Please Note This PDF version of INFINITY does not include the full functionality available in the iPad app. The following functionality is not included:
Panel Mode Super-fast smooth page swiping Audio commentaries Integrated links, videos and detailed images Graphical contents Graphical bookmarks Social media integration Update notifications Free subscription with auto-download
We recommend the free iPad version of INFINITY for the best user experience, but if that is not an option for you, we hope you will enjoy this PDF version.
ON AND ON AND ON RUSSELL WILLIS • EDITOR WELCOME BACK...
... and apologies to subscribers for the long delay since the last issue. A li6le something called SEQUENTIAL has had to take priority over the last few months. It’s been an exciEng Eme, first with our preview party at the end of April (with special guests Brian Bolland, Hunt Emerson, Darryl Cunningham and Terry Wiley in a6endance, along with what seemed to be a goodly part of the rest of the BriEsh scene), and then with the launch of SEQUENTIAL in the UK and US. One of the other highlights was the party we held at the Edinburgh Book FesEval with Graphic Scotland and the 9th Art Award... or so I hear, because I was stuck in Tokyo whilst all the fun was being had. Curses! Anyway, Infinity is back now, and I’m planning to step up the frequency of issues... and, if we can find an editor and some more contributors, then we may even move to a monthly schedule...
MISSIONS
One of the reasons I revived Infinity was because, in the midst of all the fast-‐breaking news and stories on the Internet, I was geWng dizzy... I wanted a magazine that curated content and provided it in elegant batches. There being no such magazine about the kind of sequenEal art I was interested in, I decided to make one myself, originally focused on digital graphic novels and comics. Now, just over a year later, I think the need for a magazine is sEll there, but not the digital focus. At typical Internet speed, digital comics and graphic novels have almost become a natural part of the publishing and reading mix. So I reckon we can look at the world of sequenEal art in general and digital will be an automaEc part... but of course, we’ll have a bias to digital, and inevitably to our SEQUENTIAL plaZorm – so be warned!
NO COMMENT
It seems that the revulsion towards comments on websites is reaching a Epping point. More and more publicaEons are turning them off (e.g. Popular Science), and new publicaEons don’t automaEcally assume they will have them. Will people return to wriEng le6ers that have been thought through, re-‐read, re-‐wri6en and then, and only then, sent? I hope so, and I hope you’ll consider sending such a le6er (by email is fine) to let us know what you think of Infinity, or to let us know what you think about the world of sequenEal art. For example, you could let us know that using the term ‘sequenEal art’ is shockingly pretenEous, and wonder if we’re ashamed of using the word ‘comics’…
COVER Hunt Emerson EDITOR Russell Willis contact@ienglish.com
CONTRIBUTORS Hunt Emerson Andy Shaw Nick Dawkins PM Buchan Kevin Mutch Chloë Pursey Chris ScoE PUBLISHER Panel Nine
∞ Published bi-‐monthly. This app © iEnglish.com Ltd. Contents © individual copyright holders. Volume 2 • Issue #4 • October 2013. This is issue #4 of the new Infinity, a magazine about graphic novels, comics and sequential art in general. Please email inquiries about contributions to the address above.
RADAR A ROUNDUP OF NEWS IN THE WORLD OF SEQUENTIAL ART SEQUENTIAL AND KNOCKABOUT TEAM UP FOR NEIL GAIMAN CHARITY SPECIAL Knockabout, publishers of Gilbert Shelton, Hunt Emerson and Alan Moore, amongst others, have announced that they are teaming up with SEQUENTIAL, the digital graphic novel iPad app, to release a special digital collection of Neil Gaiman’s ‘lost’ comic strips from the 1980s. The collection features Gaiman’s collaborations with Bryan Talbot, Dave McKean and others and also includes a rare interview, Gaiman’s original typed notes for The Sandman, sample scripts, project proposals and more. ! The free collection will initially be exclusively available on SEQUENTIAL in mid-October, and for each download a donation of $0.50 will be made to the charity Malaria No More.
