I’ve said before that Pekar’s ‘American Splendor’ was my first inspiration to make a serious attempt at autobio comics. I’d dabbled before but it was Splendor that showed me that autobio doesn’t have to be all about yourself, the things that happen to you and around you, the small, neglected, wonderful parts of life are as worth recording as anything else.

I’d never met Harvey but yet I feel a great loss, as I’m sure anyone else affected and inspired by his work does this week. I can barely imagine what a shock it must be for those who knew him and worked with him. I had planned to send Harvey my comics when I had wrapped up The Everyday (in a mere 4 strips time) to see what he thought of them, and make a first step towards one of my biggest comic ambitions; drawing a story for Harvey Pekar. I won’t get to do that now, which is sad, but I’m sadder to realise that I’ll never get to meet him and say “Thank you”.

For some semblance of closure I watched the film of ‘American Splendor’ and I noticed the glasses of orange that appear throughout. “Do you like orange soda?” Shari Springer Berman, the film’s co-director asks him, “Yeah, orange is alright.” Pekar replies merrily. Later on, Pekar played by Paul Giamatti, walks down the corridor of an LA hotel with a champagne bucket in is arms. Cut to the next shot in his hotel room and the camera pans across from the bucket holding a big bottle of orange soda. This little detail made me smile and so I including it in the above drawing, my tribute to Harvey.

I also started a group on Flickr for other people to add their drawings of Harvey, called, Draw Harvey! I invite anyone to add a drawing.

There’s a similar gallery of images of Harvey over at the Pekar Project called Harvey Heads, organised by Pekar’s editor Jeff Newlett (whose dedication to the artform of comics is unparalleled) for Harvey’s 70th birthday in October last year. The idea was to get 70 heads but so many artists contributed it’s around 100 now and Jeff is still taking submissions.

Harvey Pekar is the only man with a comb over that I have ever idolised. He will be greatly missed.

I was asked by Alex Fitch of Electric Sheep Magazine to create a review of the film ‘Martin’ in the form of a comic. They’ve had a good number of comic reviews so far by such UK talent as Hannah Berry, Julia Scheele and my pal Chris Doherty so I knew I’d be in good company. Also the film was about a teenage vampire directed by George A. Romero from the 70′s, which I had never even heard of, so I was keen to watch it. You may have noticed by now I’m interested in the vampire genre.

I really enjoyed tackling a comic from a different perspective, arranging it so that it backed up the opinions of the review rather than re-telling the story of the film. It’s something I’d like to try again, perhaps on a semi-regular basis, so if there’s any film magazine editors reading…

As for if I enjoyed the film or not, you’ll have to read the review, either at Electric Sheep or in the gallery section of my website.

When I applied to attend this year’s Toronto Comic Arts Festival I wasn’t really expecting to be selected. The organisers had the choice from the wealth of talent in a city famed for producing great comics plus the rest of Canada’s fertile scene and some of the best American artists working today. So being a little known British webcomic artist I was highly surprised when I was invited. I feel privileged to have been given the chance to exhibit there and to be considered on par with everyone else there.

Before I tell tales of what I did and who I met, I should explain how TCAF works so you’ll see why it had such an effect on me:

Firstly, TCAF is a curated event meaning that anyone can apply to attend but only 200 exhibitors are chosen. This meant that the quality of work on show was staggeringly impressive. Not one pitiful, amateur superhero comic in sight. This approach may take more time for the organisers, for them to look over every submission, but when compared to a first come, first served system, the result is surely more fair for the audience.

Secondly, the show is held in the Toronto Reference Library in the centre of the city. A public building that is free to enter. People who are interested in reading things go there anyway. People pass by there daily and already know where it is. People know it is free to get in to and don’t have to pay to go and buy things. It also happens to be a spacious and well designed space with rooms for events, free wifi and public computers. Suddenly, unknown, out of town convention centres with high rental fees seems a perplexing choice.

Lastly, TCAF is organised by staff from The Beguiling, Canada’s, nay, North America’s premiere comic shop. Not only do these guys know good comics they are in touch with a wide network of comic fans that they managed to convince to work the show for free. There were a small army of volunteers in TCAF t-shirts there to fetch us exhibitors water and juice boxes, provide us with change and watch our tables while we spoke on panels or filled our faces. After the show was done, The Beguiling even bought left over books, meaning bonus sales and less weight to take home for exhibitors, and an influx of international self published work for the comic readers of Toronto.

