The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Jim Medway is a well known name in the UK comics field, with his own work (his Crab Lane Crew in the DFC was a particular favourite of our own Richard and Molly), comics workshops and now a new project, an online, bi-monthly comic drawing on a range of contributing talents and aimed squarely at younger readers, Comical Animal. Kenny decided it was time to chat to Jim about the new project and his own views on the state of the once-thriving kid’s comics scene in the UK.

Kenny Penman: So Jim, you are about to fully launch your ‘Comic Animals‘ website, which is a meeting place for artists to show their animal work and for fans to get lots of new content every month. What brought you to do this for a ‘genre’ of comics, which has often been ignored by adult readers and collectors?

Jim Medway: A significant part of me thinks Comical Animal is just a foolish experiment that is going to consume much of my (and others) already precious free time. Despite this, I’m giving it a go anyway. I’m fairly disillusioned with small press and minicomics, even though I’ve only dipped my toe in briefly. While there’s plenty of talent they seem to form their own audience, with very little of it reaching anyone outside of that circle. More than that, I’m constantly underwhelmed by the big press titles that line the shelves in the comic shops. Unless the shop owner has made a positive concerted effort to stock and display kids titles, you are going to struggle to find anything appropriate for under 12′s. Why do you need to go to Waterstone’s for Asterix and Tintin books? Has anyone ever seen a copy of the Beano or Dandy in a comic shop? – I can’t recall ever seeing one, even though those are our national comics!

Is it that artists are just not creating for kids? Certainly all the interesting, top of their game artists are producing work for an exclusively adult audience. Some publishers seem to be making an effort for kids (Toon Books for example), but these seem somehow worthy and more aimed at parents than something kids would chose. Yes, there’s beautifully packaged reprints of classic all-ages material, but what kids can afford hardbacks? Take the Peanuts reprints – it’s almost a deliberate attempt to prevent children ever opening one – drab design, overfacing scale, too heavy to hold and too expensive to ever consider. The same material worked perfectly in the old cheap paperback collections of the 80′s. Drawn & Quarterly’s John Stanley Library is kids material repackaged for adult completists – beautifully presented but what kid is going to pick it from the shelves? There’s a whole generation growing up without access to decent comics. I guess Comical Animal is my way of finding out if there might an appetite for new all-ages strips, and the artists keen to provide it.

I know very little about webcomics, but it seems the way to do this is provide the material for free, then hopefully once we reach a significant number of subscribers (say 1,000) we might be able to sell enough nice bits of merchandise to make it worth the time invested in it. At this early stage I’m relying on the enthusiasm and generosity of all the great contributors, and that’s why making each issue every two months feels not too demanding on their time. As it grows, I anticipate that I’ll be able to attract even more talent, while still trying to encourage younger artists just starting out. The ‘Adopt an Animal’ scheme seems like a potential way of attracting advertisers or sponsors without ugly banners and ads all over the place. It’s based loosely on how real zoos generate income and engagement by offering similar schemes, though by sponsoring our cartoon creatures you are really keeping the artist alive.

I understand this is all very naively optimistic, but what the hell, let’s see how it all goes. I like funny animals, and I’m confident we’ve got some great content, all freely accessible.

KP: You touch on comic shops there and in effect the distribution system for comics. I know you aren’t a lover of comics shops – is that specifically because they tend not to stock much all-ages material or just you think they are badly run and focussed? How do you think they improve? I think one of the problems for them stocking material aimed at kids is they aren’t really bringing many kids through the doors in the first place. For me that ‘s two sides of an unwritten story – parents don’t bring kids to comics stores, so comics stores don’t stock kids material – they take them to Waterstone’s instead and they read Asterix and Tintin and then give up for want of much material, now the Manga boom is over and mainstream bookshops are cutting back a lot. I’ve thought a lot about this – I’m struggling to know how to change that. How do you think things could improve Jim, given financial realities have to apply for retailers.

