(one of Hilgart’s examples, original classic Fantastic Four artwork, then (below) the cleaned up, modern reproduction, (c) Marvel)

Hilgart also argues that an accidental aspect of this process produced comics which were more than the sum of their parts, the bleeding over colour creating a different sense of space and texture, which I’d certainly go along with, and how examing some panels close up, away from the actual content of story, reveals new dimensions to the imagery, much, I imagine, like looking closer and closer at a work of Impressionism and comparing it in your mind’s eye to the broader image it creates when you step further back. As I said, fascinating stuff – go and have a read.

We’ve loved their books and admired their attitude and, I have to say, loved the fact that, along with Blank Slate, they were powering a brilliant new period for British comics with independent publishing bringing us a range of fascinating and compelling works from homegrown UK artists and writers and some brilliant creators from the Continent. I don’t know the ins and outs of it yet, and  I suspect the fine details will still be getting a going-over at company level, but it doesn’t sound as if it is going to stop SMH from continuing to do what they have so consistently shown they do well, publishing some excellent graphic novels. With the added bonus that through Abrams they should be able to access the bigger US market much more easily – US readers, you should be in for a bit of a treat! (tip of the hat to Tim Pilcher for spotting the link first)

This year marks the 50th anniversary of one of the UK’s most famous major science fiction publishers, Victor Gollancz, which has published some truly brilliant work by some fantastic writers as diverse as Richard Morgan, Alastair Reynolds, Pierre Pevel, Ian McDonald, Ben Aaronovitch, John Bruner, Sheri S Tepper, Joe Abercrombie, Michael Moorcock, Robert Holdstock, Joe Hill, Ray Bradbury, Ursula K Le Guin and M John Harrison among just a few of the science fiction and fantasy authors they’ve published. Seriously, it’s not just a good publisher of SF&F it’s one of the two biggest and finest publishers of SF&F in the UK. I’ve no idea just how many Gollancz titles I have on myown shelves, from the old Yellow Jacket SF from the 70s (and some of the revived Yellow Jackets of the 90s too), some brilliant original works, shelfloads of the indispensable SF and Fantasy Masterworks series (which is to SF&F as Penguin Classics is to classic literature, a must-have range of brilliant SF works from yesteryear).

To mark the 50th anniversary year Gollancz have taken 50 of the books they’ve published, half SF, half fantasy – readers can look down the lists and then pick their favourites, taking one book from each list and voting for them. The winners will be announced in September and the top 5 SF and top 5 Fantasy books will be published into a highly collectable retro-look edition to mark the event. Entry will automatically put you into a draw to be in with a chance of a free subscription to SFX, the UK’s biggest SF mag, and 5 winners will score copies of the top ten books. Closing date is midnight on the 15th of May, so get yourself over to register your vote and celebrate one of our best publishers of quality science fiction and fantasy (and it isn’t going to be easy to narrow down just one fave from those lists, believe me).

(Only Skin #5 by and (c) Sean Ford, published Secret Acres)

“Recently, we got an e-mail from a couple of guys currently in the Navy, who are interested in publishing comics. We responded that they should be prepared to flush a down payment on a house right down the toilet. Having spent some time hanging around the (sort of) ill-fated Highwater Books in our youth, there were some things we learned, that we share with people who have asked us about publishing comics:

Never publish anything without the cash in hand to pay the printers.

Don’t get into contracts on books that won’t fit the schedule, let alone your budget.

Keeping prices low is great, but too low and you’ll never get the money back to print anything else.

Funny that we couldn’t always follow our own advice. We initially underpriced our books and gave ourselves such razor thin margins that we occasionally lost money on sales because of shipping costs. Secret Acres originally intended to put out a book a quarter, which sounds like a plan, until you consider that we don’t have investors. We had to cut three books from our schedule, which kept us awake at night for months. As for cash in hand, well, throw in a divorce and a move and it was borrow or fold.

