Exquisite Things

Transformative Cycles - Anna Bongiovanni's 'The Offering'

2012-01-22T09:51:00.000-08:00

I first stumbled across Anna Bongiovanni's work in 2D Cloud’s ‘Good Minnesotan 4’ anthology. Her short allegorical strip ‘Onion Mama’, was by far my favourite of the anthology and it haunted me for days after I first read it. ‘Onion Mama’ tells the story of a family who unexpectedly lose their mother, emphasising the burden of responsibility that passes to the eldest daughter. In Bongiovanni’s story these dramatic changes take the form of a literal metamorphosis whereby the child ages forty years in an instant; becoming the mirror image of her dead mother as she solemnly assumes her new role as matriarch. I remember being deeply impressed by Bongiovanni’s ability to cut so deeply with a mere five pages.

Her latest mini comic ‘The Offering’ shares many of the same qualities that made her 'Good Minnesotan' contribution so rewarding. Much like ‘Onion Mama’, this is a tightly coiled piece of fiction, trimmed of all the fat you might find in less mature work. ‘The Offering’ is a short but rich piece of sequential story telling, stuffed to bursting with visual information, all told in Bongiovanni’s beautifully expressive clear line style.

The story unfurls like a bleak fairy tale, laced with mystical dread and foreboding. We’re witness to the misadventures of two sisters who sneak out into the woods in the dead of night to partake in a bizarre woodland ritual. What at first seems like innocent revelry, soon turns sinister when the assembled throng calls for a blood sacrifice. In an act of blind devotion, the elder sister offers her own life to resurrect an otherworldly looking infant who bares a striking resemblance to the Greek God Pan. When the sacrifice has been made, her grief stricken younger sister seeks assistance from a witch to bring her sibling back to life. As you might imagine, things do not go at all according to plan.

Broadly speaking, Bongiovanni’s focus seems to be on the cycle of life and death; bringing her story to a close with an unexpected transformation. Thematically ‘The Offering’ feels like a companion piece to ‘Onion Mama’; exploring a similar line of thought but from another angle. There’s a strong sense of the natural world running through the comic, and I would hazard a guess that the verdant setting is far from incidental. Nature is represented here as it truly is, both alive and flourishing but also cruel and brutal with little concern for human suffering. The ongoing cycle of creation and destruction continues unimpeded and those caught in its wake are left to pick up the pieces.

With her deceptively simple tale of woodland rituals, magic and transformation, Bongiovanni has grappled with those most personal and profound of losses that we’re never quite prepared for.

Review by Matthew Dick.

Quick Links:

Anna Bongiovanni Official Site
Soft and Fleshy (Anna's blog for sketches, updates and gag strips)
2D Cloud (Good Minnesotan 4 is well worth picking up...)

Top Ten Comics of 2011

2011-12-31T08:02:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's hard to believe it's that time again. I'm always astounded when yet another year has passed and I've got to pull something together that vaguely resembles a Top Ten list. As per usual there were masses of great comics published this year, so slimming that veritable cornucopia of choice down to a mere ten favourites was a hard thing to do.

There were plenty of books I loved that have been omitted from my final list. In this case, it's what I'd call the 'obvious stuff' that didn't make the cut, by which I mean new relases by cartoonists like Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, Chester Brown and Craig Thompson. I've left some of the big names out in the cold because, quite frankly, you have the rest of the internet to tell you how good they are. Many of the comics that comprise the top ten came to me via old friends or, in the case of something like Anders Nilsen's 'Big Questions', have been on my radar for a long long time.

What I've always aimed to do here at Exquisite Things is to push those artists who aren't yet household names, but very much deserve to be. Our number one slot this year goes to Tom Neely, who has been a favourite of mine since he blew me away with 'The Blot'. His latest offering 'The Wolf' made just as much of an impression, but threw in a few stylistic curve balls I hadn't expected, so the enjoyment was there anew. There'll be more about 'The Wolf' in January when I post a long form interview with Tom on his 'painted novel'.

For anyone that reads this blog regularly, most of the choices will be fairly self explanatory, but I should mention that Kate Beaton's 'Hark! A Vagrant!' made me laugh until I felt sick. Any comic that does that should be considered a godsend. The out of the blue surprise of the year goes to Chris & Sarah Browning's 'On the Hadron', a gorgeous little comic about the life and times of the mysterious small beasties known as 'Hadrons'. It's funny, endearing stuff that sits just the right side of cute. Fun fact - I used to work with Chris in a particularly drab office job about seven years ago, and only recently reconnected with him. Little did I know he was making such wonderful comics.

'One Soul' by Ray Fawkes, I picked up purely on the basis of its concept. Fawkes uses two nine panel grids on double page spreads to tell eighteen concurrent stories, following eighteen separate individuals from birth to death. It's one of the most inventive uses of the medium I've seen in ages and is so beautifully executed.

So, without further ado, lets move on to 2011's Top Ten Comics!

1. The Wolf by Tom Neely (I Will Destroy You)
2. Big Questions (collected) by Anders Nilsen (Drawn & Quarterly)
3. Pornhounds 2 by Sharon Lintz and various artists (Self Published)
4. Hark! A Vagrant! by Kate Beaton (Jonathan Cape)
5. One Soul by Ray Fawkes (Oni Press)
6. Pope Hats 2 by by Ethan Rilly (AdHouse Books)
7. Finder: Voice by Carla Speed McNeil (Dark Horse Comics)
8. Lose by Michael Deforge (Koyama Press)
9. On the Hadron by Chris & Sarah Browning (Self Published)
10. You Can't Be Here by Nicholas Breutzman (Self Published)

Expect the Unexpected - Pornhounds #2

2011-12-26T15:54:00.000-08:00

Before I write a single word on Sharon Lintz’s 'Pornhounds #2', it’s probably worth getting the obvious out of the way first. Judged purely on its title, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was a full on 'tits and ass' comic, so it’s perhaps worth taking a moment to clarify that this isn’t a porn comic. Admittedly, the book does have its fair share of adult content as Lintz's aim was to document her tenure as a copy writer for a porn publication. So, yes, there’s plenty in the way of smut, but it’s all in the service of a very personal autobiographical work whose backdrop just happens to be the adult entertainment industry. Much like the recently reviewed 'Paying for it' by Chester Brown, Lintz isn't out to titillate, she's out to educate.

The comic kicks off with a clever little visual trick that serves as a signifier of what lies ahead. In the book's opening panels we’re led to believe the narrator is a man buying a porn magazine, only to discover a few panels later that the narrative voice is in fact that of Lintz herself. It’s a wonderful double bluff, one that proves to be of particular thematic significance as the comic unfolds. As a narrator, Lintz is constantly one step removed from her experiences. First as a ghost writer for Cytherea, the nubile cover star of her employer’s magazine, then as an omniscient observer to her own life when she’s diagnosed with breast cancer. Viewed in the wider context of the comic, shock revelations and all, this brief narrative disconnect suddenly becomes something far more poignant.

The first thirty or so pages of the comic are a relatively light read, unfolding with a welcoming mix of observational humour and gonzo reporting. As we're introduced to Lintz's work environment and co-workers, she teases out all the inherent oddness of the adult industry. There are mind numbing photo review meetings, heated editorial debates on the grammatical correctness of tag lines like 'The island of Dr. More Ho's', and some surprisingly affecting reader's letters. A number of pages are given over to fan letters, reproducing verbatim a selection which range from polite and sensitive to downright dirty. They’re all absolutely fascinating, and this small selection reads like confessional poetry culled from every imaginable walk of life. Very little is held back and reading these letters is, as Lintz puts it, ‘like staring directly into someone's soul’.

'Pornhounds #2' covers topics that you'd rightfully expect to be gritty and depressing, but there's a strong streak of absurdist humour running through the book that keeps things well balanced. During her time at the magazine Lintz churns out reams of erotic fiction that become increasingly ludicrous as time passes. When the boredom and monotony of writing erotic prose sets in, Lintz draws on her love of sci-fi, swiping plot lines wholesale from her favourite films and franchises. We’re treated to horny Psylons, a porn version of 'The Parallax view' and a racy rendition of Alan Moore’s ‘The Courtyard’. The results are quite frankly hilarious and Lintz may have inadvertently penned some of the funniest, not to mention bluest, Battlestar Galactica fanfic you’ll ever lay eyes on.

When news of Lintz's breast cancer diagnosis does come, it marks a significant change in tone for the comic, and as jarring as this is for the reader, I suspect it barely conveys the raw sense of shock felt by Lintz when she first received the news. When the call comes, Lintz finds herself in freefall - her cartoon likeness floating against foreboding blacked out panels. Her childhood comes rushing back in one short sharp flash, as memories of her father’s debilitating illness come flooding back. Her own mortality is suddenly brought sharply into focus as she stares down an uncertain future. This revelation hits with the force of an articulated truck, as the comic veers sharply off the motorway of black humour, through the crash railings and over the cliff edge - straight down into the choppy seas of personal trauma and fear. Anyone who has dealt with illness or loss in their family will find much to relate to, and all credit to Lintz as a writer for rendering it so vividly.

There are moments of sad reflective beauty to this latter section of the comic, but they’re always skilfully balanced by Lintz’s ever present sense of humour. On one page she’ll be clawing her way out from under the weight of her illness, and on the next she’ll be flippantly dismissing nipples as ‘overrated’ when she's about to undergo a double biopsy. Unlike so many artists working in autobio comics, Lintz never once falls prey to the kind gushing self pity that seems so prevalent in the genre. Even when everything’s at its bleakest, she narrates her life with a bemused fascination, delighting in the absurdity of things as she suffers through surgery and chemotherapy. One of the shining strengths of Lintz’s writing is her ability to balance the profound and personal with wit and humour.

In visual terms, 'Pornhounds #2' offers up an even wider palette of moods and styles. Not being artistically inclined herself, Lintz has chosen to call on the skills of a handful of talented artists to illustrate her work. As a result, every chapter has its own distinctive look, which adds real definition to the various chapters. Chandler Wood opens the comic in stylish fashion with art that sits somewhere between photo-realistism and classic clear line art, making a strong visual impression as Lintz sets the scene. Emanuele Simonelli follows this seamlessly, with flowing impressionistic line work that weaves its way around reproductions of the aforementioned reader's letters.

Next up is Nicholas Breutzman, who turns in some of his best work yet, expanding on his darkly vivid style with some inventive layouts that fit the tone of the comic perfectly. Likewise, Nathan Screiber aptly renders the shock and confusion that follows Lintz's cancer diagnosis, using open space to dramatic affect.

Joan Riley's loose, flowing pen work does a great job of charting the transitory stages of Lintz recovery as she reflects on the near deserted Ballardian sprawl of Southern Florida. Ellen Linder provides a refreshingly different cartoonish style that see Lintz grapple with chemotherapy treatment by way of Battlestar Galactica outakes.

As the comic comes full circle, American Splendour veteran Ed Piskor turns in some gorgeously detailed work, which sees Lintz once again stepping outside herself. Pornhound's titualr narrator takes a step back from the world, and sitting in bumper to bumper traffic she stares death square in the face.

Only then does the realisation come that she is not trapped by it, but strangely liberated.

Having read 'Pornhounds #2' in one intensely focused sitting, I came away with as much admiration for Lintz as a person, as I did for her work as a writer. Those in search of autobiographical comics with little time for self pity should seek out Lintz's 'Pornhounds' post haste, because alongside Chester Brown’s ‘Paying for It’ and Tom Neely’s nightmarish metaphorical love ballad ‘The Wolf’, this is easily one of the most enjoyable autobiographical efforts I’ve laid eyes on this year.

Quick Links:

Pornhounds website (with extra added exclusive material!)

Drawing the Future - The Decadence Comics Interview

2011-12-05T11:48:00.000-08:00

Decadence are an independent UK based comics collective formed by Dave Lander and Stathis Tsemberlidis in 2003. Since their inception they’ve self published eight issues of their distinctive ‘Decadence’ anthology, as well as a clutch striking single issue comics.

The Decadence aesthetic is a heady blend of science fiction, Ballardian near future musings and psychedelic altered states. Their work recalls the best of early European sci-fi comics, whilst maintaining a strong identity of their own. Decadence, by virtue of their approach, influences and interests, are a highgly unique entity on the UK underground comics circuit. Their comics map the outer reaches of sci-fi, tracing out the contours of some strange cosmic zone that only a handful of intrepid travelers have dared stray into.

I spoke to Dave and Stathis about their comics, ideals and aspirations.

Exquisite Things: Dave, Stathis, thanks for taking the time out to talk to me. To get us started, can I ask when was Decadence founded, and what was the impetus to start your own independent publishing imprint?

Stathis: It was 2003, around the time of the invasion of Iraq. I remember David and I having long conversations about how the new western elites were increasingly imposing their will on the world. I believe Decadence came about as a reaction to what we were seeing around us. Everything seemed fictional to me; our societies were turning into selfish entities, with power being taken away from the individual and given over to monstrous corporations seeking new forms of power. Solidarity was long gone in the western world, which made way for an immoral consumerist society, one that completely ignored the importance of living and acting in the present. We were lost in a bubble, a hyper-real world. Decadence is deeply connected with the decay of the old world.

Dave: That year was a real eye opener for me. I ended up knocking about with Stathis (from Greece) and another dude from Portugal. It was a total culture shock. They were getting to grips with London’s hectic and alienated culture, and meanwhile the government was building towards the invasion of Iraq. There seemed to be an atmosphere of complete apathy towards what was going on in the wider world. I was in Athens with Stathis when the invasion did finally take place, with every detail of it covered live on the news. Everyone I spoke to wanted to know what my take on it was, when back in the UK most people didn't seem to give a fuck. The West was knee deep in hyper-consumerism, and had little concern for long term problems in other parts of the world.

Both of us also shared and interest in sci-fi and a strong desire to do some radical shit that tackled these issues. I think that was, and still is what defines Decadence.

Exquisite Things: As you already mentioned, your comics are firmly rooted in science fiction, what was it that first attracted you to the genre?

Stathis: The use of science has brought us so much in terms of progress and development and with it a new set of challenges for society at large. Science fiction, with its dystopias and utopias, depicts a future we’d like to imagine. I think sci-fi, for me, has always been a way to understand the present by imagining the future. When portraying the future in fiction, writers have a duty to examine how we live and act in the present. Fiction, in contrast to science, gives us the perfect arena to explore new ways of understanding and using technology. That’s what appeals to me about sci-fi.

Dave: I agree with what Stathis says, but to begin with it was all about the escapism and adventure that sci-fi offered, that’s what drew me to it. The real world is small and banal, but the cosmos is vast with infinite possibilities!

Exquisite Things: Speaking of the wider world, I couldn’t help but notice that your art has a very European vibe to it. Moebius seems like an obvious touchstone, but I see a whole host of influences in there. How did you arrive at your style and what shaped your visual approach as it developed?

Dave: I think Stathis probably had a lot of these Euro comics available to him growing up in Athens, but for me ‘Heavy Metal’ was not very common as opposed to ‘2000AD’, but I never really could get into that or be bothered to buy it weekly. I read war comics (which I kinda cringe at now) and some Aliens comics, but the first thing to really blow my mind and embody exactly what I wanted to do in the medium was Akira. I read Akira as it was serialised in the pulp anthology ‘Manga Mania’ along with other sci-fi manga artist like Masmune Shirow. It was so perfect in style and content and I remember waiting impatiently every month for the next issue to drop.

As a kid I also read Tintin and Asterix in the library, but that’s all I’d really come across in terms of European comics. I think some French animated TV shows also had an early influence. I was aware of Moebius but didn’t have access to any of it, till much later. Some of my favorite Otomo short stories that I read were probably influenced directly by the Metal Hurlant vibe that was going on in the late 70’s to early 80’s.

Exquisite Things: What about literature? Reading through your comics, I’m reminded quite strongly of the much missed British author J G Ballard, more specifically his tendency towards depicting worlds overtaken by natural forces; whereby nature once again gains the upper hand over the modern world we’ve built. Are you interested in that same inversion?

Dave: Yeah, I love Ballard's work! The idea of slipping away from the modern world is very powerful. Increasingly, it seems like we're all governed by a complex system of ownership and toll booths for everything now. The natural world is receding and there's a price on everything; time is money. There doesn’t seem to be any escaping this, but Ballard's characters do manage to find a way out, either via some kind of cataclysmic world changing event or by achieving a very different kind of consciousness. Sometimes his ideas feel like they could offer an answer to the problems humanity faces today.

Exquisite Things: Whilst we’re on the topic of science fiction authors? Are there any particular writers you both admire, in terms of prose and comics?

Dave: There are so many good sci-fi authors from the postwar period that I dig. J. G. Ballard, Arthur C Clarke, Philip K Dick. All of those guys wrote short stories in magazines which I also find really inspiring. I like the idea of Decadence providing artists with a platform to present short sci-fi stories like that. I don’t really read any writer / artist comics, except ‘The Incal’ by Jodorowsky and Moebius. That shit's dope!

Stathis: For me, The Nikopol trilogy from Enki Bilal was a big influence, as well as the Incal, which Dave already mentioned. Caza was also an early influence, Tanino LIberatore and Philippe Druillet too. In terms of novels I enjoy Philip k Dick, Aldous Huxley, Stanislaw Lem, J. G. Ballard and Arthur C. Clarke. We both share that love of great sci-fi.

Exquisite Things: As Stathis already mentioned, good sci-fi is often concerned with commenting on the present. In both your own comics and the Decadence anthologies, I picked up on a definite desire to address the current social order and political status quo. You touch on warfare, state surveillance and the need to escape from the constraints of society. To what extend do you see your work as politically charged?

Dave: I don’t know, I wouldn’t say I’m politically charged. For me, it’s more about the human condition. The spectacle of politics has never really interested me. Huge and important issues are skipped over and it’s all about money and small concessions. Things like war and environmental collapse are still ongoing, and there's a complete lack of long term planning around to tackle that.

I try to tackle that very issue in my work. We live in a violent society, but we don’t see the direct result of that in the present; it's abstracted. We consume and buy shit we don’t need, we pay taxes to fund wars and weapons programs. The human race is on some Industrial Nihilism shit and I’m interested in confronting that.

In my ‘Untranslated’ comics I create an alternative reality, but it’s essentially about what’s going on now, and has gone on throughout history. It’s about mainstream news sources giving us a skewed version of reality. I’m just trying to view it from a different perspective by using aliens and untranslated languages. It’s a more distant, alien picture of the same situations we face. The viewer has to figure out what’s going on rather than by following a conventional narrative.

Exquisite Things: Stathis, I get an entirely different vibe from your comics, which read like surreal cosmic dream sequences. Space, in your comics is represented as brutal and unforgiving but also as something that can serve as a transformative force. Your characters often meet their end in the cold void of space, but death seems to represent something more; perhaps a gateway to transcendence or rebirth? In all of your work, I felt that you were constantly alluding to something beyond the physical realm. Is there a strong spiritual aspect to your comics?

Stathis: Yes, symbolism and mysticism play big roles in my work. In most of my comics there's a continuous transformative power that originates from the functions of the cosmos. In many of my stories, the present is constantly challenged in favor of a more circular movement, like a spiral that has its own continuum. Life and death are part of that continuum, and rebirth is the driving force that propels things forwards into the future. What I'm trying to do is offer up a more complex and dynamic interpretation of reality through my stories. I have an interest in things like alchemy, advances in modern physics, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the writings of Rick Strassman on the use of psychedelics. I'm interested in different levels of consciousness; the space that exists between the conscious and the subconscious mind.

Exquisite Things: Sure, that makes a whole lot of sense. There is a certain hallucinatory quality to your comics, and I constantly found myself thinking of film makers like Alejandro Jodorowsky and Kubrick. Whilst I appreciate that comics and film are very different mediums, has your work had been informed by film at all?

Stathis: I believe that film and comics share a lot of the same visual language. My stories are heavily influenced by film, especially filmmakers like Jodorowsky and Kubrick. My background is in animation, which I've been doing since 2007. It got me involved in making short films, so I always see connections between the two mediums.

Exquisite Things: Coming back to you Dave… When I look at Decadence as a whole, I see a slight leaning towards graffiti art, especially when it comes to the logos and lettering on the covers of your comics. Has graffiti culture been an influence on your work?

Dave: I’ve been into Graffiti for a while, but I’ve never really been a prolific writer. I think the coded language and the retaking of public space is really interesting. People get so angry about it, “It’s like dogs pissing to mark their territory”, is something I hear a lot, but the same people are happy to be bombarded with billboards and advertising all day long.

Every time I do a new cover, I try to do something different with the lettering. Most of all, I try to keep things simple. I don't run a contents page or anything that would require me to be more formal with it. I had a lot of fun coming up with the letterforms for the ‘Untranslated’ comics, and it ties in with the idea of using a coded language; of different cultures not understanding each other. I didn’t want it be really recognizable as graffiti, but the ideas are similar.

Exquisite Things: You recently did an animated video for Sole and the Skyrider band. It’s a really beautiful piece, how long did it take you and what was involved in the process of putting it together?

Dave: Thanks man, it took me 8-9 months to finish the video. It involved a lot of drawing every day and into the night. I then photographed those drawings and made them transparent to overlay on background drawings using software. I’m still recovering from that one to be honest! It felt weird to be away from comics and I’m looking forward to be getting some new books finished.

Exquisite Things: Did you have any influence on the choice of track, and considering the chosen song’s themes of immortality and post-humanity is the track particularly significant to you?

Sole sent me a couple of tracks to choose from. I had read a bit about trans-humanism and post-humanity. I’d wanted to do a story about it for a while, so the ‘Immortality’ track was the perfect chance to do that. I watched a documentary that described these hypothetical near future situations such as a ‘grey goo’ scenario, which is where self replicating nano robots could suddenly take over the world if we weren't able to regulate them. This was accompanied by some cheap cgi animation. I thought it would be cool to try and depict the same thing in a different way, using more traditional hand drawn animation techniques.

I listened to the track several times and sketched out a lot of ideas. At the beginning of the track, Sole makes a reference to ‘Gilgamesh’ which is an ancient epic that tells the story of a Sumerian King’s quest for immortality. I really liked the idea of involving ancient kings and gods, because if someone becomes immortal, you are effectively a God. Sole had also recently introduced me to a really dope set of lectures by the writer Ronald Wright called ‘A brief history of progress’ which looks at the rise and fall of various civilizations. One of the first civilizations came out of Sumer (which is now part of Iraq), which is where the Gilgamesh epic originated. I found the idea of cycles in history really interesting and it ended up inspiring a lot of the ideas and imagery in the final a short film. It’s pretty intense, but I think it fits the style of the song.

Exquisite Things: Is animation something you’ve always been interested in, do you plan on doing more of in the future?

Dave: Decadence was born while Stathis and I were studying animation and we’ve both been involved with various film and animated projects. Stathis is animating at the moment but it’s a really punishing discipline and sometimes it’s good to escape form it. That’s partly how the first issue of Decadence came about.

Having finished the Sole video I feel like I just got outta jail, and I don’t plan on re-offending for a while… but you never know!

Exquisite Things: So, what’s next for you both? Any projects on the horizon?

Stathis: At the moment I'm working on an animation that's going to be between 8-14 minutes. Over the past two years I've been working on a short sci-fi film but due to economic constraints, progress has been very slow. I think I'll need one more year to get that completed. Next year we are planning to release the ninth issue of decadence. Some time in the spring of 2012 I’m going to release a new anthology with some new stories.

Dave: I’m just finishing a new comic called ‘Olympic Games’. The title is inspired by a recent Sole track. The next part of my Island 3 story is a few pages short of a new installment and I plan on putting together a collection of my short stories about the collapse of civilization in the near future.

Exquisite Things: Cheers guys, thanks so much for your time.

Interview by Matthew Dick.

Quick links:

Decadence Comics

Creation Myths - The Anders Nilsen Interview

2011-11-20T11:31:00.000-08:00

In the days leading up to meeting Anders Nilsen, I spend most of my free moments trying to contextualise his latest 600 page opus ‘Big Questions’. As I flip through the weighty hardback, I begin to piece together my thoughts, scribbling questions and notes on a pad as they occur to me. I begin to construct a mental map of sorts, linking the birds in ‘Big Questions’ to my own experiences and surroundings, and as I do so I'm struck by the vivid memory of my daily walks to work when I used to live a stone's throw from the River Foss in York.

Every morning I would pass the river, whose grass verges would always be teeming with geese. Traversing the same route for two years, I'd become increasingly fascinated by these majestic creatures and never tired of watching them wreak havoc on the early morning traffic, as they crossed the road en masse in search of fresh grass. Over the years, as my familiarity grew, they became totems of sorts, like living sounding boards for my thoughts.

One day they'd be the ultimate embodiment of some unobtainable freedom. The next, they'd be arrogant and disdainful onlookers - sitting in judgement on river bank, pouring scorn on everything and everyone. They were whatever I wanted them to be, which is how I'd come to view the birds in Anders Nilsen's ‘Big Questions’ – as anthropomorphic extensions of the self. His philosophically inclined flock of birds seemed somehow closely related to my traffic disrupting feathered friends.

When, later that week, I finally meet Anders in a cafe in heart of York, he looks tired. He's been on the road for the best part of two weeks, touring Europe to promote his new book. Home has been other peoples' couches and living room floors. In spite of the obvious fatigue, Anders is friendly and enthusiastic. His manner is quiet and thoughtful, always taking his time to carefully chew over his words before he speaks.

With a cup of tea in hand, I begin to explain the thought process behind my opening question, recounting my journeys to work and my fondness for geese. I ask if he also thinks of the birds in ‘Big Questions’ in the same way. Are they like different facets of his own personality? A projection of his own experiences onto a cast of animal characters?

Anders smiles and ponders my words for a moment before launching into his answer.

Anders: I do get asked 'why birds' a fair amount, and I was telling somebody just yesterday that it's a question I actually don't have a good answer for. Part of the convoluted answer that I always end up giving has to do with the idea of the 'blank slate', especially in the way that I draw them. They're drawn really really simply and that allows the reader to project onto them.

Also, there's an element of what you mentioned. Each of the birds has a separate personality and they have very different takes on the situations that arise in the book. In that way they're like different facets of myself. I think of them less like different people and more like different ways of approaching the world. Any one person could go in any of those directions.

I wasn't particularly interested in birds before I starting doing ‘Big Questions’, but I do pay attention to them now, in a similar way to what you experienced walking to work. I used to live across from this giant urban park in Chicago and I would often take walks there after lunch, say, or when trying to figure out something I was working on. I just starting seeing them everywhere and began to notice how different they are, it's easy to project funny little personalities onto them.

Exquisite Things: I think you can't help but do that, they can become something more than what they actually are. I think people tend to empathise with animals, sometimes more so than they would perhaps do with people.

Anders Nilsen: Yeah, I think that's part of why so much fiction, especially children's stories, use animals. It's so easy to associate with; to put yourself into an animal's mind.

Exquisite Things: One of the strong impressions I get from your work is that you're constantly breaking yourself down into all these disparate parts, then piecing everything back together. I see a lot of that in the ‘Monologues’ books, ‘The End’, as well as ‘Big Questions’... does that ring true for you?

Anders Nilsen: That's something I've specifically done work about, for sure. I'm interested in the question of 'what is a person?' In the Buddhist sense of asking questions like 'what is a soul? Is there such a thing a soul?' I think the basic Buddhist answer is that there isn't, if you take a person all the way apart there is no 'thing' there other than the material, and the chemicals in the brain.

That's what makes it endlessly fascinating, if there's no single core that's eternal, pure and true, what is a person? What happens if the brain chemistry is skewed just a bit? What if you get hit on the head in the wrong way and everything changes. In ‘The End’, for example, it's about the psychological aftermath of an intense experience. It really is just about me watching myself just totally change. You have to become a different person to deal with certain things, and part of that process is anticipating becoming yet another different person. What happened, in a way, was that I eventually came back to myself, I think.

Exquisite Things: In ‘Big Questions’, you use a lot of imagery that has close parallels to the Garden of Eden. The landscapes are very open and barren and there's a small cast of human characters exploring their immediate surroundings. Those human characters introduce god-like objects into the birds' world; the egg, or bomb depending on whose viewpoint you take, and the giant metal bird / crashed plane. It’s a lot like a creation myth... Are you interested in ancient myths and the theological? Did that feed into ‘Big Questions’?

Anders Nilsen: Yes, for sure... Hugely.

Exquisite Things: You mentioned Buddhism already... but I guess I'm coming at this from a very Western Christian point of view...

Anders Nilsen: My interest in theology does come from a very Western Christian point of view. I'm not religious at all, but I'm very interested in religion because I'm very interested in stories and telling stories. To me, that's what religion is; it's about people telling stories in order to make sense of the world. That's what ‘Big Questions’ is all about. You mentioned the Garden of Eden, in some ways the book is about this loss of innocence for the birds. There are these grandiose tragic events, and a confrontation with death.

Exquisite Things: Yes, you present some pretty opposing views of those events. On the one hand, you have Curtis who's the sceptic, he doesn't buy into the more colourful theories the birds come up with. On the other you have Charlotte, the evangelist... who treats it as a massive religious revelation.

Anders Nilsen: Yes, they both witness exactly the same thing happen but come to very different conclusions about it. That's what I find so interesting and wonderful about religion… even though I also happen to think that Christians are wrong! (Both laugh).

Of course, I know they think I'm wrong too.

Exqusite Things: But there's no reason that can't all still feed into your stories...

Anders Nilsen: Yeah, even though I disagree with Christianity, I'm still fascinated by the fact that they've invented these enduring traditions and amazing stories. As a storyteller, I almost feel that there's little point in trying to come up with new stories. Just messing around with existing stories is actually more interesting in a way.

