The Brown Wedge

BRISTOL: CITY OF FEAR

BRISTOL: CITY OF FEAR

The good news - apparently People In High Places are taking an interest in my work and my minicomics have taken the festival by storm.

The bad news - fifteen minutes ago I had a ringside seat for a riot. It’s not the violence, it’s the speed - glass breaks, then another, then the shouts, then raising the head to see a chair sailing across the room into the face of J Wellington Wimpy in a Bristol City shirt not two metres away from your face. Bristol City lost today, and lost big. That’s the news breaking.

A new experience for a middle-class introvert living in seclusion in sleepy old Fishergate. If not for Jamie Boardman, who instinctively and instantly went into command mode and got us out the back, things would have been a lot worse. Jamie is 2000AD’s graphic novel supremo and his second latest bit of good work has been the alliance between 2000AD and DC Comics to reproduce the comic’s greatest hits in TPB form, backed up not by dodgy old Titan but by a corporate machine of extreme power. These will include the complete painted DREDD/BATMAN, SAM SLADE: VERDUS and various 2000AD/DC team-ups and dream-ups that I’m too adrenalined up to go into.

I just bought Jamie a pint of Carling. Feel free to follow my lead and buy a 2000AD trade paperback.

BRISTOL UPDATE

BRISTOL UPDATE

The fog of depression from earlier has lifted slightly although the muscles in my legs still aren’t working. The small press in the UK is vibrant and alive, with a hundred different kinds of animal battling in friendly competition to bring you the reader the greatest comics achievable by the hand of man. The ‘mainstream’ dealers huddle at the sides like mystery fish, unable to bring in the thrills, while the middle of the floor is reserved for the visionaries. Talks are sent to the Ramada, five minutes walk away, like lepers. SOLAR WIND in particular - ‘Yesterday’s comic today at tomorrow’s prices’ - is a delight to the mind. You can take a look at it here. Also, I suggest you take time to check out Arthur Wyatt’s doings - another small press guru who’s developing a network of all the people who should be in comics but aren’t. Go on! Order your copies!

BRISTOL: DAY ONE

BRISTOL: DAY ONE

I’m sitting in a Holiday Inn, staring at the screen of this god-damned bastard moneysucking internet VAMPIRE machine sat in the corner of the room trying desperately to remember the events of last night and failing.
I can barely remember who won what at the awards - Dom Reardon got something and THE LOSERS got something else, but I’m damned if I know what. Best Newcomer and Best New Series I think… Does it even matter? More kudos to them as they are Freaky Trigger massive whether they know it or not. The thing to watch at the moment is Dave Gibbons’ new hardback - (why these hardbacks? Who has the money for hardbacks? Is the average comic fan now a two-up-two-down-owning systems analyst from Surbiton with a Subaru who can afford such madness? Who are they aiming at?) - called THE ORIGINALS, a beautiful sci-fi take on Mod and all it meant. You heard it here last.
The other thing to watch is the death of the UK Comics Industry. Is this the hangover talking or was there a palpable sense of doom hanging like a terrifying pall over the whole thing last night? The creators and would-be creators seemingly outnumber the fans at the moment, and the general impression was some kind of boiling, bubbling cannibalistic soup, hundreds of beasts and creatures eating each other and themselves, not in some blood-stained nightmare of jealousy but in a bizarre love ritual from the depths of Coleridge’s worst imagining. It’s a truly beautiful thing but how long can we maintain?
And what mad superbeasts will be born - like the nine-headed creature of Revelation THE BEAST 666 - from the wreckage and mass of limbs? I’m about to find out. Here I go to tyhe main hall to find sweet goth girls, delicious bacon and the fruits of the New Uk Scene… the smell of xeroxed paper and mystery…

More later.

