So, this happened earlier in the year… #JustPaperAndInk (article by Broken Frontier)
June through July (2023) to be precise.
Basically a small independent comics creator pop up exhibition curated by Sean Azzopardi of PhatComics and myself. And, I guess, sort of an extension of the discreet exhibition he had held at his former shared studio space, called, “Framed”. with some of the artists who had showcased their work there, also having work in this show.
The show ran for just over a month, we were based in a shop unit ran as “The Space”, a arts project ran by a local access to arts organisation and pop-up gallery team called Creat-Hive, and we were just a couple of doors along from Hull’s Forbidden Planet store in The Prospect Centre.
I got to spend my days during the show away from my usual working form home environment, and at my temporary drawing board in the gallery space itself which as always was both fun and eye opening. The show itself bookended around the Hull Comic Con weekend event too, which was great as we were able to promote that as part of our show (one of the original thoughts that had instigated our event to be fair).
I chatted to a lot of people over those few weeks, as we had over 700 people come in and engage with the work/exhibition (ie not including the people who came in looking for other things (shops, another gallery, etc) or who left once they realised it was about comics). Which is a fair amount of people. We got to chat to about #MakingComics, comics as a fairly democratised artform, and storytelling medium, and even got to discuss the possibility of further projects with other organisations in the city, and outside of it.
I cant thank enough those people who took time out of their schedules to come and chat, it was very much appreciated, so cheers… you know who you are.
We even did a radio spot with our local BBC Humberside comics fan Kofi.
The show itself was divided up into four main sections, “the big noisy art“ at the front to draw people in (which seemed to work, cheers to Sean for providing those big fun colour pieces). Then we had a section showcasing the work of several “UK indie creators“, with which we added some hard copy examples of the books hung on the wall to show the work “in its natural environment” rather than a gallery wall (to paraphrase Crumb). And we made sure to show the creators SocMed links too, in the hope that even a couple of additional follower always helps, who knows?
Followed by two linked sections looking at “Comics Made In Hull“… which was a surprisingly big section, not only for the visitors, but for us as well. We even had someone come in on the first day and tell us that they made comics in Hull too. Which was great… Comics, the unseen communities, laughs.
…and finally “Hull In Comics“, a section that showed the city itself appearing as a character in some of that local work.
As part of the interpretation in the show, we added a number of text panels looking at other aspects around the world of making comics, so that it might be perhaps more accessible for those who had left comics behind some time ago, or just for those who had never ever really engaged with the medium.
In these sections we discussed the early history of the art form, how comics are seen in Europe by comparison to the UK & US, the balance of traditional and digital comics work currently being produced (and the threats posed by so called AI/Plagiarism Software), the use of comics in education,new voices, representation and the ever present dilemma of “But, Is it Art?”.
Amongst these we scattered a number of quotes by creators, critics and celebrated comics readers from within and outside the medium, who weren’t in the show, but who had discussed important aspects of comics and their value.
We also had a few books from our own collections to chat about and use as examples in discussion.
All in all it seemed pretty well received, and we have discussed holding onto the name of the show #JustPaperAndInk for further shows and exhibitions, workshops etc.
So I guess watch this space!
NB – I’ll consider this post a raw draft… I’m sure I have some better photos than this, I’ll replace them ASAP and delete this note.
I talked previously about the book I produced for Barnsley Museums some time ago, here. It was an experience I enjoyed, as I’ve always been interested in history/heritage. And through that project I was subsequently commissioned to create two more (albeit short) comics projects, this time actually based here in Hull.
The comics were to tie in to the ongoing Maritime Tales project (which I’d already produced illustrations for), a series of events and commissioned interactions that were designed to keep the idea of the Maritime Museum (as it underwent its huge refurb) alive in the minds of the people of Hull. The first event was The Hull Kraken. A narrative based event that saw the emergence of a mysterious but vast tentacled creature in the city, and its movement through the streets from building to building. Here’s a local article on that side of the event.
The covers to the two books produced, the narratives of which feature a pair of precocious mythology and art buffs, kids who dissect the folklore and history of the city and its art.
My role with the comic was to provide a backstory for the creature, creating a story that moved between the present day were a pair of precocious kids helping out at a Saturday Museum Club discover something odd and decide to investigate. Meanwhile the story they uncover tracks the journey from Hull to the Arctic and back of a 19th Century ship of curious characters, and their subsequent return with something very curious locked in a crate, that gets mislaid upon its arrival back in the city, only to be discovered in the present, with its curious passenger, alive and well (and now huge). The books were designed to be used as handouts, and contained a map designed by a local agency to tie in with a number of other heritage trail events, and so the book was published in the thousands, most of which went in the first two weekends.
The first book, The Strange Case of the Very Strange Case, was a really fun exercise in layering the comic with dozens of Easter eggs, both visual and in the writing, through the naming of things and by making a bunch of historical connections. Part of the project saw me presenting a workshop at Hull’s Ferens Art Gallery to discuss the making of the comic, were I discussed the writing as well as the art process.
