement and tiny home office, so no problem on the storage front. I do worry a little about dampness creeping in to the boxes in the basement (All issues 1-4 of the Quarterly) and would like to accelerate sales on those somehow.
ZL – Thinking about the future, what do you think is the future for idiosyncratic comics of the kind that Nix comics publish, self-publishing, web comics, digital platforms or something else?
KE – I have no idea. That’s serious crystal ball stuff, there.
The lefty in me hopes that print stays a viable option because it has the most potential for subversive use in the digital age. “They” can easily track and hack you on-line but try to hack this pamphlet I left in the men’s room of the Dubuque Greyhound station, jerk! (Not that I’ve ever been to Dubuque. You can’t prove that I have…)
Artistically speaking, I hope that short stories come back into vogue… I like my comic stories like I like my songs: Fast, loud and short! The whole sprawling epic thing that is in vogue across most genres really bores the piss outta me.
ZL – Yeah, definitely me as well, I don’t know why people like it. The whole idea of sitting down and watching some intricately plotted epic series where I have to keep everything fresh in my mind to understand what’s going on… I just want to switch off and relax, that’s harder effort than my job. How is that entertainment?
ZL – So, thinking again about community and particularly as you area publisher, so have to do some keeping your eye out for talent, which three creators would you recommend people search out if they are fans of Nix comics?
KE – Oh man. I’m gonna tap out on this question. Too many people deserving of a nod and I don’t want to apply any sort of hierarchy to them. How about this, here are my three favorite ways to find new creators that I admire:
- Follow zines, blogs and sites dedicated to uncovering new and old comics of all sorts. Some of my go tos are Almost Normal Comics, Poopsheet Foundation, anything Comics Reporter marks as OTBP, Your Chicken Enemy, Robyn Chapman’s Tiny Report, the review section of Razorcake Magazine… It doesn’t hurt to pick up old zines for their review sections, for that matter. Roctober had a great one.
- Invest in anthology reading and take the time to look up the artists you find in them. It’s the cheapest way to get exposed to a lot of artists. It absolutely perplexes me that they don’t sell better for this very reason.
- Look for publications by artists who you discover through their art in non-comics publications. (or other work like posters or record sleeves) You can kind of tell when a graphic artist has the chops to do narrative work, and chances are that if they have the skills, they’ve acted on them.
Hope that’s not too big a cop out.
ZL – Well, it’s just told anyone who wants to work with you how to get discovered by you.
ZL – How about we move onto fantasy futureland? Given unlimited time, budget and resources what 3 projects would you deliver so that you could retire proud?
KE – Wow. Unlimited time budget and resources? We’re not talking about individual comics or publications at that point!
- A Nix Comics Music festival. Put a bunch of comic/poster artists in a spotlight at the same time a bunch of the bands that inspire Nix play.
- Open a Nix Comics brick and mortar flagship store. Something like Quimbys meets Amoeba Records.
- Hire a full-time art and writing staff, giving them a salary, health insurance, vacation time and a chunk of the IP on anything they create.
ZL – Finally, what can we expect from you in the next 6 months?
KE – At the moment I’m in the last days of my kickstarter crowdfunding two publications:
“Kenttucky Pussy” is a comic book by Sexton Ming and JT Dockery. The text elements are all poems by Sexton and inspire the visual narration by JT, so I’m really excited by this. I’ve wanted to work with JT since I met him at the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo (SPACE) a buncha years back and I have been a fan of Sexton Ming ever since his role as the bionically enhanced and thoroughly evil Queen Victoria in Pervirella. (THAT movie is everything that the cyber punk genre failed to be!) “Kentucky Pussy” has everything that I would expect from a pairing of these two great artists: Lush imagery, outsider lamentations and proper use vulgarity. It’s weird to me that within two years I’ll have put out two poetry centered books. Never considered myself a “poetry guy.”
The second book is a collection of Sketchbook art by me! For the past few years I have been drawing picture sleeves for 7” records in my sketchbooks. I cut them out and pair them with the record that inspired them; selling them at comic shows and record fairs. It’s a good fun way to take a lonely 7” and turn it into a unique part of someone’s collection. People have been asking me for a book version of it for a while… Hopefully they were for real about wanting one!
Kickstarter campaign
I also just overspent at a local comic sale, so I expect that I’ll write a zine about comic collecting in the same vein as my “Tales from the Crate” record collecting zine. I gotta recoup that money somehow!
ZL – I’d like to thank you for taking the time to talk to us and for giving such honest answers. I hope you enjoyed the process!
KE – Thanks! I did! A very in depth and unique interview.
The Short List – Tom Murphy, some of Colossive Press
Disclosure – Colossive Press published a zine by me and I have published two contributor only zines with one of the Colossive Press people.
donate to St Christopher’s hospice donate to Maggie’s Wallace Centre
ZL – You’ve published a number of zines now, through Colossive Press, have you any plans for new publications?
CP – Oh yes! Putting out the first few things through CP last year was a bit like opening the floodgates to ten or fifteen years’ worth of ideas that I’d not had the opportunity or confidence to pursue. They’re all at a fairly nebulous stage, so I need to focus on one at a time and get it done – it’s easy to get a bit paralysed and not know which way to go first.
Ahead of the Sheffield Zine Fair on May 18th, Jane (my wife) has compiled Things My Dad Saw (But Never Bothered Mentioning) – a book of intriguing photos by her dad, Gordon Gibbens, who was also the subject of How Graffiti Saved My Dad’s Life (At Least for a While). As well as his street art photography, Gordon used to hunt down press launches, demonstrations, festivals, marches, etc. As a result, there’s a lot of splendid and strange shots in his archive.
We’re also launching 3:52 AM, an A6 zine of words and photography by our brilliant friend VJ Sellar, based on her experience of insomnia (and raising money for the Maggie’s Wallace centre in Cambridge). I like to think we’ve coaxed her into the world of zines, and hopefully there are more to come.
Given the time I’d also like to publish more things by other people, as a bit of a patron. I’d like Colossive to be a bit like Ghost Box or some of the small music labels I follow on Bandcamp, finding interesting work with a strong identity and bringing it to the world.
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
CP – At my age, most of my “firsts” are lost in the mists of time. However, I’d say that the first work in the print medium that really blew my mind was Bryan Talbot’s Luther Arkwright. As a teenager I was a casual and slightly ironic reader of whatever comics I could find in the newsagents of Chorley. However, when I landed a plum part-time job at Morrisons (in 1985), my horizons soon spread to Odyssey 7 in Manchester, where the world of comics opened up in front of me like a thousand-leaved lotus blossom. And one of the first goodies I picked up was book one of Arkwright.
Even though I was also getting into series like Swamp Thing, American Flagg! and Moonshadow, Arkwright totally captivated me with the intricacy of the narrative and the incredible craft of its execution. When, after a seemingly interminable hiatus, the second and third volumes dropped, Talbot’s mastery of the medium just seemed to expand exponentially.
As much as anything, the whole work implanted the idea that at their best, whether dealing with the mundane or the cosmic, comics could do stuff that other mediums couldn’t even dream of. That notion has kept me coming back, through thick and thin, for 30-odd years.
ZL – Given an unlimited budget and all the time in the world, what would be the project you’d make to be remembered by?
CP – Ha – I’d have no idea what to do with a budget! I guess a full-blown Croydon Spaceport visitor experience somewhere in the town’s now legendary Whitgift Centre, complete with historical artefacts, audio-visual displays and – naturally – a lavishly furnished gift shop.
ZL – Ad Astra is an alternative history story, what was the initial trigger for that idea?
CP – Oh blimey… I think that somewhere along the line, during a period of creative paralysis, I had an idea for a series of one-page text-and-image concoctions under the overall title Going Somewhere, Going Nowhere, based on the idea of travel and journeys. Little one-shots I could aim to wrap up quickly.
One of the notions I had was a voice remembering when the 119 bus used to go as far as Croydon Spaceport, how it used to be packed with people going to see the launches etc. I think that came about from the heritage work being done at the site of Croydon Airport – the very first London airport – and the sort of faded sci-fi, “lost future” feel that some of the town gives off.
Anyway, one of the benefits of my characteristic procrastination is that the idea had time to germinate in my noddle into something a bit richer. I started to come up with a more detailed timeline and cast list for the short and ultimately disappointing history of Croydon’s municipal space programme.
Another influence was a bit of street art that thousands of people walk past every day without even noticing. Underneath Blackfriars Bridge in London, the pedestrian underpass is decorated with tile displays showing alternative plans for the bridge, scenes from its construction etc. However, some enterprising ‘guerilla historian’ has dug out the Letraset and staged a bit of an intervention to come up with an alternative history involving flat-pack bridges from Argos and lost instruction manuals. I loved the element of absolute toot being delivered in a very straight-faced way.
The final piece of the jigsaw was the discovery of Flickr Commons, where various institutions make their image archives available with no copyright restrictions. With NASA and the San Diego Air and Space Museum among the participating institutions, I soon found plenty of images that lent themselves to gags or unlikely developments. Once I’d cracked the format, it kind of wrote itself.
ZL – You’ve had a lot of success and good feedback from ‘How Graffiti Saved My Dad’s Life…’ As that’s such a personal book, what does that feel like and mean to you?
CP – We’ve both been blown away by the response to the book – and we’re very proud on Gordon’s behalf. The initial aim was to showcase some of his photographs and the brilliant work of the street artists he admired. But Gordon was such an amazing man that Jane just had to tell his story.
Gordon was effectively written off when he received his second terminal cancer diagnosis in July 2016. but within weeks he was out with his camera again. Although he was clearly very frail, nobody on the graffiti scene really knew how ill Gordon was or what he was going through. Many of them have only found out recently through the book – something we now regret in a way.
There’s been a massive wave of affection and admiration for Gordon from all over the world, both from those who knew him and from complete strangers. We always knew what a brilliant person he was, of course, but it’s been great to spread the word. And although she’ll kill me for saying this, I’m pleased that more people now appreciate what Jane went through and what an amazing support she was for her dad.
All profits from the book are going to St Christopher’s hospice in Sydenham (south-east London), from where Gordon set off on some of his final graffiti trips. With a little help from our friends – including Steve from London Calling Blog, who organised a charity street art walk in Penge – we’ve now raised more than £1,300, and we hope that figure will continue to rise. (We’ll also be donating the profits from Things My Dad Saw…)
We’re very pleased and proud to be able to support such a worthy cause in return for all the help St Christopher’s has given our family. Jane’s mum Pat was also cared for there, and following Gordon’s death, Jane received bereavement counselling through the hospice. Its work is absolutely vital to the local community, but it remains alarmingly underfunded.
Ultimately, the message of the book is: find something you love doing then find a way to carry on doing it. That’s one of the driving impulses behind DIY culture, and it’s what we’re both trying to do with Colossive.
all art copyright and trademark it’s respective owners.
content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
The Short List – Malty Heave
Phil on twitter Robert on twitter
ZL – Hi both of you, thanx for agreeing to this interview about your new comic Malty Heave! Rob, I understand you’ll be launching it at Portsmouth Comic Con.
Where will people be able to find you in Portsmouth, do you have table details yet, will you be tabling both days?
RW – I’ll be on Table 6 in Comic City 4 at the Portsmouth con. I hope people can find me as I think the event is going to be even bigger this year, and it was big (and busy) last year.
ZL – Phil I believe you’re going to be at Ace Comics in Colchester for Free Comic Book day to launch it, as well as doing sketches? Pretty jealous for those people in Colchester, I’ll tell you! Before diving into details about the comic, I thought it would be interesting to get some background about how it came about.
I was wondering how long you’ve known each other and what led up to you two producing this comic together? I’m guessing you both agreed a theme and didn’t stumble upon one by accident, so I was wondering how specific that theme was and what went into agreeing content to publish together?
RW – Phil and I have known each other for about five years. I used to live in Maidstone in Kent, where Phil has lived for many years, and we met not long before I moved away (only to Ashford, which is also in Kent). We have kept in touch and met up a few times since then, and we have also done a few local comic events together.
The last time we met up, a few weeks ago, we were talking about how things like Heavy Metal magazine and Epic Illustrated used to be available in newsagents (I had been chatting to Andy Oliver from Broken Frontier about the same topic on Twitter a few days earlier, which probably led to the chat me and Phil had). Then, the next time we talked, I said I wished I had something new to sell at the Portsmouth Comic Con and Phil got back to me and suggested we do a comic together, twelve pages each, inspired by Heavy Metal magazine. I was quite intimidated by the thought of doing a comic with Phil to start with, particularly as we only had about two weeks to write and draw the whole thing, but I think we both enjoyed doing it and we are both pleased with the finished comic. We each created our own strips separately and showed them to each other when they were done (or more or less done in my case, as Phil finished his first and needed to see what I had done to design the cover) but we did tell each other roughly what our strips were about after we’d come up with some stories. The cover was Phil’s idea. He did his part first and then sent it to me to draw my characters in and add the logo, etc.
ZL – I’m deeply impressed you two could make these stories in two weeks, they’re very accomplished full stop; considering the turnaround time, even more so. Rob, your cartooning and character design really impressed me, they’re beautiful and solid forms and there’s a lot of details included in your work, how much actual time went into drawing and how much to writing? Do you layout, thumbnail or pencil a work like this?
RW – I can’t believe we did this in just a couple of weeks either. It’s amazing what you can do when you’ve got a tight deadline. It may have been a day or two over a fortnight, but it took me a few days just to come up with a script I was happy with and the actual drawing / putting all the files together was done in under a fortnight.
I wrote a script for Rank Bottom, which took a few days. I knew more or less what I wanted to do right away, and I had a beginning and an end, but it took me a while to work out what was going in the middle. I did do very rough thumbnails, just to work out what was going on what page, and then I just threw myself into drawing it and one panel at a time. I used to do quite detailed pencils and then felt like I ruined them when I inked them, but since I’ve gone digital my pencils have become very rough and I spend more time on my inking. I even draw some stuff straight down in ink, which I can do, because it doesn’t matter too much if I make mistakes. I letter it one page at a time, as I go, and tend to re-write bits of dialogue / add in new jokes as I do.
ZL – Phil, just because I can’t believe it’s possible, I’m also going to ask you about the fact that you made this comic in a two-week period, which seems amazingly quick considering the quality of the work!
PE – After suggesting to Rob that we create a comic together in two weeks I had a sudden panic attack, but I’m really pleased that we pulled it off and have created something decent, which we hope people will enjoy.
When I suggested this comic to Rob I had no idea what I was going to draw apart from that it’d feature robots and that I’d be working to a one panel per page format. Once I had the opening line the story, such as it is, developed from there and I only changed one caption along the way. I really enjoyed the freedom of drawing large panels (which were drawn same size A4). The pencils were very loose and most of the details came at the inking stage and I had fun playing around with different textures and styles. I’ve always enjoyed sketching and wanted to keep that same spontaneity with my story.
I should also mention how much I enjoyed drawing the cover and working with Rob on it. I drew my parts first, which I scanned and sent to Rob who drew his bits on the computer, which is his preferred way of drawing.
ZL – Rob, I don’t really know anything about your comics work so I wondered if you could give some details about how many years have you been working at making comics, did you start as a kid and come back, are there many years of work to dig into?
RW – I started reading comics as a kid, always wanted to draw comics, and self-published my first comic, Crisp Biscuit, in 1991, when I was 22, but in the 20 years after that I only published another handful of comics. I had very little self-confidence, was very slow, and had no idea who would ever read or publish my work, so there were quite a few long periods of time where I just wasn’t drawing at all. For a few years in my mid-20s, I just focused on writing, which boosted my confidence in that department, but I still felt like I was just bluffing it with my art. I didn’t draw much at all in my 30s and had pretty much given up on ever drawing comics again, but for some reason, in my early-40s, I got back into it again, was a lot more patient and focused than I had been before, and I stuck with it. I was 50 in February and I feel like I’m just getting going. I think the things that made the biggest difference to me this time were social media, which I hated to start with but it meant that I could connect with fellow creators and potential readers in a way that I’d never been able to before (at least I knew that someone would see my strips on Facebook), the way that printing comics became more affordable, and most importantly, getting into digital art. I bought a drawing tablet and a copy of Manga Studio a few years ago and the first thing I drew digitally was my book. Before that, I was always changing my mind about what tools to use for inking, always thought my pencils looked much better than my finished art and going digital has really improved my art and boosted my confidence in my drawing.
ZL – I’ve been sounding off a fair bit about how there aren’t any venues to get comics out there in front of people’s eyes, are you concerned that UK comics is becoming something of an Ouroboros constantly eating itself? What’s drawn you to attend Portsmouth Comic Con?
PE – There are far more comic conventions in the UK now than there were when I first started. More than one a week so there should be more venues to sell comics, especially independent ones but these conventions seem more interested in having tables selling merchandise and having “the 3rd actor who played the 2nd Storm-trooper who gets shot before he makes through the hole in the wall in The Empire Strikes Back but was later replaced by a CGI Storm-trooper in subsequent versions” signing photos at £30 a time. I know that not all conventions are the same and Portsmouth is an exception but the cost of tables, travel and possibly accommodation makes it difficult for creators to attend and make any money selling their comics.
RW – I think I’ve always been worried that there aren’t enough venues out there for cartoonists. In some ways, things are better for people like me right now than they have been for years, because at least there is a graphic novel market and a chance that I could get another GN published and into bookshops, but that is hardly a path to riches (or even a minimum wage).
ZL – I know we’ve talked about how tricky getting work out to new people can be and I’m a bit prone to talking about how things are a bit ‘best of times, worst of times’ so I was wondering, when were the worst of times and the best of times for you?
PE – I think my best times have been and gone but you never know!
ZL – Phil, you’ve been around the UK small press and zine scene as well as working in professional comics and I’m wondering how the current scene feels in comparison to, say, the early/ mid 80’s and you were in Gag! and there were companies like Harrier, Trident and Valkyrie? Do you still feel like there’s a scene and do you feel part of that scene?
Rodney the Premonition
ES*EF
PE – I’m not really part of the comic scene these days, probably because I stopped going to comic conventions and meeting anybody. It was some years before I plucked up the courage to contact Rob even though he was living a short bus journey from me in Maidstone. Rob’s younger than me and was more familiar with the scene that developed after Harrier, Escape etc but we shared a similar interest in a certain type of comics.
