Bloc will probably be well noticed around festivals while stocks last.
Smith and Lambden both raise their game for this 52-page wordless piece which has all the characteristics of a European master such as a protege of Jean Giraud Moebius. Yes, those guys.
Smith, as a comics storyteller, has dwelled on delicate poetical musings of the teenager, with a young adult's cynicism. With Bloc, a piece written several years ago, we get all that but much more. It pre-empts in characteristic his status as a recent physics graduate and author on Dr. Who with a nameless figure wandering and pondering the landscape, sharing a seemingly psychic or physical field relationship with a cumulus of floating bricks. Internal ponderings wrapped within a narrative of dynamic things happening Play, exploration, philosophy all rise in a narrative that reminds me of Grant Morrisson's silent issue of X-Men. Perhaps its better. Theres a sense of genuine wonder that is massively genuinely endearing, and theres also some horrible, horrible shock. Not bad for a visual instruction only script.
Oliver Lambden too has his roots in semi-autobiography, although perhaps more leaning to stock superhero monomyth. What he does with Bloc is every bit as inspiring as Kirby or Simonson at Marvel, grand epic like Chris Webster, proportion and European influence. For the artist, theres a definite coming-of-age of the craftsman, of the artist who cares. Structure, symmetry, density, a fixed concentration devoted to the moment, his pokerfaced pen resonating Its almost tangible. Every accolade that I heaped upon Smith above is Lambden's in kind. I do believe hes showing off! I'd be willing to get a coffee table to place this book on it. Theres probably nothing quite like it, and its one of the best UK comics this year. Buy it!
I already insisted a girl on the bus looked over my arm while reading this. Buy this!
24 pages, A5 form, approx £1 plus postage
To order email schmurgen (dot) jonerhaffs (at) gmail.com or look out for it on the festival circuit as it appears to be well distributed.
Well, what is it? Schmurgen the character appears to be a Norwegian cartoonist in a Wrestler mask attempting to integrate himself into British culture, delivering the laughs with moments for questions on society, status and gender relations along the way. The art style is at times reminiscent of SPX Expo or underground figures like Chester Brown, or British cartoonist Francesca Cassavetti. It wouldn't really be comparable to say the stillness of Sean Azzopardi's longer form work. Theres a little use of greyscale and carbon black, though mostly its elegant waves and dynamic gestures. The subject matter is often juvenile toilet-focussed, though perhaps more Oink! than Viz Yet, theres something quite amicable beyond the decent cartooning that makes it a pleasurable fifteen to twenty minutes. Theres even an exclusive competition offer.
Considering the subject matter and the seemingly one-joke nature this is a half-decent first effort, if a little raggedy around some edges. If it is a first-timer. The booklet contains likeable walk-on parts by several British comics publishing cartoonists. We've already established its not Sean Azzopardi, perhaps. If I didnt know better I'd swear its Cassavetti (whose work is here)
Then again, Schmurgen is Schmurgen. Keep a look out for wrestling masks around Soho.
Inside Outsiders is the new work by John Robbins, the 42nd publication from an Irish artist who has made his name through dense cutting politics, often dealing with mental health issues and sexual nature. If you've been around the UK independent comics publishing history for ten years, doubtless you've come accross his name. I'm a fan of his work, obviously an immensely talented artist. though at times feel a common desperation that these are thick, dense - like ' comics concentrate'. His applied craftsmanship as a creator would seem to take a lot of work, and similarly as a reader it can be quite difficult to digest.
Inside Outsiders then, is none of that. If Robbins makes comics concentrate, this book is ready to drink. It comes containing all the usual themes from the recently reprinted anthologies of his Leaflit series, but its very reader friendly, with an EC style cover, and a mock in-house ad that is timed with the story's pacing. Its only sixteen pages long but feels more content than small press books two or three times that length. The story concerns recognisable action figures venturing out of their environment to search for a missing friend divorced from the group through sexual tension's consequence. Comparisons with both Toy Story and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are good descriptive, but not really fair. Robbins brings his kit of mischief, multiple definitions, paradox, and clever pace to the proceedings. This one is a real gripping page-turner. To cap it all off, Robbins has tuned his ready professional skill closer to his style of Eddie Campbell. Some might accuse him of ripping it off, but I think it helps with the translation.
This is one booklet I feel very confident in recommending, and a fine example of what can be done as a small presser, with all its creative thinking and freedoms. It consumes the line between mainstream entertainment influence and independent's internal realms of the mirrored sexual psyche and biography. Doubtless, if you've ever been put off by one of John's books in the past you should give this a go. And for people who want to learn how to make comics....
Inside Outsiders is available for around £1.50 ordering details from John Robbins at www.geocities.com/rhubarb108/downrightbockedy.html
The edgy immediacy of the Slow Science Fictions series continues as a melancholy chagrin further bulldozes into plot complications and sees both author and story unravel compellingly amid, amongst other heady happenings, a deconstruction of the plot of Brigadoon. This one might more appropriately have been titled Four Weddings And A Funeral: SSF #21 provides news of four marriages included is that of American President Sam Poitier and celebrated author Michelle Jolly and, in keeping with the central theme of recent issues (which revolves around the search for artistic identity and acceptance) offers a quasi-post-mortem of Michael J Weller's small press vocation.