Yet we did not fold. We got picked up by a bunch of stores, Diamond be damned. Our guys were starting to show up in Best American, and on way more than a few end-of-year “Best of” lists. We were rolling full steam ahead through 2009. In 2010, we wised up and started this blog, which got us a lot closer to you than Facebook ever did. A book with our logo on it got an Eisner nomination. The future was bright, and then 2010 caught up to us.”

“My main fear for graphic novels in the UK was, as I made clear in this blog-post in 2007, that the creative talent here in the UK would have to continue to go abroad, or self-publish, or create comics rather than books, because the gatekeepers of literature in Britain have no idea what this new artform, the “graphic novel” is. Oh, they are perfectly happy to reprint successful graphic novels like Persepolis, or Ghost World, but they are not really prepared to encourage new talent over here. And that, as I recall from my time as a DJ, is a situation analogous to the music scene in Britain in the late 1970s when the major music labels and the BBC music shows and chart compilers (there were 2 number 1s and the BBC didn’t play punk) just didn’t “get it”.”

Rod notes that although some publishers had printed a few graphic novels, there was a real lack of commitment to foster and publish new talent;  mostly we got reprints of work already successful elsewhere – obviously there is a market for this and it’s often work we might want to read (such as Perpespolis) but if that’s the extent of the graphic novel publishing then it is pretty limited. Where were the equivalents of Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics, Top Shelf, bringing us interesting new voices? That’s something that’s troubled us here and a lot of our readers over the last few years – we had an exciting and vibrant small press, self published comics scene but we didn’t have independent publishers around to capitalise on that. Now we do and, as Rod comments, it isn’t just having those publishers like Blank Slate or SelfMadeHero existing and putting out books that makes the difference, it is the fact they are putting out a variety of styles, subjects and artistic approaches, something he likens to a musical period dear to my heart, the punk era:

“The difference between the works Blank Slate is producing is very important. The eclectic mix of their books puts me in mind of, and it might just be because the stark black and white cover of Darryl Cunningham’s Psychiatric Tales puts me in mind of the logo, Stiff Records, during the birth of Punk. Although, having said that, I don’t think it’s just a superficial resemblance, to me Blank Slate is part of a Punk movement; they are, arguably, the Sex Pistols or the Clash of British publishing.”

(a scene from Psychiatric Tales by and (c) Darryl Cunningham, published Blank Slate in UK, and now Bloomsbury in the US)

Now I just know our Kenny is delighted with that comparison! And it’s good to know that others appreciate the effort, time, money and resources that go into creating this kind of publishing endeavour. Rod goes on to post some insights into some BS books by Oli East, Mawil, Darryl Cunningham and more and seems to be really enjoying his diverse smorgasbord of comics dishes. He’s not alone – as we come to the final furlong of our annual guest Best of the Year posts I can’t help but notice that Blank Slate and SelfMadeHero have both been highlighted numerous times by different people in the industry in their choices for 2010 – alongside great works by the likes of Top Shelf and Fantagraphics. And I have to say that makes me happy that they’ve had that kind of impact with a lot of people – and with the slate of works due over the next year it should, fingers crossed, continue (there are certainly a bunch of works down for 2011 I am already eager to read). It’s a nice post, a combination review of Blank Slate titles and a look at the current state of British comics publishing, well worth a read, go and have a look.

Punk’s not dead.

“We’ve also seen the UK comics channel expand with the fantastic efforts of Self Made Hero and NoBrow – which now sees the market and distributors primed to be more knowledgeable about comics in general – which can only benefit us all. We shouldn’t forget Fanfare or Knockabout either – Fanfare garnered 5 Eisner awards last year which is unprecedented for a UK publisher and Knockabout, long a dormant ‘giant’ of UK comics, have woken from their slumbers and now have editions planned of Maarten Vande Wiele’s collected Paris and the brilliant Pinocchio by Winshluss. All this activity is a bit of a surprise given the economic picture but a raft of publishers covering all ends of the comics spectrum is what the UK scene has needed for a long time. I think some of us who have worked in the business a long time have always thought it would emerge before this but barring some excellent attempts like Slab-O-Concrete it never really happened.