ZL – Rob, I’ve seen the advert for your comic, Back, Crack & Sack (& Brain), but I was wondering what else you’ll be bringing to Portsmouth and what else of yours is out there to be found?
RW – I will probably bring copies of most of my old comics to Portsmouth (although there are some I have run out of now) but will mainly be focusing on Malty Heave, my book, and a couple of issues of a comic I drew called Department of the Peculiar. DOTP is a superhero / sci-fi comic (sort of) written by Rol Hirst, and the first two issues were drawn and published just before I went digital and got distracted by my book but me and Rol are working on a 48-page special right now, which will hopefully be coloured by Phil, and we intend to Kickstart that in the summer. I have a table at the Lakes festival this year and I definitely want it out by then
ZL – Apart from your work on Department of the Obscure, which I know you’ll be working on with Phil and writer Rol Hirst, whose name I recognise as a reviewer from Comics International, (yes I’m old enough), but apart from that, what projects have you both got coming up?
RW – Everyone seems to know Rol from Comics International. Phil’s friend Reuben knows him from CI, too, but I didn’t make contact with him until quite some time after that. Department of the Peculiar is my main project at the moment, and I’m still not quite half way through drawing it, but I have an idea for another graphic novel I would like to start after that, unless I end up getting distracted by something else. I would at least like to put a few chapters together and see if I can find a publisher / maybe even get an Arts Council grant. I also drew a story for Aces Weekly last year and I would like to do more with the characters who appeared in that story (Love Her Madly) and maybe build that up into a graphic novel.
ZL – Would you like to work together again, or even with a larger group of people on another anthology?
RW – I would love to work with Phil again. We enjoyed doing this comic and have since talked a bit about the possibility of doing more with Malty Heave, but with a different theme next time. I think Phil already has an idea for a story, and I’ve had an idea for something myself in the last couple of days.
PE – Malty Heave is our first project together and we’re already talking about a second issue which we think will have a horror theme (it may surprise people that I’ve always been a huge fan of Berni Wrightson and the work he did for Warren magazines in the 70’s)
all art copyright and trademark it’s respective owners.
content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
The Short List – Asa Wheatley
Asa Wheatley – twitter web Sammy Ward – twitter web
Michelle Marham – twitter web instagram patreon
Emma Graveling – instagram
Emily Pearson – twitter web Kat Willott – instagram web
ZL – I was interested by the fact that most of the stories in the anthology were about female protagonists and made the connection that the artwork was also drawn by women artists, was this a conscious decision or did it just come about organically?
AW – Much of the media that influenced me growing up had strong female protagonists, Buffy, Tomb Raider, Terminator and I think this has ended up being reflected in the work I produce. More often than not I tend to write female protagonists and this anthology is no different. The choice to have only women artists wasn’t something I had decided from the start it was more something that occurred naturally as the anthology progressed. Kat, Sammy and Emma I all knew personally before starting the anthology. Kat I had originally worked with on Tails of Mystery and in its early stages this anthology contained a Tails of Mystery story but I felt it didn’t fit the tone but I still wanted to have Kat contribute to the story so wrote something that I thought her art style would complement nicely.
Sammy
Michelle
Emma
Emily
Sammy, I had wanted to work with for a while and Sprouting was an idea that she came up with in its earliest form and we fleshed out together with me writing it and her illustrating. Emma’s work I had seen previously and thought it’d be a great fit for the kind of story I was planning with Finders Keepers. From there I realised that the artists were all women and thought why not just stick with that and see how it goes. It wasn’t hard to find extremely talented women artists, Michelle I met at a convention, one of the MCM’s I believe, and Emily I was a fan of from her work on The Wilds and I had seen her posting on twitter about looking for cover work. And with that I had all the artists I needed.
ZL – I’m always interested in how a writer works with the artists on a story, so I was wondering whether the approach varied between each artist or whether there it varied between each story?
AW– So for some of the stories I wrote them specifically for the artists. With these I tended to write a little less detail leaving the artist to make decisions about placement or character look. The way the main character of Sprouting looks for example is all down to Sammy. I trusted in her design and she delivered fantastically. For Hanging in the Darkness the script was pretty sparse with much of the exact dialogue coming post art because I wanted the short to act as two stories within one, having worked with Kat before as well I was happy to leave a lot of it to her and the choice to have much of the final panels only lit by candlelight was her idea. Whereas with A Witch’s Penance I hadn’t worked with Michelle before, so I wanted to make sure I gave her as much as possible to work with and she absolutely smashed it. Some of my favourite things in that story are things that Michelle came up with without any direction from me at all.
Emily
Sammy
Michelle
Kat
Emma
For Finders Keepers I finished the story and just handed that over to Emma and asked her what she would be interested in illustrating to sit alongside it. I think the only illustration I requested was the final one. And then for the cover, which was completed before any of the interiors I gave Emily a brief synopsis of the stories within and she designed a few covers initially with us both agreeing the one that went on to become the actual cover our favourite. So, with each artist I took a different approach but the one thing I made sure not to do was restrain any of them.
ZL – What are your plans for the anthology and the stories in it, will A Witches’ Penance going to be ongoing, will there be further issues of the anthology sooner or later and will they feature the same artists or are you interested in finding new artists?
AW – I have a couple more anthologies planned for the future but the stories within Sprouting & Other Tales of the Curious will not be continued. I wanted to portray that these stories all resided within a bigger world around them and that there was maybe more to each of them if you looked but the stories are themselves complete. A Witch’s Penance is the most open ended of the four stories, but I wanted it to reflect the world it was in and the characters it contained where nothing is ever finished for them and the world keeps moving even if they aren’t around.
ZL – You also write Tails of Mystery with artist Kat Willot, are there any plans for this title or any new titles planned?
AW – Yes, I’m currently working on the script for issue 3 and once that’s all done Kat will start illustrating the pages. Tails of Mystery is going to be a 4 issue complete mini-series so as of writing this we’re half way though the series. Within the first issue of Tails of Mystery we also featured a small back-up fantasy story titled World Weary centred on a Gnome barbarian and a Half-Orc monster hunter and we may also be working on some more stories for those characters in the future.
Tails of Mystery issue 1 cover
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content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
Review – Sprouting and Other Tales of the Curious
Asa Wheatley – twitter web Sammy Ward – twitter web
Michelle Marham – twitter web instagram patreon
Emma Graveling – instagram
Emily Pearson – twitter web Kat Willott – instagram web
The Brief
I enjoyed reading this. There are some interesting subtexts to chew over and some skilled pacing and design. I really love that cover a lot!
The ongoing serial A Witch’s Penance had me interested to follow it. It was certainly my favourite story.
As an anthology, it felt consistent and well balanced. It mixed up approaches to story telling and left me thinking about some of its themes. It’s a solidly created anthology with some interesting and more personal moments. Essentially, it delivered a good read and I was left thinking.
The Detail
This is an anthology mixing prose and comics works. It uses a traditional ‘horror story with a twist’ format that, when I’m looking at it, seems well handled. Nothing comes from left field in terms of the twists. It manages the foreshadowing and punchlines well.
Now that probably sounds cold coming from me and that’s really a matter of my reading of the work. ‘Horror story with a twist ending’ is low on my list of likes unfortunately. However, there’s a bit more at work in these stories than just that format. Maybe I’m reading more in there, maybe I’m not, but I’m going to come back to both Sprouting and Hanging in the Darkness to get into my thoughts about what they made me think about.
First, I want to discuss Finders Keepers, the prose story, then go onto A Witch’s Penance.
Finders Keepers is a fine prose story but, for me, didn’t move me too much. It’s paced well, it develops it’s plot well, it builds its tension well. But that’s it, which is not a complaint or a method of damning anything, it’s a recognition that I don’t really get into these stories. The prose is clear, avoiding being purple and that’s to its benefit. I guess the only thing I wonder is what it’s trying to tell me or talk about? I hate saying that, because I hate anytime when someone says, ‘it was done well, but…’ because that’s just an awful snipe. Things have a right to exist the way the are without having to meet my sense of meaningful.
Unpicking my thoughts really does just bring me back to the fact that the style of story is not one I am personally invested in, with the other stories I feel like there’s enough extra there to dig hooks into me, where this one feels like a nice pot boiler without much to say for itself outside of being well executed. If you like stories with twist endings, it’s well made for you.
I like the illustrations style for the story. It reminds me of a Ladybird books and that matches the tones of the story and age of the characters well. They also given some very lively acting, giving a good sense of personality and action.
A Witch’s Penance, the only ongoing story in the book, and the other two tales gave me much more of an idea that there’s something at work under the surface. I picked A Witch’s Penance out from the other two for a reason though. This story, at the moment, seems to have less of a theme and have more of a plot. Unlike the others, this is not a ‘twist at the end’ plot. This is very much a ‘revenge doubled’ plot. By which I mean, a mysterious figure with a past seems to be revenging something, but exacting this revenge sets up an excuse for the antagonist to also seek revenge. The circle of revenge is spinning and pulling in unwitting victims all around.
It’s not the plot, or even the characters that interest me as much as the approach to storytelling. Here, it’s very much that delivery which makes it my favourite in the anthology. The pacing and rhyming between panels is handled poetically. It’s got that bouncy rhythm of doggerel verse. Plain, driving, seemingly simple but incredibly effective at dragging you along. To mix my metaphors. It’s a catchy pop chorus, very simple structure delivering something immediate and accessible and hiding some very clever production techniques underneath it all.
This piece comes into its own in the chase through the wood, with panel layout and the positioning of figures (and a tree!) creating rhythm, leading to comparisons between characters circumstances, if that makes sense? To pick that apart, I get a lovely, punchy sense of action happening. It’s tense here, because there’s a sense of the figures moving around each other, of proximity and the level of danger and luck involved in trying to escape and how thin the line between success and failure will be. The end delivers a couple of cliff-hangers that set the future wheels in motion and maintain that sense of things happening and matters to learn.
It’s difficult to know how the layout was decided, where writer and artist begin and end, but I would say that the layout and characterisation achieved in the woodland scene by Michelle Marham impressed me and I thought delivered the tightest storytelling in the anthology. Whoever worked it out, did a good job, but the delivery sells it well.
As mentioned, Hanging in The Darkness and Sprouting gave me a sense of subtext in the work. Each has a nice little plot. For both, the artwork is a little rough in places in terms of anatomy and expressing emotion but paces itself well. It adds atmosphere and I like the colouring on Hanging in The Darkness most of all, I’m not sure whether there was a single colourist, or if each artist did their own. As no colourist is named, it seems likely that each artist did their own work.
Hanging in The Darkness seems to me to be a study in the slow eroding of memory and the chill and dread that comes with the loss of that memory and, as such, the art is very much telling a separate story to the text. It’s atmospheric but lacks a bite of good character work to it. The art has a hard task as it’s there depicting a story that’s less engaging than the text, which gets to delve into and explore the deeper psychological content of the piece. The art is there to deliver the chills, which it does very nicely, but I can’t quite work out what point that was serving other than as a plot device.
Sprouting on the other hand has art that is very much in sync with the writing, adding layer to the words and working together to deliver additional depth to the plot. Where Hanging in The Darkness played with loss of identity and personality, Sprouting is dealing with a sense of dysmorphia and the ability to come to a safe space where we accept our form and ourselves. Where we find friends that accept us for who we are and, through that, a place in the world.
I very much feel like this idea needed more space to develop a sense of the person, to make them meaningful, for my tastes a story dealing with such themes needs to get me to see the lead as a person rather than delivering plot beats. I think the limit of the space and the scope of the storyline conspired against it making its message deeper and more meaningful by affecting me emotionally. It ended up delivering something polemical rather than persuasive or personal.
They’re both good ideas though, ways of dealing with their subjects that I thought were quite effective concepts, interesting ways to explore those concepts and personify the psychological physically.
I do feel like there was room for these two stories to breathe more and get down to the bone. It’s a bit grisly here, you can feel it roll around as you’re chewing over the idea. To be clearer, and I can’t second guess creators, but to me these seem like strong ideas that either space or time didn’t allow for a full resolution to. I didn’t come away with a sure image of what the creator was trying to say about these things, or whether they were meant more as hooks to hang a good story on. That may be on me, and that may indeed have been the intent here all along, but to me it felt like there was room to go deeper and more personal in these stories, to commit to an opinion. They had interesting things to bring up and interesting ways of personifying the abstract, I just wanted to know more about what they personally felt about these subjects, because I think there’s an interesting set of voices here.
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content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
The Short List – Ken Reynolds
Disclosure – I provided the cover for the final collection of Sliced Quarterly, edited and published by Ken Reynolds
ZL – I have the impression of you as a long-term and influential individual within the UK small press scene. How do you think of yourself in those terms and who would you consider your peers?
KR – Perception is a funny thing. I’ve only been involved in making comics in any capacity for the last 5 years or so… I started shortly after my daughter was born. That’s not really a long time when you consider how long it can take to pull small press comic projects together. We’re 3 years and 3 volumes in on Sliced Quarterly, and it took about 3 years to do 5 issues of Cognition. That felt pretty quick to me.
So, I don’t feel like I’ve been around for ages.
As for influence… If you run an anthology it can give off a perception of being ‘in charge’ but that’s never really the case with Sliced. I round things up rather than commission on that one.
All in all, I still feel as though I’m figuring things out. I think back 4 years to the person that had aspirations of making comics… I’d have looked at me now thinking, ‘wow, you made all this stuff’. I guess that’s the trick. Keep making books.
The only way I’ve ever felt influential is when I can help other creators. Something I will do any time I can. It’s indie comics, you don’t step on people on the way up, we all lift each other.
As for peers… I guess that’s just all the people I work with consistently, the people that help me as much as I try to help them. Chris Sides, Jimmy Furlong, Jon Laight. But I could list hundreds of creators. Anyone I’ve worked with through Sliced, anyone that’s hired me as a letterer.
There aren’t levels to me. If you’ve made a comic, any comic, you’re a creator. You’ve done something special. After that it’s all subjective. But if you’ve had an idea, do everything you have to do to get that book over the line and made a reality, you have my utmost respect. If you keep doing that over and over, you might get a reputation, I suppose? But if you make good stuff, you make good stuff. I always want to read books I love.
ZL – You’ve mentioned that you’re planning on focussing on single publications now that you’ve put Sliced Quarterly to bed, are there any concrete plans in place or is more of an ambition at the moment?
KR – I have one book that is a definite. We began to serialise a story over the last 5 issues or so. We got to a nice pausing point, and when I decided Vol 3 would be the last collection I promised the creator that I would continue to help them publish the story in some form. That is partly where the idea came from.
Ultimately this move is an extension of what Sliced has always been about. Getting stories in front of readers that don’t usually get that chance. Now it seems like a natural evolution to do the same thing with longer form books instead of short comics. My experience in self-publishing and crowdfunding can be useful to someone that is attempting it for the first time. It’s still that principle of helping other creators. The Sliced banner is just a label for that.
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
KR – The first thing I really remember loving when I was growing up that made me want to make something myself was Wallace and Gromit. I couldn’t get enough of it. The animation delighted me. I tinkered with simple animation throughout my design education, but I never fully committed to it.
There was something about the style and sense of humour that made it all so accessible. It was tangible and real. Animation that you could reach out and touch. There is something special about stop motion animation, even now as it becomes more scarce. Anything that takes that much time, effort and artistry deserves attention and respect.
If we talk comics, I recall the moment I realised comics could be more than what I knew them to be from my childhood. I’d loved the Beano etc, but when one of my college tutors showed me Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean, it opened my eyes and I went on to discover how diverse the medium can be. I wish more people had this sort of revelation. My main bugbear is comics being described as a genre rather than a medium. It’s reductive because comics can and should work in ANY genre.
ZL – You’ve spent a few years now working with creators as an instigator of some kind, what do you personally gain from taking that role?
KR – I think I’ve touched on this a little in an earlier question. In indie comics we HAVE to help one another. Simon Russell once said something that I thought particularly pertinent to this point. “Art isn’t a zero-sum game.” It isn’t a competition. By helping others succeed you don’t affect your own chances of success.
Another answer would be the realisation that lots of people helped me on the road to making my books, and I would have to be a huge arsehole not to do the same for others.
As for what I gain? Satisfaction. To know you helped someone makes books that are special. To know that without you something special had less chance of existing… If you think of it like that, then it’s a responsibility to help, isn’t it?
Making is the aim. It isn’t sales or reviews. It’s the process of making. That is the goal. Everything else is out of your control, and to put your hopes on how things are received is a set-up for failure and unhappiness.
Enjoying making something, put it out, it has a life of its own, make the next one. And the next.
ZL – You are gifted the opportunity to set up a new museum showcasing all of the creators who have influenced you from birth to now. The first show is called ‘First, Formative and Now’ who do you pick and why?
KR – Oooooof! This is a brutal question.
First:
The Hobbit – Tolkien
The first story I got really lost in. I return to it a lot and have recently begun studying the mythology Tolkien created in his lifetime.
Formative:
When I discovered and researched his work in college it cemented my career path.
Now:
The friends I’ve made in small press comics. The people I speak to regularly, the people I send my work to for feedback, and they in turn send their stuff to me. It’s comradeship, support and guidance from people that are trying to achieve similar goals in very different ways. It’s not competitive, we all want to see the others make the best stuff they can. There are hundreds of these small groups in the wider scene, everyone drives everyone else on and it’s a fantastic atmosphere to grow and explore your art. Each time I go to a convention, meet new people, see new work, it refuels me. Encourages me to make my next thing. The vibrancy and enthusiasm within indie comics is special, and we shouldn’t take it for granted.
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content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
The Short List – Simon Russell
ZL – What made you choose folk tales for your series?
SR – Art is many things at the same time for audiences and artists, but one of the most important to me in this phase of my life is the idea that Art is Play – making or appreciating anything provokes an emotional response and in a world of hard noses and cold shoulders, the emotion I am most keen on pulling to the surface is delight.
Every time I set out to make comics, I was finding that I’d box myself in by insisting that the piece must be Original or Important or Worthwhile.
I think that was a valid reaction to seeing a lot of work that is very well executed but … why does it exist?
So much stuff consumed, with no change in my world and no desire to reread it left me muttering ‘that was well done, but why did you bother? And why should I care?’
