(© Lucy Knisley)

This has been all over the net this week, but I got it from Wim.

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(Madeleine Flores’ Girl And The Gorilla. Coming in 2010 from Blank Slate.)

Meanwhile, Darryl Cunningham’s Psychiatric Tales has been getting a huge amount of pre-publication press, all of it phenomenally good. It’s not going to be a light read, far from it. But it will be something wonderfully affecting. And you can find out exactly how good it is – it’s online at Darryl’s website.We’ve been longtime fans of Darryl’s work and his Super-Sam And John Of The Night time strip is still here, complete, on the site. So to see him in print this way will be a treat for us as well as you.

(Page from Darryl Cunningham’s Psychiatric Tales, coming in February 2010 from Blank Slate. Art ©2008 Darryl Cunningham)

In addition to that, we have the latest book, Berlin and That by Oliver East this January, My Skateboard Life by Ed Syder in March and the long awaited Lichen by Stuart Kolakovic later in the year. The Blank Slate website has had a major refurb and more details on these forthcoming books here. Go look.

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(“Badger & Friend” by Nick Abadzis. © Nick Abadzis and Howard Hardiman)

Seems Nick Abadzis is a big fan of Howard’s work, so he sent Howard a email with this sketch. Like Howard says:

Nick Abadzis, who is the creator of Laika, which is the best comic book in the universe, just sent me this in an email.  I actually squeaked with surprise and joy.  It’s the most incredible thing.

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Thought Bubble, The Leeds Sequential Art Festival has been going on for a couple of days now, featuring some wonderful events across the city of Leeds. And tomorrow sees the centrepiece of the festival; the Thought Bubble comic convention. It features a host of comic creators with the complete list here and a lot of small press creators – as featured on Hugh “Shug” Raine’s poster:

The things that most marked out Thought Bubble 2008 were the huge number of non-traditional customers and visitors that seemed to be wandering the halls, clearly enjoying the vast variety of material available – material that had a far greater breadth and variety than usually seen at comic conventions. In fact the overwhelming experience of Thought Bubble seems to be that it’s a very different sort of show, with a feel somewhere between a comic convention and a handmade crafts show. It also seemed to be a much younger crowd from the usual conventions – and that has to be a great thing for comics.

Last year’s convention was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, (read my report here) and I’m looking forward to repeating the experience tomorrow.

Matthew Badham’s interview with one of Thought Bubble’s organisers, Lisa Wood went up on the blog earlier this week.

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This weekend sees not one, but two great comic events. First up it’s the Comica 2009 final week – which looks rather good with a trio of conversations happening at the ICA:

First up on Sunday 22 November; Reinhard Kleist, author of the great I see A Darkness, the biography of Johnny Cash, published recently by Self Made Hero is in conversation with Charles Shaar Murray. I See A Darkness was much loved by both myself and Joe – see Joe’s review for more details.

On Monday 23 November, Comica welcome Flemish cartoonist, Willy Linthout in conversation with Michael Rosen. Linthout’s  autobiographical Years Of The Elephant, has been much acclaimed for it’s difficult and emotional tale of the author’s grief following his son’s suicide.

And finally, after his appearance at Thought Bubble Leeds on Saturday 21st , Ben Templesmith will be appearing at the ICA on Tuesday 24 November. Templesmith’s particularly graphic artwork has featured on 30 Days Of Night, Fell, Wormwood and Welcome To Hoxford. He’ll be tlking with writer/director Philip Ridley who will then go on to introduce a preview screening of Heartless, his “dark, horror-tinged urban fantasy starring Jim Sturgess as a young photographer who feels as if his life has been blighted by the birthmark that covers half of his face”.

Comica certainly looks and sounds like it’s been a huge success. Congratulations to Paul Gravett and everyone else involved with Comic 2009.

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by David Hughes

Tabella Publishing

Back in March 2009 I reviewed Thomas Wogan Is Dead as a self published comic (right here in fact). This Tabella version is effectively just a very nice re-packaging of the small press self published comic with a few extra pages and a general neatening up. So everything I said there applies here including this:

Thomas Wogan has had a  rather miserable and empty life. He’s a lonely soul whose days seem to consist of working a nothing job at Perriman Plastics in Chudley, perfecting his favourite meal of beans on toast (the perfect combination of sensation and nutrition, butter and Marmite, follow with fruit cocktail, tea and Baywatch before bed) and obsessively editing Delia Smith’s wikipedia entry. It’s not much of a life but it’s the only one he knows.

