Mita - Boekontwerp (2023)

Progress of Jamie Hewlett

20-23 pines

24-27 humanz

Hewlett’s storied and unconventionalcareer began at university where he was just trying to craft a fresh, exciting female charater that he felt other artists couldn’t even fathom.

piecesfromthecomic“tankgirl”

There wasn’t really a place for adult comics.

But at that time, we were just trying to be outrageous and we were trying to tell these stories through this female character because I think, at that point, there weren’t any female comic characters that were very interesting or very strong, and a lot of them seemed to be drawn by men who

“We went in to (Tank Girl wanting to) push the limits a little bit with that character and just be a little outrageous and say stuff that nobody said and nobody talked about

and use words that nobody was allowed to use in comic books and try to get over this sort of pathetic censorship,” he explains of his work on Tank Girl with writer Martin. “You can’t show a nipple, but you can show someone being stabbed to death or this other bullshit that we still have.”

TankGirlwasoneofyourfirstbigprojectsanditwaskindofanextraordinarysuccess,andIwonderwhatthatwaslikeforyou,justkindofasayoungguy,andthis creationofyoursjusttookoff.

I think we sort of came into... it was me and a whole bunch of comic artists who sort of came into the English comic scene at a time when it was going through a bit of a Rennaissance, and there was a lot of old school comic artists still doing the same old stuff. All these magazines did a big feature on this group of new young comic artists, who I was one of, and how we were like the new wave of punk rock comic artists, and I suppose we all played up to that. With Tank Girl which was the first comic strip that I did really, I think we were doing a comic strip for an independent magazine, and the magazine was put together by people who’d never put together a magazine before and there was no censorship or editing. We used to deliver our artwork the morning it was due to go off to the printers, so no one had a chance to check any of the scripts and stuff. It was quite sort of anarchic way of working. So we’d sort of push it a bit further every time we did a strip. So the subject matter became more and more twisted and basically we got away with doing the sort of stuff we might not be able to get away with doing anymore. The editor didn’t ever have a chance to read the scripts, because we would just turn up, give it to him, and then it would go straight on a bike to the printers. And then the ma gazine would come back and they’d realise it and scenes of depravity and whatever doing at the time. So, you know, it was a good period, I don’t think it works the same like that any more, unless you’re producing an underground comic. But we were very much were able to do exactly what we wanted to do. And the magazine became popular. It was selling well, and everyone was reading it. We got a lot of complaints from mothers and fathers who discovered the comics in their children’s bedrooms and actually picked it up and read it, and...[laughs] kinds of weird stuff happen. But we just got away with doing what we wanted.

2-D Russel

“The idea for 2-D was that he was a kinda cherubic, good-looking front man who isn’t smart but can sing.”

“Russel was this sort of meta, hip-hop guy who has had suffered through life.”

Murdoc Noodle

“Murdoc was based on Keith Richards, sort of satanic.”

“Noodle was originally caucasian and 20 years old, but we thought that was boring. The idea of having a little girl in the band who plays mean guitar was much more fun. Then we made her Japanese – why not?”

Tank Girl became a springboard for Jamie’s career, and a decade later, in 1998, he went on to co-create the biggest virtual band in the world: Gorillaz. Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn were born within 11 days of each other in 1968. 30 years later, they found themselves living together in a flat above a carpet shop in west London during a time of personal upheaval. Both had ended long-term relationships, and wanted to do something new with their lives. Damon had

bought a plasma screen television on which they spent hours watching MTV, staring perplexed into the burning bush of pop culture. Everything seemed so phony, commodified and manufactured, but not even skillfully manufactured.

To keep the Gorillaz-universe alive, each album starts with a storyline on what the characters will be up to and how they will act. It usually forms in the same way. While the music is being created, Jamie, Damon and Remi Kabaka Jr. (drummer for the band since 2000) thrash out themes and ideas, talking endlessly about “what we’re into, what we’re not into, what’s going on in the fucking world, what we wanna say, blah blah blah. It’s all quite open and nothing is forced,” Jamie says. These conversations then inform his first drawings for the campaign, which are go to a team of writers who work on structuring and expanding the story.

