The fine Nobrow comics and art folks are hosting an exhibition of crafted work by Louise Evans, better known to many of us as the Felt Mistress, in their London outlet. Not strictly comics, but Louise has a big following among many of the UK comics creators on the scene because she creates such fab work; the exhibition runs from May 18th to June 23rd, more details on her site here.

By Sam Vanallemeersch

Nobrow Press

I’m just not the right person to appreciate this.

I’m a comics guy, and my art tastes veer strongly to the sort of art that looks great but does so in service to a story.

So basically Big Mother, as an A3 collection of artwork by Belgian artist Vanallemeersch just leaves me cold. Attractive in its way, but in no way worthy of this treatment.

Vanallemeersch operates under his own name and two aliases; the visually tight and controlled Kolchoz and the mania of Solchoz – and here in Big Mother it’s all definitely Solchoz – panaramas, pencil works, lots of colours – flat and washes.

So yes, it’s huge, yes it’s colourful, and yes the artwork is a littlemore comics-ish – but effectively it’s just the same thing as those Drawn & Quarterly petit livres I slated a while back for being a waste of time (see this one - Nogoodniks).

I didn’t like those much at all. This I like a little more, but honestly? Give me comics.

And that’s my problem with it – as illustration, it’s alright, but nothing I can’t see all the time at numerous websites (including our own) every week. As a package it’s impressive through its size – but is that merely painting it with the brush of artistic pretension? Or to justify the price of £18 for 23 pages of content + cover?

So if you do have £18 burning a hole in your pocket – try The Wrong Place – beautiful, colourful art and a great comic story. Or the new Joost Swarte book – beautiful illustration, AND a master of comic art.

“Every now and then, when a new publishing concern pops up, one wonders how it’s possible they weren’t there all along. Some publishers fill a niche that one didn’t even know existed, and as a reader you’re the richer for having been exposed to it. Sparkplug Comic Books, PictureBox, and Secret Acres are three American companies that immediately come to mind, though all three were obviously strongly influenced by the aesthetic (if not economic) model blazed by Tom Devlin’s Highwater Books. Koyama Press has a similar role in Canada. Both of these countries have strong alt-cartooning traditions. England is a country that historically has seemed way behind the US, Canada, and Europe in terms of publishing and appreciating art comics, but two burgeoning publishing concerns are filling that gap. Nobrow Press and Blank Slate Books bear little resemblance to each other in terms of design and aesthetic focus, but both are playing a role in not only providing a place for young British artists to publish their work, but also in bringing the work of European artists to English-speaking audiences for the first time.”

I notice too that Rob likens Britain’s Blank Slate to the US’s Top Shelf, a comparison I know without even asking will delight our own and Blank Slate big cheese Kenny Penman’s comic soul. (link via the indispensable Tom Spurgeon)

Nobrow Press

(The comic side cover of Nobrow 6 – by Tom Gauld)

Not content with putting out some very fine examples of graphic novels in the three years of their existence, Nobrow Press also have the temerity to put out their illustration anthology, simply titled Nobrow, a collection of short, themed illustration works by many once and future Nobrow artists, all working to the exquisite standards you’d expect, and of course, packaged and designed with all the beauty and style Nobrow do by default by now.

The theme this time round is “the double issue”, and marks a change from the usual Nobrow magazine format by splitting the book in two – half illustration, half comics – each artist, no matter what, having just one double-page spread to fill. And whether comics or illustration, all the artists involved play with the idea of doubles in one way or another.

I’ll get to the illustration side later on, but the primary interest here is the comics half, and as with most anthologies there’s good and there’s not so good in here. Far, far too many to mention individually, but I will highlight just a few, those that impressed the most:

As you might expect by now Luke Pearson starts the whole thing off on a high – packing his double page with panels, telling a self-contained, relatively simple story of artistic endeavour, leading to a grotesque finale. (Full strip at his website).

Another Nobrow favourite – Jon McNaught, delivers a double-pager packed with multiple panels, in McNaught’s refined, silent signature style. A beautiful, meaningful tale.

Liesbeth De Stercke‘s Cuckoo tale – another simple tale, start – tell the story – throw in a few accent gags – utilise the hideous nature of the Cuckoo. Does everything simply and simply so well.

Roman Muradov‘s art impresses with it’s simplicity, and his story – of a photocopier accident producing an unfortunate body copy – is equally plain and simple. But it’s that simplicity that makes it work so well.

Thus far, all the strips I’ve highlighted are very much story driven comics, but there were strips less about story and much more about mood that really worked in here as well – Blanquet‘s Red Schizophrenic is another silent strip, but it generates a hideous, grotesque, chilling nightmare across its 2-pages.

