European Comics and the British Renaissance

I don't think it's an exaggeration to describe the publication of some recent comic books, or graphic novels on this side of the pond, as at least a sign of the possible beginnings of a British Renaissance; with publishers Blank Slate Books and Self Made Hero blazing the trail. With the release of Ian Culbard's adaptation of doyen of horror H. P. Lovecraft's story At the Mountains of Madness, Selfmadehero has added another title to its library of graphic adaptations, and to Culbard's personal triumphs, which include a complete set of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels, and Wilde's Dorian Gray. With Culbard's distinctive style, which looks like a cross between ligne claire and Batman anime, Selfmadehero are producing work that, I believe, would sit comfortably alongside some of the best Bande Dessinee.



Another adaptation that will soon swell the Selfmadehero ranks, and will surely fatten the section allotted to them on our personal bookshelves, is be Rob Davis's adaptation of Don Quixote, by Miguel De Cervantes.

You'll know from my previous blog-posts on adaptations here, that I have some pretty strong views on graphic-adaptations, and I'm very pleased to say that Rob really is my kind of illustrator. That is to say, one who is really interested in, and is familiar with, the text he is interpreting - to say nothing of his endless agonising over line and colour. Indeed, his Dinlos and Skilldos blog and his Twitter feed are a testament to the amount of work he is putting into the delivery of the novel. That attention to the text, and constant theorising about the craft, is also a facet of Ian Culbard's work, and he spoke about it here, on Selfmadehero's site.

Over at Blank Slate Books, the emphasis is on new original material, and their stable of creators includes European cartoonists Mawil and Randall C. At the moment, many of Blank Slate's titles are more Marcinelle school than Ligne Claire, but that is probably down to happenstance rather than design. Like Selfmadehero, as their catalogue grows, they will no doubt publish a mixture of styles. A statement of their artistic intent, and vision, I think, was their decision to publish Randall C's Sleepyheads in the same oversize edition that was printed in Holland.





What I hope for from Blank Slate (who by the way make Fantagraphically-beautiful books), and Selmadehero, is that they will one day be custodians of a catalogue of work as varied as that of Cinebook in France. The French company has grown to the extent that it now publishes somewhere in the region of 40 different titles. In mainland Europe, and in France in particular, there is an enormous range of Bande Dessinee, in a huge variety of styles and genres.

This often comes as a surprise not just to those who were previously only aware of Tintin and Asterix, but even to those more knowledgeable souls aware of Blake and Mortimer, Adele Blanc-Sec, Largo Winch, and Black Sad. Whilst it is true that Bande Desinee are not as all-pervasive in French culture as manga is in Japanese culture, you won't find Bande Dessinee about fishing, for instance, comic books are regarded with great affection as the 9th Art and the sheer amount of titles is still a real eye-opener.

One of the great strengths of the comic book market in France, is that from spy thrillers to vampire tales, and from zombie stories to historical dramas, there is a bande dessinee title for almost every reader. In this respect the French market is almost as varied as that of Japan, and it is in this area that we in the west, in Britain in particular, are sadly lacking either the vision, the scope, or just the imagination, to create fiction that doesn't have some autobiographical basis. While the Franco/Belgian market has the Bourne Identity-inspired XIII, created by Belgium's Jean Van Hamme and William Vance for Spirou before earning its own BD. And while Japan has Takao Saito's Golgo13, serialised in Shogakukan's Big Comic Magazine before making the move to its own massively popular manga title, we in the Britain have only the memory of old Modesty Blaise strips (which French BD readers love).

Of course unlike France and Japan we have no studio system in Britain, and we have no anthology publications like Spirou and Big Comic to attract a readership and create a demand for the single titles. That will make a difference, but unfamiliarity with the weekly serials does not necessarily deter the avid comicbook fan. Titles like The Chimpanzee Complex will appeal to fans of comic books and science fiction, even if those readers have never read the stories in serialised form.