But I was letting other people’s work dictate how I approached my own and that lead to me taking everything too seriously
I didn’t have that problem with my paintings or drawings – I was embracing accidents and chance and letting images grow from the different ways I could play with the media.
It seemed that retelling existing stories could be a way of getting past myself, so I wouldn’t obsess over the ‘value’ of a project and could enjoy the Play. Folk tales, myths and legends have been a recurring choice for me as a consumer over the years and I like the way that the same story can be told in ways that differ slightly or wildly. It’s like music in that respect.
So, I reasoned that if I work (sometimes) under the banner of Once Upon Again… I would never run out of material or challenges and wouldn’t hit a what-to-do block when snatching odd hours for work, as I often have to.
I may never have tested the idea if it hadn’t been for a chance meeting with Jon Mason, the Storyteller who became a collaborator. We both had a love of Norse myths and the Marriage of Njord & Skadi turned out to be one we’d each been tinkering with independently – so it was a quick decision to work together on the new comic, focusing on ‘the giantess who came for revenge, but chose a husband… and then chose again.’
That makes Once Upon Again number 1, and number 2 is a 2-page comic I did of Loki & Coyote Talking By A Tree, but OUA 3 will probably be my more comical retelling of the Njord & Skadi tale – old stories being told and retold in different ways really appeals to the part of me that wants to use more than one approach and my interest/obsession with formalistic aspects of the comic form.
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
SR – The first time? That was probably a Goofy t-shirt I had around age 5. I probably wore it for a while, but what I remember is tracing the image over and over and over and then drawing the cartoon character without tracing because I’d worked out the ellipses he was made from. And then drawing other figures. It may not be a true or accurate memory given how early it was, but I treasure it as the spark that lit a fire in me for drawing.
Tove Jannson – Finn Family Moomintroll cover
The Mighty World of Marvel issue 1 cover and free t-shirt transfer
The first identifiable pieces of art I can remember loving were Tove Jansonn’s pictures with pen and word in Finn Family Moomintroll; Starry Night by Van Gogh (on a biscuit tin or a place mat at somebody’s house, I think); and the drawings of Jack Kirby/Steve Ditko in Mighty World of Marvel number 1 (and the t-shirt transfer that came with it! for somebody who never got in to self-expression through fashion, pictures on clothes seem to have loomed large in my formative years)
ZL – Given an unlimited budget and all the time in the world, what would be the project you’d make to be remembered by?
SR – I’d like to publish a line of superior comic works by other artists – funded to create their best work over a proper time frame; edited and mentored and stretched to make each piece a substantial and lasting work; promoted and distributed to an audience that is taught to appreciate comics as more than stories or visuals
ZL – What single creation would you settle down with and just chill?
SR – I watched Star Wars hundreds of times growing up so that film is definitely a relaxing comforter. I would read the works of Tove Jansson or the Tales of the Norse Gods & Heroes by BL Picard in books and Krazy Kat or Calvin & Hobbes in comics. Maybe listen to Colours by Ken Nordine (Spotify)or something
ZL – You have a new comic, NORSE COMIC: (Once Upon Again) The Marriage of Njord & Skadi, out soon. What image from this work would you choose to have pasted all around town? 
SR – I guess I’d use the cover image for Njord & Skadi, because it shows her as the one with more gravitas and it’s obviously a ‘love story’ but it’s not a romance comic or a norse battle. Plus it shows the sort of drawing inside as well as anything can when so much of the art was made though deliberately accidental mark-making
Thanks for asking!
The Long List interview – The Secret Protectors
The Secret Protectors facebook instagram
Adam on instagram Ben on instagram
Having run the review of The Secret Protectors yesterday, I caught up with it’s two creators, Adam Wheeler and Ben Nunn in a follow up conversation after they very kindly responded to the draft review with some very interesting points.
They’ve been very accommodating and considerate, so I wanted to take a minute to give them a big thanx and wish them both well as they grow, and their comics grow with them.
The Secret Protectors Interview
ZL – What was the initial kernel of the idea for The Secret Protectors, that initial thought that made you start to build the whole story?
AW – The initial creation of The Secret Protectors characters and universe was a fair bit different to how Ben and I have it all structured at this point. These characters began, believe it or not, as Superheroes and Supervillains on the now defunct MMO ‘City Of Heroes’. I’ve always had a keen interest in sci-fi and fantasy. Playing that game as a young teen really allowed me to get my creative juices flowing. A fair amount of that ‘work’ still exists within these characters now. As time went on I started to imagine my own comic book universe where all my characters would take part in a grand narrative. As such, they’ve all ‘existed’ in my head for around a decade or so.
ZL – What are your backgrounds with comics?
BN – For me it all started when I was about 3 with watching the old Max Fleischer Superman cartoons with my nan. It wasn’t long before we were watching the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, then the New Adventures show, then we branched out into the Marvel offerings. Every time my mum dragged me shopping she’d get me a Superman/Batman comic but the first comic I really remember is one I still have to this day. An issue of Spider-Man illustrated by John Romita Jr. That’s when I saw the potential for telling stories with uniquely stylised artwork.
AW – I’m bit older than Ben, so I can’t remember being 3yrs old! Ha!
But, growing up I always loved my cartoons, TMNT, Transformers, Batman TAS, X-Men, Spider-Man… the list of great cartoons is endless. As for comics a good friend of mine when we were growing up had a bunch of copies of older comics like ‘Journey into Mystery’, ‘Action Comics’ and some old Spider-Man comics. I wasn’t poor growing up, but I know money was tight for my parents and locally there wasn’t really anywhere to buy comics, so growing up they weren’t as big a part of my life as they became later on.
ZL – When did you start making comics and when did you start thinking about The Secret Protectors and the world you’ve built?
BN – I started off with some obscure webcomics in a kind of manga style but it wasn’t until meeting up with Adam that I decided to take it beyond a hobby.
AW – Hmm… I remember making a stick-man book when I was wasting classroom time at school but that’s about the limit of my artistic capability. I wouldn’t know exactly how to describe how bad my drawing is. With that said, making a comic alone is not something I’ve ever given any serious consideration to!
Although I had all the story written up for The Secret Protectors, I only began giving serious thought to it when I told my now fiancé (soon to be wife) Kate about my idea. She really got onboard with it and supported me in trying to get it actually made into a comic. It was not long after that I found Ben via a website. We met up soon after and began working on the project together.
ZL – Can you give us a few details about:-
- The first creator you ever remember recognising the work of?
- The first creator you remember copying or studying for hours to work out how they made things work?
- Creator you most wanted to be like when growing up?
BN – John Romita Jr was easily the first creator I remember recognising. His characteristic style is what made comics real to me. While most of what I’d seen before that was very silver age, ironically heavily influenced by the likes of Romita Sr. But Romita Jr showed me that it was possible to create something totally visually different. In the days of dialup I became obsessed with Dragon Ball Z and found myself recording episodes onto VHS and desperately trying to copy that distinctive Toriyama style. Needless to say the weird warping that happened when you paused a VHS certainly didn’t help. I wouldn’t say I wanted to be like Romita Jr or Toriyama. I’ve always just wanted to create the best art I could and tell some great stories.
AW – As the one here who cannot draw at all this is a tough one. I do actually love both Romita Sr and Jr! Add Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane and Alex Ross to that.
ZL – Are there any particular influences fuelling The Secret Protectors?
BN – When Adam approached me with the story we were in a Starbucks. Adam explained the premise then launched into an enthusiastic breakdown of the characters and their backstories, their world, and even the eventual endgame of the entire story.
I think Adam and his enthusiasm has been a driving force. His drive to get these stories we believe in out there and in front of people has inspired me in my work on TSP and other projects. We’ve been really happy to have kids and adults coming up to us at events thrilled to see a black protagonist. I don’t know how much thought Adam gave to creating a diverse cast, I think it just came naturally when you’re writing a story that spans the globe. Not every superhero has to be a 6’2” white American dude with black hair, blue eyes and a jaw that could cut glass, right?
AW – There are so many influences… Some are perhaps more obvious than others. The genre of Superheroes is clearly our playground (The 90’s X-Men cartoon for instance) but beyond that I have so much love for actual sci-fi, fantasy and maybe just as importantly iconic series like The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, The Wire, Breaking Bad and Fargo. These sorts of influences may not be apparent in an obvious sense, but I’ve always drawn great enjoyment from storytelling that makes you think, doesn’t spoon feed you, allows you to draw some of your own conclusions so to speak.
ZN – You’ve already made your goal on Kickstarter – that must feel pretty good! Was getting the money the main goal or were you hoping for something more out of Kickstarting your comic?
BN – We’ve been overwhelmed by the support. The idea that there are kids and teenagers out there that cared enough to contribute what they could means just as much as the people who were able to pledge on the higher end of things. I think the Kickstarter was about getting the audience excited and being able to offer them more bang for their buck. I probably can’t say too much about the statistics but we’ve had support from some very unexpected places.
What’s most exciting is that some young fans have already taken to drawing the characters even having only read issue 1 so we just want to be able to get it out there more and be able to thank people for their support in some cool and interesting ways. And, of course, how could we resist the opportunity to duct tape my phone to the wall for two hours while we tried to read a 2-minute script for the Kickstarter video!
AW – Having followed Tyler James (ComixLaunch) for a while I always thought that if we could find an initial audience that we could use Kickstarter as a platform for the project so that one day it could become self-sustaining. We’ve received amazing support on the campaign itself.
With that said, I’m not a businessman, if I was, I probably wouldn’t be doing this! Ha! The Secret Protectors is very much a passion project. I draw great meaning from it. My main hope was that we could begin to garner a larger audience of readers. Promoting the comic and getting eyes on it has always been the toughest side of the ‘business’. I’m not a natural salesman and especially with something that has so much of my heart in it. Ben and I both know rejection is part of the game though. We have both had cause to pick each other at some point in this process.
ZL – I’m hoping the review comes across as supportive and that I enjoyed it! Sometimes I think I sound terribly negative!
AW – Ha! I don’t think that’s the case. I’ve read it a few times and I’d like to thank you for your honest feedback. We know we aren’t perfect and we’re still at the beginning of both our creative journey and actual story. That’s our first review! Ever! That’s a huge deal to me.
Issue 1 pacing was always a concern we had but we wanted to show the ‘status quo’ of this world and set things up. We wanted the reader to be able to just spend a bit of time with Ben before he gets dragged into the main conflict. He’s a normal guy and by showing him with his family we hoped to show how tough the decision would be to make in issue 2, obviously you can be the judge of whether or not we pulled that off! Ben doesn’t know or understand his powers and that’s something we hope to explore with him as the story unfolds.
BN – Yeah, the most important thing is honesty and I’ve got to say your review was thorough and will no doubt help us continue improving in future issues.
ZL – Going back to your comment about this being your first review ever, I’m interested in picking apart the experience of getting copies out to reviewers, whether you’ve found positive responses, or it’s been more a wall of silence! What you did to find sites that would be useful for promoting your comic and Kickstarter in general and what your method of contact was?
Also, generally, how it felt to send things out, waiting for a response, what it felt like if people haven’t responded?
Also – what was your first gut reaction to receiving a review and whether that felt different/ was different to how you thought it would be?
AW – Having never run a Kickstarter before I can’t say that I truly prepared for everything it would require from me. Even though we’ve surpassed our target if I could go back and start over I would probably do so. I realise now that we could have done a fair bit more pre-launch. I sent copies to quite a few people, I won’t name names, but essentially it’s been a wall of silence. I’m not at all salty or complaining about that though. Time is precious and those who do this sort of thing, like yourself, on behalf of Indie Comics are providing a service. There are so many projects out there at any one time that, understandably, getting reviews actually done is a real tough task if you don’t perhaps already have a reputation. That’s something that as a creator you need to expect and plan for. The only advice I could really offer is cast a wide net. Contact anyone and everyone!
As for receiving your review (as our first)
I can honestly say it’s a very humbling experience. By that, I mean, actually having our work prodded, tested and pulled apart is awesome! It’s helped us evaluate our work and goes down as a real sign of the progress we’ve made so far. Reviews should, in my opinion, always be tough on whatever the product in question may be. Reviewers / critics should be the stress test, the mechanism by which they the consumer can make an informed decision whether or not to spend their hard-earned money.
ZL – I wondered a bit about your thoughts on Ben being more a cypher and whether that’s a part of the plan, or a product of focussing in on the plot?
AW – I would admit that Ben does suffer slightly as you point out as the ‘cypher’ but our take was also that; he is extremely unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time at the beginning of issue 1. Bad things unfold and as a twenty-one-year-old growing up in a world where the existence of super-powered beings isn’t common knowledge he was completely out of his depth; emotionally, mentally and physically. He was basically a passenger as he’s in over his head.
ZL – I guess there’s a fine line between being a cypher and feeling lost and out of your depth and my feeling is Ben is too much of an empty vessel, I kept wanting to know what he was, how he was thinking but at the moment he seems to be all anger and little of the implied gentle side of him is coming out. Put another way, I feel like I spend more time thinking about him and who he is than I do feeling what this is like for him – if that makes sense?!
AW – There’s a few things to unpack here… so, as much as Ben is a very important character to our series this is also an ensemble title. With that said, we made a conscious decision to not spoon feed the reader too much. I definitely did not want us beating the reader over the head with a stick but it’s a fair criticism. Ben in the first issue is still reeling over the loss of his father. We made that decision early on that Ben should not be laughing and joking (just yet) as I don’t know how natural that would be. There’s a lot to Ben too, but at this stage in his journey he’s at sea really. He doesn’t know what’s going on, who to trust, what to do. He’s a mess. Issue 1 and 2 take place within quite a small timeframe.
We have a number of characters who, over the course of the next few issues will be introduced but spending time with Ben is definitely something the reader can expect, and we’re excited for.
ZL – What are the longer-term plans for TSP? Is this intended as an ongoing series, a number of story arcs with a beginning and end to each, that also build to an overall story in sum? What kind of things can we expect to see dealt with in the series?
AW – Our plan, which may be naive given our experience, is for TSP to be a long running series. We know where we want to get to though and hopefully the reader sees that and enjoys it. Although on bare face value it’s a superhero comic we want to explore the notions of good and evil being relative. Other themes we want to explore are parenting and the duality of the human-psyche. It’s a tough one really because we don’t want to give too much away. This initial run, the first story arc, we envisage running at around 12 issues. These first 12 issues will really help develop and provide the reader context for the world. The characters all have lengthy backstories as to why they are the way they are which we’ll get the opportunity to explore more of in our future issues.
ZL – So, for me, this is interesting for the very reason that we’re talking themes and plots here and I wonder if it’s because they’re part of the big plan and less of the by issue planning? Anyway, that’s not actually a question sorry!
What plans have you got for dealing with the character of these individuals? Their relationships, the nature of who they are, how they behave? What I’m wondering is, for example, the scene in issue 2 where we see Mohammed and Mika. I thought that was a nicely handled way of showing the relationship and managed to put some flesh on the characters and on their relationship, so I’m wondering what sort of planning goes into that?
It felt very organic, was it planned in that way, or did it come to you from getting to know your characters?
AW – in my opinion the grand narrative of any story really should be shaped by the individual actions and motivations involved and that is something I believe we have achieved. Each of our characters, both good and bad, have their own way of thinking. Their own plans and schemes. Early on that may not be completely apparent but as things take shape the reader will notice things early on that we did that have affected the flow of events.
ZL – Are there any questions or points you had that you’d like to make?
AW – Firstly, the close-up on page 1 of issue 2 is actually of the mech, not the van, not sure if you wrote van by mistake or just thought it was the van / not the mech.
ZL – My bad! Sorry about that. Still is a beautiful panel though!!
And that brings up an interesting point? This is aimed at Ben more – what style of art do you normally create and what source and references, in terms of artists, are you pulling in to your work?
What is your input in the comic, do you share writing credits, are you working full script or sitting around and working it out together?
Does the style feel comfortable for you yet or do you find you’re still trying to figure it all out a lot?
One final one! What is your favourite moment/ drawing in the two comics and why?
AW – We were certainly trying to go for older ‘Adventure style’ comic sort of feel, as it’s set in the 80’s we wanted the art be similar to the styles employed in that era but obviously Ben has his own style on top of that. I’m a big fan of Claremont & Byrne’s long run on X-Men. We also thought that having the comic set in the past gives it the chance to have that, for lack of a better way of putting it, ‘nostalgia’ feel.
BN – Thanks! I suppose I like to draw from people like Ryan Ottley and Sara Pichelli. I’m not sure how much I specifically draw from either of them. Consciously I draw from Hirohiko Araki when it comes to faces, but with a bit more of a westernised slant. Occasionally I’ll work in a simpler style when I’m commissioned to do a light-hearted comic for a birthday or anniversary present. That’s apparently more reminiscent of Herge’s Adventures of Tintin which I apparently loved as a child, but truth be told I don’t have much of a memory of it.
It’s hard to nail down how much of a collaboration the writing was, especially early on. There was definitely a lot of back and forth and we still discuss scripts in detail. Then there are those times when I’ll cheekily just do something differently to how it was written and just see what happens. Sorry Adam!
I enjoy the style and I think it’s evolving as I do. I spend a few hours every day studying so that’s always going to reflect in my work. Hopefully that’ll be as noticeable between issues 2 and 3 as it was between 1 and 2.
My favourite moment was one that you mentioned in your review. The panel of Wildfire propelling himself forward on page 4 of issue 2. That page was one of the last to be completed after an 11th hour decision to punch up the fight a bit. I think that shows. I’m always tempted to go through a whole issue again to bring it up to the level that I’m at by the time we finish but I’ve fallen down that hole before. I’m reminded of a quote, though I’m not sure where it comes from: “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”. Obviously, that could be taken as permission to half-arse things but I think of it as permission to let things go and keep moving forward, instead of getting trapped in an endless loop of building up and tearing down your own work and never showing anything to the world.
AW – To make this point easier I’ve just copied and pasted what you wrote:
“Just looking at things, we can also see that we’re dealing with a battle between diversity and racism/fascism/the shadow government”
So, just between us! As we get into spoiler territory that’s kind of it, but also kind of not. Now if it hits home that way then that’s our fault as the storyteller so I don’t take any fault with your description, the bad guys SCIMITAR, or Supreme Command for Incident Management and Initial Tactical Armed Response are obviously somewhat of a homage to Shield, or Hydra or any other clandestine organisation in comics, in a certain sense, however, we certainly weren’t going for them being viewed as fascist, is there a reason to you that that’s the case?
