Oliver East is the writer and artist behind indie comic Trains are Mint, whose first three issues have recently been collected by fledgling publisher Blank Slate. The comic charts Oliver’s walks along routes in and around Manchester. In this interview, recorded in a café in Manchester, he talks about his art education, the concept behind Trains are Mint and his thoughts about making art and about comics generally. The interview was conducted and transcribed by Matt Badham, copy-edited by Matt Badham and Oliver East; big thanks to Matt for taking the trouble to conduct this interview and to Oli for taking part.
Matt Badham: Hi, Oliver. Could we start with you telling us about your art education, please?
Oliver East: To start with, I did an art foundation course. It was the only course that I could get on. At school I just wanted to be at university. At first I wanted to be an archaeologist. I was crap at school, but later learned that I was quite badly dyslexic, which is where my stammer comes from.
MB: They’re related?
OE: Yeah. A certain part of my brain works too fast for the speech part of my brain to keep up. That’s not to suggest that I’m hyper-intelligent in any way. There’s broken connections in there that mean I think too fast for my words to come out properly. I think, anyway.
I did a foundation course in Art at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), even though I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with that. Then, at the end of the foundation course, they do something that’s called direct progression. You can apply to go on a degree at MMU without having to go through UCAS. The opportunity to avoid filling out any forms and probably a lack of ambition, in that I was happy to stay in Manchester, meant that I went for their course, Interactive Arts. Even at that point I still hadn’t worked out what turned me on art-wise until the beginning of the second year. I started playing around with pinhole cameras. Throughout the second year I experimented with all kinds of stuff. I built a simple camera out of an old Smash tin, covered it in breadcrumbs stuck to it with glue and put it in amongst a big flock of pigeons. It was brilliant. I loved it.
(Oli East – on the left – posing with the Banal Pig boys at last year’s Bristol International Comics Expo)
MB: The course allowed you to experiment and try things like sculpture and video and that kind of thing? You didn’t draw on the course?
OE: No. On the first day of the first year, they pretty much said, “Do what you want, just don’t get arrested.” That worked for some people… that course was the best thing that ever happened to me in terms of education, not just because my tutor in the first year spotted something in me that made him think that I should be tested for dyslexia. After that I had a learning support tutor who kind of taught me how I learn.
MB: It’s almost as though you’ve been in an education system that is one size fits all and then you’re thrust into an educational environment that is about finding your own size.
OE: It’s no accident that something like 70% of art students are dyslexic.
MB: I’d never heard that.
OE: It’s something to do with the way that the dyslexic’s brain works. You think in three dimensions and you can turn things around and see them from all different angles. I don’t use a sketchbook. I just sketch it out in my head and draw it first time.
MB: So, could it be said that dyslexia is just a more visually acute way of processing information?
OE: Yes, exactly. The course worked for some people in that they thrived in an atmosphere where you could just do whatever you wanted. It didn’t work for the people who needed some direction and boundaries. There were sculptors and performance artists and more traditional painters on the course, all sorts of people. I threw myself into learning all I could about pinhole photography. For my third year I built a ten-foot by five-foot train set, which recreated the journey from Manchester Oxford Road to Bolton. I turned each of the carriages into a colour pinhole camera that took pictures of the train set as it went around, which was alright in the end. It led to better things.
(a more rural scene from Trains Are Mint, published Blank Slate Books and (c) Oliver East)
MB: It’s not the sort of thing that necessarily furthers your career, is it?
OE: There are people I studied with who are quite bitter about the course because they didn’t get a particular trade or anything, or a particular talent that they could take into any kind of job. There were people who did that though. There was a guy who taught himself 3D animation and now he’s working in Los Angeles.
MB: The course was what you made of it.
OE: Yeah. I didn’t make the best of it because my theoretical skills are still quite poor. I didn’t attend many lectures because I can’t take notes when people are talking to me. They’re just talking at me. And if someone’s continually talking at me I just wander off in my head.
MB: But conversation is fine because there’s a back and forth?
