Panel Borders: War - The Human Cost

Continuing radio show Panel Borders month about War Comics, they will broadcast a final panel discussion recorded at the 'Comics and Conflicts' conference at the Imperial War Museum in August tonight.

Alex Fitch chairs a discussion on 'The personal and the political' as the publisher and two of the contributing artists - Sean Duffield, Daniel Locke and Ben Naylor - talk about their anthology War: The Human Cost.

They are also joined on stage by writer Eileen Cassavetti and cartoonist Francesca Cassavetti who published her mother's wartime journal Philip and Helen in comic book format.

• Panel Borders: War - The Human Cost airs at 5.00pm, Thursday 22nd September, Resonance 104.4 FM (London) / streamed at www.resonancefm.com / extended podcast after broadcast at www.panelborders.wordpress.com

(Please note: this is the penultimate episode of Panel Borders to be broadcast on a Thursday evening, before the show moves to Sunday nights from October)

Let's hear it for some Comical Animals!

Bumble Billy by Gary Northfield

A quick reminder that Jim Medway's Comical Animal, a bi-monthly online publication for comic, cartoon and kids books aficionados, is on course for a proper launch in December.

Sponsored by Good Grief! and Blank Slate Books, Jim is taking submissions for strips, articles, reviews and illustrations for the first full issue, scheduled for December. You can get to the submission guidelines here.

The preview issue features strips by a host of British artists such as Dave Shelton, Gary Northfield, Lizz Lunney, Francesca Cassavetti, Rob Jackson, Dan Berry and many more.

• Check it out at: http://comicalanimal.com

Tube Surfing: Hi-Ex!, Insomnia, Commando and Francesca Cassavetti

The Scottish comics convention, Hi-Ex!, will be returning to Inverness in the Highlands over the weekend of 27 - 28 March 2010. We echo the sentiment in their new leaflet promoting the event, a quote for the SFX Blog stating "If UK comic cons were described as body parts, then Hi-Ex would be the heart."

Staying with Hi-Ex and Scotland, we pass on our congratulations to Hi-Ex! co-organiser, Richmond Clements, who has signed with Edinburgh based publisher Insomnia Publications to write a Vigil bio-graphic novel about the life of Glasgow born Allen Pinkerton who founded the America's Pinkerton National Detective Agency and who fought on the Union side during the Civil War. There are more details of the signing on Insomnia's weekly Red Eye blog.

• CommandoMag, DC Thomson's official website for their Commando digest, has been in hibernation recently with just the details of the latest issues being added but we are pleased to report that it has sprung back into life recently with a daily feature Diary Of World War II which gives a brief glimpse of what was happening on the posting day seventy years ago.

The next Commando reprint book from Carlton, Battle Of Britain – Scramble! is due to be published at the beginning of October.

• And, finally, we welcome baby Arianna Law into the world. Dad, Steve, has been a long time supporter of downthetubes and we are pleased to say that despite being premature both mother and baby are fine - and dad isn't getting much sleep. Having received a copy of Francesca Cassavetti's The Most Natural Thing In The World as a present, they are now accosting their visitors with Francesca's excellent book pointing out which page their life with a new baby has currently reached.

The downthetubes review of the book is here.

Strip!: Fab Toons and Splendid Zines

London's Resonance FM continues its ongoing coverage of comics with several shows from the Panel Borders team.

Strip! Fab Toons and Splendid Zines
: Starting ‘women in comics’ month on the show, Panel Borders have a couple of interviews with small press creators who are selling their self published periodicals at festivals and competitions around the country. Dickon Harris talks to Bea, a.k.a. Beatrice Lane, in an interview recorded at the Bristol Small Press expo and Alex Fitch talks to Francesca Cassavetti in an interview recorded at “Schmurgen con” in Mile End.

Bea publishes Bear Cave ‘zines on a variety of subjects from short fiction to music reviews, with her latest issue The most splendid bands I know due out shortly, while Francesca’s Fab Toons comics tell a variety of autobiographical stories from her life, in strip format, from her days at art school to dating a former punk star and the birth of her first child.