STEPHEN COLLINS’ GIGANTIC BEARD WINS 9TH ART AWARD In an upset for Chris Ware’s Building Stories, the inaugural 9th Art Award went to The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil by Stephen Collins (published by Jonathan Cape). Other nominations for the award, which was given out as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, included Days of the Bagnold Summer by Joff Winterhart, Naming Monsters by Hannah Eaton, and The Nao of Brown by Glyn Dillon. The 9th Art Award aims to celebrate the best graphic novels, and is organised by Graphic Scotland. This year’s judging panel consisted of Paul Gravett, Hannah McGill, Adrian Searle, Gordon Robertson and Mary Talbot. Graphic Scotland plan to release an anthology based on work submitted for the award. The Gigantic Beard… is reviewed in this issue of Infinity. See also: The 9th Art Award
SEQUENTIAL ART NEWS BRITISH COMIC AWARDS ANNOUNCES SHORTLIST The shortlist for the second British Comic Awards has been announced and famed Beano artist Leo Baxendale has been inducted into the Hall of Fame, where he joins Raymond Briggs. See also: The BriEsh Comic Awards for more informaEon and the full shortlist
NOBROW HIRES TUCKER STONE Tucker Stone, a comics blogger and contributor to The Comics Journal, has been hired as US sales and marketing director for Nobrow. The British-based publisher has seen strong growth in recent years, with widespread acclaim for the work of Luke Pearson and Jon McNaught and for the visual identity of its publications. It is also understood that Nobrow publisher Alex Spiro is on an extended stay in Brooklyn to oversee the US expansion. See also: Comics Alliance
SAN FRANCISCO’S CARTOON MUSEUM CELEBRATES 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SANDMAN The Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco is celebrating the historic 25th anniversary of one of the most critically acclaimed comic book series of all time, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. The retrospective contains more than 75 pieces of original artwork from the comic book series, as well as paintings, sketches and other rarities. ! Vertigo is marking the 25th anniversary of the original series with the publication of a new miniseries scripted by Gaiman and illustrated by JH Williams III, entitled Sandman: Overture. The Cartoon Art Museum’s show will include original artwork and cover illustrations from this highly anticipated series, courtesy of the artist. ! Other highlights of the show include
extensive original artwork from the landmark first issue of The Sandman, painted covers by series cover artist Dave McKean, pages from each major Sandman story arc, and rarely seen sketches and concept art, most of which have never been displayed to the public. See also: The Cartoon Art Museum
NEW ALAN MOORE BIOGRAPHY BY LANCE PARKIN Alan Moore turns 60 in November, and as part of the celebrations Aurum Press will soon be publishing Magic Words: The Extraordinary Life of Alan Moore by Lance Parkin. ! There have been several books about Moore’s life but Aurum says Magic Words is the closest to an autobiography of Moore ever published. The author, Parkin, is described as being ‘a Moore obsessive’ and Moore himself has provided a blurb for the book. On sale from November 7th. See also: Aurum Press
SEQUENTIAL ART NEWS 20 VOLUMES OF JUDGE DREDD NOW AVAILABLE ON IPAD 2000AD have announced that they have made all 20 volumes – and 30 years – of Judge Dredd’s Complete Casefiles available digitally for iPhone and iPad through their iOS app. The collection includes Dredd work by creators such as Bolland, Ennis, Morrison and Dillon. See also: 2000AD Online
Days of the Bagnold Summer and Costa Biography winner Dotter of her Father’s Eyes. ! The news was announced at an industry party at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, hosted by SEQUENTIAL and Graphic Scotland, where Bryan and Mary Talbot signed a Dotter poster as a special prize.
ULLI LUST WINS OUTSTANDING GRAPHIC NOVEL IGNATZ Ulli Lust has won the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel for Today is the Last Day of the Rest of Your Life. Translated into English by Kim Thompson, the book is set in 1984 and tells the story of a teenage, rebellious Lust’s wild hitchhiking trip across Italy. ! The book has been heralded as one of the best examples of new graphic novels coming from Europe, and also won the 2011 ‘Revelation’ prize at Angoulême. See also: Review by Eddie Campbell • Forbidden Planet on the 2013 Ignatz Awards
SEQUENTIAL PARTNERS WITH JONATHAN CAPE Digital graphic novel app SEQUENTIAL has partnered with literary heavyweight Jonathan Cape to make a selection of Cape’s graphic novels available on the App Store. ! Last month SEQUENTIAL released 11 books from Cape’s list, including Bryan Talbot’s Grandville series, Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel, Costa Award nominee
! Alex Bowler, editorial director of Cape Graphic Novels, said, “It’s only natural that we should be boldly crossing this new frontier. This is an extraordinary form, and there is a real hunger for this material among a digital audience.” ! SEQUENTIAL are expected to release more graphic novels from Cape’s list in the coming months. See also: Down the Tubes
THOUGHT BUBBLE ANTHOLOGY SET TO RAISE MONEY FOR CHARITY This year’s Thought Bubble Festival will see the release of a special comics anthology, featuring work by some of the UK’s top comics talent and with all profits going to the children’s charity Barnardo’s. ! The collection will be published in partnership with Image Comics and will also include the winners of 2012‘s Thought Bubble Comic Art Competition. It will be
SEQUENTIAL ART NEWS available in comic shops and digitally through ComiXology. See also: Down the Tubes
KNOCKABOUT RELEASES THE HARTLEPOOL MONKEY An English-language edition of a book telling the story of the legendary Hartlepool Monkey has been published by Knockabout. ! According to local folklore, the monkey was the sole survivor of a wrecked French ship during the Napoleonic wars and, when washed ashore at Hartlepool, was hanged by the townsfolk who feared it was a French spy. ! The book, originally published by French publisher Delcort as Le Singe de Hartlepool, is by Wilfred Lupano and Jérémie Moreau and enjoyed a high profile at this year’s Angoulême festival. See also: Forbidden Planet review
TATE TO PUBLISH NEW COMICS BOOK BY PAUL GRAVETT Comics historian and curator Paul Gravett, who has published several books on graphic novels and is the director of Comica comics festival, has written a new book on comics to be published by the Tate Gallery next month. ! Comics Art will go on sale in the UK on November 7th. The Tate commented: “Richly illustrated with many images taken from original artwork and rare artefacts, Comics Art gives a fascinating, accessible guide to some of the special properties of sequential art.” See also: Down the Tubes
FORMER HBO GO EXEC JOINS COMIXOLOGY ComiXology has hired former HBO Go cofounder Jeff DiBartolomeo as their new chief technology officer. ! DiBartolomeo commented that his job would be to “keep driving innovation in reading and shopping for comics” and to “make sure the technology itself is scalable”. ComiXology hopes this new hire will show they have moved from startup mode to a new phase of growth. See also: Comics Beat
LAKES COMIC FESTIVAL TO SELL GILBERT SHELTON BEER The first Lakes International Comic Art Festival, to be held in Kendal in October, has announced it will be selling its own beer, with branding from Gilbert Shelton, the creator of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Fat Freddy’s Cat. ! Tall Toad Golden Ale is from the local Hawkshead Brewery and will be on sale as a limited edition. Punters can try to get their bottles signed by the great man himself, who will be at the festival to promote his new collection of Wonder Wart-Hog strips. See also: Comic Art Festival full programme ∞ INFINITY NEWS DESK ∞
Have you got news for us? If so, please send a press release to contact@ienglish.com.
