Interesting that they also have an eye on the digital form as well, something any publisher has to consider today and for a small press obviously a chance to reach readers they perhaps can’t on bookstore shelves where space is limited and it is a struggle to get your books on the racks. Improper will be at the upcoming Bristol Comics Expo this month and will have limited runs of black and white previews of their first two titles, Butterfly Gate: Beginnings and Porcelain: a Gothic Fairy Tale (both written by Benjamin and illustrated by Chris) and are planning news of other book, comics, digital and apps releases over the next few months – we wish them well with their venture, always good to have another outlet for good comics work. You can check out some preview images from those first two books on their site right now – I have to say I think they look gorgeous, I’m already falling for Porcelain…

A reminder to all the artists out there of our illustration challenge – in response to the recent assertion by some in UK publishing that we had a serious lack of good illustration talent our own Kenny, also a publisher in his own right, issued an opportunity and a challenge to the artists among our readership. Pick one of two books – Salinger’s landmark Catcher in the Rye or  The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid – and design a book cover for them; thinking outside the box is encouraged.

We need entries by the end of May at which point Kenny, Richard and myself will narrow down the contributions to a final shortlist which anyone who took part can have a vote on to determine the winner. The outright winner will receive £150, but the main prize here is for all artists to show what we believe, that we have a very strong cadre of illustrators working today and we want to show off their work to a wide audience. Send the entries to joe(dot)gordon(at)forbiddenplanet(dot)co(dot)uk before the end of May and of course include a link to your own site or blog so we can make sure you are credited properly and linked back to . You can read more about the challenge and full details on Kenny’s original post here – please do consider taking part and spread the word to other artists, we want to show off your talents right here to the naysayers.

(a page from Depresso by and (c) Brick, published Knockabout)

A couple of years ago British creator Brick – aka John Stuart Clark – had the excellent Depresso out from fine UK Indy press Knockabout. Like Darryl Cunningham’s powerful Psychiatric Tales it dealt with mental health issues, although in a very different style, John’s personal memoir of dealing with issues and the effects they had on his loved ones and friends, all rendered in a classic, very British cartooning style that brought a lot of humour to the fore; it was honest, self deprecating, touching and often, despite the subject matter, very, very funny, while never downplaying the serious effects mental health issues can have on individuals and those around them. In fact it went on to be one of my Best of the Year picks; you can also read a very interesting Director’s Commentary by Brick on the book here.

Now John, along with his partner in crime Theodore Stickley, are planning collect a range of personal graphic memoirs of people who have been through similar problems and have turned to using the comics medium as a way of telling their story and also to help their recovery – over to John and Theo:

An undervalued feature of the recovery movement is the powerful narratives of those who have survived mental health problems and the psychiatric system.

Increasingly people in distress or recovery have turned to the graphic medium of comics to tell their sensitive stories, sometimes collaborating with friends or therapists, more commonly working alone to produce a personal diary or recollection. While a few have emerged as published ‘graphic memoirs’, most never see the light of day, or at best, are only accessible as web-comics.

Going some way to correct this, we invite submissions for a compendium book of graphic short stories of personal journeys (or part of) to be published early next year. The invitation goes out to everybody, past or present ‘sufferer’, regardless of artistic or literary expertise.

The editors appreciate that the form and dimensions of any proposed book are critical to those who create comics, so before committing, we ask for expressions of interest. This should be no more than a title and paragraph outlining your proposed story, plus a sample page of artwork submitted as a jpeg no bigger than 2MB. Deadline for Expressions: 31st July 2012

As a rough guide, imagine the finished book is A4 format and in black & white. Your finished story or episode should be no more than ten pages long, but can be as short as a single page.

Provided it is indicative of your style or that of the person you will collaborate with, the sample artwork can be of anything and any dimension. It is not necessary to work up a sample of your proposed story. Postal submissions will be accepted, but your outline must be typed, the artwork must be a photocopy, and a stamped self-addressed envelope must be included. Foreign language contributors will need to provide their own translations into English, and the page must read left to right.

The editors will respect full confidentiality should you wish your work to be included anonymously, but we need full contact details, even if you prefer to use a pseudonym. The editors cannot team up writers with artists, or visa versa.

COPYRIGHT: Standard copyright practice is adhered to.
DATA PROTECTION: The editors will retain entrants’ personal data for use solely in conjunction with work on this project and will not make this available to other organisations.

Digital submissions: Theo (dot) Stickley (at) nottingham (dot) ac (dot) uk
Postal submissions: Theo Stickley, Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Mental Health Building, University of Nottingham, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road, Nottingham NG8 1BB, U.K.