I fully enjoyed both days of the show. The audience were diverse, interested, smart and, as pointed out to me by Cameron Stewart, socially adjusted. I didn’t once have to politely nod while wishing for someone to move along and stop talking at me. There was a palatable enthusiasm as audience and fellow exhibitors alike surveyed the room and discovered new comics, creators and ideas. I’ve been inspired by seeing so many different approaches to the medium in the same space, and encouraged to try new techniques and avenues.

(Photo by Chris Butcher from his Flickr)

However, my highlights of the show were the events that surrounded it.

To kick off the festival on the Friday evening to a backdrop of a raging storm at dusk, Dan Clowes presented his new book, Wilson, in a two hour talk and Q&A. Led by culture critic for the National Post Marc Medley who had clearly done his research, Clowes’ entire career was covered and featured some of his most obscure work, a Ramones music video and an OK Cola can design for The Coca-Cola Company. Clowes himself was witty, open and charmingly disgruntled. His opinion of the the iPad is that artists will the last to benefit from it and the first to be screwed over. I name Clowes as one of my three big artistic influences, so to hear him openly discuss his work and views on comics, to ask him a question (which I had to repeat a few times, due to a mixture of nerves and my accent) and chat to him briefly while he signed my book, it was for me a rare delight.

I was asked to speak on a panel called The Perils of Autobiography on the Saturday. It was the first panel I’ve been asked to speak on so I was excited and a touch nervous too. Luckily my good friend and convention buddy Marc Ellerby was on the panel too so I knew at least one person had read my work. We were joined by Erika Moen, Tory Woollcott and Doug Wright nominee Adam Bourett. Greg Means, the editor of the fantastic anthology comic Papercutter, was called in to lead the talk and he did a great job. Any nerves I had quickly fled. We started by discussing the benefits of doing autobio and how friends react to being in it, or how they plead when they’re not. We joked about the fire alarm that went off half was through. The panel agreed that we all stretch the truth to serve the story sometimes, a point I was about to disagree with when Marc mentioned Little Adam, the pixie version of myself that appears in The Everyday occasionally. And I humbly listened as the others talked about very personal things that they’ve show in their work, from sexual confusion, schizophrenia, self harm and childhood abuse. Despite those topics the talk was great fun, everyone seemed to enjoy it and the were lots of laughs. I hope any more panels I do in the future are as enjoyable.

The Doug Wright Awards annually celebrate achievements in Canadian comic past and present. This year they were held on the Saturday evening and were free to attend. Having never been to a comics award show before and eager to take in as much of TCAF as I could I went along with Kayla and was really glad I did. It was presented by actor Peter Outerbridge who had the smoothest announcer voice you could imagine and started the show with a few anecdotes and an animation of him inviting the characters for nominated books to the awards. On to the awards, The Best Emerging Talent award put me on to some great comics that I bought from the creators the day after. Winner Michael Deforge‘s Lose #1 and the work of John Martz especially. The Giants of the North (or Hall of Fame) award commemorated the work of late, avant garde artist Martin Vaughn-James with a detailed discussion of his work by a slightly nervous Kate Beaton. Some of the examples shown on the screen absolutely perplexed me.

(Image taken from The Walrus’ obituary of Vaughn-James)

Lastly, the Best Book Award was won by Seth for George Sprott: (1894-1975) . Seth is one of the founder’s of the Doug Wright Awards, a fact he pointed out may seem like nepotism in his eloquent acceptance speech. It was this speech that made attending the awards more than worth it, as he went on to discuss the current climate of the comics industry. He spoke about how when he began he just did what he liked as he didn’t ever think anyone would publish or read it. With the success of the medium over the last decade, young creators can get carried away with aspirations of publishing deals and current trends. He encouraged all young artists not to think of themselves as professionals, “You’re not professionals,” he said “you’re artists”. This closing statement rang in my mind for the rest of the weekend.