ZL – Well, partly, the Shadow Government is a form of fascism, but not of the race variety, (there are many forms of fascism as it’s essentially the belief that one group of people are superior to any others), it’s a form of free market fascism, where the possession of money and the associated power that comes with that, means you are worth more than poorer individuals. Also, though, there were the two thugs in the store with the Texas Flag, and one had a swastika, that sort of foreshadowed the presence of fascism and racism. The look of Mayhem Marauder is also quite fascistic and felt like a reference back to those thugs. I guess I’m saying, maybe my understanding of fascism is slightly different to others around the shadow government and that the character designs have sort of flagged a feeling about fascism being a part of the work’s themes.
Does that sound like a question even!!
Um – What are your thoughts on that?
AW – Gotcha! I see where you’re coming from now. Again, I’m careful to not go into spoiler territory. S.C.I.M.I.T.A.R have an agenda, but I can’t really go into that just yet, but they aren’t really drawing from a fascist playbook in my mind. The thugs in issue 1, we wanted individuals who were clearly detestable from the off. They were shaking down a shop for money. Ben, being a good guy (but naive) rushes in trying to do the ‘right’ thing and gets beaten down pretty quickly. As for Warren AKA Mayhem Marauder there’s a reason behind his appearance, something which again, will be explored later on in the series.
What we really wanted was to have a diverse set characters on both the good and bad side. This isn’t a tactical or political stand (we’re bombarded with more than enough of that in real life), it was more just a ‘why not?’. Why not have Ben be a black guy? Why not have Mika be Japanese? Why not have Mohammed be Asian? Instead of making our cast all white, black or any other ethnicity we wanted to have a diverse cast. But yeah, we certainly aren’t looking to go for anything racial at all. I’d love to know why you thought it?
ZL – The theme I picked up on was the use of a diverse cast, just generally, and sadly, nowadays that carries with it the weight of the current world political climate, with Islamophobia, institutionalised racism being highlighted by a highly racist American president and British ‘Johnny Foreigner’ scaremongering leading up to Brexit. There’s also the opposite side of the argument around why you’re writing in characters of colour when you’re not familiar with the culture or background.
So, I’m wondering from what you’ve said, whether you’ve had positive or negative or no feedback on any of those issues? Also, what have you done, in terms of research, to avoid the pitfalls of stereotyping characters by race and gender?
Essentially, it’s a very thorny area to walk in and I wonder how you’re planning on finding the safe path through?
BN – Speaking for myself I’m always wondering about that delicate balance. I think it comes down to doing your due diligence, but more than that, just treating characters like they’re human. Trump, Islamophobia, Brexit, they all come down to a basic lack of ability or willingness to empathise with people who are slightly different from you. I guess people just prefer to feel superior or succumb to fear (or both somehow) but at the core of being a good person, and at the core of good writing, is empathy and compassion.
AW – There’s certainly a minefield of different opinions out there on that subject. Personally, I don’t want The Secret Protectors to be a vehicle for my own personal politics. It’s a strange one really, I can see why politics often find their voice in comics, but I’ve always thought that if super-powered beings did exist then our way of politics would be completely different, if that makes any sense? There certainly comes a point where, logically, politics within the context of the story / world would need to be addressed but that doesn’t represent my own thoughts but rather reflects the story and the characters themselves.
I don’t want anyone to read our comic and feel like we’re preaching an agenda to them as that is not our prerogative. As for the diversity of our characters backgrounds I’ve always believed that good characters are written as individuals with their own mind, ambitions and problems. Their group identity should always be a secondary factor, that’s not to say it’s unimportant but I don’t think it should be the primary driver behind their actions.
The feedback so far, from readers, has been really great overall. I think, that with everything in life, if people can see you’re trying to put something good out into the world, even if it’s not their cup of tea, they do tend to get behind it. They can see its value and the love behind the project. I believe that the reason behind that is that, for the most part, we are more good than not.
all art copyright and trademark it’s respective owners.
content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
Review – Secret Protectors 1-2
Let’s get this right at the beginning
At the start, this may seem like I’m going in hard on this comic and also going in hard for choosing to be something I don’t like.
So, I want to say this clearly up front.
I like this comic, it’s a work forming for sure. So if you want the slick, mature work of creators fully situated in their styles, or a very settled format of superhero comic similar to corporate comics, this is not what you’re looking for. I think it’s not yet formed, and I think it’s still firmly rooted in its genre work, but it does nothing badly. For most people who read the kind of thing I’ve reviewed before it’s likely not the kind of work that will interest them, and I’ll argue why I can fit this in my mind in the same space as those works at the end and why I think it has a virtue worth investing in. It’s entirely possible these are patronising things to say and I’m going to hold my hand up to that if I’m called out on it.
I also add the extra caveat that all comments about style and genre are not to be considered as a definition of the creators’ interests, influences or personal systems of categorising. They are comments upon my thoughts, values, and ways of thinking. They deal with what I’ve put together and brought to this work. Talk to the creators for their opinion.
It all gets quite deep and specific as I parse those things out for you.
On that sinister note, let’s go!
This is an interesting comic
Maybe you’re old enough, maybe this will mean nothing to you, but this really reminds me of the comics put out by Adventure Comics in the black and white glut. Now, I really like them, in fact, I’d say that I actually own comics just like this one.
They’re the sort of comics that mix ideas the creators have seen in fiction and thought, ‘Oh my god, I want to do a story with that in it because it’s so COOOOOOOL!’ Then there are moments where there is something so personal and out of context with the stuff in it that it throws you sideways. I like them for the very reason that they’re often just this weird stew of genre cliché and they’re often characterised by being about plot point and cool scenes and some stuff to string them together. I just like sitting down and parsing all of those influences out and enjoying how clearly these are people fulfilling their kid comic dreams.
This work is near to that experience, but there’s something more than that about it. It’s one of those ones where you can see it has potential for the creators to get better an not just sit making their own weird stew of fan-fiction.
Which is to say that this is a work that leans heavily on its inspirations, has not shaken off that inspiration enough to call itself its own thing yet, but it has these moments and ideas that could really be exploited if they dig into it. It’s a work you can see where the creators are figuring out their choices and solutions a hitting some and missing others.
Which is an appallingly long way of saying that this is the work of a team finding its feet between doing the stuff they’ve loved reading and wanted to make since they began wanting to make stuff and finding their own style and purpose and their own way to say it. They have made some quick steps between issues though.
I found the second issue, for example, much more interesting than the first both story and art wise.
Let’s go back in time
Now, we have to establish a bit here. This is a ‘modern’ superhero comic and I am genuinely not a fan of modern superhero comics, they take too long to get to anything and they don’t know that they’re too serious or how to package an idea. They equate heroic poses with emotional gravitas and, as with all modern media, angry emoting is seen as ‘character’ and ‘depicting male emotions’. I’m not a fan of either thing, it’s hysteria not emotion, its going ‘BOO’ when you could sneak up and tap someone quietly on their shoulder. It’s a smiling emoji rather than laughing with your friends.
That’s definitely a taste and age thing. It’s also a bit damn unfair of me to knock something for reminding me of a style that I’m not a fan of. However – there’s work in here that has a much more interesting nature than the genre it’s leaning into, so I need to deal with why I feel this could ‘move up’ (in my estimation). It is also the nature of this blog that I’m talking about my reaction to thing, so honesty around that is required.
To me, this story doesn’t get going into the characters quickly enough because it has decompressed its story too much. Its story also seems more plot than story, as in, stories have character arcs not just things that happen. Stories talk about something relatable to their audience, not relying on a familiarity with genre to carry the weight of identification.
Put another way, these could be interesting characters, but we don’t know them. We know their plot points, not their personality and those two things are very different in my head. We know the main character got his powers in a disaster and that there are shadowy powers at work and a superhero team at work. Just looking at things, we can also see that we’re dealing with a battle between diversity and racism/fascism/the shadow government.
All we know about the personality of the main character is that he’s a bit shy around a pretty girl, loves his family and gets angry when confused. We’re two issues in, for me that’s two chapters of this story, which means two chapters in and I’m still not comfortable about whether these he’s going to be an interesting character to read about. I know he’s there to be a cypher for the reader to identify with so they can be led into this new world through him, but he’s too much of a cypher, really too much of a stereotype and not a person yet. Sometimes you need to know the head of a character before you trust their heart and their insight.
As to the Secret Protectors, the same is true for them, except that there are some moments where you get a little ‘in’ on their relationships. I’m unsure whether issue 2 delivers more interest because of their presence, or their presence in issue 2 mean that they’re treated with more skill and so come across as more interesting.
I think the art also needs to work harder at selling this comic at this point as well. It’s uneven at the moment and fluctuates in ability sometimes panel to panel. There are moments where the anatomy is bang on, followed by some really awkward posing or poorly executed foreshortening and that throws around the reading of the story. On the whole though, those anatomy issues are about time and practice. There are more fundamental decisions here about the approach to the story where there’s an uneven approach that throws the story out. Choices of posing and pacing and sequencing that at points flatten the character portrayal or the excitement of the action, but at other points serve to really punch it up a notch.
Diving down into the detail
Now – I’m going to get into a quite close read of this here and this is where I talk about why I enjoyed this comic and what I see as its virtues. That all comes with the caveat that I’m neither writer, nor artist, nor editor and that none of these things are anything other than the reasons I have for reviewing and recommending this.
So, lets begin by picking 2 pages from issue 2 to compare, page 2 and a detail from page 5.
Page 2 is the first half of a double page spread and we’re seeing what should be a really impactful moment where a mech droid is confronting the Secret Protectors. I’ve decontextualized this a lot by removing the big robot, because I want to talk about character and the depiction of those characters.
Secret Protectors 2 page 2
Secret Protectors 2 page 5 detail
If you look at the poses being struck here, I find them vey static and generic. There’s nothing individual about those poses where you couldn’t reverse the costumes and be showing them as having the same personality. Also, the composition relies very heavily on the action lines to feel dynamic. That barn in the background carries as much dynamic force as the figures themselves in my reading of the scene.
Compare that to the action shown on page 5, the position and shape of the body, the placing in the frame and the composition of the action between those two panels. They’re small on the page in the actual comic, but they carry much more action and punch and show more of the character’s personality, The writing here adds an extra element to the character depiction, seemingly at odds with the ‘go in there and do it’ look of the action we can see someone concerned with not causing harm to their enemy.
Then you look at that pose in the panel and instead of opting for a typical ‘blasting out flames’ pose, the arms are thrown backwards whilst getting into position, so now I see that the writing explains why they are thrown back without banging you on the head with a hammer.
Interestingly, the anatomy in both drawings is no better on a ‘realistic’ scale, it’s just that the flame panels have their own rhythm where those shapes put together make sense as a person running fast. Also the shapes made by the flames between each panel match up dynamically, twisting the eye around in a near circle, moving your eye down from top to bottom before retuning it to the right so you move on to the next panel. My eye moves quickly, like the action it’s depicting.
Even the computer art works differently; the orange flames, though very painterly, sit within the context of the image; whereas, the action lines on page 2 stand apart, almost speaking a different language to the image on the page.
The computer art has a nice pace of its own at points in this comic as well. There’s a panel on page 4 of the 1st issue that is just orange colour with a white speed line filter applied. It works, at that point, as a nice story beat, it’s very otherness serving to break out the rhythm of the story. The approach is not used in such a considered manner throughout though.
The 1st page of issue 2 also has an interesting moment like this and shows my point more clearly, I think. If you look at the whole page, the middle panel again uses some computer made speed lines to give a sense of dynamism. This time, I feel, they’re working against the real dynamism achieved in the figure drawing and panel composition. They’re dumped so artificially onto the panel it breaks up the flow of the story where it should move dynamically. Then you get that final panel, where there’s this amazing, expressionistic depiction of the van shown very realistically in the first panel. Break beat. Sinister yellow eyes glowing out. Impact of the message driven home. Game changer engaged. Essentially, such a different outcome.
I guess the point that’s being skirted around is that there is some really good work here, but I’m not sure that it’s a choice as part of the story delivery. I hope so for the creators, because these are interesting techniques to employ consciously. Personally, it doesn’t matter so much, intent doesn’t stop me from stopping and looking at that and thinking it is awesome.
But the application is inconsistent throughout the two issues and that’s a shame as it can really block the story at points.
Maybe one last group of examples might make my point clearer.
The use of computer colour and design on the drawings, particularly on the buildings, has a sort of deadening effect on the art quite often, as do the pacing and drawing choices. If you look at the 1st page of the 1st issue, the very precise nature of that building, the point of view disappearing into the centre of the building, the matching tones of most of the page, all of these serve to force you to just stare at the centre of the hospital complex. It’s a real work of effort to move your eye on.
When you do, it’s the same battle over again to move your eyes off those repeated panels, then again, the first panels of the bottom tier are matched so closely that the final panel of the page seems like it’s clipped from a completely different story. That page is just hard reading all the way through. Yet I can feel that it’s trying to create a rhyme on the page, a pace to draw you through.
I get the same feeling about the pacing set up on pages 8-9 of issue 1. Just looking at page 9, you can see the rhythm being aimed for. Yet it’s so flat, the characters aren’t made interesting in either drawing or writing. It’s stiff at all points. Maybe not stiff, forced, like the creators know they’ve got something to get across and they’re going to make it happen.
Now, why I’m interested in this comic can be seen when you contrast that with issue 2 page 13. Just stop and look out the layout and how it rhymes and matches up, window panes below matching panel layout above, colours in top and bottom tiers balancing yet contrasting. Even the way that the panels show the change in character personality. The anatomy may be no better or more consistent, but the pacing is on point so it doesn’t matter to me.
Look at how the relationship of characters is mirrored between their powers at work, the story beats are well chosen and well depicted. They sell the relationship of those characters to each other, rather than labouring the point. It’s subtler already. It’s unfolds before you rather than TELLING you about itself.
One last dive
I just want to look at this last page, mainly because of those bottom three panels and the way I like the look of them! Also though, because that middle panel works so well to deliver an emotional moment. Simple, good facial expression and body language and colours focussing the moment. Then those last three panels delivering such a different artistic style, changing the rhythm of the comic instantly. It’s moments like this that make me enjoy this comic.
It’s served up in a way that shows me some character and emotion, in a way that feels like it’s a personal solution for its creators. It’s fine entertainment and I’m all about that at times.
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content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
The Short List – zines.need.you
ZL – What is your history with zines and how did that lead to zines.need.you?
ZNY – I began writing zines as a teenager – as a kid I’d make my own little magazines but didn’t realise that zines existed until I was about 16 and got into mailart through the internet. I made 20 copies of my first zine on a photocopier in a newsagent in 2001 and gave it to my friends. I’ve been making them intermittently ever since – zine fests help foster a community of zinesters, and more recently Instagram is good for seeings what’s out there. I’m not particularly prolific in terms of making zines but I think about them a lot and love them as a way of sharing experiences and ideas. Zines Need You is a new project that came out of thinking quite hard about who doesn’t get heard in the zine scene and how that can be changed. I’ve been involved in DIY scenes for 15 years and wanted to use that familiarity to open the door a little wider. I’m a middle class white punk and zine fests often feature alot of people like me – it can be a little too comfortable and I would like that to change. ZNY seems like a low key place to start – its a small project to help get zines into print that might not otherwise be published. We’re keen to do a good job with a small project rather than promising the world and half-arsing it – we’ve committed to printing a zine a month for 2019 then by the end of the year we should have some idea of whether its sustainable to continue.
ZL – What sort of process do you use to decide on recipients for the zines.need.you monthly publishing deal?
ZNY – There isn’t much of a process so far as it’s early days, and certainly no standard criteria for inclusivity. We are keen to avoid people feeling like they have to list all their points of marginalisation in order to get our attention so we’re largely trusting them to decide for themselves whether they need our help or not. We also don’t want people to feel like we’ll only print things they’ve written that focus on their experiences of oppression because we want them to be as free as anyone else to write about whatever they like. Some of my favourite zines are hilariously frivolous and making those shouldn’t be a luxury, you know? I think there’s a danger that those financially supporting projects can end up expecting to have influence over what is created, so in this project we’re trying to be mindful of that dynamic and so far staying out of people’s creative process as much as possible. That said it’s been really cool to get lots of queries about different parts of zine making and nice to be able to share knowledge about printing, cut and paste, mini zines, zine fests and so on.
We are bringing our experiences and knowledge of anti-oppressive practice to this project so there is a core ethos to who we are interested in hearing from. We’re keen for this project to show solidarity with communities of colour, disabled creators, neurodivergent folks, working class makers and so on, and especially the people who live in the overlap of those identities. There have always been rad zines being made by these folks but there are more that haven’t been printed for lack of funds and encouragement and that’s where ZNY hopes to offer a signal boost.
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
ZNY – The first zines I came across were ones that I got in the mail as part of art swaps coordinated online. The first few I got came from Australia and America and turned up in these wild envelopes covered in stickers or made out of x-rays. They absolutely blew my mind – looking back now the content wasn’t anything exceptional but the realisation that you could just crack on and make a zine and that there were other people out there who would read them was huge. Like I mentioned before I had been making these little homemade magazines since I was a kid and I’d always had this fascination with the form of magazines – free gifts and cut out coupons and letters pages. Finding there was a big scene of scrappy homemade versions of magazines was wonderful, and also tied into to other interests like anarcho politics, feminism, punk, etc etc. I grew up in the countryside and our house was down a long lane. Once I was home from college I was miles from anyone so my lifeline was MSN messenger until I found mailart and zines. It was the first time I felt connected to other weirdos and gave me hope that I could get to a city and find some in real life, which I did as soon as I could. So while I’ve read zines since that are more interesting or better written, those first zines will always be special.
ZL – You’ve just announced your first recipient hit on the heels of what looked like an extremely well received launch, how does that feel?
ZNY – It’s been very unexpected – we were hoping for maybe 50 instagram followers and to tick over quietly but then we got 800 followers in the first week and we’re still growing. The project was conceived as a small and self-sustaining project (basically we committed to putting our own money in for the first year) that didn’t need donations. So we didn’t think massively about getting attention other than trying to get the word out to people who might want printing. But now that people do seems to have noticed us then it’s nice to think that our featured zinesters might get some extra readers. And getting some donations has meant that we can increase our monthly budget which is really exciting.