OE: Conversation’s absolutely fine, especially if it’s about me.
(Laughter)
OE: I don’t mind that whatsoever because I’m your textbook only child of a single parent. To talk about me is fantastic, I love it.
MB: It’s interesting that the dyslexia diagnosis came as a relief to you.
OE: I don’t mind saying that when they told me that I was dyslexic I wept like a baby. All this frustration…they told me when I was 21 so I’d already gone through a lot of education, which hadn’t really worked out for me. It just explained everything. It explained a lot of frustration, a lot of reasons why teachers had always said that I seemed perfectly capable, but they didn’t think that I was trying. All this kind of stuff.
MB: I interviewed the 2000 AD artist, Henry Flint and he talked about being dyslexic and said that his diagnosis sorted out a lot of stuff for him about why he was in lower sets and had problems at school.
OE: I didn’t think that I was smart. I though that I was stupid. I still do. I don’t know a lot about anything. But it did explain a lot and it was just the best thing that could have happened at the time.
MB: We’ve digressed a bit. Going back to the train set. Why a train set? Why did you choose to recreate a train journey?
OE: The journey from Manchester to Bolton is personal to me because it’s a journey I make at least twice a year, at Christmas and Easter.
MB: Are your family from Bolton?
OE: No, we’re from Manchester, but cos there’s only two of us, my mum and me, we kind of adopted another family as our own. We wanted a bigger family, so we said, ‘Right, we’ll have you guys.’
MB: I’m not going to ask who they are, because that feels too invasive.
OE: I wanted to make a grand gesture for my final piece for my third year. To me, this huge train with, I think, 12 accompanying photographs in frames seemed like a good idea at the time. Looking back on it I could have done it better if this was a bit smaller, possibly. But I like to make things on a grand scale.
MB: Did you have any ideas about what you were going to do after university?
OE: What happened, from my degree show I got offered an exhibition in small gallery at Salford University called The Glass Box. I attempted to turn a two-man tent into a pinhole camera and take it to caravan parks to take pictures of caravans, but it didn’t work out at all. It was crap. It was awful. I had two days left to go to the opening and I had no photographs at all, and so I decided to write about my efforts to get this tent to work. It included conversations trying to describe what I was doing to owners of the caravan parks and to people who pulled me up and asked me what I was doing.
MB: So, you’re dyslexic but, in a moment of adversity, you decided to do a text-based piece.
OE: Well, I’d never consciously written anything creative before, but I had two days until the opening of this exhibition and no photographs. The exhibition ended up being the tent put up in the middle of the floor and I’d written all over the walls. It worked out really well, probably better than if the camera had actually worked.
MB: So it’s slice of life. As with Trains are Mint, reflecting on other things and other people. Trains and caravans. The experience of the walk and of trying to put together an exhibition. The people you meet and see on your walks and in the caravan parks. And there’s a documentary element.
OE: After it turned out that the tent thing had worked out better with the writing as opposed to photographs, I became interested in how people go about making the work that they make and how things can go wrong.
MB: The process then?
OE: Yeah, the crumpled up bits of paper that no one ever sees. I decided to do something that would either put me in awkward or difficult situations that I could get good writing out of. Get me out of my comfort zone kind of thing. So, over the course of a year, I read Dr Doolittle to a herd of cows in Stretford.
MB: How did you decide to do that?
OE: I’ve no idea. I just thought that it would be interesting, kind of awkward and wouldn’t be an easy thing to do. So I took a film camera and over the course of a year I tried to read it and it was exhibited in International 3 in Manchester.
MB: How were you funding this?
OE: I worked in bars for 12 years, up until last July, and my wife supported me. I’m self-employed now. The exhibition was four video screens on the wall alongside printed text describing my efforts to do this. I kind of enjoyed how that had turned out, but I didn’t want to wait for an exhibition space to come up.
MB: To clarify, you go to this field for a year. How many times a week and how long did you stay there? And you read Dr Doolittle to cows?