A disillusioned, demoralised, rewritten Weller wrestles with a lack of validation, an abundance of self-doubt, and a sense that his writing is madness gone unchecked; but, conversely, still manages to vaingloriously recognise his salvation in a body of work produced well off the pandering path of artistic subservience. However, Weller is not immune from social expectations, still requires permission to be himself; and his bemused indignation of this self-satire is hilarious. Even Comics International reviewer Mike Kidson is to blame: Kidson had written that Weller is perhaps the most exciting British creator of comics at any level, but then insensitively disappeared from the comics scene. Ha! The cheek!
36 A5 pages, £2 inc p&p, available from Mike Weller, 3 Queen Adelaide Court, Queen Adelaide Road, Penge, London SE20 7DZ. E-mail: mikejweller(at)hotmail.com Site: http://www.homebakedbooks.co.uk/wellerverse.htm
Additional 3World in 4Time comix, pics, videos, and comments: www.4time.wordpress.com, www.earthco.wordpress.com, www.blog2blog.wordpress.com, www.addingcombe.wordpress.com, www.myspace.com/mickweller, www.egnep.blogspot.com
In issue #1 of this supernatural series from True Stories Comics: Found mysteriously fleeing a cave on the moors, amnesiac siblings Winter and Summer are soon struggling to endure a sinister orphanage bent on purging their wickedness. With nothing to aid their escape but a strong familial bond, an urchin pal and an apparition, it seems unlikely that the pair can survive a paranormal presence with malevolent intentions. In issue #2: The orphanage behind them, Winter, Summer and urchin pal Geo find themselves the travelling companions of Elias, an amiable street magician whose family have been lost to the plague. But while Summer's success with a tarot pack hints at innate talent for magic, it also reveals impending danger; and, too late, a hidden agenda is uncovered.
Thus far this is polished, decent fare of the Misty variety, and perfect for the early-teen or the inner-child. Though the rattling pace amplifies the cryptic storytelling and results in a dissatisfying lack of causality which may irk readers impatient to be drip-fed answers to narrative questions of the mystery ilk compensation exists in the form of neat conclusions to the adroitly realised suspense of each issue. Creator Tony McGee's storytelling fluidity is singular yet unselfconscious: with eerily stark black and white artwork, understated borders and no captions, panels inexorably spill past to lyrical effect. And even though the obvious quest of the main story arc is as yet unacknowledged by our aimless protagonists, already there is reason-enough to recommend this promising new series.
US format, 28 pages per issue, £1.75 each from http://truestories.awardspace.com/
Another ooh in creator Philip Barrett's impressive oeuvre, this tale of the unexpected revisits the theme of obsessive struggle previously explored in The Record and Blackshapes as it chronicles a successful artist's hapless search for relief from a mysterious face that relentlessly haunts him and his work. When catharsis fails and this malicious muse encroaches deeper into the artist's life, his locked-in despair edges him toward the ultimate release, but instead delivers something peculiar and disturbingly twisty: a close encounter of the face kind.
With brisk pace, deft characterisation and curious plot, Weird Face proves an engaging read, and is simultaneously funny and disquieting. Barrett's Tomine-like cartooning exudes warmth and sophistication, and his adroit portrayal of elapsing time and a thoroughly lucid world add considerably to one's enjoyment of this classy comic. Not perhaps possessed of the subtly understated complexities associated with Barrett's more intimate work (Typical, See You Later Then etc.), Weird Face is a crowd-pleaser a satisfying story, satisfyingly told.
16 A5 pages for 2 euros/£1.50 /$3.00 (postage included) from http://www.blackshapes.com/comics.htm
Author Michael J Weller pumps enough whimsy into his odd-shaped fiction to gently bump the knobbly high ceiling of concept. Again, though, that sense of a perpetually inchoate central plot fuelled no doubt by a prose writing informed by comic strip vocabularies and visual codes, which offers the presence of super-beings albeit off-duty but the absence of action-packed battle. In this one, menaced by the revenge fiction of Nibs writer Mike Weller, Michelle Jolly's impatient wait for her new dream of inspiration finally nears an end; a dewy-eyed Jim Pannifer must don tights if he is to maintain contact with local-writing-group-turned-amateur-dramatic-society; and the Council of God have been asked by the Archangels to forward nominations for the ninth Guardian to the Divine Assembly: Sappho makes the case for the Prophet Mahomet, Pythagoras for Charles Darwin, and Dante for William Blake, but who really could follow the eighth Guardian, Diando? (Diando: the composite Holy Spirit of ancient goddesses Ppamms, Dido and Diana, and of the lovely Jill Dando.)