ZL – You get to build the world’s most exciting web platform, people flock to see it, which five creators do you first showcase and why?
ZNY – First up would be Jacq Applebee, our February zinester, because they write about so many different topics with realness and humour and generosity. I would love a world where Jacq’s zines got left around on bus seats and in hotel rooms so that people who really needed them would stumble across them.
Then it’d be Saffa Khan who is well known in the scene but should really be a household name. She makes these exquisite and intimate zines that are precious and profound and beautiful – she has her own risograph machine and has really pushed things forwards with her use of colour and interesting layouts. I always want there to be a space for splotchy cut and paste zines but I love that there are DIY artists making things beautiful too.
Third and fourth is a double whammy of Holly Casio and Seleena Laverne Daye who each put out their own zines but are close friends who met as penfriends on Teletext back in the day! They’ve been around zines longer than me and they kind of personify what I love about DIY – I first came across them as radical cheerleaders supporting The Gossip in 2003, since then between them they’ve been making art, zines, podcasts and loads of other shit. Since people are flocking to see my web platform I’d hope their showcase meant they could spend less time working and more time making glorious weird shit because it makes the world better. It’s hard to pick a final creator because I could go on forever so I’m going to pick a non zine wildcard, Kensuke Koike who is a collage artist I follow on instagram. His work is so simple and total genius, he manages to conjure humour, subversion and the unexpected out of a few cuts in old photos. It’s nice to run across people who spark off that sense of wonder and possibility with their work so I would recommend him to everyone, not that he needs my help!
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content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
The Short List – Douglas Noble
ZL – In my mind, Jazz Creepers is your first anthology and did amazingly well. From a personal note, I was just jealous at the fact you got Sarah Horrocks, Gareth Hopkins and Paul J Milne all in one anthology, 3 favourites of mine! Why did you decide on an anthology and what was the experience like organising contributions?
DN – The title jumped out of a conversation Paul and I were having, and after a couple of days of it rattling around my head I found myself seized by the urge to make that the title of an anthology. The look and feel of it was pretty much all there from the off, even down to the design of the cover and the idea to integrate art from the past into the comic, and it really coalesced after talking it through with Sarah Gordon, who is also in the first issue.
As an anthology Jazz Creepers has only two rules: Florid, and no autobiography.
After that I just asked people who I knew or who’s work I liked, told them the rules and let them get on with it. Of course, not everyone was available, or able to contribute, but I was extremely lucky to get exactly who I had first imagined in there in there. I knew everyone involved would make great comics, so was very hands off in terms of editorial involvement.
Organising how everything fit together was maybe the part that I enjoyed the most. There’s a specific aesthetic to Jazz Creepers: ripe fruit, velvet, the masquerade, and peeling paint. It was fun to try and preserve that in the flow of reading the comic, flitting between stories in a way that made sense, making sure everything fitted in, and making sure that the design of the comic helped the whole cohere into something that reflected the intention.
The award seemed to say that it did. Next time, it’ll be even better.
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
DN – I came to comics fairly late, though having thought about it, I keep revising the date back.
Was it Colin McNeil’s splatterpunk take on the world of Judge Dredd in Chopper: Song of the Surfer,with its splurging sunset golds and russets, violence refracted to the abstract through a kaleidoscope of colour? Or earlier, John Ridgway in Doctor Who Magazine; lines scratching into the page, nervous and febrile, pushing the TV show toward the epic? Or before that, maybe The Quest for the Gloop, with its wild flights of fancy, it’s weird worlds and textures?
Colin McNeil on Chopper
John Ridgway on Doctor Who
Jan Pienkowski art and Helen Nicholl writing Quest for the Gloop
ZL – You are gifted the opportunity to set up a new museum showcasing all of the creators who have influenced you from birth to now. The first show is called ‘First, Formative and Now’ who do you pick and why?
DN – It’s a grand museum this. A great sweeping thing of interlocking chambers and vaulted ceilings, a museum with weight behind it, so it’s only fitting that it should house my vast obsessions and passions.
The first chamber: A visitor walks up into an enormous blue space, like a summer sky, and there in the centre of that space is a golden column, quite thin, with a black sphere atop it. The visitor can walk around and around it, and, if they reach out and squeeze the sphere, it will make a noise.
HONK!
At that sound screens drop down from the ceiling and the image of Harpo Marx flicks across them, mute, in constant motion. Running and chasing and doing impossible things. Unlike anything and utterly true to himself.
The second chamber: A green room, like the colour of a hillside at dusk, clover flowers on the walls. In great slashes of charcoal, the art of Carol Swain. Swain’s work is something that stays with me, and towers over comics in general. There’s an essentiality about it, a truth to it. Her landscapes of borderlands and between places speaks to the places that I grew up. The elliptical tilt of her stories is an angle that appeals to me.
The Third Chamber: A room full of old nitrate stock, and in the centre a candle. Old peepshow machines lining a wall, each with a different Guy Maddin film playing. I think the reason I enjoy his work so much is that it explodes the normal tools for building stories and finds new ways to say things. It takes fragments of the past, grafts them onto current techniques, and produce a glorious hybrid – something that never existed but should have. Something like his recent Seances builds a wonderful, never to be repeated experience from the bricks of lost films.
ZL – What one publication would you choose if you had to choose something for all the world to read?
DN – Under my benevolent fist, my troops will round up my people and force them to brutalist storerooms where everyone will be provided with a copy of Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away. They’d be given strict instructions to devour it, to give in to it; in short, to be the good and loyal citizens that I demand. They will thank me.
It’s a sensuous, lyrical book, tense and muscular, about the awful weight of destiny and the race to outrun it. It starts with the death of a prophet, and follows his nephew as he rejects both a religious and a spiritual life. There is fire along the way. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
ZL – If you could live for a day in the body of any creator and experience what it was like for them to create, who would you choose?
DN – I’d choose a sculptor, because it’s a medium that I haven’t really worked in, and the physicality of it, the fight and the heft of it is something that appeals. I think that Elisabeth Frink is wonderful – the textures and life that she managed to put into her work is something that seems almost channelled rather than decided upon. So, Frink then, building up one of her shattered ravens, or facing the solidity of making something real.
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content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
The Short List – Paul Jon Milne
ZL – I feel like you’ve been doing zines for a while, when did you start and what inspired you to do so?
PJM – After I graduated art college in 2003, I started contributing pieces to various publications. I did a fair few one page things for excellent Dundee arts zine ‘Yuck n Yum‘, and I was trying to get some work going as an illustrator with varying amounts of ‘for exposure’ success, but finally decided to make an actual comic around 2009/10. I had a lot of spare time due to being unemployed, and wanted to vent frustration about how rotten the ‘Jobseeker’ life was, and so I made my first ‘proper’ zine, Guts Power 1. It was pretty rudimentary but it exists and that’s what’s important.
Unemployment’s not a particularly entertaining subject and was covered surprisingly accurately already in League of Gentlemen, so in the end Guts Power was less about the dehumanising aspects of the jobcentre, and more about absurd jokes, ridiculously specific pop cultural references, body horror and musclemen in fetish clothing, plus lots of thinly-veiled self-hatred. Basically my attempt at a ‘Deadline‘ sort of thing but with much better taste in music.
Once I’d made issue 1 and realised that it was a thing I could actually do, it spurred me on to start making other comics. The final issue of Guts Power 6 finally came out last year, phew.
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
PJM – Comics-wise, I was very taken with the weekly Marvel UK Transformers comic,
specifically the ‘Time Wars’ storyline by Simon Furman and Andy Wildman. It seemed impossibly dark and important to young me, and maybe the first time I was aware of the comic as something other than just nonsense with my favourite toys in it.
But I still abandoned it when the Hero Turtles comic came out, as I sure did like those Turts, and kids are daft.
Other formative “what is this, this is incredible” moments as a tiny bozo were the Night on Bald Mountain section of ‘Fantasia’ , catching a random and unadvertised showing of Ghibli’s ‘Laputa’ on ITV on a school holiday (which seems to be an experience shared by many people of my generation), and first contact with Street Fighter 2, which broke my brain.
ZL – What single creation would you settle down with and just chill?
PJM – I find it hard to ever properly relax due to my delicious cocktail of mental health issues, but at the moment a pretty good time can be had lying in bed with a glass of milk and a volume of Q. Hayashida’s ‘Dorohedoro‘ which is ludicrously imaginative, gory and kinetic. It’s also very sweet, but crucially not twee. No tweeness at bedtime, I don’t want to go to sleep angry.
ZL – You have just published your second Grave Horticulture issue after what seemed like a good amount of success with the first publication, does that make it harder or easier this time around?
PJM – I suppose it was a kind of success as people seemed to like it, but the box of leftover copies cluttering up my bedroom says otherwise! The fact anyone had an opinion on it is quite daunting, and as a result while working on issue two I’ve definitely found myself overthinking things.
This is useful when it comes to stuff like “will people be able to follow this sequence?” as it pushes me to consider storytelling clarity, but not so useful when I start second-guessing nearly everything and worrying about if something seems “professional-looking”.
Best just to try and follow my instincts I suppose, which is certainly easier in theory.
ZL – (Let’s hope this never happens, but let’s also pretend!) A psycho runs up to you in the street and chainsaws your hands off. Your life is saved, but they couldn’t save your hands. Who draws in your hands’ place?
PJM – First of all, I hope the chainsaw person gets the help they need! And secondly I hope I’d still carry on with art in such a situation, but I suppose it’s good to have backup plans.
Not sure I’d want anyone else to draw my comics really, it’d be pretty unfair on them as my scripts are very vague and confusing. I mainly piece the story together as I go, apart from a rough outline and certain scenes. I’ve done ‘full script’ once or twice and it’s been much easier for me to draw, but the final results haven’t been as good, I don’t think.
I like the idea of making Michel Fiffe draw whatever I tell him to, but I would feel bad keeping him from making more issues of Copra.
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content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
The Short List – Nick Prolix
twitter instagram start here on the web
ZL – I’m really interested to know the influences for your comic?
NP – I call it a slice-of-life in as much as the characters and their stories are imagined if not directly from real life, then from lives that could plausibly have been real. Will Eisner prefaced A Contract With God by saying that the book contained “stories drawn from the endless flow of happenings characteristic of city life. Some are true. Some could be true.”
I would say exactly the same for Slang Pictorial. I’ve taken characters, incidents, stories and sayings from my own life and the lives of my parents, recollections of friends and relatives, events recounted in memoirs, plots borrowed from TV narratives and the best lines stolen from the pulpiest paperbacks and mixed them all up in a hodgepodge to such a degree now that I’d be hard pressed to be able to tell you what was true and what was just plausibly, possibly true-ish in the sense that Eisner identified.
In terms of specific formal, thematic and structural influences I’d point to Film and Television as being very central to my thinking, as befits my coming from an academic Film Studies background. Take a love of the French New Wave, mix it with a deep admiration for the ambition of Anthony Newley’s criminally under-rated creative endeavours such as The Small World of Sammy Lee and The Strange World of Gurney Slade, chuck in as much Sam Selvon and Colin MacInnes as you can read plus the long-form narrative ambitions and character-driven genre storytelling of contemporary TV like Fargo and The Deuce and I’d say you’ve got a good sense of the kinds of art that feeds my drive to keep making The Sheep And The Wolves
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
NP – For comics it would be Iron Man #150, the special double-sized issue in which Tony Stark and Dr Doom find themselves thrown back in time to the court of King Arthur. It had fantastic John Romita Jr visuals and a done-in-one story featuring sorcery and pseudo-science and an army of undead zombie knights that I read and re-read hundreds of times. I found the comic in a pile of my primary school teacher’s rainy-day comic books and so had no idea of continuity or who the characters were beyond what I’d seen in cartoons, but I was absolutely hooked and have been an Iron Man mark ever since.
ZL – Your cartooning style is very reminiscent of classic Belgian cartooning styles. Is the style influenced by the retro nature of the content, or is the content influenced by your retro style of drawing?
NP – I have a very binary brain and so as a child I was a Marvel reader which meant I didn’t read DC and I was an Asterix fan and so avoided Tintin. I loved the energy and dynamism of Uderzo’s art and the knockabout humour of Goscinny’s writing and compared to that Herge’s clean lines were always too clean, his characters too buttoned-up and the worlds he created too rigid, rule-bound and well-ruled in terms of everything being about straight-lines whereas Asterix was all curves and swooshes, architecture bending and straining to contain the lolloping limbs of these bonkers characters. I loved the historical aspect of the stories being a big ancient history buff, but I also remember wishing that Goscinny and Uderzo would do stories set in more modern times, with gangsters and spies and detectives, etc. I had no idea that there existed a slew of artists and writers working in the magazines Spirou, Pilote and Heroic that were doing just that sort of stuff, Franquin with Spirou and Fantasio, Maurice Tillieux with Gil Jourdan, Francois Walthery and Natacha, even Peyo and Benny Breakiron. I only discovered this side of the Franco-Belgian bookshelf when I came back to comics about six years ago and ever since I’ve just been steeping myself ever deeper into this stuff.
ZL – You are gifted the opportunity to set up a new museum showcasing all the creators who have influenced you from birth to now. The first show is called ‘First, Formative and Now’ who do you pick and why?
NP – I’d say First is going to be Dan Clowes, certainly not my earliest cartooning memory but very much someone whose work defined my return to comics in the early 2000s. I read Ghost World, David Boring and Ice Haven in pretty quick succession and each one seemed to progressively build on and transform what came before it. These were revelatory comics for me, both formally and thematically, in terms of what comics could be and say and how the interlinked craft of comics-making; of inking, hand-lettering and book and page design; all served to strengthen the kind of storytelling being showcased.
Formative is probably Franquin, a cartoonist I feel an affinity towards both in terms of his wonderful art style as well as, less positively, his psychology; but I am always trying to emulate and incorporate his character designs and world-building as well as to try and keep pushing myself to adopt new styles and techniques, adapting them hopefully into my repertoire in productive ways.
Now is definitely Gus Arriola, a cartoonist who doesn’t get enough love or column-inches, but his Gordo strip is very much everything I strive to make Slang Pictorial, expressive and animated cartooning in a character-driven soap-opera set within a fully-realised and jazz-infused world that’s just the epitome of hip, mid-century modern comics.
ZL – You are currently Kickstarting and you’re offering a package collecting all previous issues as well as the current 4th issue of Slang Pictorial. I like the way that the whole of the work is being made available as a tier, by the way! How was it to have successfully achieved your funding within 90 minutes?
NP – It’s always amazing when you hit that target and you can breathe a huge sigh of relief knowing that the project is going to get funded. Slang Pictorial #3 hit its target in under 12 hours and that was huge for me as it was my first ever time on Kickstarter and I really had no idea how it was going to go. I won’t say with #4 I was specifically trying to hit that 90 minute target but I did do a lot of work before hand in an effort to try and beat that previous result. So I set up a pre-launch mailing list, did a lot of Instagram and Twitter promotion to start hyping up the launch as well as offering a couple of Early Bird only rewards for backers who pledged on the first day. The point of doing all of that was to try and get us over the line as quickly as possible, but the fact that the project funded as quickly as it did is ultimately all down to the fantastic folks that jumped on board and did such a great job sharing and spreading the word.
In terms of the logistics of this Kickstarter, the funding will go towards printing issue #4 as well as reprinting some more of issue #3, issues #1 and #2 were reprinted as part of the previous campaign. I always try and budget the funding ask to cover printing enough copies of the comics to fulfil the backer rewards and leave me enough stock to cover convention sales for the following year. After issue #5, which I hope to launch at the end of this year, I am going to have to think about perhaps a trade collection of the first five, as I can see that after a certain point, new readers might like to engage with the work in a nice chunk, however I am very much committed to maintaining the serial form of the single issues. The challenge is working out a balance between what to keep exclusively for the individual issues and what to put in the trades by way of back matter, etc.
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content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
Short List – pip_odyssey – Sophie Ell
Disclosure – I am currently working with pip_odyssey on an anthology planned to release in June.
ZL – Why and when did you start making comics?
SE – I’ve been a fan of illustrated books since I was a little kid, and that never went away, but it wasn’t until pretty recently that my own random doodles and drawings started taking shape. I am currently working on a PhD in American Studies, and to be honest, making comics is simply a way to stay sane in the face of the hyper-cerebral academic overload. About two years ago a good friend handed me a high quality (i.e. expensive) drawing pad and said, fill her up! I don’t think I would have bought such a thing for myself. So I did, fill her up. Now I do it somewhat compulsively, as a way to counter the dreariness of grad school while also exorcising some demons. It became a ritual; a panel a day keeps despair at bay.
Taxonomy page 2
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
SE – The first graphic novel I got seriously hooked on was Transmetropolitan. I fell in love with the character, I was thrilled by Warren Ellis’ bold social and political commentary, but probably most of all I was blown away by Darick Robertson’s artwork, the shifting perspectives, the composition, the careful attention to every little detail. Every panel vibrating with so much energy. Incredible.
ZL – Given an unlimited budget and all the time in the world, what would be the project you’d make to be remembered by?
SE – For me, making art has nothing to do with budget or time. In fact, I often find that my best work comes out of constraints, out of lack, out of not having enough money, time, space, or energy. Creativity needs to push against something, it thrives on contradictions and polarities, it comes alive when the conditions are not optimal. I have no doubt that amazing art is being created every day in prisons, hospitals, and mental health institutions, probably much better than the stuff generated in the studios of fine art academies. The other secret to my own process is not having a project in mind. I cannot plan, I must trust the logic of the moment, which is always in flux. Every day it’s something else that wants to manifest visually on a blank page. I try to tune into what feels most urgent right now, and let things unfold on their own. Then, later, I can see themes and threads that either come together or not, and that’s an exciting process of discovery.
ZL – You’re currently working on a graphic novel, what are your hopes and aims whilst working on it?
SE – The graphic novel I am working on is a growing collection of ideas, memories, observations, and feelings that are all pieces in a bigger puzzle. My only aim is to keep going and stay out of the way, if that makes sense. I would like the collection to reflect the fact that the puzzle may never be complete.
ZL – Which one creator you love seeing do you feel the world knows too little about, and what would you like to tell us about them?
SE – I have a big list of visual artists and musicians I want to tell the whole world about. Look at this! Listen to that!! But today, in this moment, if I had to choose just one, it would be the Swedish band Goat .
