I was trying to see whether I could find info on Merv Grist -still have a collection of hisSmall Press comics from the 1980s plus a "The Slugs That Ate Manhattan" cassette tape which I dare not play because (if you are old enough you knowwhat cassette tapes used to do).
Anyway, I found a blog that mentioned Merv and...ME! The entry was from 2012 and...my PC had another hiccup and I lost the blog (if it was yours let me know!)
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"Hi, a friend directed me to your site and can I say how much I enjoyed it. Thanks also for a nice piece about me! I had no interest in comics as a kid but began collecting early 20th cent. comics when I was at art college in London and you could pick them up very cheaply in the original Vintage Comic Mart (a tiny upstairs room off Shaftesbury Avenue) before it all went posters, pricey and pear-shaped in Soho. As for the Small Press, I sheltered from the rain one Saturday in a Zine Zone Comic Fayre in Bath and was inspired to have a go by all the stuff on offer and the enthusiasm of Terry Hooper ..."
I did a lot back then. I think. I was young. In fact I often read these things where people state I inspired or helped them -Mark Stafford is an artist you need to check out by the way- but a lot of them have left comics and there are some that plain vanished into the ether.
And over almost 40 years I have never changed. I am still poor.
I have always been inspired by your tenacity and loyalty to one of the most difficult mediums to master in the cosmos. My late, dear friend, Bib Edwards used to say - paraphrasing - that he approached each page with a degree of quiet desperation, hoping that he could canalize all that vision in his head into a satisfying resolution on the page - I hope that I've summed it all up accurately, especially given I can no longer access the man himself for a conversation about it, I believe we both felt the same way. This movie that we have going in our heads that we have to translate. The translation varies in methodology and with the completion the drain of energies of brain/body as with any job of work. It's not with nothing that this material is produced. A lot of the time the loyalty to the medium overspreads into lack of bread and meagreness of butter. Creators give in because the resources aren't replenished and they find some other means of living because the sustenance, therefore the will, is there no longer. The once-creator becomes a sad loss to the medium.
ReplyDeleteIs this the blog you were l9ooking for (that's if I read you correctly and you were looking for this?)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.existentialennui.com/2011/03/notes-from-small-press-9-some.html
McScotty -that is the one -THANKS!
ReplyDeleteMerv Grist. one of the heroes.
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