Gorillaz; a group of two dimensional cartoon characters with cliche band member personalities and preposterous back stories. They would be given the room to grow on their own terms, conducting interviews in character for example. There are four members: 2-D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel.

“all the best bands have four people,” Jamie says. “Three is too few and five is too many.”

“18 years ago we started Gorillaz, and they seem to be more relevant today than they were when we first met them, for some reason,” Hewlett says. “And I think that might have something to do with the fact that people are tired of celebrities, because we live in a society where everyone’s a fucking celebrity, and usually they’re a celebrity for doing nothing and so it’s easy to really dislike real celebrities, whereas I think there are things about cartoon characters that are timeless and endearing.”

While searching the world for a new hideout, Murdoc discovered an island in the middle of the ocean made entirely out of landfill stuck together. He sprayed the island bright pink and used the insurance money to build a new Gorillaz HQ on top, renaming the island, “Plastic Beach”.

Damon Albarn got the idea for Plastic Beach while on a beach next to his house: “I was just looking for all the plastic within the sand”, he said. On 17 September 2008, Albarn and Jamie Hewlett announced that they would be doing another Gorillaz album in an interview with CBC News.

The young fool and the sea, 2010.

Fantasy island without the little guy.

Jamie’s pines are stark and evocative. Staring at them takes you to an enchanted place. There’s a Brothers Grimm-style fairytale darkness to them, like the kind of trees Hansel and Gretel would gaze at on their way to the cannibalistic witch, unaware of what awaited them. They are as much a study of light as they are of trees, and how a tree can look so different depending on whether it’s bathed in sunshine or cloaked in darkness.

pines

Jamie has one of the pine tree drawings in his bedroom at home. It was one that his wife particularly liked, so they framed it and put it on the wall. Some mornings, they find themselves lying in bed with a coffee staring at the artwork. Even now, they swear they can see things they’d never noticed before, lurking in the shadows or the shapes within the bark. Details that hide beneath. Pictures within pictures within pictures

Finally completing their first album in 7 years, Humanz. On the 19th of January 2017, the band released their first song after their five-year hiatus: “Hallelujah Money” featuring Benjamin Clementine, along with its own music video.

‘We really need them right now.‘

It’s funny, a few people have said that, which obviously gives me a warm glow all over to know that people are happy to have four cartoon characters back, and that, in some way, it helps. It’s strange. I never would’ve imagined that. All the Gorillaz albums have been a little political. We’ve always been trying to say something, but we’ve kept it hidden between the layers, not going on our soapbox and preaching what we think. But there’s always been a message in there, and the best delivery is to to let people discover it themselves. I think this album is probably sounding like the most political to date, and I think that’s because we can’t help ourselves. Everything’s just gone to shit in the last couple of years, so it’s coming out in the work. It would be impossible not to recognize or have feelings about the way the world has changed and the sort of shit that’s going on; hence the name, Humanz. It’s an appropriate title for an album because it’s sort of a question. The Z on the end of Humanz puts me in the mind of artificial intelligence, robots, programming, conditioning, brainwashing and control, so it’s kind of asking the question: Are we still human? Or are we humanz? Are we aware of what’s going on? It’s up to us to make a change, to make things different, to do something. Sometimes we need to wake up a little bit.

stories. Noodle has grown up and become a woman (“which is something cartoon characters tend not to do,” Jamie says) and 2-D has transformed from a delicate wallflower into an extremely confident adult. In fact, on their record, The Now Now (released in June 2018), 2-D’s confidence has become a problematic arrogance. He has dominated interviews this year, answering questions with fired-up but vague declarations that make no sense under inspection. The band also hired Ace of The Powerpuff Girls fame to temporarily replace Murdoc as bassist while he was serving time in prison, and released their album, The Now Now.

Cracker Island is the eighth studio album by English virtual band Gorillaz. It was released on the 24th February 2023.

During July 2022, the band announced that they had begun recording their next album in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. During this time Murdoc became increasingly interested in the occult, and eventually founded a cult focusing on the supernatural, dubbed The Last Cult. The rest of the band weren’t too keen but didn’t think much of it.

In honor of Jamie Hewlett.