JM: There are plenty of great comic shops, which in my opinion are the ones that make a significant (and I’m sure bad financial sense) effort to get non-mainstream comics and books into people’s hands. I applaud Gosh! (of course), Page 45, OK comics and all the enthusiasm that others put into stocking material that isn’t going to fly straight off the shelf. It’s when I have to squeeze past Star Wars tat, Buffy calendars or role-playing games that I feel I’m not going to find much of interest. Give me a proper bookshop over that any day – new, second-hand, anything! Recently I was impressed with Manchester’s Forbidden Planet (having always preferred the welcome in Travelling Man) and a new rack of independent and diverse stock – all new to me. I also looked around me and realised there’s a pretty substantial stock of graphic novels that stretch way beyond the assumed obvious black spines. Also worth a mention is mcr’s Good Grief! – stocking all the weirdest acid soaked comics nowhere else would touch. Clearly though, I know nothing about retail, other than the fact that I’m not jealous of those that do pour their energy and enthusiasm into these thankless passions. I’m certainly not offering up Comical Animal as an alternative model!

KP: I just want to discuss the comic shop a bit more. I think both Page 45 and Gosh! are great shops – but Page 45 from my memories is a store aimed squarely at adults rather than all ages, isn’t it? Gosh does carry more for all ages with comics and kids illustration books. I think I would also include Dave’s Comics in Brighton in that group. Do you think that it’s more about the feeling you have from those shops – rather than entirely the stock mix? Do you think a shop that carried every comic available (pretty much a forlorn dream these days outside of perhaps Jim Hanley’s in NYC and Comic Relief in Berkley) would actually be attractive to an all ages audience?

Wouldn’t parents be reluctant to come into a shop that might stock Good Dog, Bad Dog but also the work of any number of edgier cartoonists – say the Dernier Cri crew or Mike Diana or even some Crumb and other Underground material. I’ m sure – for instance – they would be kinda terrified of some of the ‘zines carried by places like Good Grief. To some extent the better a comics shop you are, in terms of the breadth of your stock, the more you potentially restrict the audience you appeal to. Counter-intuitive I know – but what do you think?

JM: Jim Hanley’s Universe blew me away – I could’ve spent all day in there, plus a hell of a lot of money. You’re right, they stock everything, including, to my girlfriend’s surprise (and mine not so much) a pretty seedy ‘erotic’ section right at the back of the shop. There were some sad-looking men in there. Other than that, it felt like a ‘real’ bookshop, except with a lot more pictures in the books. Lose the ‘cuddle’ shelves, and you’ve got a pretty perfect comic shop.

Trouble is I suppose, how that involves holding tens of thousands of pounds worth of stock. A regular bookshop with a kids section might have a comfy area that invites kids to sit and read or draw, while parents keep one eye on them and the other on what they want themselves. I know very little about bookselling, though I do mourn the demise of Waterstones in Manchester after it’s manager Robert Topping was ousted probably about 10 years ago now. His policy of stocking EVERYTHING meant the shop was a mess, you had to edge your way around piles of stock, but they’d have exactly what you were after plus be able to hand you another 5 titles you’d never even heard of. The shop now has about a third of the stock, and has scrapped or amalgamated the different desks in each section. Plenty of best sellers, but no discoveries any more. Trouble is, they do very well.

(Funny Bunny Boys by and (c) Steve Tillotson, from the first online inssue of Comical Animals)

KP: However I’m not so sure about Travelling Man and OK – who seem to me to be shops largely about selling SuperHeroes (neither stock Blank Slate books for instance) and or Manga but accredited as being Indy friendly by dint of their presentation/reputation rather than their actual stock mix. I notice you praise FP’s mix of stock in Manchester but I don’t hear them being held as Indy friendly – when in fact their stock mix is much wider than most comics stores. Are we saying that the shopping experience is less about the stock mix and availability and more about marketing?

The fact that FP carry a lot of merchandise puts you off eventhough the stock mix on the comics side may be better than in those you see as comics shops. Isn’t that a strange dynamic? I don’t care for merchandise either but I do know that it brings more kids in with parents for Star Wars figures etc than most kids comics would. Then you do have a chance of selling them something else. As a comics fan myself I think I’d just ignore the ‘tat’ as you call it and head for the comics.

