Now is not the time for hysteria...

That Man

2012-01-22T07:10:00.000-08:00

Video for Dutch jazz singer Caro Emerald inspired by the graphics of Saul Bass.

Kiss This

2012-01-11T14:27:00.001-08:00

I don't care what anyone says. This is a thing of beauty.

Polymers are Forever

2011-11-14T09:09:00.001-08:00

The new EP from Future of the Left with artwork by myself is out tomorrow. I'm pretty darn excited. You can listen to the EP here : http://www.spin.com/articles/first-spin-hear-future-lefts-polymers-are-forever-ep. I've been lucky enough to hear most of the tracks from the forthcoming album too and personally I think the bands new material is astonishing. Some of the best British rock I have ever heard. If there's any justice in the world it should be massive.

Ursonate with Real Time Typography

2011-11-10T10:44:00.001-08:00

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

2011-11-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

I'm afraid you're going to have to check out A Christmas Charlie Parker Handyman to find out.

http://www.soundofdrowning.com/books.html

Oh Gandhi!

2011-10-27T13:14:00.001-07:00

Seinfeld Matrix Comic Trailer

2011-10-13T07:36:00.001-07:00

Vinyl Candy

2011-10-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

Coming across these couple of excellent blogs dedicated to the art of vinyl - current not historic - I'm heartened to discover that there are still those who believe in presenting, as opposed to packaging, music. Innovation as well as beauty abounds - check out metal on metal with its inbuilt circuitry or the record made from concentric detachable rings. Amazing.

Recently having produced artwork for the new EP by Future of the Left (not out yet...but soon and yeah, it's f**king great) and maybe in with a shot at forthcoming album artwork I've been thinking a lot about presentation, packaging and record cover art. The kind of album art I always liked the most was stuff you could pore over and see something new in every time. But I'm well aware that these days alot of album art is only ever seen by people as icons, no bigger than the size of a postage stamp. You really have to make art that works small as well as large which does then push toward simple rather than elaborate design. Sure a lot of classic album covers are very simple but I do have a thing for clutter. As a kid my mum had an original version of The Rolling Stones' 'Their Satanic Majestic Request' gatefold with it's lenticular 3D cover photo and and inner madness...

...I remember spending hours looking at this thing. Maybe that was an extreme example but you know what I mean.

Anyway. Here are those vinyl sites...

http://piratespress.com/rotw/

and

http://corporaterecords.biz/RecordWordPress/

The Animated Egg

2011-10-03T11:49:00.000-07:00

There are bad album covers and there are really bad album covers and then there is The Animated Eggs first and only party stopper, my personal vote for worst album cover of all time. It's not kitsch or funny bad. It's just bad. Really bad. Everything it does it does exceedingly badly whilst also being exceptionally offensive to the eye. Bravo gentlemen.

Frog with Spear in Speedos Menaces Kissing Giraffes

2011-09-23T09:58:00.000-07:00

Picking just one image to draw attention to the fact that ThriftStoreArt.com has some new galleries up was a tough call but "Frog with Spear in Speedos Menaces Kissing Giraffes" pretty much sums up all that's great about this site - not just the paintings themselves but the curators nack for naming a spade a spade. Gems, one and all.

Leeds Alternative Comic Fair 2011

2011-09-16T09:41:00.001-07:00

Hot Dog Factory

2011-09-10T16:29:00.001-07:00

Stool Pigeon Comics Exhibition

2011-08-16T07:21:00.000-07:00

The Stool Pigeon presents an exhibition of comic art at Orbital Comics, London, from August 19 to September 18, featuring full-page strips,cartoons and visual gags from throughout their six-year history alongside original artwork, line drawings and sketches.

The Stool Pigeon is a bi-monthly, free, fully independent and award-winning music newspaper based in London and available across the UK. Each issue contains an exclusive eight-page comics section, recognised for producing some of the best underground comic art in Britain today. This exhibition is a chance to put that work in its own context, away from the paper’s music journalism, and included in the show are all our regular comic strip writers and cartoonists — Krent Able, Paul O’Connell and Lawrence Elwick (Charlie Parker ‘Handyman’), Martin Kellerman (Rocky), Richard Cowdry (Down Town), Luke Pearson, Moochowski, Babak Ganjei (Hilarious Consequences), Dave The Chimp, Mickey Gibbons and others.

The launch of the exhibition, from 7.30pm on Friday August 19, is an open invitation to all Stool Pigeon readers, Orbital shoppers and comics fans. They’ll be live music from Babak Ganjei, free drinks, signings with the artists and DJ sets from No Pain In Pop, The Stool Pigeon and Krent Able.

My Favourite Clown

2011-08-03T05:24:00.000-07:00

I first saw Slava Polunin at the Hackney Empire in the mid 90's. I went back the next week and saw him again and have seen him a couple more times since. I was so blown away that first time (literally - see video) that I decided I would attend clown school. It was not a good experience. The clown running the clown school was a very angry clown indeed and a very hard taskmaster. It was more like a clown boot camp if truth be told. But that's another story. Here's Slava...

No Froth!?

2011-07-22T10:39:00.000-07:00

I'm reminded of the scene at the start of this clip almost every time I go into any random Brighton coffee house...

What's even more painful is realising how I have become this man.

Let it Be (Naval Manouvres in the Dark)

2011-07-21T14:06:00.000-07:00

I think this is one of the best Beatles covers I've ever heard. This is how it should have been done in the first place. All power to the Russian navy or whoever these people are. I like to think that whichever navy they belong to, they're the people who just weren't that good at the whole being at sea thing so they kept them safe back on dry land, inspiring the proletariat with stirring cover versions such as this...

Morrissey and the chicken

2011-07-02T06:58:00.000-07:00

I discover rare video footage of a contemporary dance performance featuring Morrissey and a chicken. Enormous cuboid blocks stand in a large pool of water. A naked Morrissey, accompanied by a chicken, leaps from block to block in time to a piece of classical music. Under one arm he is carrying a a piece of cardboard which he unfolds to reveal the form of a Gustave Dore lesser demon. He continues to dance with the cardboard demon held before him. He then unfolds it further to create a large black winged demon and continues his dance to it's dramatic conclusion. What strikes me most during the dream, watching the footage, is how nonplussed the chicken remains throughout.