He finds himself sharing a waiting room with a cuckoo, a toad, an egg, a sea urchin, a bat, a fish and an LCD display with an incredibly large number that’s gradually counting up to the number on the ticket in Thomas’ hand. And since the book’s called Thomas Wogan Is Dead, we can assume that we know the answer to Thomas’ questions. But the far more interesting question, the one they all spend the rest of this the only question they all want to know is: what happened to you to get you here?

In the pages that follow every animal has their moment to reveal the manner of their demise ….. And in between it all, we get to find out a little more about Thomas’ life and the manner of his death. Just as pointless, tragic and faintly ridiculous as the rest of the creatures in the waiting room.

(The pertinant question and two nice examples of the art & snazzy new commercial font from Thomas Wogan Is Dead by David Hughes, Tabella Publishing)

This Tabella Publishing edition is a step up for Thomas Wogan – a spine and commercial lettering add a nice professional touch to the book. The art sits well in a more professional format, with all the grotesques of the original still there, and all of the sad, lonely existence of Thomas’ life portrayed just as well. The extra pages flesh out a little more of his life, and add to the sense of poignancy of the tale.

Thomas Wogan is still dead, but this new edition shows that there’s life in the comic still. I like it just as much as I did the first time around, except now, this better dressed, better presented Thomas Wogan is something I can sit on the shelf where it belongs.

Richard Bruton.

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Strip! – Ctrl Alt Shift: Lightspeed Champion and Savage Messiah, tonight at 5pm on Resonance FM, podcast afterwards at Panel Borders

Continuing ‘British Mavericks’ month on the show, Alex Fitch looks at the new charity anthology: “Ctrl Alt Shift unmasks corruption”, a collection of short comic strips that mixes seasoned professionals with the work of small press artists and creators from other media who are less well known for working in comics. From the latter group, Alex is talking to Dev Hynes*, better known as the musician Lightspeed Champion, who has a sincere interest in comics that led to the creation of two strips in the anthology. Alex also talks to the cover illustrator Laura Oldfield Ford, whose work can normally be found in fine art galleries in the fields of collage and traditional illustration, but also creates sequential art ‘zines under the name of Savage Messiah…

*(If you want to quibble, Dev was born in Texas but raised in Essex since the age of 2, so he’s an honorary British Maverick)

I’m ready for my close-up: The films of Joseph Strick, Firday 20th at 5pm on Resonance FM

To coincide with the ‘Directorspective’ of the work of Joseph Strick, currently at The Barbican centre in London, Alex Fitch talks to the Oscar Winning director about his career from working as a U.S. Airforce photographer during the Second World War to directing adaptations of challenging texts such as James Joyce’s Ulysses and Portrait of the artist as a young man, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and Jean Genet’s The Balcony. A selection of six of Strick’s films will be screened on consecutive days at The Barbican from 19/11/09 and there is also an additional daily screening of a new print of Ulysses (1967) until 26/11/09.

Recent podcasts:

Panel Borders: Doctor Who and The Spiral Cage

Continuing our month look long at ‘British Mavericks’ – interviews with artists whose work brings aspects of the avant-garde to mainstream comics – Alex Fitch talks to artist Al Davison about his career so far, from early graphic novels based on autobiography such as The Spiral Cage and The Minotaur’s Tale which depict Al’s struggle with his identity as an artist with spina bifida to his most recent book Hokusai: Demons which explores Japanese erotic art and bestiaries based on the artist’s dreams; and also writer Tony Lee joins Alex and Al to discuss the latter’s collaboration with the artist on the American Doctor Who comic which depicts David Tennant’s alter-ego having adventures in 1920s Hollywood. Interviews recorded last month at the British International Comics Show in Birmingham.

Panel Borders: Lost gloves, types of women and a (comic) Book of lists

In the first of two episodes recorded at this summer’s Alternative Press week, ‘zine creator Dickon Harris talks to a couple of small press creators about their work: writer / artist Paul Rainey, whose comic book paperback The Book of Lists sees the cartoonist collating events from his life into thematic order and poet Ceri May who self publishes her writing at alt. press events. The podcast includes Ceri’s reading of the poems: “All the lost gloves of London”, “There are two types of women” and “When I grow up” and was recorded at The Miller pub on Snowsfield, Borough during Collaborama!… (Edited by Alex Fitch)

Panel Borders: The art of Paul Ashley Brown

In the second of two interviews recorded during the Alternative Press Fair, Dickon Harris talks to comic book writer and artist Paul Ashley Brown about his work outside the St. Aloysius Social Club in Somers Town, London. Dickon and Paul discuss the latter’s latest small press comic – Browner Knowle – and the small press scene in London from Fast Fiction in the 1980s to the present day.