VERBATIM
THE QUOTE FILE NEIL GAIMAN Writer, The Sandman, American Gods “When I started writing comics in 1985/86, I sort of had this vision of a golden age and it was absolutely Utopian. It had huge golden spires, and in it, comics were right up there with every other medium. You could do anything in comics that you could do in any other medium. And people understood that you could have biography, you could have some history, you could have reportage, you could have whimsy. All of this stuff was valid. And that Utopia did actually come round. The fact that a lot of the comics creators are women felt wonderful. It used to be a boys’ club.” From nymag.com ALAN MOORE Writer, The Birth Caul, A Small Killing “I’m completely happy and confident about the comics medium because even if, as I hope, the comics industry collapses tomorrow, then there’ll still be people who have access to a Woolworth’s jotter and a cheap Biro – that was all I used when I was doing my first groundbreaking series of comics when I was eleven.” From an interview on the Forbidden Planet blog ART SPIEGELMAN Creator, Maus, Arcade “I was reading Marshall McLuhan, and he said that every form, when it is no longer a mass medium, has to become an art or disappear. And that sounded right to me. Comics needed to make that kind of deal. Become art or die.” From The Chicago Tribune
ALISON BECHDEL Creator, Fun Home, Are You My Mother? “Graphic stories are able to show incidental life without having to describe it.” From edrants.com EDDIE CAMPBELL Creator, Alec, Bacchus “An artist should spend his artistic career expunging from the work everything that he recognises as a habit. If he finds a neat way of doing something, instead of using the trick again, he must refrain from ever doing so. He must cast it out. A particular brushstroke or a figural gesture, or whatever. Comic books are entirely made up of this sort of thing. I have a pal who loved the way Berni Wrightson drew the strings of saliva stretched between upper and lower teeth, so he borrowed the device and still uses it forty years later.” From hoodedutilitarian.com
GABRIELLE BELL Creator, The Voyeurs “If comics aren’t art, I don’t know what is.” From theparisreview.org
For hundreds of great comics quotes, check out www.quotesoncomics.com
GOT A QUOTE? Have you come across an interesting quote about sequential art? Then help us out and get in touch: contact@ienglish.com – and please include a source!
REVIEWS
EUSTACE SJ Harris Jonathan Cape £14.99 • No digital edition Reviewed by Andy Shaw While its soft, pencil-drawn illustrations may give Eustace the impression of being dour and depressing, nothing could be further from the truth. Hidden amongst the grotesque characters and ethereal sketching is a riot of quirky, bawdy, farcical dark humour. ! Eustace is a sickly eight-year-old, bedridden and given nothing to eat but a succession of watery broths. He pines for visits from his mother, who gets migraines and relies on the brusque, burly maid to
deliver her son’s meals. Eustace’s father can barely remember his name. Eustace is, however, visited by a long succession of great aunts and uncles, who mollycoddle and spoil him, presuming he hasn’t got much time left. ! But everything changes when Eustace finds his Uncle Lucien hiding underneath his bed, on the run for fraud. Uncle Lucy ends up hunkering down with Eustace, but he has a few bad habits that include smoking, drinking and hiring prostitutes. ! This could easily be a play, and a rather good one at that. The story is entirely set in Eustace’s bedroom, and Eustace talks to the audience throughout. The adults around him take this destruction of the fourth wall as an indication that Eustace has imaginary friends, but the reader is acutely aware that they have a front-row seat at a startling, intriguing performance. ! The art is beautiful. There’s a lightness of touch here, creating a mood that hits the pitch of the book perfectly. The characters’ skins look translucent, while their bones show through. They’re universally ugly too, with even the dolled-up prostitutes carrying themselves with an air of sorrow and fatigue. ! It’s a beautifully ugly book. The characters are intense, the story is a rollercoaster of insanity and the art gives it a further depth that brings everything together. Perfect. ∞ Andy Shaw is the editor of Grovel. To see more reviews of graphic novels, visit www.grovel.org.uk See also: SJ Harris on creating Eustace
REVIEWS
THE EVERYDAY Adam Cadwell Great Beast £11.99 • Available on SEQUENTIAL (£2.99) Reviewed by PM Buchan British Comic Awards founder Adam Cadwell is one half of indie publishers Great Beast, perhaps best known internationally for his contributions to Blank Slate Books’ Nelson, Image series Phonogram and the anthology titles Solipsistic Pop and Paper Science. Cadwell is currently working on the Young Ones-esque vampire series Blood Blokes, and his work on the British Comic Awards is building him a reputation as a tireless champion of the medium, but none of these things would have been possible without his autobiographical webcomic The Everyday. ! It’s not uncommon for cartoonists to hone their talents by working on diary comics, but in The Everyday Cadwell combines honesty, insight and a rare talent for visual storytelling, creating a whole that amounts to more than the sum of its parts. My own bias as a reader is that I hate mundane, everyday life in just about every medium but comics, but within comics I’ll make an exception for particularly skilled storytellers. By this criteria The Everyday is nothing but a resounding success.