• Strip! Fab Toons and Splendid Zines airs at 5.00pm Resonance 104.4 FM (London) 03/09/09 / streamed at www.resonancefm.com/ podcast after transmission at www.panelborders.wordpress.com


(N.B. There is no Sunday repeat this week as Resonance is broadcasting live from 'Pestival' at The South Bank Centre from Friday evening to Midnight on Sunday)

Recent podcasts from Panel Borders include The Art of Jill Thompson, concluding children’s comics month. It's the belated podcast of Alex Fitch’s interview with Jill Thompson which sees Alex and Jill talk about her career so far, from drawing popular DC comics such as Wonder Woman and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman to creating her own children’s books, Scary Godmother and Magic Trixie.

Jill also talks about her influences, her early work on Mike Baron’s Badger and her latest project Beasts of Burden.

• The Art of Jill Thompson, arranged in conjunction with Gosh! Comics and originally broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM can be found here on the Panel Borders web site
 

Review Round Up: Pasties, Khaki Shorts and Thief Takers!

Over the past couple of months several indie press folk have sent us comics for review and I have to apologize for being slow at publishing reviews of them. downthetubes remains a site created in spare time between paid work (offers always welcome) and I've got behind with this aspect of the site. The good news is that David Hailwood has now stepped up the plate to be our small press/indie press Reviews Editor, and if you want a plug here, please send your comics to the address below. (But make sure you continue to send us press information to the usual e-mail address, thanks)

Premable over, let's cut to the comment, firstly for Rob Jackson's joyous Pasty Anthology, a 28-page black and white title with colour cover dedicated to the Cornish-created pastry delicacy that you can fill with anything (purportedly the reason why the devil never crossed the Tamar river, by the way). Combining the talents of Matt Badham, Jim Medway,
Steve Butler, Francesca Cassavetti, Dave Hughes, Ant Mercer and of course, Rob himself, this is a fun title, evidenced from the outset by its Planet of the Apes-inspired cover. Favourite elements? Hard to choose, but Steve Butler's twist in the tale 'Keeping Fit' and Francesca's 'Chewing Gum' are in there, but some of the grotesque eating habits displayed in Rob's own 'Shortcrusts #2' don't just make for strong comic strip, they'd look great on t-shirts, perhaps.

Another anthology title, Khaki Shorts #20, has also been winking at me from the corner of my desk for a while: Glasgow's longest running small-press comic offers another fantastic assembly of talent that includes Neil Bratchpiece ('Apocalypse Now & Then', featuring Amazilian, the most anatomically incorrect woman in comics, ever, surely), loads of Rob Miller's 'Star Trudge', 'The Wildebeests' by Shug and much more. Khaki Shorts is simply bursting with the kind of frenetic energy that some pro titles used to have: personally I think some strips would benefit from a larger page size rather than the A5 format ('Dollyforce 2020', in particular), but with a cover price of just £1 one pound, who's complaining?

Finally for this round up, there's Storm Comics two issue mini series Thief Taker General, which we frist plugged back in (gulp) June (see news story). Writer-artist Michael Crouch has worked hard on this true-life story adaptation, telling the story of two legends of 18th century London, Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard. It's an impressive piece of work, with some qualification.

Of the two issues, the first features the better art (but I'm not keen on the cover) but #2 seems, well, rushed, somehow, as if Michael was setting himself a challenge of getting the book out to a self-imposed deadline. There is better composition and storytelling in Issue 1, although in some establishing panels his wonderful attention to detail and careful recreation of 18th century life sometimes distracts from the central characters in a panel. Script-wise, the second issue also seems a trifle muddied: I have to confess I lost track of who was who, although the three-page set piece of Jack Sheppard's esacpe from prison is a visual gem.

Thief Taker is good with plenty of promise and I think Michael has the makings of a fine talent, properly tempered by stronger storytelling and better figure work (this is what all editors say, but it's true). With the huge number of 'historical comics' on the market in the pro sector, there should be no shortage of work for a honed talent.

• If you have a small press or indie title you would like us to review, send them to David Hailwood, Flat 5, The Saltings, Bognor Regis, West Sussex P021 2RJ. Press information should still be sent by e-mail to the usual downthetubes e-mail address, thanks.


