I decided, on a whim, to print up the recent work I’ve been doing for the 69 Love Songs Illustrated project in time for the Alternative Press Festival this weekend.

The prints, I’m glad to say, turned out very nice indeed. The extremely limited full colour A3 prints will be available from me during the Collaborama (Saturday) and Alternative Press Fair (Sunday) events for the modest price of £2. There will only be 30 of each print so get there quick! I won’t be selling these on the website.

Another comic for the 69 Love Songs Illustrated project (see this post for my adaptation of “Absolutely Cuckoo”). This time I’ve interpreted “A Chicken With Its Head Cut Off”.

It is absurd. But was so much fun to draw. I wanted it to look like an old Sunday funnies style comic from the back pages of a newspaper. It just seemed appropriate after I’d decided on the concept. It was drawn at A2 and then coloured on the computer. Needless to say, my faithful but slightly old computer struggled with the size of the piece so it took longer than I anticipated. When I was happy with the colours I added a filter to give it CMYK dots for that old newspaper printing look.

Listen to the song here while you read!

Due to the comic being drawn so large (I think I might try and print it one day), some detail may be lost below so feel free to check out a larger version here.

“Jimmy Carr had to take Jim Davidson to task for stealing some of his material. Although, to be honest, if Jim Davidson can steal your material maybe it’s time to think about writing something else. To be fair to Jimmy Carr, it was a kind of sexist bit that he’d written with a sense of irony that Jim Davidson was able to appropriate at face value. One of the kindest things you could say about Jim Davidson as a fellow comic is: he’s not a performer who is troubled by the possibility of duality of meaning” – Stewart Lee

We’re getting close to Edinburgh Fringe time and Paul Fleckney, editor of the fantastic comedy site London Is Funny, has set up Edinburgh Is Funny as a one stop port of call for all festival attendees in need of comedic guidance. Here’s a small image I was commissioned to produce for the mini-site:

I sadly won’t be able to attend the Fringe this year but based on the preview shows I’ve been seeing, there will be some absolutely outstanding sets.

Of course, most broadsheets and various other media will be trying to be your source of information about the festival throughout the summer, but I really would advise you to bookmark Edinburgh Is Funny over all of them. Believe me when I say that it isn’t just because Paul is kind enough to commission me. Paul really knows his comedy and has been running London Is Funny for well over a year now. Besides being a great place for some genuinely well written comedy journalism, there’s a wealth of great interviews and Josie Long is writing a fantastic column about charity shopping (which I talked about in an earlier blog entry) so you certainly won’t be left wanting for interesting material and/or recommendations.

But also – you won’t find anything like this pernicious and unhelpfully blinkered article by Brian Logan (published in The Guardian yesterday) which attempts to address the extremely complicated issue of the apparent rise of politically incorrect and offence-for-the-sake-of-offence comedy. There is certainly an interesting discussion to be had regarding all this (I say “all this” because there are several related issues to be dealt with here) but it would not be a new one. Far from it in fact. Stewart Lee has often pondered the merits of political incorrectness, taboo breaking and the fine line comedians tread in and outside of his work (here, here and here), as has Daniel Kitson and, indeed, Richard Herring whose latest show is horrifically misrepresented in Logan’s article. The problem with such pieces is that they tend to engender the “I haven’t seen/read/heard it but…” argument in people who read it. Essentially, anyone who starts a sentence with that opening conversational salvo is really just saying “don’t listen to a word that comes out of my mouth from this point on as I am clearly uninformed and won’t empirically check things out for myself. Actually, it might be best to avoid speaking to me altogether as I clearly can’t be trusted to form reasonable and interesting opinions of my own. All the best now. Take care”.