And then there’s the gag strip style – as depicted so very, very well by John Martz‘s Know Your Double.

The very best of the comics here; and there are several that fall into that category just play around with “the double” in some way, using their double page allowance to actually try to tell a quick story, not over-stretching the narrative, knowing they’ve very little space to play with.

But all too often, the artists involved just take it a little too far into the metaphysical, into the vague, into the scratch head and wonder what just went on. Alongside this there’s the feeling that too many of them are not really making use of the double page, trying too hard to say too little, using their space too spoarsely. It’s no surprise that some of the best in my eye utilise the double page by cramming with many panels, attempting to actually tell a story withing the confines of the space they have.

It may simply be a Nobrow issue though – the whole imprint will always hold sway at the more esoteric and artistic end of the comic making spectrum. That’s no failing, that’s actually a grand strength. But here, when too many of the 30 comic artists all seem to compete to out weird each other, to spend more time challenging their reasdership to extract meaning from some slim pickings, maybe there needs to be a slightly tighter rein?

(Nobrow 6 – the illustration side cover by Gwenola Carrere)

Right. That’s the comic side done, now a quick mention of the illustration side.

I’ve gone on and on and on about my dissatisfaction with the various Drawn & Quarterly Petits Livres series of high-faluting gallery brochures dressed up in posh hardbacks that deliver so little satisfaction again and again. So the back-end of Nobrow #6, the arty stuff, should rightly leave me a little cold.

But it’s better than the petits livres for a couple of reasons; first off it’s shorter. Each artist gets just a double page and if it’s not to your taste the next double page might give you something better. And secondly there’s enough range of works that even an artistic philistine such as myself will find something they like. In this case it was the more comic artwork that did it for me, and here’s just a couple:

(Vivianne Schwarz)

(Roman Muradov)

Nobrow 6 is absolutely full of potential, full of unfamiliar names, and full of promise for the future. It may not have filled me with delight every step of the way, and it certainly has its faults, but it wears them defiantly on its sleeves, just as something so artistic should.

As an artistic statement of intent, a Nobrow Press manifesto, mixing its signature style of illustration with its increasingly important comic brand, it’s a  good, strong, impressive body of work.

So here we go…. amongst the books I’ve reviewed in December these are the best of the best….

Nelson

Co-Edited by Rob Davis and Woodrow Phoenix

Blank Slate Books

“Nelson succeeds not because it brilliantly serves up lashings of nostalgia for the last 40 years, not because it creates rounded, interesting, and recognisable characters, not because the lives these characters lead in the 44 years of the story are absolutely involving, passionate, rewarding, emotional, poignant and heartfelt. No, it succeeds because it feels completely, absolutely, utterly REAL.

Nelson is a towering achievement, a credit to all concerned, especially Davis and Phoenix. Nelson delivered everything I hoped it would. It will deliver everything you could imagine it would, and it will be a book you’ll remember many years from now. Brilliance.”

Hilda And The Midnight Giant

By Luke Pearson

Nobrow Press

“Absolutely, utterly gorgeous. Like an Tintin album passed through some design/art-school filter. Nobrow’s normal matt effect printing is all over this, their subdued palette of colours makes those cover colours flat and beautifully so, and then there’s Pearson’s quirky, beautiful, expressive cover artwork delineating an image that intrigues – Hilda? Why so tall? The houses? Whose are they? And is that the midnight giant in the background?

And that’s just the cover. Once you get inside, the love carries on, and on, and on.”

The Escapologist #2

By Simon Moreton

“These aren’t stories, more meandering thoughts directed across the page, a mood, a moment…. thoughts coallescing and taking flight.

…. there’s just an irresistable pull to them, they draw me in, over and over and over. Each image has meaning no doubt, but it’s the beauty of the image in isolation and the cumulative effect that wins me over. I could stare happily at each panel for so long, lost in the ideas it helps form as my own thoughts wander and fly, connecting, imagining.”

And finally, one I promised, faithfully promised I’d get reviewed in December. And unless some minor Christmas miracle happens in the next couple of days, it’s a promise I’m going to have to renege on.

Hector Umbra is a beautifully done thing, one we previewed back in November, and definitely one for you to be spending your Auntie Mabel’s Christmas money on. And one I shall be reviewing in the New Year. Promise!

By Luke Pearson

Nobrow Press

“In the first volume of the new series, Hilda finds her world turned upside down as she faces the prospect of leaving her snow-capped birthplace for the hum of the megalopolis. Her mother, an architect, has been offered a prestigious position in the bustling metropolis that she would find hard to reject. Besides, the tiny elven creatures making a daily habit of bombarding them with threats isn’t making Hilda’s case any better.

As she seeks ways to stall her mother’s decision, Hilda rushes to befriend the very source of her malady – will they help or hinder her? More importantly, who is this mysterious Midnight Giant?”

