Fumetti 1

I've often said the obvious, that French/Belgian comic culture is the best in the world. I try to go through France once or twice a year in order to pick up their monthlies, and often get some oldies from the stalls along the Seine. But this year, my routine test of the theory didn't work. I saw amazing French-authored comics in Italian bookshops, which I then failed to find in France. Or I found the Italian translations of them were more attractive and whole than the French versions. I visited, for the first time, the half dozen recommended comic shops just to the south of Notre Dame, and bought nothing. Whereas in Italian train stations I bought the usual poor quality but v lengthy cheap fumetti, to keep me going on the overnight trains, and I was distressed in the Italian bookshops to have so much beauty looking out at me, and be able to afford so little of it.

So this may be the first of a small series of posts about some of the amazing Italian comics and comic art out there. No promises, but maybe.

 Mural in Messina, one of a host of real beauties out there raising towerblocks out of shitness and into glory. I remember Brussels also being amazing for these, but didn't see much in France this time around.

Most of this post will be photos of good comics I couldn't afford.

This is a page from the first above, about some dude who loves to run. I don't know British comics or American which make pages in quite this way - the mix of space, scale, and a scene-setting that interests your eyes so that each of the 5 panels adds up to something more than the sum of their parts. I can't say it's unique, but the Italian versions of it are worth an explore.

These two (sorry for the cricked neck) are beautiful, and consistent, and I've lingered over before. In fact when I was there I looked at them so long I worried I might already have one of them in a box back home. If I go again, I will make sure I get at least one of them. Different art styles, both consistent to their own beautiful universes.

Now for the Mafia. Anti mafia comics are a thing. My Italian is too poor to make out the whole, but I already have on my shelves one (less good looking) comic history of an anti Mafia person murdered.

This is the one I wish I had.

Look at this beautiful monster, and its designer setting.

This sort of careful computer layout is not my usual style, but there is no criticism possible for the way this book encapsulates the form. 

And in contrast:

A very different style, more the thing I usually lust after. Notice the publisher: Bologna-based Coconino Press. I first came across these guys in a bookshop in Brindisi, waiting for the overnight ferry a few years ago. They made my journey!

That C mark at the bottom, that is the Coconino Press sign of a superb job done. Everything in that line is wonderful and I own so little of it.

In these two, Milo Manara at the top was new to me, but massively well known in European comics and probably dead. Also abundantly available in Paris. He's mostly into buttocks and draws a lot of soft porn historical drama. And does it really really well. I will get one of his one day - I just can't get past the dilemma of which.

Gipi, below, is the single most celebrated - and justifiably so - comic artist of Italy today. Most of his stuff on the Coconino imprint. Each story with a different, story-specific style. Each one humane and grotesque, uplifting and dark, sensitive and brutal. Check out one Italian comic artist and make it him.

Toppi, the bottom one here, is like Manara a very well-known figure. I didn't know him. I bought this book. His faces alone are things of real intricate wonder and if I had the real heart and gusto of an artist I would have spent at least three days trying to copy his faces. Instead of which I just looked at them, thought of it and then went to bed. I suppose it is fantasy art, which as a cultural phenomenon is largely shit. He also adds the glossy erotic porn female stuff that is particularly big in Italy. But it is not just that, it is something that surprises you out of your stupor. Maybe sublime is the word.

Simpler, elegant, a bit more controlled, lots of this sort of style are floating around comics publishing these days. Quite 2D, quite kids' illustration, quite art-course. I won't buy them -  there isn't enough depth in the detail, enough shocks or weirdness - but I cannot help but admire their sophisticated illustration and control of the tone over their subject matter.

Example of the sorts of comic displayed on browsing tables in Italian bookshops. It's funny to see Hartlepool monkey-hangers get mocked even in translation, in places that have never heard of the place (I like Hartlepool by the way).

To finish with Gipi, you know i mentioned him. I wanted to mention him again. He's got a lot out there right now.

This is the only form I have managed to afford to buy from Coconino so far, a little wider than A4, staple-bound, matt-texture to both cover and pages. I love the relief that non-gloss brings the comic-reader. Who made comics gloss? It is so horrible. Matt for almost all of Coconino, matt for Gipi, matt for me.