While the second book, Drawing (near the isle of the) Sirens, focussed on the Herbert Draper painting, Ulysses and the Sirensin the Ferens Art Gallery, and saw the same two kids from the first comic, discussing the various mythological descriptions of Sirens, and comparing that to the incarnations we often see in Victorian paintings (ie. appearing as mermaids rather than bird like creatures), and why that might be, whilst also discussing some of the other myth relegated sights around Hull, including the great statue of Oceanus that is hidden away just off a main thoroughfare. This second comic also featured a number of art works from the gallery hidden amongst the siren art in the book, acting as an Easter egg hunt for visitors.
With both books I was given free reign to write and interpret as sequential art, and so felt very connected to the end products produced.
…
These projects, often filled with a mixture of straight narrative, explanatory asides, surreal visual guesses and and other visual non sequiturs were a real joy to work on, both as a writer and as an artist, to the point which even if not commissioned by others, it’s my goal to create some more. Specifically about aspects of Hull’s heritage and history, now that I’m settled back here for good.
Of the various projects like this that I’m interested in exploring, the one I’m most enthusiastic for is “A history of Hull’s Deaf Community and the Hull & East Riding Deaf Institute (now Hull Deaf Centre). My wife is manager of the centre. She is a CODA (child of deaf adults) and a signer/BSL user (we actually met when I had a profoundly deaf student I my games design degree class). I’ve grown a fascination with the history of the centre, and the organisation of the charity which began in the city in the mid 19th century, and even currently give the tours of the centre (purpose built for the deaf in 1926) on the Heritage Open Days in September of each year. Taking that interest into my chosen storytelling medium seems like a very natural progression.
The finish art/book would be given over to the charity to produce and sell to raise funds as they see fit.
The script is already started, my plan would be to involve the current deaf community in the themes that might be discussed and interwoven into the wider social history and discussion of the evolution of this robust community. As a back up, I’d also be interested in developing a brief history of BSL to accompany the work.
Poster for the exhibition hosted at Phatgallery, floor 2, Shirethorn House. Then home to a Hull based art collective.
The exhibition brought together a range of artists/comic creators working across a number of genres and approaches, and was accompanied with a series of interviews with some of those exhibiting*. It was great to be seen amongst such great company.
The title of this post comes from an old image, an ironically unfinished title page for a comic I started to fumble around with two and a half (maybe more) decades ago. It shows a character, once again looking not unlike myself, opening mail, whilst leaning back on a chair near a drawing board. The comic would have no doubt been about the punk/rock band I’d fleshed out some stories for back then. Stories that involved time travel, science fiction, “robots and religion” (with that particular outing called, very cleverly “Cross References”) as outlined in a vague list like manifesto by myself and my old friend Andrew Segal, at a table, in our student digs in Norwich all those years ago… the weekend I wrote those first words, I sat and fleshed out and illustrated a bunch of disjointed and unconnected panels and splash pages outlining the romantically hopeless members of a band called Toxic Shock… a crass notion, that resulted in the title Toxic Shopping, as the book would really focus on the mundane stuff the band, to often be abbreviated to just “Toxic”, would be shown doing, including of course, “shopping”. All no doubt inspired by pouring through a friends copies (then later, my own) of the works of Los Bros. Hernandez.
The scrappy hand drawn Title/logo I’d considered for “Toxic Shopping”. My gods, look at that thick Tippex/whiteout… aah, those crazy pre digital days.
The art/thumbnails above include my first finished/complete comics story too. A “Toxic Shopping” elseworlds outing that was really a bit of fun exploring my love of Mœbius, you can find the pages for that online over on my old DeviantArt profile, here – https://www.deviantart.com/hesir/art/A-Mobius-Strip-1-of-8-7270461
This wasn’t my first outing as a “comics creator”. I’d not finished (indeed, barely started) other comics before this, and would go on to stubbornly unfinish many other comics projects in the future (sincere apologies to those of you out there nodding at this bit, I really am genuinely sorry). Anyway, I recently found a page of some very early art in some old artwork portfolio sleeves from my art school years whilst sorting out detritus still unpacked from an house move sometime ago. If I remember right it featured a kid with a chainsaw for a head (I believe called “chainsaw-head”) who had escaped a mad politician’s sideline as a serial killer who made bizarre sculptures of his victims in an old warehouse. The art veered from one style to another, weakly emulating whichever artist I wanted to be that week, and if I also recall correctly (and I’m sure I do), ultimately based around the lyrics of a Sundays track, if you can believe that?
This image above , I remember, was inked, laying on the the floor of my student flat, sometime back in 1992, I guess? It doubtlessly owes a lot to those A4, Mignola Dracula tie-in comics they brought out… there were other pages for this story, some fully painted (man I wish I had some photos of those still), others mixed media as I absorbed work by McKean, McKeever, Seinkiewicz and others…
If it helps, this is me back then, I clearly had no idea about anything.