! Beginning as an array of crude reflections on everything in life from housemates to hangovers, The Everyday is the kind of book where you see the artist grow from page to page, and it’s to Cadwell’s credit that he resisted the temptation to whitewash his past by editing out any of the early, weaker strips. The effect of reading the collection from start to finish is one of following Cadwell’s storytelling from infancy to maturity. ! In his introduction to the book Cadwell suggests that the strips work best as snapshots into ‘the little moments in life’, and I agree with that assessment. The few heart-to-heart conversations with flatmates come across as stilted, lacking the emotional depth to convey anything meaningful, or the narcissism that makes Jeffrey Brown so interesting. (We ALL love his early comics, but surely everybody hates the self-important swagger that Brown achieves in his later books!)
! The Everyday really does excel, however, at capturing the sensation of being young at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Travelling the world for comic conventions, endlessly refreshing webpages to reserve
REVIEWS
• Adam Cadwell: A Samuel Pepys in 3D specs
tickets to music festivals, finding yourself ! using website names as verbs… the result of this accumulation of details is that Cadwell joins a tradition of biographers going right back to the likes of Samuel Pepys. As hyperbolic as that may sound, it’s the
minutia of everyday life that usually stands the test of time. ! For me, the real success story around The Everyday is that Adam Cadwell used this diary experiment to learn how to create great comics, and now he’s putting those skills to use in the fictional world of Blood Blokes. Other readers will more likely be interested in reading about contemporary life in Manchester, England. Whatever your motivation for reading it, this is the best British autobiographical strip I’m aware of, and that’s reason enough to give it a try. ∞ See also: Interview with Adam Cadwell
REVIEWS
ELLERBISMS Marc Ellerby Great Beast £12.99 • Available on SEQUENTIAL (£2.99) Reviewed by PM Buchan Marc Ellerby is one half of Great Beast comics and has worked for publishers like Image, BOOM!, Oni Press and Slave Labor Graphics. Given that the first two Great Beast graphic novels are collections of previously published webcomics, the easiest way to introduce Ellerbisms is to say that it is everything The Everyday is not. Ellerby and Great Beast co-creator Adam Cadwell might have one of the most famous bromances in the British comic book industry, but their voices are individual and pronounced, growing in very different directions.
! Ellerbisms represents Ellerby’s attempt to create a narrative from his diary comics, omitting strips that failed to serve the overarching story and including new strips to bridge narrative gaps. Coming together as a curious whole, there are definite problems in Ellerby’s decision to retrospectively tell a specific story with his diary comics, but it was definitely the right decision to make. Ellerby’s relationship with his Swedish girlfriend Anna is easily the most compelling element of Ellerbisms; the hook that kept me reading. ! There are alternating points in the book where Ellerby comes across as a jerk to the people around him. Sometimes this feels like a brave decision to paint an honest picture of his life, at others it seems unintentional, as if we’re expected to sympathise with his viewpoint, but the cues from other characters often suggest that we should feel otherwise. Whether intentional or accidental, these moments lend sincerity to the concept of Ellerby as protagonist, and without them the book would be far less effective. ! Another interesting contrast to The Everyday is that Ellerby’s mundane observations almost always fall flat. The art improves from page to page, but I felt almost no resonance with the world that Ellerby occupies. Luckily the relationship aspects become increasingly compelling as the book progresses, reaching a state where the reader can empathise with almost everything that takes place on the page, so honest and genuine are Ellerby and Anna’s interactions. ! It reflects well on Ellerby that rather than discussing his storytelling techniques or art style, what I really want to do is dissect his relationship and offer parallels to my own life. That’s the kind of book that Ellerbisms is. It holds love and companionship under a microscope, evoking all the highs and lows
REVIEWS
• Ellerby consoles his sick girlfriend. Sort of
with an authority that fiction would struggle to command. For all the book’s shortcomings, Marc Ellerby has captured that heart of a relationship on paper, and the passage of time will do nothing to erase the poignancy or vitality of this tale. I wouldn’t want to read any of his diary comics beyond this
relationship and am glad that he moved on to create the (brilliant) Chloe Noonan series, but Ellerbisms is a book with few peers. Anybody wanting to re-experience the highs and lows of young love would do well to read it. ∞ See also: Interview with Marc Ellerby
REVIEWS phenomenal rate – you can literally see it growing. Attempts to cut it fail, and it just grows larger and larger. Eventually it breaks out of his house and starts invading the tidy and ordered worlds of our hero’s neighbours. ! The book is gently surreal, crammed full of charm and wit. The text is sparse but the illustrations have their own structure and rhythm. Every page is thoughtfully designed and completely engaging. There’s a cartoonist’s simplicity to the illustration, with a clear-line style to characters and buildings, but it’s all meticulously shaded. ! It’s a beautiful piece of work: a simple story, expertly told. There’s enough closure to satisfy the reader but it’s the type of book that leaves itself wide open to interpretation. You’re left quietly contemplating the beard and the effect it might be having on the community, long after you’ve finished the final pages. ∞ Andy Shaw is the editor of Grovel. To see more reviews of graphic novels, visit www.grovel.org.uk THE GIGANTIC BEARD THAT WAS EVIL Stephen Collins Jonathan Cape £16.99 • No digital edition yet Reviewed by Andy Shaw Stephen Collins is a rising star of British cartooning, with an Observer short story prize and a weekly strip in The Guardian already in the bag. Fortunately he’s not restricting himself to short things, and has also produced this huge book. ! It’s about a neat, tidy man, who lives on an island of extremely orderly people. He likes everything to be just so, from what he eats for tea through to the music he listens to (Eternal Flame by the Bangles, on a constant loop). Then, one day, in a situation that channels the spirit of Roald Dahl, he starts growing a beard. This isn’t just any old beard, it’s prolific. It grows at a
See also: Video interview with Stephen Collins
REVIEWS
DROWNTOWN Robbie Morrison, Jim Murray Jonathan Cape £12.99 • No digital edition Reviewed by Andy Shaw The first in a series of graphic novels, this first volume of Drowntown is an extremely promising start. With two of 2000AD’s finest writing and illustrating the book, and it coming out of the Jonathan Cape stable, it’s almost not worth pondering over – you know you want it. ! In a futuristic London, the water levels have risen to the extent that the city streets are underwater, creating a grimy, sewage-filled world where cars have been replaced by boats. Think of a dirtier, rougher, sprawling Venice.
