Comic Book Babylon project announced, probing "British Vertigo"

Author Tim Pilcher has announced a Kickstarter campaign to publish Comic Book Babylon: A Cautionary Tale of Sex, Drugs & Comics, probing a bizarre period when, to outsiders, British creators looked set to take over American comics.

Tim Pilcher’s shocking, revealing and completely unofficial memoir of DC Comics' legendary London office, will, he hopes, celebrate the Vertigo imprint's 20th anniversary, lifting the lid on an intriguing part of British comics history.

“For a few glorious years only, before cost-cutting set in, there was Vertigo's 'British Office' - the comics equivalent of the Loaded HQ in the 1990s," recalls Grant Morrison, author of Supergods, All Star Superman, Batman Inc. and The Invisibles. "Vodka, mushrooms, Es, sex, money, travel and the pure unleashed creativity of young people having a good time together."

Comic Book Babylon is the candid, uncensored and utterly unofficial of story of DC Comic’s infamous Vertigo UK office, written by one who was the heart of the drug-fuelled, creative whirlwind. It’s the odyssey of how comic fan Tim, in pursuit of his dream job, became the first British member of the DC editorial staff, and learning the harsh realities of publishing life.

Along the way he meets comics professionals and celebrities including Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan, Jamie Hewlett, Mark Millar, Garth Ennis, Philip Bond, Paul Gambaccini, Glyn Dillon, Jonathan Ross, The Spice Girls, Blur, Adam Ant, and many, many more. Revealing the crazy, halcyon days of the British comics publishing in the mid-Nineties, it blows the lid off the debauchery and excess that was part and parcel of the industry.

When you reach such dizzy heights, there’s only one place to go.

“It was an incredibly exciting time to be in comics," Tim recalls of his time in the offices of "British Vertigo". "We felt we could achieve anything at the Vertigo office, and things got a little crazy. This is the book I’ve been threatening to write for the past 20 years! I suspect the first people wanting to pick this up will be all the comics professionals, to see what I said about them. There should be some very worried writers, artists and editors out there!”

Revealing the reason for writing this latest book - as well as many articles for a huge range of magazines, he's written books like Erotic Com­ics: A Graphic His­tory and The Essen­tial Guide to World Com­ics (with Brad Brooks) - Tim says he wanted to let the world know that the comics industry is not all geeky and nerdy as some might think.

"In fact it’s every bit as hedonistic as the music business," he declares. "If Paul Gravett is ‘The Man at the Crossroads’, then I’m ‘The Man at the Centre of a 15-Car Pile-Up’!”.

Tim's first job in the industry was at Comic Show­case, starting as a shop assistant but eventually becoming its man­ager. After four and a half years of that he worked as an assist­ant editor for Art Young at the Vertigo UK office on titles like Kill Your Boy­friend by Grant Morrison & Phillip Bond, Enigma by Peter Milligan & Duncan Fegredo, The Extrem­ist by Peter Milligan & Ted McKeever, The Mystery Play by Grant Morrison & Jon J Muth and Rogan Gosh by Peter Milligan & Brendan McCarthy. He was a founder mem­ber of the Les Car­toon­istes Dangereux col­lect­ive, along with Brad Brooks, Roger Lan­gridge, Charlie Adlard, Paul Peart, Faz Choudhury, Jonathan Edwards, and Dylan Hor­rocks.

"Then I moved to Pen­guin Children’s Books, Dorling Kinder­s­ley, and then as asso­ci­ate editor on Com­ics Interna­tional for a few years with Dez Skinn," he told Comics Bureau in 2011. More recently he's been an editor at Ilex Press, where he has comm­iss­ioned a whole range of pop cul­ture and comic-related books such as War Com­ics: A Graphic His­tory by Mike Con­roy, the Eisner-nominated and Har­vey Award-winning Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga by Helen McCarthy and the brilliant Alan Moore: Storyteller by Gary Spen­cer Mil­lidge. He also commissioned me to edit SciFi Art Now, a collection of science fiction art, published in 2010.