Essential Daredevil volume 2 by Stan Lee and Gene Colan

Essential Daredevil volume 2 by Stan Lee and Gene Colan

This is mainly worth having for Colan’s lovely art. He doesn’t do the most dynamic and powerful action scenes, but he draws beautifully, and the quiet scenes are an absolute joy - although the inking in here is pretty undistinguished, so if what you want is great Colan art, you’re better off going for Essential Tomb Of Dracula 1+2, where he is mostly inked by the wonderful Tom Palmer.

But Daredevil is an interesting case study when assessing Stan Lee. Pretty much all of his other major work is with the world’s greatest superhero artists, who were also writers; Colan wasn’t a writer, so Lee is left to his own devices here, having to create all of the storylines and villains and so on all by himself. The stories here are pretty weak, especially the long-running one where Matt creates a groovy twin brother for himself to cover his secret identity - and no one ever seems to ask why Matt and Mike Murdock are never seen together. But an even more emphatic difference between this and Spidey, the Fantastic Four and so on is in DD’s foes. While the Ditko and especially Kirby titles got a great, memorable villain, who has stayed a major character for forty years, pretty much every other issue, Daredevil fought the feeblest and most unimaginative series of enemies any major comic has ever seen: Leapfrog (a man in a frog costume who can jump high), Frog-Man (another frog suit, less jumping, more swimming), Ape-Man (gorilla suit, strong), Cat-Man (cat suit, agile), Bird-Man (bird suit, flies), the Owl (looks a bit owly, also flies), the Matador (he’s a matador)… I’m not making these up. Stilt-Man (he has stilts) was probably the best of the megalame bunch, bar the odd second-rater borrowed from other superheroes (Mr Hyde, the Cobra, the Beetle, Trapster, Electro), and a dreadful Dr Doom tale, which shows how little grasp Lee has of this great character.

It’s impossible to read this and believe that Lee had anything much to do with creating all those great FF (etc.) tales and characters. Having said all this, the style is here, and I think that was a very important factor in Marvel’s success, all the groovy, palsy, swinging language that he added to all their titles, giving a consistency and a feel like nothing before them, making an audience feel special and part of it all. This contribution shouldn’t be understated - but it’s hard to stay balanced when Lee claims so much credit that plainly isn’t his.

White Apples by Jonathan Carroll

White Apples by Jonathan Carroll

He’s an odd writer. I like his ghost stories, none of which seem quite like any other stories I’ve ever read, as if there is an endless series of different ways of handling this old genre. But are these variations much worth having? I’m not sure. The story this time is full of cosmic nonsense that seems vague and rather pointless, and it seemed a bit pleased with itself with all its ‘God is the cosmic mosaic’ wittering. Also, it builds up dangers well, then pulls rabbits out of hats to dispel them in rather lame ways.

The characters are good, fresh and mostly likeable, as is most of the writing (though he does write the odd rotten, clumsy sentence, and mystifyingly leaves them in), but the praise he gets seems a little out of proportion. One review compares him to Raymond Carver on acid, that tiredest modern critical trope, and Carver is surely in a very different league. I like him, and will keep reading him, but I really can’t see that he is as special as many people claim.

it’s true because it’s funny (= sad obv)

it’s true because it’s funny (= sad obv)

mainly i’m trying NOT to read bought-media commentary abt the east london warehouse artfire cz i. i have no doubt that abt 95% of it (pro OR con) will be more annoying and lamer even than the music reviews at amazon (even), and ii. the place i work had significant archival storage (non-YBA/non-conceptual) in the same building, which means that a woman that everyone likes - and who i pass in the corridor every other day - just saw her LIFE’s curatorial work go up in smoke

so i expect what follows has already been said plenty of times: but duchamp simply pointed out that this fire and this post and what you just said to yrself in response to this post are also all “art works”… how “good” they variously are to be explored by the conversation that follows (ie no one’s contribution, cheap OR pricey, and no one’s judgment, idiot OR EXPERT is intrinsically unworthy of notice)

