The Comics Bureau

The Birm­ing­ham Zine Fest­ival is rap­idly approach­ing, and fea­tures a whole host of events, includ­ing exhib­i­tions, a fair, work­shops and even a pic­nic! Head over to the site to acquaint your­self with the sched­ule and read some inter­views with exhibitors.

Joe List, the brains, hand and pen behind the Annot­ated Week­ender, last year’s must-have col­lec­tion of abrupt stor­ies ‘Freak Leap’ and the minicomic ‘Guts’ announced this morn­ing that he has star­ted a web­comic, also entitled Freak Leap.

You can read an inter­view with Joe for the Birm­ing­ham Zine Fest­ival here;

Q — What are your motiv­a­tions with your work? I notice there is a lot of humour. Is this espe­cially important?

A — I like telling half jokes, ideas that aren’t quite fin­ished. That’s what makes me laugh and so that’s what I try to con­vey in my comics.

The Freak Leap will be updated EVERY week­day, apart from Thursdays, as that is Annot­ated Week­ender Day. Update your book­marks, folks!

They do say that print media is dying. Lets hope that the News­pa­per Club are the excep­tion to the rule, espe­cially after the excep­tional job they did on the recent We Are Words & Pic­tures ‘Paper Sci­ence’ pub­lic­a­tion.

Keep up the good work, fellas!

With the Lottery-funded Thought Bubble Fest­ival in Leeds fast approach­ing, here is a ‘super-link’ post, start­ing off with a series of mini inter­views (min­ter­views) pos­ted up on the Thought Bubble blog;

Hugh ‘Shug’ Raine,
Marc Ellerby,
Steve Tillot­son,
Jack Fal­lows,
Lizz Lun­ney,
Adam Cad­well,
Emma Vieceli,
Charlie Adlard,
Frank Quietly,
and Ben Temple­smith so far…

Exhib­it­ors this year include (alphabetically);

2 Tone Com­ics,
Aaron Murphy,
Accent UK,
Adam Cad­well,
Al Maceach­ern,
Andi Wat­son,
Apo­ca­lypse Com­ics,
Ariel Press,
Asth­matic Com­ics,
Banal Pig,
Bang! Bang! Com­ics,
Bey­ond Mono­poly,
Black Lib­rary,
Cazbounces Books,
Chamon­kee,
Charay­dis Com­ics,
Chris Doherty,
Chris Garside,
Cine­book,
Claude Trollope,
Com­ics Cre­at­ors Guild,
Cos­mic Apple,
Cute But Sad,
David O’Connell,
David Gold­ing,
Dealer Com­ics,
Dean Orm­ston,
Des­tin­a­tion Venus,
Adam Lowe,
Don’t Panic,
Doc­tor Simpo,
Dr Sketchy,
Drastic Com­ics,
Dumpy Little Robot,
E-Merl,
Fet­ish Man,
Fiona Steph­en­son,
Fly­ing Mon­key Com­ics,
For­bid­den Planet,
Francesca Cas­savetti,
Frozen Real­ity Stu­dio,
Future Quake,
Games Work­shop,
Genki Gear,
Glyndwr Uni­ver­sity Com­ics, (dis­claimer — I teach on this course)
Gothy Beans,
Grimm Com­ics,
Gun­nerkrigg Court,
Har­oldinium Com­ics,
Hello Aunt Alicia,
Hex­gib­ber,
Her­man Peaks,
Hope For The Future,
Hyde Park Pic­ture House,
Infin­ity & Bey­ond,
Ink Soup,
Insom­nia Pub­lic­a­tions,
Jemma Web­ster,
Joe Decie,
Joe List,
Kristyna Baczyn­ski,
Large Cow,
Leeds Anime Soci­ety,
Leeds Com­ics Soci­ety,
Leeds Sci-fi & Fantasy Soci­ety,
Leonie O’Moore,
Little Ter­rors,
Liz Green­field,
Liz Lun­ney,
Lucky Tar­get Com­ics,
Magic Beans Com­ics,
Magda Borey­sza,
Marc Ellerby,
Mat­thew Craig,
Mod­ern Mon­stros­ity,
Mor­o­n­oid,
Murky Depths,
Naniiebim,
North­ern Delight,
OK Com­ics,
Omni­v­ista­scope,
Paper Jam Com­ics,
Paul Fryer,
Paul Rainey,
Pop­corn Pea­cock,
Quick­sil­ver Com­ics,
Ragada­bah,
Richard Smith,
Reet! Com­ics,
Rob Jack­son,
Sam John­son,
Self-Made Hero,
Scarygoround,
Sgt. Mike Battle,
Shef­field Space Centre,
Soar­ing Pen­guin,
Sour Meat & Moose,
Space­Babe 113,
SmallZone,
Span­dex,
Split Infin­ity,
Sum­mer Rain,
Tempo Lush,
The Juz­zard,
The Fallen Angel Media,
Time Bomb Com­ics,
Tokyo 15,
Tom Cock­er­ham,
Touche Tees,
Trav­el­ling Man,
Turn­ing Cog Cre­ations,
Twi­light Zone,
UK SF Out­reach,
Veli­cia,
Viz Media,
We Are Words & Pic­tures,
Wild­ways Com­ics,
Wynn Ryder,
and finally, Zip­Gun Com­ics.

Apo­lo­gies in advance for broken links and incor­rect pages!