OE: I tried my best, but they weren’t big fans of me being there.
MB: And where were the cameras?
OE: Wherever it wasn’t muddy and wherever it looked like the cows couldn’t get to them.
MB: On fixed tripods?
OE: Yeah.
MB: Shown as four fixed images when exhibited?
OE: Four videos edited down from all the footage.
MB: With cut scenes.
OE: Yeah. I’d never done film previously.
MB: You’ve got this real learn by doing ethic. Is that something else you got from the course?
OE: I guess so. I mean, after the cow thing I wanted to do a walk. I didn’t want to wait to have to apply for money or be offered an exhibition anywhere. The natural progression from doing videos with text into something that would get the work out there quicker seems to be a comic. It’s the same kind of thing. It’s still text and images. But I’d never drawn before, ever. Not since school. This was 2005. I thought I could squirrel myself and learn to draw or just get on with it…the thing about Trains are Mint is that I wanted to learn to draw in front of my audience. I’m putting PDFs of my early mini comics up.
MB: The House of Fire to Black Hill.
(House of Fire to Black Hill by Oliver East; you can check it out as a free PDF on Oli’s Rolling Stock Press site)
OE: The House of Fire is a fireplace shop just round the corner from me on the top of Stretford Road and if you look down Stretford Road you can see a hill in the Peaks and I just tried to walk in as much of a straight line as possible from one to the other.
MB: So this is a proto-Trains are Mint.
OE: Yeah.
MB: This was after the cow show, although it probably wasn’t called the cow show.
OE: As well as the cow thing I was commissioned by the owners of the gallery to produce a book as well. It was the first time that I’d ever produced a book in any kind of form. I went to Norway and I tried to camp exactly 150 metres away from people’s houses for 28 days.
MB: Exactly?
OE: Because there’s a law in Norway that says you can camp anywhere for free so long as you’re 150 metres from people’s houses. So I went to try and camp exactly that distance away.
MB: Did your course give you the ability to embrace chance and randomness to produce work?
OE: I guess so.
MB: It sounds like a lot of your art comes from asking a what if question?
OE: I always kind of had a hang up with the fact that I considered myself to have a lack of innate talent in any one particular field, so I couldn’t draw, didn’t think that I could write well. I guess it was just a matter of putting myself in situations where I find out stuff about myself as much as the project that I set.
MB: I suppose the other constant element, after the exhibition at the Glass Box, is that you started to put yourself bang in the middle of your artworks.
OE: Yeah, but that’s the only child in me isn’t it?
(Laughter)
OE: It’s kind of weird, though, I do like being the centre of attention, but if you really like Trains are Mint and you were going on about it for a while, I’d be quite uncomfortable about it. I do want you to like my book, but keep it to yourself or tell me once but don’t go on about it. But, apart from that, yeah, I just love being the centre of attention.
MB: Do you edit Trains are Mint, or do you just put it down as it comes?
OE: I make a point not to. I do spell-check, up to a point…I’m kind of treading a line where I like to write how people talk. So, people don’t say, ‘do you?’ they say ‘d’you?’ I won’t correct that.
MB: So, that’s about vernacular.
OE: Yeah, but I’m trying to, like, rein it in a bit, because if you do it too much it can be twee and annoying. And I’m kind of aware that non-English people will pick up Trains are Mint and I don’t want to alienate anyone.
MB: Yeah, it got pimped in The Comics Journal. A nice, big Paul Gravett pimp.
OE: He’s been really good. He’s been really nice. When I did the first Trains are Mint, a friend of mine who used to write about comics for Flux magazine suggested that I send a copy to Paul and he’s been really good to me since then, helping me out with mentions here and there. I did the 24-hour comic thing at the ICA last October because of him.
MB: How did you find that?
OE: I wouldn’t do it again, but it was brilliant. I had a ball. I did cheat a bit in that I didn’t do it all in 24 hours. I enjoy my sleep too much not to have a good night’s kip. I did it in 16 hours.
