ZINESTERS ARE DOING IT FOR THEMSELVES

Aging Hipster wannabe and poster-child for the Lost Thatcher Generation, Paul Ashley Brown, also a reknowned Bristol zinester who can be found lurching at various zine events in London.  Here he reviews the newspaper sized Comix Reader 5

So what did the doyenne of the zine, the Dean of Depression think?

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The Comic Reader Issue 5 

Edited by Richard Cowdry

Various Contributors, 

24 pages 

Full Colour  

£2

 Any doubts that a delayed fifth issue may have signalled the beginning of the end can be dispelled, as Richard Cowdry's Broadsheet for and by the bright young punks of Zinedom returns from it's brief hiatus. Anyone not up to speed with the current winds of change blowing through Comic Book world would do well to start their journey here. Forget the current Trendy Media Fuckwits who've decided again that "Yeah, Comics are like, so, Now and Cool, Y'know?" They don't count and they never will. Here, in the pages of C.R. is the Tatty Truth. Comics for the people by the people, that are made and financed and sold by the artists themselves. Here is a true reflection of the real sea change that's been going on in the last 5 years, via Zine Fairs, Alternative Press Events and the growth of Artists Self Publishing. The question that requires an answer for you comic innocents and ignoramuses out there is :But is it Any Good?

The Comic Reader is in itself a Microcosm of the Comic World that's emerged. By which I mean, some of it's okay, some of it's a bit hit n' miss and doesn't quite work, and some of it is very good indeed. This is always the case with anthologies or a collection of different contributors and contributions. What I do love about the Comix Reader is it carries an air of immediacy, as if the broadsheet you hold in your hands has just been drawn in the last hour, and printed in the last minute, and flung onto the waiting streets this instant. In this respect, it has that feel of the 60's Underground comics Editor Richard saw as an inspiration. It also, visually, has that very Rough n Ready sensibility, a not wholly polished vibe to it, which gives it, to my mind, more of a cutting edge than something like Off-Life, which occupies a similar space, but lacks CR's directness.
Alex Potts

So, this issue is, like every issue thus far, a hit n ' miss affair. Also, as with every issue previously, it does have a rather lovely and distinctive cover, this issue, by the lovely and distinctive Alex Potts, all melancholy mood and glowy neon ramshackle beauty. More on him later. If that doesn't lure you gently in with it's understated charm, then nothing will. It's aided and abetted by a really great opening spread of a neat intro page, nicely designed by Elliott Baggot, that kind of echos Alex's urban atmospherics, and visually also compliments the first "strip", if that's what it is.

Paul O'Connell & Dan Locke's  Untitled page is striking in it's look ; seperating the text from the images, and numbering each in order for the reader to connect them. The images are taped down, overlapping space, as the text reads like a strange diary entry of a banal incident in the narrator's life. The whole thing has an odd sense of unease and disorentation, abetted by the graphic design of the page, it's ambiguity emphasised by the striking large image of a man in a leather mask, the reasons why never made apparent within the narrative. It's a very strong opening page, doing what the Comic Reader does best, an edgy yet playful experimentation with the form and structure of a comic narrative.

 Bernadette Bentley

Bernadette Bentley's England's Glory is more conventional in it's approach, of it's observed narrative of some strange old man, but has a delicate melancholy in it's words that borders on the poetic. If i'm being overtly harsh, the drawing could be slightly more defined with sharper edges or broader lines in places, but it does have a grey, scribbled delicacy that adds to it's mood quite nicely, that conveys a certain worn down sadness and isolation. Again it has a strength of quality in the play off of word and image, and it's good  to find work that says something about the here and now of a wretched England and it's lost inhabitants.

Ellen Lindner's Opera is again, another neat contrast, from Bernadette's Black & White reality we shift to heightened limes pinks and reds as Ellen gives us a glimpse of her time working in New York for an Opera company. It's somewhat light, conversational and throwaway, but fun, and again, the design of the page is lovely and playful, as you're led from image to image by connected arrowed panels of text.

Elliot Baggott's Boss Talk and Saban Kazim's the Rubbish Story are both similar in form and function, essentially using the strip form to build to a punchline payoff in the final panel. Both are nicely executed, creating simple rhythms in their panel progression. Elliot's skill is in the depiction of our Puffed-up Manager's body language to tell us everything we need to know about him and his self-delusion, as well as a nice swipe at sexist office politics. Sabim's strip has a lovely direct simplicity in it's cartooning and a clever use of simple colour, alternating red and yellow spot colour backgrounds that give the whole page a simple rhythm and balance. I liked both artists understanding that sometimes the simplest execution provides the best results.

James Parsons Unconscious Desire is the strip that has most in keeping with a 60's/70's Underground sensibility, in that it tells us of the authors strange, sexual desire for the actress Sarah Douglas, the villanness in Superman 2. It's drawing is also similar in feel, having that feel of not-quite-constistent-enough cartooning, in some panels nicely done, in others, not as good. But it's again direct and honest, and quite funny.

Tobias Tak is a Comix Reader regular, and this issue serves up, quite literally,an alien dinner scene,in the aptly named The Lunch. Content wise, it's a frothy light  souffle of a strip, as some aliens share dinner and chat. Tak's quality is in the delicate quirky beauty of the drawing and colouring, his lovely light line and delicate shading  creating a real sense of the character's world. Within the current comics enviroment I think Tobias is a bit of a one-off artistically, there's no one else whose work looks like this, and he's not your typical conventional comiker, thank goodness, and he's around again later on this issue.

Sally-Anne Hickman provides us with four strips of her sallyshinystars character, which, while reasonably drawn and written, didn't really appeal. They work well enough, and have some sweet drawing in places, but lacked punch perhaps.