An unexpected and rather lovely package arrived for me the other day from the Library of America, a pair of quite beautiful small hardback editions of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes and A Princess of Mars. On May 14th, 1912, Burroughs recorded that he had finished writing Tarzan of the Apes; a century on and his immortal hero is being celebrated by the Library of America; in the same year one of his other great heroes, John Carter, would appear in print for the first time, serialised in several parts in the All-Story magazine across the summer of 1912. Both have inspired readers for a century – I well remember finding cheap paperback collections of both Tarzan and John Carter tales as a boy, devouring them alongside Haggard’s Allan Quatermain stories (how little did I know he would re-appear in a fascinating new form from Messrs Moore and O’Neill decades later). Even as a twelve year old boy I knew they were old-fashioned, from a different era to the other books I read, but so too were my HG Wells and my Jules Verne, my Robert Louis Stevenson and my Arthur Conan Doyle books and it didn’t matter; if anything that just made them more special, not just fantasies of other world and cultures but written from the perspective of a culture and world that itself had long since vanished, as much an insight into those eras that birthed them as they were wonderful tales of adventure.

The editions are both lovely things – yes, I know that it is the actual story that is of paramount importance, but those of us who love our books, let’s be honest, also love finely made editions because, unlike an e-book, the physical book isn’t just a method of storing and displaying data, it can be a treasured object in its own right (although LOA does also offer various digital versions if that’s the way your prefer reading). There’s an undeniable physical pleasure in holding a nicely made volume, admiring the binding, the feel of the dustjacket, running your fingers down the spine, the feel of good quality paper as you turn the pages, even the scent of a good book is a pleasurable act to some of us. And these are such volumes, very handsome small hardbacks, which for their inspiration are designed around the original hardback editions of a century or so ago, boasting extensive introductions, essays on the original editions, notes on the author and characters; in the case of A Princess of Mars the volume also boasts some of the glorious illustrated pages too. Both are very much of their time, feature elements that stretch credulity (even when suspending belief for a fantasy tale Burroughs often stretches it way beyond any sensible level), other elements are awkward for modern readers (gender roles, attitudes to race), but as the recent controversy over Tintin in the Congo shows it simply doesn’t work to apply modern cultural standards to historical works; as I said before, these sorts of work are as much a glimpse into the era that spawned them, and indeed into the writer’s mind.

But that aside they remain what they always were, what has made them endure for a century, being adapted endlessly in sequels then into new media like film, television, comics, computer games and more – they are simply fabulously enjoyable adventure tales. And how nice to have them in such lovely editions; I’ve had a desire to go back to the John Carter books since watching the recent film (which really didn’t deserve the scorn some film industry figures heaped on it, I thought it a most enjoyable action-fantasy that did exactly what it said on the tin, giving me a decent film version of Burroughs’ planet-travelling hero). It is also worth noting that the The Library of America is a not for profit publisher, dedicated to preserving the most significant, influential and important  writing in fine, collectable editions, all with notes and introductions (currently they have over 225 different volumes); any profits made go back into creating the next volumes on all sorts of writers and subjects. I find that rather appealing and imagine many fellow readers will also approve of such an approach to preserving and publishing important books; you can order them and find out more about them on their site here.

This isn’t comics but I suspect anyone involved in book design and publishing will find it interesting, not to mention the many artists who these days work with a tablet and digital pen to draw directly onto their computer – it’s a video AT&T Tech has posted up about a digital system developed by Bell Labs and used to design pages for the Yellow Pages back in 1977. Amazingly basic and rough compared to modern Desk Top Publishing, WYSIWYG systems, digital imaging, scanning and software packages, of course – rough even compared to the very early DTP packages I first used on a Mac way back in the very early 90s (and I’m sure more than a few of you fiddled with those early DTP and Adobe type programmes to see what they could do). And yet there’s a lot here many of us will recognise – the digital tablet, the scanner, saving regularly used images for re-use (such as logos), the ability to re-arrange the layout on the screen to best fit what will later be a printed page, it’s all the elements many can now do from their work desk or at home in high-resolution simply and quickly (indeed the iPad or Android tablet in your rucksack probably has greater design apps in its slim case), but here is the early “bang the rocks together, guys” version. To quote the old Vulcan saying, “fascinating”. (via BoingBoing)

What made the article controversial with many in the UK was the comments of one of the country’s leading literary editors and publishers, Dan Franklin of Cape, long a home to graphic novel publications and still using some illustration in prose works, who said that there seems to be few, if any good, illustrators around anymore. His argument seemed to centre on people having poorer drawing skills, especially when it comes to depicting the human figure, a contention that was backed up by several others. The article resurfaced this week through the magic of online discussion (as Richard noted here on the blog over the holiday weekend) and lead to comics creator and illustrator Sarah McIntyre posting a robust defence on her LiveJournal, noting that not only are there many fine illustrators working in the UK, even the barb about being able to draw the human figure didn’t always hold water as often an illustrator doesn’t feel that a naturalistic life drawing approach suits a particular scene.