Now almost spontaneously there are a load of new publishers all working at it at the same time. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a time when it’s possible a coherent scene could emerge which is interested in producing comics of quality in the UK, without hoping the moment they got their break they would be on a plane to the DC offices. The surprise is that the major book publishing houses haven’t been the catalyst for this – they have access to the cream of the US production but someone like Cape who should be dominating and growing the UK market aggressively, seem to have paddled their canoe up the cul-de-sac labelled ‘would-be literary progressive’. So those who care about the narrative splendour of comics have decided to get on with it themselves,” Kenny Penman on the Blank Slate site.

It’s true, it does seem to be a very exciting time here at the moment; as I’ve been editing the guest posts for our annual Best of the Year I’ve already seen Blank Slate and SelfMadeHero titles cropping up and as you can imagine while I am editing these guest posts I’m also mentally making notes of the long and doubtless rambling list I’ll be writing up of my own favourites from 2010. And I can tell you Knockabout, SMH and Blank Slate are all figuring heavily in my list. And I’m not just saying that because Kenny is my boss – I think most of our readers know us well enough to know that when any of us on the blog post our thoughts on books and comics we give our honest opinions. I’ll be picking some works by these publishers because they genuinely were among the finest works I read this year. And while you know we do our best to try and bring you news about the wide world of comics and wonderful works from around the globe, I hope you’ll also forgive me for being so delighted that this year I can honestly say some of my best comics reading came from homegrown talent published by homegrown publishers who clearly enjoy bringing us interesting new works that deserve to be seen.

A look down at some of the artists on BSB’s 2011 slate has me equally excited for my reading prospects next year: Peggy Adam, more from Darryl Cunningham and Mawil and Oli East, Warwick J Cadwell, Line Hoven and more. SMH’s catalogue for next year has me similarly excited; I’m now getting the buzz of anticipation over some of our homegrown publishers that I normally get from perusing the catalogues of D&Q, Fantagraphics or Top Shelf. I think we’re going to be talking a lot more about titles from these publishers next year…

(Gungle, one of the forthcoming BSB releases for next year, by and (c) Warwick J Cadwell, borrowed from his blog)

As Kenny notes further on though, for this growth in Brit comics publishing to continue it needs two things: to expand internationally (which has already started with Darryl’s Psychiatric Tales being sold to US and Italian publishers) and to get support from readers. That means buying books from them; at the end of the day that’s how they stay in business and that’s how they keep on picking out great new works to publish for us to read. And I’m not saying buy them just because you should be supporting the homegrown talent who are trying to do something here, I’m saying buy them quite simply because they are good books by interesting artists and you’re going to enjoy them.

It’s certainly encouraged me to enjoy some more diversity in my reading than I could otherwise afford, so I am hoping very much that it will do the same for Blank Slate. Okay, perhaps I am a bit biased since I work with Kenny here at FP, but I think regardless of that I’d be just as happy with the reputation Blank Slate has been garnering with some very interesting releases, to say nothing of the fact that it is a pleasure to see good new comics works coming from an independent British publisher, something we’ve lacked for a long time but are now developing nicely with BS and SelfMadeHero and some others (I should point you to Rod McKie’s recent post on the ‘British comics renaissance’ where he praises Blank Slate and SMH highly). And adding this new format should open up avenues for some of the fab talent we have here who, as Kenny says on his post, should be being published.

There isn’t much money to be made from it, he comments – it is a cheaper format to create and for readers to buy (hopefully around £5.99) but the margins are almost non-existent at this level, meaning there will be no advances to artists on these titles but the profits made after costs will be weighted heavily towards the creators, so if the book does well they can make a small profit, but mostly it’s being done as another way of getting some worthy creators into print and into stores, with hopefully longer form graphic novels by those creators further down the line for Blank Slate, so in some ways it is almost a taster, an aperitif. Kenny has signed up the first two creators for this new format, one I whose work I know already, Joe Decie and Luke Astorigin, who’s a totally new name, to me at least.