I suppose what irritates me most about Logan’s column is that successful, intelligent, interesting comedy relies on a lot of trust. The trust of the audience in the performer to ride odd and sometimes uncomfortable trains of thought, and the trust of the performer in the audience to not take everything they say at face value and understand what they are really trying to say. Granted, there are undoubtedly comedians who may not think about the responsibility of what they say on stage but I’d suggest that the large majority do. Indeed, I imagine most probably agonise and overanalyse a lot of their more difficult material. To suggest otherwise would be to do them and the medium of comedy a huge disservice.

You might be asking: “What does this have to do with comics?” Well, not much really. Like I’ve said before, I enjoy live comedy and I get easily annoyed by lazy, reactionary journalism which takes things out of context to appease an erroneous conceit. Normal service will resume shortly!

Read Herring’s response to the article here. Andrew Collins also makes some good points about the article here. Paul manages to write a decidedly more entertaining and balanced piece about Herring’s new Edinburgh show here.

So the San Diego Comic-Con, the largest comic convention in the USA, is happening. The con gets a huge amount of coverage by the comics press due to the amount of big announcements that are made during the five day event. Among the news: Supergirl is wearing bike shorts under her skirt. The comic industry is failing to boycott the homophobic Hyatt hotel. Marvel have acquired the rights to the most famous unread comic – Miracleman. The Eisner winners were announced (congrats to Chris Ware and Nate Powell for their awards). Further developments with Longbox. Etc.

Next week sees another five day comic-related event happening right here in London: The Alternative Press Festival 2009.

The Alternative Press Festival 2009 begins on Wednesday 29th July and runs to Sunday 2nd August. You can read about all the events that have been lined up at their website here.

I’ll be exhibiting my comics at the Alt. Press Fair on the Sunday but also taking part in Collaborama on the Saturday.

What is Collaborama? Here’s what the organisers say:

We hope you’ll join us at the Collaborama (as we’ve affectionately come to know it!) an all day event which will comprise many elements of the small press coming together. Tables will be set out in the main space downstairs at the miller for zinesters, comix and small press creators to exhibit their work. There will also be space where any combination of visitors and exhibitors can get together to create pages which will be used to create a zine of the day. The garden will have a barbeque and the upstairs space will be used for workshops, film screenings and talks. In the evening Resonance FM’s Radio Orchestra will be performing a piece written by Ed Baxter which will be interpreted and illustrated live by two teams of small press artists on overhead projectors!

For information on venues and times, check out the Alternative Press Festival site. Hope to see some of you there!

I’ve been ill the past week so apologies for the lack of updates lately. I have, however, been able to finish off this two page How To Date A Girl In 10 Days epilogue. This will be my last auto-biographical comic for the foreseeable future. Enjoy!

“Where do you get your comics printed?” is a question I often get emailed or asked at comic shows…

I’ve been thinking a lot about printing recently (I know, all aboard the fun train of Tom’s mind! Calling at all stations to Boring Pontificating) as I’m trying to figure out how to handle an anthology I want to put together.

This seemed a good place to collect some of my thoughts and maybe help those of you looking for a bit of advice on printing your small press comics.

Keep it simple

You know that famous illustration that appeared in a punk fanzine (Sideburns I believe) with the immortal lines “This is a chord, this is another, this is a third, now form a band”? That’s essentially how I feel about starting a comic. If you have a story you want to tell, an idea you’re dying to express, a feeling you need to communicate – all you really require is a pen, piece of paper (or fabric, or tissue paper, or whatever you can draw on) and access to a photocopier. Anybody who tells you different is lying and doesn’t know the first thing about why comics are so amazing and thus, shouldn’t be trusted.

Am I comparing the DIY small press comic scene to the boundless enthusiasm, excitement and creativity of punk in the late seventies? Yes. Yes I am. And I’ll fight you if you disagree. My limping, bruised and crippled corpse will still be right.

So. Draw your comic, get it out there. Make mistakes. Find out what works.

