In Review: New British Comics #2

They've been jolly polite over at New British Comics: editor Karol Wisniewski sent me a copy of #2 eons ago (long before Wasted #3, below!) and again, it's slipped through the cracks. Which it really shouldn't have, because NBC#2 is every bit as good as the first issue, released last April (reviewed here on downthetubes).

Not only does it have a terrific line up of creators, culled from indie talent in the UK and Poland, including Dan White, Dave Thomson, Pawel Gierczak, David Hailwood, Tony Suleri, Maddku, Jacek Zabawa, Paul O’Connell and Rob Miller; it also features a great range of strips.

Highlights of this collection, for me, are White's (biographical?) 'Last Summer'; Dave Thomson's phantasmagorical 'Feeding Spiders', worthy, surely of much wider exposure; Hailwood and Suleri's SF shocker 'Spare Parts', first seen in the Temple APA but well deserving second exposure here; and David Robetrtson and Frank Lamour's 'Under the Rainbow: Mercy' a disturbing tale of voodoo. But there is even more to enjoy in this fine mix of styles and genres.

Published in Poland in both a Polish and English edition by Wisniewski, the contents and strips are the same in both editions but the only difference is language. Once again, this is a brilliant project, truly deserving support from the comic community. So, what are you waiting for? (Other than this review, of course...)

• New British Comics is now available through SmallZone's online shop - smallzone-shop.co.uk

• There's now a new web site about the project at: newbritishcomics.blogspot.com


• More information and sample pages visit: www.polygobooks.com/newbritishcomics

• In addition to the book a Polish website dedicated to comics - www.komiks.nast.pl - has started publishing online British comics (click here for these)

New British Comics #2 On Its Way

The second issue of indie anthology title New British Comics, featuring this spiffing cover by Nelson Evergreen, should be published in October.

Contributors for the 84-page anthology, which will be published by Karol Wisniewski in both English and Polish, include Dan White, Dave Thomson, Paweł Gierczak, David Hailwood, Tony Suleri, Maddku, Jacek Zabawa, David Robertson, Frank Lamour, Rob Miller, WJC, Jon Edwards, Tony Hitchman, Lawrence Elwick, Paul O’Connell, Leonie O'Moore, Iain Laurie, Craig Collins and Nelson Evergreen.

"I hope I've quietly perverted the idea of 'Britishness' here," says Nelson of his fab cover, "what with the tea drinkers, bowler hatted gent and ominous skies rendered in a vaguely European sort of style and topped off with a decidedly shop-soiled Union Jack."

UK Indie distributor SmallZone is still selling the first issue of New British Comics, which features 13 stories and 17 artists including Dave Thomson, Malcy Duff, Paul O’Connell and Rob Miller. The contents and strips are the same in both editions but the only difference is language.

The comic is also available from Bad Press (UK & Worldwide) and Centrum Komiksu,Imago.com.pl, Incal.com.pl and SklepKomiksowy.pl (Poland)

• Read our review of Issue 1

• Visit the blog about the project at: newbritishcomics.blogspot.com

New British Comics Gets UK Distribution

UK Indie distributor Smallzone is now selling the first issue of New British Comics, an 80-page comics anthology featuring, 13 stories and 17 artists including Dave Thomson, Malcy Duff, Paul O’Connell and Rob Miller.

Reviewed by us here last month, the book has been self-published in Poland in both a Polish and English edition by Karol Wisniewski, the contents and strips are the same in both editions but the only difference is language.

New British Comics is now available through SmallZone's online shop - smallzone-shop.co.uk, and Karol tells us that other UK
shops should soon be distributing the book, too.

The book will be sold at Bristol Comics Expo at the SmallZone stand.

• There's now a new web site about the project at: newbritishcomics.blogspot.com

In Review: New British Comics

Last month we gave a quick plug for the first issue of New British Comics, an 80-page comics anthology featuring, 13 stories and 17 artists including Dave Thomson, Malcy Duff, Paul O’Connell and Rob Miller.

The book has been self-published in Poland in both a Polish and English edition by Karol Wisniewski, the contents and strips are the same in both editions but the only difference is language.

Karol kindly sent us a copy of both editions to review and I have to say that I really enjoyed reading the English edition. (Lancaster has a large Polish community, so we plan to donate that one to the Library here when it re-opens after some Lottery-funded refurbishment -- they have a good comic collection for lendng).

Back in the 1980s, there were numerous independent comic anthologies published in the UK, and the tradition continues with the likes of the brilliant Futurequake and Omnivistascope. But, I'd argue, none of these modern titles have the quirkiness that made long-gone titles like Escape, which was home to creators such as Eddie Campbell, Glen Dakin and Eddie Campbell so distinctly memorable.

Maybe - just maybe - New British Comics will take up the mantle.

Crammed with great strips and a web site to showcase more to back it up, New British Comics doesn't yet have the same voice as Escape - there's no feature material and neither do I expect there will be. But what it does have is a range of challenging, for the most part enjoyable material from a disparate range of comic talents.

I always say this, but an anthology title is never not going to throw up a strip or two that isn't too the reader's personal taste - that's what makes them such a hard sell. But the good outweighs the borderline here, from the opening shot of Brownehayes by Dave Thomson, a bizarre fable about a bizarre prophet; Dan White's illustrated tale, Jackie Goes to Hell, as a girl plunges, Dante-like, into Satan's domain to find her dead boyfriend's soul (the Howling Men are just superb...); and Daniel Locke's woodcut-styled ghost story, No Word of a Lie.

And there's more: Paul O’Connell's edgy one pae strip, The Child Molester and his wonderful creation, Charley Parker, Handyman; Nelson Evergreen's Damieinne Hobbs Reflects, Caroline Parkinson's romance tale, Inner City... the list of notable material stretches on.

In short, if you can track down a copy of New British Comics then buy it. Give this ground-breaking project your support. The fact that this title has been co-published in Poland has helped raise awareness of all these comics talents and fly the flag for British comics on the continent - always something worth doing. Editor Karol Wisniewski has pulled off a remarkable coup in being one of the first independent 'small press' publishers to accomplish something akin to the sort of strip syndication that made giant publishers like IPC, DC Thomson and Egmont so successful. Perhaps others will now take his lead...

• New British Comics is now available through SmallZone's online shop - smallzone-shop.co.uk, and Karol tells us that other UK shops should soon be distributing the book, too.

• There's now a new web site about the project at: newbritishcomics.blogspot.com


• More information and sample pages visit: www.polygobooks.com/newbritishcomics

• In addition to the book a Polish website dedicated to comics - www.komiks.nast.pl - has started publishing online British comics (click here for these)