28 A5 pages, £2 inc p&p, available from Mike Weller, 3 Queen Adelaide Court, Queen Adelaide Road, Penge, London SE20 7DZ, or pick up a copy at the London Underground Comics stall in Camden market. E-mail: mikejweller(at)hotmail.com Site: http://www.homebakedbooks.co.uk/wellerverse.htm
Additional 3World in 4Time comix, pics, videos, and comments: www.4time.wordpress.com, www.earthco.wordpress.com, www.blog2blog.wordpress.com, www.addingcombe.wordpress.com, www.myspace.com/mickweller, www.egnep.blogspot.com
Despite the plushy format and intellectualising-foreword provided by new publisher Blank Slate, this collection of Oliver East's self-published Trains Are Mint comics vitally remains the work of a bemused underdog: the drawings are crude, colour-washed insinuations of urban localities, and East writes just like regular folks, too. The subject matter is congruent with this common man crafting: shops, pylons, factories, terraced housing etc. all come into view as East's good-humoured record of loner treks between Manchester and Blackpool maps well-worn haunts and the things we live a little distance from. It's uneventful stuff, which speaks of mortal tedium, but which seductively offers a creator at peace with his crafting ability and with his environment.
Hardback, £12.99 / $24.99 for 124 A5-ish pages, available from www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk
In Social Reality Earthtime 2008 it is personalities not policies that celebrity culture demands in electoral voting markets. What voters don't know is that Sir Michaeal Spearate, the Duke of Hell, now operates in all ten Realities with his bent key to the universe, and that Samuel L Poitier new Commander of the Cosmic Squad, Democratic candidate for the American presidential election and possessor of feminine upper figure had been built and animated at Spearate's laboratories in the depths of Dis and is the intellectual property of global corporation Earthco; senator Poitier is a world leader born to be cloned for all continents and all nations in multiple simulations. Meanwhile in Britain, Conservative leader David Eton-Trifle stirs, and Prime Minister Gordon Scott's Presbyterian leadership style proves unpopular. (Come back Tony Blandford, all is forgiven!)
Just as the curtain closes on jostling for a Way Out West Wing, it opens again to reveal author Michael J Weller furiously tugging at the levers of his Wellerverse selves and at characters that are simply aspects of a fragmented personality: dead novelist MJ Weller confronts Mick Weller as he sells his home-baked, cock-eyed booklets at Camden's London Underground Comics; Michelle Jolly refuses to be written into the nasty, horrid, paranoid drivel of a nutcase she is doing something else. Here the exploration of the author's troubled interior universe veers toward self-indulgence his career dyspepsia and resultant creative-deprecation overtly communicated through dialogue too on the nose but the narrative counters with some existential comment on the substance of what we do to confer meaning on our lives. (Hang in there, Mikes!)
32 A5 pages, £2 inc p&p, available from Mike Weller, 3 Queen Adelaide Court, Queen Adelaide Road, Penge, London SE20 7DZ, or pick up a copy at the London Underground Comics stall in Camden market. E-mail: mikejweller(at)hotmail.com Site: http://www.homebakedbooks.co.uk/wellerverse.htm
Additional 3World in 4Time comix, pics, videos, and comments: www.4time.wordpress.com, www.earthco.wordpress.com, www.blog2blog.wordpress.com, www.addingcombe.wordpress.com, www.myspace.com/mickweller, www.egnep.blogspot.com
Even with eyes set firmly in the shadow of one's critical cap it's impossible not to mine redeeming elements in every work of an anthology produced with charitable intent, and so it is with this uneven-but-worthy comics collection all proceeds from the sale of Sorry I Can't Take Your Call Right Now But I'm Off Saving The World are destined for Goal. Delivering work inspired by this title-trigger the answering machine message of editor Cliodhna Lyons' late father when working abroad with aid organisations the anthology offers a diversity of styles and subject matters.
Featuring the 1- to 8-page works of 30 creators, this attractive, polished volume delivers a veritable mix-bag of penny chews, with some chews inevitably tastier than others. Cricket In A Bag, by Catherine and Tomm More, briefly explores the impact volunteers in Kenya have on rescued street children, to uplifting consequence. In sedate parable Planting, Christopher and Ellen Ruggia touch on personal responsibility via a horticulturist who understands the conditions of the world and who has found her own tranquillity and order. Malte Knaack's The Visit moodily evokes the absence of closure in a broken relationship as exes spend a listless weekend together. 1963 pastiche The Living Proton, by Gar Shanley and Cathal Duggan, is an adroitly realised sci-fi superhero parody wherein our hero does battle in a quantum world's haberdashery realm. And in Jenny Linn-Cole's cosmic allegory Dog Man Saves The World three lolloping mutts have their delightful way with a familiar globe.
Also in the creator-mix are the chewy Joe Decie, Sarah McIntyre, Lee Thacker, John Maybury, Philip Barrett and others (including me; as masticatory as they come). And though much of the material is superfluous to the spirit of a title poignantly personalised by Cliodhna Lyons and not intended to stretch the limits of creative endeavour there is conscientiously crafted work on offer, diverting-enough to satisfy the undemanding reader, and gathered and bound into an uncommon publication with intent substantial-enough to eschew the dampening appraisal of criticism. Recommended.
96 A5 pages, £5.50 / 7 available from http://www.goalanthology.com/