I used to vaguely agree

I used to vaguely agree with the notion that you didn’t actually need to see conceptual art; it was the concept that mattered. Then I did go and see some and of course I realised how wrong I’d been. A lot of Young British Art (& other art, but it’s YBA that’s sadly in the headlines this week) does operate from what seems to me a juvenile impulse, but not the ‘desire to shock’ some critics parrot. What seems to animate conceptualists is what animated me when I started off on some elaborate doodle in a boring lesson - “what would it look like if…?”. If I join up these dots or make this pattern; if Damien Hirst slices a cow in half. We can imagine half a cow, or a giant anatomical toy, but there’s a childlike delight in actually seeing these things, and I’d guess that’s what animates a lot of artists and a lot of art lovers. I don’t think that sense of gosh-wow wonder is the only thing art can achieve now, and maybe it isn’t the highest thing it can do, but it is a good thing to do.

Authors you’re too old to read at 34 (part 2) Virginia Andrews

Authors you’re too old to read at 34 (part 2)
Virginia Andrews

I Love Books has been tossing around the notion of re-reading, reflecting changes of taste and how the reader’s judgement alters throughout the years. In the middle of the discussion, in swept the 80’s gothic fiction writer, Virginia Andrews (latterly marketed as VC Andrews for reasons I’ll explain). Forthright opinions followed, an impression of slight shame emerged. These, apparently were books of their time, relegated to charity shops once teenage turned to twenties.

When I was a 15 year old casual, I liked nothing better than to read Virginia Andrews as I poured Slush Puppies down my Pringle jumper. Even the hard kids at school couldn’t resist and would read a quick chapter between fights. Flowers in the Attic was the catalyst, followed by several sequels, a prequel and a fairly successful movie. You knew what you were getting with Virginia; families with skeletons in every closet and a final third of twists and spins. And of course, incest. Let’s cut to the chase, nearly every story contained some inter-sibling sex. And she didn’t shun the descriptive side. This wasn’t Jane Austen sex, all he brushed her arm and nine months later Abigail was born, but the real thing, albeit with a gothic touch; all manhoods and exhilarating sensations.

I reread Flowers just last week. And in retrospect, I wish I left it where it lay (on the shelf in my teenage bedroom, by the Altered Images poster). The phrasing is odd to say the least, Good Golly Day! being a common expression of surprise. Several characters are no more than cardboard cut-outs and the children speak well beyond their years.

The fascinating thing to throw in the mix is Virginia herself. Every year another book is released, embossed cover, entwined roses, aunt shagging storyline. Virginia herself would be amused. She died in 1986. Subsequent books have been carefully worded, “based on the original drafts” became “sourced from the original plotline” as the years passed and Virginia’s death proved no barrier to further publication. The truth came out eventually, step forward horror fiction writer Andrew Neiderman. A bloke! Authorised by the Andrews estate to “continue the story-telling genius of VC Andrews”.

I watched a girl reading the latest VC Andrews cliffhanger on the bus the other day, pupils wide, fully absorbed. It was titled Willow of Fate or somesuch. She glanced up as the bus braked and looked bewildered, then bundled her book into a bag and begged the driver to let her off; her stop, I guess, some distance back. He refused (correctly, as we were clinging to a busy roundabout) and she left in a huff at the next stop. I watched her disappear back down the road, reading as she walked.

The curse of “Of course”.

The curse of “Of course”. The urge to write “of course” during an essay or a piece is one which comes out of pure arrogance. It is suggesting that you know something that everyone knows, appealing to the intelligence of the reader and hence shaming them when your obscure fact does not leap out at them. “Of course” is needless, pointless as an appelation - and hubris. It also has a much better chance at flaggin up an error, as in this case from the Judith Hawley review of Armand Marie Leroi’s Mutants in the Guardian Review this Saturday.

In a highly quotable dictum in this thought-provoking and aphoristic book, Armand Leroi declares: “We are all mutants. But some of us are more mutant than others.” The expression recalls, of course, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four…

Of course I make this kind of error all the time.

TICK TOCK

TICK TOCK