MB: Your first mini comics. We were talking about those and took a massive digression. How were they distributed and received?
OE: I didn’t know that people self-published comics. I didn’t know anything about printing out mini comics or anything. I just printed them out at MARC (Manchester Area Resource Centre), which is just round the corner, into editions of a 100. I gave them out to people in the bars that I worked at. I did three and didn’t really know if I was going to do anything like that again, but I enjoyed the investment involved, the process of working on something for quite awhile, and then giving it to my friends for free. It was quite nice.
MB: Presumably, though, having done various other projects previously, which involved creating artwork, you were used to the solitary and painstaking aspect of making comics?
OE: At this time, while making The House of Fire, I had a studio by Piccadilly Train Station, and, yeah, I do enjoy working on my own. I’m good on my own. I don’t have to talk to anyone, and so I don’t have to stammer.
MB: You said that you distributed the mini comics in bars.
OE: I didn’t know that kind of thing could get into shops and that. I didn’t know anything about Travelling Man in Manchester or any kind of websites that sold these kind of things. I just made them and gave them away.
MB: Did you ever have any notion about doing your art as a career? Was that always at the back of your mind?
OE: Yeah, although I never made any work to further my career or anything. I didn’t want to make art solely to make cash but, you know, I did always want to do art full-time and get paid for it. I’m getting closer to that now. Doing illustrations for the band Elbow gave me a good half-year’s worth of money. But it will be difficult, if not damn near impossible, to have a career in self-published comics, but I’ll have a good stab at it. It’s always going to be difficult to sell psycho-geographical comics about the North West of England to people.
MB: I’m not sure that’s true. I think, actually, that people are responding to Trains are Mint for a couple of reasons. I originally had the series pegged as outsider art, but I’m starting to wonder if folk art is a more appropriate category. People respond to it because of its element of social documentary. And it’s colourful and bright, and it’s nice to see you as an artist evolving on the page. Was the element of social documentary and social history, the interaction with people and landscape, also there in your early mini comics?
OE: Yeah, it’s just the same as in Trains are Mint. It’s a precursor. The art’s pretty bad, but the writing is as good as anything in Trains are Mint. I’m quite confident when it comes to writing. I know when something I write is good because it comes out really easily. It’s the best feeling in the world as a dyslexic artist, when you’re in the flow of getting some text out and it’s comes out really easily. It’s the best high, personally. As someone who has always struggled in education, to be in the position where you’re writing something really good and it’s coming really easily, it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m good at something after all.’
MB: Is it kind of proving a point?
OE: I don’t think that I’ve proved it yet, because Trains are Mint is not big enough for me to have proved anything yet. The self-published comics world is such a small world. I mean, the world of Bugpowder and Forbidden Planet and The Comics Reporter is really small. And only a handful of people in that small world have heard of Trains are Mint, so it is really small. It hasn’t crossed over into the world of people who don’t buy comics.
MB: I think it could. People who don’t read comics that I show Trains are Mint to respond to it.
OE: The people behind Blank Slate work for Forbidden Planet and told me that there are people in the warehouse there who only read superhero comics who like it so it’s got potential. But even if the Blank Slate collection is a massive hit, I’ve still not made a brilliant comic yet and I won’t be happy until I have.
(the station cat, one of the characters which I’m guessing a lot of busy commuters often don’t even notice, who Oli encounters in his travels for the fifth part of Trains Are Mint, borrowed from his blog and (c) Oliver East)
MB: So, you yourself have got a bit of a downer on Trains are Mint.
OE: Yeah.
MB: Despite it being bigged up in The Comics Journal and the general response and the Elbow stuff…
OE: I like it. Don’t get me wrong. I think that the concept of Trains are Mint is a sound one that’ll keep me going for a while. I think that it’s a good comic. The latest one, Trains are Mint 5, is moving it more in the right direction.
MB: It’s become and more of a comic rather than text and pictures side by side.
