Pete Ashton’s Blog

Plinth had their third gig last night but the lights were so low most of my photos were shit. Plinth weren’t shit though. They were storming, more than making up for the second gig nerves last month. There’s now talk of publicity and the need to build up an audience that isn’t composed of friends and co-workers so I guess another pro bono website is in the works. Next gig is November 4th. Spread the word.

This one came out fairly okay, but I do need to figure out a way of taking decent low-light shots. Might be time to invest in a pocket tripod.

Support was from Issue 22 who were good and fun and the astonishing, though not necessarily in a good way, Raiders of Rock n’ Roll who did a kind of 80’s hair metal thing without a trace of irony. I was grinning like a tit as the incredibly nerdy lead singer swung his mike stand during a climax and I’m still not sure if I was laughing at them or not. It was kinda refreshing in some strange way. Goodwin was horrified at the clip-art sexy lady on the flyer (see their site) but I like it. They’re playing again at the Firkin on October 28th. You never know…

During the gig I was thinking how I only seem to go to gigs of bands I already know and how this isn’t the best way to discover new bands, and I had an incredibly stupid idea. Once my tax refund finally comes through I’m going to spend two weeks going to every single gig at the Jug of Ale in Moseley (mainly because it’s my nearest gig venue) and when there isn’t a gig on there go to one somewhere else where I don’t know the bands. 14 gigs in 14 days. And every night I shall write up my experience is as much detail as possible. I’m tentatively calling this project “Going Deaf for a Fortnight”. I bellowed the idea in Tom’s ear and he grinned with approval, and now I’ve written it here so it will happen. God help me.

Ooh yes, confirmation appeared in flyer form of Jeffrey Lewis’s next Birmingham gig, at said Jug on Friday November 11th with fellow US anti-folk noiseters Schwervon (mp3s) in support. I will be there come hell or high water.

Finally a reminder that I’ll be at Una Corda’s gig on October 7th at the Jug for flat-mate related post-rock action.

Pictures and Words - New Comic Art and Narrative Illustration by Roanne Bell and Mark Sinclair is a big book with many pictures, the sort of thing you’d find in the art department of a nice bookshop and is published by arts publisher Laurence King (Yale in the US). While some of the artists featured will be familiar to comics aficionados they tend to come from the art comix end of the spectrum. You’ll have noticed the repeated use of the word “art”. We’re in Art-land here.

Art-land is a treacherous place for the comics fan. If you’re not careful you can get dazzled by the respectability of it all, of seeing the medium you love discussed in such rarefied and intellectual terms. And then when you see it for what it is comes feelings of treachery and disappointment and a sense that these art folks are missing the point, picking what fits their narrow paradigms and not fully comprehending the medium before moving onto the next trendy thing.

While a lot of this is just a clash of cultures and perspectives there’s something fundamental behind it. Art, as in art-in-galleries capital-A Art, doesn’t tend to be narrative, or at least not sequentially narrative and, unless I’m mistaken, there aren’t that many critical tools for dealing with such crazy concepts as “story”. That’s for the literature guys and opens up a whole ‘nother area I won’t go into right now. Suffice to say your Art critic is can cope with comics as illustration but tends to lose it as you move towards comics as comics.

Which is why Pictures and Words is an interesting book because it attempts to tackle the thorny issue of narrative head on yet still come at things from at Art perspective. To this end the focus is on emerging and cutting edge cartoonists with a smattering of non-comics artists whose work could be considered to be if not comics then narrative. The authors also give a good third of the book over to single-panel illustration, in other words gallery-friendly comics, which rather that be a cop out is actually quite revolutionary for this kind of criticism as they look at narrative flow within the illustration or across physically disconnected pieces.

Since this is a review I’d better say a little about the book itself. It’s laid out rather like an anthology with each artist given between one and four pages with their art with filling the page or reduced to show two pages side by side. Short commentaries (rather like gallery cards) unobtrusively accompany the art putting it into the context of the chapter often using quotes from the creators.

There are three chapters, “Silent” covering wordless comics, “Single Panel” as mentioned above and “Text and Image” featuring what could be called normal comics. Thirty three artists are featured from around the world with a slight emphasis on the UK: Anna Bhushan, Barry Blitt, Fredrik von Blixen, My Clement, Jordan Crane, Paul Davis, Mantin tom Dieck, John Dunning, Marcel Dzama, Jeff Fisher, Scott Garrett, Tom Gauld, Jochen Gerner, Sammy Harkham, Igort, Benoit Jacques, James Jarvis, Jason, Andrez Klimowski, Simone Lia, Lorenzo Mattotti, Roderick Mills, Ethan Persoff, David Rees, Barnaby Richards, Jenni Rope, Joe Sacco, Marjane Satrapi, David Shrigley, Nikhil Singh, Katja Tukianen, Andrew Wightman and Jim Woodring. Of those I recognise twelve as being comics creators in the traditional sense. The rest come from another school, usually fine art or illustration.