It’s strange to think, that those early notions of a story about a band, would eventually turn into the Cthulhiad after going through various transitions and central character refocuses, including being rewritten as prose, and even retooled as screenplay notes and script, one small section of this would even eventually get performed as a script in hand play by performers from Middlechild Theatre here in Hull, at a Scratch Theatre event in the embryonic arts quarter that was in Humber Street, that was surreal.
Various early “Toxic Shopping” artwork, including notes and rambling written descriptions of cults and organisations from the “Cross References” episodes of Toxic Shopping that I had planned. There seems to be an abundance of this stuff, drawn variously in sketchbooks, A4 or A3 loose sheafs of paper, fastened together in plastic pockets etc. Much more than I remembered.
These stories didn’t seem to fully know what they wanted to be, but I carried them around as I took other art & design related jobs, eventually starting to travel into Europe with work, then drifting from design job to design job around the South East. The writing would eventually evolve into a series of short prose pieces. Stories that I would first post on the (now sadly defunct) BBC Writing website, a site through which I would get to share my love of writing and storytelling with my sister Jane, getting closer to her before she passed away). After that I began to post my work to DeviantArt’s prose section, and I started to draw together a set of stories that would form some of the mythology and atmosphere behind my current comics. Follow the link and you’ll even find the prose version of The Indian Fighter, the first comic I fully finished and printed, taking it to Thought Bubble around a decade ago now.
From there my sketchbooks started to fill up with other snippets and panels and page layouts for more Cthulhiad stories.
(Click to see the full images) Some of the elements in the sketchbook pages above found there way, in one form or another, into Some Rough Beast(s).
…
I was talking to a friend and fellow comics creator recently, I suppose trying to pin down the point/relevance of what my comics are about. And I’m broadly speaking about my own personal comics here, The Cthulhiad, and maybe to some extent the museum/heritage comics I write and draw. Thinking about when I’m asked directly what my books are about, or when I’m pitching them to passers by at comics events, I often simplify my response to “They’re about monster hunters, and some of the monsters that hunt back”, or “Lovecraftian Tentacles, this book is talky, this one is more fighty”, “Occult Detectives, Secret Societies, Myths and, yes, Monsters” etc. But that’s not what they are really about, at least not to me.
I think, weirdly, just like those early books. They were an attempt to write about my life. I guess all writers do that to some extent. But I can’t help noticing, beyond the obvious likeness of the books lead character to various incarnations of my own physical self (in terms of practical reference use, I am my own cheapest model after all), that the books now seem to have become weird, cryptic reliquaries for autobiographical snippets, past experiences, current thoughts and obsessions, places, environments. One of the last pieces of The Cthulhiad I self published, Some Rough Beast(s), going as far as to take the lead character back to his home town, which is with out a doubt clearly and unashamedly my own home town. It’s name is right there, written on the town sign, and it’s primary features are drawn right there in the panels. My comics aren’t about the relationships between people, they’re not even really that plot driven, as they seem to focus more on things. Things, objects, that become repositories or externalised manifestations of memories or ideas. Whether those memories belong to people, organisations or something “other”. All usually left for someone to decode, one of the characters along with the reader who gets to look of their shoulder as they unpick thieve cryptic palimpsests.
“But what about all the goddamn monsters?”, well, maybe they are cyphers for something else, something I haven’t quite figured out yet… I mean I like monsters. Both in a visceral, in thoughtful way a kid likes monsters. I grew up reading books on Greek myths and just laying there on the floor surrounded by picture books filled with images of the various (alleged) heroes, Perseus, Bellerophon, Theseus… but it was the creatures they fought that really did it. The Chimera, Medusa and the other gorgon sisters, Stheno and Eurayale, and the Minotaur, then came the Conan books, and then Frazetta, and don’t even get me started on Clash of the Titans (I was a late starter to cinema, we just didn’t have the money when I was growing up, so seeing that at the pictures turned my head completely). Conan would be my first introduction to Lovecraftian creatures and atmosphere of course, then the short stories themselves followed by the books of letters between those various pulp authors, and the subsequent disappoint,ent and wrangling dog conscience to separate the work from the author. But as I’ve clearly stated above… can you fully do that. I don’t know?.
Anyway… I suppose the point of this nostalgic (?) ramble, is maybe there’s something to be learnt from these mostly unfinished things, these part made comics projects… the word “monster” suggests “a lesson” or demonstration after all.
I remember reading something by Scott McCloud, in which he mentioned a man called Henry Darger, now considered a classic example of the outsider Artist, but in the interview a cautionary tale of sorts, about telling stories that go on and on, never finished and never becoming things that can be experienced by others.
So I guess what I’m suggesting is. Finish something. Make it. Give it a cover. Print it, or post it somewhere online. Allow people to get at it, for free or for money. So it doesn’t just become…
IronShodApeComics 