OE: When I did the first three I’d finished the third before the first had come out, but I still didn’t know anything about comics. I was a big comic fan as a kid, but stopped reading them. As an adult I’d never heard of Chris Ware or anyone like that. After the third Trains are Mint came out my wife bought me Jimmy Corrigan. I was like, ‘This is brilliant.’ I did the first three issues of Trains are Mint without thinking of them as anything other than a book, but then when I saw them in print and after I saw what else people were doing, people like Jeffrey Brown, I thought, ‘Hold on, Trains are Mint is a comic.’
MB: So, previously you’d just thought of it as a collision of words and pictures.
OE: I just thought of it as the cow thing on paper. So it was text plus image. I’m still learning a lot about comics and what’s out there, but it’s difficult, especially on this side of the pond, to see where the great artists are. Who are the British creators to look up to, certainly in terms of self-published work? Personally, I think Malcy Duff is brilliant. I just think that he’s fantastic. But, then there’s a big drop-off after him in terms of looking up to artists and thinking that’s the level of quality that I want to achieve.
MB: I am starting to think that the British small press comics community is slightly handicapped by this culture of bigging people up no matter what. It’s like you cannot criticise people because it’s seen as negative, but actually decent critical feedback helps artists improve.
OE: I was really pleased when The Daily Crosshatch asked me to write about British small press comics. And if someone sends me something and it’s bad I will say so.
MB: That’s how people develop.
OE: I don’t have any friends in comics anyway, so I can’t lose any. I can only think of a few creators that I’m on first name terms with. I have been edited quite a lot for The Daily Crosshatch, because my natural writing style is quite irreverent. I reviewed an exhibition and half of the review was taken up with an account of a chance meeting with a smackhead that we had on the way to the exhibition. I was asked to rewrite that. I’ve also been edited by them and it’s kind of odd when you write something that you consider has a good rhythm to it and it gets edited, and it’s not edited badly, but that rhythm has been blunted slightly.
MB: Is there a lack of decent critical writing on the British small press scene?
OE: I’m not sure what Bugpowder is trying to do, apart from being a newsblog. I can’t pinpoint any sales that I’ve made because I’ve had a mention on it. I don’t know what good it is.
MB: Tell us more about your involvement The Daily Crosshatch?
OE: I got an email from them asking if I knew anyone who might be interested in writing a column about our small press comics scene. I suggested you or Richard Bruton. Then, at the end of the email, I said that I’d like to have a stab at it. I don’t get paid for it, so I probably spend a day a week on it. I can’t afford to spend too much time on it, because if I’m doing that, I could be drawing instead. It does give me opportunities to see what’s out there and try and find out if there are any good comics on the scene that I’m just not really aware of. I’m doing things now that I wouldn’t be doing if not for this column. I’m going to Edinburgh to a small pubcon there. It’ll get me to go to comic shops that I haven’t got to yet, like OK Comics in Leeds. I’ll go now and do a report on it.
MB: You can be quite outspoken and have been on your blog.
OE: I’ve got this thing in my head that hardly anyone reads my blog. I can say whatever I want and hardly anyone’s going to see it anyway. I think the people who are interested in Trains are Mint…I didn’t want to crap on about my everyday life…I wanted it to be opinionated in certain ways to separate it from your average blog, which can be quite dull. And I am quite opinionated, but I don’t always have the right opinion. I often contradict myself, because that’s part of life isn’t it? I’ve offended people I’ve never even met and it’s the worst idea probably because I just came out of it looking like an arse. I don’t mind that though.
MB: Didn’t you say something about London Underground Comics?
OE: No. I once said that Tales from the Flat was crap. They then put a quote from me on their blog, which I thought was brilliant because it just turned it round and made me look like an arse. But I don’t mind that. That’s humans. People make mistakes and say the wrong thing. I wanted to show that in Trains are Mint and on my blog.
MB: Warts and all. Learning by doing. Learning in public.
OE: I don’t want to do it too much. I want people to see that I’m fallible. I make mistakes every day and that’s part of life.
MB: How much of a publicity thing is the blog and how much another strand of your work?