Jimi Gher­kin writes up a cal­en­dar of events that the Altern­at­ive Press gang are either attend­ing or organising.

Copy it into your own cal­en­dar from here.

I spent the day yes­ter­day at the Women in Com­ics con­fer­ence at the New Hall Art Col­lec­tion in Cam­bridge. What fol­lows is a brief skim through the notes I took dur­ing the ses­sions I sat in on. I couldn’t make it to every ses­sion as there were par­al­lel ses­sions, but I’m assured that they were all recor­ded, so I may update this post if I get my hands on a copy of the ses­sions I couldn’t attend.

I’ve seen Asia Alfasi speak a couple of times now, and each time I’ve seen her, I have thought the same three things.

1. This is brilliant

2. What inspir­a­tional enthusiasm

3. I can’t make notes quick enough!

Asia spoke (rather rap­idly) about being a female Muslim car­toon­ist, her ideas on cul­tural iden­tity and what wear­ing the hijab means to her. She talked about the tend­ency of some manga artists out­side of Japan to attempt to assume some kind of ‘Japanese-ness’, instead of embra­cing their own cul­tural her­it­age and try­ing to cre­ate some­thing new.

Much of her talk could prob­ably be broadly clas­si­fied as the com­ics equi­val­ent of motiv­a­tional speak­ing. She summed it all up quite nicely with this call to action;

Don’t wait for someone else to say what is on your mind.

Wise words.

Sarah Zaidan, who is cur­rently work­ing on a practice-based PhD at King­ston Uni­ver­sity spoke about her ideas of super­her­oes and why we need them, to how they evolve both phys­ic­ally and them­at­ic­ally through­out the his­tory of the genre.

Sarah McIntyre spoke about the over­lap between children’s pic­ture books and com­ics. She argued that comic books and pic­ture books are pretty much the same, but with a testoster­one imbal­ance. Much of her talk was look­ing at the work of a num­ber of female cre­at­ors, a list of which I’ll be post­ing and link­ing in the com­ing days, so stay tuned for that.

Melinda Gebbie spoke about her early career as an under­ground comix artist, and how she gained accept­ance from the male mem­bers of the group through drink­ing, swear­ing and push­ing the lim­its with her art­work. She told stor­ies of the early days of the brit­ish under­ground comix scene, and how manga has encour­aged ‘nice girls’ into comic shops, places that were once the exclus­ive domain of ‘boys that smelled of wee’.

She spoke about the pro­cess of cre­at­ing Lost Girls with Alan Moore, the troubles encountered on the way and some of the tech­nical aspects of pro­du­cing the art­work, stat­ing that it took her roughly 3 days to com­plete one panel!

She also gave insights into her ideas on the uses of com­ics, explain­ing that as they are visual, aural and kin­etic, they are great ways of teach­ing and inform­ing. She encour­aged every­one to write a work of comic auto­bi­o­graphy that explains who you are for future gen­er­a­tions, a sen­ti­ment that I share.

Kate Evans talked about her par­al­lel careers as car­toon­ist and act­iv­ist. While she lamen­ted the lack of a dif­fi­cult child­hood, and the sub­sequent lack of juicy auto­bi­o­graph­ical writ­ing mater­ial, she spoke about the uses of com­ics to inform and enlighten. Check out her book ‘Copse’, about protest­ing the New­bury Bypass.

Corinne Pearl­man and Woo­drow Phoenix dis­cussed whether auto­bi­o­graphy is a trap. They dis­cussed Corinne’s work explor­ing her Jew­ish iden­tity, and Woo­drow spoke about some of his appre­hen­sions sur­round­ing auto­bi­o­graphy. He and Corinne spoke about his res­ist­ance to mar­ket­ing Rumble Strip as a mem­oir. (I don’t want to spoil any­thing, so I won’t go into too much detail, but GO AND BUY IT immediately)

Woo­drow expressed some of his con­cerns about auto­bi­o­graphy, describ­ing it as a way of legit­im­ising the story in a way that fic­tion would struggle to do effect­ively. Head over to Myriad Edi­tions for some stream­ing audio of Corinne and Woo­drow hav­ing a sim­ilar conversation.

Their talk also fea­tured a huge col­lec­tion of slides that explained some of both their influ­ences, which again, will have to become a sep­ar­ate post fol­low­ing exhaust­ive research.

All in all, the day was very well organ­ised, the speak­ers were both insight­ful and inspir­a­tional and there was a very def­in­ite sense of ‘so can you’ from all of the speak­ers. Very inspir­a­tional stuff, lets hope this is some­thing that can be repeated and developed upon.

Richard Cow­dry (of Bed­sit Journal fame) writes about Birmingham’s Nos­tal­gia & Com­ics and their push for more small press submissions.

This is great news, as decent shops that are wel­com­ing to, and actu­ally enga­ging with small press and indy cre­at­ors are not only rare, but can have a hugely bene­fi­cial effect on the scene and art­form. One word of encour­age­ment, one extra comic sold, can make all the dif­fer­ence to someone who is just test­ing the waters… or to seasoned self-publishers for that matter.

I was in Nos­tal­gia & Com­ics just the other day and picked up a bunch of cool new books, and a very pleas­ant exper­i­ence it was too.

Appalling Non­sense has an inter­view with Jimi Gher­kin, key player in the Brit­ish Under­ground Comix scene.