You can do amazing things with one sheet of photocopied paper. Folded several times, you’ve got an eight page comic. At the very least, by finding out what photocopiers end up doing to your artwork, you’ll have an understanding of what it was like for those early comics pioneers who had to deal with poor printing quality. Heavily inked linework and halftone isn’t just an aesthetic preference at this stage – it’s a neccessity.

Boutique comics

Eventually, you may want to produce a book with higher production values.

One of the many advantages of doing this yourself is that you’re not having to try and publish twenty two pages on a regular monthly schedule. Similarly your print run, at most, will likely be in the low hundreds. This offers some interesting options for how you choose to print your comic.

Matthew Sheret has started a fascinating conversation over at Ellis’ Whitechapel board regarding the comic book as an object of graphic art (choice line: “But can it still be a fetish object if you can only get it at obscure shows in small college towns?”). This is the right way to go I think. The decline of print media – or the death of print or whatever you want to call it – will only be limited to that which can be reproduced digitally. So make your comic impossible to read online. People always want something tactile. Artefacts. A beautifully designed comic will always grab a reader’s attention.

Even DC are returning to the roots of the newspaper funnies with their Wednesday Comics to breathe a bit of life into the monthly mainstream titles.

Here’re some ideas about how to achieve your own boutique small press comic:

1) A key factor is format. Mike Allred’s Red Rocket Seven was made to resemble a 7″ Vinyl record, Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library is a different size and shape with each issue, the Fantagraphics Ignatz series are published larger than the traditional American comic book size… Think about what your story is, how best the format can service it, and don’t let your comic be boxed in by any pre-existing sizes.

2) While you may print the material out on your computer at home, on a photocopier, or at a printers – you can still play with the paperstock. You could experiment with 3D, have pull out sections, use paper that only display illustrations when held up to the light… Just make sure these things are helping you tell your story or get your point across and don’t stray too far into novelty territory.

3) You can have the best interior work anyone’s ever seen but it’s meaningless without an interesting cover. Ware’s McSweeney’s #13 comes with an illustrated poster that details the history of comics and folds up into a gorgeous dustjacket with pockets for tiny mini-comics that fit inside (in fact, all the McSweeney’s are uniquely published and packaged objects. Seek them out). Adrian Tomine’s hardcover edition of Summer Blonde has a peephole cut out of the dustjacket which reveals a part of the illustration underneath.

You could print your main interior artwork on your home computer and screenprint your own covers on thick, matte paperstock to give it that hand-made feel. Or even draw a different cover by hand (we are talking small print runs here).

I tend to hand number each comic and offer the first 50 issues of a printrun with a screenprinted envelope. It’s worth checking out Philip Spence’s work to see some of the lovely boutique comics he creates.

Finding a printer

There’s no real easy answer to this one. Set aside a couple of days. Make sure you know what you want – how many pages your comic is, how many copies you want, and whether you want a full bleed etc. etc. – and then start calling around printers for quotes. Browse the internet for numbers of printers nearby. It’ll take some time but you’ll find one that is right for you.

You might be lucky enough to know someone who can recommend a good printer, but if not you want to make sure you find one you can trust. One that is friendly and helpful and happy to offer advice on any of the issues you may not be an expert in.

A couple of the main things you’ll want to find out is whether they deliver the comics to you (if not, how close are they? Can you pick them up with some help from friends? If they do deliver – how much does it cost?), and what the unit cost will work out at. You’ll most likely want to sell your comics at double the unit cost so that if you sell out, you have enough to pay for another print run, but if you don’t you’ll hopefully have made your money back. If the unit cost makes this price seem too steep then start looking elsewhere or inform the printer what you were hoping for. By and large, printers will do their best to help you cut costs and secure themselves the job.

Preparing for print

Most printers will prepare your comic for print if you ask but they usually charge. If you want to save the money and have complete control over the way your book will turn out, it’s generally best to layout the work in InDesign or QuarkXPress. This is fairly easy, and if you’ve drawn your pages with bleed and live art in mind, you shouldn’t have any problems. You don’t need a design degree to know all this – the basics are online and you’ll most likely pick a lot of this up through trial and error. Don’t let the rules and jargon put you off. At worst, ask a friend with the software to do it for you in exchange for a drink or two.