Exquisite Things: Speaking of myths, I also noticed there's a strong allusion to the Orpheus myth in ‘Big Questions’. The search that Algernon undertakes, whereby he's determined to retrieve his partner from the underworld. This seemed like a very intense sequence to me, I know you experienced the loss of your fiance to cancer some years ago. I read that you’d drawn the sequence before she was diagnosed. Was that a very strange experience? To have your own work of fiction foreshadowing events in your life?

Anders Nilsen: Right, that sequence was written before she ever got sick, but I didn't get to the point of actually drawing it until some time after she died. So, there was this very weird moment where my life was following the work, as opposed to my life informing my work.

Exquisite Things: What did you make of that?

Anders Nilsen: By nature, I'm not the kind of person who makes much of it. It's part of who I am – in the work that I do I deal with serious subject matter. Dealing with death, love and loss seems to come naturally to me. Obviously, these things happen in life all the time, so at some point it was bound to come around.

Exquisite Things: It's definitely an odd experience, did you find that you ended up pouring those experiences back into the sequence when you came to finish it? Did that add to the intensity of things?

Anders Nilsen: Honestly, I don't know. Of course, it's inevitable that your life experiences are reflected in your work. But with ‘Big Questions’, the story was already in place, it already existed independent of anything else. It really is just me trying to record the story as accurately and as faithfully as possible. All the things that happened in my life haven't really affected the story that much. Except maybe the flaws... which I blame myself for! (Both laugh)

Exquisite Things: Speaking of foreshadowing, one thing that interested me greatly was 'the snake' character in the book, primarily because the symbology attached to snakes is so historically rich. Many ancient cultures interpreted the snake’s unblinking, lidless eyes as a sign of great intelligence, and they were deemed to live by reason and not instinct. I think the most prominent signifier for me was the Snake as guardian of the Underworld or as a messenger between the upper and lower worlds. Your snake, like those in myth acts on reason and goes against the instincts you’d expect. Did these historical interpretations of the snake feed into the character and the purpose the snake serves?

Anders Nilsen: I remember reading that for many ancient cultures, the snake was seen as very wise because they were so close to the earth. I don't think I knew about them being seen as guardians of the underworld. But the pilot kills the snake...

Exquisite Things: and in turn meets his own demise fairly soon thereafter...

Anders Nilsen: Yeah... I'm not sure when exactly I devised that perfect little ending for both characters, but it was the ending that was necessary. I liked the circularity of it. Speaking of foreshadowing, the snake does talk about his own death before it happens; in a conversation with the owl. He knows his death is inevitable, but he also knows he's not just going to fade away. He has a purpose.

Exquisite Things: Now, I may be reading into things here, but I couldn't help but think of Ouroboros, the symbol of the snake eating it's own tale. ‘Big Questions’ itself also come full circle as it concludes; and after much upheaval, death and loss in the human and avian world, we revert back to two birds discussing how great doughnut crumbs are. Bad things happen, the birds try and make sense of them, but life ultimately goes on...

Anders Nilsen: Right... the 'bad things' are life. I think of the book as having two endings, or two 'bird conversations' that wrap it up. There's the one you referred to, which is literally the last page, but there's also a conversation between Betty and Charlotte. Betty has moved on and the implication is that Betty is building a nest with Curtis. Basically, she hasn't completely reconciled all the horrible things that have happened or the guilt she felt, but life goes on. She's not really telling Charlotte 'you're wrong', but she just doesn't have time to deal with it any more. She's just getting on with things.

The story did evolve over time, and within a couple of years of starting it, I had the main plot points all figured out. But the idea of having that last conversation about the doughnut crumbs came to me very late on in the process. I decided I wanted to end the book in the same simple gag strip kind of style that I'd started it in.

Exquisite Things: Yeah, looking back at the really early strips that are reprinted in the back of ‘Big Questions’, I see a real affinity for gag strips. A lot of ‘Big Questions’ is quite visceral and serious but it's always balanced with the ridiculous. I loved that very early 'fuck you' bird strip in the appendix. Do you think it's important to maintain a sense of humour, to represent both dark and light?

Anders Nilsen: Oh yes, that's super important to me. There are a couple of ways I think about it, one is just to have an emotional range. The art that resonates with me most often is art that has a wide emotional range.

I mean, for example, I'm not even a huge Bob Dylan fan, but on some of his early records, and some of the bootleg connections, he'll do 'Bare Mountain Pick-nick', and that'll be immediately followed by the most heartbreaking song about a woman whose father is killed and she's forced to sleep with the Sheriff. That contrast multiplies the impact, I think. In my work, I really want both of those things to be able to coexist. I'm trying to make a serious comment on life, but I'm also really really interested in entertaining people. I think that's part of where my interest in the humour comes in.

Exquisite Things: I think even your most harrowing material has a humorous side. ‘The End’ for instance, I found a really hard emotional read. It documents the fall out of you dealing with the death of your fiancé. It's pretty serious stuff, and yet, there's something darkly funny about it.

Anders Nilsen: Yes, it's supposed to be funny. The strip 'I can do whatever I want all the time'. It's a totally absurd situation. When you're going through something like that, there's an element of you being detached and of you observing yourself going through it. You're doing the dishes and you break into tears. Part of you is upset, but part of you is also watching yourself and thinking 'huh. this is weird, I was doing the dishes, and now I've collapsed and I'm on the floor crying'.

Exquisite Things: ‘The End’ was a companion piece to ‘Don't go where I can't follow’, and I have to admit it's the only book I haven't read. For some reason I didn’t pick it up when it came out and now I can’t get hold of a copy. I read you chose not to opt for a second printing. Can I ask why? Was it too close to the bone?

Anders Nilsen: There's a couple of reasons for that, but let me first say that the book is actually going to get reprinted next year. When I first started the book, it wasn't intended for public consumption. It was done as a memorial to Cheryl, then it took on this character and I wanted to do it in colour, and I needed a certain number of copies. I couldn't do it myself, it was just too expensive. It was intended for family and friends, but was published by Drawm & Qiarterly because that's the only way I could afford to get it out there. I was never 100% settled about that, and I'm still not, perhaps I never will be... The book seemed to really resonate with people though, and I got more response for that book than I'd ever had for anything else.

So, at that time, I was very unsure about the reprint. I had been working on the book again with the intention of reprinting. At about that time an article was published about it, and I was beginning to see somebody new and it just felt like there was this thing in my life, that I was beginning to move away from was on my heels. Having the book out there seemed to be preventing me from moving on with my life, or at least, it made it complicated.

Now, I have moved on. At this point I don't think the book is going to define me. I think I can frame it for the readers in a way that won't colour how they read rest of my work. I have a new 600 page book out now… I don't think it will overshadow ‘Big Questions’.

Exquisite Things: Turning to some of your other work now, your two 'Monologues' books' are really very different. They're more loose, more 'stream of consciousness' in their approach. Even the corrections and mistakes are left in. There seems to be a conscious effort to maintain a sense of immediacy as opposed to the very detailed style of ‘Big Questions’ and Dogs and Water. How do those two sides of your creative approach differ?

Anders Nilsen: I think of them as very different, but the truth is they do actually feed into each other. I began the ‘Monologues’ stuff after I was deep into ‘Big Questions’ and ‘Dogs and Water’. So I was doing a lot of very deliberately paced, carefully drawn work. The thing is, ‘Big Questions’ itself actually started as these really rough drawings of little birds having weird conversations. I found that really compelling and it lead me into interesting territory. So I went back to working in that way, and that became ‘Monologues’, I wanted to see what would happen if I kept it rough and immediate. What has happened, is that like ‘Big Questions’ it has coalesced into a bigger story and has developed its own structure all by itself. I'm trying to keep that off-the-cuff feel and looseness.

Exquisite Things: That's interesting, because I think like many cartoonists, you come from a 'fine arts' background and then subsequently found your calling in comics. Was it sense of fun that made you decide comics were for you?

Anders Nilsen: Totally, that's what was so refreshing about finding comics again. It's fun, it's entertaining, it's easy... Well, it can be easy... It can be horribly hard also. All art has to have a relationship with an audience, and that was one of things that really struck me about comics. I could make a little mini comic and give it to a bunch of friends and it was instantaneous, you make your own audience.

Comics are a form that's very much about your audience. To me, comics are about communication. Paintings are about communication too, but they're these static objects that get hung on the wall and get looked at. Where as with a book, it's something you can get sucked into. I've done a lot of installation work, and I feel books are a little like installation work in that way, it's something you can become enveloped in.

Exquisite Things: Definitely... For me, the great thing about comics has always been the focus on how they convey information, and how they differ to other mediums in that way. I often find myself coming back to Eisner's musing on how comics hang together in terms of form, rhythm and pacing. I mean, a reader’s perception of time and the flow of events can be changed by simply changing how you arrange panels on a page. To me, that's really potent stuff.

Anders Nilsen: Maybe that's part of it... the rhythm, how you panel things out and arrange things. Comics are created to be read, they're for the viewer. Over the history of painting, there has been this idea that's suffused painting; that it's almost pure and maybe the viewer is not necessary. It's pure art, it's just an image. It is what it is whether anybody's standing there or not. I do paintings too, but comics have a more direct, necessary relationship with your audience.

Exquisite Things: So, what's on the cards for the future?

Anders Nilsen: I think I've already started too many projects! I will start a new proper graphic novel, but probably not for a year or two. Before that I'm going to do a book of my sketchbook strips. I have a show of drawing and painting coming up next summer. There's a third and final ‘Monologues’ book that I plan to do. That's not even everything, but that covers it for now.

Interview by Matthew Dick.

Quick Links:

Anders Nilsen Official Website
The Monolinguist - Anders Nilsen's Blog
Drawn & Quarterly

Go read about - Bill Mantlo...

2011-11-15T13:03:00.000-08:00

Bill Coffin writes an impassioned article on Bill Mantlo, who was a prolific writer for Marvel Comics in the 70s and 80s. Following a tragic accident, Mantlo lost most of his motor functions and suffered at the hands of a deeply flawed health insurance industry. I found it a really moving piece.

Read the entire story here.

Orgone Accumulation – The Elijah J. Brubaker interview

2011-11-07T12:31:00.000-08:00

Elijah J. Brubaker is a talented cartoonist who first came to my attention via the ever reliable Sparkplug Comics. To date, Sparkplug have published eight issues of his biographical series 'Reich', which follows the life and work of the radical psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, as depicted by Brubaker's spare, elegant artwork.

Reich's scope spans both decades and continents; from pre war German liberalism to the post war conformity of Eisenhower’s America; following Reich’s controversial work within its strictures. It's a gripping comic that deserves a wider readership. Elijah kindly took the time to answer some questions about himself and his work, revealing a great deal about both in the process.

Exquisite Things: How long have you been working as a cartoonist?

Elijah: Like most cartoonists, I've been doing it my whole life. It's hard to define a place when you jump from someone who likes to write and draw in your sketchbook to that of a working cartoonist. The job generally pays about the same either way, so you can't use that as a marker.

I guess I've gone through steps as a cartoonist, and they're slow steps too. When I bought my first hardbound sketchbook, that was one step as a cartoonist. Hell, switching from crayon to pen was a step. There are so many steps that lead you to what you are. I think the sketchbook thing was my first real conscious effort to become a cartoonist: that was somewhere around 1992. A few years later my sister helped me print a huge print-run of an embarrassing comic. It was awful, but I was so proud at the time.

It really wasn't until recently though, that I think my skill and my ambition are creeping close enough that I can call myself a cartoonist. I have no education at all so it's taken me a long time to hone my skills, even to the rough level they are now. I'm sure in another twenty years I'll produce a good comic. Right now though, it's all study and practice.

Exquisite Things: How did you first become interested in comics? Was it something you had always wanted to pursue?

Elijah: Yes, always. Kids draw comics naturally. It's just an efficient way of communicating. If you don't know a word for something, you can draw a picture of it. If you draw a picture of a cat and no one knows what it is, you put a label on it that reads "cat." Growing up though, you realize that Marshal McLuhan was wrong and the medium isn't the message. You begin to look for stories to tell with your chosen form. Like most American kids my age, I read superhero books. For a time I imitated the stories I was reading and I thought I could draw superheroes and action/adventure.

I read underground stuff too because my mom was a hippy and there was always some “Freak Brothers” laying around. I was too young to get the jokes but I liked the drawings. So my earliest stories were a bizarre amalgam of underground and mainstream comics. Eventually I became interested in drugs and girls so my comics meandered firmly over to the underground camp and pitched a tent there for years.

Exquisite Things: What other comics/stories have you produced besides 'Reich'?

Elijah: I did a few zines and minicomics in small runs before I started drawing 'Reich'. I was part of a group of cartoonists in Seattle that put out an anthology called “Moxie” for a couple of issues. I had a piece in Robyn Chapman and Kelli Nelson's true porn anthology. It was all good practice but looking back at that stuff makes me cringe.

Around the same time Sparkplug picked up 'Reich', I was contacted by Greg Means of Tugboat press and offered a spot in the “Papercutter” anthology. I had twenty-something pages in “Papercutter” #3. That and 'Reich' are the two stories I can point to and say "look, I'm a cartoonist". Since then I've put short work in a few places like Portland's “Stumptown Underground” zine and I've been putting out issues of my minicomic “Blue Moon”. I just printed issue 5 after a few years away from it.

Exquisite Things: Why a biographical comic about Wilhelm Reich? What was it that drew you to Reich as a topic?

Elijah: I had this ridiculous notion that doing a biography would be easier in some way. I'm generally more confident with my writing than my drawing ability, so I wanted to constrain my writing to non-fiction so I could focus on the drawing more. I chose Reich as a subject because he was semi-obscure.

There was enough written about him in English that I could do the research but most people haven't heard of the guy. I didn't want to cover a subject that was well-trod. It always bothers me when comics are used as a gimmick to get stupid people to read. "Look kids, a biography of President Taft, but it's a comic so you don't have to think as much." I felt like my book might fall into that trap if I covered a more well-known figure. And of course, the most important criteria I had was, the story had to be interesting. I'm one of those jerks that thinks everyone's lives are interesting in some way but I really wanted a subject with some meat on it. Reich's story has all these twists and turns and intrigue and madness and science and hokum, all the stuff I love.

I've been interested in Reich since I was a kid but it was a pretty superficial interest. I read something by William Burroughs where he spoke of the Orgone accumulator. Burroughs had a knack for writing about everything with the same acid-tongue prose, it's difficult to parse the truth from fantasy. At first I assumed that a mad scientist creating an "orgasm machine" was something Burroughs had created from his subconscious. I did a little more research, learned the cursory story of Reich and left it at that.

It's a romantic notion that a man can be so sexually liberated that he winds up in jail for it. It's the kind of story that is good to have in your mind as a teenager. The story of Reich kicked around in my brain alongside Jean Genet, De Sade, Henry Miller, Anne Sexton, Kathy Acker etc. Yeah, that's the kind of kid I was. Eventually I began to read more and more about Reich and the less romanticized parts of his story began to hold sway with me. I began to see Reich as a person and less a set of ideals.

Exquisite Things: How much time did you spend doing background research? Having attempted to find information about Wilhelm and Peter Reich myself, I know it's a somewhat daunting task. Were there any significant barriers to finding what you needed?

Elijah: I've read most of the material on Reich available in English. The biggest barrier I had in my research was the language barrier. I know a little German and Google translator helps sometimes but there's a lot of Reich's untranslated writing I haven't read.

I did read through Reich's entire FBI file which was pretty much a wash. It's no longer available through fbi.gov but I think you can find it elsewhere. I've read every article and book I could dig up about Reich or his work within his lifetime. I have very little interest in the people that are continuing his work. There are a lot of Reichians out there and their work is interesting, but my focus is Reich as a person, and current Reichian techniques don't help me understand that part of him.

You mention Peter Reich, whose book “A Book of Dreams” is probably the most emotionally wrenching account of the Reich story. It's the only book in my research that I would recommend to a casual reader. I've tried to learn more about Peter Reich but there's very little information available on the internet about him.

Exquisite Things: Were there any particular biographical comics that you looked to for inspiration?

Elijah: I credit Chester Brown's 'Louis Riel' book in the first issue of 'Reich' but I really regret doing so. Not that the book wasn't an inspiration to me, but I don't think the two books have very much in common. I read a recent review of 'Reich' and the critic said something about how Brown's influence is still evident. It's a small thing and I should take the comparison as a compliment but 'Reich' is absolutely nothing like 'Louis Riel'.

They are both biographies with notation, I use a six panel grid in some of the book and my issues are 24 pages long, those are the things our books have in common. This is off topic but I sort of regret putting the notes in the back too. I sometimes hear 'Reich' referred to as historical fiction because of the way I diverge from the accepted facts but most people wouldn't see that divergence if I hadn't put those notes in the back, pointing it out. Anyway, that's my rant against lazy critics not my answer to your question.

The other, obvious influence on 'Reich' is 'Epileptic' and 'Babel' by David B. Again, the books are very different in most ways but his enthusiasm for drawing really took hold of me and influenced certain ways I told the story. There are some panels in Reich, especially early on, where the drawings closely resemble David B. I will probably be redrawing those panels if and when the book is collected. There are a few panels where I appropriate another artist’s work to make a point and I felt the David B panels were in that vein but now, I think it was a mistake.

Not really a biography and not obvious at all as an influence was 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' by Kim Deitch. That book is amazing and really under-appreciated, I think. Everything Deitch does is reallygood, he's a master.

Exquisite Things: What advantages do you feel the comics medium offers over a normal prose biography in telling Reich's life story?

Elijah: I don’t think comics are better or worse suited to telling the type of story I have to tell. I don't play with the medium in any formal way. Comics are just my chosen form of expression usually. Whenever I write anything, a story, a blog post, a grocery list, I always think "this would be better as a comic."

I'm not sure why I feel that way. Comics just seem more rich and fruitful to me. I do think my book has an advantage as a biography because it's a novelty still, in comics to do something like that. It's also a novelty in that, if I wrote a prose biography of Reich, it would be lost pretty easily among the other books about him.

Originally I thought Reich's story would be perfect for comics because there are so many aspects to his life that would just be a blast to draw. There's post Weimar era Germany and Nazis and sex and riots. Sigmund Freud is a great image all by himself. There's space-guns and flying saucers and atom bombs and all this great shit. Eventually though, I kind of scaled it all back in order to keep the story even-keeled. I didn't want the character of Reich to get lost in all the wild imagery. Even when I get to draw UFOs, I'm pretty reserved about it.

Exquisite Things: What has pleased you most about the comic so far? And what do you hope to achieve with the issues that remain?

Elijah: I'm generally very happy with the way the book has come out. I'm sure there are Reichians out there that would disagree, but I think I show a pretty even-handed view of Reich's life. In upcoming issues where I deal with some of the more controversial aspects of his work I think I maintain a sympathetic approach to Reich. On a personal level this book has taught me so much.

I think I'm a better cartoonist now than when I began. I have a more nuanced and thorough understanding of certain areas of history. The creation of this book has been a huge learning process. What I hope to achieve with the rest of the issues is just to tell the story in a fulfilling way. I hope the people that have been along for the ride won't be disappointed. Anyone out there can find out the events of Reich's life by reading a wikipedia article but I hope the way I tell Reich's story has more meat to it. I hope people can connect to it and to Reich on some emotional level.

We’ll see.

Interview by Kevin McCaighy.

Quick Links:

Elijah J. Brubaker's Blog
Sparkplug Comics

Romance is Dead - Chester Brown's 'Paying for it'

2011-09-16T01:00:00.000-07:00

Chester Brown’s latest graphic memoir ‘Paying for it’ was originally meant to be titled ‘I pay for sex’. A blunt declaration of intent if there ever was one, and whilst I understand the business sense in softening the title somewhat; I think the original does a far better job of conveying the confessional nature of the book. Sure, it might have offended a small minority of the book buying public, but it would have better prepared them for the unflinchingly honest account of paying for sex that lies within.

The opening pages set the scene, with Brown and his long term girlfriend Sook-Yin cordially ending their relationship. Seemingly unfazed by the arrival of her new boyfriend, Brown continues to live in their shared flat. He overhears the new couple having sex, listens in on their petty arguments, but feels not a twinge of jealously. Upon discussing the situation with friends, he concludes that he’s far happier being friends with Sook-Yin than he ever was when they were lovers. Applying this same logic to his past relationships he postulates that romantic love brings out the worst in people, commenting to an ex-girlfriend that she’d seen him at his “meanest and pettiest” when they were dating.

And so, it’s with a strange emotional detachment that Brown decides he’s had enough of romantic love. He rationally dismisses the concept as a socially enforced norm that does more harm than good. Upon reflection, he finds that the only thing he misses about having a girlfriend is sex. As time passes, Brown wrestles with two competing desires; the desire to have sex versus the desire to not have a girlfriend. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that he lacks the social skills to pick up girls for casual sex. His timid, thoughtful persona does not lend itself well to trawling clubs for sexual partners. With limited options, and an unshakable aversion to romantic love, Brown decides the only feasible way to satisfy his sexual needs is to pay for sex.

After two years of conflicted internal debate he finally takes the plunge and goes in search of his first ‘paid for’ sexual experience. Hereafter, the book unfolds like a diary; with one chapter dedicated to each prostitute Brown sees between 1999 and 2010. What may come as a surprise to most readers is that there’s nothing remotely erotic about 'Paying for it'. Right from the go get, it’s clear that Brown intends to engage your brain, not your nether regions. By keeping his art detailed yet cartoonish, he achieves a degree of objective distance. This in turn gives the impression that you’re viewing some kind of elaborate social experiment, as seen through the framed windows of the artist’s panels. 'Paying for it' can seem cold and distant at times, but it's a necessary evil in order to maintain the level of anonymity required by Brown's sexual partners.

In many ways, 'Paying for it' bears an uncanny resemblance to Brown’s earlier comic memoir ‘The Playboy’, which examined similar themes of sexual desire. The big difference is that Brown is no longer dabbling in adolescent obsessions with porn magazines. Unlike ‘The Playboy’ there’s no guilt or awkwardness, but rather a mature realisation that he’s grappling with significantly larger social issues. It’s a big jump, and a very brave one at that, especially given the strength of opinion around his chosen subject matter. To see it depicted in such frank and open terms is disarming, educational and on occasion even amusing.

What really caught me off guard was Brown’s thoughtful and considerate nature. Despite his coldly logical rants and wholesale dismissal of romantic love, there’s a sensitive side to his character that comes through in his actions. This is exemplified by the level of respect he shows the girls he sees, making excuses when he can’t go through with sex in order to avoid denting their confidence. Each prostitute sets clear boundaries, which he adheres to stringently. These may seem like small concessions, but they do much to reveal a kinder, more complex sexual interplay that's all but ignored by the media.

One thing ‘Paying for it’ does exceedingly well is dispel the clichéd image of prostitution peddled by the gutter press and the Christian right. Being privy to the little details makes all the difference, especially the transitory yet affectionate friendships that unfold between Brown and his partners. His memoirs put a human face on things, and the picture that begins to emerge is of a cross section of women who have chosen their profession, who are well paid and respect themselves. It also becomes increasingly apparent that the average ‘john’ isn’t the misogynistic drunk we might think him to be. From these experiences Brown begins to form a well reasoned pro-decriminalisation stance that develops alongside his radical re-definition of sexual relations.

Much of the debate for and against prostitution takes place between Brown and his close friends, Joe Matt and Seth. Their informal chats form the stage upon which many of the book’s more salient points are made. What I found particularly amusingly was Joe Matt’s indignation and disgust at Brown seeing prostitutes. For those of you who haven’t read Joe Matt’s equally self-effacing comics, it's worth noting that he spends much of his time obsessing over porn films. Double standards? Oh yes, absolutely, but it’s all fuel for the fire. Even though the three friends rarely seem to agree on anything, they do provide the perfect sounding board for Brown to voice his opinions in detail.

In renouncing the shackles of romantic love, Brown argues that paying for sex is essentially no different to the emotional ownership and trade-offs that occur in a romantic relationship. In a further refinement of his argument, he clarifies that he’s against what he terms 'possessive monogamy'. As the book draws to a close, Brown finds himself in an ongoing 'relationship' with just one woman. They don’t see other people but cash still changes hands for sex. A financial transaction still takes place, but it’s a transaction they’re both comfortable with. For Brown, their relationship avoids the all the pitfalls of romantic love; there's no implied ownership, instead a clear cut economic arrangement. Brown's overbearing ideal of romantic love is left out in the cold, but to the keen observer it’s obvious that their relationship skirts dangerously close to the very conventions he's trying so hard to escape.

Even if you don’t particularly agree with the viewpoints laid out in ‘Paying for it’, it still makes for fascinating reading. Those with a bone to pick can always refer to the exhaustive appendices at the back of the book, which cover practically every conceivable angle and counter argument you might care to come up with.

Even if the sexual exploits of a balding forty-something cartoonist aren’t high on your 'to read' list, I’d none the less urge you to take a look at this engaging discourse on romantic love vs. prostitution. ‘Paying for it’ is an eye opening tell all with very little held back. Regardless of where you stand on prostitution, you’ll be left with plenty to chew on by the time you’re done reading this.

Review by Matthew Dick.

Quick Links:

Drawn & Quarterly's Chester Brown page

RIP Dylan Williams

2011-09-11T03:30:00.000-07:00

I'm deeply saddened this morning to learn that Dylan Williams has passed away after his battle with cancer. I didn't know Dylan personally, but through his work as an independent comics publisher and cartoonist.

And what beautiful work it was... a world of urgent, honest art given a voice thanks to what Dylan achieved with Sparkplug Comics. His DIY attitude and selfless approach to publishing was inspiring and his generosity was instrumental in getting Exquisite Things off the ground. He sent us package after package stuffed with the most amazing comics, and never asked for a thing in return.

My thoughts go out to his close friends and family. He will be sorely missed.

Dylan Williams of Sparkplug Comics needs your support!

2011-08-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

As many of you may already be aware, Dylan Williams who runs Sparkplug Comics has fallen quite seriously ill. Unlike the UK, where we have a free state provided health care system, Dylan is based in the USA and will have to pay medical bills. He's but a humble cartoonist and underground comics publisher, and could really use your support. Lucky for you, you can do this by buying comics directly from Sparkplug.

Why should you care? Well, Sparkplug are one of the finest examples of an underground publisher doing what they do for all the right reasons. Dylan isn't out to make buckets of cash, or publish fancy tomes for your coffee table; he's far more concerned with publishing comics that push honest self expression. If ever there was someone doing it out of pure love of the medium, it's Dylan.

I'd like to urge you to please go buy some comics from Sparkplug, even if you buy just one thing it'll be a massive help. I've made a quick 'Top 5 personal favourites' list with links to reviews of the books we've featured. All of the below are absolutely essential for any discerning comic book fan and can be purchased from Sparkplug Comics here.

1. Inkweed by Chris Wright

What we said: "Haunting multi-layered stories, laced with gothic overtones and visual symbolism".

2. Eschew (1-2) by Robert Sergel

What we said: "The beauty of Sergel's work lies in its careful use of layout and timing; in its formalisation of the everyday, transforming the mundane into a series of taught parallel lines and carefully crafted geometric forms".

3. The Heavy Hand by Chris C Cilla

What we said: "The Heavy Hand embraces a skewed feverish dream logic, spewing forth puzzle pieces that point towards some unfathomable truth just beyond the reader's grasp".

4. Reich (1-8) by Elijah Brubaker

What we said: "Elijah J. Brubaker’s elegant and investigative biography of the notorious Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich".

5. Asthma by John Hanckiewicz

What we said: Well, not an awful lot, but the buzz around this book has been incredible. I'm off to pick up a copy myself. Right now...

Broadcasts from beyond the Rim - Decadence Comics round up

2011-08-20T05:39:00.000-07:00

In early November last year I stumbled upon some truly exceptional comics by Bristol based creator Lando. He had a table at Thought Bubble comic con in Leeds, and I can confidently say that nothing else I saw that day came close to the quality of his comics. My only regret is that it’s taken me this long to get round to writing about his work and his 'Decadence Comics' imprint. At the time, I remember beings pretty burned out on comics. Very little had grabbed me in the months running up to the con, so I was looking for something to re-invigorate my interest in the medium. Coming across the Decadence Comics table was a welcome slap in the face, and a poignant reminder that the UK has some truly outstanding underground comics talent.

Lando’s work draws heavily on European sci-fi comics, most notably the comics of Jean Giraud (aka Moebius) circa 1970-80. He explores the same kind of progressive vision that Giraud and France’s Metal Hurlant magazine were championing thirty-six years ago; tracing out the barren landscapes of frontier sci-fi with a distinct visual flair. Lando's largely silent comics deal in alien worlds and cultures, with no concessions given to those not versed in alien tongues. In his 'Untranslated' series of comics, exchanges between characters are represented with glyphs and streaks of telepathic energy. Body language and strong visual cues get the job done, without the need for large swathes of unnecessary dialogue. Lando’s style is open and loose, almost skeletal at times, but with an eye for sweeping landscapes peppered with detail.

His stories read like interplanetary news broadcasts; a parade of monochrome footage beamed back from war torn worlds beyond our galaxy. There are flashes of Joe Haldeman's classic sci-fi novel 'The Forever War', as worn out soldiers face off against an alien enemy they barely understand. Elsewhere, a tribe of shaggy creatures wage war against a giant godlike floating head, think a parallel universe Zardoz and you're half way there. The devastated vistas of Lando’s fantasy worlds are comparable to those of our own and could have just as easily been lifted from news coverage of Afghanistan or Iraq. In all three issues of ‘Untranslated’, the ravages of war are painfully apparent, but most of all, it’s the futility of armed conflict that Lando drives home with great eloquence.