OE: Personally I think that my blog was better when I worked in a bar because I worked in a bar where I didn’t have to do much work all day. I was pretty much sat on my arse for six hours a day and it gave me a chance to do some creative writing that I would then stick on my blog. But I don’t work in bars any more. If I’ve got time to be doing any writing then I should really be doing the comic, because my wife’s supported me financially for three years and so I’ve gotta make the most of my time being self-employed. I’ve kinda let the blog slip a bit, but I’m still an attention-seeking only child who needs to be heard. It’s just a way for me to let people know that I’m still here. But I don’t want it to just be news so I try and write as creatively as I can on it.
MB: Back to Trains are Mint. We’d talked about your career up until the third issue’s completion and first one’s release. What was the print run for Trains are Mint 1?
OE: 500. I’ve still got about 50 left of the first one after nearly two years.
MB: Have they paid for themselves?
OE: In theory. One thing that I’m still not very good at it is promoting the books, giving them to shops and that. As soon as the book’s out I lose interest in trying to promote them and get on with drawing the next one, which I’m trying to rectify with Trains are Mint 5, which has a print run of 1000. That cost two grand.
MB: Sold for a fiver.
OE: Via shops I usually come out with £3 each.
MB: Presumably you give out some comp copies.
OE: I’m trying to keep a close eye on where all the copies of Trains are Mint 5 are going. So far I’ve given away 32 copies to either friends or reviews. But the thing with sending them away to get reviewed is that you don’t tend to get much of a return on reviews. I might get a review on the mini comics blog, Size Matters and sell two copies off the back of that. So, you’ve given one copy away to sell two. I do like it when people write about Trains are Mint, but it’s sometimes difficult to see what the return is, if it’s worth doing. I might send a copy to The Comics Reporter and they don’t pick it up, so that’s a copy down the drain. And I’m trying to fund Trains are Mint 6, so I’ve got to keep a close eye on who’s worth sending a copy to and who’s not. I’m still learning.
MB: I suppose that when something happens like getting the job to illustrate for Elbow, it’s good…
OE: Probably the best thing that’s happened in terms of selling Trains are Mint.
(Oli’s art for the band Elbow)
MB: …but another learning curve in terms of being self-employed for the first time.
OE: I didn’t train as an illustrator. But I wouldn’t be where I am now anyway if I had trained as an illustrator. I would have picked up tips about how to source the work as well as do it. Stuart Kolakovic is a trained illustrator as well as being someone who makes comics. He’s got up some work up next to HMV in Manchester. He earns cash that way. The Elbow album isn’t out in the States yet [actually it is now, but wasn’t when this interview was recorded] and I’m still kind of hoping someone will pick it up and really like my art, and hire me off the back of that. If I can do three jobs like the Elbow job in a year then I’ll be happy, and that’ll fund Trains are Mint 6, 7 and 8, but still have money left over to live on.
MB: How did the Elbow job come about?
OE: They’re good friends of mine. I managed their local bar for five years. They were working on this album and they said that they were looking for someone to do the album sleeve and I jokingly said, ‘I’ll do it.’ And they went, ‘Yeah, alright then.’ And so they let me have a go at it. I took some work in that I’d done for Trains are Mint 5, because I was still working on it at this point, and the band really liked it. So I met the record label and they fell in love with Trains are Mint and it went on from there.
MB: Tell us a bit about your art style, which is hard, for me at least, to encapsulate in a few words. The way you draw people, for example.
OE: If you have a look at the first few Trains are Mint there are really simplified representations of people, but there’s also the odd time that I’ve tried to draw the way people look and I can’t draw that way. If I make a conscious effort to try and draw things the way that they look then they look bad, whereas if I relax a bit and try and draw elements of things then it works a lot better. I was having a look again at The House of Fire trilogy the other day which I’d always said the art was really poor in, but in some ways the people that I’ve drawn in there are a lot better than the people I’ve drawn in Trains are Mint. I don’t know why, it’s just that I was a lot more relaxed with the House of Fire than I was with Trains are Mint. I think that with the first three Trains are Mint I’d made a conscious effort that this was what I was going to do now for quite a while, whereas with House of Fire they were almost like throwaway items that I wasn’t sure that I was ever going to do again. I’m still kind of figuring out how I draw people. I’m getting there slowly.