He's also one of the founding members of the Comic Book Alliance, (www.comicbookalliance.co.uk), a not-for-profit organisation and "The Voice of the British Comics Industry" promoting books, graphic novels, webcomics and sequential art in its many forms.

"Comics were undoubtedly in my blood from day one," Tim says of his love of comics."I had 'four colour funnies' running through my veins before I’d even heard the expression. Cut me and I bled cyan, magenta, yellow and black. I inhaled the musty smell of old comics, as if they were perfume. I sweated Indian ink and I came in process white. It was my destiny to work in comics."

There are three versions of Comic Book Babylon planned: an eBook (with additional images), paperback, and 200 limited edition hardbacks, with covers created by design genius and comic book artist Rian Hughes.

“Rian’s out done himself,” said an impressed Pilcher, “The punky/acid house colours perfectly reflect the rave mood of the times in the book.” Hughes has also designed a limited edition print and three “Sex, Drugs and Comic Books” badges as incentives.

• Comic Book Babylon: A Cautionary Tale of Sex, Drugs & Comics launches Kickstarter on Thursday 4 April, 2013. See a preview of it here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/2016810024/1303051881?token=bb3f146a

• Website: sexdrugsandcomicbooks.blogspot.com

Nich Angell Becomes First of Few on Kickstarter UK

Following a recent publishing deal with Zeta Comics, 27-year-old artist and writer Nich Angell has become one of the first British comic creators to launch a Kickstarter campaign, to fund the second installment of his book 7String.

Aimed at a 12+ readership but enjoyed by people of all ages, 7String is a full colour adventure graphic novel about a boy with a guitar sword, heading out on an epic quest into a world of music. Wielding a guitar-sword, Zach fights to defend everything he loves by using tempo, volume and genre against instrument-wielding foes.

Aside from his own comics Nich, who lives in Salisbury, produces work for Titan Magazines, VS Comics, Mattel, features in various exhibitions, and has worked with the BBC. He's been touring comic conventions to promote 7String since the beginning of last year, and says he has received fantastic feedback from consumers, reviewers and fellow comic creators. 7String is currently stocked in a number of stores nationwide and Nich signed on with Canadian publisher Zeta Comics in August 2011, and the first volume of 7String was published in July 2012.

The first book has already received rave reviews from peers and critics alike, and now Nich's hoping to continue the success by appealing for fans worldwide to collectively donate £10,000 to fund the making of Volume 2.

Kickstarter is a crowd-funding website that can be used to gather any sum of money to fund a range of projects and products.Previously it was primarily for projects in America, it opened its doors to UK-based projects earlier this month.

Funding is normally open for one or two months, and curators are able to set their own target amounts. If they fail to reach that amount, the project is not funded and nobody is charged. If the project surpasses its target, there is no ceiling on how much can be raised in the time limit.

Nich is hoping to be one of the first few in the UK to successfully achieve his target goal before the month-long opportunity closes on 9th December.

He's at Thought Bubble this weekend, where he will be exhibiting his work and also taking part in a question and answer panel about upcoming series VS Comics.

• The Kickstarter Project can be found at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/234373302/7string-volume-2?ref=live

• For more information on Nich and his work, visit www.nichangell.co.uk

 

Afterlife creator after crowdfunding new collection

Jon Lock, writer and creator of a great-looking comic called Afterlife Inc. is among the first British comic creators using the UK arm of crowdfunding site Kickstarter to try to raise the finance to publish a third collection of the strip.

The story so far goes like this:

When corporate con-artist Jack Fortune's life comes to an abrupt and brutal end, he discovers a business opportunity on a scale he could never have imagined. A mysterious Calamity has cast the afterlife into chaos. The time is ripe for modernisation. With the vision, the business-smarts and a ragtag collection of allies behind him, Jack strives to reinvent the city of the dead as a modern day corporation: AFTERLIFE INC.