! Leo Noiret is an ex-cop turned bodyguard and private investigator, who’s rescued from a corrupt cop by a wealthy and very attractive patron: a rich young woman who has everything, except any memory of her life up to the age of 19. She wants Leo to dig (or, more accurately, splash) around in the city’s underworld to try to find out who she is and why her memory’s been wiped. ! It’s not the first time noir has been merged with science fiction, but the execution is absolutely first class. Murray’s illustration is simply stunning, bringing a photorealistic touch but not shying away from comic exaggeration. His depiction of a submerged London is a marvel of shiny new future skyscrapers next to run-down, semisubmerged landmarks. Below the waterline he shows a filthy, grimy world of sunken rubbish and forgotten trash. ! Likewise, his characters are amazing. Leo is an overweight fighter, built like a bull in a Hawaiian shirt. His patron is stunningly beautiful. And the city is populated with talking animals, in the style of Blacksad, who are the unfortunate result of genetic fiddling. ! Morrison’s plot may not feel original but his script is razor-sharp. The dialogue is tight and focused, and the pacing is spot on, as the story flits around the past and present, revealing more about the mysterious patron’s past than Leo knows, keeping the reader well ahead of the game. ! Together, Morrison and Murray have created a wonderful piece of cross-genre fiction, a homage to both noir and sci-fi, honing it down to a gritty but beautiful piece of work. Bring on Book 2. ∞ Andy Shaw is the editor of Grovel. To see more reviews of graphic novels, visit www.grovel.org.uk See also: Robbie Morrison and Jim Murray at EIBF
WEBCOMICS • RUSSELL WILLIS
ESSENTIAL WEBCOMICS BOULET Strip Briefly
THE LONG JOURNEY The incredible Boulet makes his second appearance in this column with a wonderful example of the infinite canvas made possible with digital comics. The infinite canvas, of course, was first popularised by Sco@ McCloud in his ReinvenJng Comics, published over 12 years ago. Here, a bored, digiFsed Boulet goes on an exploraFon of a whole range of fantasy landscapes. A delighHul trip down the digital rabbit-‐hole. Just remember to keep on scrolling!
GAVIN AUNG THAN Strip Briefly
A CARTOONIST’S ADVICE Gavin Aung Than turns speeches and monologues by the well-‐ known into great li@le strips. Here he takes the words of one of the masters of sequenFal art, Bill Wa@erson, as his source material. Wa@erson, of course, is the creator of Calvin & Hobbes, and famously decided to stop the strip at its peak before it went stale, refusing to cash in on the huge demand for Calvin and Hobbes merchandise. A great man of huge integrity. The speech is from a 1990 commencement.
LAUREN LOPRETE Strip Briefly
THIS CHARMING CHARLIE A surprisingly affecFng mashup of Smiths lyrics and Peanuts strips. There is a legal tussle as to whether the mashup is fair use or copyright infringement, so rush to see Snoopy consider, atop his dog house, whether the body rules the mind or the mind rules the body. Also see Charlie Brown plainFvely note: “And when I’m lying in my bed, I think about life and and I think about death and neither one parFcularly appeals to me.” I used that as a chat-‐up line when I was 17. It didn’t work.
DIGITAL EXPLORER
A LAND OF POSSIBILITIES Digital comics give me a headache. They have infinite potential, thwarted by an ugly clamour of distribution methods all shouting over each other, and archaic pricing structures that offer no reward for cutting out the physical product. Convenience should be the real draw for digital comics in theory, because so many of us don’t have time to visit our local comic book stores, but the convenience of buying comics in bed is undermined by the tragic inconsistency of what is and isn’t available to buy digitally.