RIP Anet

2011-06-15T06:56:00.001-07:00

The best job I ever had was reviewing bands demo tapes for a North London gig promoter. One of the demos I reviewed was by a band called Cay. The promoter I worked for became their manager and within a year they signed a major record deal. They were pretty big for a while, won a Kerrang! award, released some singles and an album and at a time when there was no one else to step up to the mark, their singer, Anet Mook, became the poster girl for the UK alt.rock scene - though she always appeared incredibly shy and awkward when she was alone in the spotlight. I used to run their website, deal with a bit of fan stuff and in the early days, do their lights for them at the packed out, sweat dripping from the ceilings club gigs they used to play in North London. In the episode of Spaced where Daisy and Tim get wasted in Camden they’re sitting in the Monarch (I think!) and you can see Cay posters on the wall (in an unconnected coincidence the bands bassist Tom Harrison later worked as a sound engineer on Shaun of the Dead).

For me the whole time was an interesting insight into how the music business worked at that level and how much engineering and orchestration went into creating a buzz around a band that would, hopefully, get them a record deal. There was a lot of grease oiling those wheels and a lot of greasy people making themselves apparently invaluable. There was a joke I heard that went along the lines of two A&R guys who bump into each other at a gig for some unknown band. One says to the other – ‘I hear this band’s really good’, the other replies ‘They must be if we’re both here’. Just how much things had changed clicked for me one day when Cay played a gig in exactly the same North London venue they had played a year earlier. The first time it had cost nothing. This time it was costing a considerable amount of money to put the gig on. Nothing had changed with the band except that now there were a whole bunch of other people needing to be involved and expecting payback. I saw a few good bands around that time signed and swallowed, never to be heard of again. It's a shit business.

Cay didn’t last too long. The record label dropped them, the band split up and I lost touch with all of them except their drummer Mark. Everyone lost track of Nik and Anet. Or rather I think they chose to lose themselves. Over the years there were various slurs, sightings and rumours but nothing solid. No one actually knew that much about her. Anet was originally from Holland. That was pretty much it for sure. No one even knew how old she was. I heard stories about how Anet treated other people sometimes and they weren’t good. But she was always very sweet to me. One thing that always impressed me was how much she genuinely cared about the music and especially the fans.

Mark sent me a text last night with the news that Anet had died last week in Amsterdam. The last time I saw Anet it had been a sunny day in Camden around 11 years ago. We sat on the pavement outside the old Rat and Parrot and had a pint together. When you haven’t seen someone for a long time you often find that there is one particular memory that sticks with you of that person and that one is mine. The beers cold, the sun is shining and you just know that it’s all going to turn to shit, but that’s ok because right now, fuck it, the beers cold, the sun's shining, live for today.

Mark shares his own thoughts here.

I Was A Middle Aged Sex Pest

2011-06-14T09:17:00.000-07:00

This is one of a few strips that didn't make the final edit into The Sound of Drowning #13, though it did previously appear in the special comics edition of Torpedo Quarterly. I might post up some of the other stuff that didn't make the cut at some point. Or I might not. Time will tell. In the meantime feel free to check out Dan Locke's review of SOD#13 with my own tuppence thrown in for good measure on the new Sussex Cartoon County blog.

Under Pressure

2011-06-07T07:38:00.000-07:00

Don't think I'd ever seen this original video for Under Pressure before. Good stuff.

Karma to Burn

2011-06-05T04:16:00.001-07:00

Gig poster by Rhys Wootton incorporating images from The Optician.

Yadayadayada

2011-05-29T11:51:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who bought comics from me at this weekends International Alternative Press Fair. If you're one of those people, thanks also for taking the time to visit the website/check out this blog. All the compliments given to Lawrence and his artwork I have passed on and watch out for the new Stool Pigeon in a couple of weeks time, we're just finishing off the latest Charlie Parker:Handyman episode now. Meanwhile for anyone who enjoyed the muppet wicker man comic mashup, hopefully you'll also enjoy our next forthcoming feature The Seinfeld Matrix, a collaboration between myself and Sean Duffield . Don't touch that dial.

Where's Daddy?

2011-05-24T06:33:00.001-07:00

One of the last bits of research I helped with before being made redundant from the University of Brighton last year was a project looking at representations of fatherhood in childrens books. Matt Adams, whose idea the project was, developed this poster representing the project for a competition. As well as a really attractive and engaging way of representing academic research, what makes the poster even more impressive is that it was entirely made using Powerpoint! Matt aparently misread the brief and thought he had no choice. Wow. I had no idea Powerpoint was even capable of producing anything like this! You live and learn.

International Alternative Press Fair 2011

2011-05-08T08:11:00.000-07:00

Movie of the Week: 'We Are Wizards'

2011-04-24T10:59:00.000-07:00

Another entertaining documentary, this one all about Harry Potter spin off bands and websites and stuff.

Without doubt the best thing about it is Brad Neely, a guy who rewrote the first Harry Potter novel without ever having read it, only having seen the film. And it's a work of genius. You can download/listen to both parts of 'Wizard People, Dear reader', here on this website -

http://www.illegal-art.org/video/wizard.html

You can sync them to the film itself which was his intention but I reckon it works perhaps better just as an audio book.

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

2011-04-15T18:25:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 19th April, BRIGHTON
"When?": 7.30pm - stories start 8pm sharp, home time 'round midnight"
"Where?":The Basement, Kensington Street, Brighton
"How much?": £4/£6
"What do I get for my money? Will I go hungry?": NO! as well as original short stories , read in our gorgeous candlelit burrow, accompanied by beautiful visuals and a smashing playlist, there will be FREE cakes and cucumber sandwiches, and a lost and found raffle, competitions and prizes. Stories by Andrew Kearsey,Paul O'Connell,Lindsay Meadows,Tony Hicks,Louise Winters,Denis Doran,Fiona Mcillavry.
"How do I get a ticket?": Call 01273 699 733 or visit
http://www.thebasement.uk.com/whatson.html
Shortly after the show, you will be able to download the stories straight onto your phones if you go to the White Rabbit section of Ether Books. For more info about Ether go to: http://www.etherbooks.co.uk/
www.thewhiterabbit.org.uk

Comics Don't Pay

2011-04-10T18:09:00.000-07:00

Interesting and enlightening article from The Village Voice...
If cartoons are so big, why don't they pay?