• For a measly £2.50 (PayPal accepted), free postage in the UK, you can buy Pasty Anthology from Rob's web site at www.robjacksoncomics.com. Rob's blog includes sample Pages and more info: www.robjacksoncomics.blogspot.com

• Khaki Shorts #20 is on sale from Avalanche Records, the Arches Cafe and Bar, Ychai Ovna, Play it Again Sam in Glasgow and Deadhead Comics in Edinburgh. More info and ordering: www.myspace.com/khakishorts.


• All three Storm Comics titles - the scifi tale After Life and Thief Taker General #1 and #2 - can be bought in one fell swoop for £8.00 inc. p&p, a saving of £1.25, from the Storm Comics web site at www.stormcomics.com.

Bear-Shaped Comics Collection Launched!

Richy K. Chandler, the creative force behind UK indie title Tempo Lush comics, has been wanting to put out a collection of his Tempo Lush Mini Comic range since the first one featuring Lucy the Octopus was released to the world back in 2007. After being kept busy with various other comic and illustration work -- including writing for Titan's much-missed Wallace & Gromit comic, bear- shaped inspiration finally struck and a new collection of 10 A4 mini-comics was the result.

Published in both colour and black & white, the collection comes snuggled up inside a box in the shape of Square McBear, who also stars in the final comic in the set. Other entries include "Govinda the Meditating Rabbit" and "22 Responses to an Insult."

The sets, which Richy put lots of love and effort into making, went on the sale for the first time at the London Underground Comics 176 event at the end of June and were flying off the shelves.

He tells us he was determined to make the sets as fun and tactile as possible, using different paper stocks and a broad range of drawing styles to create a breadth of experience jammed into one little package.

Also new to the Tempo Lush range is Bunch Issue 2, featuring a woman discovering that her toys are not as innocent as she thought, some literally eye popping office antics and more Lucy the Octopus.

Joining Richy is Fabtoons comic artist Francesca Cassavetti, creator of The Most Natural Thing in the World and Striptacular, plus in her comic book debut, animator, illustrator and graphic designer Maria Lee.

• You can read comic samples and buy your own bear at www.myspace.com/tempolush

• Tempolush is also on Facebook: www.facebook.com/tempolush

Pasties Are Better Than Comics

Oh all right, that's not really true, but you'd be hard pressed to find more enthusiasm for the pastry-based food, created by the Cornish and whose reputation is frequently ruined by bakeries across the UK who simply have no idea how to make one*, than in Rob Jackson's fun new comic anthology devoted to them.

Celebrating this lunch time staple of Cornish miners, students and many others, indie British creator Rob Jackson has just launched the 28-page The Pasty Anthology, which features contributions from downthetubes contributor and new Dad Matt Badham, Jim Medway,
Steve Butler, Francesca Cassavetti, Dave Hughes, Ant Mercer and of course, Rob himself.

The Pasty Anthology available from Rob's web site, priced only £2.50 (PayPal accepted), free postage in the UK.

"I mentioned a random idea on my blog for a Pasty based story ('The Story of Greggs' – which was a Viz-style story, thinking of those pages in Viz every so often that are called things like ‘The Story of Honey’ or ‘How We Get Milk’)," explains Rob of the anthology's origins. "Dave Hughes was very keen and started drawing pages for it so I thought I’d better actually make it."

Rob admits it's a pretty off-the-wall theme for a comic, "but everyone likes pasties. I was happily surprised at how all the artists have gone for very different takes on the vague theme.

Rob tells us he hopes his fans and newcomers to his work and the other creators will enjoy the title, which he's been working on since February. "It's very funny," he enthuses, "and has lots of very diverse stories."

Despite creating a Pasty Anthology, Rob admits he's never made one of his own. "Cheese and onion is my favourite, or Greggs Vegetable pasty," he admits, "but Dave Hughes did masses of research for his two stories (which are very funny). He's like a method actor in his diligent research!"

• Buy The Pasty Anthology via www.robjacksoncomics.com

• Sample Pages and more info on Rob's blog: www.robjacksoncomics.blogspot.com

* (I once gave a proper Cornish pasty recipe to the now defunct bakery chain Birketts, which had a shop on the Lancaster University campus, but it did no good, they never produced a decent one).