MB: Were you surprised by the positive attention and relative success of Trains are Mint?
OE: No. I thought that it would appeal to certain people who had the same concerns as me.
MB: You go on these walks and follow train tracks as closely as possible, and that’s the basic premise. You then record that in Trains are Mint. What’s the process of documenting the walks?
OE: I stick as closely to the train tracks as I can without trespassing. The only choice that I ever have to make is whether I go down the right-hand side or the left-hand side. The choice of where I go is taken out of my hands. I don’t make sketches and I don’t take a camera. I take extensive written notes, but only stuff that I think along the way. I never take any descriptive notes of how things look. That’s important for me in that if I was to take a camera or a sketch book then I’d be hung up about making the drawings representational. If I took a photograph of a street or a sketch of a field I’d be obsessed about making it look like what it’s supposed.
But what I do is walk, leave it a month or two so until my memory is a bit hazy and then I draw from memory. But then I try and make it look how I remember it. In Trains are Mint 5 I did a drawing of UMIST and the old fire station on Whitworth Street. If I’d worked from sketches and photos then it would have been a bad drawing because it would never look like what it’s supposed to look like. Maybe it’s another way of avoiding bad drawings. By having this way of drawing from memory, maybe it’s like having a get out of jail free card.
MB: Are Trains are Mint and the Elbow stuff the things you’re doing exclusively or are there other things going on?
OE: I just do Trains are Mint. I want to make a brilliant book one day and I’m just working on that all the time. I teach part-time for 20 weeks a year. That’s on a History of Film and Media course. It’s a theory-based course, but I get them to do workshops that help them appreciate where artists come from. They do all kinds of things like film, photography and creative writing.
MB: So, you’re actually tasking them to make art so they get an appreciation of process.
OE: These are theory-based students who, out of 40 students, I think that I’ve got one who did art as a GCSE. They’ve never done stuff like this before. The stuff I set them is quite basic if you come from an art background. It’s just getting them to think in different ways than they’ve ever thought previously. For example, I drew three squares on a map of Manchester and asked them to record the square in any way that they see fit.
MB: Record the square? So they can choose the medium?
OE: Freaks them out, which is brilliant. This student last year picked up all the plastic bags she found in a square and made a dress out of them. And she’d never done any art previously. Pretty good.
MB: So, what does the future hold?
OE: I’d like to have a publisher for my next book and then the one after that. I’d like to be confident that I could find a publisher for my next project.
MB: Beyond Trains are Mint?
OE: Yeah. At the moment I’ve done Trains are Mint 5, which is the first part of a big book.
MB: What are Blank Slate collecting?
OE: The first three issues.
MB: As a hardback?
OE: Yeah. Trains are Mint 5 is the first part of a walk that’ll probably be seen through to Trains are Mint 8. That’s, like, four books there. Trains are Mint 5 cost me two grand and I got that on the cheap as well. So I have to decide whether it’s worth printing 6, 7 and 8 as well, or whether it’s better to wait until I’ve done all of that and then self-publish it as one book. So, what I’m going to do is finish off 6, 7 and 8 and then see if Blank Slate want to publish it. If not, I’ll offer it around to someone else.
If that doesn’t work, which it probably won’t, I’ll self-publish it as a collection. You know, like the guy who did The Blot in the States. It was a wordless comic in a soft-bound cover. It’s quite thick. Top Shelf offered to publish it, but he decided to do it himself. The thing is, Trains are Mint 5 isn’t really like a small press book. It’s a bit better quality than something you’d get from the local copy shop. I’d like to see if I could take a proper stab at publishing it and getting it well received. And to do that I need to get it distributed as well. But if I can get someone else to sort all that though, then so much the better.
