Solipsistic Pop goes to print + Radio times
Tom Humberstone and I made a trip to the printers last week to check out the progress of Solipsistic Pop. It is looking beautiful. I was always going to be excited about this project, but now I feel that same giddiness I remember feeling every time I heard this.
We’re also on Resonance fm‘s show Strip! later today (22nd), at 5pm.
Continuing ‘anthologies and collectives month’ on the show, Alex Fitch talks to four members of a group of Irish comic book artists – Stephen Mooney, PJ Holden, Will Sliney and Declan Shalvey – who work for a variety of British and American comic publishers and collectively promote their work through a blog with the title “Eclectic Micks”.
Alex also talks to the curator of the new anthology “Solipsistic Pop” Tom Humberstone, and contributors Julia Scheele, Matthew Sheret and Stephen Collins, which intends to bring the sensibilities of high-end American Indie comic anthologies to the under represented world of British small press creators. Julia and Matthew also talk about disseminating their own self published comics – “We Are Words + Pictures” – to the public via market stalls and club nights.
Alex Fitch was a gent to throw this together, and a saint for staying up all hours to edit the show.
Busy busy busy.
Elsewhere on the internet
Emotional Pornography is a group-blog started by the delightful Miss Katie West. It does pretty much what it says on the url, and I offered up this untitled contribution:
She starts for a cigarette, the room all moving in chat and business, forgetting her empty wine glass. Glasses. She stops, retrieves, tops them up; the bottle splashing off the rim and wetting a rug she probably doesn’t recognise. She pauses in pouring, before more for good measure and then more again because she really wants to drink…
A little more at the site. There’s some beautiful work on there, writing and photography, and I urge you all to add it to your RSS feeds.
I’ve also started blogging as Newspaper Club‘s “embedded reporter”. My first post, titled after a quote from Russell, went live today:
Part of the fun of the system is being able to play with how your copy looks on the page. If you think you’ll want to print a newspaper around the launch then go away now and start gathering words and pictures. I mean it: Now. It’s better to have to leave things out than abandon a half full draft.
And that’s enough of that for today.
Delivery boy
For the next month or so I’ll be in Newspaper Towers playing with the interaction and language of Newspaper Club. I’m creating a guide that will answer all of the questions You, the User, will need answered before putting together your own publication. So, if after January(ish) you don’t know what to do/what ARTHR is/that you can’t have a double page spread then that’s my fault.
For the past few days I’ve been going through the archive of commentary the team, the investors, the users, and the press have been generating in the past few months, and in the coming days I’ll be harangued by Art, Marketing and Engineering as they each describe the production process: By the end of the week we’ll know where they still need to compare notes.
While the blog has been a study in expectation management, it’s clear already that any guide has to play an important role in continuing that. It’s reasonably easy to outlay production rules (12 pages, no full bleed, quantity limitations et al) and tell you what you can’t do, but when you click order will you know how much space 1’000 newspapers take up? Will you be disappointed it isn’t stapled? Will you expect the edges to be untidy? Will you remember that you’ve never seen a clean white newspaper?
All this, and the answer to the eternal question: What happens when you click order?
Untitled
She starts for a cigarette, the room all moving in chat and business, forgetting her empty wine glass. Glasses. She stops, retrieves, tops them up; the bottle splashing off the rim and wetting a rug she probably doesn’t recognise. She pauses in pouring, before more for good measure and then more again because she really wants to drink.
As she leaves the room and the party and a few sideways glances I’ve only got a memory; of her cardigan falling open and of her skirt slipping off of the sheets and of my hands pushing for space and of a sound in my ear something deeper than a gasp and of the cramp-ache in my calf where her heel dug hard. I remember in the morning I found her skirt beside an almost empty carton, toppled juices seeping through my shirt and into the rug.
I push past her on my way way to the kitchen, and unsuccessfully try to avoid eye contact.
Ellerbisms @200
John Allison's Ellerbism #200
The lovely Marc Ellerby, drawer of my face, is having a bit of a celebration this week as his Ellerbisms web-comic reaches strip #200.
He’s roped in a bunch of friends, fans and villains to contribute words and pictures to the fun, including “The Polaroid Press-erbism” from myself. That I’m up alongside some of Liz Lunney‘s lol-icious cats and Emma Vieceli‘s frankly gorgeous Emmabism – which really happened – is quite an honour.
Check it out, and stay tuned this week for more of the birthday party. “Ellerbisms vs The Fans” drops tomorrow, and I can’t wait.
Bookleteer
My two Pitch Up & Publish eBooks (Unguided and Expeditions In Paper Science) were published over at the Diffusion website, so you can now download them at home. Big thanks to Giles and the Proboscis team for selecting my work.
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Solipsistic Pop (book 1)
Started by Tom Humberstone in 2009, Solipsistic Pop is an anthology of UK Small Press comics artists, designed to bring a new generation of comic creators into the public eye.
I co-wrote ‘The Manifesto of The New Vague’ with Humberstone, alongside the closing essay ‘Do Everything’. It is available here, priced £13 including UK postage or £15 including worldwide postage.
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Love and reflections
Heart Shaped Latte
The write up of Sunday’s stall went live on Monday over at We Are Words + Pictures. We’re arranging the final confirmation our next stall date pretty much as I type. We also got a lovely write up from Architect/dream reclaimer/customer Alison Sampson. She is good people.
I’ll be going dark over the next few days while I move house and go into deep think* for a couple of upcoming projects. Sporadic, often obscure, updates will be fired off over on Twitter I have no doubt.
* drinking in my new local
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