When using colour, the main thing you need to be aware of is staying in CMYK mode as that’s what printers work with. Try to stick to pantone colours if possible (and various strengths of those colours) so you can tell the printers exactly which colours to print in. Another useful tip is to reduce the saturation slightly when you’re finished – the colours always end up being a little stronger than you expect.

Print-on-demand

I’ve never used this sort of service, but from my understanding, you can get your comics printed out as and when someone orders a copy. This is not really something that really fits into the way I like to distribute my comics but I can see a lot of advantages to the idea.

I’m not entirely sure what the results are like with the various POD companies. Some specialise in comics, but I have no idea whether you can work in formats outside the traditional ones. Many people I know swear by these sites though. Clearly, I just haven’t done my research.

Lulu are the biggest POD company out there right now. With Ka-Blam and ComiXpress specialising in the four-colour-funny medium. There’re also some UK based companies out there too such as Fallen Angel Media. I have no idea who produce better quality work.

Get in touch if you use print-on-demand. I’d be interested to hear what it’s like. Can you use POD but still create a unique, boutique small press comic?

Distribution on the web

Alternatively, you can try and find a way of selling your comic online somehow. Scott McCloud has a lot of ideas about this. But really, you should go and check out this Clay Shirky piece about the death of print media and the internet revolution – it’s a must read.

The screenwriter John August has offered his short story The Variant on his website as a Kindle formatted file and PDF. He’s written some interesting thoughts on how this works as a way of self-publishing. As I don’t own a Kindle or any kind of ebook reader, I have little idea on how one of these devices might deal with making comic artwork readable on the go but I’m told it wouldn’t really work. I’d like to try and make My Fellow Americans work for a Kindle though so will look into that and let you all know how I get on.

Longbox – the “itunes of comics” – seems like a good way to go (read Kieron Gillen’s ideas on Longbox for an explanation and sensible reaction to the application) in terms of getting work seen by as many people as possible and I don’t think it would damage your chances of people buying a physical version of your comic at a later point (see all the previous points for reasons why). But only time will tell if Longbox has staying power and if it will be easy to sell your work through it.

And that’s that. Phew… I can go on sometimes… Hopefully someone, somewhere will find this helpful.

Get in touch by email or leave a comment if you think I’ve failed to mention something particularly crucial or there’s something that I need to clarify.

Any other small press related questions you want answered in the future? Let me know at ventedspleen@hotmail.com.

The irritatingly talented comic artist Julia Scheele recently decided to start a project in which contributors create comics, illustrations, or poetry for each of the sixty nine love songs on the Magnetic Field’s indie classic 69 Love Songs.

Julia set up the website How Fucking Romantic where you can see all the contributions to date.

Clearly, this is a great idea and I jumped at the chance to illustrate a couple of my favourite songs. The first of which – is ‘Absolutely Cuckoo’.

Listen to it here if you’ve not had the pleasure.

I’ve gone for a slightly different style than I used for How To Date A Girl In 10 Days. Simpler and with an economy of line that I’ve been itching to settle into. I couldn’t really do this with How To Date for fear of making the inconsistency seem jarring but I’ve really enjoyed drawing this comic and feel very comfortable with my inking process these days.

Anyway, without further ado – the comic:

It may be a little small and hard to read – If so, click here to read a larger version.

I’d originally planned to do the comic in stark black and white. While I was happy with the original linework I ended up having too much fun adding colour and settled for the two tone effect above. I’ve included the black and white version below for the curious:

This, similarly, can be read at a larger size here.

I’ll throw up my next contribution for the project soon. In the meantime, bookmark How Fucking Romantic if you’re keen for more Magnetic Fields related comics!