Stathis Tsemberlidis is another like minded artist published by Lando's Decadence Comics imprint. Stathis creates sumptuous surrealistic sci-fi comics that draw form the same melting pot, but with a thoughtful philosophical bent that recalls Jodorowsky's films of the same period.

In his comics 'MOA-192B' and 'ALPHA', death and rebirth are played out in the most inhospitable of environments, where astronauts explore desolate worlds in search of something greater than themselves. His depiction of space exploration is steeped in wonder, but is tempered in brutal fashion by the crippling physical forces of space that are brought bear upon his characters.

Many meet with death but are always reborn in other forms, becoming part of the ecosystem that ensnared them or journeying onwards to higher planes. Behind the often unsettling psychedelic web of imagery, Tsemberlidis' focus seems to be on the endless cycle of life, death and rebirth. There’s a striving towards an unseen higher force that his character never quite reach, instead returning to the physical world to be begin over again.

I’ve always felt there was distinct lack of intelligent sci-fi in modern comics, especially for a medium where practically anything can be depicted, no matter how fantastic or alien. Whilst I’ll happily concede that there are a number of creators currently writing excellent independent sci-fi, it’s still worth acknowledging that this is but a very small piece of the bigger comics pie. With this in mind, it’s reassuring to see such strong talent emerging from the underground to champion the all too often denigrated science fiction genre.

Review by MD.

Quick Links:

Decadence Comics
P.S. Here's Lando's utterly killer animated music video:

Pride comes before a fall - Reich #8

2011-08-07T13:07:00.000-07:00

Elijah Brubaker’s superb comic exploration of Wilhelm Reich’s remarkable life and work comes to perhaps its most critical stage, when his scientific efforts came under the scrutiny of both the American press and its government in the late 1940s. The benign, almost complacent figure that Reich cuts on the sepia-toned cover gives no clue to the chaos that is about to engulf him; it acts as a final moment of safety before the world descends on him.

Brubaker chillingly conveys Reich’s wariness of the press and its invasiveness in an exchange with the journalist Mildred Brady:

Reich: “Much of my trouble in Europe was caused by the press and I have no urge to see my name in print outside my own publication”

Brady: “I assure you doctor, you have nothing to worry about.”

As Reich continues to outline his postwar experiments - into cancer research, his 'discovery' of 'bions' and later development of 'Orgone energy accumulators' - he is at pains to explain himself fully, and corrects Brady when her inevitable sensationalist instincts manifest themselves. As if his pride came before the fall, Reich cannot seem to recognize the danger he has placed himself in.

We as readers sense immediately that he is about to become the victim of a monumental hatchet job by Mildred Brady, via scathing articles in Harpers and The New Republic in 1947. As ever, pride comes before a fall. The panels devoted to how the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration first came to hear of Reich’s activities bring the restrictive measures of US postwar policy into very sharp focus, reducing Reich to nothing but a “quack” even before they deign to investigate him.

Brubaker’s marvelously evocative artwork manages to convey a dazzling array of scientific detail and biographical exposition with skill and economy, especially the page recalling his arrest and imprisonment under the auspices of the FBI during the Second World War. So much ground is covered, from the birth of his son Peter (later the author of “The Book of Dreams), his reconciliation with his daughter Eva, and his ill-fated association with Albert Einstein, whose conclusions regarding Reich’s breakthroughs with bions were less than encouraging, and deeply damaging to Reich.

The celebrated doctor’s intransigence with members of his own family, with the visit of Eva and their fractious conversation regarding his former wife and friends-turned-enemies brilliantly demonstrates just how isolated Reich is, and how unprepared he is for what will follow. The arrival of FDA agents at his front door in the issue’s final panel coldly prefigures the storm of controversy that will undoubtedly be the focus of issue nine.

That issue is awaited with baited breath and whitened knuckles.

Review by Kevin McCaighy.

Quick links:

Elijah J Brubaker
Sparkplug Comics

Cosmic Rays from Across the Universe

2011-08-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

And... we're back.

After a somewhat protracted absence, I'm slowly getting things back on track here at Exquisite Things. To get things rolling again, I’ve got a wonderful selection of comics courtesy of Emix Regulus and Frater Alarph of Microcosmic Comics. Frist up is, 'Deadtime Stories' which collects together a number of short comics and a prose piece by Frater Alarph. The opening comic, 'You Find Yourself Standing on a Lunar Beach' has a free flowing narrative quality; slipping from frame to frame in dream like fashion, etching out those liminal moments between sleep and wakefulness with a graceful fluidity. Nothing is boxed in, with panel boundaries existing only as a wash of brush strokes; suggesting scenes far removed from reality.

The protagonist finds herself on the moon overlooking a lunar sea populated by hundreds of doppelgangers, appearing as both younger and older incarnations of herself, her many faces pasted onto amorphous black bodies. Each has a unique voice of its own, a lifetime of memories forming a sea of opinions that threatens to swamp her. Only when these separate entities begin to merge back together, becoming one with the observer, does she finally find the peace that she seeks.

This phantasmagoric, mystical tone is something that emerges very strongly in all of Emix's comics. Her work ranges from quasi-serious deliberation of spiritual matters to outright silly flights of cosmic fancy. 'Oryza Sativa', for example, sees the author awaken as a grain of rice amongst a bag of 'starchy brethren'. As one grain amongst many, she struggles to assert her individuality but when this is finally achieved, she ends up being cooked into a bowl of rice pudding.

The tone is light and humorous but the end result is strikingly similar to that of the opening comic. Both conclude with the individual finding some sense of unity, even if it is in form of rice pudding! It's thoughtful, sometimes abstracted material, but that should hardly come as a surprise when ‘Deadtime Stories’ deals primarily with dreams and the afterlife.

Frater Alarph contributes a prose piece 'Psychic Club', which relates his experience of attending a psychic group whose aim is to make contact with the dead. Alarph, like Emix draws on similarly ethereal subject matter, but does a fine job of contrasting it with the cold realities of the material world. His bleak urban bus journey to the club, set alongside his ghostly experiences thereafter does much to highlight the strange intersection of inner life versus the outside world. The story is a heady mix of the observational and the haunted, told in a conversational and honest tone that reads like a personal journal. It ads weight and variation to an already accomplished collection of work.

Next up is 'Textrs', a beautifully presented little package of seven miniature illustrated cards. A collaborative effort by Emix and Frater, it’s intended as “a symptomatic and acausal machinery to remove ego-self from the constant flow of time”. Each separate card is a different pattern or texture to get lost in. Many of the cards bearing mandala like designs, inviting subconscious exploration and self induced trance states.

There are subtle nods to Austin Osman Spare’s system of sigilisation, but more than anything 'Textrs' is a visual invitation to clear your mind and do a little inward exploring. Like any artefact of this sort, it’s imbued with a certain power as a result of the artist’s intent. Whether or not you ascribe to this particular aesthetic will depend greatly on your own magickal leanings, but even if you don't connect with these aspects of 'Textrs', you still have six very pretty pieces of card to marvel at.

On the more humorous side of things, Emix's solo comic ‘Strassman Forever’ is just as beguiling as her other work. The presentation is beautiful, with an ornate wrap around cover concealing equally well rendered comics within. 'Strassman Forever' chronicles the adventures of an immortal fabric toy named ‘Strassman’ who transcends the physical form, explores the horrors of the internet and quests on an inter-dimensional Manta Ray to save the Spirulina Crystal.

Emix's art is loose and flowing yet highly detailed, with some truly exceptional forays into the realms of dense fractal forms and symmetrical patterns. In much the same way that her art veers from free flowing to taut symmetrical forms, so too does the content of 'Strassman'. Emix weaves in strands of her own life in the form of short autobiographical snippets. It's equally off kilter stuff, but gives the reader a valuable insight into the overactive imagination that spawned Strassman's adventures.

These mini comics are first class examples of small press publications with high production values, but what makes them really interesting is their preoccupation with the internal world. Behind the flights of fancy and off kilter humour, there's an engaging emotional core at the heart of everything. Whether it’s Strassman’s spiritually tinged high adventure or 'Textrs' sidelong glance at sigil magick and meditation, there’s an ongoing interest in finding spiritual peace in an increasingly chaotic world. Both Emix and Frater strike a good balance between fiction, autobiography and humour. Their comics are insightful and honest, delighting in the absurdity of life and reveling in the little mysteries that sit outside of conventional wisdom and rational thought.

These are deeply lovely early offerings and I sincerely hope there’s something more expansive waiting in the wings that will offer a more prolonged glimpse into their beguiling internal worlds.

Review by Matthew Dick

Related links:

Microcosmic Comics

Who's laughing now? - The Bound & Gagged interview

2011-02-13T05:21:00.000-08:00

'Bound & Gagged' is a self published comics anthology with a rare sense of purpose. Bucking the trend of merely collecting together a number of short pieces by comics' latest and greatest, editor Tom Neely has instead chosen to explore the artistic potential of that most classic of comics forms; the one page gag strip.

'Bound & Gagged' brings together artists who, despite their varying backgrounds and styles, seem to operate on a strikingly similar wavelength. With no unifying theme beyond that of the one page gag, it's surprising to observe that, from this simple exercise in form, there emerges an artistic kinship that verges on the telepathic. It is this surprising sense of continuity, both in tone and theme, that lends 'Bound & Gagged' a unique coherence that many bigger name anthologies have struggled to achieve.

The book has all the trappings of some long lost alt. comix gem found at the bottom of a long neglected bargain bin, stumbled upon only after many painful hours of rummaging through back issues of 'Marvel Apes' and 'Tarot'. Luckily for us, Bound & Gagged is very much in the here and now, and is a very welcome addition to the canon of contemporary comics anthologies.

Exquisite Things hooked up with editor and publisher Tom Neely and contributors Anders Nilsen, Chris Wright, Chris C Cilla, Dylan Williams and Michael Deforge to discuss Bound & Gagged and the wider world of comics anthologies.

Exquisite Things: Tom, before we dive into specifics about ‘Bound & Gagged’, I wanted to start by asking about the artists you approached to contribute to the anthology. There's lots of great folks from the Sparkplug Comics stable, right through to cartoonists like John Porcellino and Anders Nilsen. How did you go about assembling such a diverse range of creators?

Tom: This book stemmed from an art show that I was asked to curate for Secret Headquarters Comic Shop in Los Angeles. SHQ is one of my favorite comic shops in LA, but it’s normal clientele has little interest in underground and art comics. I took this as an opportunity to try to introduce some of my favorite contemporary artists to the people who normally shop there, and hopefully get the store interested in carrying some of their books. I don’t know if I achieved that goal with the art show, but I ended up with a book that I’m extremely proud of that will eventually reach a larger audience than an art show is capable of reaching.

As for who was included, I just started making a list of my favorite contemporary cartoonists. I didn’t really have an agenda of saying “These are the most important cartoonists” or anything like that. Actually, I kinda did the opposite and cut out some of the bigger names that SHQ wanted me to include in the show. I just went with the simple idea that these are all artists who I think are amazing and I think everyone else should appreciate them as much as I do. And those who I thought would do a good job with the single image format.

Exquisite Things: As much as I love anthologies, I sometimes come away feeling a little cheated, as a lot of content tends to be culled from larger pre-existing works. When part of a longer piece is removed from it's original context, I sometimes find it hard to get a real feel for a particular creator.

Your choice of format for ‘Bound & Gagged’ does much to avoid this pitfall, forcing a more concentrated, self contained approach to each page. What motivated you to opt for the gag strip format for this anthology?

Tom: It comes from my love of painting and fine art rather than from a love of one panel gag cartoons. I do love one panel comics, though. Especially artists like Charles Addams, Hank Ketchum, Gary Larsen… But I’ve always been interested in telling stories with a single image. So, I used the idea of the one panel gag to force the artists to think in just one image. Almost like asking them to do a painting. I could have asked them all to do paintings, but that’s a different thing than a one panel comic.

Exquisite Things: What first sparked your own personal love of gag strips, and what kind of lineage do you trace from the past to your own work? When I think of gag strips, my mind jumps to people like Herriman, Schulz and Watterson... How about you?

Dylan: I’m a descendant of all those comics, so yep, I like Herriman, Schulz and Watterson.

I’m a giant fan of Bud Blake, Hank Ketcham, David Low, Fougasse, Pont, Phil May, Charles Aadams and on and on. I don’t think I had any of that stuff in mind besides maybe Pont when I was making the stuff for B&G but he's a big influence on everything I do. I think the music brought those pictures out.

Chris C: As a kid I read the New Yorker gag collections at the library, and my dad’s B. Kliban books, those gave me an interest in the single panel gag form. I like some gag strips, like Nancy (Bushmiller) & Gordo in particular, of course Peanuts. Paul Kirchner’s 'The Bus' in Heavy Metal. I really enjoy William Steig, Abner Dean, Robert Osborn, Tomi Ungerer and others in that vein (I think Sam Henderson called them the 'Id Cartoonists').

National Lampoon was a formative influence also, Gahan Wilson, Randall Enos & M.K. Brown all did great gag stuff in there, and Mark Newgarden & Raymond Pettibon in Weirdo and the Raw Gagz section of Raw magazine (the big ones) were mind expanding as well (exploring the definitions & nuts & bolts of the single panel). There are so many great little tributaries of gag cartooning, many good cartoonists working the panels. Jonathan Winters’ book of single panel cartoons, George Booth’s cluttered scenes, Reg Manning’s cactus cartoons, I could go on & on (& have...)!

Chris W: In terms of single panel stuff, the old New Yorker guys were always the most interesting to me... Or at least the prettiest. I don’t draw anything like Peter Arno, but I always liked his juicy, confident line work. I still envy the fact that a guy like that could make a living off of a few quickly done cartoons. Aside from him, I can really only claim my support for most of the cartoonists that Dylan and Chris C mentioned. Herriman did a single panel strip for a while called 'Embarrassing Moments', which, in terms of its content, could have been thrown on the bonfire with so many other semi topical strips of the age, but oh the drawings. That may have been passed around actually, that strip. I seem to recall a few by DeBeck as well.

Oh! for God’s sake, also guys like A.B. Frost and T.S. Sullivant, and for that matter Charles Dana Gibson. Nobody draws like that anymore. And most of the humor is so out of time that it’s hard to comprehend, but again, what gorgeous drawings. Sullivant in particular makes me want to open a vein.

Michael: Growing up, Peanuts, Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes were the big ones for me, since those were the collections my parents would have around. I sort of learned to read with those books. Something like Bloom County would be weird because I wasn’t old enough to get some of the topical humor in the strips, but I’d still recognize that there was a joke there - like, I wouldn’t get some Kitty Dukakis punchline, but reading all those things would teach me the “rhythm” of those three-panel gags. Later on, I really dug George Booth and Gahan Wilson. Mark Newgarden’s work with the single panel comic was really huge for me too.

Exquisite Things: Tom, there's a wonderfully realised sense of association running through the anthology, to the point where what should be a collection of stand alone pieces, begins to form a larger, if slightly unconventional, extended narrative. I picked up on a lot of common themes, like the way J.T. Dockery and Michael Deforge's darkly comic accounts of sexual frustration segue so seamlessly into Dylan William's pitch black assessment of the opposite sex. This kind of melding of ideas crops up again and again as the anthology progresses.

How much time did you spend on sequencing the book, and did contributors have any prior knowledge of each other's pages?

Tom: It’s kinda like making a mix tape actually. You wanna have a flow throughout and have ups and downs and surprises throughout. I spent a couple of weeks figuring out the sequence of the book. Then I had to rethink it once I started talking to the printer and had to group the color and black & white sections to save money on printing. I think there was a bit more of a logic to the original sequence, but it still works the way it was rearranged for print. I didn’t really have any particular idea of a narrative through the book, but I like that you can read it that way.

Dylan W: I just want to say that I noticed that too and I really appreciate the way Tom did that. It is hard to layout an anthology so it works as a whole. Also my view of both genders is pitch black! "Humanity is the devil", to quote a band I shouldn’t like.

Exquisite Things: Tom, did you lay down any specific guidelines for the anthology beyond the 'one page gag' remit?It seems very coherent given the diversity of the people involved. Were you looking for work along any particular lines or did you just give everyone free reign to do what they wanted?

Tom: No there were no other guidelines. Just to use the idea of a one panel gag as a tabula rasa for whatever you wanted to express as an artist. I didn’t want to impose any other ideas on the artists. I selected artists who I think could do interesting work in that context, and left them to do whatever they wanted.

Talking about this reminds me of when I had to take a “creativity test” in high school to get placed in the advanced classes. The test was a page full of squares. The only guideline was you could do anything with these squares and they would judge your level of creativity based on what you drew in the boxes. Once I used them as panels to make a comic strip. Once I made a very surrealistic labyrinth with all kinds of monsters and details lurking about... But I failed the test all four times because I wasn’t being “creative” by their standards.

I think that moment in my life probably explains a lot about the way I chose to curate this.

Exquisite Things: Following on from that, were you surprised to see common themes emerging?

Tom: Yeah, it was interesting. I was surprised that there were more dark gags than funny gags, and even most of the funny ones are on the dark side of humor. I could be all lofty and talk about how it’s a reflection of the troubled times we live in, but I think it just says something about my own taste in darker art.

Exquisite Things: It's funny to note how Anders Nilsen’s little non-sequiturs seem to mirror the feel of the anthology itself, at once seemingly random yet interconnected. Happy coincidence?

Tom: Probably a coincidence, but his pieces were some of the first I received from the artists, and he sent 8 or 9 total, so it might have had some influence on the overall feel. We had a private blog set up so the contributors could see what everyone was submitting, so maybe seeing what everyone else is doing had some influence on some of the contributors.

Exquisite Things: Anders, that brings me nearly to your pages, which follow a recurring pattern/motif; using a silhouetted figure delivering monologues against varying backgrounds. The written elements seems to draw on techniques like automatic writing and free association.

How did you decide on the images and what’s the relationship between the visual and narrative elements?

Anders: I’m sort of generally on the look out for old books and magazines with imagery that I can use for this stuff. My favorite at the moment is books of semi-generic painting from the 1800s. I think there were some of those in the strips that ended up in Bound and Gagged. I look for... I don’t know, landscapes that aren’t too cluttered, so the figure and the content won’t be overwhelmed. Something that’s evocative in some way, and seems to lend an interesting ground for the content to work with (or against). The relationships aren’t thought out or planned, I just look to pair imagery with subject matter that will be jarring or evocative in some way.

Exquisite Things: Was it challenging having to produce single page gags as opposed to working with a more extended narrative?

Anders: Calling the stuff I contributed “gags” is probably a stretch, I guess. But they’re single panels. I work that way regularly. I think that, in a way, the single panel gag is the highest or the most pure form of the medium. When it works, when the text and the visuals are all cranking together it can be kind of sublime. But it’s really hard to do. Which is why I generally take the experimental way out.

Exquisite Things: And everyone else?

Dylan: It was pretty freakin’ easy! I felt really lucky that Tom asked me (I don’t get asked a lot) to do stuff for his anthology and he was super supportive so I think that positive vibe really made me want to do the best work I could for him.

Chris C: I have done my share of single panel gags, and I drew a weekly strip for a few years (Swonk, written by Greg Petix), so I am fairly comfortable drawing short scenarios/jokes. I keep a sketchbook of stuff & sometimes the drawings grow into longer comics, sometimes they are fine as a single image. I sent Tom a bunch of sketchbook scans, and he picked a few, some got redrawn & some were printed as is. Some didn’t make the cut for the book, but were included in the exhibit.

Chris W: I’ve been doing drawings that are unrelated to my comics for years, it’s how I blow off steam. Working on comics can be really frustrating, and crazy making so it was nice to have a reason to just make a bunch of pictures. With the exception of Woman Sized Pipe (which didn’t make it into the book or the show, probably because it made people feel bad) the images always came first and a usable caption would leap to mind as I worked.

Michael: It’s obviously much more labor intensive to draw an extended narrative, but I like that when I’m working on shorter strips or one-panel gags I have to be a much more concise cartoonist. It’s always challenging for me that way.

Exquisite Things: In terms of other anthologies out there, ‘Kramer's Ergot’ always stood out for me as a real ground breaking anthology, especially the way in which they experimented with format and form. I've also been very impressed with Raighne & Megan Hogan's 'Good Minnesotan' anthology. Do you guys have a favourite comics anthology?

Tom: It’s hard for me to name an anthology I love all the way through. I love the idea of anthologies more than I love any anthologies out there. I like getting a book because you like one artist but then you discover someone new that you'd never heard of. That’s part of what I hope will happen with B&G- someone will buy it because they’re a fan of Anders Nilsen or Kim Deitch, but then they fall in love with Levon Jihanian and Ryan Standfest.

Kramer’s is definitely a book I admire but it doesn’t entirely work for me either. I think the brilliance of Kramer's is how Sammy Harkham has changed the world of comics and elevating them to the level of “fine art” by exposing the world to cartoonists that most people would otherwise never see. But the failure of the giant KE7 is that it’s so expensive that the audience you reach is too limited. There are so many over-produced fancy books coming out in recent years that I purposely wanted Bound & Gagged to be a small, cheap and unpretentious collection of art comics. If i could have priced it as a $2 book I would have.

With Bound & Gagged I wanted an anthology that would introduce you to new art, but I also wanted it to feel like a fun and weird little book of comics- more like those old cheap paperback collections of Peanuts, or a beat up old funny animal comic from the ‘40s that you found at a garage sale. Now that I think of it, I love the idea of someone discovering Bound & Gagged for 50¢ at a garage sale in 20 years.

Dylan W: Oh man that is a good one. I love Raw, Hyena, Zero Zero, Class of Skookum’ High, Slow Death, Skull, Escape, Fox, Garo, Ax, Paper Rodeo, Nome, Tante Lenny, Weirdo, Zap and so on. I think Hotwire is one of my favorites going now. I basically love the old underground style anthology. I love Good Minnesotan too. I liked the fourth Kramer’s a lot.

I feel like when anthologies go too fancy, or too all over the place they loose focus and just become like channel surfing on a high end TV. Mome suffers from that (for me). I’d say that Skull may be the best anthology ever created. Slow Death being a close second. It is all about the caliber of people and the way they work together. Then theme and packaging.

Undergrounds had a feel that really worked with anthologies where as modern indy anthologies tend to be focused on name-recognition, middlemen and imaginary sales. None of which I care about as a reader. It all comes down to designing comics to be read in the bathroom and floor of you apartment vs. sitting on a coffee table or bookshelf. I want a comic that I want to read. Not one that feels like a product. Part of that is the intangible vitality that comes from good editorial direction and part of it is just luck.

Chris C: I like anthologies in theory, and wish there was an American Garo, a cheap fat monthly freaky anthology. Weirdo & Zap are very important to me, in my early understanding of comics possibilities. I also enjoyed Raw, Buzzard, Arcade, Dirty Stories, Drawn & Quarterly (magazine format), Zero Zero, lots of the underground comix anthologies (Bijou, Skull, Insect Fear, Snarf, etc). Kramers Ergot, Studygroup12, Class of Skookum High, Hotwire, & Stripburger are some of the best contemporary anthologies I’ve seen.

Tom: That’s interesting because I love all of the underground anthologies Dylan and Chris mention, but they didn’t even enter my mind because I see those anthologies as a completely different animal from something like Kramer’s Ergot or Mome. I think of Slow Death or Death Rattle or Zero Zero as really exciting comic books with different artists that you read over and over and, but I think of Kramers or Mome as something else entirely.

Chris W: I like anthologies that have texture. The work doesn’t have to stand on it’s own necessarily, it just has to fit into the particular crevice that has been vacuumed out for it. On the other hand I also like seeing great work that doesn’t fit into its allotted space. Great work is one thing, a great anthology is another.

Raw was obviously the big revolution, if anything else comes close it’s Kramer’s. I think Jordan Cranes 'NON' arguably paved the way for Kramer’s, especially that last volume. There is a lot of stuff in the Kramer’s books that doesn’t do that much for me personally on an aesthetic level, yet if any of it were taken out it, the book would somehow be diminished... if that makes sense. Maybe that’s the brilliance of those books.

Anders: Am I allowed to say I like Kramers if I’m in most of them? Raw is in a category of amazingness all by itself... I was super into World War III as a kid...The original Drawn and Quarterly had a lot of great stuff in it. Gotta give a shout out to Paper Rodeo too.

Michael: I don’t have much to add that hasn’t already been mentioned, but finding the Gary Panter edited “Go Naked” for two bucks at a used bookstore introduced me to a ton of different artists at a very formative age for me. Mark Beyer, Kaz, a bunch of others. Seeing Paper Rodeo a few years later was also very inspiring for me.

Exquisite Things: Moving on to some of the content in ‘Bound & Gagged’... Dylan, I wanted to ask about your contributions, as they really stood out for me, and I found myself drawn in by the stark nature of your humour.

There's a real sense of dread to your illustrations, which gives rise to a strong contrast between image and text. I noted that in each piece you've quoted lyrics from different pop bands/artists; Adam Ant, the Lightning Seeds and the Beach Boys. You turn saccharine pop into something altogether more unnerving.

What inspired this particular slant?

Dylan W: You can’t give away my sources like that, I want people to think I’m a total sappy genius! And there was a Kinghorse song in that series too... It wasn’t so much saccharine as songs with intense lyrics that I was working from.

I’m really into the idea of translating energy through art and thought; learning about manifesting that energy. I like the idea of text underneath a picture affecting the image and vice-versa. These themes are inevitably what I make work about. I’m an extremely morbid person so I enjoy creating work that has a “weird” (in the old sense of the word) aspect to it. I’m so glad you liked it, thank you. I felt like I dragged the book down by not being funny or super well done.

Exquisite Things: Michael, your 'Note for Note' one pagers also elicited a similar response to Dylan's work, and I get that same sense of immediacy and emotional rawness from it; they seem like very personal gut reactions to strong emotions. Where were you coming from when creating these pieces, and how do you see them as fitting into the wider gag strip tradition?

Michael: I like writing from that annoying, entitled, young adult voice. I feel like it comes up a lot in my humor. It’s mostly autobiographical - I mine a ton of material from those restless, bratty, angst-filled years, since they were completely ridiculous.

I’m not sure how these ones might fit in a wider tradition. I’ve done one panel pieces that are much “straighter” gags than the ones I did for Bound and Gagged, and maybe these ones wound up being a bit darker.

Exquisite Things: Chris (Wright), I’ve spoken to you before about your striking character designs, more of which are present in ‘Bound & Gagged’. You mentioned that many of them frequently start out life as a doodle whilst sketching out ideas. Your contributions struck me as very spur of the moment, like sudden flashes of creative energy. Much like Anders’ pages I felt they shared a common interest in automatic writing/drawing.

Would it be fair to make that connection?

Chris W: I drew most of them in a bar across from The Center For Cartoon Studies in Vermont, so they are pretty well lubricated. I don’t know whether there is a common link between Anders and myself specifically, because I don’t know him, but I certainly approached the cartoons in my typical kamikaze kind of style. I’ve been second guessing that approach more lately though... Third guessing it really.

Exquisite Things: I wondered if you might be familiar with the English artist Austin Osman Spare? I recently stumbled upon his work, which draws heavily on automatic drawing. All in all, many strange parallels seem to have emerged from this anthology!

Chris W: I'd not heard of him, but that's some great stuff. It’s sort of like if Dali got inside of Rackham’s pen box. Magnificent. Thanks for turning me on to him.

Exquisite Things: Chris C, you designed the cover for ‘Bound & Gagged’, which looks like the fall out from some sort of anthropomorphic drugs and drink binge. Did this seem like a fitting image to bookend the work of your fellow cartoonists, and did the cover go through various iterations before you came up with the finished product?

Chris C: I like the world that cartoon characters live in, and this scene is sort of like the scene on a gag comic cover, but shortly before or after the actual gag scenario happens. Cartoon folks are waiting, freaking out or ignoring whatever is happening. I wanted something that looked funny, and suggestive of plenty of future laughs.

I sent Tom a sketch of the front cover & he liked it & suggested I make it a wraparound. I drew it a couple of times before I was satisfied, and then Tom & I went back & forth on the coloring; I provided a color guide, which Tom chewed on & improved, & he did the actual computer coloring work. I enjoyed the collaborative effort with Tom, he has a good eye and is meticulous. He also assembled the title logo from my roughs.

Tom: Yeah, it was fun collaborating on the cover. I didn’t intend to at first, but Chris sent me all these ideas and I started working on the layout, I started having my own ideas about some of the coloring and design. I messed around with it and I felt kinda like I was violating Chris in a way, but he seemed okay with it and we worked back and forth and I think it all came together really nicely. It’s a crazy cover! I originally imagined something more like an old issue of a ‘40s Funny Animal comic or something, but filter that through Chris’ brain and you get something completely different and amazing.

Exquisite Things: Tom, I wanted to ask... you're little riff on ‘Asterios Polyp’; that one definitely elicited a few sniggers. Personally, I enjoyed Mazzucchelli's latest effort, but I can see why some people found it a bit too technically showy. Do you really dislike the book that much?

Tom: Wait... What? I don’t know which one you’re talking about. I didn’t do anything as a riff on Asterios Polyp, but I’m interested in how you may have interpreted something that way.

Exquisite Things: Your page that uses of the three “printer’s primaries”, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. I think I just instantly assumed it was a riff on the layouts used by Mazzucchelli.

Tom: Oh... yeah, I could see that... maybe... I’ve been playing around with using different colors to represent different ideas for a while, and that piece is part of a larger series I’m working on. I like to use different colors to represent different ideas, which I guess is similar to the way Mazucchelli uses color in Asterios Polyp, but the way he does it feels so sterile to me.

Unfortunately I guess anyone who uses multi colored characters is gonna be compared to Mazzuchelli after the critical success of Asterios Polyp. But for me I think it stems more from my interest in painting and the use of repeated imagery. I was thinking more about Rauschenberg than Mazzucchelli.