Future of the Left

2011-04-10T10:33:00.001-07:00

Bang the Librarian

2011-03-29T07:56:00.001-07:00

One of my favourite pieces of short literature (at least that's what it is as far as I'm concerned) is this list of a survey of hard core pornographic paperback novels which feature librarians published between 1978 and 1988 courtesy of River of Data. Not sure what happened after 1988, maybe authors felt genre variations had been exhausted (surely not)...

Bang the Librarian Hard. PP7315
Campus Lust. SH/105
Chained, Whipped Librarians. BH8197
Degraded Raped Librarian. BH8203
Eager Beaver Librarian. GR2411
Eager to Spread Librarian. PP7351
Eager Young Librarian. PP7354
First Rear Entry. HGL 103
Helpful Head Librarian. PP7480
Horny Balling Librarian. PP7091
Horny Hot Librarian. CB4345
Horny Licking Librarian. PP7245
Horny Peeping Librarian. AB5443
Hot Bed Librarian. DN458
Hot, Licked Librarian. DN492
Hot Loving Librarian. GR2387
Hot Mouth Librarian. GR2365
Hot Pants Librarian. TB1011
Hot to Trot Librarian. PP7190
The Hottest Librarian. LL330
In Heat Librarian. PP7087
Lash the Librarian! BB109
A Librarian Enslaved. BB101
The Librarian Gets Hot. CB4517
The Librarian Got Hot. PP7403
Librarian in Bondage. LB1238
Librarian in Chains. LB1117
The Librarian Licks Big Ones. LE106
The Librarian Loves It. CB4545
The Librarian Loves to Lick. CB4564
The Librarian Slave. LB1302
The Librarian With the Hots. DN 473
The Librarian's Boys. MST-104
The Librarian's Hot Fun. AB5489
The Librarian's Hot Lips. PP7095
The Librarian's Hot Urges. GR2382
A Librarian's Training. BB129
Licking the Librarian. AB5379
Line Up for the Librarian. AB5287
Naughty Voyeur Librarian. PP7273
Nympho Librarian. YW-128
The Oral Librarian. DN 485
Overeager Librarian. PP7270
Raped and Roped Librarian. LB1106
Sally - Sexy Librarian. ILL-1017
Sex Behind the Stacks. LL0338-R
Three-way with the Librarian. PP7079
What a Librarian! GR2468

New British Comics #3

2011-03-29T07:20:00.000-07:00

The third issue of this British/Polish comics anthology is out now! It's the strongest issue yet in my humble opinion. As well as featuring a lovely cover by Lawrence Elwick, inside you'll find a bunch of class strips including new work from Dan White, a couple of 'Charlie Parker: Handyman' strips and the very first 'Alfred Hitchcock: Master of Suspense' strip also by Lawrence and myself. More details at http://newbritishcomics.blogspot.com

Bol Baby Bol Rock'n'Roll

2011-03-10T04:44:00.000-08:00

Movie of the Week: 'A Personal Journey'

2011-03-01T15:54:00.000-08:00

Martin Scorcese takes an epic journey through the history of American cinema via the films and directors that inspired him, up to the point he himself started making films. It's packed with tons of clips of great old movies you probably never heard of and will want to check out and is far less about Scorcese than it is a love letter to cinema itself. Brilliant stuff...

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
(each part is around 70 mins)

Warning: Flies

2011-02-24T06:25:00.000-08:00

I can barely open the balcony door because of the drifts of soiled cat litter that have piled up against it. I am advised that by law I need to place a sign in the window of my home warning of flies. The cat is nowhere to be seen.

Bumble Boogie

2011-02-19T16:34:00.000-08:00

Leeds Alternative Comic Fair

2011-02-16T09:36:00.001-08:00

Movie of the Week: 'Happy Go Lucky'

2011-02-13T11:08:00.000-08:00

One of my favourite Mike Leigh films. Some people I know find the main character annoying. But I'm not one of them. Mike Leigh often has these ebullient optimistic characters in his films. I like how in this film you get a sense of the emotional labour that this requires of a person; that it's not simply glib jollity, it's a choice of how a person presents themselves to the world for their own private reasons. Well, that's my take on it anyway.

Movie of the Week: '36 Crazy Fists'

2011-02-05T07:38:00.000-08:00

Not least for the opening kung fu/dance routine and the Northern British voice dubbing that seems to sometimes replace the American voice dubbing - either that or the British voice actors occasionally do their best at American accents. It's hard to tell. But it did often remind me of this...

Movie of the Week: 'Sid and Nancy'

2011-01-28T15:51:00.000-08:00

I had a copy of Sid and Nancy on VHS as a teenager and I watched it a fair few times. More for the dramatisation of the Sex Pistols story than for anything else. Watching it again now, it's easy to see why John Lydon was never a fan. It's pretty camp; more Streets of Fire than Filth and the Fury. But then it was the Eighties. Weren't most things? And is it me or is the actor who played Rockhead (I mean, come on...'Rockhead'?) the same guy who played Zaphod Beeblebrox in the old BBC Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series? I kept expecting the other head to keep appearing from around the side. Anyway. Who knows. Who cares. Enjoy.

Thus Spake the Children

2011-01-23T16:26:00.000-08:00

A beautiful recording of a school band rendering of 'Thus Spoke Zarauthustra' which reminded me of the All Womens Kazoo band's 'Over the Rainbow', The Langley Schools Music Project and other similar gems. I love recordings like this, full of heart rending pathos as they stumble stoically on towards their climax. Another great example is this school band version of Popeye the Sailor Man - http://www.archive.org/details/SanJoaquinSchoolDistrictPopeyeTheSailorMan , barely holding itself together until it eventually shuffles off the quay altogether and falls into the water with a dead plop and not a dry eye in the house. Thanks to Lawrence for the 2001 clip!