“The convenience of buying comics in bed is undermined by the tragic inconsistency of what is and isn’t available to buy digitally.“ THE BIG PLAYERS The publishers like Panel Nine that offer genuine value and respect to their book lists are few and far between. ComiXology might hold an overwhelming market share, but they don’t even respect their customers enough to invest in software that doesn’t pixelate the pages as you swipe between them. Don’t even get me started on the fact that when their servers were overloaded by people downloading free Marvel comics NOBODY could access any of their paid ComiXology content! ! Madefire are creating spectacular content by top-tier creators, but let’s be honest, we’re all wondering how they’re going to turn a profit and at what point we’ll have to start paying for the titles that they’re hooking us on. As fantastic as their brash, dynamic comics are, they’re something new, not a substitute for traditional comics.
WHY SO SERIOUS? When Russell Willis invited me to write a column about going digital, I thought it would be a piece of cake. Hell, I’ve written about comics for national and international magazines, even literary journals, and professionally one of my roles is to write about cutting-edge developments in software and technology. I should be able to write for Infinity in my sleep, but I can’t,
PM BUCHAN PM Buchan is the lead comic book columnist for Starburst magazine and considers himself to be a vocal advocate for the BriKsh comic book industry. When not culKvaKng his obsession with comics he writes novels about the end of the world, watches horror films, and reads books about the Manson family. He now sincerely hopes that all his favourite comic creators will announce their plans to create work with the iPad in mind so that he can ditch his colossal collecKon of gradually-‐ decaying printed material.
DIGITAL EXPLORER because eight months since buying my iPad I still struggle when browsing for new comics to read. ! What kind of a world is it where somebody that studied comics at university, managed a comic book store, led graphic novel reading groups for young people and has access to review materials from every major publisher can’t find anything exciting to write about in a digital comics column? There’s no doubt that I’m looking for news in the wrong places, but in all this time the only reliable source I’ve found has been Infinity, and I can’t just write about the comics my editor was talking about two months ago!
“Is it too much to ask for a simple, streamlined way to search for what is and isn’t available digitally?“ ! Whenever I pick up my iPad and try to decide what to review or write about, I despair. iBooks, Kindle, the App Store, in-app stores… where do I begin looking? Is it too much to ask for a simple, streamlined way to search for what is and isn’t available digitally?
PIMPING OUR WARES Selling digital comics is even harder than buying them. I found out recently that Kate Brown has illustrated an issue of the Marvel series Young Avengers. Kate coloured the cover to the first issue of a gothic-horror series that I created called La Belle Dame Sans Merci, so this should be the perfect opportunity for me to pick up new readers. It works in theory, but the only way that I can become more visible is by making LBDSM available on as many platforms as possible. ! Right now I sell my comics through a Big Cartel store linked to a Pulley account that
sends files to buyers, and this simple solution works for independent creators as well as it does for art collectives like 44FLOOD, whose first Kickstarter for a comic raised $132,538. Big Cartel and Pulley represent a very economical and direct way to sell both physical and digital comics, but only to people that visit your website looking to buy your work. They’re useless if I’m trying to sell to Apple users, who expect convenience above all things.
COMPROMISE AFTER COMPROMISE I’ve got a graphic designer working on making LBDSM more widely available, but every day he sends me another email asking what type of ebook file he should create? What are the specifications for ComiXology submissions? Should it be an app or an iBook? He’s putting together a Kindle version for me even though I know that most people would resent reading LBDSM on a device that it wasn’t created for, a device that might not show the lettering very legibly, but how else can I make my comics available to casual browsers on Amazon? I’ve gone to the effort of creating a series based on a poem by John Keats so the least I can do is help more readers to find it when they’re searching for Keats. ! I’d love my comics to be easily available on Apple devices, but we’ve all heard stories about the censorship (or if you’re feeling generous, ‘risk management’) that Apple enforces on its content. My satirical horror anthology Blackout was almost refused by the printers, and contains booze, death-bymisadventure, necrophilia, cannibalism and suicide in just one of its many offensive stories. If Joe Casey can’t get a comic called Sex approved through ComiXology then what chance do I have with Blackout, the comic that elicited nothing but dirty laughter from Lost Girls co-creator Melinda Gebbie?!
DIGITAL EXPLORER ! I HATE THIS. Why can’t I read a review of an award-winning comic and then easily buy the digital version on my iPad? Why do I spend so much time working with artists, letterers and graphic designers to get my comics ready for print if we then have to put just as much effort in submitting the comics to each different digital platform? I work full time and have two children that never sleep. All I want to do with my free time is make comics and occasionally read them. Why do both have to be so difficult?
THE DIGITAL FUTURE ComiXology won the war to distribute superhero comics and I can accept that. Marvel and DC publish nothing but decadespanning soap operas anyway, and I can no longer bring myself to buy never-ending soap operas chapter by chapter. ComiXology offer only negligible incentives for buying full story
arcs or collected editions, and if they ever fail then they’re taking your comic collection with them. I have no great love for Comixology. ! If superhero comics are spoken for then I want somebody to create a streamlined solution for the rest of the comic book industry. I want somewhere that I can easily read Archaia’s Tale of Sand or Tony Millionaire’s Maakies. I want my peers to have somewhere to sell their comics that will be easy and intuitive, so that they can concentrate on creating better comics instead of better salespeople. Panel Nine have done a great job with a select handful of comic creators, but I want to see similar opportunities opened up to the rest of us. Until that happens, digital comics will continue to display infinite potential, obscured by a war between distributors and platforms where nobody wins. ∞ This is Phillip’s last Digital Explorer column.