I’m not trying to be partial here but it seems to me good comics shops can be any number of things – but people approach them with something of a pre-ordained expectation which isn’t always accurate – to some extent they either want them to be bookshops (but why? bookshops don’t do a good job of being comics shops) or something made ‘just for them’. Aren’t good comics shops allowed to be more than comics shops as long as they do that part of the job well? Should we be widening the net of what appeals to us as adults in a store to something that by its nature is more all age – more TV and Film media inclusive – that potentially brings in possible new customers? I might not be an Iron Man fan but I’m aware of what Iron man can do for comics on a wider basis.

JM: Yes, I’m being snobby about Doctor Who calendars and the like, but I can’t help that natural ‘threshold resistance’ I experience when I plunge in past the novelties. My 12 year-old self would probably be the opposite. I think there’s just something a bit depressing about the adults that relish these products as well as the system that targets these ‘collectables’ directly at them, that seems at odds with the breadth and variety of high quality comics and GNs available, and the delicious purity of sitting down and getting lost in a book. Maybe this isn’t the best place to air these views of mine, Kenny!

KP: I’m not personally a believer in the “we need to get kids buying comics” school of thought that seems to think that will be the key to us still having an audience a few years from now. I grew up, and you probably did as well, in an age where we all read comics. Truth is only a very few of us continued to read them into adulthood – barely enough to sustain a comics industry in this country. I expect the same would be true of any new generation of kids – only a tiny percentage  go forward as comics readers – given we are starting from a much lower start point than 40 years ago I don’t see this as key. You’ve worked with kids and might have different thoughts on how kids start reading comics and what might retain them? To me adult readers really are the key and whilst we seem to be at some sort of tipping point there’s still no guarantee they will be a large audience going forwards. Any thoughts on that how to get more readers thing Jim?

JM: Regular bookshops that might stock GNs are going a step in the right direction by putting Sin City in the Crime section rather than the comics section (I’m sure Paul Gravett said this at some event somewhere). I know that libraries are keen on comics for young people, and are constantly pushing the good stuff, through book awards, events and suchlike. Shame they are being effectively abandoned. I don’t know the answer – get the teachers on board, get them into schools and integrated into not just art but English, history, science, languages. That’d be a start anyway.

KP: I was one of those comics fans who pretty much ignored ‘Funny Animals’ until I was in my late 20′s. I think the thing that got me interested (and my knowledge is very sketchy) would have been Krazy Kat reprints and the Another Rainbow, Duck sets. I don’t remember much of an anthropomorphic tradition in UK comics – with the exception of Korky the Cat in the Dandy – so I guess it’s not surprising we have a hole in our comics tastes. Have you always been a fan and what brought you to them in the first place.

JM: There are a small handful of funny animals from old British comics, but no, not a huge amount. Tiger Tim, Teddy Tail, Bobby Bear, Biffo and Barney Bulldog are the first that spring to mind. I nearly said Rupert, but realised he’s pretty humourless, and you could argue – not comics but illustrated stories. I expect my interest stems from a combination of the children’s books I grew up with, which were full of anthropomorphism, and jumble sale/second-hand comic and annual finds. I’m as big a Richard Scarry fan as ever, and was mesmerised by 1960′s finds like Beezer and Topper. Whenever I’m asked to recommend kids titles, I end up suggesting paying a couple of quid for a battered old 1967 Beano annual. I’m mystified why this wealth of old material isn’t being reissued properly.

Art Spiegelman was asked about British comics at a recent Comica event, and he quickly dismissed them as limp, dull and barbless compared to their own MAD and EC or whatever. A set of volumes collecting all the work of Leo Baxendale, Ken Reid or David Law should set them right. I realise I’m slightly contradicting my previous response by calling for more hardback archives for us adults to drool over – so please, whoever is going to do these, let’s have an affordable smaller set too! I realise I’m just wishing my own comics reading childhood upon kids now. Maybe kids are perfectly happy with Death Note and Ben 10, but I’m not.