(a nicely observed little street scene from Trains Are Mint, (c) Oliver East)
MB: Beyond Trains are Mint do you have any inkling of what you might be doing though?
OE: I just want to make the best Trains are Mint that I can and then we’ll see what happens after that. But I’m pretty far away from doing that.
MB: Do you think you’ll still be working in comics?
OE: I think that I’ll always draw now. It doesn’t come naturally though. I don’t ever draw unless I’m doing something for Trains are Mint. I don’t doodle or anything. But I have learnt to love drawing now. Previously it was a bit of a chore. I think I’ll always do comics, because no matter how small a world it is, and it is, I kind of enjoy being part of this little gang that’s not really appreciated by a lot of people. We know how good comics can be, but hardly anyone else does and that can be frustrating, but it’s kind of cool as well. But I do want Trains are Mint to be successful and to be bought by people who don’t normally like comic books.
Having said that, I don’t want people to be able to understand it as soon as they pick it up. I want them to be made to think. Even if they don’t automatically like it, if they’re still thinking about it when they put it down then it’s worked to some degree. My mum explains it as not completing the circle. I don’t want to give you all the information that you need. I want you to bring something else to it and even if you don’t understand it in the way that I meant it to be understood, if you’re still thinking about it then it’s worked.
MB: Perhaps that why the response has been positive.
OE: Positive so far.
MB: Well, I haven’t heard anyone say anything bad. Maybe I’m talking to the wrong people.
(Laughter)
OE: It was difficult when it first came out. It’s not enough of a comic for some comic people, but it was too much of a comic for arty people. It’s not quite an artist’s book, but, especially with the first three, also not quite enough of a comic. So, I’m not sure it’s been as well received as it could have been.
MB: At first glance some people get put off?
OE: Some comic fans aren’t open-minded enough to give it a chance. They’re very set in their ways about what a comic should be. I didn’t know what a comic could be before I made Trains are Mint. In fact, I don’t think that it’s been received that well, it just so happened that someone who liked it happened to be starting up a publishing company.
MB: And someone else who liked it happened to be Paul Gravett, which is always good.
OE: Even though Paul Gravett is big in terms of comics, he’s still pretty small. You ask anyone in here who he is and they won’t have a clue. All I’m really arsed about is making a brilliant comic, but I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t matter what people thought. If, from all the people in here, even one person had heard of Trains are Mint I’d be over the moon. That is better to me than a good review on The Comics Reporter because this is the real world. As much as I want to be accepted in the comics world, and I don’t think that I am yet, I’d much rather be accepted by non-comics people. Kenny Penman from Blank Slate seems to think that it has got that crossover potential, but we’ll see how that pans out.
MB: You want other people to like you. You want them to like your work.
OE: I’m needy.
(Laughter)
MB: Do you like yourself?
OE: I wouldn’t pull that thread.
(Laughter)
MB: I better not. Tell me about Manchester Council and the stickers instead.
OE: I got gripped for sticking Trains are Mint stickers up everywhere.
MB: What was the consequence?
OE: All my friends told me to lie to them about it, say it was fans that put them up, but I went in and told the truth. I said that I put them up to promote my art and didn’t realise that it was illegal. They produced a load of photographs of the stickers as evidence. They produced about 14 photographs and then they produced photographs with signs everywhere that said there was no flyposting allowed. It was recorded and everything. It was like something out of The Bill. It was hilarious. At the end of it I told them that there were far more out there than they were aware of. And they basically just told me not to do it again.
MB: You got away with it. Not a bad note to end the interview on. Oliver, thanks for you time.
OE: My pleasure.
The new Trains are Mint collection is available from Blank Slate now via the Forbidden Planet International webstore and our branches. You can also get hold of it from Page 45 in Nottingham, OK Comics in Leeds and Gosh! In London; it should feature in the July Previews catalogue too, so expect to see it in more stores in the near future. Thanks again to Matthew for conducting this interview.
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