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(Climate Talks by and (c) Morten Morland who won the Political Cartoon Award, cheekily pinched from Bloghorn’s article)

The award winners were:

Strip cartoon award: Graham Dury, Davey Jones and Simon Thorp, the artist/editors of Viz

Pocket cartoon award: Matt Pritchett MBE (Matt) of the Daily Telegraph

Joke cartoon award: Robert Thompson of Private Eye, The Oldie, The Spectator and others

Political cartoon award: Morten Morland of The Times

Caricature award: Howard McWilliam of The Week

Young cartoonists of the year: Alex Shaw (under 18) and Nick Edwards (under 30)

The Pont prize for drawing the British Character: Annie Tempest of Country Life. The Pont Award was set up five years ago in memory of Graham “Pont” Laidler, who drew the series The British Character in Punch in the 1930s and 40s.

Lifetime achievement award: Michael Heath of The Spectator, Private Eye and Mail on Sunday. Previous winners of the award have included Raymond Briggs, Ronald Searle, Gerald Scarfe, Fluck and Law, and Trog.

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by Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett

Abrams Image

Boilerplate is a fascinating concept – a mockumentary coffee table book dealing with the heroic exploits of Boilerplate – a Victorian Era mechanical man. He crops up everywhere from his creation in 1893 until his disappearance in 1918; possibly making it to the South Pole way before Amundsen, meeting Lawrence of Arabia, serving in WWI and much, much more. Indeed you may well be wondering after a little while why you’ve never heard of Boilerplate before.

Well, the reason is simple; Boilerplate never actually existed. He’s not actually an invention of one Professor Archibald Campion, but the creation of Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett, the husband and wife team most often remembered for their work on Heartbreakers. And with Boilerplate, they’ve created a very unusual book indeed.

(Professor Archibald Balthazar Campion (1862-1938) and his greatest invention: Boilerplate. Chicago, November 1893. From Boilerplate by Guinan and Bennett. Abrams Images.)

The idea of inserting a completely fictional character into key moments in history is in no way new – indeed Woody Allen, with Take The Money And Run and Zelig is credited with inventing the “mockumentary” idea, but it’s been done in literature countless times before then. So Boilerplate is by no means the first book to play with this idea of fictionalised reality. But that really doesn’t matter. What really counts is how well this book reads – and personally I thought it was very good indeed.

We follow the life and times of Boilerplate here from his creation through to his disappearance, taking in much of the major historical events of the times. And in fact, the book is so packed with historical reference that lesser scholars than myself will find themselves scurrying to wikipedia within a few pages. (Okay. I admit, that was me scurrying to wikipedia. My history has never been that good. I blame the teachers). But within Boilerplate you do actually get a nice little history lesson, full of colourful characters, from Teddy Roosevelt to Nicolas Tesla and more, all seamlessly worked into the Boilerplate legend without having to alter the actual facts all that much.

Obviously, as you’d expect now the digital manipulation of the images to put Boilerplate in these situations is perfect, seamless stuff. That’s not the clever bit though – the clever bit is in the writing; Guinan does such a convincing job of mooring Boilerplate in the reality of historical fact that it feels very likely that Boilerplate really existed, and it’s necessary to remind yourself throughout that the robot is a complete fiction – and that, to my mind, is a definite proof that the book does exactly what it’s authors wanted it to.

(A double page spread from Boilerplate to give you an idea of the great design sense at work throughout the book. From Boilerplate by Guinan and Bennett. Abrams Images.)

It’s a beautifully presented Steampunk artbook, every page packed with details in both text and illustrations, and with a nice design sense running throughout. Full of details, illustrations, manipulated photo reference, maps, posters, cartoons, maps and more, all designed to create a completely immersive experience. It really does feel like a historical coffee table book and it’s an engrossing, absorbing, ridiculous read of a book. Full of marvellous history, full of ridiculous invention and a very enjoyable bit of nonsense.

For more information, the Boilerplate website is a great place to start.

Richard Bruton.

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We may have to wait until next year for the promised new edition of Dave McKean’s brilliant Cages, but meantime there’s something rather lovely in this week’s new releases to keep McKean fans going: Pictures That Tick is a large-sized collection of Dave’s shorter comics work from the 90s and early 2000s. And as you’d expect from Dave the art styles and techniques he uses to spin his tales vary enormously in look, feel and method, which is one of the qualities in his work I’ve always admired (and the large size means you can enjoy the art). Treat yourself or else drop very heavy hints to someone close to you that a certain Yuletide season is fast approaching and this would make a person very happy were they to receive it as a gift…

(a panel from one of the short tales in Pictures That Tick by and (c) Dave McKean, published Dark Horse)

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