Jason Beghe Interview

2010-12-21T05:33:00.000-08:00

I appreciate few may have the interest or time to watch the whole of this interview but I came across it the other day with similar feelings and ended up spellbound for the whole two hours. Hollywood actor Jason Beghe was involved with scientology for years at quite a high level before he decided to 'get out' and in this interview, once more back in his 'right mind', he eloquently and entertainingly gives an account of his experiences. It's fascinating stuff and delivered in such a down-to-earth and often very funny way...

Are You The Favorite Person of Anybody?

2010-12-08T11:37:00.001-08:00

Sabrina/The Comix Reader

2010-11-29T06:36:00.001-08:00

A new full page strip 'Sabrina: A Life in Lingerie - The Norma Anne Sykes Story' as featured in The Comix Reader - more details here!

Soda Pop

2010-11-29T05:45:00.001-08:00

Cookin' with The Flaming Lips

2010-11-27T08:03:00.000-08:00

From the latest Lemmy fronted issue of The Stool Pigeon! Which also gives me an opportunity to plug the brilliant work of Krent Able who is also a regular Stool Pigeon contributor. More of Krents work here.

Cultural Exports

2010-11-10T08:22:00.000-08:00

The latest issue of the superb Croatian underground comics compendium KOMIKAZE is out now. Though unless you live in Croatia or Berlin you might be hard pressed to find a copy. Which is a shame because it really is rather splendid and something of a priveledge to have work included in it. Not least because it amuses me no end that one of my older strips 'One Last Nazi Cumshot for the Road' is seeing itself once again in print thanks in part to The Croatian Ministry Of Culture and Zagreb City Council for Education, Culture and Sport. Quite right too.

The Sound of Anarchist Catering

2010-10-06T05:07:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow night on Resonance FM listeners will be underwhelmed to hear being broadcast an interview I did a little while ago with Dickon Harris for their weekly comics show Panel Borders.

The interview took place at the end of this years London Zine Symposium and while you might be able to surmise from the interview that I had been drinking a fair amount (it's a very poor coping mechanism I have developed for such events), what you unfortunately won't catch is how the interview took place in the anarchist cafe that was part of the event and that sitting across the table from myself and Dickon was a man intently eating a plate of felafels and salad and trying his best to ignore us.

I found the concept of Anarchist Catering curious. Earlier in the day I had gone in for a cup of coffee. I had asked for milk.

"We only have soya milk, is that ok?" They said. I didn't hide my disappointment.

"Well, ok, just a little bit." I sighed.

"It doesn't really 'work' with a little bit.." They said.

No, I thought, it doesn't does it? That's because it's not milk, it doesn't taste like milk and it doesn't even behave like milk.

I was then asked to put a 50p deposit on the mug. I wondered how convinced these anarchists were that people could be trusted to self-govern themselves in matters of real importance if they weren't sure they would even safely bring back a borrowed mug.

I glanced at a rack of Anarchist zines and pamphlets beside the counter. One was entitled 'Ban All Restaurants'. I felt more assured. A restaurant that actively promoted the idea that it should not exist had to have something going for it.

I tried one more test of their politics and attempted to stuff a fistful of felafels into my pocket without paying for them. Pretty anarchic I thought. They weren't impressed. And neither I sensed was the man sitting at out table later during the interview. Neither I suspect will anyone else be. But if you do want to listen to me being drunkenly interviewed by the very charming and enthusiastic (and sober) Dickon Harris it will be broadcast tomorrow (Thursday 7th October) at 5pm on Resonance FM and then available as a Panel Borders Podcast - 'The Sound of Drowning and Gentlemen Corpses' soon after.

Although I suggest you just go and do something far more anarchic instead.

Mecha Charlie VS Robo Ga Ga

2010-09-26T07:14:00.000-07:00

From the latest issue of Stool Pigeon, available free from hundreds of music shops and venues around the UK or online here.

Future Ghosts of Battersea

2010-08-12T08:35:00.001-07:00

As part of this years London Comica event the Pumphouse Gallery in Battersea is hosting a site specific exhibition - 'The Shapes of Comics to Come' which features work by Dave Mckean, Daniel Merlin Goodberry, Adam Dant and Warren Pleece.

Originally destined to be exhibited on the parks Bandstand the four pieces above form part of a bigger strip that forms an aspect of Daniel's installation. The bandstand comic strip, which features work by several other artists including Douglas Noble, Ellen Lindner and John Cei Douglas, depicts a fictitious free festival that took place in the bandstand in the 1970's. Amongst the crowd figures from history with some kind of a connection to Battersea assemble for the show.

The more observant among you will thus no doubt spot amongst the audience...William Blake, Malcolm McDowell & Stanley Kubrik (A Clockwork Orange was partly filmed in Battersea), Morrisey, Mick Jones, Timothy Spall, Alfred Hitchcock, Ronnie Biggs, Pink Floyds inflatable pig, a crowd surfing Victorian policeman and some residents from the nearby animal shelter.

The exhibition runs from 12th August to 26th September 2010 and looks to be well worth a visit.

Envelopes of Skin

2010-08-01T07:51:00.001-07:00

Dang Dang Dang Danngg!

2010-07-03T06:11:00.000-07:00

Crap Factory

2010-06-19T06:04:00.000-07:00

A little plug here for Sean Duffield whose latest comic CRAP FACTORY is going to be included in the reading room of the RUDE BRITTANIA exhibition currently on at Tate Britain

Sean describes CRAP FACTORY as 'a potent mix of political satire, social commentary and purile humour with an underground comix edge. It's limited to only 50 copies, and is priced at £2.50 (+35p postage).' You can get yourself a copy by sending £2.85 via paypal to S. Duffield with CRAP FACTORY in the message, or alternatively email Sean at seantiger@googlemail.com to arrange another way of getting yourself a copy.

Also included in the comic are a couple of collaborations Sean and I did together entitled 'Neo-Nazi Nights In'...

How many Charlies does it take to change a lightbulb?

2010-06-06T06:16:00.000-07:00

The Sound of Drowning 14

2010-05-30T07:50:00.000-07:00

The Sound of Drowning 14 with artwork by Lawrence Elwick is finally finished. Hip Hip Hooray!