Oh my word.

At the start of 2011, Luke Pearson and Nobrow released Hildafolk, part of Nobrow’s 17×23 series; small comics for debutante artists, a testing ground, a chance to see what they’ve got.

Fast forward less than a year, and we’ve already seen Pearson’s Everything We Miss, a brilliant, bewitching, dreamlike tale of moments passed.

And now, with Hilda and the Midnight Giant we have proof (if proof were needed by now) that Pearson is one of THE major emergent talents in the UK of 2011. Everything We Miss and a series of stunning short works in major anthology comics (Nelson, Solipsistic Pop, Nobrow #6 to name but three) are all you need to see he’s very, very good.

And so is Hilda and the Midnight Giant. Better than good. Much, much better.

Obviously Pearson and Nobrow have decided that the artist and his delightful little character passed the test of the 17×23 format, and Hilda is now due to feature in a series of beautifully designed, Euro-style hardback albums, with Pearson aiming for one a year.

Hilda and the Midnight Giant is the very first in the series, and my word, it’s gorgeous. Really. No, really. I imagine most readers may well find themselves, just like me, actually enjoying the aesthetic of the book before even opening it.

Absolutely, utterly gorgeous. Like an Tintin album passed through some design/art-school filter. Nobrow’s normal matt effect printing is all over this, their subdued palette of colours makes those cover colours flat and beautifully so, and then there’s Pearson’s quirky, beautiful, expressive cover artwork delineating an image that intrigues – Hilda? Why so tall? The houses? Whose are they? And is that the midnight giant in the background?

And that’s just the cover.

Once you get inside, the love carries on, and on, and on.

The basic story is easy, but I’m going to skate around as the reveal is early, and important, and it’s not one I want to giveaway. Effectively it’s all there in the PR quote that started this review.

Hilda and her mom are being menaced by hidden little folk. If it wasn’t for the damage caused, you get the idea that mom may have been thinking it was all in Hilda’s head, and the question of imaginary friends, immaterial worlds (both literal and imagined) is touched upon many times throughout the book. It goes to establish a dual world; that of the child, full of magic and fantasy, and the adult one; of jobs, career decisions, mundane and boring stuff.

At this point I’d normally just drop in a few pages from various points in the story, but like I said, there’s a reveal very early on that I’d rather you got for yourselves, so instead, here are four pages from very near the beginning. Enjoy, delight in some beautiful cartooning, meet you after the art…..

Back?

Nice really isn’t the word is it? And that pretty much sets up the story for you, without me needing to divulge anything else of the plot here.

It’s very suitable for children, and has an all-ages appeal of something akin to Bone – with a perfect lead character appealing to boys and girls, men and women, and existing within a fantasy setting that allows storylines to go almost anywhere. Add an artist capable of beautiful work and a sense of underlying darkness and threat that pulls children in and you end up with something that, if played right, if it does continue as a regular series, could be huge.

Hilda And The Midnight Giant is truly a book that has real potential to be an incredible hit. A UK Bone? Who knows. It could be. It really could.

Looking back on that first Hildafolk comic as I was writing this, it suddenly looked slightly amateurish, almost clumsy. That’s how much Pearson’s improved in just a few short months. And he’s sickeningly, brilliantly young. Just think what he could be capable of? It’s going to be a sheer delight following his career.

I’m already looking forward, not just to seeing what the children at school make of Hilda, but of what Pearson and Nobrow deliver for Volume 2, hopefully out this time in 2012.

When we briefly chatted at this years Thought Bubble he seemed committed to continuing Hilda’s adventures, alongside developing the more adult work we’ve seen in Everything We Miss and various anthology works this year. That seems the perfect result for us all. He can sleep when he’s older after all.

Luke’s Hilda comics are published by the very fine Nobrow and our own Richard described the first one as “absolutely gorgeously delightful”. This really made me smile and it’s also pretty darn cool to see our beloved comics medium inspiring creators in other artistic mediums to create work like this. And look, she even has a teeny weeny copy of Hildafolk tucked under her arm! Fabbity fab fab.

And here, thanks to Michale Conde’s photography, you get to see Hilda in spectacular (in)action at Luke Pearson’s recent signing at GOSH:

Photo credit: Luke Pearson & Hilda at GOSH, 26th Nov. Photograph by Michael Conde, used with his permission.

By Richard Short

Nobrow Press

Always nice to see something you once held in your hands as a hastily put together self published comic turn, thanks to the art publishing skills of Nobrow, into a rather tasty looking A5-ish hardback, of the sort often found frequenting stockings at Christmas, albeit usually not as fine as this, either in production or content.