Naturally, as readers who are exposed to a wide variety of illustration every day, we tend to Sarah’s side of the argument, that we do have excellent illustration talent here. And so we are putting our money where our mouth is – we thought we would run a little contest and let you put your best foot forward. If you are an illustrator or cartoonist, we want you to have a go at producing a cover for one of a couple of books. The books are Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger and The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid. The first is a book most everyone knows, that will tackle your skills in thinking outside of the many covers and images used for this book in the past – this is your chance to bring something new to it. The second book is one some may be less familiar with, but is a tremendous book dealing with a changing world in a sympathetic and intriguing way. There is very little imagery associated with that book, so it gives you free reign to work out some sort of design with few influences – think on your own, outside the box. We’ve excluded kids books not because we have any problem with them – regular readers will be aware we’ve reviewed comics and illustrated books aimed at kids numerous times on here – but because there seems to be much less argument about the existence of a lot of talented children’s illustrators.

So how will this work? We need you to send in your cover art for one of the two books (email them to joe (dot) gordon (at) forbiddenplanet (dot) co (dot) uk. We will then post all the entries on the blog (subject to them appearing to us to be of a pro standard – myself, Richard and Joe will be looking through them). We know that a lot of people in the world of illustration and publishing read this blog. Your efforts will be seen and hopefully a clear answer given to where all the great illustrators have gone. As a small incentive we will give £150 to the winning entry. Once all the entries are up on the blog we will narrow them down to a shortlist of six – at this stage we have decided to go for the jury of your peers approach, so those artists who contributed work to the competition will also be eligible to vote for their favoured cover (naturally you can’t vote for your own, it is other people you need to impress with your design after all!) to select the final outright winning cover artwork. The only other rule is that you shouldn’t post the image you make online until we have done so first, so others will not be influenced by your entry. This contest has no commercial aspect and FPI will be doing nothing more with the entries than posting them to be seen by readers and publishers (as always we will include links to your own sites with the art), in the attempt to, we hope, prove a point. The work, of course, remains owned by those producing it. The contest entry date runs until the 31st of May; let’s show them that our illustrators are just as good as we all believe, send us those entries and then let’s show them off around the blogosphere and Twitterverse.

“Ok, some loose thoughts, that may or may not add up to anything and that not only will you disagree with but, over night, I’ll probably find fault with too.

In order to prevent me be a dithering waffler (as I am prone to do) I will state the following as ABSOLUTELY correct assertions and shall brook no compromise. Though, obviously, that’s just an affectation. As I’m probably dead wrong on all fronts.

1) The NEW digital comic format is landscape. Uh hu. It is. We’ve all been fighting it, because, frankly, we’ve too much invested in the old portrait format of print. But we’re all wrong. DC have a couple of books that are pure landscape format (they seem to have started by producing work that can be both landscape ipad and portrait print, by having an artificial half way point on the art, and getting the artist to keep that in mind when drawing. But, I don’t think it’s a strange hybrid animal and if you do it so it works for ipad it works less well for print – and vice versa)

2) Cheap comics weekly or Expensive long one offs. That’s it. That’s your choice. The monthly comic book format, 22 pages for $2.99 is a result of the current distribution model and, while it sort of works ok, produces books that are really perceived as not being great value for money.”

There’s more in there that should be of interest to anyone creating comics and trying to get them out there, so go and have a look. I also found it interesting that PJ flags up the portrait versus landscape format. I’ve never downloaded a comic on my tablet, I mostly prefer to read paper versions and that isn’t going to change. But I have used my tablet to read some advance digital copies of upcoming work sent by creators or publishers as a simple, effective and affordable way to let bloggers get a look at their work and I read webcomics on it. Of course like any tablet, Android or iPad, I can turn it and the screen flips itself from landscape to portrait display automatically, but PJ has a point, although I can read a portrait format page comic, the screen is wider than it is high, in the now standard ‘widescreen’ design, and frankly I can read a page easier and at a larger resolution in landscape format. But then I have to keep scrolling over and up and down as the page isn’t formatted that way, which is annoying and distracts from the reading experience. Of course, if you do design your comic in landscape, as PJ notes, it will work better on a screen but not so well for print…

(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)