Learnabout Madeleine

2010-05-25T15:45:00.000-07:00

So taken was she with the batch of Ladybird nasties I conjured up a while ago, Madeleine Brettingham (a comedy writer whose credits include Mitchell and Webb and Harry Hill) asked if I could redesign her website and magic up some more slightly disturbing nostalgic surreality for said purpose.

Hey presto, Madeleine's new website and a couple of fresh Ladybird nasties can be found at

www.madeleinebrettingham.com

Into the bargain I was having such fun playing around in the Ladybird universe again that I ended up producing a whole new batch of these collages, many of which I kind of prefer to the ones I did before - I think they're slightly weirder and darker and a bit closer to what I wanted to get at originally. Anyway, with a bit of luck these will see themselves turned into a book with accompanying prose by Hannah Eaton, whose recent show at the Brighton Fringe Festival was aptly described in one review as 'ruthless adult comedy horror'. Though I went myself and personally I'd say that was something of an understatement. So rest assured about our future collaboration. It shall be dark.

Bukowski

2010-04-30T09:46:00.000-07:00

Some panels from the second of two Bukowski strips illustrated by Lawrence Elwick that will be a part of The Sound of Drowning #14. It seems like we've been working on this 44 page comic of various character stories forever but it's finally finished. And so is The Sound of Drowning #13, which is something else entirely. More on both very soon.

Skyscraper Lunch

2010-04-06T17:44:00.000-07:00

One of the recent Charlie Parker Handyman strips set to a little of the man himself...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-2eUfGacrQ

Paint it Red

2010-03-27T07:09:00.000-07:00

Keep your eyes peeled in the next few weeks for the latest issue of the award winning free music newspaper The Stool Pigeon. The new issue features another brand new full-page Charlie Parker Handyman strip with art by Lawrence Elwick...

...as well as another new 'It Should Have Been a Picture' strip with art by Nelson Evergreen. This issue featuring the world's favourite megalomaniac, Axl Rose...

As I say...find the latest issue in music shops and venues around the UK and Europe in the next few weeks.

Girlfriend in a Michael Crichton Coma

2010-03-24T15:56:00.000-07:00

Bad puns, Paganism and the smell of burning felt...

2010-03-03T09:10:00.000-08:00

Suddenly noticed that A Muppet Wicker Man - a comic version of the classic film...with muppets...that I gave to friends at Christmas and had posted on Issuu, had suddenly been getting alot of traffic. It seems a few blogs had picked up on it's online presence thanks to an original posting on the Forbidden Planet Blog which has meant that it now also appears on google when anyone types in 'Wicker Man'. Oh well, it's surely now only a matter of time before unhappy copyright agents from Disney with their dark glasses and Mickey Mouse ears come to take me away to their secret torture chamber beneath Space Mountain.

Nevertheless, before I'm dragged away I hope I might get to attend one of fellow Brightonian Dr.Bramwell's Sing-a-long-a-Wickerman nights -

http://www.drbramwell.com/live-events/sing-along-a-wickerman/

Surely the only entertainment spectacle in history to offer audience members edible foreskins to munch on whilst singing along to Pagan folk songs!

Balloon of Doom

2010-01-08T06:19:00.001-08:00

They don't make 'em like they used to. From Bunty comic, March 1986.

Animal Heroes

2009-12-21T08:22:00.000-08:00

From a stack of old Look and Learn magazines I inherited a while ago. Some of my favourites from a series of cover illustrations for a feature entitled Animal Heroes...

British Journal of Photography

2009-12-06T14:39:00.000-08:00

The British Journal of Photography has a feature in it's latest issue on the recent strip I did about the DRCongo using the photography of Marcus Bleasdale for the CTRL.ALT.SHIFT 'Unmasks Corruption' anthology. The print feature runs for 5 pages and features many of the original images Marcus took shown alongside pages from the strip. An abbreviated version of the text from the article and interview with Marcus is also available to read online .

Lionfish

2009-12-03T17:32:00.000-08:00

Very excited as I've just seen the first pictures of a book that artist Simon Fowler is putting the finishing touches to - Lionfish - which will feature Simon's engraved illustrations accompanied with text by myself. More soon...

Schizophrenia Explained

2009-11-13T06:47:00.001-08:00

Illustration from an old psychology textbook I was flicking through.

Design Week Interview

2009-11-03T07:46:00.000-08:00

I was recently interviewed by Design Week about my contribution to the CTRL.ALT.SHIFT 'Unmasks Corruption' anthology being launched at Comica this year. Here's the full interview...

DW: First, can you tell me how you came to be involved in the project?

I was invited by CTRL+ALT+SHIFT to contribute some work to the project. I get the feeling that they wanted to get me to work with Marcus from the outset.

DW: Could you give me a brief synopsis of your story in the comic, and tellme a little about how and why you came to create it, and why this subject?

Before I had any contact with Marcus I had been sent links to his photodocumentary work in the DRCongo.

I also did a great deal of research myself on the situation there, taking in all different kinds of personal and political perspectives and experiences.

The more I researched the situation in DRCongo, the more complicated and horrific I perceived things there to be. The atrocities that are taking place there still are simply unimaginable. Where a lot of the accounts of the situation were pinning some hope on the intervention of the international community and the UN and then you discover that those ‘peacekeeping’ forces were similarly being accused of the atrocities they were sent there to prevent (rape, corruption, exploitation etc) it made a desperate situation seem even more hopeless.

I also wrestled with lots of issues about my own right to any kind of comment or expression about a situation I was so comfortably removed from and horrors that are way beyond anything people in the western world could ever imagine experiencing.

I spoke with Marcus briefly and he gave me access and permission to use his images and initially I was still unsure on how to approach the project. I decided I didn’t want to pollute what Marcus had captured in his images by adding text or a any kind of personal narrative and eventually decided to try and almost ‘remix’ those images in (my own) comic book way for a comic book audience whilst also trying to express, in my approach, my own feelings of horror that I had felt engaging with the reality of the situation as I understood it.

DW: With no text, how do you feel the frames express and convey the story, and what part does Marcus's photography background play in this form of graphic expression?