A CRIME-NOIR THRILLER FROM DAVID LLOYD, THE ARTIST BEHIND V FOR VENDETTA “Frankly, all digitally released graphic novels should be given this amount of care.” – Spandexless “[It] works beautifully and looks gorgeous. It would be a crime not to buy it.” – Comic Heroes “Fantastic! Go buy it!” – David Hine
PARTY PEOPLE
EDINBURGH BOOK FESTIVAL
Robert Crumb
The British comics scene is healthier than ever, with an amazing and ever-‐expanding selection of comics and graphic novels being released. And that calls for a party! Well, lots of parties, actually; industry events, book launches, exhibitions and more. There’s loads of stuff happening, and our Party People section – with your help – will show you the photos. In this issue of Infinity we’re kicking off with the recent SEQUENTIAL and Graphic Scotland party at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, and in future issues we’ll be showing pictures from wherever we or our readers have been. So if you go to a comics-‐related event, please take some pictures and send them to us. (And it doesn’t have to be British! We’d love to see photos from events you’ve been to anywhere in the world.)
Stephen Collins, winner of the 9th Art Award, with his collecKon of prizes
STRIPPED AT EDINBURGH COMICS GET LITERARY
This year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival was the first to host Stripped, a strand of the festival exclusively dedicated to comics and graphic novels. Stripped boasted a mini comics fair and a whole host of events led by the likes of Neil Gaiman, Paul Gravett, Bryan and Mary Talbot, Posy Simmonds, Hannah Berry, Glyn Dillon and many more. It was also the inaugural 9th Art Award, with an after party hosted by SEQUENTIAL and Graphic Scotland…
The 9th Art Award ceremony, with Mary Talbot, Paul GraveE, Gordon Robertson and Billy Kirkwood
PARTY PEOPLE
Sandra Marrs and John Chalmers (metaphrog)
Rob Davis (Nelson, Don Quixote) and Nora Goldberg (Knockabout Comics)
Hannah Berry (Adam<ne, Bri2en and Brulightly) and Hannah Eaton (Naming Monsters) Rutu Modan (Exit Wounds, The Property) and Paul GraveE (Comica) Chloë Pursey (Panel Nine), John McShane (Graphic Scotland) and Mary Talbot (Do2er of her Father’s Eyes) The entrance to the book fesKval in CharloEe Square
PARTY PEOPLE
Mary Talbot, Corinne Pearlman (Myriad) and Bryan Talbot (Grandville)
Coll Hamilton (See Far Enough), who won an iPad at the party Emma Hayley (SelfMadeHero) and Rob Davis
Kate Charlesworth (Nelson), Mary Talbot and Pete Renshaw (Plan B Books) Neil Gaiman spoEed backstage at a photoshoot with some sand, man…
∞ INFINITY PHOTOGRAPHS ∞
Send us photos from events you’ve been to! Email your images to contact@ienglish.com. Remember to tell us who or what they’re of.
EVENTS • RUSSELL WILLIS
GET OUT! ALTERNATIVE PRESS EXPO (APE)
LAKES COMICS ART FESTIVAL
THOUGHT BUBBLE
Where?
San Francisco, USA
Where?
Kendal, UK
Where?
Leeds, UK
When?
October 12-‐16, 2013
When?
October 18-‐20, 2013
When?
November 17-‐24, 2013
Price?
$10 per day (deals available)
Price?
£25 for a weekend pass
Price?
FREE
URL?
www.comic-‐con.org/ape/
URL?
h@p://www.comicarHesFval.com
URL?
h@p://thoughtbubblefesFval.com
Type?
AlternaKve
Type?
AlternaKve and mainstream
Type?
AlternaKve and mainstream
Briefly
The people who bring you the massive, scary San Diego Comic-‐Con also have something for those tired of spandex. APE boasts around 5,000 attendees and, this year, special guests Bill Griffith, Diane Noomin, Raina Telgemeier and Anders Nilsen (below). The event is at the weekend, and you can stop by the booths of Fantagraphics, Top Shelf, NBM, Drawn & Quarterly and others.
Briefly
The Lakes InternaKonal Comic Art FesKval is modelled on the European comic fesKvals such as Angoulême. They aim to create an ‘en fete’ atmosphere, making the whole of the Lake District town of Kendal part of the fesKval. There’s a great range of talks, live drawing events, workshops, films, exhibiKons and a kids’ zone. Special guests include Bryan Talbot and Posy Simmonds (below).
Briefly
This year’s programme includes free comics workshops for young people and adults, an academic conference, talks and masterclasses lead by industry professionals, and a programme of sequential art-‐related film screenings. The two-‐day convention includes an incredible line-‐up of leading artists and writers including ILYA (below), and over 300 exhibitors. Plus the British Comic Awards!