To be honest, I still haven’t finished Asterios Polyp. I love Mazzucchelli’s previous work, but this book just really irritated me with it’s overly clever use of comics gimics and I can’t find any motivation to finish it. It’s like listening to an Yngwie Malmsteen record; you can be impressed by all the technical ability and respect him as a guitarist, but the end result is empty and unlistenable.

Exquisite Things: Staying on that topic for a moment, not Yngwie obviously... what do you all feel good comics should be? What’s the most important quality to you in terms of truly good work?

Dylan W: Honesty, and not being boring. I think that the best art is based on variety and that comes from/creates honesty and not being boring. This is all, of course, highly subjective.

Chris C: I think it’s pretty much impossible to boil it down to a simple answer, the qualities that make one comic great would damage a different comic. It’s like comparing miso soup with menudo, or split pea; they are all great soups, and require the blending of different ingredients to varying effect.

This is why it’s often hard to separate out the element that makes a comic successful, or the opposite. My favorite comics create their own standards of quality, through the work itself, the decisions made during the work, and the artist’s blending of all elements to their own understanding of what this soup should taste like.

Anders: I think comics that are like Miso soup or Menudo are bad. Split pea is fine, but what I’m trying to make in my work is a really good Pozole.

I remember hearing the playwright Tony Kushner talking once about how a great play should be like a great lasagna. It should be completely stuffed with all kinds of different ingredients, to the point that it is almost going to collapse and fall apart under its own weight. But not quite. It should have just enough structure (that would be the pasta and the cheese) to hold it together.

Sometimes I think about it like that.

Exquisite Things: Coming back to you Tom, you've been self publishing your work since day one, starting with the rather sublime graphic novel 'The Blot', through to a number of mini comics and more recently this anthology. How have you found the experience of doing everything yourself, and what have the main challenges been along the way?

Tom: Actually it goes back further than 'The Blot'. I’ve been self-publishing my comics for a little over 10 years now. The Blot was just the first thing that got any acclaim (and thankfully because the first 7 years of comics are embarrassing now). When I started doing it ten years ago with some crappy xeroxed mini-comics, I always figured I’d eventually get a publisher and then I could leave self-publishing behind.

But by the time publishers started getting interested in me, I’d pretty much decided that I’d rather keep doing it myself. Now the whole process has become a part of my art. I’m getting close to the end of my next book now, and I’m already excited about the printing process and promotion and conventions and all that. The challenges are in getting the work out there. There are still so many roadblocks and stigmas attached to the idea of “self publishing”, and that impacts on everything from press to distribution. I’m always learning and trying to figure out a better way to do things. Dylan and I spend a lot of time talking about this stuff. I think we have very similar ideals, although his ambitions are a bit more humble than mine.

It can be frustrating to run both the business end and the artistic end of the same project. I’m my own PR guy, and I almost have to become a different person when promoting my work or going to conventions, because the artist me just wants to stay in a cave and draw all the time. I try to stay positive and always moving forward and maybe if I keep doing it long enough it’ll keep improving. I’m happy to say that every year has been an improvement and I am still dedicated to self-publishing my work for now. Bound & Gagged was my first real attempt at publishing other artists. I enjoyed it a lot and I’m very happy with the way it came out and I may do something like this again, but I think for the most part I much prefer to just deal with just one crazy artist (myself).

Exquisite Things: Dylan, have your experiences running Sparkplug Comics been similar?

Dylan: I think Tom and I have a ton in common. Both of us are big fans of other people’s art as well as doing our own work. We talk a lot about making comics and it helps me a lot. Even though I think about comics 24/7 I sometimes forget the importance of self-publishing. It's through Tom that I’ve really rediscovered my total support of self-publishing as the most effective way to make comics as art. That's why I decided to make Sparkplug the distro focus on self-publishers.

Of course, this is at odds with Sparkplug as publisher but I hope we’re being useful and publishing work that is important. The biggest hurdles I’ve encountered begin with my own laziness. I could be working on things 24 hours a day. But I guess you could say that about anything. I think, outside of that, the biggest problems are misconceptions. Sparkplug never set out to be a publisher in the way that Fantagraphics or Drawn & Quarterly were publishers. This has created a lot of logjams or roadblocks where it becomes hard to explain that our chief goals aren’t to turn a profit, make fancy books or lock artists into lifelong contracts.

Also, it's incredibly hard to convince people that honest self-expression is more important to me than being taken seriously as a real publisher. I know that a lot of people see legitimacy as the most default goal for anyone involved in comics. For me, it's mutual respect and support. It is almost impossible for me to explain that well enough to jump over the hurdles that have been created in comics (or maybe life).

We’ve been incredibly lucky and in spite of my crazy punk rock ethics we’ve managed to generate a lot of interest in a lot of good books. Dealing with stores has been a breeze for the most part. Art comic friendly stores have received the Sparkplug books well. Distros are also really good. We’ve had some books turned down by Diamond as part of their dumping of the pamphlet comic form but often those books have all been really well received outside of their catalog.

Again, a big hurdle is just that same thing about finding enough time to stay on top of things and maintain sanity. We aren’t intent on being a big comic company so I haven’t been going to every comic convention but we’ve still gone to a ton this past year. Maybe a little more focus on doing ones we like doing in places we like going to. People have responded really well to the work too, I mean I wish we could help make every artist we publish rich, but hopefully we can at least get their stuff to a wider audience and help them explore ideas they want to explore.

I do realize I sound as much like a hippie as a punk.

Exquisite Things: Well, that's all good... Thanks so much to you all for taking the time to talk to me. Any final comments? Grand declarations? Advice for the world weary?

Dylan W: Just a big thank you to you for doing this interview, to Tom for putting together the book and show and to the Secret Headquarters guys for hosting the show.

Chris C: Thanks for investigating this book, maybe we can get the ball rolling on more funky gag comic collections.

Anders: If anyone is ever in Chicago they should go to this place called Pozoleria San Juan at North and Pulaski. The best soup on earth.

Chris W: I wish I could play the guitar.

Michael: All the cartoonists in this interview are amazing. Also, thank you to Tom for putting the show and book together, it was an honor to contribute.

Tom: I feel very lucky to be able to call up a bunch of my favorite artists and get them all to contribute to a little book I wanted to put out there. I’m extremely grateful to all of them for being a part of this.

Interview by Matthew Dick.

Quick Links:

Tom Neely / I Will Destroy You
Anders Nilsen
Chris Wright
Chris C Cilla
Sparkplug Comics / Dylan Williams

Forever Changes - Chris C. Cilla's 'The Heavy Hand'

2011-01-15T05:45:00.000-08:00

It's difficult to begin to evaluate Chris C. Cilla's 'The Heavy Hand' in any traditional sense, primarily because Cilla's first full length comic doesn't engage in the kind of linear storytelling you might have come to expect from your comics. This isn't a straight journey from A to B, but rather a hallucinatory tour de force through Cilla's own creative interior, an experience which is as disconcerting as it is rewarding.

Even if I forewarned you of the presence of killer pseudopods and immaculately conceived goats, it still wouldn't prepare you for the sheer oddness of Cilla's surreal allegorical fantasy world. The book is brimming with creative energy, packed to bursting with its own internal system of symbols and myths. Unlike so many of its comics brethren, 'The Heavy Hand' embraces a skewed feverish dream logic, spewing forth puzzle pieces that point towards some unfathomable truth just beyond the reader's grasp.

It's with an almost jarring intensity that Cilla goes about stripping away the artifice of modern life, cleaving pieces of reality until he arrives at the selfish, brutish heart of city living. Alvin, Cilla's less that likeable protagonist, fumbles his way through life with nothing but tall tales and lies to his name. Everything that comes out of Alvin's mouth amounts to little more than an work of elaborate fiction, cooked up on the fly to impress others. As Alvin hitch hikes his way to his new job as a research assistant in the depths of Honeypot Caverns, it soon becomes clear that this 'fresh start' also has its origins in the realms of fantasy. With a narrator as unreliable as Alvin, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction, and so, the boundaries between the two dissolve rather quickly.

Strange flights of fancy are therefore a given, and the many illusory escapades are a big part of the book's charm. Much like the lone patchwork donkey that wanders through Cilla's pages; an observer to acts of moral corruption, violence and hatred, Alvin finds that he too must venture down some strange paths to reach his final destination.

There's a strong theme of metamorphosis running through the comic, with the aforementioned patchwork donkey rising from its lowly station as a passive observer, to become the unlikely steed of 'the agent of death', a masked Zoro-esque bringer of the apocalypse. The donkey thus becomes a force for destruction, change and cleansing. It's very much a case of out with the old, in with the new. In fact, there are any number of metaphorical 'reset buttons' scattered throughout the book; from Alvin's simple act of cutting all ties and leaving town, to the subsequent floods and lethal exploding chickens.

It's perhaps telling that mid way through the book, a living, breathing goat casually emerges from an ornamental globe. The sudden arrival of the goat, with its age old symbolic ties to the deity Pan, points us in the direction of a purer, simpler existence, one imbued with a deeper sense of reverence and respect for the natural world. Perhaps, as the blurb on the reverse of 'The Heavy Hand' suggests, the goat has finally outpaced man in the evolutionary marathon.

For me, Cilla's comic speaks of change on any number of levels, but what you take away from 'The Heavy Hand' will depend entirely on how you choose to decode Cilla's wonderfully rich artistic vision.

Related Links:

Chris C. Cilla's Blog
Sparkplug Comics

Review by Matthew Dick.

Go read: Holiday Season interviews by Tom Spurgeon!

2011-01-11T15:49:00.000-08:00

See the links below for a truly impressive series of interviews that appeared over at The Comics Reporter during the festive season. Needless to say, this is well written, deeply insightful stuff that deserves your attention. Wonderful selection of creators to boot. Show some love.

CR Holiday Interview #1 -- Joe Casey
CR Holiday Interview #2 -- Karl Stevens
CR Holiday Interview #3 -- Matt Seneca
CR Holiday Interview #4 -- Matt Bors (art below)
CR Holiday Interview #5 -- Dustin Harbin
CR Holiday Interview #6 -- Peggy Burns
CR Holiday Interview #7 -- Zunar
CR Holiday Interview #8 -- Kiel Phegley
CR Holiday Interview #9 -- Jason T. Miles
CR Holiday Interview #10 -- Dylan Horrocks
CR Holiday Interview #11 -- Daren White
CR Holiday Interview #12 -- David Brothers
CR Holiday Interview #13 -- Andrew Farago
CR Holiday Interview #14 -- Kelly Sue DeConnick
CR Holiday Interview #15 -- Matt Gagnon
CR Holiday Interview #16 -- Dirk Deppey
CR Holiday Interview #17 -- James Sturm
CR Holiday Interview #18 -- Brigid Alverson
CR Holiday Interview #19 -- Daniel Clowes
CR Holiday Interview #20 -- Jaime Hernandez (art above)

Best Comics of 2010

2011-01-04T13:46:00.000-08:00

So, the inevitable end of year lists for 2010 are upon us.

It feels like it's been a lighter year for me comics wise, and it seems that increasingly, I'm more and more picky about what I like and what makes it to review here on Exquisite Things. Not everything I receive gets reviewed, and that's mainly because I need to feel a genuine connection with a book before I put pen to paper. Things don't always click for me, but when they do, I'll always do my best to give them the attention they deserve.

When I read a truly exceptional comic or book, or encounter something that moves me deeply, I believe these things become internalised. As readers, and as lovers of art, I feel we project much of our own lives and experiences onto what we read. They're as much a reflection of where we're at as people, as they are of the artists who create them.

I recently asked a cartoonist what he thought good comics should be, and to be perfectly frank I don't think there is a 'right' answer. It's a difficult questions to be sure, but remains a question I think we should all be asking. Personally, I feel that if we try to give as much of ourselves over to art, as artists gives of themselves in their work, then we're already much closer to appreciating what makes for truly good comics.

Here's what really got my blood pumping in 2010...

Matt D.

1. Big Questions #15 by Anders Nilsen (D&Q)
2. King City #1-12 by Brandon Graham (Image)
3. Alpha / MOA 192B by Stathis Tsemberlidis (Decadence Comics)
4. Untranslated #1-3 by Lando (Decadence Comics)
5. Bound & Gagged, by various ed. Tom Neely (I Will Destroy You)
6. Echew #2 by Robert Sergel (Sparkplug Comics)
7. The Heavy Hand by Chris C Cilla (Sparkplug Comics)
8. Good Minnesotan 4 by various, edited by Raighe Hogan (2D Cloud).
9. Acme Novelty Library 20 by Chris Ware (D&Q)
10. Planetary Vol 4. Spacetime Archeology by Warren Ellis & John Cassady (Wildstorm)

Kevin McCaighy

Not too many new things here, but its an accurate list of what's made me happiest in comics this year.

1. Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution by Patrick Rosenkranz (Fantagraphics)
2. Reich #6 and 7 by Elijah Brubaker (Sparkplug)
3. I Need Love by Aline Kominsky Crumb (MQP)
4. Schizophrenia by Vaughn Bode (Fantgraphics)
5. Pocket Full of Rain by Jason (Drawn & Quarterly)
6. One Model Nation by C. Allbritton Taylor & Jim Rugg (Image)
7. The Complete Crumb Comics Volume 3 by Robert Crumb (Fantagraphics)
8. H Day by Renee French (Picturebox)
9. Soba by Joe Sacco (Drawn & Quarterly)
10. The Land of Nod Treasury by Jay Stephens (Oni Press)

Deep undergound - The Patrick Rosenkranz Interview

2010-11-24T12:37:00.000-08:00

Following Kevin's recent review of Patrick Rosenkranz’s “Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution”, Patrick got in touch with Exquisite Things to talk about his personal choices in writing the book, and to expand on why he opted to focus on certain key creators within the underground comix scene.

A few emails later, and after a little healthy debate around Vaughn Bode's legacy, it quickly became apparent that Kevin and Patrick shared the same unfettered passion for US underground Comix; so it seemed only natural when Kevin suggested a full interview with Patrick to gain a deeper insight into his research and writings on underground comix.

Kevin seized the opportunity to talk to one of the leading authorities currently working in the field of undergound comix; expounding on its brightest stars and their enduring legacies.

Exquisite Things: What first prompted you to write about the history of the US comix underground?

Patrick Rosenkranz: In 1971 I was a young writer looking for a worthy topic for my first book. The underground comix, with their revolutionary approach to my favorite medium called out to me. I read them, enjoyed them, and even sold them out of my head shop in Portland, Oregon.

I admired what these cartoonists were doing and wanted to know more about them. In 1969 I wrote two articles on Kim Deitch and Skip Williamson for the local underground paper 'The Fountain'. The next year I wrote a longer survey of the comix scene for Bullfrog Information Service. Jay Lynch contacted me and put me in touch with other cartoonists and eventually I met and interviewed most of the major figures in the movement.

Exquisite Things: What was your initial brief for the book, and how did long did it take to complete?

In late 1972 I signed a contract with Crown Publishers to write a book about underground comix and I delivered the manuscript a few months later, as well as a beautiful cover drawn by Dutchman Evert Geradts. Unfortunately, that was the same year that the Supreme Court decided on using community standards to determine pornography, and my publisher got nervous and axed the project.

They had just published The Joy of Sex, so I don’t know what the problem was. I was discouraged, but I was determined to get my work into print. I got a call from a Dutch publisher, Paranoia, Inc. who asked if they could produce the book in English in The Netherlands. It came out in 1974 as Artsy Fartsy Funnies. It wasn’t what I hoped it would be, but it was something.

Then, in 1998 I got a call from Robert Boyd at Kitchen Sink Press, who said “I have a copy of Artsy Fartsy Funnies in my hand and we want you to write something bigger and better.” I agreed to do it and began revisiting all my research materials and contacting the underground cartoonists who were still alive. I spent about three years doing interviews, writing the manuscript, and selecting illustrations. Meanwhile Kitchen Sink went out of business in 1999 and I signed a new contract with Fantagraphics, and it came out in hardcover just before Christmas in 2002. A revised paperback edition was issued in 2008.

Exquisite Things: How did your opinion alter or change regarding the leading figures in underground comix while working on the book?

Patrick Rosenkranz: It was often intimidating for me to approach these well-known artists whose work I admired, but for the most part, I found them to be very enthusiastic about having their lives and work chronicled. I liked the art they were creating and there was a lot of excitement around them. I occasionally met hostility, but remained patient and persistent and things usually worked out well.

It was the lives of the people who made the comix that held the most interest to me. Meeting them added a personality to their creations and allowed me to understand their work better. I also studied the nuts and bolts of their operations. There were some flakes and phonies riding the coattails of the movement, but I concentrated on the best artists and publishers. Rebel Visions includes the names of 175 cartoonists but concentrates on 50 of the most influential.

I still count a number of them among my cultural heroes.

Exquisite Things: In my review I assert that your book emphasizes the role of Rick Griffin as a catalytic force in the comix underground. Would you agree with that particular statement?

Patrick Rosenkranz: Yes, definitely. While he was still a teenager his Murphy cartoons in Surfer Magazine were a popular focal point in the surf subculture of southern California. After high school he went to an art school in LA that promoted abstract painting and criticized his “figurative art” so he left and joined the emerging psychedelic poster phenomenon in San Francisco, where he became a tour de force.

His bold, colorful, organic designs for the Fillmore and Avalon Ballrooms are now among the most collected posters around the world. They also served as recruiting posters for the hordes of hippies who descended on San Francisco in 1967 and 1968.

Robert Crumb saw Griffin’s 'Sunday Funnies' poster in a store window in 1968 and looked him up to invite him to join the Zap Comix lineup. Griffin and Victor Moscoso, another prominent poster artist were preparing to make their own comic book when Zap appeared out of the blue and they jumped on board.

Rick Griffin’s art continues to influence young people today. His solo book, 'Man From Utopia' was one of the most beautiful comics produced in those days. He only got better with age, until he was killed in a collision between his motorcycle and a van in 1991

Exquisite Things: In re-reading many of the classic underground titles, which stood out to you as the very best – and very worst – examples of underground comix?

Patrick Rosenkranz: 'Zap Comix' definitely set the bar from the beginning. Experimentation, innovation, iconoclasm, and draftsmanship were the criteria by which all the other titles were judged. some of my personal favorites were 'The Furry Freak Brothers', 'Big Ass Comics', 'Bijou Funnies', 'Young Lust', 'Binky Brown', 'Slow Death Funnies', 'Harold Hedd', 'Insect Fear'… the list goes on and on.

There were also some real dogs, including 'Suds', 'Demented Pervert', 'Googiewaumer', 'Baloney Moccasins' and lots more. By 1973 there were more than 200 underground comic titles from San Francisco, New York and Wisconsin, as well as dozens of obscure self-published work from the hinterlands. Eventually a glut of inferior comic books poured into the market and readers rejected them. Of course, due to the fact that they didn’t sell well at the time, they have subsequently become more rare and valuable to comic collectors today.

Exquisite Things: For many years, the only book on underground comix available to UK readers was Dez Skinn’s 'Comix: The Underground Revolution', a book that proved to be highly contentious to say the least. Can you tell me more about your own personal objections to it?

Patrick Rosenkranz: My book, Rebel Visions was subtitled The Underground Comix Revolution 1963-1975 and came out in 2002. Dez Skinn’s book was published in 2004 with the title Comix: The Underground Revolution. A coincidence? I think not. It started there. He also swiped quotes and photos and illustrations from my book. I called him on it and made him pay. The details are probably already known to your readers. I don’t know how well his book sold in the UK.

Exquisite Things: You’ve also penned biographies of notable underground creators Rand Holmes and Greg Irons. What was it that interested you about their lives, and what drove you to write about them?

Patrick Rosenkranz: Greg Irons died way too early, at age 37, struck by a bus in Bangkok. I worked with his younger brother Mark to compile his life’s work and write his biography 'You Call This Art?! A Greg Irons Retrospective'.

He was one of the most revolutionary cartoonists in the underground and I didn’t want him to be forgotten. His work is just as potent and meaningful today as it was forty years ago. His anti-war, anti-corporate, pro-environmental stories still ring true and point out that not much has improved since he drew them. He was emerging as an innovative tattoo virtuoso in the early 1980s when his new career was cut short by fate.

Rand Holmes was equally revolutionary in his attitude toward art and society, but he was also an introvert who guarded his privacy. Discovering the details of his life was a great challenge and it took me a long time to chase down his ex-wife, old buddies, school chums, and colleagues to ask them a lot of nosy questions.

For the most part they were eager to tell his story, because they recognized him as a great artist and wanted the rest of the world to know it as well. His widow Martha gave me access to his art collection, diaries and sketchbooks and I was able to gradually paint a sprawling portrait of the man and his life, titled 'The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective'. There are some cartoonists who do great work but aren’t very interesting people. Rand Holmes was both – a fascinating individual who taught himself to draw, tame birds, play the banjo, and build his own log home.

He was also a serious and talented artist.

Exquisite Things: I understand that you also teach a course in comics history, could you tell me more about what the course entails?

Patrick Rosenkranz: I’ve been an educator on and off my whole life, teaching for public and private schools and arts organizations in a variety of settings. I recently received a request from the Pacific Northwest College of Art to teach a history of comics and I gladly accepted.

I’m taking a thematic rather than historic approach to the subject, and my lectures include sex in comics, Superheroes from Popeye to Hellboy, American family life, American and Dutch underground comix, bubble gum cards, and proto-comics from cave paintings to European caricaturists. My intent is for my students to better understand and appreciate this visual, verbal, spatial, pictographic language that is the comic medium.

Exquisite Things: To wrap up, what would you cite as the lasting legacies of the US underground comix scene?

Patrick Rosenkranz: To copy David Letterman, the Top Ten Legacies of Underground Comix are... Drum roll please!

1. Creators own the copyrights to their work
2. Artists retain ownership of their original art
3. Cartoonists are paid royalties based on sales
4. The freedom to make unconventional story and character choices
5. Artistic control of the work from beginning to end
6. Autobiographical comics
7. The rise of small press publishers
8. The creation of alternative distribution systems and specialty comic shops
9 Freedom from censorship and editorial interference
10 A broadened horizon for the comics medium

Interview by Kevin McCaighy.

Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution 1963-1975 by Patrick Rosenkranz

2010-10-18T11:29:00.000-07:00

In 2008 I was privileged to meet the legendary underground comic artist/writer Gilbert Shelton at a signing session in Leeds, just one stop on a UK tour promoting the publication of the complete “ Furry Freak Brothers” anthology. I was thrilled to finally meet the man who had created such iconic characters and has been a mainstay of the comix underground practically since its inception. Yet that excitement was tempered by the fact that I was easily the youngest of the queue patiently waiting their turn to meet Shelton, indicating a very real lack of knowledge of underground comix among contemporary comic devotees.

What could lie at the root of such ignorance? These isles have a proud and glorious underground comix history, one that drew greatly upon its American counterpart and imported its greatest titles in significant numbers. That knowledge and passion seems to have ebbed away, leaving only the hardcore patrons like Knockabout Comics to pursue their noble causes without receiving their due.

The publication of “ Rebel Visions” was a vital riposte to that tide of apathy, a vast and authoritative work built for the clear purpose of documenting the entire history of the US underground revolution in a definitive fashion: a not inconsiderable task given the various tributaries that have spewed forth since the early 1960s. Some have brought a great many of the original creators’ fame, fortune and stature like the irrepressible figures of Robert Crumb, Rick Griffin and Shelton himself. Others like Spain and Greg Irons remain shrouded in a near-mythic obscurity, their work long out of print.

Rosenkranz diligently weaves a number of divergent themes using the oral histories of most of the major participants. He delves into the backgrounds of key figures like Kim Deitch, Art Spiegelman and S. Clay Wilson, whilst also signifying the original DIY works that were the first fruits of the nascent comix underground, notably Robert Crumb’ s 'The Yum Yum Book' and Jack Jackson’ s 'God Nose'. The surfer turned poster artist Rick Griffin is clearly positioned as the defining catalytic force for the entire West Coast underground movement. Even above the work of contemporaries like Stanley Mouse and Victor Moscoso, his formidable, freewheeling talent effortlessly conjured up images that were to become icons of the psychedelic era, in particular his poster series for hip promoter team The Family Dog.

The births of collective endeavours such as 'Gothic Blimp Works', ' Yarrowstalks' and 'Zap!' are covered in meticulous detail, brought to life in the spirit of creative solidarity by the biggest names in comix. 'The Big Four' of Crumb, Griffin, Moscoso and Wilson dominate these pages, but other names receive critical attention, like Spain Rodriguez with his violent anarchist strip 'Trashman'. These early collections truly broke the boundaries of what comics were expected to accomplish, spilling across the consciousness of countless readers worldwide in a free associative riot of groundbreaking art and transgressive ideas. The book gives over ample space to reproductions of classic strips, often in full blazing colour. Griffin’ s work still gleams with possibility and invention, and Wilson’s grotesque comic strips retain their queasy, black-hearted power.

The underground movement exploded in so many different directions, from the horror-themed strains of Greg Iron's 'Slow Death', to the emerging cadre of feminist creators like Shary Flenniken and Trina Robbins, that Rosenkranz had his hands full outlining the various personal and political shifts that guided each new territory. His skill lies in the interweaving of each of these movements at the right interval of the narrative; everything from the printing travails at Rip Off Press to the copyright battles emanating from the infamous Disney-baiting 'Air Pirates' comic receives a considered and concise airing. Unionization, allegations of chauvinism, self-referentiality; every pertinent issue is afforded its moment as the great tale unfolds, building towards the decline and near-collapse of the entire underground commix scene. Various reason are cited, among them censorship, premature death and creative inertia, but it seems that over-saturation and falling standards had as much to do with it as anything else.

If there is one failing with the book, it is this: my personal underground comic hero Vaughn Bode is at once present and not present as historical record proceeds. Rosenkranz has to necessarily emphasize the West Coast comix explosion, but that inherent bias places the New York-based Bode on the fringes of the main action, often quite literally. Entries concerning Bode figure on the margins of pages whilst Crumb, Griffin, Shelton etc have the full spreads to themselves. Crucially his work is cited in the book, 'Das Kampf' is credited as one of the first DIY comix, and his titling and editorship of 'Gothic Blimp Works' are acknowledged – but a truer sense of the bravery and innovation of his comix and art is not evident in Rosenkranz’ s prose. Rather, he is presented as an early casualty of the counter-culture, a victim of his own proclivities instead of the creative giant that I truly believe him to be.

That being said, “ Rebel Visions” is an essential guide to the comix underground, containing valuable information and insight that affords the contemporary comics reader a comprehensive view onto the first real wave of comic insurgency.

- Kevin McCaighy.

Related links:

Fantagraphics Books

Comix, Catmasters and Conurbations - The Brandon Graham Interview

2010-09-27T03:59:00.000-07:00

Poised somewhere between underground cult status and mainstream success, Brandon Graham is one of those rare cartoonists; producing deeply individual creator owned material in an environment that all too often turns its nose up at anything that doesn't fit into a spandex bodysuit.

He's survived corporate reshuffles, the cancellation of his series 'King City' and even a bout of cancer. In the face of overwhelming odds, he's continued to forge his own path, making unique comics on his own terms.

Graham bridges the gap between underground comix, manga and street art to produce dizzyingly detailed and refreshingly fun comics. His pages bristle with an explosive energy that threatens to run off in a million different directions all at once, yet his stories hang together with zen like cohesion. His comics reflect the ordered chaos of modern life, both serious and funny, ugly and beautiful.

With his successfully resurrected series 'King City' now fast approaching its conclusion, I went in search of Seattle's very own catmaster, seeking ancient comix wisdom.

Exquisite Things: You often describe King City as a spy comic about friendship and getting over heartbreak. Twelve issues in, do you still see the comic in the same way, or has the scope of the book evolved as you’ve gone along?

Brandon Graham: It's still about friendship and dealing with life, but over the course of the series I also got really into it being a reaction to living in cities. Originally I wanted to call the comic ‘Catmaster’ but Tokyopop asked me to change the title. I think that it being named after the place really affected how I went about it. I remember my first reaction to the name change being “shit, now they can't leave the city”.

Exquisite Things: I think the city itself is half the charm of the comic. Do you find you draw on your own surroundings and experiences when creating the urban sprawl of King City?

Brandon Graham: Yeah, a lot of King City is a reflection of how I feel about Seattle and New York.

I remember one time after being gone from Seattle for months, taking the bus from the airport and getting off in my old West Seattle neighbourhood. The first guy I walked past asked me for a smoke, when I said I didn't smoke he yells "yeah you better keep walking!"

The nonsensical abuse of a city.

I've lived in big cities my whole life and they still amaze me, just how much is going on all at once and the history of what’s gone on in any one place. I remember walking through Seattle's china town with a friend of mine explaining how all these plain looking buildings we were passing had great histories; how one had a secret gambling den in the basement years ago, or how Bruce lee had worked as a waiter in another. I want to try to capture some of that feeling of mystery in my stuff.

Exquisite Things: Tokyopop went through a fairly dramatic restructure in 2008, which saw the cancellation of many titles including King City. You’re now working in partnership with Image comics to release it as single issues. Was it always your intention to present King City in this format and how instrumental were Image in getting the comic back on track?

Brandon Graham: The whole thing would have been impossible without Image, those guys really put in the work to talk Tokyopop into a co publishing deal. I can't say enough nice things about the guys at Image. Eric Stephenson and Joe Keatinge especially, It was 8 months of meetings for a book that I don't think they expected to make much, if any money at all.

Getting it put out as single issues was ideal. It's how I like to read comics.

Exquisite Things: Was it difficult coming back to King City after such an extended hiatus? I know you had a lot to deal with in the interim period, including a bout of cancer, which isn't exactly something you recover from fast. That, and all the red tape around getting the series up and running again must have been a lot to have to contend with.