Though these events made TCAF such a joy to attend it was also a pleasure to meet a lot of the people in the Toronto comics scene. I treated myself to a two and a half week holiday to Toronto around the comic show and unlike anyone in town for the weekend I experienced the city when the weather was nice, gorgeously sunny in fact. Staying with my girlfriend Kayla, a former employee of The Beguiling, I was fortunate enough to meet a few people before the show. On my first day there we attended a Jeffrey Brown talk about his working method which featured a lively slide show comic and reading from Brown. There I met TCAF organisers Christopher Butcher and Peter Birkemoe, whose gruelling work ethics resulted in the splendour that was TCAF. It was a pleasure to meet them both and I thank them for inviting me to their show.

In those first sunny weeks of my trip I also paid a visit to The Beguiling itself for Free Comic Book Day. There, we bumped into Andrew Wheeler, a Englishman himself now living in Toronto. After grabbing a few free books, we enjoyed a pint in The Victory Cafe down the street. At lunchtime at the show on Saturday this generous man brought us all home-made sandwiches. On Sunday the show started at 11am giving all of us who stayed up for karaoke some blessed sleep. All of us except Wheeler it seems, who after bellowing pop songs all evening, somehow got up early enough to bake breakfast rolls, a kind of bacon, egg, pastry twist, as well as chocolate caramel muffins for us all. Thank you Wheeler, you are an angel.

On the Wednesday before the show I was invited by Michael Cho to come along to “Comics Lunch” a weekly meeting of Toronto’s comic artists. I met most of the TX Comics crew there like Arthur Dela Cruz, Eric Kim, Brian MaLachlan and Ramon Perez, but meeting Michael was great as I’ve been following his work and chatting to him online for years. He’s a joyful character and good conversation and I’m glad I kept bumping into him at the many TCAF related parties.

Speaking of parties there was so many. Book launches on the Thursday, a launch party on Friday after the Dan Clowes talk and a webcomics house party uptown, an official after party on the Saturday followed by the TCAF tradition of Karaoke and a closing shindig on the Sunday. After a long day at the show everyone still seemed up for drinking and socialising and it really felt like the whole weekend was one long celebration.

The Karaoke was especially hilarious. I’d never been to a private room Karaoke place before and at first the underground venue in Korea Town seemed a little dingy, and well it was, but we had a great time regardless. Jim Zubkavich was a wailing troubadour all night long, Wheeler showed his love for girly pop music and Kayla put everyone to shame but it was Chip Zdarsky who wins. Chip’s rendition of Careless Whisper had me streaming warm tears from both eyes. Spellbinding, funny and so, so wrong all at the same time. As for me I lent my vocal talents to Don’t Stop Believing, Killer Queen and, chosen by Jamie McKelvie, Du Hast. It was a great end to a tremendous day.

I met so many other new people and I liked an awful lot of them but I won’t write a big list as I’ll forget someone or spell someone’s name wrong.

I feel really energised by TCAF, a sentiment Marc shares in his write up of the show. It’s the perfect comic show. The almost overwhelming variety of comics there have me thinking about fresh ways to do what I do. The Everyday is ending shortly and Blood Blokes is soon to arrive, so it’s a great time to look at the the way I work anew and thanks to TCAF I’m brimming with confidence about the future. Let’s hope it last, at least ’til TCAF next year.

(Marc and me, with Kayla peeking from behind. Photo by Abe aka ab81.)

P.S. I’ve posted a bunch of photos from my whole trip to Flickr. Go and laugh at my dorky poses.

I’ve been talking about my slacker vampire comic for a number of years now and at last I can show it, well a bit of it at least. I’ll be debuting a 7 page preview of issue #1 of Blood Blokes this coming weekend at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival 2010. I’ve posted more information about appearing at the show over on The Everyday blog.

Blood Blokes is a six issue series about Vince, a 20 something slacker who becomes a vampire and is taken into a nest (grubby student house) of 20 something slacker vampires. But as he discovers the nocturnal world of Manchester and the ways of modern vampires he wonders if an eternity of shirking responsibilities and casual drinking (pre-bought blood) is what he really wants.

The name Blood Blokes comes from a jokey moniker given to the the comic by The Great Man John Allison which I adopted as a working title. It’s become much more memorable than the original title so I’ve gone with it. I even used John’s original scrawl as a makeshift logo for the preview. Thanks John!