(art from Pablo Apple Tree by and (c) Luke Astorigin)

To quote Kenny: “The advantage of this format is it’s cheaper to produce in a run of 1000 (which will be our print runs on these so they will be, in some form, limited) than a book format whilst it maintains a classy presentation. We hope to have a retail price for these of no more than £5.99 – and they will be 24,36 or 48 pages in length. At that price there will be almost no profit for Blank Slate (in fact probably a small loss) but we would hope to reap a later reward with collected editions or a bigger book from some of the creators involved. As it is a wafer thin proposition financially for us we aren’t paying advances against comics that will feature in this programme – something I regret but inevitable to get this going. After that we have a split of 70/30 in the artists favour on revenues after we recover the print cost. In simple terms it means that if your book doesn’t sell well – you will likely see nothing but your 50 free copies and your work in print with a barcode. If the print run sells through you should walk away with around $750. So no-one is getting rich here – but it seems to me like a project that opens a door that might otherwise be closed.”

As I said I’m pretty happy with any new publishing venture that offers an avenue into printing for good talent and more Indy comics publishing a la Fantagraphics or Top Shelf is exactly what we need in the UK arena: we know we’ve got the talented creators out there, we see a lot of their often self published work (and Richard has shared many of them with you through his reviews on here), now it’s great to see more publishing routes open to them. Obviously we’ll let you know more about these as they come along and hope you’ll lend your support to the venture as well so we can see more of them.

“In January of 2010, I closed the doors at Buenaventura Press in Oakland, California. I was forced to let go of the dedicated employees who had worked so tirelessly for so little money in order to create art that we all believed in. This meant that I had to abandon all current and future projects and discontinue sales and distribution.

I deeply regret having to take these actions, but the press experienced a devastating financial blow that made it impossible to continue. (I will release more details about this problem in the future.)

I consider myself lucky to have collaborated with many of the best cartoonists and artists of this generation. I am genuinely proud of the books and prints that the press released, and I am extremely grateful for all of your support,” Alvin Beunaventura on the Blog Flume.

(cover art for Comic Art #8, edited by Todd Hignite, published Buenaventura Press)

It’s always upsetting to see any publisher being forced to close down, but especially bitter when it is a daring, innovative Indy who was producing some beautiful and fascinating material, including becoming a home to Todd Hignite’s brilliant Comic Art journal (see back here on the blog for an interview with Todd), Kramer’s Egot and more, and it’s a blow for anyone who loves the more unusual, quality end of comics publishing. Chris Butcher has posted some of his thoughts on it and also done something positive with negative news and made a list of other quality Indy comics publishers that are well worthy of your support and a suggested a title or two from each of them, which is a great idea. (via Rob Jackson’s Twitter)

(The Beano #1 from 1938, (c) DC Thomson)

“These are difficult times for the publishing industry, but our publications are still amongst the most successful in their field. However, like others, we are not immune to the economic downturn or market conditions… We remain fully committed to our newspapers, magazines and comics business,” said a DCT spokeperson (quoted on the BBC site). DCT is still a major publisher and has been the training ground for a large number of now famous names in Brit comics (I seem to recall Alan Grant and John Wagner both worked their early in their careers) and has remained a family concern over the decades. No word yet if there will be any affect on DCT’s comics output, although I’d assume the likes of the Beano will still be safe for future generations of kids to enjoy and their statement would seem to indicate that too. The publisher is now entering into a period of consultation with staff in an effort to try and minimise compulsory redundancies.

(Emma Hayley, Ian Rankin, David Fickling and Paul Gravett on the graphic novel panel at the LBF, pic borrowed from the Geek Syndicate)

Nuge does go on to say that despite the massive travel problems caused by the volcanic eruption footfall did seem to pick up later on and that there was a bit of a buzz from some folks curious to know more about comics publishing, while Emma Vieceli and Nana Li did a sterling job drawing away and acting as ambassadors for the medium and that a panel discussion, New Opportunities: Graphic Novels and Digital, with Emma Hayley (from SelfMadeHero), Ian Rankin, David Fickling and Paul Gravett (Cory Doctorow couldn’t make it) was a standing room only affair, which surely bodes well for more publisher interest in the graphic medium.