Another reason for publishing modern contemporary fiction in a graphic format is that when a genre, like horror, and like vampires and zombies in particular, becomes popular enough to attract major funding from movie and TV studios, a Britain creator, studio, and publisher, will actually have a product that makes money. Worthy as some of our autobiographical tales are, they are unlikely to attract the sort of audiences The Walking Dead or 30 Days of Night bring in. No doubt though, part of the problem for British creators is where exactly do they try to place a graphic novel, let alone a series of graphic novels, about vampires. Currently, the only answer, it seems, is "in the US".

I have always believed that large mainstream publishers in the UK would avoid graphic novels like the plague, because of the way the businesses are run. They will probably be happy too reprint success stories from other shores, but they won't break the habits of a lifetime and invest in new product. With luck, the new independent companies that are bravely stepping in to fill the void will publish some daring new fiction alongside the re-imaginings, adaptations, and autobiographical works - making the new British scene more like the French, with no "mainstream comic book/indie comic book distinctions. And with luck they will be rewarded with some monster hits and monster pay-days.

Words and Pictures

Phew.

I'm a little behind again. It irks me because I have two projects I want to begin. Meanwhile, I want to finish Johnny Morte. Well, as much as I can, definitely #1.

I just finished the art for a short story. I sort of crammed it into 11 pages - could maybe have used 15, but it has a lot of talking heads and I was getting itchy feet; or fingers. These things always take longer than you expect. My advice would be, if you are doing all the artwork on your own, to allow one day per page.

The writer, Anthony Abelaye, didn't intend it as a graphic story, so it's big on atmosphere and short on action; but don't be fooled, it still took some drawing. Writers and illustrators take note, the shortest story, or poem, can take some drawing as the ideas are uncondensed - a sentence like, "he looked across the vast expanse of the alpine landscape" takes only a couple of words but a lot of drawing. Actually, the computer-related simile that came to mind was that stories are like Zip files, made smaller, and tighter, for delivery to the reader's brain - where of course the reader supplies the pictures. An illustrated version is like that story unzipped, expanded, and laid-out for all to see. Of course you need to edit sensibly, imagine drawing a passage of running Orcs from Lord of the Rings, you could potentially fill an entire book with just Orcs pounding around the Shire.

Turf Wows

Turf (Image Comics) by Jonathan Ross and Tommy Lee Edwards, was always going to be well drawn. Tommy Lee Edwards is the western equivalent of the very best mangaka - he draws like an angel. Whether or not it would be well-written was open to question, despite Jonathan Ross's love of comics and his extensive comic book collection, Wossy was very much an unknown quantity in that respect.

So if you haven't picked up Turf yet, and a lot of you have as each issue sells out pretty quickly, let me put your mind at ease; Turf is as much fun to read as it is to look at; and that's saying something. Note to self: do not, do not, ever, look at Tommy Lee Edwards artwork while you are drawing a project yourself you will only become as depressed as Salieri looking at a handwritten Mozart score.

Make no mistake, Ross has written something pretty special here, at times verbose, occasionally clichéd (seemingly, but that's part of the joke), it is a story that teases and tantalises and even dares the reader to spot the joke, or to consider the juxtapositions too, too, coincidental.

Set in Prohibition - era New York complete with bent coppers and the Holland Floral Company -this tale centres on virtuous, intrepid female reporter, Miss Susie Randall, Society Reporter for the Gotham Herald and her sidekick, photographer, Dale.



Told in dialogue, in illustrations, in the yellow-coloured exegesis of the omniscient narrator, and in the thoughts of the protagonist, sometimes all at once, Turf makes some other comic books out there look like they are grid-locked in the slow-lane with the "special" kid taking the wheel for the first time.


Right from the start it is clear that the narrator knows more than he or she is telling, or the drawings are subverting the narration and exposing what the narrator is not saying (both of which are pretty fucking sophisticated possibilities for a comic book). The story of the "disappearing" Hancock family, who "sell" their stately home to the leaders of the Dragonmir Clan, and who we can clearly see being buried in shallow graves, sets the tone for the playfully macabre narration.