I think the ‘story’ is one involving billions of people - Those who are living in DRCongo and those whose lives are made more comfortable by the resources that the lives of those people are being expended to produce. This includes everyone who owns a mobile phone, or computer or piece of jewelry or any other number of taken-for-granted luxuries and essentials. They all have a human cost that most of us never even consider. It really is Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ still happening, except on a much more horrific scale.

Marcus is the person who went there to bring back evidence of that happening. When Marcus saw the strip and commented to me that it reminded him of his nightmares I felt that I might have done a decent job of things. Just reading about the situation and engaging with it emotionally made me sick to my stomach a lot of the time. I really can only imagine – and try and convey that imagining - how it must feel to the people of DRCongo to live day-to-day with those experiences. The situation in DRCongo says such dark and terrible things about what some human beings are capable of normalizing and justifying. Unspeakable things.

DW: There's obviously a long tradition of graphic novel work that dealswith real-world issues and political corruption, exploitation etc, doyou think that as a genre it's strengthening or stagnating?

I think it’s a shame that comics can only be perceived as having any real cultural value if they deal with political subjects. But at the same time they seem to have a potency to enable people who might not otherwise to deal with political issues, do so. There is good and bad in this I think. I think the proliferation of war-reportage comics and the way they have become somewhat homogenous over the last few years does reflect a danger of (sub)genre stagnation, certainly when such a homogenous approach seems to have become the norm. But then I think that comics have always been a very conservative art form. Most creators try to fit in and be taken seriously rather than trying to express something more originally and honestly and then risk rejection by their peers. I don’t think that helps comics be taken more seriously as a form of literary and artistic expression.

DW: Finally, can you give me a couple of emerging artists working in the genre that you admire?
More than anyone I admire Sean Duffield of Paper Tiger Comix. He has been collating material for and trying to produce a high quality international anthology of work in this field for years now. The barriers and obstacles he has been presented with by the people who should be encouraging and supporting his efforts and work makes me extremely frustrated on his behalf. If there were any justice in the world someone would give him the support he needs and deserves.

Sid & ABBA

2009-10-23T08:17:00.001-07:00

And so as one thing ends so another begins. As Lawrence and myselfs run of Charlie Parker: Handyman strips in The Stool Pigeon comes to an end, so another chapter of musical cartoonery begins. Starting next month, gracing the back page of the self same organ will start 'It Should Have Been a Picture! Unphotographed Moments in Rock History' thrown together by myself and Nelson Evergreen. First up is a supposed incident that took place involving Sid Vicious and the girls from ABBA. I like to think that it's not so much whether it's really true or not; it's whether you WANT to believe...

Waiting Rooms

2009-10-03T10:41:00.000-07:00

It’s the middle of a weekday afternoon and the Housing Benefit Office’s waiting room is too large, too quiet and too devoid of distraction. No magazines, no posters. Just a large red digital number 47 displayed on a screen on an otherwise blank wall, inevitably drawing the gaze of the handful of numberless people waiting, all wondering if they should have a number themselves or need a number or what the electronic number-board is for considering that it seems to bear no relation whatsoever to anything else going on.

When people are ready to be seen their names are called aloud and they go and sit with their backs to the rest of the waiting room, where they are interviewed by social services staff in one of the partitioned wooden booths which line two of the perimeter walls of the room. Conversations between workers and members of the public are clearly audible but remain largely incomprehensible due to the lack of appreciated background context. This is the kind of anonymity that poverty affords you. The better off you are the more private and personal you are able to keep your affairs. The poorer you are the more a spectacle for others your situation becomes. The receptionist, when talking to passing colleagues speaks in a whisper. Like many public waiting rooms it has the air of a secret shame that even the staff seem to share in.

The lower down the social ladder you get, the closer to rock bottom, the more obvious this is made to you through the kinds of waiting rooms you find yourself having to wait in. Successful people rarely find themselves actually having to want, or wait, for anything they find themselves truly in need of.

The Citizens Advice Bureau's waiting room is so small that, sitting down, your knees are almost touching those of the person sitting opposite you. The man opposite me doesn’t speak English. He holds in his trembling hands a letter in an envelope, which he constantly unfolds, looks over and stuffs back into the envelope. He is accompanied by a woman who clutches his arm and whispers into his ear in a language I do not recognise or understand. She has told the head that appeared through the hatch that opened when they rang the reception bell that the man needs an interpreter. That the courts system should provide an interpreter. That how can he be given a fair hearing in court if he is unable to understand what people are saying and no one is able to understand him. Which, as a pertinent and valid criticism of the British Justice System also goes some way to explain the mans pleading expression and incessant hand ringing.

When all the seats are taken and there is not even any room left to even stand in the waiting room, when someone opens the door to the room everyone inside has to lean incrementally to the side to allow for the small but significant reduction in available space. The effect is like being a participant in a very pathetic attempt at a kind of Mexican wave. When there is nowhere left to stand or sit new people find themselves having to wait on the pavement outside. There are twelve people waiting in the room and two more on the pavement outside. When another person squeezes their way into the room and rings the reception bell and the hatch opens and the head appears, they are told the service can only see fifteen people a day. They will have to come back tomorrow. They are advised, without irony, to arrive early in order to avoid disappointment. I suspect that most people, no matter what time they arrive, are carrying with them disappointment enough to spare. I don't think a little more is really going to make that much difference in most peoples cases.

Another man, who looks like he might possibly originate from the Indian subcontinent - although he may just have a very deep and worked upon tan - sits sweating in a corner, cradling a bulging folder of what we have all overheard to be his ‘financial correspondences’ (sic). Upon arriving he asks the receptions head if he could be given a glass of water. The request, clearly untoward, is nevertheless acknowledged and the receptions head says they will get him a glass of water before it withdraws (the head) and the hatch is again closed. The man fidgets and tics and when eventually, some time later, the hatch is re-opened and the head re-appears to speak to another entering client and is then about to disappear without any mention of the glass of water, the clearly inwardly agitated man politely reminds the head that he would (please) like a glass of water. The hatch closes and this time soon reopens again, a glass of water appearing, held out by a disembodied hand. The man drinks the glass of water in one go and then finds there is nowhere in the room pressed full of people to put down the empty glass. He tries to balance it on the shelf beneath the closed-again hatch but the shelf is too narrow and the glass tips off, back into his hand. Thus the man, still twitching, still sweating, returns to his chair in the corner and holds the glass in his lap along with his bulging folder until he is called for his appointment. He then hands the empty glass to the CAB worker who stands in the doorway that opens outwards from the room and leads onto a corridor, off which are set a number of police-station like interviewing rooms. The worker takes the empty glass in the way all people take things they are handed that they know they must now bear responsibility for but really don’t want or know what to do with. The mans apparent lack of appreciation of the trouble his asking for a glass of water has caused is ergo also lacking awareness of it’s potential impact on the progress of his imminent interview. Which, overheard conversation between man and head in hatch has revealed, is one more in an apparently considerably far-back reaching chain of many previous interviews. The tanned mans folder, presumably, expanding with each subsequent unresolving visit.