Brandon Graham: Yeah, it was a lot to wade through in the course of getting the series done.

I feel like whatever comic I'm doing, life is always going to get in the way. I've gotten pretty used to switching gears, it's kind of the nature of the beast. I try to focus on whatever page or scene I'm on. Coming back to the characters was easy, it was more reminding myself what the plans for the plot were, which I just ended up rewriting anyway.

I have this idea that there's a time limit on ideas, so if I let them sit for too long I need to come up with new ones so they're fresh enough to execute how I'd planned. If anything the cancer and legal shit were grist for the mill. I'd probably be worse off if nothing exciting ever got in the way of making comics, I'd have less to write about.

Exquisite Things: King City has an incredibly distinct visual identity, one which draws on everything from classic European sci-fi comics to street art. There’s an economy of line to your work that’s reminiscent of Tezuka, but with a penchant for sprawling, highly detailed backdrops in the vein of European artists like Moebius. Whilst it's clear that you've drawn inspiration from a diverse range of sources, you’ve definitely got your own unique artistic style. Could you tell us a little about your influences and how you developed your present style?

Brandon Graham: I was exposed to a ton of great comics really early on. My older brother Keith brought home a lot of European, Japanese and underground comics when we were growing up. I don't think I'll ever get over what he had on his book shelves. My brother being into all kinds of underground culture just gave me this idea that you have to dig for the best stuff.

I was mostly influenced by manga as a teenager, and I remember my brother giving me grief about my drawings being too based around big eyes. He had me draw a page of facial expressions showing emotions in non cliché ways. And later, when I was 19 I did a series called October Yen with Antarctic press about a robot without a face to force myself into showing emotions without the crutch of a face.

In my late teens I was really into the Seattle graffiti scene. That was a huge influence on my outlook on art and style.

Exquisite Things: How did you first get involved in street art, and how did those experiences make it back into your comics?

Brandon Graham: As much as I always liked comics and always identified myself as a comic artist there wasn't any kind of comic scene that I was involved with in Seattle. Plus there was so much exciting stuff going on in Graffiti in the 90's, it was hard to ignore. When I started getting seriously into it, my pal Ludroe was adamant that if I was was going to do it, I would have to understand it. So he gave me all these books on the history of hip hop and really pushed the idea that it's a culture that you have to earn to be part of.

Also, just the snarky fun of running around drawing on things that you aren't supposed to. I remember one day, back when Magic cards were a big deal there was a Wizards of the Coast building in Seattle's U district, with a sandwich board in front of it that had a clear plastic cover, with and ad for whatever they were promoting at the time. Ludroe pulled the paper out of it, flipped it over and put it back with a giant hand with its middle finger up drawn on it. And then we just sat on the corner and cracked up seeing this big fuck you sign on the street.

Plus it seems like graffiti is really a cousin of comics. Aside from it being so influenced by comics, they're both about combining words and drawings.

Exquisite Things: Vaughn Bode is one of the few cartoonists whose work seems to have become synonymous with graffiti art. Was his work an inspiration to you in any way?

Brandon Graham: Bode was a huge influence on graffiti, he didn't really live to see how much he affected an entire art form. But yeah, he's a big influence on my stuff, his use of color and letters and that great sense of humor in his work. There's this one strip where a lizard is staring at a phallic looking robot and says "you look like a god damn tin penis" I can't even think about that without cracking up.

I think doing one page comics as well as he did is really amazing. I think about that density a lot; how Bode and George Herriman, who did Krazy Kat, are able to convey such complete stories in just one page. With work like that out there you've got no excuse for not making a 20 page comic dense and fun.

Exquisite Things: King City reminds me a little of Carla Speed McNeil’s series ‘Finder’, specifically in the way that you treat the city as a character unto itself. There’s a level of detail to your environments that makes the city just as interesting as its inhabitants. How important is world building to King City?

Brandon Graham: I really like what McNeil does, she's amazing. Playing around with the environments your characters live in is so much fun. It's hard to leave that kind of thing alone once you realize that you can tell a story about anything you want to. You can’t help wanting to delve into what's behind all the doors and windows that you've drawn.

Exquisite Things: You seem just as interested in the incidental and the random as you are with the overarching plot of King City. The comic is both dense AND decompressed without being at odds with itself. How on earth do you go about achieving that balance?

Brandon Graham: It's really important to me to go with my interest rather than just follow a plot. I try to have as much fun as I can, but I also try to make issues that hold up by themselves. There's a Raymond Chandler introduction that I always think about where he talks about wanting his books to be good even if you read a copy that’s missing the beginning and the end.

That’s one of the reasons I have chapters in King City. I want the chapters to hold up by themselves, even if they’re just two pages long. Plus I was so used to writing short stories, so it was less daunting to treat it as a bunch of shorter chapters, rather than some 12 issue monster.

Exquisite Things: Taking a moment to focus on the cast of King City, I wanted to ask about Joe and his multi-talented cat Earthling J. Catingsworth III. Earthling’s quite the sidekick, enough to make anyone want a super intelligent weaponised feline companion. How did you first come up with the whole ‘Catmaster’ concept? Mastering a cat can’t be easy…

Brandon Graham: The original idea was to create a James Bond type character in a suit. He’d have a suitcase with a serious weapon in it… and when he pulls it out… it's just a cat!

Exquisite Things: Now I’m stuck with the mental image of Sean Connery wielding a cat. So… how did you get from that, to a main character like Joe?

Brandon Graham: In that early version, the owls were the main focus and the catmaster was just a side character. I abandoned it about ten pages in but I liked the idea of a catmaster, so I tried to come up a character I could relate to.

Joe was based on a photo of a surfer I saw, that and old 70's Savage Sword Conan.

Exquisite Things: Your wife Marian Churchland and Ludroe both designed their own cat masters for the comic, both of which showed up in issue eleven. How did those designs come about?

Brandon Graham: I wanted the other catmasters to feel like they were main characters in their own stories. Also I thought it would be cool to let my friends who I'd based so much of the story on to have a stab at it. I wish I'd had more pages to add in side stories and extras by other friends.

When I was working on initial characters for the book I based Pete’s character on Ludroe's personality. Physically there’s no resemblance, Ludroe's a thinner guy than Pete, and it’s hard to tell in the comic but Pete is meant to be Thai. His full name is Pete Thaifighter. So when Ludroe gave me his catmaster character design it was interesting that he also made him a chubby dude. So I ended up having two characters based on the same person, just different aspects of that person.

The other catmaster that shows up is based on Marian's best friend Claire that lives down the street from us. She's the Vancouver BC catmaster. I had big plans to show even more cat masters from all over.

Exquisite Things: Speaking of ladies, King City has its fair share of gorgeous women, and certainly doesn’t shy away from sex. What surprised me about the book’s erotic content was the way you approached it, in so much that it actually adds depth to the characters and their relationships. I get the impression you’re not overly interested in ‘cheesecake’ for the sake of it? At least not in a comic like King City...

Brandon Graham: Sure, I really like drawing and looking at that stuff but I don't want to be just some pin up dude just drawing empty women.

Exquisite Things: I can understand you wouldn’t want to be type cast in that way. I know you’ve also worked on adult comics like 'Perverts of the Unknown' and 'Pillow Fight' but there’s still a level of depth to those that makes them very entertaining comics in their own right. You seem to take immense pleasure in simply having fun with the medium, adult orientated or not.

Brandon Graham: Thanks, those were fun to do. I wanted to make dirty joke books instead of something just to masturbate to. I do feel like I never quite got everything I wanted into my porn comics. They seems to require a very different kind of comic science, with closer shots and more facial expressions.

I wish I'd made the characters more diverse in Pillow Fight, but they all kind of seem to look like the same girl. At the time they were the only paying work in comics I could get, but in retrospect I'm glad I was doing that and not some low end superhero comics. It did give me the freedom to have as much fun as I could... as long as there was sex.

Exquisite Things: Do you foresee a time when there's a more widespread acceptance of sexually explicit content in mainstream comics? What do you make of recent attempts, such as Alan Moore’s Lost Girls to present porn as something with genuine artistic and emotional value?

Brandon Graham: I do think sex is something worthy of real and expressive art. It's defiantly a big part of being human. I'm hoping to do some work in the future that has more sex, but where it isn't the main focus of the book. As far as widespread acceptance, I imagine not... these Romans are crazy.

Exquisite Things: Do you believe that porn and serious storytelling can co-exist side by side? Given your background with adult comics is this something that interests you?

Brandon Graham: I definitely think the two can co-exist, and there are plenty of books where it’s been done really well. I'm trying a minor version of that in my next book ‘Multiple Warheads’.

The focus is on the relationship between a couple, but I'll also be including sex scenes as and when they happen. I do worry that a few pages of sex might be enough to overpower the content of the rest of the book, but I think it's something worth doing.

Recently I've been reading ‘Omaha the Cat Dancer’ where the mix of the two is done very well. There also this web comic called ‘Effort Comics’, which gets it right too.

Exquisite Things: It's good to hear that Multiple Warhead will be returning to the racks, that's exciting stuff. Can you tell us a little more about where you're going with it?

Brandon Graham: I'm about 70 pages into it right now and I'm having a great time with it.

It's set in a fictional future fantasy Russia and it's about an organ smuggler named Sexica and her boyfriend Nikoli, who has a werewolf penis sewn onto him. When he sleeps he dreams of the wolf’s old life. They also have a car in it named Lenin (because it's not Stalin) and as the story goes on the car’s parts get replaced with different animal parts, so it slowly turns into a living thing.

It's a lot more complex than anythijng I've done before, and where King city had a limited amount of issues I could see myself making 'Multiple Warheads' books for another 10 to 15 years.

Exquisite Things: Coming back to King City for a moment, now that the series is approaching its 12th, and possibly final issue, how do you feel about the series as a whole? I sincerely hope we'll be seeing more King City in the future?

Brandon Graham: It's really forced me to mature into a real adult comic artist as opposed to the porn comics "adult" artist I've been in the past.

In the last issue I have a scene that happens in front of the same row of vending machines that I drew in the first issue, and just drawing the same place was so completely different because of how I draw now.

I hope I'll be able to do more of it too. The rights are just screwy with Tokyopop but I've got some plans for short comics with Joe and the cat, even if they just show up on my Livejournal.

Exquisite Things: Is there likely to be a new TPB collection which encompasses the entire run? I heard rumours of a lavish French boxed set… Should we all start brushing up on our French?

Brandon Graham: The French have put out the first book so far, they mentioned a box set but they've only just got the last pages recently. They’ve really put in some work translating it all, they even redid all the graffiti in the backgrounds.

I'm not sure about an English language collection yet, I'd like there to be one. Like I said, the rights to the book are a mess. Part of me likes how it’s just single issues right now, but I realize it's not the easiest comic to get hold of. A collection would help with that.

Exquisite Things: Besides King City and Multiple Warheads, do have you got any other projects on the boil right now?

I've got a 300 page collection of some of my older stuff and a bunch of art that I'll hopefully get together soon. There's always a ton of side stuff that I hope to get to. I've got a detective thing called 'Rain like Hammers' that I want to do as a one shot after I get a big chunk of Multiple warheads out there.

Brandon Graham: Are there any comics that are blowing your mind right now? Any creators you feel are doing real groundbreaking stuff?

Oh yeah, there's a ton. One of the things that frustrates me about the comics industry is that I can name 50 amazing artists but if I go into a comic store this week there's a good chance I'd find nothing new that I wanted.

I like my pal James Stokoe’s ‘Orc Stain’ a lot and Adam Warren’s ‘Empowered’ has been really fun. ‘The Dammed’ that Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt are doing is also good stuff. I also just read ‘Monsters’ by Ken Dahl, that's a really fantastic book.

Here's a few links of some artist I'm really excited about right now:

John Kantz
Simon Roy
Jordyn F. Bochon
Giannis Milonogiannis
Farel Dalrymple
Tom Herpich
and my misses, Marian Churchland

Exquisite Things: Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me, any closing remarks or shout outs?

Brandon Graham: Thanks for letting me talk at you.

As much as I may have issues with the industry at times, I really think it's a great time to be reading and making comics.

And I'll howl at Meathaus--my old NYC comic book gang!

Interview by Matthew Dick, with thanks and kudos to Brandon Graham.

Related links:
Brandon Graham's Live Journal
Image Comics

Reich #6 & #7

2010-09-19T07:13:00.000-07:00

Elijah Brubaker’s wonderful rendering of the life of Wilhelm Reich resumes with two new issues.

Issue six has Wilhelm in the Berlin of 1933 as the Nazis begin their ascent to power, threatening not just the livelihood of the now famous psychiatrist but the lives of his entire family. The pace of issue six is heightened by the very real dangers encountered by the Reich family on nearly every page, symbolized in one memorable series of panels by the smothering black ceiling of the train carriage where Wilhelm and his estranged wife Annie are briefly interrogated by an officer of the SA. Elsewhere, a black monolithic mass of followers hurl books onto a bonfire, pointedly including Reich’s own “The Mass Psychology of Fascism” – it becomes a literal funeral pyre for the idea of any meaningful sense of opposition to such destruction.

These dark elements are sharply contrasted with the clarity of Reich’s scientific breakthroughs, such as his discovery of “bions”, which were central to almost all of his theories that were to prove so notorious in the following decades. It's a key issues in the series, detailing so many of the tumultuous events that were both formative and transformative, from his initiation to brothels to his gradual estrangement from his children, from his cancer research to the loss of both his father and his great mentor Sigmund Freud.

Issue six leaves Reich in 1937, but issue seven begins with a drastic leap forward in time to 1954, and a complete change of character emphasis. Wilhelm’s young son Peter becomes the focus of our attention, boasting to an older friend about his father’s cloudbusting machine and weather experiments. Peter’s admiration of his now legendary father and his exploits is endless, a son’s unconditional love given ample white space to roam within each panel and speech bubble.

Peter regurgitates his father’s theories verbatim, the experiments with orgone boxes and sexual energy by his sister and her boyfriend are part of daily life and go unremarked upon. Only a trace of natural curiosity and child-like questioning surfaces in Peter; it is enough to keep the reader firmly with him even as he faithfully wends his way through his father’s extraordinary practices and concepts.

When Reich Sr finally appears towards the end of the issue, he is a broad, confident figure, vast in size and ambition in the eyes of Peter. His words here seem to have calcified into dogma on the page, rather than flow in the manner of theory that distinguished his younger incarnation. Every statement is fact, every sentence sits in judgement of others, and the boundlessness of Peter’s love only underscores Wilhelm’s harshness further. Brubaker skillfully makes the reader wary and suspicious of Reich in precisely the way what people were already thinking of him at the time: was he a sex-crazed quack? Was he merely exploiting the dichotomy of sexual exploration already at play in an ultra conformist America still reeling from the revelations of Alfred Kinsey?

The climax of the issue is a decidedly uneasy depiction of a father and son meal at a desert diner, where once again the subject of sex and its function in daily life is inescapable. It is a powerful, somber episode in the series, foreshadowing the real trials and tribulations that Reich will have to face in the not too distant future. Creating it clearly took its toll on Brubaker, who in his raw concluding notes describes the issues as “hard born”; hinting too at troubles elsewhere that I hope will not put the series in jeopardy. “Reich” continues to be one of the most challenging and engrossing independent comic series that I’ve read in recent years, and richly deserves the chance to reach whatever resolution its creator has in mind for it.

Review by Kevin McCaighy.

Related link:

Sparkplug Comics (Buy Reich and more great comics here)
Elijah J Brubaker's website

Bound & Gagged Anthology

2010-09-08T04:32:00.000-07:00

Tom Neely, author of the utterly brilliant 'The Blot' has just curated and self published his first anthology. 'Bound & Gagged' features 72 pages of one panel gag comics, as drawn by an impeccable line up of creators that reads like a 'who's who' of underground comics.

The book features contributions by:

Andrice Arp, Marc Bell, Elijah J. Brubaker, Shawn Cheng, Chris C. Cilla, Michael DeForge, Kim Deitch, J. T. Dockery, Theo Ellsworth, Austin English, Eamon Espey, Robert Goodin, Julia Gfrörer, Levon Jihanian, Juliacks, Kaz, David King, Tom Neely, Anders Nilsen, Scot Nobles, Jason Overby, John Porcellino, Jesse Reklaw, Tim Root, Zak Sally, Gabby Schulz, Josh Simmons, Ryan Standfest, Kaz Strzepek, Matthew Thurber, Noah Van Sciver, Dylan Williams, Chris Wright and many more.

Expect COMEDY! HORROR! NAVEL GAZING! ABSTRACTION! AND MORE!!!

For a measly $10 it can be yours. Head on over to I Will Destroy You to grab a copy.

Fragmenting Time - The Robert Sergel Interview

2010-09-04T08:18:00.001-07:00

After five years of publishing online, Robert Sergel has finally made the jump to print comics. A mere two issues into his ongoing series 'Eschew', Sergel has already proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's a creator worth his salt.

His stark, meticulously constructed autobiographical comics boast a rare appreciation of form that you'd sooner associate with cartoonists ten years his senior. With such an auspicious start to his publishing career, I thought it was high time I spoke to Robert about 'Eschew' and his evolving approach to comics.

Exquisite Things: The first thing that really struck me about Eschew was your art. It’s very stylised and precise, sharing many common traits with the ‘Ligne Claire’ school of cartooning. I know you often work with photos, creating digital composites to form the basis for your art.

Could you elaborate a little on your visual approach and how it’s achieved?

Robert Sergel: I definitely like things very clean and precise. The art style is something I sort of fell into because I didn’t really know any better. I have a BFA, but it’s in photography, and I got it at a film school where there weren’t really any drawing classes or anything. I got burnt out on taking pictures, so I starting making photo comics instead. Since then I’ve just been trying to find the best way to simplify forms. Around that time I started reading a lot of comics again and got it in my head that it was really important to strip down your images as much as possible. So I just tried to do that. It comes out looking precise because I’m so restrictive in my source material.

Exquisite Things: There’s a great deal of symmetry and rhythm to your comics. Your layouts often adhere quite stringently to a six panel grid, with only the occasional divergence. To me, there seems to be a very strong sense of formal discipline running through your work, whereby your artistic approach always reflects the needs of the story.

What considerations run through your head when you’re working on page layouts?

Robert Sergel: That’s nice you noticed that. I do spend a lot of time making sure pages look good as a whole and that all the panels work in relation to one another. It feels pointless a lot of the time because comics aren’t really absorbed that way.

People go panel to panel and maybe don’t notice page layouts because they’re following a story and want to know what happens. It makes more sense in something like George Sprott, where each spread is its own comic, but in a traditionally-structured narrative I’m not sure how much it matters. It definitely matters to me, though.

Exquisite Things: The majority of your comics seem to draw on personal experiences. What inspired you to focus on the autobiographical as opposed to fiction?

Robert Sergel: I think it just came more naturally to me. I’m better at identifying which stories will work as comics than I am at inventing them. I’ve recently been trying to work on a completely fictional story, and I’m finding that it’s way more difficult. You have to make a ton of decisions to create a comic, and autobiography absolves you of some of that responsibility. You still have to choose the right stories and figure out the best way to tell them, but the question of “what happens” has already been answered for you. So it’s easier in that way. I’d love to do something entirely fictional, but it seems to require a level of imagination that I don’t really have.

Exquisite Things: Following on from that, are your comics a straight retelling of events from your life? Or do you tend to blur the boundaries between fact and fiction?

Robert Sergel: Most of them are things that have happened to me. Sometimes I have to change things slightly for the sake of clarity or dramatic effect. I’m certainly looking less and less like the character all the time. The last story in Eschew #2 is the only one that’s more a conflation of events than a straight retelling.

Exquisite Things: Have you ever read any of Phoebe Gloeckner’s comics? With her books I can never quite tell where her reality ends and the fiction begins. There’s an almost wilfull blurring of the two, and even though she’s always referred to her work as fiction, there are so many parallels between the author and her protagonists that you’ve always second guessing. Are you interested in that kind of ambiguity?

Robert Sergel: I think 'Diary of a Teenage Girl' is the only one I’ve read. I do appreciate that ambiguity, but only because I don’t think “wow, I can’t believe that happened to you” is a very desirable reaction to a story. That’s the limitation of memoirs and auto-bio comics, and what makes me nervous about them. It can very quickly become a situation where you are being judged, and whatever idea you had is overshadowed by empathy or pity or disgust. So if it’s true that she’s actively distancing herself from the reality of her comics, I can understand that. I try to keep it a little unclear in my comics too.

Exquisite Things: ‘Up Up Down Down’ in Eschew #2 was probably the highlight of the book for me. It’s what made me sit up and really take notice of your comics. There’s some wonderful visual interplay and use of foreshadowing, not to mention the plaintively somber atmosphere that permeates the whole thing. I came away deeply impressed by your use of pacing and timing… it’s just really mature work, and as a closing piece, it’s quite the emotional sledgehammer. ‘Up Up Down Down’ comes across as a very personal account of a tragic event.

Did your approach to this strip differ at all compared to your past efforts?

Robert Sergel: Usually I will thumbnail a story in my notebook. It might change a little as I work on it, but the basic structure stays the same. I went into that story with a much more vague sense of what I wanted to do or how it would turn out. I think I had originally intended to only do the bit about trying to play a broken Nintendo. But as I worked on it, it started to feel like a pretty cheap, nostalgic sentiment.

So I started pulling in some other ideas and tried to construct the narrative in such a way that the Nintendo functions less like a sentimental manifestation of lost time, and more like the ghost of Christmas past or something like that. So I had printouts of the pages taped to my wall for months and months, and I would look at it every day and move things around and add things and throw away other things and it kept expanding and expanding. It went through a lot of different permutations before I thought it made any sense.

Exquisite Things: It would be great to see you expand on the kind of extended, more drawn out storytelling found in ‘Up Up Down Down’. Do you have any plans to try your hand at longer self contained stories?

Robert Sergel: I definitely plan to do that. When I first started making comics, I just sort of jumped into the fray immediately working on something very long without really having any idea what I was doing. That failed pretty spectacularly, so I started the website as a place where I could experiment and try different things and hopefully get better.

I drew a lot of gag strips and stuff like that. Then I did a few one page stories that turned out okay, so I did a series of related one-page stories called “13 Bad Experiences Involving Water.” From there it’s been a very gradual progression into longer stories. But my plan has always been to eventually arrive at a point where I can do something that’s book length. It just takes a huge amount of time and discipline and I want to make sure I know what I’m doing.

Exquisite Things: ‘Eschew’ is your first official foray into printed comics. Personally, I’m a big supporter of pamphlet format comics, but at a time when many creators are headed in the opposite direction, what motivated you to make the jump from the web to print?

Robert Sergel: I never really considered myself a web cartoonist. I always looked at it more like a way to get my stuff out there and receive some feedback and hopefully get better that way. I was part of a web-comic collective for a while, and there were some awesome people there who really inspired me to work harder. Plus, it forced me to generate content every week, which really helped me get better faster than I would’ve otherwise.

My primary goal was always to do longer stories and to eventually have something printed. I prefer printed stuff too, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere. That being said, it’s really too bad there’s such a comic-sans, MS paint stigma attached to web-comics, because a lot of them are just really good comics. Most of them are available in book form anyway, so I don’t really see the harm.

Exquisite Things: What first got you into comics? What was it about comics in particular that inspired you to start making your own?

Robert Sergel: I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was little. I loved Calvin and Hobbes and Spiderman and drew my own little strips and books and stuff, but eventually I sort of quit because I didn’t think I could draw well enough. So I stopped drawing comics and got into photography and did that all through high school. It was mostly just an excuse to hide out in the darkroom at school and be antisocial, but I was good enough at it where it made some sense to pursue a degree in it.

So I did that, but then everything I liked about it evaporated pretty quickly once I got there. Around that time I started reading a lot of comics again, and eventually it just sort of clicked that I was better equipped to be a cartoonist. I spent the rest of my time at school learning how to use various design programs. I took a lot of cinema studies courses too, which maybe had an effect on me as well.

But in response to your question about what particularly inspired me... pretty much everything about drawing comics appeals to me. I really hate it when cartoonists complain about it. It takes such a diverse set of skills that you’re never really at a loss for something interesting to work on. There’s so much you get to do. You get to write and draw and paint and silkscreen and use computers and do layouts and book design and web design and typography. It’s like a dozen art forms rolled into one. That can maybe seem like a burden sometimes, but really it’s why I love comics.

I even like the “bad” stuff. It’s unprofitable and takes forever to do and isn’t really taken as seriously as other art forms, but those hurdles ensure that the people doing it are genuine and passionate and involved for the right reasons.

Exquisite Things: What’s the best thing you’ve read in terms of comics over the last 5 years? Are there any creators you’re particularly partial to?

Robert Sergel: It might be 'The End #1' by Anders Nilsen. Everything he does is brilliant. 'Acme Novelty 19' was awesome. I recently read a book called 'Driven By Lemons' by Josh Cotter that was great. Or maybe The Blot by Tom Neely. One of those, I guess. My comics are packed away at the moment, so I might be forgetting something.

I’m partial to a lot of creators. Obviously I love the Sparkplug people like Austin English, Hellen Jo, Aron Nels Steinke, John Hankiewicz and Chris Wright. There’s a smallish publisher out of New York called Secret Acres who are cranking out some unbelievably rad books by Eamon Espey, Sam Gaskin, Ken Dahl, Minty Lewis and Theo Ellsworth. I’ll buy anything John Porcellino or Renee French put out. There’s a Scottish guy named Malcy Duff who is doing some really interesting stuff, and a London-based artist named Mr Clement who is actually a lady and mostly draws rabbits. And I love a webcomic called 'Perfect Stars' by Jordan Piantedosi.

Exquisite Things: I noticed that you play in a local band called The Channels. I’m guessing music is a big part of your life. Does your work as an artist cross over into your music, or vice-versa?

Robert Sergel: I try to keep them pretty separate from one another, and I don’t generally work on them at the same time. I tend to shift focus every few months or so. At the moment I’m drawing a lot of comics, but over the spring I was recording every day and hardly drew anything. I just find the finished product is better if I completely immerse myself in it.

Exquisite Things: If Eschew had a soundtrack, what bands would appear on it?

Robert Sergel: You mean something to listen to while reading it?

Exquisite Things: Yeah.

Robert Sergel: That’s hard to answer, because I bought a mini one time that came with a CD of “mood music” you were supposed to listen to while reading, and it really only made the experience less enjoyable. Comics are about fragmenting time, so to introduce something fluid like music is only going to make that harder to do. But if someone were to turn one of my comics into an animated short or something, I’d like to re-animate Bernard Herrmann and have him score it.

Exquisite Things: Are there any future projects or aspirations you’d like to tell us about?

Robert Sergel: I’m working on stories for Eschew #3 at the moment. I’m hoping it’ll be done by winter.

Interview by Matthew Dick, August 2010.

Related links:

Sparkplug Comics (Buy Eschew and more great comics here)
Idiot Comics (Robert Sergel's webcomics presence)

Framing Time - Robert Sergel's Eschew #2

2010-08-04T13:21:00.000-07:00

I have four hours to kill on the train to Bristol.

In my bag I have a copy of Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art and the second issue of Robert Sergel's ongoing series Eschew. I re-read Sergel’s comic for the third time in two days and begin to compose my thoughts in scribbled bursts on an A4 notepad. The British countryside hurtles by largely unnoticed, muted and distant, framed by a thick pane of glass that sits between me and the outside world. Doncaster, Sheffield and Derby stations come and go, but I'm far too engrossed in Eisner's instructional book to track our steady progress South.

I've always been fascinated by the mechanics of comics, particularly their ability to convey information in ways that other mediums cannot. Their fusion of text and image gives rise to a whole host of creative possibilities that simply don't exist anywhere else. To my mind, much of what makes comics so unique boils down to their use of time, or to be more precise, their division of time on the page.

Charting the passage of time is something that Eisner explains with great eloquence, using simple yet effective examples to illustrate how an artist's approach can profoundly affect the way a story is perceived. In comics, Eisner explains, six panels could be used to depict a two minute action scene, but equally, those very same panels could be used to chronicle the passing of an entire era.

By changing key visual cues, an author can quite literally expand or contract time at will. Something as simple as charting the progress of two figures walking down the seafront, as in Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell, does a splendid job of illustrating the passage of time over the course of six panels. As a reader of comics, it’s easy to take these techniques for granted, but for a creator of comics, Eisner’s lessons represent the most fundamental of tools available to an artist.

Setting Eisner’s book aside for a moment, I attempt to enunciate what it is that grabs me about Sergel’s work. The words "bold and distinctive" appear on my notepad, but they don't really begin to sum up his elegant line art or refined use of pacing. I spend a good ten minutes flicking through the comic again, mentally dissecting its contents, turning over Eisner’s myriad examples in my mind.

I keep coming back to Sergel’s panel arrangements, those carefully crafted static images that meter out his stories with the precision of a metronome. The beauty of Sergel's work lies in its careful use of layout and timing; in its formalisation of the everyday, transforming the mundane into a series of taught parallel lines and carefully crafted geometric forms.

'Disgusting Human Being', for example, is a 'tell it like it is' one pager that sees Sergel picking the scum from between his toes, going about his daily business, then later realising that his hands are utterly filthy. Likewise, 'My famous grey sweatshirt' chronicles the author's long standing love affair with a particular sweatshirt, drawing on the common experience of that one precious item of clothing that you get a little too attached to. Most amusing of all is Sergel’s subsequent search for a replacement, whereby his cartoon self is subjected to the horrors of his local American Apparel. It's funny, keenly observed stuff, but as good as these shorter pieces are, it’s the closing chapter of Eschew which makes a lasting impression.