Tube Surfing: 4 May 2009

• Over on Comic Book Resources, Brian Cronin has just completed a month of posting reviews of a different self-published comic book each day. Check out the archive of reviews here

• Meanwhile, Matthew Badham has perhaps taken a leaf from Brian and has started his own recommendation challenge for self-published work etc., entitled 100 Days, 100 Cartoonists, so far plugging the likes of British talents such as Francesca Cassavetti, Steve Larder, Eleanor Davis, John Allison and others. Follow Matt's blog here

• Talking of self publishing, over on Bear Alley, Steve Holland has announced he's risking his bank balance with his first Bear Alley book, reprinting an as-yet un-named collection of an old British comic. We have no idea what the comic is, but we're rooting for a collection of Come on Steve by Roland Davies, which we know one of Britain's top comic experts has a fondness for, as do we.

Seriously - given the work Steve has done bringing the work of talents such as Don Lawrence to the attention of today's modern comic fans, he deserves support. "The artwork is scanned, the introduction written in rough, a cover is being prepared and I have some quotes in from printers," Steve says.

"At the moment it looks like it will be a 300-copy limited edition hardcover which means the unit cost is huge so the eventual selling price will be £15. Which isn't unreasonable for a hardcover...

"The title... well, I'll be announcing that shortly. I'm still trying to figure out how the hell I'm going to sell 300 copies and what I'm going to be living on while all my savings are tied up in piles of books. Roast book... fried book... raw book..." Check Bear Alley for updates

• Web site 2000AD Review has posted a round table feature with creators Alan Grant, Al Ewing and Rob Williams, talking about writing the comic's most famous strip. "Mega-City One is one of the most prescient SF worlds ever created," argues Ewing along the way. "After all, we're more than halfway there - MPs, making full use of the 'Big Lie' technique and our own increasing hysteria, are now legislating everything they can imagine and a few things nobody else dared to. Did you know that there's an upcoming law that could technically make owning a copy of Watchmen a sexual offence? And if you don't agree that that's necessary, you support paedophilia. Maybe the Judges will be knocking on your door one of these nights..."

• Talking of writing comics, Jim Medway offers some thoughts on that process - in particular, speech and thought - on his blog, part of his ongoing publication of his work as a Comic Workshop tutor. Well worth checking out if you're interested in writing comics.

• And since we seem to be plugging writers in this round up, Alan Moore has just been interviewed over on Newsarama about the just release League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volume, Century: 1910. Moore expresses high regard for publishers Top Shelf in the piece and a shift in his way of working for this project as a result. "It’s been something of a revelation. Not because I’m surprised at the production job Top Shelf is doing, or how pleasant they are to work for, because those are things I decided when they published Lost Girls by me and Melinda. But what has been a bit of a revelation is the effect working at Top Shelf has had on me, and I think Kevin [O'Neill] as well.
"I think we both decided that because we were not working for anything we recognized as a mainstream comics publisher, we have changed the way we think about the work. It’s a subtle thing, but if you’re working in mainstream comics, as both of us have been doing for getting on 25 years or more, then really, it’s a thing that you kind of take in by osmosis. You absorb the values of the field in which you’re working." Read the full interview here

• Hunt Emerson has a new strip in the Beano, a revamp of the classic Fred’s Bed which many of you reading this may be suddenly remembering very fondly right now. "Reprints of the Tom Paterson Beezer strip Fred's Bed had been running for a couple of years," notes fellow Beano artist Lew Stringer, "but now the strip has been given a makeover with an all new series illustrated by Hunt Emerson. The reprint had always proven popular with Beano readers but the source was finite, so commissioning new strips was always likely... The new version of Fred's Bed has a few changes to the original; Fred himself has been redesigned and he now sets his alarm clock to control where he travels in time instead of the random occurrence in the original strip."

• (via Forbidden Planet International): Paul B Rainey has just published the ninth part of his There’s No Time Like Present series (available from his web site). Paul says he’s been pondering endings and now thinks that the whole TNTLP series will wrap up with part twelve - although he adds that “I have been warned by people more intelligent than me that endings can often take longer than anticipated"...