While all this is going on, Tommy Lee Edwards is drawing up a storm. The vintage cars and clothes and architecture are a delight, of course, but what astonishes me is how he captures the noise of the period, the industry, without resorting to in-your-face sound effects. There is one panel where a beer, or Canadian blood, shipment is being unloaded, and you can just sense the noise. And then there's the flying, that is noiseless, it is a gentle raising in the manner of Peter Pan and his Lost Boys - these are masterly effects that appear effortless, though doubtless are not..

I absolutely love the page where The thoughts of Susie Randall take over the narration, a point only made clear by the position of her in the centre of the page - and only crystallised upon turning the page as this wandering thought joins the think balloon above her head. This is a perfect example of the writer and the illustrator working very closely.

Throughout, there are little authorial conceits that tease and please, when Susie Randall chastises Dale with "you might as well be drinking blood" we can see Stefan surveying the scene with a drink (more than likely blood) in his hand. And the words "...outer space" actually cut to a "meanwhile in outer space" scenario where a spaceship is about to collide into this vampir/gangster epic as the bootlegging Squeed, fresh from stealing from the more civilised Mantii, crash into the story.


Make no mistake; this writer will take your feet from under you, if he needs to. The clever titles all appear to have layers of meaning, Turf #2; Aliens with Dirty Faces, is clearly a play on the title of the gangster epic Angels with Dirty Faces, and perhaps also a play on the theory in some circles that the biblical Angels might have been aliens.

This tale of the sibling rivalry at the head of the Dragonmir Clan, as one brother vies to wrest control of the City from the mob, is a glorious blood fest. It is a tale of the tearing off of heads, with "...who the fuck are you gangsters" juxtaposed with "...the heck are they reporters". This is sassy writing; it is a His Girl Friday for the modern era. I mean, come on, the gangster Eddie Falco helps the aliens who help him by blasting the vampirs, and meanwhile, "The Old One" mentioned in the vampir prophecy is awakened and is clawing his gnarly way out of the ground, and we hope, against hope, that the truly vile beast O'Leary gets wacked -- that's bang for your buck, mate.

It is slightly unbelievable, I admit, that in this tale of vampires and aliens that nobody is a simple cipher, that they are all characters made with fleshed-out words and pictures, but it is true. And if you want to see some masterly drawing to match the masterly script, look no further than The cutthroat razor scene - that is a page full of tension, for the reader, who can see more than the central characters as the scene unfolds- how the hell did Tommy Lee Edwards do that?

Turf #3 Badfellas will be out later this month, and I can't wait to see just what the hell is going to happen next.

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Turf, copyright, 2010, Jonathan Ross and Tommy Lee Edwards.

The Things you Didn't Know you Didn't Know...about Charles Front

My Dad said, when I visited him a few weeks ago, "that thing Rumsfeld said about the 'unknown unknowns', the things 'we do not know we don’t know'; it's starting to make sense to me". I can't remember the context he (my Dad) said it in, but despite the fact that it made me laugh, it does make sense, dealing as it does with the philosophical concept of the unknown known. The Slovenian philosopher and critical theorist Slavoj Žižek describes it as "that which we don't know, or intentionally refuse to acknowledge that we know...". Which, if you think about it in the context Rumsfeld was using it, WMDs, really suggests that he might just be admitting that he "sort of knew" there were no WMDs, but kept it from himself. Oh heck, talk about a digression; let's get back on track.

Yesterday, Saturday July 31st 2010, I was looking through The Times and I spotted a big story about ex-Oasis front-man Liam Gallagher's new clothing line, and shop, Pretty Green (which, being an old Suedehead/Mod I'm into, by the way), and right there, staring me in the face, was a new twist that just impossibly, through sheer serendipity, segued into my blog post about the illustrator Charles Front. You see the logo for Pretty Green is a bit of a Beatle-hat tip to Charles Front, whether those concerned know it or not.





You see, Charles Front was the young illustrator who designed the lettering on The Beatles Rubber Soul album. Back in 1965, Art Director Charles Front was asked by Bob Freeman, the Beatles' photographer, to create artwork for a new album sleeve; Rubber Soul. Front's design, squeezing the words Rubber Soul into a shape that resembled the drip of rubber from a milked- rubber-tree (an early example of playful bubble-shaped lettering) quickly became a template for the poster art of the period, and would slowly, very slowly, influence the design of more creative forms of typography over the coming decades.