Establishing a new business is always challenging, but now Jack must balance the demands of a free market with rampaging archangels, a misplaced God and the dark secrets at the heart of their world.

This may be the job he was born to die for, but has Jack's reach finally exceeded his grasp?

AFTERLIFE INC. is the tale of Jack's vast Promethean dream for humanity: equal parts self-empowerment, opportunity and stealing fire from the gods to sell back at a profit.

In an age where we are all too familiar with the failings of big business, we need a hero to restore our faith in the corporate ideal. Someone who can wrestle noble intentions from the trappings of consumerism. We need a company we can believe in.

If you'd like to see some of Afterlife Inc. in action, you can read the entire back catalogue, featuring art by the likes of Ash Jackson and Nich Angell, for free on Jon's website (www.jonlock.com/afterlifeinc). Volume 1 of Afterlife Inc. - Dying to Tell, which featured artificial intelligences, deceased serial killers, invasions from beyond time and space, and surprise cameos from both Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle - saw print earlier this year. He'll be debuting Volume 2 at Thought Bubble in Leeds this weekend.

By day, Jon works as a school Biology Technician, but in the evenings he can be found at the writing desk, engaging his true love of comics. In addition to Afterlife Inc., he's also written for the Harvey Award-nominated Uniques Tales, and some of his work will be appearing in the forthcoming Disconnected anthology.

jon and his team are clearly committed to this project. "Since launching online two years ago, a new Afterlife Inc. story has been released every month without fail," he says, and the quality of the strip has earned him high praise, including kudos from veteran creator and self publisher Bryan Talbot.

"With the recent launch of Kickstarter in the UK, I'm running a project to fund production of Volume 3," he told downthetubes.

He's set himself a target of £7000 to fund the creation and printing of Lifeblood, and has already raised over £4000.

"While Afterlife Inc. has been self-funded up until now, the biggest limit on productivity has been my budget. As Afterlife Inc. grows in scale, the time has come to tell the larger, more ambitious stories I’ve had planned since day one.

"In Lifeblood, Jack and Co. must contend with the rise of a fanatical and extremist movement called the Undead. Guided by an ancient text that harks back to the afterlife’s mysterious past, the Undead seek to awaken the Harvest – an entity whose existence spells doom for the entire Empyrean. Worse still, the Undead have chosen to model themselves on the vampires from a popular series of teenage romance novels – something that Jack, having died prior to the success of a certain franchise, remains in a perpetual state of confusion over."

Lifeblood is an original 96-page Afterlife Inc. series featuring faces both familiar and new, intrigue, action, citywide devastation and (of course) stupid, sexy vampires," says Jon. If all goes to plan, the trade paperback will go to print in June 2013, pre-orders for which are available as rewards.

"If Lifeblood reaches its target, Kickstarter profits will fund 96 pages of full colour artwork from Ash Jackson and Nadine Ashworth, with masterful lettering from Michael Stock, plus the first print run of 150 copies," Jon explains. "I’ve had the honour of working with these folks for some time now, and their art continues to blow me away.

"Ash was the first artist to ever draw Afterlife Inc. and has been instrumental in defining the look and feel of the world. In Lifeblood, his pencils will be paired with Nadine’s inks and colours. The two have collaborated before on the Dead Days series from earlier this year. I can’t wait to see what these two can come up with again."

Kickstarter's arrival in the UK is a game-changing development for creators. It's helped see numerous amazing projects come to fruition in the US and we're sure plenty of British creators will be keen to see how things work out for impressive pitches like Jon's. Check it out on Kickstarter UK.

• You can see full details of the project and the incentives being offered to backers on Jon'sofficial Kickstarter page (www.kickstarter.com/projects/jonlock/afterlife-inc-volume-3-lifeblood). If you are attending Thought Bubble, Jon is exhibiting in the Royal Armouries Hall



"Afterlife Inc." and all related images, text and characters Copyright 2007-2012 Jonathan Lock. All Rights Reserved.