(Kitty & Pup bake a cake by and (c) Jim Medway, from the Comical Animal preview)

KP: Do you see the medium as one that basically has no restrictions or one primarily aimed at kids? I’m guessing something like Krazy Kat was one of the first funny animal strips – starting back in the early 1900′s. It wasn’t aimed at children and in fact was fairly ambitious territory for some adults – although the art always appealed even when the stories were deliberately baffling. Do you think that the transformation from these adult roots was the coming of animated cartoons – that Disneyfication in fact skewed them much younger than they had been previously and established their ‘kids stuff’ reputation for quite some time?

JM: In a lot of cases, funny animal strips aren’t about animals at all – they’re just people with animal heads. I write a little about this in my article, which is to feature in the first issue of Comical Animal. Animals make great replacements for kids, as kids are a lot nearer animals than adults are. It seems comics have always been read by all ages – look at the letters page in a 40′s US comic and they’re from GI’s and housewives. I expect the same is true of cartoons – they’re for everyone. All the best kids stuff has always been enjoyed by adults too – they’re the ones who have to pay for it, sit through it with them or read it to them.

With Comical Animal I’m hoping for an ‘all ages’ audience rather than just kids – I’ve no idea what age children start accessing stuff online, though I hope adults might point them towards Comical Animal. Yes, I’d much prefer print, but for the time being let’s see how much interest can be generated by providing free and original strips online. At some point a few years down the line there’s always the chance of compiling a selection of material into a book or annual, which would be far preferable to having children (or adults) staring at a screen for any longer than necessary.

KP: If kids are happy with Ben 10 etc – does it become a bit of a crusade with no-one aggrieved if the kids are happy with what they’ve got – are you fighting for yourself or us all, Jim :-)? Until the release of the new Dandy kids comics have been becoming more and more about the free gifts than the comics – in fact in many of them comics have a very small part to play. The Dandy and recently the DFC are experimenting with new funny animals amongst the comics they fill the mag with. What have you thought of them do you think that they should be a mix of animal and other strips or do you think something that experimented with just an anthropomorphic format might work better?

JM: Pitting Comical Animal against the existing children’s culture out there would be fairly futile, but isn’t it frustrating when there’s chimichangas, dopiazas and lasagnes but all they want is fishfingers? Beano and Dandy are great, but the rest of them in WHSmiths are TV and film tie-ins, and just seem like tat sellotaped to a toy. Kids used to have so many other weekly titles, each aimed at it’s own specific target, but now it all seems like marketing. I’d love to see a new title that didn’t insist on covering every possible genre in kid’s comics (adventure, sci-fi, farts & bogeys etc), but gave platform to light-hearted, amusing and infantile humour.

(Ned Trumpet falls for the old sticky bun trap in Ned Trumpet, Elephant Detective by the excellent Dave Shelton, from the Comical Animal preview)

KP: I want to ask you a little about the DFC. You yourself contributed a much liked strip in ‘Crab Lane Crew’ – a strip which seemed to be very naturalistic despite being funny animal based. The kids wandered through adventures and the pace was often leisurely and the conclusion often very non-specatacular. I know we at FPI really liked it and our reviewer Rich Bruton’s daughter (about 8 at the time) loved it. What kind of reaction to that ‘unusual’ pacing did you get – within the DFC and from readers feedback?

JM: I didn’t have a clue at the time but it seems the first couple of outings for the Crab Lane Crew left a lot of people baffled and unimpressed – where is the story? The adventure? The ninjas, robots, time travel etc? Three or four weeks in, it seems all of a sudden it seemed I’d won them over. They were getting to know the characters, and started to realise that just like real kids and real life, stuff doesn’t happen – they chat, tease each other, have a laugh and potter around. I should make it clear this is the adult readers I’m talking about here, who couldn’t work out what CLC was in the DFC for. Kids, I think, just accepted the characters much easier, and recongised something about themselves or their own lives maybe.