Review – Once Upon Again: The Marriage of Njord & Skadi
The Marriage of Njord and Skadi
By Jon Mason & Simon Russell
It’s a funny thing getting something you’ve watched grow and come to life over a long time. It’s funnier when you realise, suddenly, how the experience of watching it grow is little to no indicator of what it is you end up getting. Which is a loopy sort of way to say, I’d never thought about this as a story and surprised myself upon reading it, reacting to the comic as a story rather than the artwork as ART.
That’s still not picked apart terribly well, so let’s talk about my background with this comic.
I knew Simon for a while before he started posting images for the comic. When I first saw Simon’s art on Instagram; these big splodges of messy colour, no form and all texture and space for the imagination; I immediately just loved them.
Absolutely wanted to take those images, run away with them and make things with them. Then I watched him carve and inscribe meaning to them, hewing image out of those spacious textures, making space into form.
They still LOOKED cool and I knew I’d buy the comic because I wanted to see that art and stare at it, all together. Compare it to what I’d seen made, space to form to object.
I backed it and recently picked up my copy from Simon and sat down at work, thinking I’d flip through and wallow a bit in all that mark making. Now, to digress from my own point a minute, the art is great, the writing too.
There’s a lovely moment in this spread I particularly like. That little image set at the end of the left page telling a story in just two panels. Succinct but meaningful, art and words punching together to tell it all with impact.
There’s also just this lovely balance and variety. That first panel stretching, summarising. How it places the end of the story told in those two bottom panels as a single moment before retelling the same story with greater emotional impact. That small panel/ large panel combination flipping on the next page. The story focus moving from past to present, from fire to ice. From one enemy to another. That first summary panel that stretches time reflected by the final summary panel that concatenates moments. Frozen memory, action bursting from the frozen castle.
This tale tells itself so simply whilst using this very clever structuring, pulling in colours and textures, balancing pacing and time patterns seamlessly. The images rhyme and pace and create new contexts without you even really paying that much attention to it. It’s structured so that it’s just there to tell the tale, it gets out of its own way and does the job it needs to do. Yet it’s so well thought out if you want to pay attention.
The strength of this comic, though, is the story-telling, the emotion it delivers. You don’t need to appreciate the art, you don’t need to admire the structuring. None of it is done to impress you. It’s written in word and image to make you feel, feel what is going on and nothing is getting in its way.
When I sat flipping through it at work I just read the odd word but had to turn back to the start to read from the beginning. I got to the end and just felt this welling up of sadness about what happened to the two of them. I don’t know whether we’re meant to feel like it was inevitable, whether it was good that it was fleeting, but I felt like it was a terrible and sad outcome to it all. It should have worked, they should have had the chance to stay and be. Sorry to be oblique but still spoil the story for you!
It’s now over a week later and I see that cover and I think about how I want to read it again and imagine how they could make it work, find the answer to their problem.
Njord and Skadi, that is, not the creators. My memory is fixed on the story and the creators and the creation don’t really matter at all.
To put a context to this, when I sat down to write this, I went back to look at my notes and realised that my plan was to talk about how awesome it was to see all of these marks off a flickering screen and sat on a page, how much I loved the mark making and how it was exciting to follow its journey; space to form to object. That’s not what was actually exciting at all. Reading the story, how the words and images were so in tune, was exciting. How all of it just wanted to tell this story, in fact the story itself, that’s what mattered.
Another slight digression, but I want to be a bit clearer here, when I’m talking about words and images being in tune, I’m not talking action to word matching, but rhythm and style. No words rhyme, they’re not epic couplets, yet it has that ‘rhyming’ rhythm one associates with poetry. Everything is told in these simple beats. Short clipped captions condense time to a feeling, a synopsis, to pack a punch. The same with time between and in the panels. You’re not getting a linear transcription of time passing here. You’re getting a succinct timeline carefully weighed up to deliver an emotional punch.
When I put the comic down I didn’t think about the art or the language. What I thought about was how sad it all was and kept thinking about that. About how differences can, in the end, tear us all down, keep us all apart. That’s what’s stayed with me. Just that crushing sense of emotion, of promise failed. It’s maybe a mirror of my mood, maybe a door into my feelings, maybe just melodrama on my part. But it’s there. That sense of being broken hearted, of seeing a story that’s an oblique observation of actual life and people; not just structure, characters and plot. A tale telling us what it feels like being broken and let down by life and how you can snatch a gift from that. That may be the message of the story, but it’s not how I felt afterwards, I felt like the world had let me and these people down by not having space for them to be together and it made me sad.
The Short List – Zeno Carta
Disclosure – I am currently working with Zeno Carta on an anthology planned to release in June.
ZL – Your work is, so far, all black and white linework, would you like to see your work coloured?
ZC – I’ve been focusing for now on the rhythm of black and white because, while colour can do a lot, it can also easily overwhelm. Black and white is all most comics need to do their work, and I find that, when done well, black and white is actually clearer and more appealing. It’s hard to match good black and white design for pure impact.
That said, my most recent comic as of writing, “Warehouse (nsfw)” uses limited colour to do what black and white can’t.
I think that many comics treat colour almost like an afterthought, but colour has its own rhythms to consider–otherwise you lose the focus that black and white line art often has on its own. At the very least you need to know the colour wheel and basic pleasing palettes like dual and split complimentary.
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
ZC – No idea when I first liked something, but the comics I read as a kid were mostly Tintin and Peanuts. I pretty much believe that Herge and Schulz can teach you most of what you need to know about comics, before learning on your own. Learning comics is mostly practice–more of a craft than book-learning–but Tintin and Peanuts make a pretty good foundation.
Going back to those comics now, I think you can still see a sort of spark that explains why everyone knows them. I mean, it’s no fluke that they’re still popular, while the vast majority of comics never make it out of the basement. They have something to say, but know how to say it in a way that feels like a real experience.
ZL – Given an unlimited budget and all the time in the world what would you create and where or how would you send it into the world?
ZC – Given unlimited time and resources and time, I’m sure I would start a whole bunch of crazy projects and never finish any of them. There’s far more creativity in restriction and discipline than there is in unlimited resources.
Restriction, both in time and money (and even in skill) forces you to think of new ways of doing things. If you’ve got to draw a page that’s supposed to be an intricate city scene but you’ve only got a few hours left, you’re going to have to figure out some different way of doing things that might actually end up being better from a design or story perspective, while still taking less time. In other words, restriction forces you to experiment.
This isn’t an excuse for laziness in comics, but rather what I mean is that, when given unlimited freedom, there’s nothing to spur you to change bad habits and discover new ways of doing things. (This the is the reason I tend to stick to a grid. I’ve got to box myself in or else I lose all sense.)
ZL – I’m new to your work but have dug through your website and really love what I see. How long have you been drawing comics and what was the impetus to start putting them online?
ZC – I made comics as a kid but only came back recently. Right now I’m just sort of seeing what people might be interested in.
Or in more modern terms: In order to reach #success you must #motivate and #extricate your thoughts #fromdepressiontoinvention to #testthemarket and #findyourself today in this web of internet tubes that create a mirror on our life and demand our attention at every moment but take us even farther from the nature which would make us #happy, which is why you could do with a monthly #successquotes postcard (from my Patreon) with a custom sketch to help you out of the trap.
ZL – What is the most important influence on your current work?
ZC – Impossible to pick one. Some prominent influences recently would include 40s noir films, Mike Mignola, W.T. Frick, and vaporwave. There are ideas everywhere if you’re a curious sort.
I really liked those “influence maps” from a few years ago (basically ancient in internet time) because they revealed how far away influences can be even for people who have stuck with a similar style their whole career.
Or in other words, once when I was a teenager I was out in an old flat-bottomed aluminum boat. The water was really low that year, and a shoal that had never been a problem before suddenly looked way too close to the surface. I was still running fine, but instead of skimming the surface I decided to slow down. The boat lowered just enough that the propeller crunched where it shouldn’t, which snapped the shearing pins. And being the idiot I was at 15, I hadn’t replaced the spare shearing pins after tangling with some lily pads in a marsh the previous fall. I had to prop the motor and paddle a mile home, meaning that when I got there I had to eat moose instead of venison.
The Short List – J Edward Scott
Disclosure – I am working with Ed on a small zine with no set publication date as yet
ZL – You have a very idiosyncratic and personal style to your comics, but one very situated within the history of UK comics, how did you arrive at your style and how satisfied are you with it?
JES – When I started drawing with a view to doing it seriously, I did that thing most people do which is drawing in a way you think is how you’re meant to draw. In my case, to start with, that style was newspaper editorial cartoons, somewhere between Steve Bell and Ralph Steadman because that was what I wanted to do out of university. Probably (Gerald) Scarfe was in there too, but he is such an egregious old wind-bag, I’m less keen to admit to being fan. I then tried to simplify my style when I started doing small press 
comics, trying to be like Tom Gauld (who I still love). Then I thought I’d try and go ultra-realistic like Brian Bolland or Arthur Ranson and do a long form gothic Frankenstein story (currently unfinished and mouldering in my parent’s attic). Anyway, the best piece of advice I ever heard was from a Chanel 4 fly-on-the-wall documentary about a kid trying to become a graffiti artist and the guy coaching him was having a go at him for not drawing enough. You should be drawing all the time, draw anything, develop your style. So I tried to focus on just draw things ‘wrong’ until I found out what the wrong drawings were trying to tell me. So that’s sort of it. Also, I creep in Kevin O’Neil and Mike McMahon’s house at the dead of night and suck bits of their brain out with a straw. Did I mention I have Michael Moorcock’s head in jar?
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
JES – I really loved the Beano like most kids growing up. I also really enjoyed Adam West era Batman and the cartoon at the start of the show which I think got me hooked on cartoon violence. He-Man is lurking in Blade of Arozone, which is hardly surprising. Akira blew the back of my head off when I bought the first volume when I was a teenager after seeing the film on BBC 2. A big thing I am channelling at the moment is the Warhammer art of people like Ian Miller, Paul Bonner, Kev ‘Goblinmaster’ Adams and John Blanche, which I was obsessively into as a kid. I was actually more into Warhammer than comics growing up!
ZL – Do you yearn to work in colour?
JES – Working in black and white was originally a practical choice because I was printing comics on a photocopier in Kinko’s (RIP) and I knew colour would cost more. I’m not averse to colour, but I really like that feeling of black, inky comics, so I will be monochrome for a while certainly.
ZL – You are gifted the opportunity to set up a new museum showcasing all of the creators who have influenced you from birth to now. The first show is called ‘First, Formative and Now’ who do you pick and why? 
JES – Growing up in the 90’s there happened to be a lot of documentaries about underground comics, so I remember Robert Crumb being the first example of a guy being vaguely ‘rock and roll’ but not being a musician but instead doing something I could do (since I was no good at music). Formative is definitely Simon Bisley, who I tried to emulate as a teen-ager (with zero success). Current is a long list, but in terms of style, energy and imagination (not to mention jaw-dropping work ethic) I’m a big fan of Hyena Hell. On reflection, that’s the exhibition that taste forgot, isn’t it?
ZL – You’re due to release the second issue of your comic ‘The Blade of Arozone’, how well has the first issue done and how different are you feelings now compared to when you released the first one? 
JES – I’m pretty buoyant at the moment – I’ve had some really good feed-back and some great support, especially from Tom Oldham of Breakdown Press and Gosh Comics. I’m mainly glad to have gone from being a guy who used to make small press comics a decade ago to a guy who makes small press comics again. I also really want to tell this story, so the fact there is a willing audience is excellent. The alternative was handing out pamphlets about Death Priests and Elderkin on the streets. There’s always that to fall back on, of course.
all art copyright and trademark it’s respective owners.
content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
Review – Slang Pictorial 1-4 – Nick Prolix
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I like this series, it’s got a real charm to it. Bouncy, friendly and likeable and going down into depth on the characters. The characters are likeable and engaging. You’re not seeing great story arcs, you’re seeing the quotidian increment of people’s daily lives. Bad decisions, poor choices, changing attitudes. It layers them into the storyline, rather than laying them out in front of you. I guess that’s why I class this as a friendly comic to read. It’s not shouting at you about itself, it’s putting itself out there for you to hang out with and find out about.
I’m a huge fan of the book ‘Georgie Girl’. This is a descendant of that. It’s a descendant of those New English Library books with painted people draped on each other lustily and fags hanging from their lips. This is Kitchen Sink Drama. This is also cheeky Brit comics by the like of Hunt Emerson. It’s also low life story telling about wideboys. Not the Crays, not dangerous or evil, just cheap and desperate and showy and trashy.
This is the 60’s swinging London as lived by the poor in all its genre glory. All the characters you’d expect, or the class and cultural meters are fed in. There’s not a trick missed. This is 60’s kitchen sink drama, this is ‘Angry Young Man’ world, gladly lacking the entitlement and white male hero complex I see in those other works.
I probably need to pick that apart!
Stories can be about SOMETHING and they usually foreground those things as the main character, they ‘DEAL WITH’ depravation, personal disenfranchisement and everything that happens, happens to drive that point home.
Stories can be about SOMEONE and there’s your protagonist flexing their character muscles whilst others throw shade and reflection upon them but do little else.
This story is very much about SOMEWHERE and SOMEWHEN. This is 60’s Soho.
It’s seen through the lens of genre. Maybe genres? But it’s very clear that the milieu is the character. There are interesting people, there are fine twisty little plots, there are even big themes. None of those is the purpose of this comic. This is telling you about the lives lived and the environment that bred those lives. This is telling you the history, the changes but it’s dealing with it through the experiences of lives lived. That’s the key to this comic and what I like about it. It gives you a story, then it fleshes that story out with shades of past and future, with the view of the other people involved. Turn around, turn back, look at it again. What I like about issue 4 is how it goes back in time to things that have happened but it’s not plugging a hole in your knowledge, that flashback is somehow a linear part of the way the story makes sense.
I’m not sure that’s a clear point, so I want to re-iterate this thought. There is something in issue 4 that happens before the events in the previous 3 issues. Now, although that happens to be a travel back in linear time, it’s a linear movement forward in storytelling and character depth. That’s something as I’ve thought about this work that just seems amazing. Lord know if that’s planned. But I’m not concerned by what the Lord knows, I’m concerned with how it all works together. That’s truly a very impressive writing feat to achieve, to write backwards in time and make it feel like you’re moving the story forwards linearly.
Issue 4 really is that issue where the things click as well. I’m glad I got to read it as a series as it builds well when read together, issue 4 hits the stride of the main story threads, pulling the disparate little bits back in to one story. I’m glad I got to read it as a series with issue 4 as it lays any concerns I had to bed. What concerns?
There was a feeling of likeable characters and likeable work being made here, but it hadn’t made me feel it would hit an emotional depth. I felt like I could gladly indulge my like of the genre, spot the tropes being picked off. Carrying on my long running desire to talk about things no one knows much about, it had all the niceness of DC Comics ‘’Mazing Man’. Now I love to sit down with that and enjoy the beautiful cartooning and the fun little comic stories, but that comic is no great piece of work, it’s just a very nice piece of work. That also feels like it’s ambition as well, so it feels alright to meet it on that level.
This comic really doesn’t feel like it wants to be met at that level, because this has a feeling of something more about it. Aside from anything else, there’s the environment and how well put together it is. There’s the effort to make characters that clearly have depths to reveal as well. The concern I had in those first 3 issue is that these great characters wouldn’t have space to breathe in a story that leans into its genre trappings and delivers small sized chunks of story.
Issue 4 dropped then like a sugared pill. Relief followed by that sense of something finally getting deep and taking itself seriously in a way that is totally deserved. Clever structure, characters revealing depths, not UNEXPECTED depths, the soap opera version of depth. Totally understandable and believable levels of character that we just hadn’t seen yet.
I really want to see how this goes and I really want to own a big thick book where I can experience this in one sitting. In some ways, this is like Cerebus, it works really nicely as bits, but it hits home when it’s there in a big lump to experience.
What’s true of Slang Pictorial as it is of Cerebus, is that it’s damn good at drawing its world. This is consistently great cartooning. It’s very personal in style at this moment, oddly enough, considering how much it draws on the language of comics cartooning. It follows a lineage from classic Belgian cartoonists in the 50’s/ 60’s, think ‘Lucky Luke’ and ‘Asterix’. It leans into British Jazz great Hunt Emerson. Yet it has its own distinct design sense. It builds a consistent and detailed and believable world in its pages and it’s the kind of world you drop into and don’t notice the detail and skill shown on those pages. It’s not interested in showing you how well thought out and consistent it is, it’s is there to make this story grounded, to give you the in to the world you’re looking at. It just digs in and delivers story telling chops again and again.
Little marks changing the look of a character instantly to ‘woken up and feeling rough’ by slashing in some well-placed lines on their face.
You don’t have to think about this art, it does the hand holding and hard thinking for you to get that story told. But it does it with panache and style; clever, but gracefully so.
This is a damn fine comic series and a lot more clever than it would have you believe.
The Short List – Nyx of Sea Green Zines
Disclosure – I have worked with Nyx on a contributor’s copy only zine before and am currently working with her on an anthology planned to release in June.
ZL – You were one of the first YouTube channels to discuss zines, but there seems to be a wave of sites recently, how does that feel?
Nyx – I’m struggling for the right words, to be honest. When I started reviewing zines on my blog, zine enthusiasts seemed few and far between when you stepped off the We Make Zines site. And when you did find others, you’d almost be just as likely to find places that hadn’t been updated in a long time or clearly stated they wouldn’t be posting/reviewing/etc anymore. I hesitate to call it ‘renewed’ enthusiasm because there are many people who were there all along, but it does feel thrilling to be able to see so many sites, channels, and socials popping up where people are letting their zine love shine.
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
Nyx – I always loved books and reading, but the first time I truly fell in love with a book – or any creative work for that matter – is when I read The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley. I fell completely and utterly in love with the world she created (since before I could read, I’d had a strange, unexplainable conviction that I was meant to be in a much more arid environment than I was), I loved the main character, Harry, who just wanted to fit in, and I of course loved the adventure of hidden heritage and going with your heart even when your head didn’t quite understand.