A cursory glance at the Beatles album designs around, and even after Front's design, reveal that whilst album covers became increasingly innovative, vivid, and colourful, the typography was more often than not less adventurous. And the fact that the influence of that iconic design can still be detected today, with very few people knowing a great deal about the designer himself, speaks volumes about the quality of the work.









This is where the "not knowing what you don't know" part comes into the equation. If you look at the work of the cartooning-godfather of graffiti art, Vaughn Bode, with no knowledge of the Rubber Soul design, then the only illustrator who produced typography that could have influenced today's Urban Art, beginning with the bubble lettering, "Softies", of PHASE2 on the streets of New York in 1972, is Bode. Indeed Bode, who used balloon lettering in his strips Deadbone, in Cavalier Magazine in 1969, and later in Cheech Wizard, is acknowledged as an influence on that movement.











When you look at the lettering on Rubber Soul again though, and think of the popularity of the Beatles, then it is not impossible to imagine that Charles Front's iconic Rubber Soul font, might also have been an influence on that Art form. It is, I would suggest, a possible cultural influence that you had no idea you knew existed.



Although other artists who worked with the Beatles are better known, you will surely be hard-pushed to find more t-shirts, logos, key-rings, and the like, out there devoted to a Beatle-related image, than the Rubber Soul typography designed by Front. In fact it is pretty rare to see an album typeface, other than the later YES designs, take on a life of it's own in this fashion.










Indeed, the only other really daringly playful use of typography on a Beatles album, can be seen on Magical Mystery Tour, released in the US in November 1967, and that album also uses bubble writing, but in a more conventional way. And whilst Peter Blake's cover for Sergeant Pepper (Jun, 1967) is pretty spectacular, the lettering is incorporated into the drum in the image and is therefore, more or less, pretty conventional.

I would argue that nobody who worked on the Beatles's album art played the kind of daring game that Charles Front played with the text, in fact very few artists of the period seemed to have been daring enough to try. Even the late Heinz Edelmann, brilliant creator of the hallucinogenic landscape of Pepperland as art director for the 1968 animated Beatles film Yellow Submarine, who like Charles Front also produced artwork for albums, never produced typographic design as innovative as his album cover art.

Outside the Beatles hit-factory there was also a dearth of daring typographical design, and even the great Andy Warhol was producing covers with unadventurous lettering.

One of the few artists who who worked on album art, and who did experiment with typography, including bubble-lettering (most famously on Keep on Truckin' (1968))alongside colourful, playful, artwork, was Robert Crumb, who, coincidentally, worked alongside Vaugh Bode back in the day. Again though, Crumb could be a little conventional with the typeface, and it is surely a little fanciful to see that big upturned shoe sole that appears in much of Crumb's artwork, as slightly reminiscent of the shape of Charles Front's Rubber Soul design.

If you search for "Rubber Soul" on Google, and check out those images you will see some evidence of the influence of Charles Front's innovative design. You will also see little or no mention of Charles Front, the man who created the design. I took some advice in regard to the copyright of the Rubber Soul font, and of the design in general, those in the know, Nate Piekos and Daniel Poeira, are of the opinion that Apple would be responsible for establishing rights. My feeling though is that there is certainly a case for moral rights belonging to Charles Front, and of course it very much matters what his original deal with the company was. In the meantime, it would be a nice gesture to acknowledge Charles Front as the original creator of what is very clearly a popular design. I mean, how many people have seen their artwork adorn a Beatles cover, countless t-shirts, influence Urban Art, and act as a backdrop for The Righteous Brothers? Respect.

As a caveat, bear in mind this post makes no mention of the many books Charles Front illustrated, and the fact that while you were young you enjoyed his drawings on Jackanory. Now there's a thought, you saw his work in books, on TV, and sitting there in your big brother or sister's or even your parent's record collection. It was influencing you, and you didn't know it. More things you didn't know you didn't know about Charles Front.

The images here are copyright their respective copyright holders. If you have any questions, ask me.