If you’re at the show come by and pick up your exclusive copy of the preview. I’ll be posting more news and pages from the comic after the show.

Here’s more info from the WAW+P blog:

“Saturday May 1st is Free Comic Book Day, and to celebrate We Are Words + Pictures will be once again releasing the talents of UK comics press on you all with a new edition of Paper Science.

Sporting a brand new cover by Philippa Rice, we’ll be setting ourselves up in London’s Orbital Comics, with 500 free copies to distribute to anyone who comes in. We’ll also be running a Drop In + Draw day there, featuring Tom Humberstone and Mark Oliver as well as the Mobile Library.

This new edition of Paper Science has been created with the generous assistance of Newspaper Club. They’re printing us a 16page, full-colour edition of 500 in time for the event. We’ll also be offering a print-ready PDF of the paper on this site on Saturday under a Creative Commons license, for you to read onscreen or to take to a printer. You can knock up a run wherever you are, just let us know.

We Are Words + Pictures are joined in this madness, in order of appearance, by Philippa Rice, Francesca Cassavetti, Joe Decie, Octavia Raitt, Becky Barnicoat, Daniel Locke, Anne Holiday, Matthew Sheret, Tom Humberstone, Luke Pearson, Adam Cadwell, Geof Banyard, Mark Oliver, Liz Lunney, Douglas Noble, Kristyna Baczynski, Anna Saunders, Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Sean Azzopardi, Edward Ross and Marc Ellerby.”

What does that word mean? It means that anybody interested in comics from the best, new UK artists should start getting very excited.

The first volume of Solipsistic Pop, or Solpop, or Sloppy Pops, was debuted at last year’s Thought Bubble festival in November and received glowing critical acclaim from The Guardian, The Independent, The Comics Journal and Forbidden Planet International. The second much anticipated volume is released this month, on Wednesday 28th April. More info about the launch party and where to buy it below.

I was invited to contribute to the first book, but for reasons I forget I didn’t submit anything. After seeing how well it turned out though, I was falling over myself to be part of the second book and editor Tom Humberstone was happy to include me. My story is a 6 page tale called ‘The Tears of Tommy Cooper’ and here’s a look at the title page:

If you’re a fan of my webcomic, The Everyday, or short autobio stories in general, then I think you’ll enjoy this.

You’ll first be able to get your hands on a copy at the launch night in London on the 28th. There’ll be bands, comedy, DJs and live drawing. Also, booze. Plenty of booze. See the flyer below and the SP site for more details.
I’ve seen the full gatefold cover design and a pdf of the whole book, and I can tell you it’s going to be a beautiful thing. The main book is 64 pages, B&W with a blue Pantone spot colour, and it comes with a full colour, 12 page newspaper insert and a tote bag. I can’t wait to get a copy myself, and I’d be just as excited even if I wasn’t in it.

Simply put, I can’t foresee a better comic anthology coming out this year, UK or otherwise (unless volume 3 is released in November) and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.

(Book cover and flyer artwork by Luke Ferenc Pearson. Flyer design by SP editor Tom Humberstone.)

Here is a photo of me and my work at the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing 2010. Thanks to Dan Berry for the photo. Dan writes the superb blog The Comics Bureau and more of his photos from the show can be found in his Twitpic photo stream.

The Childhood Villains postcards went down well and chubby, little creep Moominpapa proved very popular. It was delightful to see people’s reactions to them, one guy gasped in horror at the sight of Judge Doom. Someone else told me The Wheeler brought back a flood of buried memories. It’s got me thinking of doing another series of illustrations, more villians or Childhood Heroes perhaps. I’ll have a think.

I had a great time at the show and it was an unusually calm, stress free day. I just about managed to pick up the comics I wanted from other sellers and had the pleasure of meeting gifted illustrator Warwick Johnson Cadwell (who I discovered is a distant cousin) and the lovely Phillipa Rice, the crafty genius behind hit webcomic My Cardboard Life.

The next show I’m attending is TCAF in Toronto, Canada in May, which I’m ridiculously excited about. Expect news and announcements in the run up to that.