In the GP’s surgery a touch screen appointment system allows the receptionist to concentrate on tasks more demanding and important than personally acknowledging the sick, concerned and needy. I type in my gender and date of birth and am instructed, by name, to proceed to the waiting room.

It’s first thing in the morning and the waiting room is empty. In the centre of the room is a low scuffed coffee table upon which sits a pile of magazines. The only magazines orientated towards men are dedicated to golf. Which is clearly more indicative of the surgery’s resident doctors interests than those of the men who actually live in the low-income poor-quality-housing area the surgery is situated in and serves.

In the corner of the people-empty waiting room sits an abstract sculpture of Soviet repression, designed to look like a possibly educational wooden children’s play set. Created by political prisoners in the 1960’s and exported to the West in an attempt to offset the national debt of wheat imports from America, upon the bases of these artifacts can often be found the sad carved signatures of long dead academics whom Stalin had perceived at the time of their incarceration and forced labour to be ‘dangerous enemies of the state’.

Around the walls of the waiting room are a taxonomy of ‘health information’ posters, flyers and leaflets which the long wait to see a doctor allows me to consider at length. The posters range from slickly produced propaganda for the latest government health initiatives to improve the wealth of the nation to simple photocopied advertisements for local self-help groups and drop-ins: Wednesdays Weekly Mother and Baby Wart Clinic for example or the last Thursday of every months Melanoma Lunchtime Drop-In. The dominant theme amongst this group of posters is undoubtedly that of unpleasant skin conditions. Which does make me consider standing to wait instead of continuing to remain seated. Other posters seem deliberately calculated less to scare the shit out of people and more to foster a nagging sense of your being sicker than you actually feel by highlighting vague symptoms such as getting up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night and suggesting that this may be indicative of certain types of banal disease. Nothing deadly. Just stuff you don’t want and could do without knowing the symptoms of. In another category a socio-ecomonic sub-group-specific poster campaign pictures close-cropped photographs of low-income, poor-quality-housing type people who look like they have either just been or are just about to cry. Above their heads, single words in large-fonts bluntly and aggressively question the obvious, as in ‘TIRED?’, ‘RUNDOWN?’ or my personal favourite with which I identify strongly; the simultaneously unequivocal and ambiguous, ‘SCARED?’.

Eventually a door behind me opens and my doctor’s voice calls my name. I enter his office, sobbing and relieved. Upon seeing my face, my doctor, a kind if ineffectual man, looks genuinely distressed and concerned, his right hand barely able to contain itself from reaching, even before he has heard what might be wrong, for the pregnantly fat and blank prescription pad that sits on the desk between us.

The Counselling Centre’s waiting room is full, it’s palpable atmosphere of despair making a similarly full doctors surgery waiting room seem, by comparison, positively joyful. This is despite the waiting rooms abundance of natural light and well-tended houseplants and it’s lack of fear inducing posters or inappropriate reading material. The houseplants and daylight, one suspects, have been engineered into the room to bolster a sense of optimism among the centre’s clientele; messages of light, growth, life etc. Or if not bolster, then at least offset the air of mental fatigue which most of us in here emanate. I have no idea what colour a depressed persons aura is supposed to show up as in those photographs which purport to be able to capture a persons aura, but I feel sure that the aura of most people in this waiting room would show up as a sickly mustard yellow colour that gives you a kind of unpleasant childhood type feeling just to even look at.

Where as in most public waiting rooms there is at least some unspoken sense of shared experience or hardship, here such a feeling is absent. Where as in most public waiting rooms unintentional eye-contact is awkward at worst but can at least be redressed with a slight apologetic smile, raised eyebrows or shrug, here such banal responses would seem grotesquely inappropriate, no matter how well intentioned. All who pass time in this room have a personally rooted understanding that we are each of us in our own personal hell that cannot be outwardly shared or communicated, except with the help, patience and perseverance of a trained professional. A pair of raised eyebrows and a bit of good-humoured eye-rolling is simply not going to cut it.

The receptionist is, however, disconcertingly open and cheerful; broadcasting a professionally sunny outlook which she hopes communicates that she is perceptive enough to be aware that anything less than beaming optimism may be enough to unfavourably tip the psychic scales of any one of us. Let alone all of us. Those with any first-hand up-close experience of ‘the misery business’ are all too familiar with and wary of the domino effect when it comes to acute psychiatric distress and rooms, wards or any enclosed spaces full of similarly emotionally disposed people.

Which is perhaps why the waiting room for the drop-in service run by The Samaritans contains only one chair and could really only comfortably contain one solitary person. It is less a vestibule, barely a hallway and really only the space between two doors, one leading in and one leading out to a driveway whose gravels crunch in the otherwise silent courtyard signals clearly to those in the surrounding overlooking offices the arrival of yet another suicidally depressed person to the Samaritans drop-in service below. It is only after leaving, after a lot of crying and apologising and trying to articulate myself to a one-eyed woman with an eye-patch who sits listening sympathetically as she sips from a mug of tea, that I find myself feeling extremely grateful that no one else had chosen the exact same time to drop in to a service, the only service in this city at least, that openly welcomes at any time of day or night, those of us who have become all too hopelessly aware that we have reached our very own, uniquely personal, rock bottom.