I don’t think of it as being a funny animal strip – they were kids, not cats, even though they were clearly cat kids. Once I’d created the characters, I shared them with a couple of Year 6 classes, and quizzed them about them. I had the kids write down all their responses – what the characters might do at a birthday party, on a weekend, if it was raining, what they’d give each other at christmas, what they’d do if they found a fiver etc. From these ideas, I was able to map out all the strips week by week – have one thing happen (an activity, someone visiting), then just leave the characters to respond as they would. I think kids are funny, are funny enough, so I guess I wanted to see if I could translate that into a strip. I was dead pleased with Crab Lane Crew, and really enjoyed spending time creating them. I also learnt a lot from doing it, and my drawing improved immensely.

KP: Because of the DFC’s cancellation the ‘Crew’ was never fully finished was it? Now that the DFC have started their excellent album program are we going to see your strip collected and finished? If the books are successful do you think there is a chance they will continue with new adventures on an album only basis ?

JM: Because it was so rudely cut short, the readers missed another 10 or so episodes of CLC, two of which I’d drawn. I’d be thrilled if there was enough demand for a CLC DFC Library hardback, but there’s been no talk as yet. Maybe a few pleading letters to David Fickling from anyone who also misses the gang might help! I think the DFC Library books so far are the right choices, though I’d love to see a Little Cutie or Sausage & Carrots one also.

KP: The DFC had an unusual distribution model being subscription only. Allied to it’s fairly middle class leanings (well to my eyes at least) wasn’t it cutting out to much of the everyday comics reading public from the get go? I loved the bravery of the full page illustration covers and the matt stock – but then I’m an adult reader and it appealed to my sensibilities – do you think those things had the opposite effect for kids? Or didn’t it matter as it was essentially set up to sell to parents for their kids and not direct to the kids themselves. If you compare it to say the new Dandy they have two very different aesthetics and styles – one manic and sillier the other a little more worthy and slower paced. Do you think both can compete in a market where kids are used to their thrills hard-wired into them via some electronic device or another.

JM: I found it frustrating that kids had never even heard of the DFC, let alone ever seen one. The stories, artwork and fact that there were no ads made it a high quality product, so it’s depressing it didn’t reach enough kids. I always felt it was too expensive – more than twice the price of a Beano, and didn’t feel kids would really care about the nice paper stock. I know that the eventual aim was to get it onto the newsagents shelves, and the subscription model was just to get the ball rolling, but it didn’t seem quite right to me. Put simply, it meant kids couldn’t buy the comic – even if you had £3 a week to spare, it still depended on an adult to subscribe using a credit card, so the comic was always being mediated by parents. I’d love to know how many subscribers were adults with no intention of passing it onto a child – probably a significant number.

KP: Have you got a method of getting the word out for Comical Animals? I think it’s a great project but I doubt 1,000 readers will come close to supporting it. Do you have lots of activity in place to have the word passed out through UK comics circles, Facebook, Twitter? Do you have the comics websites onside to give you publicity? Any other ideas for how you are going to reach people?

JM: I’m hoping that CA is something that can exist happily without demanding too much from it’s generous contributors, and not depending on selling information about it’s subscribers. All material is freely accessible without subscribing anyway; it’s just a nice way of ‘joining in’ and being notified when the newest batch appears. It will be interesting to see how CA will have evolved and developed in a years time, 6 issues on. Maybe I’m being naively optimistic (actually I’m definitely being fully aware optimistic), but I’m anticipating that a momentum will gather and word will spread. Ask me again then. In the meantime, yes, I’ll be doing what I can to promote online, and target the existing comics enthusiasts and amateurs, though I’d appreciate any pointers or assistance from anyone out there.

(Worm and Slug by Simone Lia, from the first issue of  Comical Animals)

KP: From what I know of your cartooning it has always had a funny animal element to it – right? You are famous for you cat characters. Did the use of cats in your work come from some other animal cartoon influences – any specific ones or from the wanting to use animals and cats being a favourite or easier to draw. How did you develop your own personal style and do you think it’s set now or still evolving?