'Up Up Down Down' deals with a vivid, introspective flashback to what I presume to be Sergel's youth. The comic cycles through a series of visual triggers, focusing on recurring circular motifs, as if methodically unearthing memories panel by panel. This seemingly abstract exercise in pattern recognition comes full circle when Sergel discovers his old Nintendo sitting in a cardboard box. Our attention is drawn to the A/B buttons of the joypad, which in turn become the doorbell to Sergel's old family home. Acting as a metaphorical anchor to the past, the discarded games console gives us a fleeting glimpse of a tragic accident that results in the death of a friend.

In an effort to reconcile the memories triggered by the discovery of the Nintendo, Sergel hooks it up for a game. When he turns the machine on, the intro screen to Super Mario flickers to life but quickly degenerates into a mess of distorted pixels and glitches. The television becomes a torrid reminder of the lingering guilt caught up with the console. Plaintively Sergel packs away the Nintendo and throws it out, ending the comic with a pensive full page splash.

Eschew concludes with an air of sadness and regret, and I'm once again drawn to Sergel’s careful delineation of time; his ability to alter the pace of events with little more than the careful division of a page.

When 'Up Up Down Down' concludes, it's as if time has slowed to a crawl. As the world of fiction slowly recedes, the reader is left to consider all that's just transpired.

Sergel, like Eisner before him, understands the importance of pacing. Moreover, he fully grasps the impact that a shift in tempo can have upon a story. ‘Up Up Down Down’ hits as hard as it does because it unfolds slowly using a series of elongated panels. In contrast to everything else in Eschew, it feels distinctly open and contemplative, much of which is down to Sergel’s carefully devised page layouts.

It’s always a pleasure to see comics executed with this level of care and attention, and with Eschew Sergel has provided us with yet another fine example of their ability to communicate deep and meaningful experiences.

MD.

Related links:

Sparkplug Comics (Buy Eschew and more great comics here)
Idiot Comics (Robert Sergel's webcomics presence)

Good Minnesotan #4 - Funding achieved!

2010-07-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to report that 2D Cloud have successfully raised enough cash to print up a first run of Good Minnesotan #4. Great to see the project come to fruition, it's well deserved. The finished anthology is due to ship late August / early September.

Well done Raighne and Meghan!

Good Minnesotan #4 - An Anthology in the making

2010-07-02T12:43:00.000-07:00

Good Minnesotan #4 is the final installment of 2d Could’s regional comics anthology focusing on cartoonists and artists based in Minnesota, USA. It’s published by Raighne and Meghan Hogan, who have steadily built a reputation for themselves by putting out consistently beautiful hand assembled comics.

Good Minnesotan #4 continues down the same path, and is presented as four mini comics housed in an eye catching Giclee printed slipcase. At 120 pages, the anthology covers a lot of ground, taking in a wide range of approaches to comics and visual art. If you’re looking for easy comparisons, Good Minnesotan sits neatly alongside the likes of Kramer’s Ergot and Mome, but with a healthy dose of DIY attitude.

There's some outstanding work spread over the four minis that comprise this anthology; my absolute favourite being Martha Iserman’s single panel gag strip ‘Albert the Stuffed Parrot-Beaked Puffer Fish’, which charts the secret life of her taxidermied puffer fish. In a series of one panel snap shots, her preserved puffer fish indulges in a spot of voyeurism, embarks on a perilous trek across the Alps, and mounts a daring attack on a Cylon base ship. It’s as funny as it is ridiculous and I firmly believe the world needs more comics like this.

2d Cloud mainstay Nic Breutzman (Yearbooks) makes a welcome return to the pages of Good Minnesotan, delivering a sparse piece of cartooning that evokes the dreamy haze of adolescence.

Breutzman’s narrative is restricted to only a few panels per page, but is set against the eerie skeletal sprawl of a new housing development. His art is vivid and precise, yet somehow distant and retroactive at the same time. Breutzman taps into a subtly unsettling visual landscape that often verges on the uncanny. It's the very epitome of the familiar, shot through with an atmosphere that just isn't quite right.

Anna Bongiovanni contributes an equally affecting allegorical tale that expounds upon the harsh reality of being forced to grow up too fast. Her deceptively simple story of a group of children who lose their mother, packs far more emotional punch than you might expect from a five page short.

Having buried their mother deep in the onion garden, the orphaned children vow to eat all the onions that grow the following year. The metaphor of one daughter's dogged determination to eat the entire crop is a powerful one; and as she struggles to consume every last bitter, acidic morsel, her appearance slowly begins to change. Forcing down the last of the onions, she ages thirty years in seconds, emerging as a mirror image of her deceased mother.

Bongiovanni draws on all the strengths of her chosen medium, marrying image and language to create an arresting and emotionally charged comic. She deals with themes universal to us all, mapping out the burdens of responsibility and adulthood with astounding clarity and understanding. This one lingered with me for days after I first read it.

In contrast to the aforementioned pieces, Buck Sutter offers up a striking selection of treated black and white photographs. It's beautiful, clearly personal work, riddled with symbolism that springs from the page like half remembered dreams. There's a shadowy, gauzy quality to his images, like distant memories obscured by the fog of time. His photography is a welcome addition to an anthology that deals in visual storytelling in all its myriad forms.

Good Minnesotan #4 is nothing short of excellent and should be applauded for its heady mix of paintings, photography and comics. If you're searching for new talent on the fringes of the American underground comics/arts scene this would be a great place to start.

2d Cloud are currently raising funds to cover the printing costs of Good Minnesotan #4, which will be sold at the highly affordable price of $5. You can help them on their way by pledging some cash, which will net you a copy of the anthology and various other goodies when it goes to print. This anthology deserves your support, and if you like what you see, I’d urge you to head on over to their Kickstarter page to help ensure this gorgeous little gem makes it to press.

Deconstructing Superheroes - Daredevil: Born Again & Kick Ass

2010-04-10T05:25:00.000-07:00

Daredevil: Born Again was first published in 1986 and followed in the wake of Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s own The Dark Knight Returns; both highly influential comics that fundamentally changed the landscape of modern superhero fiction. Although Born Again is perhaps far less well recognised than those comics, it’s certainly no less deserving of attention.

Born Again saw Frank Miller team up with David Mazzucchelli, a pairing that might raise a few eyebrows were it to happen today. Miller brought his trademark hard boiled crime stylings to the book and Mazzucchelli delivered art to match, with an unparalleled spatial awareness of what could be done on the page. By modern standards, it’s almost a given that Miller and crime noir go hand in hand, but it’s worth noting that his gritty detective fiction slant on the superhero genre started with his work on Daredevil.

By the time Born Again hit the shelves, Miller’s darker, Hell’s Kitchen inspired template was already firmly in place and ripe for exploitation. The addition of Mazzucchelli’s detailed, multi dimensional art, adds a visual clout to the book that goes far beyond simply rendering the urban backdrop of Hell's Kitchen believable. All this adds up to a pretty great book, but it’s not just the noir leanings and evocative art that make it such a standout piece. What makes Daredevil: Born Again truly special is its psychological deconstruction of Daredevil, aka the blind lawyer Matt Murdock.

The book opens with a down and out Karen Page selling Matt’s secret identity to a drug dealer. Of course, it isn’t long before this information drops into the lap of crime lord Wilson Fisk, who is only too pleased to discover that Matt Murdock and Daredevil are in fact one and the same. With this information in hand Fisk begins to systematically dismantle Matt’s life, methodically striping away his reputation, wealth, career, and friends. As things begins to unravel, his only means of escape is his alter ego Daredevil. Left homeless, friendless and deeply suspicious of everyone around him, he becomes increasingly violent, frenzied and animalistic as he plummets towards rock bottom with alarming speed.

Here Miller tackles the inherent paradox of superheroes; on the one hand Matt Murdock is a shining beacon of all that is good and just in the world, and on the other, he’s a violent vigilante whose secret double life borders on clinical schizophrenia. Miller acknowledges the death and destruction that surrounds Daredevil, and then follows those veins of poison as they seep into every corner of his personal life. There are some wonderful pre-echoes of Mazzuccehlli’s later work, especially his inventive use of colour and space. In issue 228 of Born Again, Matt confines himself to a cramped, seedy hotel room. Paralysed by fear and paranoia, the room becomes both a physical and mental prison. There’s a repeating motif of long thin vertical panels, lined up like prison bars, further adding to the calutrophobic nature of events. As everything closes in, fighting for space on the page, Matt struggles against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Ben Urich, the wayward Daily Bugle reporter receives a similar visual treatment when he finds himself under Wilson Fisk’s watchful eye. Following a series of unsuccessful attempts to ease Matt's plight, Ben finds himself under constant threat of physical violence from the Kingpin. As his situation turns from bad to worse, Mazzucchelli begins to visually morph Ben’s features, switching from his realist style to exaggerated elongated lines, stretching out Ben’s face so it radiates stress and nervous energy. Ben is painted a cowardly yellow, the panels themselves become narrow, boxing him in on the page as the omnipresent force of the Kingpin moves in for the kill.

In both cases mood is expressed in terms of colour and space, and it’s interesting to see Mazzucchelli experimenting with these stylistic techniques. As the attentive reader will know, these particular traits would eventually become an integral part of his artistic approach, most notably in his adaptation of Paul Auster’s City of Glass and his recent solo effort Asterios Polyp.

What fascinates most about Daredevil: Born Again is its inversion of classic comic book conventions. It takes a long hard look at the cold reality of being a superhero and doesn't shy away from the more unpleasant truths that emerge. Take ‘Nuke’ for example, the book's drug fueled nemesis; a blindly patriotic, failed military experiment who’s forever popping pills and spouting militaristic non-sequiturs. Nuke is post Cold War politics embodied. He's the anti- Captain America. Nuke is clearly cast as a villain, yet maintains the psychotic delusion that he's allied to the forces of good. He is the darker side of warfare and politics, blindly following orders, sworn to protect ‘our boys’ and his beloved USA. When a disillusioned Captain America finally lays his misguided fellow comrade to rest, it’s abundantly clear that superheroes aren’t what they used to be. All is not right in the world of the superhuman, and although the book reaches a typically ‘wrapped up’ resolution of its main plot points, it still asks some stark questions about what it would truly mean to be a superhero.

Just over two decades later, Nicholas Cage (Big Daddy) and Chloë Grace Moretz (Hit Girl) face off in a disused reservoir. Big Daddy calmly points a gun at his daughter and pulls the trigger. Thus begins their journey on the road to becoming masked vigilantes in the big screen adaptation of Mark Millar’s comic Kick Ass. Big Daddy and Hit Girl are a case in point, they’re the apex of modern superhero fiction; and as apt a parody as you’re ever likely to see. Morals are swept neatly under the carpet and bloody justice reigns down at the hands of an 11 year old girl, whose aptitude with firearms and knives is nothing short of frightening.

Kick Ass is an undeniably funny film, but the reason it elicits so many laughs is, I suspect, due to the sheer perversity of the whole setup. I need not explain to you the strange pleasure of watching an 11 year old girl brutally dispatch dozens of hardened criminals, and whilst I laughed as much as the next man, I couldn’t help but feel that Kick Ass makes some interesting points about the pysche of the superhero.

In much the same way that Miller and Mazzucchelli strip down Daredevil to his very core to reveal an unbalanced, yet highly driven individual, Kick Ass too, quite adeptly acknowledges the savage duality of the modern day superhero. There’s a dark and nihilistic streak lurking just under the film’s playful action flick sheen, and therein lies the all too knowing recognition that such heroes would be flawed and unbalanced individuals long before they even put on a mask and cape.

MD.

Lauren Barnett - Secret Weirdo

2010-02-10T06:28:00.000-08:00

Lauren Barnett was kind enough to send me some of her mini comics. I hold in my hands three short form pamphlets, Secret wierdo, A story about a fish and I'd sure like some fucking pancakes. Snappy titles, I think you’ll agree.

What strikes you immediately about these mini comics is that Lauren’s cartooning is very off the cuff, all rendered in a primary school style scrawl, which has more to do with her overall narrative approach than it does with her artistic ability. It’s obvious that Barnett is capable of a much more considered style, but the messy simplicity on display here suits her subject matter perfectly. Barnett relates childhood memories and snippets of her adult life with a singular, almost childlike innocence, taking obvious pleasure in the simple joys of life. Her wonderfully honest, off kilter sense of humour is more than enough to balance out any reservations you may have about her purposefully regressive art.

Barnett’s comics aren’t about artistic finesse, in fact they’re quite the opposite; coming across like a scribbled postcard from her younger self, serving as a reminder of all those wonderful childish things we keep buried deep within our subconscious. It’s at once reassuring and comforting to see such uninhibited work, as Barnett dredges up memories of her past for all to see, whilst reflecting on the present with an uninhibited sense of optimism.

When doubts and worries do enter the picture, they’re warped and bent into curious forms for Barnett’s own amusement. The serious sharp stabs of the real world are rendered blunt and ridiculous, but somehow maintain an underlying air of solemnity that can take you by surprise. In one strip a chicken loses its feathers, and to add insult to injury the errant plumage refuses to return to its owner, “I’m moving on”, say the feathers. It’s a funny little gag, but it could just as easily be read as a poignant tale of betrayal. It all depends on what angle you come at it from.

Barnett gives us occasional flashes of her full artistic potential. In I'd sure like some fucking pancakes there’s a particularly striking dream sequence based around killing a unicorn. The sketchy, lifelike art is far more accomplished than anything that precedes it, and again it marks a more thoughtful, even melancholly moment amidst otherwise light hearted content. It’s also worth noting that the painted cover of Secret Weirdo displays a remarkably different artistic style to Barnett's interior pages. The exterior of her mini comic is impressionistic and detailed, whilst the interior harkens back to her rougher, more immediate line work. Interior and exterior here are presented as two very different things, and I imagine they’re just as wildly divergent as Barnett’s daily surface level experiences and her own personal inner world.

It would be easy to write Barnett's work off as 'cute' or 'amateurish', but personally, I think there’s a lot more to her strange world of goldfish, cats and featherless birds than first meet the eye.

You can check out more of Lauren’s comics here. Give her a look.

The eye of every storm - Von Allan's 'The Road to God Knows...'

2010-01-08T04:14:00.000-08:00

Von Allan’s debut graphic novel The Road to God Knows deals with the author’s experiences of growing up with a mother suffering from schizophrenia. Instead of taking the tried and tested route of straight autobiography, Allan has chosen to create a work of fiction that's closely informed by his own experiences. Casting the 13 year old Marie as his lead allows him a certain distance from his subject matter, and whilst this is clearly a highly personal book, it benefits greatly from this approach. Never once did I find myself gritting my teeth because the book was overwrought or too self obsessed.

By using Marie as his main vehicle, Alan limits the amount of information the reader has access to, keeping the emphasis very much on Marie’s world as she perceives it. Events and experiences are all magnified though the lens of adolescence, making the emotional turmoil that Marie faces all the more immediate. As a result, The Road to God Knows is a focused yet strangely blinkered reading experience; we never learn the full extent of Marie’s mother’s illness, nor are we privy to any of the medical ins and outs of her schizophrenia. It might have been beneficial to gain some deeper insight into the mental disorder that sits at the heart of the book, but in many ways, this is very much in keeping with Marie’s perspective, focusing squarely on the social and emotional fallout that begins to spill over into her everyday life.

Setting out how a thirteen year girl deals with the ramifications of her mother's schizophrenia is a difficult task in itself, and Allan takes an even handed, almost observational approach, sketching out events but rarely delving beneath the surface to reveal the inner workings of his characters. The overriding impression is that even Marie doesn’t fully comprehend the extent of her mother’s condition, only that her life is very different to that of her peers.

Reading The Road to God Knows is a little like sitting in the eye of a storm, gazing out at the damage and debris that surrounds you, yet safe in the knowledge that you’re momentarily sheltered from the destructive forces responsible. We’re privy to the impact that Marie’s mother’s schizophrenia has on her life, but very rarely do we see the storm itself. In all but a few key scenes everything is internalised, and this has as much to do with her mother’s private battle with her own demons, as it does with Marie’s ability to fully process the events occurring around her. What's good is that Allan leaves more than enough space for you to draw your own conclusions, resisting the temptation to hammer home his message with the blunt implements of cheap melodrama and tragedy.

In Marie’s world simple joys become precious to the point of obsession. She seeks solace in wrestling magazines and televised matches. Her fascination with the wrestling duo The Northern Rockers serves as both an escapist fantasy and a symbol of her sexual awakening. When, early on in the book, she learns that her wrestling heroes are due to pass through town, getting the cash together to attend the event becomes a driving force in her life. Wrestling and her close friends are the grounding forces that tether Marie to something approaching a balanced existence.

It’s interesting to note that Allan chooses wrestling as a focal point for Marie. It's one which serves as both a cultural calling card for the 80s as well as a fitting metaphor for the book’s subject matter. Wrestling, after all, is a sport that deals in split personalities; the high theatre of the 'on stage' alter ego vs. the normal person who exists outside the ring. Wrestling here seems to function as a sanitised socially accepted form of conflict, providing a stark contrast to the domestic unrest that Marie has to face in her day to day life. In the end it’s wrestling that offers a salvation of sorts, an affirmation that Marie can lead a normal life, indulging in the same pastimes that regular teenagers do. Her future is left wide open, riddled with uncertainty, but not without the spectre of hope looming just over the horizon.

The Road to God Knows depicts the all too common battle of getting from A to B under difficult circumstances, clinging all the while to every remaining thread of normality. The book feels like a small piece of a far larger history, and much like being granted a fleeting glimpse into someone else’s life, it’s an all too brief examination of a series of incredibly complex social issues. Historically, mental illness has been a subject that’s frequently discussed in hushed tones, and despite its brevity The Road to God Knows gets its point across with clarity and conviction.

Although Allan’s work still has hints of the fledgling artist to it, this is solid stuff. His style of clear line art, coloured with soft watercolours is more than capable of carrying his story, and with the exception of some slightly ill considered page layouts and a few instances of exaggerated body language his art gets the job done. If anything, it's his characters facial expressions that let him down, veering from slightly wooden to too overstated. Admittedly, these are fairly minor quirks, quirks that will no doubt be ironed out as Allan continues to develop as a cartoonist.

Taken as a whole, this is a strong debut told with unflinching honesty and a genuine desire to educate.

You can download The Road to God Knows as a free PDF here, or alternately it can be purchased from Amazon should you wish to show your support. More information on Von Allan can be found on his website here.

Review by Matthew Dick.

Best of 2009 - Comics and Music

2009-12-30T00:54:00.000-08:00

My end of year lists always end up being a bit skewed because I’ll invariably read a lot of the best stuff the year had to offer after the year is out. Sure, if I had more free time, then maybe my list would read a little different, who knows. In any case, here’s a run down of the comics I’ve enjoyed in 2009.

I’ve also included my top 10 albums, should you require some aural accompaniment to go with your comics. Plus, I’m sick to the teeth of reading piss weak ‘best of the decade’ album lists that suggest a further atrophy of the collective musical consciousness, culminating in a revisionist orgy whereby Joy Division and The Beach Boys are repeatedly gang raped by contemporary musicians.

Hold that image in your mind and have a great 2010!

COMICS

1. Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
2. Phonogram: The Singles Club (ongoing) by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie
3. Grandville by Bryan Talbot
4. King City (reprints) by Brandon Graham
5. Self Indulgence by Tom Neely
6. Criminal (ongoing) by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
7. Uptight #3 by Jordan Crane
8. Parker: The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke / Richard Stark
9. Freakangels by Warren Ellis
10. Pluto by Umezawa x Tezuka

MUSIC

1. Six Organs of Admittance - Luminous night
2. Silver Bullets - Free radicals
3. Oneothrix Point Never - Rifts
4. Holy Sons - Criminal’s return
5. Eagle Twin - The unkindness of crows
6. James Blackshaw - The glass bead game
7. Emeralds - S/T
8. Eleh / Nana June - Observations and momentum
9. Current 93 – Aleph at hallucinatory mountain
10. Sunn O))) – Monoliths and Dimensions

Christmas Singles - The Kieron Gillen Interview

2009-12-21T14:01:00.000-08:00

Kieron Gillen spent his formative years working as a video game and music journalist. Somewhere around the turn of the Millennium he began writing comics, earning his stripes churning out short strips for Warhammer Monthly as well as Playstation Magazine UK. He forged a partnership with British artist Jamie McKelvie and made what he terms his 'real comics' debut with Phonogram: Rue Britannia, a pop music urban fantasy centred around the decline of Britpop.

This was soon followed by a companion series 'Phonogram: The Singles Club' in 2009. The Singles Club ranks amongst the finest serialised comics to appear this year, presenting an inventive interconnected series of stories exploring personal experience as filtered through popular music. At its core lies a simple, near self explanatory tag line: 'music is magic', and if you're a music lover yourself, I shouldn't need to offer any further explanation. Most of you will have come to Phonogram with an intrinsic understanding that music is so much more than simply songs on a silver disc.

Music is a means of communication, a rite of passage, a companion, a spell to be worked.

Music is a powerful personal experience that's unique to you.

If this all rings in your ears like the hallucinatory ramblings of some misguided coked up oracle, preaching from the urine soaked stalls of an indie club, then perhaps it's time you experienced Phonogram for yourself.

See you on the other side dear reader...

The following interview was conducted at Though Bubble Comic Convention in Leeds on 21 November 2009.

Exquisite Things: I’m very fond of the episodic nature of The Singles Club. Each issue stands alone as a single self contained story. A friend recently pointed out that the issues could be read in practically any order, yet still hang together as a cohesive whole. They’re like little self contained universes, miniature personal histories; powerful experiences all bundled into a 32 page comic. How did you first come up with the idea for The Singles Club?

Kieron Gillen: Interesting question... I think we wanted to take a drastically different approach with The Singles Club. As much as I still love Rue Britannia, the first arc of Phonogram, I wanted to get away from the fact that it was essentially 'David Kohl's Britpop adventures'. We never really wanted to be a 'Britpop comic'. We wanted Phonogram to be a comic about music, not just Britpop. So, instead of having just one key character whose perception dominated the whole thing, we decided we'd have seven different characters, spread across seven issues.

Instead of doing a comic that was retro, or about the concept of retro, we decided to make it as narrow as we could. We wanted to give it a contemporary feel, and to explore all the different ways in which music can be magic. So we set the whole thing in the same location, on the same night, and decided to switch perspectives from character to character every issue.

I think I've wanted to do something like The Singles Club ever since I was nineteen. The seeds of the idea were planted when a girlfriend asked me to write her a story, and I think I only ever got about half of it done, but it was about five people in a pub. The central premise of the things was to tell five distinct stories, all happening in the same place at the same time. I think it was the potential for different perspectives that most appealed to me. You can set things up from different viewpoints, pose questions like 'why did that character run out of the pub?'

Of course it would later transpire that the character was hallucinating... completely convinced his cheese sandwich was about to eat him.

Exquisite Things: Hah, that's great...

Keiron Gillen: I think the opening line was, "he became increasingly convinced the cheese sandwich was about to eat him". Something along those lines...

So, we ended up using a similar approach for The Singles Club, and if you're talking in terms of the bigger picture, the comic's all about subjectivity. It's about each individual's own personal response to music. That's why every issue is a stand alone entity. When you read the first few issues you begin to realise that the story's all about subjectivity...

Exquisite Things: It's about giving people limited information and then filling in the gaps.

Kieron Gillen: Yes, exactly.

Exquisite Things: I was stuck by the way it's possible to completely misinterpret events in the first issue because you're only seeing things from one person's point of view.

Kieron Gillen: It's like asking someone 'what was the gig like?' The idea that any gig is either good or bad is just a bit ludicrous, because it's an individual experience. There's an example of this in Rue Britannia where Kohl is talking about the landmark Oasis gig at Knebworth, but there never was a 'crowd', it was just a collection of individuals. Although, that said, I'm kinda coming back around the concept of crowds but in a different way. I may even do a story about that eventually... but generally speaking, crowds are never really crowds. That's what I'm interested in.

There were also some very sensible and practical reasons that we structured The Singles Club the way we did. Not all comic shops order Phonogram and not all shops end up getting every issue. Half the time, you never really know if you're going to get another issue or not, so at least this way we ensure that readers can pick up any issue and still get a full experience. If you only get issues one, four and seven, you can still start reading at issue four because each issue is a stand alone story. But every subsequent issue you read after that will change your experience of that issue.

It's a unit of culture... It's sensible decisions and stupid decisions working together in harmony.

Exquisite Things: I’ve got to admit, when Phonogram first hit the shelves with Rue Britannia I was a little put off by how closely it was tied to Britpop. You see, I grew up with heavy metal, so I never really felt connected to that particular scene. To begin with, I just assumed that all the indie music references would go straight over my head, but soon realised it wasn't essential to enjoying the book.

Regardless of the bands you reference, I still found a universal red thread that appealed to the music lover in me. In The Singles Club I could relate to Penny in issue one, I could relate to her passion for music. Sure, 'Pull Shapes' by The Pippettes doesn't do an awful lot for me, but what was great was that it didn’t really matter. The experiences you draw on are universal to music lovers regardless of taste.

What I'm trying to say is that Phonogram seems to be all about the human experience as filtered through music, that rare transcendental state that only music can provide. Is that pretty much where you’re coming from?

Kieron Gillen: Music's only really interesting in terms of what goes on inside of your head, as in the internalisation of that art form. We're not really interested in bands very much at all. What goes on in the studio is infinitely less interesting than what happens when the sound comes out of a speaker and hits your ear drum. That's what's important to us, it's the core of the book really.

Some people quite literally turn off at the band references, and I don't think it's because they don't get the references, I think sometimes people literally can't read past that. They only see the band name, they're incapable of taking a step back and accepting a references for what it is. An example. The reason we chose to use real bands was to imply that Phonogram wasn't purely fantasy, we could have just made up bands but it wouldn't have had the same impact. Using real bands allowed us to join them to real people's responses to music. We're not just talking about some magical hypothetical bands, I'm talking about Blondie. It's about how music can change your life if you let it. The transformative nature of art and music is very much part of that landscape.

Exquisite Things: As I mentioned earlier, Rue Britannia is tied very strongly to the Britpop era and despite my ambivalence towards that period, you managed to make the music scene of the mid 90s live and breathe in a very convincing manner. Now that Britpop's tombstone finally has a death date, bestowed by the long overdue breakup of Oasis, what are your thoughts on the legacy of Britpop?

Kieron Gillen: I wrote a piece in Plan B magazine, a story called Rue Britannia, which was a very cynical take on Britpop. It described Britpop as a 'cultural Hiroshima'. Yes, it was important, but it left burnt ashes in its wake. Sure, we should remember it, but not in any way try to do it again. There's a lot of that sentiment in Rue Britannia.

Exquisite Things: That idea of not looking back?

Kieron Gillen: Yes, but the comic softens that notion a bit. As in, it's not important for me, it's important for you. I think Britpop really destroyed the music scene in a lot of interesting ways. Then it simply upped and left and fucked up music, especially indie music, in a way that I don't think it's ever really recovered from in the UK. It's become acceptable to reminisce, but it's also about not forcing it down people's throats and coming to terms with the fact that it's done with. To quote kohl's last line in Rue Britannia, Britpop was "nothing important". In some ways it's about me coming to terms with that period and being able to admit that I quite liked Shed 7. I'm not embarrassed, I'm okay with that. It's okay! (Laughs)

Fuck it, it was enough to base a six issue story around. But yes, Britpop's legacy is what I'd term a 'cultural Hiroshima'. I mean Britpop basically started as a new wave art school pop revival and ended as bad stadium rock. It moved from 70s pop music to 60s pop music with the advent of Oasis, the brains were removed entirely and you were left with bad stadium rock. That whole side of it was the end for me. I stopped reading the NME in early 2000 but actually started reading it again lately and it's amazing how little their ideas have shifted since 1999.

The Libertines I think were the closet the UK indie scene came to regenerating itself. I'm not a fan by any means but they're the only thing post Britpop that's shifted the NME's ideas towards the music world at all. Britpop's legacy is a mainstream demi-indie culture that has generated the notion that recycling the Beatles is somehow inherently radical. It will get you airplay on the radio and now there's a career path for these losers. (Both laugh)

Exquisite Things: Little bit of anger there?

Kieron Gillen: Yeah, I guess so.

Exquisite Things: Actually, something I just had to ask is about the date that The Singles Club takes place on. The 23rd of December 2006, cause, strangely enough, it turns out that one of my friends was at a Pipettes' show that very night, dancing to "Pull Shapes" with the best of them. Does that date hold any significance for you?

I was in that night. Never on a Sunday, the club in which The Singles Club takes place, is actually based on a real club in Bristol called Lipstick on your collar. I didn't go to the show, I should have gone. I sat at home and imagined it. I wanted to set the comic at the end of 2006. It's a subtle thing, we actually had an alternative title, which was 'The Christmas Singles' or 'Christmas Single', which fits it in a different light .The Singles Club is almost like the alternative to a Christmas single.

Exquisite Things: Why 2006?

Kieron Gillen: It was as contemporary as we could make it. I had to set it in a certain place, and much of the inspiration for those stories happened in 2006. It was a bit of a brutal year for me, with a lot of emotional energy.

Exquisite Things: There's something quite raw about issue 5, it leaves you feeling a little on edge.

Kieron Gillen: I listened to too many Long Blondes records that issue! I think there's a kind of gas that comes off them... great band.

Exquisite Things: Yep. Kate Jackson, total minx.

Kieron Gillen: Yeah. You know, I actually split up with my girlfriend that year. We had long blondes tickets and it was pretty much the week after we split up, so we decided we'd go to the gig and be civil. Although what I'd meant to say was "I can't go with you it'd be weird', so I tried to work out how I could say that without being a cunt. Basically there was no way round it, so that was the cost; I never saw the Long Blondes live ever. So one of the costs of the break up was the long blondes gig and all the emotional baggage that came with it.