This concentration on the bleeding edge of experimental comics and the emphasis on creators who have followed a different path than the norm is interesting and quite valid. It reinforces one of the themes of the book - that the mechanical essence of comics, how they work in themselves, has in recent years influenced non-comics art as never before. It’s always been the view of this aficionado that comics are everywhere, that almost everything can be viewed as a comic in some form of other. The landscape that surrounds us, man made or natural, is a tapestry of comic art and can be read sequentially as a narrative, from a countryside panorama to a collage of photographs on a teenager’s wall. Everything is interconnected, discrete objects that when considered in connection to their neighbours taken on a deeper, richer meaning, a narrative told by the mind of the viewer as the gaps are filled by the imagination and we experience the world as poetry.

And yes, I accept I’m an extremist in this respect, but I think it’s a valid point of view, that an understanding of how comics work can give a fresh and useful perspective on other forms of art. With Pictures and Words, Bell and Sinclair appear to be doing just this. It would be easy to show how comics work using “normal” comics (as Scott McCloud did over a decade ago in Understanding Comics) but to apply this understanding not just to emerging cartoonists but to the work of art school graduates is actually quite daring. (Even if the cartoonists piss all over the “artists”, but that’s by the by…)

I was also struck by how little art-wank there was in the book. At no point are cultural influences brought to bear or tedious references to popular culture. While in no way dry this is quite a technical book, looking at how the art works more than what it means, or rather, showing that how it works is intrinsic to what it means, or something. This is a toolbox for artists looking to explore something new.

So, as an indicator of where comics are at in the non-comics consciousness this is quite a landmark and while the topics covered might not be new to someone who knows their comics, the application of them should be of interest.

And finally it gloriously betrays its roots by having a kick ass cover featuring a giant robot. What more do you want?

Published in the UK by Lawrence King, ISBN 1856694143, £19.95
Published in the US by Yale, ISBN 0300111460, $26.95

The reason Shaun felt justified in driving 150 miles to the Misty’s gig last night was that he had a meeting in Birmingham on Tuesday so could fit it in, just about. And so I discovered that he’s actually good friends with Kathy, another of the Bonfire Radio podcasters. Turns out they work together. And she’s going to this meeting in Birmingham too. So we met up in the Tap and Spile, it being the only decent pub near their hotel.

I guess you’d call it a Podmeet.

It’s a bit like a Blogmeet in that you sit in a pub and talk about all manner of shit, occasionally veering into podcasting but no really, truth be told. No-one passing would be any the wiser but sitting at that table were the creators of Stroka Sounds, Cold Citrus and Pete Radio all being all cutting edge and that. It was cool, if slightly odd in that way when you meet people who’ve been reading your blog for a while.

I dunno if there’s ever been a Podmeet before. Probably, but if not then this was the first, if three people counts. Apparently their company will be sending them to Birmingham again for more meetings so maybe we should try and drag Dubber and Spoons and other podcasters along. It’d be, like, well wicked and that.

Or maybe I’ll just meet them in the pub and we’ll talk shit. Because I’m glad to say, having never met them before despite syndicating their shows, Shaun and Kathy are good people.

In 1999 the cartoonist of some note Ed Hillyer did a comic called End of the Century Club. The second volume, Countdown opened with a big party celebrating the demise of Margaret Thatcher - ding, dong, the witch is dead, and all that. Reading it I reminded me of that legendary day on November 22nd 1990 when she resigned as Prime Minister. I was at 6th form college at the time and the school was torn between the majority dancing with joy and a the minority stomping around with indignant horror, that their glorious leader could be betrayed in such a fashion. But regardless of how you felt about the woman (and it’s safe to say I was happy to see her go) you couldn’t help be affected by her. For anyone who came of age prior to or during her reign (and it was a reign) Thatcher and all she stood for is a powerful focal point.

And at some point, probably fairly soon, she’s going to die.

I have to say I’m not chomping at the bit to dance in the streets but I’m very curious to see what does happen when she passes on. There really hasn’t been a public figure that evokes such strong feelings of loathing since Thatcher. Yes, people say they hate Blair but their hatred always seems a little bit shallow, like they really want to hate him but there isn’t much there to hate, and it just reflects badly on the wannabe hater. Pity him, dislike him, worry about him, yes, but such a strong emotion as hate? He doesn’t really deserve it. Thatcher, however, she was someone to hate. She reveled in it. And I wonder if those emotions will still be strong enough when this old lady shrugs off her mortal coil. I wonder if level-headed people who pondered Edward Heath or shrugged at Lady Di will find their fists pumping in the air when it happens. I wonder if pints will be raised and Billy Bragg songs played in jukeboxes throughout the land. Or has enough time passed that memories been softened and since the young people don’t really know what she’s about it doesn’t really matter in this day and age.

Part of me (I’ll admit, a fairly significant part of me) really wants there to be some kind of spontaneous celebration, not so much to piss on her grave as to reaffirm to our glorious leaders that whatever the long term benefits of her rule (and I accept, grudgingly, that there may have been some, even if the costs were somewhat high) a part, possibly a significant part of the British public weren’t too happy about it and still bear a grudge.

But it’s still kinda weird. There’s “Thatcher” the icon, there to be loved and despised as you see fit, and there’s Margaret the old, frail woman. Is it socially acceptable to still hate her after all these years?

I guess we’ll find out sooner or later…