I rented and re-rented The Blue Sword from the library so many times, always desperately hoping that it would end up in the excess bin where I could purchase it. (The internet existed, but I certainly didn’t have a bank or credit card to use online.) That book gave me the courage to write my own first novel with a world all my own. A novel I would spend a lot of my pre-teen and teen years rewriting many times and loving every minute of it.
ZL – Given an unlimited budget and all the time in the world, what would be the project you’d make to be remembered by?
Nyx – Oh, my gosh. That is a question I think about quite a bit, both on the darker side with life being what it is and wondering if/how I’d be remembered and on the lighter side with what I would like to do had I the ability. My first thought went straight to a dream of mine to set up a multi-vendor website for zinemakers that doesn’t charge a huge amount of fees – big fees being a huge hindrance to people who want to sell $1-$5 items.
With an unlimited budget and all the time in the world, though, that would be thinking too small.
I would love to be able to set up a beautiful, relaxing distro bistro. Ha ha ha. A nice, open space that has coffee and nice food, plenty of tables and some comfy couches/chairs, a zine library section, and a zine shop as well. There would be a performance space in the corner for bands and zine readings as well as an adjoining room or two for holding workshops, zine club meetings, and we could even bring in travelling zinemakers to chat about what they’re working on – who could then sell their goods in the shop, of course.
This building would be paid for in full and a trust put into place so no one would have to contemplate selling it to pay the bills, etc. There’d be solar, water filters, and even a community garden space out back.
That might still be thinking too small, but I reckon it’d be fabulous.
ZL – You’ve decided to start a distro up, can you give us some details about that and how it feels being trusted to rep other creators’ work?
Nyx – That I certainly have! I remember years back when I was first diving into zines: I was reading Stolen Sharpie Revolution, and when I got to the part about distros, I thought, “I want to run a distro someday.” Here we have the first little step. The distro will be officially opening within the next month – barring any hiccups. It will be its own shop tab on Sea Green Zines and will launch stocked with zines from Australia, Japan, and the US as well as my own.
These kind of things need to be taken slowly and carefully if they are meant to last, so I’ve only been able to approach a few zinemakers so far. (I’m not selling on consignment and thus am approaching zinemakers instead of the other way around.) With reviewing, it’s all about my love for a zine. As a distro, it’s not enough to just love a zine; the zinemaker needs to trust me with their work. To have all positive responses so far has been absolutely brilliant.
ZL – I know you talked a little about having been published as a prose writer, but not in any great detail, could you tell us a bit about the experience?
Nyx – I’ve been writing stories since I could write. Even when I was very young, I understood that I was physically born to my biological family, but I was convinced that I wasn’t where I should be. Where I’d truly come from and where I belonged. I spent a lot of time thinking about that ‘other’ place and writing the stories that bloomed from there.
My first stories were not nearly so serious, though. One was about my brother letting out a nuclear fart that made humanity move to Mars, and another one about the ‘real’ story of the three little pigs and how history had it all wrong. Funny how I was so sympathetic to the wolf back then when, many years later, I’d start a series about werewolves.
I’ve been published in a few anthologies with short stories and non-fiction (Chicken Soup for the Soul if you’re familiar). I was lucky in that the experiences of submitting were clear cut and not at all vicious. Yes or no, read the contract at least a few times if it’s ‘yes’. It was an easy, straightforward introduction to mainstream publishing.
My three novels are self-published, though. I was never very patient, and that was to my detriment given the first book could use a rewrite. Live and learn, right? I taught myself along the way about formatting, layout, and so on, and it gave me the chance to meet a lot of great people who were/are cover designers, freelance editors, etc.
I adore zines through and through, but writing will always be my first love.
all art copyright and trademark it’s respective owners.
content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
The Short List – Gareth Hopkins (@grthink)
Disclosure – I have worked with Gareth on a contributor’s copy only zine before and am currently working with him on an anthology planned to release in June.
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ZL – I believe you started out drawing for fashion zines before moving on to drawing comic zines. Why the move to comic zines?
GH – I wasn’t doing fashion zines, but rather fashion illustration for Amelia’s Magazine. I’d already started working on The Intercorstal – I’d done 30 or so pages, I think? – but was looking for new challenges, and Amelia’s Magazine was a great place to do fashion and editorial illustrations. There’d be a call out from either Amelia herself or one of the writers, and you’d either get some reference or a list of things to Google, then given a day or so to come up with an image. It was a challenge at the time because I was always trying to do comicsy art, which sometimes worked really well (like when I did some illustrations of Tony & Guy which were very heavily trying to be Indigo Prime)
but sometimes went against the grain of what the magazine’s aesthetic. Not a lot directly came out of working with Amelia’s (some people were able to make the jump to commercial illustration jobs), but I got some hard lessons in prepping artwork for print (I was in the Compendium Of Fashion Illustration, but had never used CMYK before), made some great friends, and got really comfortable with working quickly.
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
GH – I don’t really remember it but… there’s one panel from Revere, (by John Smith and Simon Harrison, appeared in 2000AD in the 90s) that sat in the back of my brain for years and years. It was the silhouette of a hand against the static of a TV, and the main character was trying to do some kind of magic spell using the static as a portal.
In my brain it took up half a page, but when I re-read the comic 20-odd years later it was a tiny, incidental panel. There was just something about it that my brain glommed onto.
ZL – Given an unlimited budget and all the time in the world, what would be the project you’d make to be remembered by?
GH – So much of my work is the result of constraints – time, space, materials – that I don’t know what I’d do with unlimited resources. I’d definitely go large, make some kind of immersive environment, like MeowWolf, and I’d also like to make it collaborative somehow… but I don’t know if it would be memorable? Also… in general I think ‘Complete Creative Freedom’ makes people lazy. I can’t think of any situation where someone was given complete creative freedom where their art was better than when there were limits imposed — limits of budget, or content, or scale. Really good art, as far as I can tell (and I stand to be corrected) is always pushing against something.
ZL – You have quite a long history in the small press/ zine scene now, with a history of style shifts as well. Is there a style you’ve left behind that you feel revisiting would reap interesting rewards?
GH – Well, I’d sort of left behind the old ‘Intercorstal style’, which was very tight and careful, during ‘Found Forest Floor‘ which was very impulsive and loose, but made an intentional return to it when I worked on The Intercorstal: Extension. For anyone unfamiliar with how I made it, I’d done a project called ‘The Intercorstal 2’
Found Forest Floor, Gareth’s first Graphic Novel, in collaboration with Erik Blagsvedt
Intercorstal: Extension Gareth’s recent self-published comic
which involved abstracting existing comics (by other artists that I liked) and also doing my own pages to the same format and dimensions. I’d been selling the results of that as a zine, but one time when I printed it out got the settings wrong and instead printed each A5 page in the middle of an A4 sheet. I didn’t want to waste the paper, so I decided to carry on the pages by filling out the space to either side of that, literally having to re-learn the styles and techniques I’d been using previously. There are some styles I can’t return to though… ‘Too Dry To Rot’ was originally intended as a return to the first Intercorstal pages that I’d done, but has since become a total rejection of them.
ZL – You have a graphic novel, Petrichor, out with Good Comics. What image from this work would you choose to have tattooed on your back?
GH -I don’t know if there are any images from it that are defined enough to become tattoos. They’re so abstract that they’re more… audio than visual? Like, they give a sense of feeling, rather than being something identifiable to ‘read’ (which isn’t the same for many of my other comics, I should point out, where I’ve carefully constructed the images to work visually).
If I was going to get anything from Petrichor tattooed it’d be one of the repeating phrases, of which there’s a few to choose from. If it was to be tattooed somewhere where I’d see it, like on a forearm, I might go with ‘Vent Axia’…. but if it’s on my back it’s more for other people’s benefit, so I’d go with ‘It’s Easy To Forget How Many Times You’ve Fallen In Love’.
Intercorstal: Extension Review
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Review – Drawn Poorly Zine – Identity
This is an interesting zine for me.
It’s one that’s as much ‘what I bring to the party’ as it is one that is about the work itself. I’m going to get a mildly philosophical, political and personal – so be warned!
There’s a discussion to have here about the project itself, around purpose and worth. This includes the wider discussion about identity and what that means and is at points in life.
A separate discussion about the actual physical issue and its content is needed as well.
My identity and chronic illness, or; identity, it’s not for everyone
Oddly, for someone who’s pretty healthy currently, my life has a few eras of chronic illness that mark my identity. I’m not sure I should delve too much about these matters as that’s not really the point of a review, to talk about myself in detail, is it? Yet, considering the project, I think it is the point, will I find my reflection or feel left out?
There are pieces in here that are so close to the bone of my own experiences that I’m never going to manage any kind of distance to discuss quality. However, there’s an argument to make about the worth of that experience in itself, (which I’ll make shortly).
Starting at the macro then; philosophically I have an issue with the conception of identity in and of itself. It’s one of those reductive concepts that imply a person is a thing and a thing is a single whole. By which I mean, to be personal for a second, people often believe a way of feeling or an experience means you have AN identity. I’m a white, middle-class man. That’s apparently AN identity, except, I’m someone who has mental health issues and I’m someone with a history of chronic illness and I’m someone who parents a child with chronic illness and that child happens to have learning difficulties. Oh, and I grew up as the child of hippies in a working-class area, in the 80’s in Wales, in a post-industrial town. So where do I have my IDENTITY in that, as opposed to talking about the experiences that have shaped me as a person?
Also, there’s the opposite side of this which talks about the identity of a group as if it’s all the same for each one. What is the identity of those with learning difficulties, for example, it’s different for my child than it is for someone with autism or downs syndrome. I’m pretty sure the experience of a person in America is different from a person in the UK, especially, getting back to subject, when it comes to chronic illness, because at least we in the UK don’t have to worry about paying for our medication or suffering or dying because we can’t. That’s a real and true issue in America.
There’s the further issue of awareness outside of that identity group. I wonder how many people could even conjure an understanding of why I’d mention growing up in Wales in the 80’s without just thinking about neon wearing kids dancing to Duran Duran, because, you know THE 80’S. I’ll tell you, that’s literally NOT what it was like then and gives the absolutely the wrong image of what it was. So, as I say, identity is just a great way to allow stereotyping, misconception and failed understanding. Even with good intentions. I’ll also call out identity as a renamed bigotry in certain hands. Everyone knows disabled people are in wheelchairs, so only wheelchair users are disabled? Sound familiar? Thought it yourself? I encounter exactly that attitude every day.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that identity sounds simple, but I believe it is essentialist, reductive, stereotyping and exclusionary more often than not.
I’ve had a 6 month long stay in hospital because of a childhood illness, I’ve had nearly 9 months in a hospital hospice because of my first child’s initial health issues. So am I the parent who was a sick child, the parent of a sick child, the parent (who was a sick child) of a sick child. Where does my niche go and where does my experience fail to meet the description and purpose and in failing to meet that do I end up feeling like my IDENTITY is not true, angry at not seeing myself represented?
Am I seeing too narrow a stereotype or caricature and what is the impact of that being delivered to the public as well? Will they, the inexperienced, limit themselves by only understanding the issue as represented here?
That really is the matter for the project to consider and the yard stick against which to measure it. How does it deal with these matters of representation, of diversity, of essentially becoming a gate keeper simply by existing!?
That’s a heavy matter, particularly considering who it is trying to represent, people already suffering in life in some way, shape or form.
The Project
I can see why the first issue dealt with identity. It’s a matter of setting out your stall, delivering your agenda for all to see. It really does need to be up front, because it really does tell you whether you’re in or out of this project. I know I keep banging on about this, and I’ll get to it, honestly!
First though I want to talk about another matter of inclusivity outside of the politics of representation. Does the zine communicate effectively with people who have a wide range of need, including some who may have learning difficulties? Can it deal with all of these when it is a project that relies upon open submissions? Particularly when it’s dealing with the cross-over of chronic illness and artistic expression?
I think they’ve done some very clever things that mean that this project is accessible to a wide range of needs. I’m know for certain that some of these works by themselves would communicate to my child with learning difficulties. Yet the editorial approach has made the issues raised in those works accessible to them. I’m no mind reader so I won’t claim to know whether they planned that or came upon those solutions by other routes. In the end that’s not what matters, it’s accessible in a very clever and low-key manner. I want to pick up on that here, because I think it speaks clearly about the strength of this project, it’s humanity and openess.
On the second inside page they have a whole series of speech balloons summarising the content and opinions of those present in the zine. Pithy little comments that give quick insights into their experiences. It’s a clever way of priming people to the content they’re about to encounter.
It’s also a good way of making some of the internal, often expressionistic or abstract work, more accessible to those who can’t understand complex abstract ideas. It means that, although certain work will never mean much to my child, I can still have a conversation around the subject that it deals with. It frees the art up to be expressive, whilst still highlighting the content in a way that’s not forced or invasive to the art.
I’m also pleased that it’s meeting its own criteria of talking about both chronic illness and art dealing with chronic illness. The art is served well, with good reproduction and the physical item itself is on lovely paper with decent printing. More importantly, to me, it’s cleanly laid out and well labelled with details of the contributors, so it’s easy enough to go and find out more about their work if you want to. Simply put, it’s a well put together package, well edited to make it as accessible as a resource as well as a magazine to be enjoyed in and of itself. The mix and pacing of image and text is also well handled.
The project is also an interesting manner of dealing with chronic illness, dealing with aspects of daily life as well as more philosophical matters, for example, the second issue deals with having a sex life with a chronic illness. Identity is an interesting point, but it’s very BIG PICTURE. Sometimes you just want to know how to live through a day and the philosophy of it all matters much less.
I can imagine these being a great resource both online and within hospitals. A good library of these dealing with the philosophical and practical matters of life will make a good companion for someone dealing with chronic illness in their life, whether their own or someone else’s. Considering the subject, I think that’s important and appropriate. What’s the point in having this if it’s not a resource to help those it’s talking about.
The Issue
So, finally, to talk about what’s in here on both the macro and micro scale, by which I mean – how well do I think it deals with the issue of identity and the associated matter of representation and what do I feel after reading the contributions included in here.
Well, firstly, some pieces are privileged with the nature of my own experience reflecting their content. There are those that aren’t and are still fascinating and there are those that aren’t my sort of thing. That’s again a ‘me’ thing though.
There’s a diverse range of experience. There are pieces that are short and blunt, some more like memoir. What all of them have in common, is that they talk about the personal, not the abstract. These are about PEOPLE talking about their experiences. Really, that’s how it gets around the matter of philosophy and politics. Everything is grounded in people and their experiences. The editorial team also take great care to identify that they are trying to reach out to as diverse a population as possible. The content is treated with respect, but the editorial tone is light, open and welcoming. It’s an encouraging approach, not a distancing one.
There is a work in here that I found fascinating as an artwork communicating the intangible. It tries to make visible the invisible and uses such a beautifully simple idea it’s almost poetic. Considering that the solution is crumpled pieces of paper, I’m genuinely surprised by how visually interesting it is as well. I’m intrigued to see more, just because I can buy into that simple visual communication. It makes it very quick to get an insight into how day to day life can be for that person and for all suffers of endometriosis.
It also speaks of how different approaches can evoke different reactions in different people for different reasons. A piece like that, so abstract and so different from my experiences. My access into that is very much an appreciation of it as a method of communication, it’s an intellectual reaction entirely.
Very early on in this review I raised my own question about seeing myself reflected in pieces and how that skewed my ‘critical’ reaction to them, and what that meant within the context of this zine.
Well, I think it speaks volumes that there are pieces, dealing with people’s experiences of illness that are not mine, that can still evoke or trigger recognition in me. In particular there is a very succinct piece (similar in visual style to the cover) that so sharply reflected one of the worst experiences of my child’s early illness that I was nearly shocked to tears at the memory.
I think it’s that recognition that gives this zine it’s power. I get to see someone whose illness, whose circumstances aren’t my own, reflecting my own feelings, so I get to see that not everything I experienced is niche, is my burden and mine alone. I think that I’m never going to identify with identity, but I can experience the sense of belonging to a community with shared experiences. Really, that’s the greatest comfort you can offer anyone who feels isolated and alone, the opportunity to recognise that there’s a community of people just like them in the world, even though they are not like them. This project delivers on that opportunity.
The Short List – Lucy Sullivan
Disclosure – I’ve worked with Lucy on a small, contributor only zine in the past
Twitter Instagram Web Support Barking
ZL – When and why did you begin creating comics?
LS – I’ve been making them on & off for myself since I started reading them. In the early days that’d be in honour of strips in the papers & anthology comics like Deadline & 2000AD but I showed this to almost no-one. I started making them to be read in 2016. I’d been trying to get BARKING off the ground after my friend Nick Abadzis encouraged me to do it but it took having my daughter in 2014 & (frustratingly at the time) losing work opportunities, so I found I had time on my hands. That’s never good with a mind like mine but then suddenly realised I could be using it to finally make comics. It seems ridiculous now that it took so long to get round to it but I had to commit myself fully to the practice and start figuring out what I had to say.
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
LS – I was really taken in by an early love of female lead stories, comic shops were pretty unfriendly at the time so I took great comfort in reading ‘Tank Girl’ and ‘Halo Jones‘ but pretty much anything with artwork by Dave McKean was devoured over. A key read for me was ‘Signal To Noise’ (Gaiman/ McKean/ Ballamy) it’s a powerhouse team creating an extraordinary tale from inside one man’s thoughts as he comes to terms with his mortality. It changed everything I thought about comics & made me want to improve my skills drastically to create work that powerful.
Signal To Noise
ZL – Given an unlimited budget and all the time in the world, what would be the project you’d make to be remembered by?
LS – The deep seated wish for Barking would be a combined graphic novel & Animated Feature Film. It would be entirely hand drawn animation & shot on a rostrum camera with every music clearance I needed to get across the inspirations behind it. I would 
draft in some favourite creators in both comics and animation to help create it together or do it all myself because sadly I am that much of a control freak. That will probably be my epitaph.
ZL – You have a history in animation, do you feel that has an impact on the way you draw action?
LS – Yes, hugely. My brain is hard wired for motion. I can’t help it. I spend most of my time trying to work out which key pose would best describe the animation in my head. It’s incredibly satisfying when you get that moment right & horribly frustrating when you can’t. Key poses are at the root of 2D animation and working in the form taught me how a simple line can say so much. I’ve still got a lot to learn about the pacing and pagination of making comics. Although the volume of work to animate is intense the framing seems lazy in comparison. No matter what, you’re dealing with just a rectangle. It’s been a lot of fun playing with the page format, seeing how far I can push it but still make the story readable, at least I hope so.