So, to come back to the point. I liked the idea of setting it just before Christmas, but no one ever mentions Christmas in the book. That the point...

Exquisite Things: I'd never even really twigged that it was set just before Christmas...

Kieron Gillen: That's it. It's the idea that any other fiction set around Christmas play up to that... 'Oh my, maybe Santa Claus will appear'. It's the exact antithesis of every fucking Christmas episode of any given series. Whilst everyone else is out shopping, these people are going out clubbing and dancing to pop music and obsessing over it. They're creating their own subjective realities and Christmas has nothing to do with that, it doesn't even register. But broadly speaking it just had to be set in 2006.

Exquisite Things: That's interesting because I constantly find myself thinking ‘where next for Phonogram?’ It’s so open ended that you could veer off in any number of different directions, any number of different eras. Have you considered exploring other areas or particular styles of music?

Personally, I'm really fascinated by the early 80s 'Industrial' scene, pardon the term. For starters, it’s a quintessentially British musical movement, and it caused more than enough commotion at the time to be interesting. I guess the music being produced mirrored the social unrest of Thatcher’s Britain, which is fascinating in itself. There’s an almost mythical, maybe even mystical status surrounding bands like Coil and TG, which seems to fit well into the Phonogram ascetic. Jhonn Balance, Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson, Genesis… all phonomancers if you ask me. Hell, when Coil released 'Time Machines' John Balance casually commented that the album was intended to ‘dissolve time’.

Would you be interested in exploring other scenes or eras of music in Phonogram?

Kieron Gillen: I'd love to do it. I mean, I'd really like to read that comic, but I'm not sure that I'm the one to write it. With Phonogram, I know every single detail, because I'm drawing from my own experience. For instance, I'd love to do something about Hip-Hop, but it would be a case of looking at it from the perspective of say someone growing up in a rural community in the UK and coming into contact with the music of the The Wu Tang clan, the kind of impact that would have. For me, I really have to have some experiences, or the experiences of close friends to draw from.

I think there's still a lot of territory we could explore with Phonogram but this it's unlikely we'll continue after The Singles Club. Sadly, I think this may be the last series of Phonogram you'll ever see.

Exquisite Things: Sorry to hear that. It would be a real shame to see it end with the current run.

Kieron Gillen: Yes, yes it would, but Jamie and I didn't exactly eat well when we were doing Phonogram and we only just managed to make ends meet. Our sales have remained steady but they haven't grown from the first book to the second. Ideally we'd love to do two more story arcs, but right now I just don't see it happening.

Hypothetically, I'd like to do something about feminine identity and 80s pop music, looking at reality from that perspective. Then, I'd also like to look at what kohl was up to between 1991-1994. After that I think I'd be getting a bit too old to be writing Phonogram. I think you need to be really bang on with the characterisation to make it work. Writing people in their late teens actually scares the living shit out of me. I'm fine with structure and plotting, that just requires a bit of thinking, but actually writing teenagers without being fucking offensive, that's a hard thing to do. No one's ever said anything about it being wrong so far, and that makes me very happy.

So, that was our initial plan. Four solid albums and then maybe a B-Sides and rarities collection, much like the Smiths. After the fourth volume we'd hand Phonogram over to other artists to writers and let them do their own Phonogram stores. You know New York Mech?

Exquisite Things: Yeah.

Kieron Gillen: Outside the regular comic they did two anthologies, and got a load of friends to do stories. We'd be looking to do the same, just spin it off and allow others to explore different aspects of the Phonogram universe. It's always been about individual experiences, so it would be great to see other people inject their own into a Phonogram story.

Exquisite Things: Moving away from your work on Phonogram for the moment, you recently landed a gig at Marvel writing Thor and Dark Avengers: Ares. Congratulation on that. How have you found adjusting from writing creator owned material to such a high profile superhero comic like Thor?

Kieron Gillen: Loving it. It's like using a different part of my brain. I tend to write Phonogram drunk and then edit it heavily. With the Marvel stuff I take a far more clinical approach. I think very carefully about the characters, what they're going to do and what emotions might result from that. I'm enjoying it a lot, it's the challenge of it that I really enjoy. It's not like I've gone to Marvel and said, can I pitch X or Y character. I try not to think about other people's character unless they ask me too, because thinking about characters you don't own is a waste of time. You may not be able to do anything with those stories.

Exqusite Things: I guess there's always the danger of the 'the big reset button', which will invariably be pushed at some point...

Kieron Gillen: The reset button doesn't actually bother me all that much, it's the fact that if I waste time thinking about a Superman story, firstly it's a story I may never get to tell and secondly, it's stopping me thinking about other stuff. So, I try and stay focused on those things I actually control or work on things that I'm given. For instance, with Marvel it's normally like "any ideas of Ares? We want to do an Ares mini, got any ideas?". Then my mind starts working. What would I do with Ares? What's the character about? What would interest the readers, and what would interest me? You have to think about both sides of the equation, if you don't do one there's no audience, if you don't do the other you'll end with a book that's no good. If you don't do both you end up with a book no one will give a toss about.

With Ares, the interesting aspect for me was taking a character who represents the personification of an age of war which is pretty much dead. It's the core idea that in combat you'd be standing eye to eye with your foe, even soldiers these days don't get that close.

Exquisite Things: As opposed to today's modern warfare that's frequently fought at a safe distance?

Kieron Gillen: Yes. Take Athena, she was the god of pressing buttons. Ares was the god of pulling out eyes. I think we should be glad that age of war is over, it was fairly brutal. So, I see Ares as the personification of that age, and I thought it might be interesting to pit him against the modern military. The second aspect of the character I wanted to tackle was his desire to change. He's got a relationship with his son, but it's a tricky thing. He obviously cares about him deeply but what does that mean? How can the personification of essentially 'a really bad attitude' build a relationship with his son? These are the kind of questions that interest me.

The thought process is all about sitting down and dissecting the emotional make up of your cast, that's the angle I come at it from. In the process, you also discover a lot about yourself and why you're doing it. So far it's been an incredible job that I've really enjoyed doing. The pay's good and I actually thrive on the pressure of working to deadlines. I've been a journalist for ages so it's almost second nature now.

Exquisite Things: I wanted to ask you about the comics industry in general, more specifically about the distribution of comics. In recent times we’ve begun to see a gradual shift towards comics using digital distribution systems. Although we’re nowhere near the kind of paradigm shift the music industry has undergone, we are slowly beginning witness some changes. With the advent of systems like Longbox how do you see online comics distribution panning out over the coming years? In other words, in five years time do you think there'll still be a market for pamphlet style comics?

Kieron Gillen: I wouldn't be foolish enough to try and predict the way things might go.

Exquisite Things: But in terms of your own experience, how do you see things going? You mentioned earlier that Phonogram likely won't have a third series because of financial pressures.

Kieron Gillen: Not in singles anyway. Phonogram might be the last great single issue comic. The final issue's going to be incredible, we've really gone to town on it. We'll go out with a big a big 'Fuck You'! And goodnight!

In the final issue everything explodes! (both laugh)

Exquisite Things: Pyrotechnics! Fist pumping adrenaline!

Kieron Gillen: Exactly! Good evening Leeds! Are you read to ROCK? ... No... no you're not... there's only four of you here. Shit...

Exquisite Things: The whole crowd stood with folded arms, looking fashionably disinterested.

Kieron Gillen: Anyhow, where were we? Ah, yes, online distribution. I think it will really help the 'mid list' comics. I think a lot of indy books will have real trouble selling in floppies, and floppies for all intents and purposes are really an extended advert for the trade. There are definitely areas where there's no reason not to go online, backed up by a printed collections. With Phonogram, if we were actually making enough money off the trade just to sustain it, that would be fine. On the other hand, we put a lot of effort into the floppies.

Exquisite Things: I guess it comes back to the 'back matter' as Warren Ellis termed it. Those mini essays at the back of each issue really add a lot to the book. We've seen it with Fell, Casanova, Criminal, and these are the comics that people who care about quality pick up.

Kieron Gillen: Yes, but the problem with that theory is that it makes very little difference to us, commercially speaking. We put in all the effort creating the comic, but the audience has remained exactly the same. We've analysed this for years, and the wierd thing about it is that we sold about 4000 of the first issue of The Singles Club but Suburban Glamour's first issue sold 6000, despite the fact that Phonogram sold so many more in trade than Suburban Glamour.

So why is that? It would be safe to assume that a great many shops simply didn't up their orders, or that they didn't care or simply weren't paying attention. All the effort we put in doesn't really fucking matter. The thing is, back matter is great, lots of people like it but I don't think it sells comics. I feel good doing it and people who buy the book get more out of it as a result. However, I don't think it has the slightest bit of impact on how many copies shops order us.

Exquisite Things: It's very much down to shops acknowledging and recognising quality, then actively promoting that to their customers. You don't see that everywhere. There are a few shop that do it but it's the exception rather than the rule.

Kieron Gillen: There are a lot of wonderful shops out there that have been very supportive, but there are just as many that simply don't care. I just think the general trend that we'll see emerging will be singles as an art object. You'll be selling to those people who want an art curio. I think singles will continue for some time yet because people like the object, it's how they like to buy comics. If you're on the web you're not creating an object.

Saying that, I do hope Longbox is a success because our biggest problem is distribution. Some people who want Phonogram simply can't get hold of it. If people can just click a button, well, that breaks down a lot of barriers. Equally, web to print is very interesting. People in a load of shops tell me that Freakangels is Warren's best selling trade at Avatar.

Exquisite Things: Somehow that doesn't surprise me. It's an interesting model, if people like an online comic most of them will shell out for the hard copy collection. Sure, web comics are accessible to everyone at no cost, but there's still that desire to own the tangible product. I'm still like that with it comes to buying music.

Kieron Gillen: It's interesting to look at the long term on these things. I have a lot of friends who do webcomics and it's intriguing to compare what they're doing with traditional cartoonists. They're used to getting paid for the work they do, but with webcomics there's no immediate pay out. It's all about the merchandising. People who do webcomics are quite happy being businessmen, where as old school comic artists are more than content to just be artists. This is where the problem arises, if creators aren't particularly business minded, they'll never ever do web comics.

Take someone like Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, we'll never see anyone like that emerge through web comics. Never. He believed that any merchandising detracted from the work, it just didn't appeal to him on any level. Evolution doesn't necessarily imply direction, it's just what's happening right now and that's the problem with the web comics model.

You need to be doing a certain type of comic for it to work on the web. There needs to be a certain critical mass or saturation point for it to work and not everything is suited to the web. If social trends continue to change over the next ten years maybe people will become increasingly disinterested in physical collections. It's hard to predict how things will go, but if people do stop buying books, then that's one source of income that dries up for writers and artists.

Exquisite Things: Finally, to round things up in true Phonogram fashion, what's been on heavy rotation on your stereo?

Kieron Gillen: End of year so I always try to do some manner of list. I'm back into the xx album. I went through a worrying obsession over Florence & The Machine. I like the Pains of being Pure at Heart a lot.

Indie nonsense, basically. Same as it ever was.

Interview by Matthew Dick, 2009. More information on Phonogram can be found here. Kieron Gillen's workblog lives here, Jamie McKelvie's is here.

From the Archives: An Interview with Renee French

2009-11-24T12:36:00.001-08:00

Throughout her career as a comic artist and writer Renee French has taken the darker shades of human interaction as her focus: the absurdity of behaviour, the hidden meanings of gestures and the secrecy of language. Her stories are of the everyday, stories that frequently take flight into the unknown at the turn of a page.

Her near-forensic interest in the slightest emotional change in her characters is what distinguishes French’s work – her emphasis on feeling, even at its most repellent or macabre is nothing short of fascinating. French’s storytelling evokes the ambiguity of a fairytale, with the softest of pencil tones masking their nightmarish menace.

What follows is an interview first published in SALT magazine in 2003, which still ranks as one of my personal favourites during the course of running the magazine. Discovering French's work marked a turning point in my life as a comics fan and to this day I still remember the impact of Corny’s Fetish, a heart-rending experience that turned me into an immediate fan.

From the death obsessed Ninth Gland, to the solitary experiences of Edison Steelhead in The Ticking, French's work never fails to impress in both scope and depth. To my mind French is as important a piece of the modern comics landscape as Woodring, Miller or Spiegelman. The resulting piece is a testament to the generosity and passion of Renee herself, giving a remarkable set of answers to my over-analytical questions, with the same grace and humanity that her work possesses to this day. I hope you enjoy this brief glance into her past.

How did you get your start in the comics world?

Danny Eichorn, the creator of the comic series Real Stuff published by Fantagraphics, saw a self-published comic that I co-created with Dan Turner called Sociopath Comics and wanted to collaborate with me on a story for his comic. Then Gary Groth of Fantagraphics saw that piece on Real Stuff and gave me my own series Grit Bath. And that, as they say, was that.

Who are your biggest influences?

David Lynch, Ivan Albright, Maurice Sendak, Red Grooms, Chester Brown, Anke Feuchtenberger.

Have you found it difficult to develop both your writing and art skills as your career has progressed? Personally, I find that very difficult, and can only concentrate on the visuals, and so I wondered how you’ve maintained consistency in both?

Well, I’ve never really thought about that. I really love to tell stories but I’ve never considered myself a writer. I guess I am a writer, but not without the use of pictures – a Picturestoryteller, as the Germans say. For me the story comes first, then the drawings, then the words. But those elements are so tightly wound together that it feels like one.

Where did the inspiration for Cornelia come from?

Oh, Cornelia, I don’t know. I think she was a response to all the pretty characters in movies and books always being the good sisters. You know, Cinderella is the beautiful but mistreated sister and her two ugly sisters are, of course, evil. I was probably feeling particularly ugly when I first drew Cornelia.

I think Cornelia in the Pen is one of your most moving stories. The Rabbit giving its blood to the Cornelia in order to paint the cell walls seemed to be a metaphor for creativity, no matter what the obstacles. Is that what you were attempting to communicate?

Wow, thanks. You’re absolutely right. I had a bout with arthritis years ago and it was terrifying to me that I couldn’t draw during that time and even more terrifying that I might have that condition forever and that drawing would always be painful. I constructed a roundish cushion to go around my pen so I could hold it with less pain. It was really difficult and I could only draw for a few minutes at a time. I was treated aggressively by a brilliant doctor and a month or so later I was in remission; and still am. But I haven’t forgotten how fragile it all is. I guess it’s about that.

Mitch and the Mole reminded me of David Lynch’s short film The Grandmother. What is it that brings you back to stories about children and their initial confrontation with death?

I’ve been thinking about that recently because, while reading through all of the material that went into Marbles in My Underpants, I had no idea how much I’d been working through those issues. Of course, I haven’t really been able to figure it out, but I do keep coming back to an incident that happened when I was little.

We had lots of rabbits, one after another; I guess they were my first experience with death. When I was about 8 or 9 my black and white rabbit, Napoleon, was staying in the basement one winter and I went downstairs to visit him one night after dinner, but when I flipped the switch, the light didn’t come on. I guess I felt less afraid to go into the dark basement because I knew that my rabbit was down there and I wouldn’t be alone. I could see his white patches glowing in the moonlight coming through the basement window. As I got closer I noticed he was lying down and not moving so I stuck my hand out to him. He still didn’t move. I crouched by the cage and poked my finger into his side and felt he was cold and hard. I can still remember the feeling I had reaching out expecting to feel his warm, fuzzy, breathing body and discovering his dead body instead. I ran up those basement stairs so fast.

How would you describe your sense of humour to those who’ve not read your work? Your short pieces like Chocolate Bunny Head are incredibly dark!

Yeah, I guess I’d say, “It’s kinda dark.”

Where do the images you draw in soft pencil come from? Are they drawn figures? Portents of doom?

I took some of my characters and made portraits. For example, the drawing of the man’s chest is a portrait of Huey Kittentank, the janitor/surgeon in The Ninth Gland. You never see his chest or any part of his naked body in the story, so I guess the drawings are about the lives of the characters outside of their stories.

Do you have a background in medical or veterinary studies, given your fascination with animal anatomy?

I just study on my own and I’d love to take a gross anatomy class some time soon. Biology would have been the subject I studied if it hadn’t been for art.

The Ninth Gland had a lot of resonance for me: everyone recalls finding an injured animal and wanting to help it. Is there a reason the animals in the story are so strange, so dissimilar to real animals? Or am I reaching a bit by making connections to all kinds of historical events involving torture in the story?

I studied torture techniques at university but any historical torture connections in The Ninth Gland are not intentional. When you find a dead animal on the side of the road, sometimes there’s a second or two when you’re not sure what it is and I find that to be really creepy.

Also, I’m always dreaming of strange-looking tiny creatures that I’m assigned to protect and that always find their way into a dangerous situation. Like the dream in which I had a tiny monkey-like creature in a paper cup and was taking care of it, until I had to leave it for a few seconds. When I came back the cup was filled with ketchup and the monkey was smothering.

Do you plan to work with Penn Jillette on more stories for the wonderful Rheumy Peepers and Chunky Highlight?

We’ve been talking about it on and off. But right now I’m working on a bunch of different things and there’s no way I could fit it in. It was great working with Penn. We’ve been friends for a long time so it was easy and fun working together.

Reading Marbles in my Underpants, it seems to me that you’re striving to convey the pain your characters experience, both emotional and physical. How do you view your characters?

I want the reader to feel what’s happening in the story. It’s really important to me that my characters feel real, even if they are not realistic.

Does that make sense?

Movies and comics that do that for me when I watch/read them are my favourites. David Lynch’s movies definitely do that.

How does it feel to see everything collected in one volume?

It’s great! It was an interesting exercise for me to read over all of my work in preparation for getting collection together. I hadn’t ever read all of my stories back to back like that and certain things became a lot clearer to me. I shocked myself. It was such a strange feeling to be thinking, “wow, that’s disturbing”. Some of the older stories really disturb me. I think it’s because I was a different person when I wrote them.

Corny’s Fetish is a beautiful, subtle story. It also seems like the summation of all the themes of your past work, as ideas and images re-emerge and take on new forms. Do you see that story as a full stop to one period of your career?

Yes, I actually do.

I didn’t plan it, but after “Corny’s Fetish” I took a break from comics and did some travelling and thinking and just drawing for the sake of drawing, and when I came back to comics, I was using a different drawing implement and a quieter approach. Not intentionally...but now I can see that that’s what happened. With Corny’s Fetish I was really working on my storytelling and I felt really close to the story. That character (actually two characters – his dog too) were very real to me and the end was difficult for me to draw.

Can you tell us a bit about your book The Soap Lady?

It’s my baby. It’s a 112-page picture book done in the soft pencil style you referred to earlier. It’s a story inspired by the saponified (turned to soap) mummy in the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia about a monster who befriends a boy. I don’t want to give the story away but it’s a picture book for adults in the form of a children’s book and it turns out that kids love it too.

Finally, what do you want to achieve in your future comic career?

I’m working right now on a graphic novel called The Ticking for Top Shelf. The main character is called Steelhead, from the story in the Marbles collection. He’s got a sort of deformed face and no ears, very much like Cornelia. I guess the story is about looks vs. heart. I’ve also got a story in the upcoming EXPO 2001 anthology and some drawings in “The Ganzfield”. I’d like to do more children’s books and graphic novels until I figure it all out.

Interview by Kevin McCaighy (2003).

This Weekend - Thought Bubble 2009

2009-11-19T05:29:00.000-08:00

This weekend in Leeds:

Signings, talks, workshops and film screenings. Guests include the likes of Bryan Talbot, Sean Phillips, Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Alex Maleev, Duncan Fregredo and many many more. Last year's con was a very enjoyable experience, and I expect this year to be even better. Do come along and give Thought Bubble a look if you're anywhere near Leeds.

This week's comics

2009-11-03T04:49:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the only thing that needs to be on your comics shopping list this week...

Criminal Deluxe Edition Vol. 1: A mammoth 432-page collection of Ed Brubaker's & Sean Phillips' consistently excellent crime noir series. If, like me, you've been buying the single issues, this is probably going to tempt you to shell out for something that will sit nicely on the bookshelf.

With it's interconnected cast of characters and plots, I imagine this will read very well in collected form. Lots of extras including a Criminal short story and the never-before-printed five page "movie trailer in comics form" that Brubaker and Phillips created to announce the series online, plus illustrations, selected articles, behind-the-scenes glimpses, painted covers.

The Page 45 Interview - Selling comics to the real mainstream

2009-09-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

Page 45 is a comic book store located in the heart of urban Nottingham in England’s East Midlands. They sell comics, but you wouldn’t know it looking at their tastefully decorated store front. With little more than framed art and collages hung in the window, you’d be hard pressed to make any value judgements on what they sell before stepping through the front door.

Upon entering the store you’re confronted by a large display of weighty, artfully designed books. The shop has a laid back atmosphere that puts you in mind of a smaller, more welcoming Waterstones or Borders, but it’s not until you pick up a book and begin to peruse its pages that you realise you’ve just set foot in a comics store. But you’re not interested in comics… or are you?

During their 15 year stint in the business, Page 45 have developed a unique approach to selling comics. Setting out with the express purpose of bringing quality comics to ‘the real mainstream’, they’ve steered well clear of the traditional bread and butter of comics stores, making a conscious effort to diversify their trade away from superhero comics, plastic paraphernalia and the niche market stigma that comes with it. Some said they were mad. Some predicted they’d last little more than a year, but by championing genuinely intelligent and thought provoking comics, Page 45 have succeeded in breaking down people's pre-conceptions of what comics can be, and have in turn succeeded in bringing the medium to a far wider audience.

More to the point, they’ve developed a business model that most comic book retailers should be following if they want to outlast the current economic downturn and the ever changing state of the direct market. If local comic books stores are to survive the rise of online giants like Amazon, as well as the emerging move towards digital publishing, they could do far worse than to look to Page 45 for inspiration. With their 15th Anniversary just around the corner and the store achieving record sales, I spoke to Stephen Holland, Tom Rosin and Jonathan Rigby about comics, communities and ‘the real mainstream’.

Exquisite Things: Page 45 was founded in 1994 and has gone from strength to strength since you first opened your doors. What inspired you to open Page 45 in the first place?

Stephen: Panic.

It was an act of sheer desperation. Mark and I were working for a comic book chain that we knew full well was broken and about to go under at any second. So we asked each other, what else could we do?

Mark, of course, was the most magnificent artist whose three-dimensional creations in Page 45's windows went on to become one of Nottingham's chief tourist attractions, so he could have deserted the comic book scene completely and made a very profitable career for himself as an installation artist, in theatre, or as a set designer for many of the bands he admired; but he cared about comics so deeply that there was no question for him that he'd continue to harness his skills to the benefit of his favourite creators like Jim Woodring and Larry Marder. Whereas my only skills involve sticky-back plastic, and the ability to execute trick-shots in croquet with a glass of white wine in the one hand and three smoking fags in the other. So what am I going to do except sell comics?

Exquisite Things: But there must have been a defining moment that made you think ‘this is what I want to do’?

Stephen: Yeah, okay - it wasn't quite as haphazard as all that.

In 1993 Mark and I organised the Aardvarks Over UK Tour. Dave Sim and Gerhard traveled the British Isles from Aberdeen to London on a 14-day, 9-stop tour to promote their 6,000 page magnum opus CEREBUS. The sheer scale of this endeavour and its subsequent success for a quality comic book not widely embraced by other retailers gave us the slightest inkling that we were more than capable in terms of professional acumen. It also turned us onto the fact that there was a massive untapped market out there for quality comic book fiction.

But in a way, of far more importance to Mark and myself, was our early success with EXIT by Nabiel Kanan. EXIT was straight fiction about teenagers growing up in England. Just the sort of thing you watch on BBC1, BBC2 or Channel 4.That sort of subject matter is a goldmine in Europe where comics never suffered the UK/US dependence on superheroics, and where graphic novels are therefore invariably amongst the countries' best-selling books each year. We sold over 200 copies of Nabiel's EXIT #1, beating the shit out of Jim Lee's mega-launch of X-MEN #1 with its five or six greedy variant covers.

So what actually happened is this: after our Nottingham CEREBUS gig, which had both Nabiel Kanan and Paul Grist co-signing, Dave Sim and Gerhard got us both stoned and drunk, and told us that we could do a much better job if Mark and I opened up our own shop. On our own terms, with our own budget, our own aesthetics, and our own bias towards what I've since coined as "real mainstream" material: pure comicbook fiction, politics and autobiography by the likes of Posy Simmonds, Eddie Campbell, Bryan Talbot, Kyle Baker, Los Bros Hernandez, David Mazzucchelli, Alison Bechdel, Joe Sacco, Jeffrey Brown and John Porcellino & co.

Who knew that the more experimental works of Tanya Milkkitten, Paul Pope, Tom Gauld, Simone Lia and Jeremy Dennis would match those sales so quickly? We certainly didn't. In fact they sell so well we no longer regard them as experimental. I mean, who would have guessed that Bryan Lee O'Malley's SCOTT PILGRIM volume 5 would be our fastest-ever seller?

But even back then we'd been galvanised, plus I had already started mouthing off in public about ethical retailing unshackling itself from the dead-end of corporate comics, so we put our money where our mouths were.

Tom: It was amazing how Mark and Stephen had an effect on the comics scene, even back in Fantastic Store when they were starting out. I remember the first time I went down into the basement of what was then a Virgin Megastore and tried to buy an issue of Sam Keith's THE MAXX, only this feisty young man with amazing hair suggested that perhaps it wasn't really suitable for someone of my tender age. I was eleven but may have looked much younger as I was beyond weedy. Instead I ended up with an absolutely dire issue of Spider-Man and Marvel Holiday Special '93 as my mum rushed me out the store. It put me off spandex for the entirety of my teens. If only I knew who that young man with the amazing hair was, as the decisions made on that day pushed me into manga as an alternative to hokey spandex. Later I found Andi Watson's GEISHA, due largely to Mark's massive display. That and Nabiel's LOST GIRL reaffirmed my faith in western comics.

By that point I was working next door for Another World, a very frustrated fish in a toxic bucket. In contrast to that first-hand experience at how not to sell comics, what Page 45 were doing was like comics-retailing nirvana. It still is compared to those sci-fi/game stores. What amazed me was the control they had. They were informed because they had control over what they were stocking, unlike me at the time. That was my "this is what I want to do" epiphany. My goal was to work for a comic shop like that.

I'm pretty sure I got their attention.

Stephen: Do you think...?

Even when Tom was working for Another World, he was constantly overheard in Page 45 during his own lunch breaks, bringing in customers to promote our books. Books he was never allowed to stock himself, but which he loved with a passion. He's got a gentle eloquence about him - and it's a key still in this industry, being able to whip off half a dozen recommendations personally tailored to an individual's tastes - so we spotted him a mile off.

So yeah, Tom arrived with a passion and a fully fledged eye of his own, but then absorbed everything from Mark that made Mark the undisputed John Peel of Comics. God knows what that makes Tom, apart from indispensible. John Peel Jr.? It was actually Tom who spotted Bryan Lee O'Malley here before Mark or myself, and before he was even published. Also Theo Ellsworth, Lucy Knisley, Mariko and Jillan Tamaki. Thanks to Tom, Lizz Lunney sales are beginning to go through the roof, just as Tanya Milkkitten's have always been under Mark's support, and we have as high hopes here for Adam Cadwell as we've always had for Marc Ellerby. On top of that Tom is, to my mind, the foremost authority on quality manga, introducing our customers to the likes of Inio Asano, Naoki Urusawa, and Ai Yazawa.

Tom: CoughMoominsCough.

Stephen: Yep, sorry, Moomins too. Tom has well and truly made the Moomin books monumental sellers here. Oh and that Minty lady. Minty...?

Tom: Lewis.

Stephen: Yeah, she's good! I'm really buzzing off her stuff at the moment. Porcellino's also a fan.

Exquisite Things: Page 45 is striking for its differences. The shop bears very little resemblance to the average comic book store. From the outward facing image of the store, right through to the way you rack your books, Page 45 is unique in how it presents itself. As you say, your window displays are always a talking point, with their intricate cardboard constructions and scattered autumn leaves...

Stephen: Leaves are a big thing at Page 45. You might have noticed from our logo. Lift us with leaves and we'll love you forever. LOCAL has a load of leaves on the cover, and as a direct consequence was our biggest selling graphic novel last year. You wait until you see Rob Ryan's THIS IS FOR YOU!

Exquisite Things: So, nothing about your exterior screams ‘we sell comics’ unless you happen to be familiar with the art or characters on display. Instead of alienating half your potential customer base before they’ve even set foot in the shop, you’re inviting them in with strong, thought provoking imagery.

Stephen: Exactly! It's a risky strategy when it comes to alerting current comic book readers that you sell comics, some of whom only find us later, but we cannot expect this medium to thrive in the US and UK, as it does in Europe and Japan, by relying on the current customer base which is less than 0.5% of the population, 0.5% of which are women.

Our window displays are designed to lure new people in by mistake, and it works. That was always Mark's conscious goal: to lure new people in with his his magnificent window displays, a tradition we've continued with a little help from our more creative friends.

If you don't currently read comics, and you hold the stigmatic preconception towards them that the 'real mainstream' understandably does, then until they encounter what we stock instead, they're just going to think, "Comics: I don't read them, so I don't need to go inside". That's why we never pop physical comic books in the window, instead we have hand-crafted artifacts inspired by them. Just like we don't have the word "comics" in our name.