JM: Always animals, but not always funny. About ten years ago I had a phase of drawing foxes, but as an animal they are too magical – you always tell someone if you see a fox – so reverted to cats. Because I combine observations of people with cats, it helps that cats are so everyday and familiar. The cats are just what come out when I put pen to paper – I don’t really notice that they are cats half the time. To be more accurate, they’re cat people – far closer to people than cats – they’re my way of drawing people. Having always struggled drawing humans, my solution has been to anthropomorphise them, though I am now making much more of an effort to push myself with people. I offer a figure drawing session to secondary schools, so felt I should practice what I preach a little. Leaving college I had a phase of seeking out kitchen sink films and social realism, which I then combined with the cats to form a sort of magic social realism based on observations of people around me.

These were not cartoons or comics – they were just how I drew. (plenty of examples on jimmedway.com) Richard Scarry has always been a huge influence – he still delights and surprises me. I used to lose myself in Janet Ahlberg’s illustrations too. Maybe this early influence of children’s books is one that’s not been surpassed – this world where it makes perfect sense for animals to be baking cakes and wearing shoes. If I had the time I’d also be doing more linoprinting, painting and making stuff, though it would more than likely still feature cats. I saw a Charles Addams exhibition in NY Library some years ago, and his inking blew me away. It was so rich, varied and warm. Up until then I’d been a bit of a Luddite, insisting on using ballpoint on scrappy newsprint, but seeing these originals snapped me out of that. Trying new materials, expensive brush pens or Rotrings, fancy nibs and suchlike – while it doesn’t radically change what I’ve been drawing, it does encourage me to expand and extend the possible ways I might approach a particular drawing or strip. I must be evolving in some direction, but without more time to dedicate to art and comics, my evolution is going to be a slow one. Maybe once I’m 40 and have a thing or two published, I’ll have the financial time and space to really get cracking and produce my masterpiece!

KP: As well as being a cartoonist I know you work a lot with kids in instructional and educational programmes. Can you fill us in on some of the things you have done, have upcoming and how these are initiated and paid for. What kind of reaction do you get from kids – does it lead you to believe that they would love to read comics if marketed to them well or that they will always be sliding more towards computer games and other things?

JM: Oliver Postgate said that kids haven’t changed at all, other than by adults giving them junk. There’s nothing in a modern kids natural brain that demands only Ben 10 or Mortal Kombat. When I go into schools, top end of primary mainly, but some secondary too, they can still enjoy whatever comics I show them just as we like to believe kids used to. Out of a class of 28 10 year olds though, only one will have read any Tintin, a few will have seen an Asterix film but be unaware of the books, there’ll be a couple of Beano or Dandy readers, and a couple of Simpsons and Spongebob readers.

The nice thing about visiting classes and teaching them the basic skills that go into making comics, is that within a couple of hours they are capable of producing a pleasing result. Often we’ll work collaboratively and create a page each of a larger 28 page story, then photocopy, fold and staple enough for everyone to take a couple home with them. All of a sudden they are producing culture rather than just consuming it. I’ve written up all the drawing games and exercises that I use on my blog, but very briefly we typically cover character design, speech, using black & white contrast, all with an emphasis on clarity and simplicity. The rest of the session is spent putting these into practice in fun ways, with plenty of demonstrations and tips along the way. I do exactly the same with all ages, and often work with teens, adults, families, community groups, libraries whoever wants to give it a go.

Now that the millionaire locusts are decimating everything within reach, I’m in no way convinced that schoolkids are going to benefit in any positive way, and there is unlikely to be any spare cash for getting a comic artist in for the day. I also do a lot of work for Manchester Art Gallery, on site and in schools, so I’m praying that there will still be a role for me there if the Tories get their hateful vandalistic ways.

I’d like to thank Jim for taking the time to share his thoughts with me – given more time I think there were things we could have explored more deeply. Maybe Jim’s right though some of those are for personal conversations late night in a pub – and it might have all got a bit long-winded onscreen. You can follow Jim via his own site and Twitter, while Comical Animal can be found right here. Please do spread the link around – we’d love to hear what you think of Comical Animal, more especially we’d love to hear from those of you with kids and what they think of it. There is material online already to preview and it goes fully live today.