On Coltrane

2009-09-24T09:05:00.001-07:00

Like Father Like Son

2009-09-17T10:09:00.001-07:00

Unspeakable Things

2009-08-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

These are a few images from a 7 page strip I've just completed for CTRL+ALT+SHIFT on the theme of 'corruption'. In order to produce the strip CTRL+ALT+SHIFT put me in touch with photojournalist Marcus Bleasdale who gave me access to photographs he had taken documenting the humanitarian crisis in The Democratic Republic of the Congo in the last couple of years.

Whether or not CTRL+ALT+SHIFT will end up publishing the strip remains to be seen. They did seem to be most interested in comic strips being based on 'personal stories'. After a lot of research, I just couldn't see that working. I appreciate that using personal stories is a way to let people connect with 'big issues' but it just didn't feel like the right way for me to approach things with the materials I had been given to work with. So I've ended up with something quite different from a personal story.

I hope that what I've done says something. I hope it re-interprets Marcus' photography in (my own) 'comic strip' way for a different kind of audience than would otherwise engage with those kinds of images. What Marcus or CTRL+ALT+SHIFT will make of all this who knows.

There is a vast amount of information available on the Internet about The Democratic Republic of the Congo, but a good place to start reading is the downloadable report by the IRC here:

http://www.theirc.org/special-report/congo-forgotten-crisis.html

Day of the Jacko

2009-07-11T06:48:00.000-07:00

Back in April I wrote the text below as a possible idea for a comic strip which I soon filed away with very little intention of ever using. As soon as I saw the headlines about Michael Jacksons death a couple of months later I consigned my memory of it away to the never-going-to-get-used pile and didn't even bother reading it again. But it sat there on my hard-drive and I re-read it again this morning as I was going through old pieces of writing. If you start to smell something sweet and sickly, don't blame me.

The Day of the Jacko (April 2009)

Nobody could have seen it coming. With the news of Michael Jackson’s suicide came what commentators described as a tsunami of grief whose intensity surpassed even that shown by the public toward figures such as John F Kennedy and Princess Diana.

It seemed that the tragic demise of the star whose bizarre life had been so luridly documented by the worlds media had touched a great many more people than anyone could have foreseen.

Michael had hung himself from his favourite tree in the silent ghostly grounds of his private estate on the morning of April 1st, apparently the tragic victim of an ‘all the children in the world are dead Michael!’ April fools hoax gone terribly wrong.

“I was going to tell him I was kidding but he just ran off so fast…” Said the security guard responsible for the fatal jape.

The hastily arranged funeral had been attended by tens of thousands of fans travelling in from all over the world. It was also to play host to Jackson’s final surprising artifice – a eulogy written by Michael himself, publicly read out by a young look-alike that Jackson had personally groomed to be his spokesperson in the event of his death.

Jackson's last recorded words: “I want you all to know that I will live forever in your hearts” struck a motown sized chord with the public. Billions of people around the world reported weeping as they watched Michaels see-through-candy-coffin trundling on a dozen steel rollers toward the roaring flames and whining high-powered gas-jets of pop star immortality. In the deluge of tributes and testimonials that followed, those present all recalled how from that day on they would forever associate their memories of Michael with the delicious smell of burning caramel.

Meanwhile, though many of the thousands attending the funeral had been sighted adopting a range of Jackson’s famous affectations in tribute to their idol, it had been those wearing life-like latex Jackson masks who had drawn the most media attention. A few months later it had become apparent that rather than dissipating, the phenomena of wearing Jackson masks was becoming epidemic and what was initially perceived as tribute began to be described as revolt. As with many cultural and political revolutions, the origins were diverse and uncoordinated. Simply a handful of unrelated incidents involving a handful of individuals from a number of unconnected protest groups who all happened to have the same idea at about the same time. The media picked up on a few of these cases, tied them together and before long it was being reported as a full-blown phenomena. This was before they realised what it all meant of course. How far it would go. But who could have guessed the implications back then?

I personally saw my first jackson mask one afternoon in my local supermarket, a few days after the funeral. I dismissed the wearer as simply one more Jacko fanatic and thought of the incident little more. But the next day I saw another. And then another. Before long I was even wearing one myself.

As improbable as it seemed, the ‘Live Forever’ rhetoric of Jackson’s delusional psychology had sparked a revolution. Jacksons back catalog was plundered and politicised. Wherever you went it became impossible to avoid the sound of ‘Can You Feel It’ playing on a radio or stereo somewhere close by. Those old enough to remember them said it was like the sixties all over again. Only this time they pledged to get it right. And all of this, largely beneath the noses of those who thought they were in control. It was only when the first crimes were committed by Jackson masked perpetrators that the authorities first sat up and took note.

But by then it was already too late. The wearing of Jackson masks had become widespread. Rapidly the distinctions between pop-star fanatisism, everyday crime, civil disobedience and terrorism were lost. Everybody was a criminal. Everybody was a Jackson.

On the day the governments tried to push through a bill criminalizing the wearing of Jackson masks, millions of Jackson masked demonstrators rioted in the streets of national capitals, and when police forces and armies were called in to crush the groundswell, Jackson’s visage had no less a presence within their number either.

It was the end. Governments toppled like dominoes as all political systems collapsed and anarchy ensued. And for a while things were pretty bad and a lot of people died. But then everything just kind of levelled out and calmed down and the world settled itself into a new order. Of course, it was all basically the same old system but only this time it was dressed up in a sequined glove. Which somehow made it palatable for the people of the world, whom history has determined will pretty much buy anything as long as it’s celebrity endorsed.

The new world wasn't a whole lot different to the one before. But it was different enough that people felt that they had regained a little hope for themselves and future generations. Even if those generations would have to spend their lives wearing Michael Jacksons face.

But if that was the cost, they said, then that’s what they will have to pay. If Michael could do it for the sake of a better world, they said, so can we.

Planet of the Dancing Dogs

2009-05-16T07:13:00.000-07:00

Would you like a jelly baby?

Now is Not the Time for Hysteria...

2009-05-10T07:58:00.001-07:00

Fantomas Abridged Apache Dance

2009-05-10T07:06:00.000-07:00

Strawberry Protein Synthesis

2009-05-10T06:27:00.000-07:00

The sun helps the strawberries grow and grow...