ZL – What single creation would you settle down with and just chill?
LS – Arrgghh, this is almost cruel. I tend to flit around genres & formats. Often reading 2 or 3 at a time. I’d love to get through my reading pile which is in 4 (growing) sections: Small Press, Graphic Novels, Literary & Academic. But if I had to choose I’ve just started ‘Gideon Falls’ (Lemire/ Sorrentino/ Stewart) it’s a cracker of a tale & gorgeously rendered, the art & colour is reminiscent of ‘Button Man’, plus it’s a huge collection already so lots to read. Or if I’m feeling focused I’d attempt to get through the entire ‘Akira’ Manga Collection. Otomo is a massive influence on my work, I can never tire of his draftsmanship. Or if I’m in a perverse mood the full ‘Twin Peaks’ output. Yup, that’ll keep me well occupied!
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content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
The Short List – NiceZines
nicezines – shout outs for zines
ZL – What made you choose to start promoting zines?
NZ – I started nicezines on tumblr in 2012 when I was in university. I did a degree in book arts and design (It was all about fine art bookbinding mixed with whatever design you were into, a sad side of this is that that degree course no longer exists) I love all printed matter and wanted to share all the amazing artists I was finding whilst doing my own research on projects.
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
NZ – Anything by Yoshitomo Nara and everything in ‘Nobody Knows: Yoshitomo Nara Drawing’
ZL – Given an unlimited budget and all the time in the world, what would be the project you’d make to be remembered by? 
NZ – I’d love to turn nicezines into a publishing house, that would be super cool and so much fun.
ZL – Why an instagram account and not a review zine?
NZ – I’ve never thought about making one of those before! I love using Instagram though because it’s free and you can easily reach so many people around the world.
ZL – What one publication would you choose if you had to choose something for all the world to read?
NZ – Private Eye I’m a huge fan of satire mixed with current affairs.
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content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
Review – Pocket Thoughts Annual #1
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Pocket Thoughts Annual #1
I love this little 16 pager in both thought and fact.
The Thought
It’s a gathering of a whole murders row of zinesters who gang about with each other online, by which I mean, there’s the core of a whole online scene here. The thought that appeals so much here is the feeling that someone’s gathering up the troupe to put on a classic repartee performance for the audience. It’s the zine equivalent of a British ensemble cast. They all have their character they do so well that you never tire of seeing them do it. They’re all so good at what they do, they bring something new to it. They all like each other so much, that they just play together well and it’s damn fun to watch it all happen.
I love the thought that someone has finally put together this little scene as a physical object, it feels like the moment a notional thought has coalesced, a dream made reality is probably a step to far, maybe more a zine scene fest for your pocket?
The fact it’s a 16 pager of curated guests is as fitting as it gets really. Proper zine scene diy glory at its photocopied, immediate best. I should clarify why I say curated. Even if this wasn’t a by invitation production (by which I mean – I have no knowledge of whether this was by invitation, or just ended up this way) you can still see who is in touch with who in this scene here. It’s really, as I say, a murders row of all the biggies in their scene. This isn’t some exclusionary thing though, just a gang of online friends putting a best foot forward for the fun of it to let people know what they’re at and invite them all in on it.
The Fact
It is a great little zine with everybody putting in a great turn. I literally liked everything in there. All killer, no filler is fair here – depending on your tastes of course. To expand a bit on that – this is just a great collection of zine creations. Its very typically zine; rough, 
all about the personal. It get’s in there and talks quick and cheap or it speaks it’s own poetic idiom and asks you to meet it with your arms open. By that measure, everything is great because I feel that I get to know each contributor from their single page, there’s not one where I come away wandering what that person is about. As the zine is labelled ‘a showcase of zinesters from around the world’ you can’t ask for more.
For my own personal tastes, there are some that I connected with more than the others, but that’s more about me and my tastes and nature than it is about the quality of one over the other. I’m not going to go over them all, but 2 examples that stand out are Richard Larios’s (feral publications) piece, which is just so quick and blunt and to the point it made me absolutely smile. Literally the zine equivalent of a hardcore punk 30 second blast of rage. I don’t know if anyone knows who Steve Ditko is or what his later career after SpiderMan and Doctor Strange was like, but this had that same blunt, political smash of his later work (though a different political take). Latibule’s piece just struck a chord with its cleverly poetic image. What struck me was the way they both use the same language, but one is spitting and the other is singing (both in the best way).
To stop myself disappearing into a detailed little synopsis of every piece, what I want to say is that I like how the pieces have been ordered as much as I like the pieces. I like that there’s such a range of style and approach, but I also think that the individual pieces have been placed in an order that flatters each piece as part of the whole.
I’ve used the analogy of an album of music being about the whole rather than the strength of individual tracks and I think that this is the case here. What is all the more amazing is that this is the equivalent of a scene compilation but feels like an album and not a collection.
Really glad I got this and if you’re interested in zine scenes, this is a great little taster of this group.
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content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
The Short List – Tim Bird
NEW COMIC – Asleep In The Back
ZL – Why and when did you start making comics and how many comics have you made?
TB – As a kid I was always drawing – little cartoons of my friends and family, doodles, comic strips. My friend came up with a character called Pseudoboy and I drew some comics about him, but it never occurred to me to publish them or show them to people outside my friendship group. It wasn’t until I visited Thought Bubble in 2010 that I realised there was such a large community of comic book creators self-publishing their work and I wanted to get involved! I started doing diary comics that I shared online and began a series called Grey Area, which was published by Avery Hill Publishing. There were four issues of Grey Area, and I self-published a few short comics before I made my first graphic novel, The Great North Wood, which was also published by Avery Hill Publishing last year.
I’ve also made lots of other short comics for various anthologies like Dirty Rotten Comics, Over The Line and Off Life.
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
TB – I vividly remember my dad reading Tintin comics to me when I was very young, explaining how speech bubbles and thought bubbles worked, and how you followed the story by moving from one panel to the next. One image in particular stayed with me – a
character called Rascar Capac breaking through a window to throw a crystal ball full of poison at Tintin. It was terrifying to me when I was young, but I would dare myself to look at it and try and draw it.
ZL – I currently own only one of your comics, but really treasure it, ‘Rock & Pop‘. What impressed me was the way you took many short anecdotes and wound them into such an emotive narrative. How did you work how what would be in the story and how to pull it together?
TB – Rock & Pop started as a webcomic. The idea was to draw and post online one comic a week about a song that had inspired me or that I felt related to an important moment in my life. I started with songs that had felt important to me as a child (like Belinda Carlisle!) and continued through being a teenager, moving to London, meeting my wife, and having kids. The narrative all comes from my life, being interested in music. Just growing up really. People really responded to the webcomic, so collecting them for a print edition seemed like the right thing to do. Since self-publishing it, I’ve asked other people to send me comics based on their own responses to songs important to them, and have been posting them online – various-artists.co.uk (I’m always looking for new contributors for this!)
ZL – You’ve recently had your first graphic novel published, ‘The Great North Wood‘. I know you’ve published smaller works prior to that. What was the main difference between the two experiences?
TB – I tried to be more disciplined when I was writing the Great North Wood, making sure I had all the pages fully planned before I started drawing. With my shorter comics I often start drawing without really knowing where the story will end up, but with this longer project I thought I’d run into problems if I tried to do that. I spent a lot of time doing research for the book – studying the history of the area that the book’s about, and reading about folklore associated with forests and woodlands. 
I think the fact that it’s a longer a piece of work, and took longer to create, means I invested more into it emotionally, and feel really attached to it. A lot of my comics are about a feeling of connection with a specific place, and spending so long writing about south-east London for this book has increased my bond with the area. I’ve recently finished a short comic called Asleep In The Back, and it’s been nice to feel a bit less involved with a piece of work – to put it down and move on.
ZL – Which one creator you love seeing do you feel the world knows too little about, and what would you like to tell us about them?
TB – I don’t know about in comics – there’s so much good work being made right now that I don’t think I can pick just one creator to tell you about! In music though, I’m always surprised Debsey Wykes isn’t more well known. She sang backing vocals for Saint Etienne and has fronted two bands – Dolly Mixture and Birdie. They’re both great!
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The Short List – wing three comics
ZL – I’ve only seen your work on your instagram account, but I see that you produced or were producing a black and white zine, was this made and, considering how much of your account is in colour, why go with black and white?
WTC – The black and white zine is called “Clara” and is incomplete. I printed out a few copies of Part One to submit to the Laydeez do Comics award on my home printer. I was not successful in my award application and received feedback that it wasn’t clear – which
I agree with. This was the first time I ever submitted anything! I will keep working on it. At the moment, I’m planning for it to be a three-part series. Clara is hand-drawn in pencil. The pencil drawings started as rough sketches but then I received positive feedback on the pencil, so I kept it. I scanned the pencil drawings and used the multiplication tool in Photoshop to get the black and white look. The black and white aesthetic is a better match for the story about grief than the bright colours I often use in my sketches.
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
WTC – I remember discovering Frida Kahlo when I was a teenager. It was that time of life when I was exploring what it meant to be an individual and a woman for the first time. I was also suffering from chronic pain, so I connected with her physical and metaphysical suffering. I grew up in the countryside in the US and didn’t have many opportunities to see fine art. I first saw her paintings in books, so it wasn’t a single piece of work – it was her lifetime of self-portraits. I think her use of colour has stuck with me ever since.
Comics is an artform I discovered later in life. The first comics I totally loved was the Love and Rockets series by Gilbert and Jamie Hernandez. It completely blew my mind. They created a rich world of complex characters and great storylines that inspired me to want to do the same. It’s a crazy hard thing to do!
ZL – Someone contacts you and say they want you offer you a year long residency. Where would be your ideal location and what would you produce?
WTC – My ideal location would be the Japanese countryside. I would travel there with no expectations of what I would produce and see what happens.
ZL – I’m particularly in love with the texture of your Instagram images and wondered how what you use to create those images?
WTC – Thank you! My instagram account is mainly filled with London tube portraits. I use small brown paper sketchbooks from Paperchase that have this slightly grainy texture. They are the right size for clandestine drawing in public places! I use a mixture of posca pens and wax crayons. I look to draw people who are either asleep or
completely absorbed in a book or their phones, that’s why most have their eyes closed. I sketch with Posca pens and colour in my sketches with crayon at a later time. I rediscovered crayons on a train journey from London to Edinburgh while drawing with my kids. Kids are so good at mixed media!
ZL – Your colour choices are really exciting and individual, what is the most important influence on those choices and do you draw inspiration from a specific practitioner or style?
WTC – I love contrast – be it black and white minimalism or bright loud colours. I think my early influences helped develop my taste. Frida Kahlo, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Mark Rothko were my first loves in art. One artist who recently made a huge impact on my colour choices is Lisa Brice. I saw her exhibit at Tate Britain and completely fell in love with her use of blue.
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Previous Interview – The Short List – Mattias Gunnarrson
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Review – Coffee & People 1 & 2
I don’t intend doing this often but Craig is someone who promotes zines and zinesters very effectively on his instagram account five o’clock zine – go follow that link and check out all of his reviews.
Review – Coffee & People 1 & 2
Two classic mini-zines this time round. A7 single pagers, typed and pasted up then photocopied and stuck down.
A lovely, immediate and simple format.
A format perfect for the two little stories told in these zines.
It’s very easy to say (and imagine) that such zines are just quickly thrown together, with little thought and can be quickly consumed and thrown away with little thought. In truth the medium prevents great depths; the content likewise, is seemingly small and inconsequential in the grand scheme. All of this is true. All of this misses the whole point of the worth of these items.
These little zines are the hand of friendship reached out from another world, reaching a stranger in a strange land. They’re a conversation on a bus or bumping into the friend of friend you barely know. You may share the same proximity, but not the same world. They are in essence, one of the reasons I find great virtue in zines. They open ways of seeing I never knew existed and focus my eyes for a few minutes on existence as I’ve never seen it before.
Coffee & People works this well, keeping the language simple and clear, getting out of its own way and letting it be a conversation, rather than a didactic exercise or the florid flexing of some personal neuroses. What recommends these to me is getting to sit and experience a life never lived in a world I know nothing about, (something I’m always going to immediately like, it’s my current jam).
Of the two, issue 2 is my favourite with it being more focussed on what it’s telling us. It satisfies more, even though (or maybe because?) there’s less in it that I recognise from my own life.
I also like how inexplicit it is when coming full circle at the end.
In the end, these stories will not rock your world, they will not plumb the depths of the human soul. These stories will open your eyes to another human life and let you see what it’s like to be alive as that person, even if it’s only for a few minutes. If that’s your jam, then indulge with these homemade lovelies.
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The Short List – Mattias Gunnarrson
Disclosure – I should let you all know that I have worked with Mattias on a contributor copy only zine.
ZL – You are an artist often working with groups or on large public pieces – what place do zines have in your work?
MG – Zines and self-published work have its own platform in my practice, and then it plays different roles in different projects. For example, there is one solo track where I draw by myself and collect the drawings on a blog (visual notes) where a constantly changing narrative occurs, one that I can look at for a better understanding of how I am working and what topics or methods interest me at the moment. These drawings are turned in to a type of random collage zines every three months or so like an archive of my drawing work. Another type of zine is the series ”MASU Works” that I do together with my colleague Susanne when we collaborate as MASU and do larger scale sculpture work both in urban public space and as Land Art in the forest.
We use MASU Works to collect sketches, try out new types of methods, document projects as well as invite writers or produce exhibition catalogues. MW has an open format, with no specific logo, size, design or purpose but is rather elastic in its framework for whatever is the content. MW is both an ongoing process for us,an artist collective and a way for us to distribute and share our work and we make issues when we have projects.
Besides this I am also part of a few different situations where self-publishing is involved where either zines are produced, traded or lectured about as well as collected, archived and discussed.
So, to conclude your question I think self-publishing is constantly present in my practice in different formats.
ZL – Do you remember the first time ?
MG – There are probably many of those moments that I have forgotten, but I think the one moment in recent years that took my breath away was the work of Tadashi Kawamata at Centre de Pompidou in Paris 2010. The actual exhibited pieces, a couple of loosely constructed huts or sheds that hung outside on the building facade, were of course great but what really got me was an image in a book from an older project: Apartment project “Tetra House N-3 W-26” 1983 Intervention in situ. In this project old wooden planks flow around the small house like the wind, almost encapsulating the building. The movement in the wood in relation to the solidness of the house is mindblowing.
Kawamata’s early projects really opened things up for me.
ZL – Given an unlimited budget and all the time in the world, what would be the project you’d make to be remembered by?
MG – Oh. It would be a project dealing with education.
I really like the Skateistan-project (www.skateistan.org) which started as a support structure for young girls in Afghanistan where they could go and learn how to skateboard, and once in the spot there was also education and an empowering environment. The project has branched out to more locations, also including boys.
Education for next generation global citizens is key.
So, if I had the means I would do projects like this in a bigger scale than I do now.
ZL – You work at a university that seems to have an amazing zine library, if you could suddenly find any one zine, what would be that treasure?
MG – 🙂 I am not sure about amazing yet, we are still very much setting it up, with just over 300 titles so far, but let’s hope we get there.
It is a difficult question, about the one great great treasure. I think for me it is mostly about the variety and the differences of the archive, that it holds both writing and photo essays, screen printed zines and copy machined work, drawings, paintings, collages and poetry from professionals, students and kids. Of course it would be amazing with early works by Basquiat or Patty Smith, but still I believe that the zine world is not so much about stars and collectibles and rather about the possibility to get voices out and bypass the marketplace. So, I think the real gems in a zine collection are the ones where someone just could not resist telling the story, where it just had to be told.
ZL – Which one creator you love seeing do you feel the world knows too little about, and what would you like to tell us about them?
As I said before, Tadashi Kawamata is my always go-to artist. His way of working with materials, people and the space is extraordinary. Even though he is now realizing some real grand projects, I feel mostly connected to his smaller scale projects where there is such tactile connection between the different components. Also his drawings and models for the projects are incredible!
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Previous Interview – The Short List – mir.and.or
all art copyright and trademark it’s respective owners.
content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019
The Short List – mir.and.or
Disclosure – I should let you all know that I have worked with mir.and.or on a contributor copy only zine and am currently working with mir.and.or on a project currently slated to publish in June.
ZL – Why and when did you start making comics?
M – I have always wanted to make comics from a young age, originally just because of the aesthetic of traditional comics, the colours and line-art which I always loved. I also always found comics a very impressive art form as well, one that took a lot of time, effort and skill but wasn’t as self-indulgent as other illustrative professions. However I never actually made any sequential pieces until my third year of uni, before then I think I was a little scared that I might ruin the thing I admired the most, if I wasn’t good enough.
ZL – Do you remember the first time?
M – In terms of comics I guess the one that stands out the most for me was Victor Moscoso’s super psychy comics from Zap. When I was 15 or so I used to be obsessed with psychedelic rock posters and I think someone at some point told me he did comics as 
well and I was just mind blown because I didn’t know comics like that even existed. But it definitely just felt a lot more natural to me than the narrative based comics I had been reading.
ZL – Given an unlimited budget and all the time in the world, what would be the project you’d make to be remembered by?
M – I think I’d really like to do a collaborative audio-visual comic with a band or musician which visualises a full album. I’d love to just do something really experimental with sound and perhaps even try out some kind of live events/exhibitions.
ZL – You’ve featured in a number of anthologies that I know of, including Heavy Metal, do you have plans for any long form work??
M – There are quite a few stories I want to tell from my childhood which could translate into a series, but I think at this point I am still looking for the right way to visualise them. I don’t think I could really be happy with illustrating them in any traditional or representational way. I am working on finding an angle that allows me to show a really emotional side of being stuck in your own head as a kid and is less bothered by the events or characters in the stories.
ZL – What is the most important influence on your current work?
M – I’m usually influenced by a lot of different types of things, not necessarily comics or art. At the moment I really just like looking at textures, in particular within fashion. Just finding interesting fabrics and surfaces and looking at how they move. Then kind of thinking about what kind of feeling or emotion that texture has and from that I find a story. Which I guess is what designing for fashion is all about, although I don’t know too much about it.
Previous interview – The Short List – Shuffleplay comics
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content copyright iestyn pettigrew 2019