Peter Lally is another CR regular, this time reversing his artwork out so that it becomes an odd, black scraperboard looking piece of insanity, as his protagonist takes a trip in the company of a somewhat lunatic Taxi driver friend of his Dad's. Lally's quality is in his lunatic stories and dialogue, that occasionally border on the surreal.This is funny and mad, but I think if he can push the stories and their scenarios into an odder situation or enviroment, he could well become quite brilliantly mental. As to the artwork, all the elements are there, but again, it's just needing to push it that bit more and be more definite about his line and composition in places.

Someone who doesn't need to push it is Hurk, who again provides a perfectly drawn adventure of the Thor Gang Four. As in his previous strips for CR, Hurk plays neatly with a strong sense of Design in his page, employing a use of graphic shapes that render the page almost like a boardgame. Here, a ladder links two elliptical strip bands together as the groovy Thor Gang Four foil a gang of crooks with the deft use of a Cuban Heel. It's fun and silly and brilliantly drawn, and has a nice nod and wink to conventional 60's British comic book plots. Those meddling Kids indeed.

Editor Richard Cowdry provides four Downtown strips featuring his characters Krudzy and Klutzy, two clowns whose relationship borders on being that of a dysfunctional mariage. Klutzy is an optimistic naif, while Klludzy seems fuelled by bitterness and resentment, a contrast apt for comic slapstick. Again, like Hurk Cowdry is an excellent cartoonist who keeps it simple and direct, understands the rhythm of the newspaper strip format, yet has an interesting bleak, melancholic edge underlying the gags.

Kat Kon provides a series of panels showing various customers at a cafe/coffee shop and their various demands, depicted so that you the reader are the one behind the counter. It's a kind of collection of irritants and grotesques, and within her drawings I always find an odd darker undercurrent, that needs a stronger narrative outlet for the eerie potential in those character portraits.

Sina Evil aka Sparrow provides us with 4 pages from his diary comics ( see my previous review of his Art Fag comic on CBO ). His direct, day-in-the-life confessionals and neat drawing stop this from being some unbearable self-indulgence, and you genuinely care about him and his life, thanks to the emotional honesty infusing these strips. More power to his pencil.

Craig Burston's Low Res Des is another nifty page of quirky looking graphics that impresses with it's pixel-like minimalism even if once again, the content is a bit light, despite it's neat nod to the Fly. Following this is Ralph Kidson and Martin Meeks' Fudgasaurus, which sadly for me, seems the weakest strip here, if only because it seems too conventional. Not that it's badly done at all really, if anything it's one of the most professional looking of the pages in CR5, and maybe that's my problem. It wouldn't look out of place in a 1975 Whizzer & Chips annual. Not that that's a crime at all, but in a way it seems out of place here. Kidson reappears with a page later and this seems to make more sense, or rather nonsense, and is more akin to the contents of his wonderful mini-zines, direct simple cartooning and daft surreal comedy with a dash of bitterness thrown in. Much better.

Julia Homersham provides in one whole page the History of the English Puddings, which is visually great fun, nicely drawn and will probably take you a week to read, and less time to make pudding I reckon. But hey, at least I learnt something, who says comics can't be educational. Meanwhile, education is somewhat lacking as Sean Duffield takes a hardly relevant but still funny pisstake at unbearable 70's "comedy" double-act The Krankies. Worryingly, this made me laugh a lot, probably because I hated the Krankies. It's nicely drawn, and wouldn't look out of place in VIZ, except it's probably funnier than most of their strips now,

 

Funny as in peculiar is Kevin Ward, Tobias Tak and Tania Meditzky's Snubby in Strange Attraction. This is the product of three utterly deranged minds who seem to have made-it-up-as-they-go-along, and their free form insanity allows for a bizarre yet funny page that's beautifully rendered in dayglo colours for simple minds, and bonkers characters in bonkers scenarios. None of it makes any sense, which is probably why I liked it. Though I think their collective collaboration hides a lack of personal responsibility for their work, the snivelling cowards !!!

Steven Walsh and Mike Medaglia provide a vista of Contempory London life and thoughts, viewed from the dizzy heights of the Millenium wheel. Again it's a nicely rendered page visually, though seems again to lack a focal point to it's narrative. Though maybe it doesn't need one, and I'm demanding too much from my pages.Maartje Schallx eschews any words for a visual dialogue as a man and a woman's heads are depicted, each on a pillow, the man's eyes closed throughout, while the woman's open and close, remain open, her head shifts to look up, awake. There's a lovely, beautiful minimalism to this page, and it reads like some abstract visual poem that suggests rather than describes, its meaning ambiguous and maybe not. It's wordless visual lyricism is a lovely full stop to the interior contents, and if that's not enough, then Cover Star Alex Potts closes things nicely with his back cover page Our Phillip Breaks from his Usual Routine, another wonderfully drawn 35 panel page of perfectly realised comic strip, full of charm, dry humour and a mood of sad, whimsical beauty.

To conclude, if you've managed to stay awake, the Comic Reader deserves your support, as it contains artists who are not just doing it for themselves, but also doing it for the right reasons, the only reason-that they love making comics and they love the medium. While in places it may lack a certain slickness of style and execution, it more than makes up for it with bags of enthusiasm, a joy in creating, and a courage and willingness to experiment with the form that's to be applauded. I hope it's creators continue to make waves and push boundaries, and find and create an audience for themselves that their work certainly deserves.

I for one, look forward to Issue 6, and hope you go and buy this one to ensure there is one. You know it makes sense !!!!!

Paul Ashley Brown