I’ve had some promotional postcards printed of my Childhood Villains illustrations and they’ve arrived just in time for this weekend’s comic show, the UK Thing 2010, in Mile End, London. It’s a great show bursting with talented artists and self publishing trailblazers so if you’re in London this Saturday come along. I’ll have all my Everyday comics for sale, including the limited Glastonbury postcard books. There’s more details on the show’s “retro” website.

More photos!

This Sunday, Valentine’s Day, I will be taking part in Drop In + Draw, an open comics and illustration workshop organised by the ever-impressive We Are Words + Pictures. It’s held in Notting Hill Arts Club, London from 3-6pm and is £1 entry. It was intended to be all ages, but last minute changes by the venue owners have meant it’s 18+ only, sadly. Click the banner above for more info.

After that, WAW+P are putting on a night of music called Modern Romance in the same venue. Bands and DJs will be presided over by the comedian Robin Ince. It’s £5/£4 entry and runs from 7:30 ’til late. Again, click the link for more info.

I’m very much looking forward to both events.

(Above: Detail of flyer design by Tom Humberstone.)

“Beware the Wheelers?”

It took me a while to determine which character would be the final Childhood Villain in this series. I needed six and thought Moominpapa would make a good final choice but I didn’t have six so I had to draw Moominpapa as number 4 and think more about the last two. Judge Doom came to me after half remembering some other claymation horrors but number 6 was eluding me. I persisted because I wanted a set of six but mostly because I knew deep down in my blurry subconscious there was one more character left.

That horrific creation, the last terror of my childhood, was not one character but a screeching, scraping gaggle of henchmen called The Wheelers, from the bleak, nightmarish children’s film Return to Oz (1985).

Of the six villains I’ve drawn, I’m most confident that The Wheelers will cause a shiver to anyone who saw this strange film as a child. I watched it again recently for reference and I enjoyed its dark themes and the expansion of the world of Oz beyond the first film. There was, I learnt, 14 Oz books by L. Frank Baum (and 26 more by other authors) and Return to Oz is an amalgamation of 2 of them. I liked it as a child too, drawn to its spookier elements (swappable heads, talking pumpkins) but I do recall an undercurrent of dread. Re-watching it I observed the danger never lets up. The opening scenes where Dorothy is taken for electro-shock therapy become increasingly grim and gothic causing her to escape to her fantasy land, Oz. Once there, Dorothy and her new companions are always either on the run, imprisoned or gambling for their lives. This is exemplified most by Tik-Tok, a clockwork robot of the Army of Oz, whose three functions (thinking, speaking and moving) are constantly winding down.

Among all this trepidation, the most memorable monsters are, of course, The Wheelers. We see their silhouettes spying on Dorothy from afar as she enters the ruined Emerald City. She discovers graffiti that reads “Beware the Wheelers” and finds everyone turned to stone. Right then The Wheelers make their screeching entrance:

They appear later in the film but are less frightening once we know more about them. It is this scene in particular when they appear as unknown antagonists that terrified the young Cadwell. I think they’re ingeniously and freakishly designed, a mix of dirty, Vaudevillian waiters and a neon-clad, punk, street gang. The sound of their screeching wheels that precedes their arrival, foreshadowed in the Asylum in Kansas and echoing around the ruins of the Emerald City, is the kind of sound that sets anyone on edge and The Wheelers are a great and horrifying embodiment of that noise.

The Lead Wheeler (played by Pons Maar) was the only one who spoke rather than cackled. I based most of the design on him and one of the other 11 Wheelers who had bright pink lapels. Their physicality is limiting in regards to poses, but their costumes, a mix of many influences, could be pushed in lots of interesting directions. I wanted to hint that they may be corrupted members of some old Circus of Oz. I emphasised the coils around Lead Wheelers shoulders that wormed down his arms and I simplified the sleeves so the dirt and smudges gained from riding along the ground (and putting on makeup somehow) wouldn’t be lost. I tried to hint at faded paint on the wheels and redesigned the gargoyle face on the helmet.

Here are some sketches I made while watching the film:

Next week: Nothing!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this Childhood Villains series and at least one of them has freaked you out. I’ll be doing some promotional postcards of all 6 of them, news about that soon. Sweet dreams.