• Quick Surfs: Declan Shalvey has just posted preview covers for Boom! Studios 28 Days Later book, which he's drawing; to celebrate The Specials reforming (yay!), Brendan Mccarthy has published some vintage artwork of the band from 1979, and some Johnny Rotten artwork done around the same time; and Dave Morris pays tribute to the legendary comic store Dark They Were and Golden Eyed here.

• Compiled with thanks to Matthew Badham

Striptacular New Comic at The Thing...

We plugged the UK Web and Minicomix Thing 2009 in Mile End, London this weekend earlier this week, but one comic to look out for there will be Francesca Cassavetti's Striptacular, a 36-page comic featuring nine brand spanking new strips, including her entry for last year's Observer competition.

Francesca whose creations include Fabian Carr, Bloke in a Dressing Gown and New Man, has been supplying cartoons and illustrations to a variety of clients, including Harper Collins, Emap and the BBC for a number of years, all the while creating her own comic strips and stories.

Francesca will be sharing her table with Tempo Lush illustrator Richy K Chandler and the lovely Sally Ann Hickman.

Review: The Most Natural Thing in the World by Frances Cassavetti

Right, time to review cartoonist Francesca Cassavetti's The Most Natural Thing in the World (hereafter referred to as The Most Natural Thing).

Ok, here goes... The Most Natural Thing is a joy. One of the best comics I've read all year.

There. Job done. Time for a full English and a steaming hot mug of tea (it's cold, in case you hadn't noticed)... what's that? You want to know what makes this one of the best comics I've read all year? Awkward sods. Okay, let's try that again...

The Most Natural Thing (and Francesca admits that, in future, she's going to choose shorter titles for her comics) is a 96-page collection of Francesca's mini-comics of the same title, originally published and released in four installments. It's presented with a bonus story, Shadow of the Curriculum, that is, in itself, a tiny masterpiece and which perfectly complements the material that has come before.

The Most Natural Thing is Francesca's account of the difficulties inherent in deciding to have children, getting pregnant, giving birth and taking your first, few fumbling steps as a parent. Francesca doesn't pull any punches in her depiction of the stresses and strains of childbirth and parenthood. That's not to say that The Most Natural Thing is depressing; far from it, in fact. Francesca often manages to see the humorous side of even the most traumatic aspect of parenting, such as when mum and dad spend hours trying to calm their screaming baby, only for said baby to finally stop crying when they are both in tears themselves (trust me, it's funny on the page).

Inevitably, there are going to be two types of readers for this collection: those, like me, who are parents already and who laugh in recognition at the mistakes the two lead characters make as they negotiate being a mum or a dad for the first time. The second group of readers will be those who have yet to have children and, indeed, perhaps never will.

For the former group, The Most Natural Thing is all about recognition and memory; suddenly being transported back to that point when you had a new-born and life took on a slightly hyper-real quality (or was that just the sleep deprivation?). Most parents will, I think, be able to remember inadvertently waking their new-born because they were checking her to see if she was still breathing. I'm sure they will certainly remember the hours that it took to then persuade their baby to get back to sleep.

For those readers who do not have children, The Most Natural Thing provides a glimpse into a world that they are probably familiar with and may have been on the periphery of, but are unlikely to have engaged with fully (I suspect that there's nothing more boring to non-parents than proud mums and dads; a fact I try to remember to stop me from becoming a dad bore). The warts-and-all nature of The Most Natural Thing's portrayal of parenthood makes me think that it should be a set text for secondary schools as part of their sex education programme. It's a very balanced account; The Most Natural Thing shows the positive as well as the negative aspects of parenting and there's a sense in the comic that each low that comes your way as a parent will be balanced by an equal high.

In short, The Most Natural Thing is a triumph, with an insightful, witty script and easy on the eye cartooning. The bonus strip, Shadow of the Curriculum, shows how your priorities shift when your children become teenagers and is a welcome addition to what is already a very strong collection.

This comic is a must-buy for parent and non-parent alike!

• Frances Cassaveti's blog is here and her website is here.