I reviewed Richard Short’s Klaus back in February 2011. And this Klaus book contains much of what was in there, and the new work is very much of the same style, so you’ll forgive the laziness of the repeated review this once…. highlights from that Klaus review:

“When I first read Klaus I knew I instantly liked the look of it – it reminds me somewhat of Jason’s work – and in more than just the cat character. But that initial reading just failed to really engage me, it felt too bitty, too episodic, and each episode didn’t really seem to have any connection with the next. But a re-read has let me view it in a different light. My initial problem with Klaus comes from the nature of their creation – these strips were originally posted online through October 2009 and as such “represent more of a themed collection .. rather than a proper story”.

And he’s absolutely right, this collection does contain a story of sorts, but it’s one that he’s interspersed with seemingly random strips. Seemingly being the important point – because it’s not random at all – the strips all go towards producing a rather sweet, yet slightly dark and definitely surreal tale of adoptive fatherhood, weird parenting and the pain of letting go.

But as the comic goes on, themes start to develop, patterns emerge, plots are revisited. Essentially it’s all about Klaus the Cat taking home an egg of uncertain origin and adopting the little chick that hatches. Between moments of surreal interjection (dream horses, nightmarish closeups of insects) we watch the pair bond and grow, until eventually Klaus decides to release the bird. But it’s fate is left hanging, almost disturbingly so.

Like I said right at the start I really like Short’s artwork – clean, simple lines, interesting characters. His storytelling takes some getting used to perhaps, but this one deserved and repaid subsequent readings.”

And yes, everything I wrote back then applies here. But the thing that’s most noticeable with this collection is the humour that Short really starts employing most effectively from the second section onwards. There’s a delicious sense of timing and visual gags all through the pages, often a funny downbeat payoff, or more accurately, the moment just before or immediately after the actual payoff. You do the work, Short just delivers the means to connect the jokes…

The difference being with a longer collection of his work those themes and those patterns I was talking of have even more time and space to develop. This 68-page collection contains Short’s personal selection of previously published material and all-new work. The egg story I talked of in the prior review is all covered in just the first of four sort-of themed sections; “On Conscience”, “On Liberty”, “On Justice”, “On Desire”, and “On Nature”.

Each utilises Short’s clean, simplistic loooking artwork to spin his little moralistic tales of Klaus and his freedom loving alternate Otto; the black cat to Klaus’ stripes. Otto is more of the Garfield to Klaus’ Charlie Brown, the maverick, rebel type, more of the party animal, more prone to getting into trouble, but just as likely to muse philosophically on any situation……

And over the course of the book the gags continue to work, the themes develop, and what you get in the end is some strange mutated traditional comic strip. It’s impossible not to make the obvious comparisons when presented with this much material; sure, the characters and style looks a little like Jason, but the tone, the pacing; that’s pure Peanuts meets Garfield going on.

With it’s laid back, contemplative philosophising, it’s an attractive and enthrallingly entertaining read. Klaus is a pocket sized delight of a work. You could do far, far worse than to try it as a surprise stocking filler.

There’s a lovely poster that came with the first 500 orders at the Nobrow site as well…. as good a visual summary of Richard Short’s work here as you may find:

November 11th: Frederik Peeters (Blue Pills: A Positive Love Story) signing/talk/Q&A. His new book Sandcastle is out through SelfMadeHero (recently reviewed here on the blog).

November 14th: A Comica Conversation with Richard McGuire (Raw, The New Yorker, Liquid Liquid) and Steven Appleby, plus a projection of McGuire’s animated films.

November 18th: German creators Uli Oesterle and Mawil signing copies of their newly translated books from Blank Slate.

November 25th: Nelson launch party, signing and art show. Exclusive Gosh! Bookplate Edition by Frank Quitely available on the night!

November 26th: Luke Pearson signing copies of his new Hilda book from Nobrow + art show (all pieces are up and on sale now)

The Comica poster from Nobrow, art by Isaac Lenkiewicz.

This year’s Comica festival takes place across November with the usual impressive line-up of events, conversations and launches. This year’s festival is in association with Nobrow Press, who have several events, exhibitions and launches across the month. And they’ve also contributed rather an attractive (and very Nobrow styled) poster, with art by Isaac Lenkiewicz.

Much more at the Comica website, but here’s just a little of what’s going on….

The premiere of the Warren Ellis documentary Captured Ghosts, exhibition from Berlin based Biograftiktion collective, Nobrow launch parties for Nobrow 6 and Richard Short’s Klaus.

More Comica conversations – Laydeez Do Comics, Paul Gravett on superheroes, Nicole Rousmaniere discussing Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure.

The Observer/Cape Graphic Short Story Prize announced.

The return of the Comica Comiket, the alternative comics fair taking place this year on the 12th November.