We're still asked by newcomers on a daily basis, "Why are you called Page 45?" It's very gratifying since the precise reason we called ourselves Page 45 was to provoke Joe Public into asking why. If you ask us, then you've already asked yourself, if you've asked yourself, you've already remembered our name. Scott McCloud called it "style positive, content neutral". And given that we'd actually named Page 45 after the 45th page of Scott McCloud's UNDERSTANDING COMICS, well, we'll take that accolade and run.

You have to go out and grab The 'real mainstream', and in particular women. With 99.5% of the population to go, there's plenty to play for. Just three days ago I was idling outside with a ciggie and this 60-year-old gentleman stopped to read the only window display I've ever created. It's a Posy Simmonds TAMARA DREWE affair (pun intended) using pages enlarged from the book to provide a slightly misleading summary of the story.

I followed him in after ditching my smoke, pointed him in the direction of Posy, and the gentleman had a really good browse before asking me if we have any "classic" Japanese comics as he was heavily into the country's prose output. So I showed him Tezuka, specifically the eight BUDDHA books which our Jonathan adores, and Hayao Miyazaki's only comic series NAUSICAA, plus AKIRA and BAREFOOT GEN. Turns out the guy was a practising Buddhist and a lot of the Japanese authors he'd read had referred to BAREFOOT GEN without him understanding exactly what it was. A BUDDHA and a BAREFOOT later, I'm completely convinced we have a new comics convert.

Exquisite Things: That's just great, and I suppose it's where the real difference lies in your approach to selling comics. So, following on from that could you tell me more about the way you’ve chosen to present the shop and the underlying principles behind those decisions?

Stephen: Sure. Superheroes are at the back so they don't put off the women; everything with a spine is at the front so it looks like a book shop, except for the superhero books. We do love some of the more modern superhero writers like Bendis, Ellis and Millar, but that genre sells itself and has had quite enough publicity in the US/UK comic book industry, so that's probably the last you'll hear about them in this interview.

We stole the whole thing from Waterstone's fifteen years ago, right down to having the big book plinth front-centre, so that books are stacked up on top of it just like you'd see in a book shop. The principal is very simple indeed: lure people in by deceit, keep them comfortable by giving them surroundings they're familiar with, then make yourself available to answer questions.

Exquisite Things: Much like yourselves, I firmly believe that comics have the potential to appeal to anyone, and with the sheer breadth of material available these days, I think it’s simply a case of exposing people to something that will speak to their interests. How do you approach someone who’s completely new to comics? In your experience, are there any particular titles that emerge as clear winners when introducing people to the medium?

Jonathan: Well, we certainly all have books in our mind that we will always recommend to people completely new to comics. We do our best to established what genres they might be interested in based on their prose, television, film and even music tastes, and we have a few of those graphic novels up on shelving behind the counter with an 'Always Recommended' sign just to prompt people if they're a bit shy about asking us.

Similarly, it's an approach we'll be duplicating on our website. We'll have an 'Always Recommended' section where we'll duplicate those titles, and for those just browsing by category, those books will be indicated by little icons. Also on the website front page we'll be asking people 'Would You Like A Recommendation?' which will be informed either by what comics they've previously enjoyed or, as mentioned, their tastes in other media.

Stephen: It can be a little daunting for newcomers but the key is to understand that, then cater for it. So we make ourselves as approachable as possible without being too pushy. A gentle "Hello!" as each new person wanders in and, if we get the chance to make eye contact easily as they pass by the counter, "If you have any questions, just shout". It's a sort of "I'm here if you need me" whilst backing off to allow people to browse at their leisure and not feel harassed. 50% of the time there's an immediate response with an immediate question, so thank God we make the effort.

As Jonathan says, the Page 45 website will redress the information deficit. We've planned it so that visiting the website should feel as much as is humanly possibly as visiting the shop in person, with different entry levels depending on your existing knowledge. There'll even be a complete list and accompanying reviews of everything we've chosen as our Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month so far, but if you already know your stuff or you just want to explore on your own, you'll be able to search by title or creator through the 5,000 different titles we have in stock, or browse through the different genres at leisure. I'm busy editing all the reviews written by ourselves and even a few mad customers over the last fifteen years so that readers can absorb reliable, first-hand and hopefully entertaining testimony rather than having more corporate hype shoved up their ass.

Tom: I think we worked out the other day that between us we had 30 years of comic retailing experience. Now ten of those are mine, one of them belongs to Jonathan... So that means... Go Stephen! But that doesn't count all the previous years of just plain retail, which makes our collective experience two hundred and forty-six... Go Stephen!

Stephen: You can go off someone, can't you?

Exquisite Things: It would seem good old fashioned ‘bricks and mortar’ stores have had an awful lot to contend with in recent years. With online retailers like Amazon offering low prices and door to door delivery, it’s certainly changed the way people shop. As a direct result we’ve seen numerous independents disappear from our high streets, which are now beginning to look eerily homogenous. It’s a lamentable state of affairs...

Stephen: Use it or lose it. Seriously. If there's something you love, then use it. Otherwise expect a natural cause/effect interface resulting in one giant Starbucks and an otherwise empty city.

Exquisite Things: Exactly... and I'm eternally thankful that one thing Amazon can’t offer its customers is a sense of community, let alone years of accumulated knowledge and experience. You’ve clearly worked hard to create a unique identity for Page 45, as well as a friendly and welcoming space where people can congregate and share their enthusiasm for comics. Do you see Page 45 as a community unto itself, and how integral has this been to your success?

Stephen: Unlike Thatcher, I'm heavily into building and nurturing communities. If I haven't memorised your name and tastes within three visits, I'm definitely slacking and I will apologise. If you care enough to shop with us, we care enough to know who you are and what's happening in your life. I've had customers stay with me, customers live with me... You even went out for a pint with Tom the other night, right...?

Exquisite Things: Yeah, I gained an unhealthy addiction to Brew Dog beer and a long list of Japanese underground music.

Stephen: That's it... I mean, how many times have you been out for a pint with someone who served you earlier? There are no walls - or at least there shouldn't be. When you do comics right, it's where everyone meets: the customers, the creators and their works. We're merely the facilitators, but both the customers and the creators have always appreciated that at Page 45 at least this finally happens. We want to bring diversity to the masses, and to do so we stock the widest possible range of quality graphic novels and comics in every conceivable genre. Page 45 and its friends/customers are all on the same side: we want comics to succeed.

We wouldn't be here without the vocal support of creators like Talbot, Ellis and Sim. Nor would we be here without the equally ardent support of our customers who actually cared enough to get up off their arses and vote us the best retailer in the UK 2004, and turn up to Mark's family funeral in such stunning numbers that it was standing room only at the back, or to our 10th Anniversary Booze Bash whilst Mark was alive.

Page 45 is about humanity and individuality, whether it's creators having something fascinating to say about the world around them, or customers with their own take on what they love and why. It's all about caring, about giving a shit about your fellow human beings. It's about interacting. It is, as you say, all about fostering a love of community.

Jonathan: Going forward from the perspective of the website, we're hoping that customers will use the forums to discuss topics of interest with other customers. In my mind, I can almost picture conversations between certain customers who've never met each other but love the same creator or comic.

Stephen: You're thinking of Dan Barnes and his love of Joss Whedon aren't you? Or are you thinking about me and my thing for Brian Michael Bendis? Mark never approved of that.

Tom: Yes, well the things you would do to Brian in your love dungeon are illegal in 49 states.

Stephen: He is the only reason we ever appeared in a Marvel comic. Him and customer Chris Craven who wanted a girlfriend. If Marvel even noticed, I imagine they were furious. No, I think I'll just sit there waiting for other Jeremy Dennis fans to come along. Me, Jeremy and one more will make 3 IN A BED. We sold 100 copies of that graphic novel, so there has to be a deep well of other fans out there.

Tom: I think you have more of a chance with Bendis. Jeremy was married a few months back. And besides, didn't you want Tanya Milkkitten's hand in marrige? I still intend to duel you for that right, but do we really have to get up at dawn?

Stephen: Could you really get up at dawn...?

Tom: For those interested, submitting mini-comics may result in duels. You have been warned!

Exquisite Things: You also run a Comic Book of the Month Club, whereby subscribers get a book of your choosing every month. It's another thing that’s no doubt helped to build a sense of shared experience amongst readers. How hard is it picking a book every single month that will appeal to such a broad range of people?

Tom: Honestly, it's easy. We don't try to pick things on their potential mass appeal to customers, we only pick the comics that appeal to us. Any other way would be dishonest, and honesty is the best weapon against Amazon we have. We read hundreds of comics a month and then discuss amongst ourselves which we believe is the best and then order a terrifying amount in and hope our judgement is sound. I've loved everyone of the books I've chosen and the club's still going strong so, fingers crossed, I'm not alone there!

Stephen: Tom's right - the reason readers join is for us to choose the books for them. At a discount, obviously. But, to tell you the truth, sometimes I'm terrified that we might not suss out the right book. The trust that customers have placed in us brings with it a huge onus of responsibility. It's bad enough that writing every twice-monthly Page 45 Mailshot can feel like an end-of-term exam (Did I properly evaluate each graphic novel's strengths and/or weaknesses? Did we successfully search for the best new entries? Was I even remotely entertaining?), but this is on a completely new level.

On the other hand, it's a great way to spread interest in the diversity of this medium and often promote lesser known voices. The most reassuring accolade is that the project's catalyst, Simon Ghent, has loved all three years of it so far.

Exquisite Things: Speaking of picking good comics, lets imagine for a moment you were to be marooned on a desert island. What five comics would you take with you?

Tom: If I were on a desert Island I would most likely go mad with boredom, whatever I brought along.

Could I fashion Finder: Sin-Eater into a pulpy spear? Would I want to?And how long before I'm using THB 6d as toilet paper? Would I shed a tear when forced to stoke a puny fire of Tekkon Kinkreet in order to keep warm? Using emergency origami skills, might Kramers Ergot 4 serve as shelter until rescue arrives?Perhaps Love & Rockets vol II would make a nice hat though... Keep the sun off my face...

Jonathan: These aren't necessarily my five favourite comics of all time, but I think they are the ones that would help me survive on a desert island.

The Midnight Surfer by Wagner, Grant & Cam Kennedy - My absolute favourite ever 2000AD story featuring undoubtedly my favourite Mega-City character Marlon "Chopper" Shakespeare in his bid to win Supersurf 7 on his home turf in the Big Meg. There's just something about Chopper's absolute refusal to let anyone or anything, including the prospect of 20 years in the cubes, break his will to rise above the grind of Mega-City life and achieve what he believes to be his destiny that really moves me. I have probably read this story at least a hundred times, and I will never tire of reading it. Put simply it's a story about if you believing in yourself and your dreams, with the added bonus of two fingers to authority at the same time.

That Poor Bastard by Joe Matt - Simply to remind myself that no matter how bad my life might seem stuck on a desert island, there's someone out there who feels worse than I do and it's entirely self-inflicted. Still as funny as the first time I read it, pure comedy gold.

Daredevil: Born Again by Frank Miller & Mazzucchelli - This one really has it all. Probably about the point I realised what a complete genius Miller is, and also when I realised that with great writing even Marvel and DC characters could be immensely entertaining. Still the best ever DD for me, including anything by Bendis and Brubaker, that's how highly I rate Born Again. Basically it's all about how much can one man take. A single act of desperate betrayal allows the Kingpin to learn DD's secret identity, and after that the death of a thousand psychological cuts begins. Can Matt Murdoch survive? Yes, but not without totally and utterly losing the plot first.

From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell - For many reasons, but the sheer density and multi-layered attention to detail ensures this is a must have. There are so many little sequences that stand out and stick in the mind often requiring considerable analysis to work out exactly why, the passage through the tunnel on the barge being an example for me personally. A genuine masterpiece and a work of genius.

The Incal by Jodorowsky & Mœbius. Yes, yes, technically it's a three volume triology I know, but they're all fairly thin so you'll let me have this surely?!

Exquisite Things: Oh go on then...

It's the ultimate in sprawling meta-physical tarot inspired nonsense sci-fi, with the perfect non-ending. The perfect escapism with hidden depths for an enforced island sojourn.

Stephen: Eddie Campbell's ALEC OMNIBUS is a book whose entertainment value on a Dessert Island would far outlast my own resourcefulness there! It'll keep me laughing while I'm spitting out sand. Eddie Campbell is the medium's finest raconteur, and everything he does manages to bring life to the foreground and give it a little spin to make you think about your own. Strangely enough the copy I've packed away for the trip also has Eddie's FATE OF THE ARTIST selotaped to the back, and I can't seem to get it off.

Bryan Talbot's ALICE IN SUNDERLAND is an equal necessity. I love my history and I love my Alice In Wonderland, and I love the sheer craft, knowledge and wisdom that this guy brings to the medium. And, like Eddie, the humanity.

The complete works of CEREBUS at 6,000 pages long would certainly keep me going and give me much pause for thought. So many pages from JAKA'S STORY onwards are innovations worthy of Will Eisner, and glorious pieces of craftsmanship worthy of his landscape artist Gerhard, whom I'd rate right up there with Gustav Doré. I don't agree with everything that Dave has written, but few would agree with everything I've ever written - particularly when it comes to Duran Duran! They'd be wrong, mind.

On the other hand EXIT by Nabiel Kanan is the work I'm fondest of, partly because of what I mentioned above, but also because he nailed teenage uncertainty and Nabiel's lines on the page are just so fucking sexy.

Lastly it would have to be ASTERIOS POLYP by David Mazzucchelli. Largely because there'd be such an uproar if I told the truth and said it was Mark Millar's two seasons of THE ULTIMATES.

Exquisite Things: You’ve played host to a number of high profile signings over the years, including Bryan Talbot, Posy Simmonds and Eddie Campbell. Do you think it’s important to allow fans the opportunity to meet creators face to face?

Stephen: Yes, and preferably over a pint. That's what we've done for the last three or four years - try to introduce a more relaxed, interactive element by removing the counter between them. Removing that daunting pressure which is "You have 5 minutes to say everything you ever wanted to say to your favourite creator". It was Andi Watson who started the trend when we made LITTLE STAR the inaugural Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month and he offered to meet with our members over a drink. No signing, just his personal attention for several hours taking people through the creative process of his next few projects, and with readers swapping stories of what it was like being a Dad. When Eddie Campbell came over, he even kicked off with a 15-minute performance piece down the pub, in which he extemporised beautifully using a customer's son for perfect comedic timing.

It's also important for certain creators. Bryan Talbot is the most sociable and approachable guy imaginable. He spends so much time alone working hard in his study that he loves the opportunity to come over and chat directly to his readers. It was Bryan who suggested he co-sign with Posy Simmonds for the launch of TAMARA DREWE - and I don't think she's ever signed at a comic shop before. Gorgeous woman.

He liked what we'd done with cross-pollination whereby we get two or more creators together who have similar appeal but a different readership. In Bryan's case it's only since ALICE IN SUNDERLAND that he's become known outside of the comicbook field but Posy's been a household name for years, hence her MBE. Bryan and Posy know each other well so Bryan took care of that and it worked out beautifully.

The signing was announced in the Guardian newspaper which is where TAMARA DREWE and GEMMA BOVERY were originally serialised, and her liberal leftie, gratifyingly affluent readers turned up, whilst we promoted it in the world of comics so Talbot's regular readers who'd not even heard of Posy also appeared. And each bought the other's books for the unique opportunity of having them not only signed but sketched in for free.

We did the same for Hope Larson and her husband Bryan Lee O'Malley. Hope said it had been her most successful signing ever. Bryan said he'd never been asked to draw a gerbil before. That's the only time I've ever seen a pop-star queue full of squealing young ladies desperate to meet a comic book creator, or preferably Scott Pilgrim himself.

Exquisite Things: There have been numerous changes to the way Diamond does business, frequently to the detriment of smaller publishers and creators. As a store that seems to do its best to support lesser known creators, how do you feel about the current state of play?

Stephen: I used to be vociferously and quite vocally antipathetic towards Diamond when it was run by amateurs, and I probably still would be if I worked in America, but Diamond has a crew in the UK now who do actually care, and have raised the distributional standards dramatically to the extent that restocks of material outside of the confines of the superhero sandpit have become much more accessible. People like Mike Hollman and Chris Rice (who has always been a friend to comics), but also Liam at the warehouse and John Hitchen right at the top.

It's very easy for retailers to whine about things like price increases, but when the pound dropped below $1.50 it was almost inevitable that Diamond UK would have to raise their conversion rates. Yet they didn't. For months they persevered as the pound lingered around the $1.40 mark until finally hitting a nadir of $1.37 so then of course they announced a further increase... Only to rescind that increase before it even had chance to come into effect as the pound rallied.

I tell you, the screams and tantrums before that reprieve... And yet what choice did John have at $1.37? I sent an email in support of his decision to raise the rates, thanking him for having held off as long as he could, and I'm glad I did so because I later heard that some numptees were accusing Hitchen of trying to destroy the UK comics industry. Firstly, it's John's career so I really don't think so, plus I'd like to see those idiots who don't use other sources make a living from comics without an economically viable Diamond UK. It seems to me that a lot of comicbook retailers spend so much time in the la-la land of superheroes that they don't comprehend reality.

Having said all that, the international company's broader policy towards newcomer creators recently has been woefully short-sighted, and it seems their commitment to investing in the medium and therefore the industry has all but evaporated. They're raised the plateau of money they want to make from any individual product before they consider distributing it. That's understandable to a certain extent - their monthly catalogue is full of feckless, middle-of-the-road drivel that I'd swerve to run over in a second. Then I'd change gears and reverse over its bloodied corpse just to make sure it was dead. But there should be some mitigating judgement in that equation which evaluates artistic quality and potential. There should be someone on board like Top Shelf publisher Chris Staros who's good at discerning out finesse. Someone who says, "Okay, that comic doesn't meet our base sales requirement yet, but we see the potential or even our obligation to distribute it". There should be some fucking old-school patronage - a fostering love of the medium rather than their wholesale capitulation to corporate power.

And I don't see that happening. If I was high up in Diamond USA, I would want to be proud of what I could do for the medium and therefore the industry, instead of being a shameless and therefore shameful corporate collaborator who merely maintains the status quo, when any status quo is doomed to atrophy.

If Jeff Smith's BONE had been originally solicited under Diamond's current terms it would have been rejected, and as a direct result the whole series would almost certainly have been stillborn in its creative womb. Jeff Smith's BONE is now an international best seller. Millions of dollars are changing hands which Diamond could have a larger share of. But incidentally we have to use a different distributor to keep the colour versions of BONE in stock here.

Retailers are bombarded by Diamond on a daily basis with the most transparent, puerile claptrap which serves only to reinforce the current conformity which has historically strangled this medium and therefore industry in the US and UK for six decades. Why? Because Diamond USA are amateurs. Professionals would want to make more money, not less. I am a professional businessman, I do want to make more money, so to that end Page 45 has supported the medium in all its diversity for fifteen fucking years, and -- oh look, it's already paid off, with record sales in the middle of a recession, and the dividends can only grow bigger.

Exquisite Things: I know you had Tom Neely’s The Blot as comic book of the month last year, which isn’t a book you’d find in many UK comic shops. There’s a great deal of incredible work out there that simply bypasses Diamond’s distribution channels altogether. How do you keep up with self published material that crops up on the fringes of the comic book scene?

Stephen: Mark used to go out roving for new material like MILKKITTEN which he'd find at music festivals and which was an absolute sensation at Page 45, and Tom's about to do the same thing. In the meantime we both surf the web and search out the sites, and we're sent pages of new stuff all the time which is how we first discovered Gary Spencer Millidge's STRANGEHAVEN.

We'll look at everything so that, unlike most other retailers, being self-published doesn't diminish your chances of being stocked on our shelves, but we're no soft touch. Being self published gives you just as much chance as if you were part of the Vertigo brand. On the other hand, it doesn't give you an inherent right. We sell more copies of MILKKITTEN than we do of almost every DC comic for the simple reason that MILKKITTEN is genius, and we're proud to promote it.

Exquisite Things: Do you see the rise of digital distribution as a threat or an opportunity?

Jonathan: That's an interesting one because there's no doubt that digital distribution will probably be the only, never mind predominant format in the music medium before too long. Probably the same will be true also for computer and console games. And in the medium term (ten years or so) I don't doubt that better quality ebook readers will certainly capture a small but growing segment of the prose book market.

However, with respect to our industry it is very different and I think the area that highlights it best at the moment in some ways is manga. We get a lot of people who watch a particular anime but still want to purchase the manga as well and tell us they greatly prefer the books. It's one thing to replicate prose in a handy portable digital format, but artwork is another thing entirely. I think also that the publishers, with a mindful eye on the amount of file sharing that goes on in the music industry, are extremely reluctant to go down any sort of digital distribution route unless consumer preferences absolutely drive them to it, and I just can't see that happening for a very long time.

What will happen is more use of limited free digital distribution as a marketing tool. For example you can view an Adobe pdf file of the first issue of pretty much every Vertigo title at the DC site. DC know that more people are picking trades up rather than the single issues, that this is a trend that is only going to increase over time, and that they need to find other ways of ensuring people are aware of titles of interest to them in the future. It does generally appear that most publishers are exposing more interior content online for marketing purposes than they have previously.

Undoubtedly some people do read torrent files of material that are 'illegally' shared, but those people anecdotally still appear to be picking the trades up. Also I get the impression from chatting to people that often they are reading torrent files of titles they wouldn't have even bought in the first place, just out of mild 'continuity addiction', but it probably does serve to help stimulate their interest in the medium generally.

So I don't even see torrent files and the like being too much of a concern at the moment. Again, much like the music industry there is an argument to be made that they help generate interest in different material.

Stephen: Oh, it's great advertising for us, and I applaud it.

People love to have and to hold. They just do. It's a human thing: touch is a wonderful, warm sensation. The day I prefer to be curled up on my sofa with my plastic and metal computer than leaf through pages of exquisitely printed, textured paper book is the day I'll feel threatened.

Information is one thing - and it's a brilliant thing, as is accessibility - but craftsmanship is another. Wired Magazine interviewed me the other day, and I'm all for Longbox because it'll mean that exceptional comics like Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie's PHONOGRAM will be accessible to all rather than just those lucky enough to have a local comic shop. But most people will want to own a real physical copy of the book as well. PHONOGRAM: THE SINGLES CLUB is so bloody good that you'll want to lend it to your mates too, to impress upon them how cool you were in discovering it first!

So if you're a comic shop that stocks comics like PHONOGRAM, you can only benefit from Longbox and all other online appearances. If you stock nothing other than superheroes then you've just been circumvented, and it serves you fucking right.

Exquisite Things: You recently made the transition to an ePOS system. How’s the new technology working out for you and what have been the immediate gains?

Jonathan: Fantastically well, and the quick answer is three man-days a week time saving now we don't have to do the weekly stock check and assemble our orders manually. Also having an internet connection on the shop floor and being to check release dates of forthcoming comics, and checking whether books we don't currently stock are in print or available for interested customers is proving extremely useful.

Stephen: Tell me about it!

I love the new system, and Jonathan's being typically modest in failing to mention that if it wasn't for him, none of it would have happened. None of it. You can forget the ePOS system and you can most certainly forget the forthcoming website. I remember visiting Comix Experience in San Francisco and Brian Hibbs extoling the virtues of what an ePOS system had just done for him. This was late 2007 when Page 45 was basically being run by Tom and myself single- handedly. I knew there was no way we were capable of investing the time and thought to source and then populate any sort of electronic till. Plus we would never have had the expertise nor, I concede, would Mark have.

And then along comes Jonathan towards the end of 2008 as my new business partner, and suddenly our future is as bright as it was under Mark. Jonathan may have only had a year's retail experience so far, but what he brings to the team is a complete revelation and revolution. He used to market bio-hazard suits. Big bucks, but he chucked it all in because of his hatred of corporate back-biting and his love of Page 45. He's like the technological version of Alan Moore or Chris Ware: he works everything out in advance, calculating what goes where, when and why, how this affects that and what must come next. He keeps chuckling about the next big thing after the website and hasn't even told me what it is!

I'm serious. He hasn't told me, and I'm his fucking business partner!

Exquisite Things: Where do you see Page 45 five years from now and what challenges do you expect to face on the journey?

Tom: Shit, that'll make the shop twenty! It's bad enough as a 15-year-old with its silly haircut, spending all its time on the internet and tweeting its mates. And if I smell weed wafting through its doors again, we're having words! Still, at least he's got decent comics.

Stephen: The challenges will be those that any independent retailer faces against the corporate giants and rapacious landlords in their collaborative quest for a High Street utterly devoid of individuality. Don't look to short-sighted local councils for help, either. But as Tom rightly identified, and our customers are so kind to testify, trustworthiness is going to be the key. A service you can't get elsewhere.

But at the risk of sounding conceited, the big challenge came fifteen years ago: launching a comic shop that flew in the face of almost every other store in the US/UK and getting the ground work in then when it counted the most, just like Josh did at Gosh! right opposite the British Museum in London. As Mark wrote five years ago, everyone thought we were doing it wrong, which is one of the reasons that we felt we were doing it right. COMICS INTERNATIONAL editor Dez Skinn said we were doomed to failure; and then later on he hired me. Dez Skinn told retailers to diversify into plastic toys; Mark and I told them to diversify into other genres of comics instead.

We're breaking records. How's that plastic doing for you, fellas?

Interview by Matthew Dick. Many thanks to Stephen, Tom and Jonathan at Page 45 for taking the time. For more information on Page 45 visit their website here or email page45@page45.com.

This Week's Comics

2009-09-15T12:55:00.000-07:00

A quick selection of stand out titles arriving in comic stores this Thursday: (Wednesday if you’re in the USA):

PLUTO Vol. 5 by Naoki Urasawa

As reviewed below, this is damn fine stuff. I’m beginning to suspect some kind of paper based MSG subterfuge, developed by Japan’s top scientific minds to boost the sales of Pluto in the West. Compulsive reading, will leave you thirsty and wanting more.

TOM STRONG DELUXE EDITION BOOK 1 by Alan Moore & various artists.

Need an Alan Moore fix? How about this lavish hardcover edition of the first 12 issues of Tom Strong? Contributions by notable guest artists such as Al Gordon, Art Adams, Jerry Ordway, Dave Gibbons and Paul Chadwick.

WALKING DEAD #65 by Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard

Those zombies just keep on walking...

Pluto - Vols 1 & 2

2009-08-21T11:28:00.000-07:00

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the biggest manga aficionado. It’s something I’ve been attempting to rectify, but I find myself frequently put off by the sheer volume of material available. The seemingly endless rows of pocket sized books can be a daunting prospect for anyone attempting to suss out where to begin.

My own personal experience of eastern comics doesn’t extend much beyond the acknowledged classics, and apart from a few select Tezuka, Matsumoto and Tatsumi titles, my manga collection remains shamefully slight. Whilst I do my best to dip my toes in from time to time, I find myself relying largely on the advice of others when it comes to reading manga. Pluto was recommended to me by a good number of people and I have to admit, it’s a series I doubt I’d have given a second look without their seal of approval.

Naoki Urasawa’s book is a modern re-interpretation of Osamu Tezuka’s classic Astro Boy, given a full make over with a distinctly adult tone. This is not simply a rehash of Tezuka’s work, far from it, it’s a complete re-imagining of Astro Boy’s world, reconstructed from the ground up, taking its cues from modern science fiction and contemporary politics. Urasawa retains the key concerns of Tezuka’s original, but also adds in a dash of Asimov to create a well realised world where robots and humans co-exist, all the while keeping a keen eye on the social and political implications of his futuristic status quo.

Instead of focusing on Tezuka’s original flagship character Astro Boy, Urasawa instead chooses to follow the exploits of Inspector Gesicht, a top robot detective tasked with investigating the murder of Mont Blanc, one of the world’s seven most advanced robots. The story begins at the scene of the crime, a shocking topography of scattered limbs and twisted metal that immediately elicits a media frenzy and widespread public outcry. You see, Mont Blanc isn’t just any old robot, he’s a celebrity, a decorated war veteran and much loved public figure, best know for his humanitarian work. In Urasawa’s future world, robots are an integral part of society, living out their lives in much the same way as their human counterparts, taking holidays, raising a families and working for a living.

As Gesicht’s investigation gets underway he quickly rules out the possibility of a human suspect, based solely on the strength required to destroy a robot of Mont Blanc’s stature. But when the same killer strikes again, this time targeting a human robot rights activist, the murders take on a more troubling dimension. As the body count begins to mount, Gesicht is forced to contemplate the notion of a robot who may be capable of breaking the most fundamental of robotic laws; to do no harm to humans.

These added complications make for a potentially explosive case, one which could have massive ramifications should Gesicht’s suspicions turn out to be correct. In all of human history, there’s only one recorded case of a robot killing a human. With the perpetrator of said crime under lock and key, Gesicht has little to draw on as he tries to fathom the motivation behind the crimes, but perhaps the ‘insane’ robot locked in the depths of a high security prison knows more than he’s letting on. Is it possible that a robot could experience happiness, sadness, anger or perhaps even murderous rage?

As Urasawa’s murder mystery unfolds, he deftly explores the social and political landscape, examining the implications of a world where robots form a large chunk of society. Urasawa tackles everything from modern warfare to discrimination and does a wonderful job of really getting under the skin of his characters, be they robot or human. As the first two volumes progress, the plot thickens rapidly, ramping up in intensity as more of the world’s seven greatest robots are picked off by the seemingly unstoppable killer.

Pluto makes for compulsive reading, something I’d attribute to both Urasawa's knack for intrigue, and manga’s typically high octane pacing. Despite its ‘mile a minute’ narrative flow, Pluto maintains an emotional depth that can hit surprisingly hard. I won’t spoil anything for you, but just wait till you read North No. 2’s story in Volume one. It’s emotional stuff, and has been known to reduce grown men to tears. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

If you’re looking for smart, well constructed science fiction, you need look no further.