Fumetti 1

I've often said the obvious, that French/Belgian comic culture is the best in the world. I try to go through France once or twice a year in order to pick up their monthlies, and often get some oldies from the stalls along the Seine. But this year, my routine test of the theory didn't work. I saw amazing French-authored comics in Italian bookshops, which I then failed to find in France. Or I found the Italian translations of them were more attractive and whole than the French versions. I visited, for the first time, the half dozen recommended comic shops just to the south of Notre Dame, and bought nothing. Whereas in Italian train stations I bought the usual poor quality but v lengthy cheap fumetti, to keep me going on the overnight trains, and I was distressed in the Italian bookshops to have so much beauty looking out at me, and be able to afford so little of it.

So this may be the first of a small series of posts about some of the amazing Italian comics and comic art out there. No promises, but maybe.

 Mural in Messina, one of a host of real beauties out there raising towerblocks out of shitness and into glory. I remember Brussels also being amazing for these, but didn't see much in France this time around.

Most of this post will be photos of good comics I couldn't afford.

This is a page from the first above, about some dude who loves to run. I don't know British comics or American which make pages in quite this way - the mix of space, scale, and a scene-setting that interests your eyes so that each of the 5 panels adds up to something more than the sum of their parts. I can't say it's unique, but the Italian versions of it are worth an explore.

These two (sorry for the cricked neck) are beautiful, and consistent, and I've lingered over before. In fact when I was there I looked at them so long I worried I might already have one of them in a box back home. If I go again, I will make sure I get at least one of them. Different art styles, both consistent to their own beautiful universes.

Now for the Mafia. Anti mafia comics are a thing. My Italian is too poor to make out the whole, but I already have on my shelves one (less good looking) comic history of an anti Mafia person murdered.

This is the one I wish I had.

Look at this beautiful monster, and its designer setting.

This sort of careful computer layout is not my usual style, but there is no criticism possible for the way this book encapsulates the form. 

And in contrast:

A very different style, more the thing I usually lust after. Notice the publisher: Bologna-based Coconino Press. I first came across these guys in a bookshop in Brindisi, waiting for the overnight ferry a few years ago. They made my journey!

That C mark at the bottom, that is the Coconino Press sign of a superb job done. Everything in that line is wonderful and I own so little of it.

In these two, Milo Manara at the top was new to me, but massively well known in European comics and probably dead. Also abundantly available in Paris. He's mostly into buttocks and draws a lot of soft porn historical drama. And does it really really well. I will get one of his one day - I just can't get past the dilemma of which.

Gipi, below, is the single most celebrated - and justifiably so - comic artist of Italy today. Most of his stuff on the Coconino imprint. Each story with a different, story-specific style. Each one humane and grotesque, uplifting and dark, sensitive and brutal. Check out one Italian comic artist and make it him.

Toppi, the bottom one here, is like Manara a very well-known figure. I didn't know him. I bought this book. His faces alone are things of real intricate wonder and if I had the real heart and gusto of an artist I would have spent at least three days trying to copy his faces. Instead of which I just looked at them, thought of it and then went to bed. I suppose it is fantasy art, which as a cultural phenomenon is largely shit. He also adds the glossy erotic porn female stuff that is particularly big in Italy. But it is not just that, it is something that surprises you out of your stupor. Maybe sublime is the word.

Simpler, elegant, a bit more controlled, lots of this sort of style are floating around comics publishing these days. Quite 2D, quite kids' illustration, quite art-course. I won't buy them -  there isn't enough depth in the detail, enough shocks or weirdness - but I cannot help but admire their sophisticated illustration and control of the tone over their subject matter.

Example of the sorts of comic displayed on browsing tables in Italian bookshops. It's funny to see Hartlepool monkey-hangers get mocked even in translation, in places that have never heard of the place (I like Hartlepool by the way).

To finish with Gipi, you know i mentioned him. I wanted to mention him again. He's got a lot out there right now.

This is the only form I have managed to afford to buy from Coconino so far, a little wider than A4, staple-bound, matt-texture to both cover and pages. I love the relief that non-gloss brings the comic-reader. Who made comics gloss? It is so horrible. Matt for almost all of Coconino, matt for Gipi, matt for me.

Inktober 2016

For the last 3 years I have taken part in Inktober, an unstructured effort by mostly unconnected people who all, in their different ways, draw stuff. Some people share the images online, some develop a theme, some do something every day of the month. These are some of what I did.

For October 2016 I was going to be in Malta twice: first for a long-term voluntary commitment to bird protection during the migration season, and then to see my family.

So a lot of my drawings this year are diary sketches in various transport hubs: in this case, Luton airport which is awful and I recommend you never use it. 

These are two of my fellow volunteers for Birdlife Malta, Bob and James,

This is a Maltese man in the aquarium cafe (see him in the background? A typical Maltese face)

And this is a naked couple that I didn't realise I'd taken a photo of till going through them later : I was doing a composite photo of an area full of illegal hunting, to see if the recently built hides showed up from this angle.

Self image, during our video surveillance of migratory birds and illegal hunting. This year I did manage to film swallows being shot down, but then failed to film the guy who ran past me before dawn being chased by police. This is part of the reason why this is a long-haul effort - it would be unrealistic to think we will stop all the horrors in one decade. Tell me if you might like to take part in Spring 2017.

Sparrow nests in the park : they are one of the very few species that manage to thrive on the island. Some are Spanish sparrows, some are Italian sparrows, the whole lot probably a unique Maltese hybrid mixture.

Turtle doves are one of the main target species for hunting, and now rarely seen.

Maltese words for colours (but not yet coloured in - idea for an alternative colouring book).

Now back in the UK, I contributed a page for our next child-friendly comic anthology. I had no clear or decent idea, so chose to fill out my notes from a previous Paper Jam meeting - notes I made when the suggestion was first made to do this anthology.

Ex member Jack Fallows had drawn the girl on a bike for his contribution to our previous child-friendly anthology, so I decided to reintroduce her to my last panel.

Then onto Kendal, host of the annual Lakes International Comic Art Festival. I volunteered on the kids area and was wowed by some of the stuff being produced these days. The image above is from one of 5 young Japanese comics artists selected for exhibition by Ken Niimura.

This second image is from the exhibition of Hanneriina Moisseinen's Silence, a pencil-drawn comic about the forced evacuation of the Finnish population from Karelia.

The third exhibition encouraged local people to share stories of the flooding that devastated the town at the turn of the year. Stories like the one above were shared.

In Carlisle station, where I often change trains, there has since Spring been a mind-melting exhibition of pictures of the Queen, drawn by literally hundreds of young children and everywhere the eye looks. They have really got into my head and images like these I will never unsee.

On another day in Carlisle, I drew scenes at the Bookends festival of Literature.

Sorry to make you crane your neck, not sure how to rotate these on this computer. I was playing with a second pen for this crowd sketch.

And for the second trip to Malta, I did some research on the Phoenician heritage of Malta.

The Phoenicians are interesting. No state, no border, no clear line of territory. They were all about the interaction between distance peoples, and the currents of the Mediterranean sea.

Again and again, the most interesting finds of this period of Maltese history were quietly stolen - the best and most beautiful things lost, the majority of discoveries destroyed. Some rich Maltese families will have some in their private cabinets, and others will have been sold off to rich overseas. It is sad, that communal history is thieved by private riches in this way.

Salty dry life.

One of the beautiful streets you can still find, if you get off the main roads and cheap modern development. This one is in Mosta, with the famous dome in the background. My niece loved being told again and again and again the story of how the WW2 bomb that crashed through the roof did not explode, and the people inside survived. By the time I left, my brother was already really tired of retelling the story.

Me in the middle.

Then the journey back: travelling solo, I tend like most drawers to a bit of voyeurism. Don't bother reading the words by the way, it was a boring day. My diary is just for myself, not others. It's the drawings I like to share sometimes. Thankyou for looking at them. 

And next October, put some ink to paper too.