LETTERS Le^ers may be edited for length, clarity, and interest. Comments within /( )/ are by Russell Willis. Send your le^ers to Russell at contact@ienglish.com
Kevin Mutch • New Jersey, USA As a comics maker I’ve been interested in digital comics for a long time, hoping that they’ll solve the single biggest problem comics have – the lack of an audience. ! Here in the US there’s a large and enthusiastic community of artists making serious comics, which grows every year, but the means of distribution available to them are all very limited: indie comics conventions (which are largely attended by other artists and are notoriously more a chance to network than to sell many books), distribution through the ‘direct market’ of comic book shops (which is small and weighted toward the superhero comics audience), or webcomics (which are oriented toward short attention spans because of the nature of reading on a desktop computer and are easily lost in the blizzard of Internet content). ! I think these constraints have led to a second problem: comics which get made for the tiny audiences of insiders that remain for both mainstream and indie comics are increasingly self-referential and mannered. In the indie world, many comics are about
comics, or about making comics, or aren’t about anything at all – just formalist explorations, the sort of ‘art comics’ that have dominated the landscape here in the States for the last decade or so. /(Interesting. I wonder if the same could be said of the UK? -- RW)/ ! Most of that doesn’t interest me very much, so I’ve been delighted to see tablet computers arrive with the prospect of connecting directly with a broader audience that might have no real history with comics but might be open to deeper and more demanding work once they have a chance to see it. SEQUENTIAL (and Infinity) are exactly what I’ve been hoping for, so my fingers are crossed and I’m hoping it’s a huge success! /(Likewise! But we do need everyone’s help in spreading the word. -- RW)/ ! Having said all that, I want to mention my own, personal reaction to the advent of ‘tablet comics’ in the last couple of years. As much as I love reading comics on my iPad I’ve been surprised to find myself still buying comics as physical books. I didn’t realize how much I still wanted... not so much the fetishy experience of ink on paper that lots of people
LETTERS talk about, but the trophy object, I suppose. The prize to add to the shelf. /(Yes, this was something I found hard to get over too. I had walls of CDs, DVDs and books... now just the latter, and as mentioned in a previous issue, this is looking more like a self-identity time capsule as time goes by and most of my purchases are digital. -- RW)/ ! Since I’m so hopeful about digital comics distribution this actually worried me a bit – after all, if someone like me isn’t downloading comics, how many other people will? Then, over the summer, I happened to notice the OFF LIFE anthologies available for free on SEQUENTIAL. Being on vacation with no access to printed comics (and with nothing to lose!) I downloaded an issue and read it, getting exposed to all sorts of British artists I might never otherwise have seen. Immediately, I wanted another issue and then another one after that, until I read them all. ! Then, just yesterday, I noticed that Terry Wiley’s book VerityFair was on sale on SEQUENTIAL for a single dollar. Despite the fact that I’m not familiar with Wiley’s work (other than an excerpt I saw in Infinity) I couldn’t pass up such a great deal. ! This was the very first time in my life I actually paid any money for a digital comic. Which made me realize two things: ! - Despite loving books on paper, I’m willing to buy an ebook if it’s significantly cheaper than the paper version. One dollar for an entire graphic novel obviously takes this to an extreme but I think there are a lot of books I’d download for say, five bucks that I’d either never read or only buy in paper if they were ten dollars. ! - Context matters a lot. The fact that Wiley’s book had been profiled in Infinity and was available on SEQUENTIAL lent it real credibility to me. Had it been part of the unorganized mass on Amazon or Comixology I would have probably never seen it or
skipped right past it. ! I’ve enjoyed every issue of Infinity immensely, and just want to close by mentioning how different it feels to read a magazine about comics on a tablet than to surf say, the Comics Journal site. The web seems to encourage skimming – an ephemeral interaction. When I finish an issue of Infinity, I’m conscious of reaching the end of a discrete package of ideas which have been dealt with at depth and I immediately look forward to the next issue – which is a great feeling to have again. /( You saying that is appreciated more than you can imagine, Kevin, as it is exactly what I was hoping for, but sadly have received almost no feedback on… *sob* ! Kevin Mutch, of course, is the creator of the Xeric Award-winning Fantastic Life, available on SEQUENTIAL. -- RW)/ Nick Dawkins • London, UK I notice that Infinity is silent when it comes to terminology. It seems that the words comic, comics, graphic novels, sequential art, art, medium, comic strip, etc. etc. are being used randomly... Has anyone done any proper linguistic analysis on these terms and how they should be used? I was amused by the British Comic Awards having Lenny Henry as a judge. Did he believe that the awards were for comedians but then politely went along anyway when he found out that these were the type of comics that you read? /(This is an interest of mine, and I’m hoping that we’ll have something on this very topic next issue! There has been much previous discussion about the meaning of ‘graphic novel’: e.g. by Eddie Campbell. What do you think? Keep those letters coming! -- RW)/ ∞ SEND US YOUR THOUGHTS ∞
Let us know what you think about Infinity, or about comics in general. Send your letters to contact@ienglish.com.
OPINION
THE LAST WORD… HOW BIG IS THE MARKET FOR SEQUENTIAL ART?
One quesEon that seems to stump most insiders in the comics world is about the size of the market for non-‐superhero comics for adults. The answers are almost always guesses, and at best aren’t clear as to whether the amounts are retail sales value or revenues to publishers, and what exactly is included or excluded from the figures. The Bookseller recently ran an article on the graphic novel business in the UK and included some numbers that looked extremely unreliable. Apparently sales of graphic novels for adults in 2002 were only £140,000, but had grown to £1.5 million by 2012. Elsewhere, a top creator claimed he’d been told by a leading publisher that the unit sales of graphic novels in the UK numbered around one million. Given that the average retail price of a graphic novel might be £10, that would mean we’re looking at a market size of around £10 million – twice the high end figure I’ve been given privately by a graphic novel publishing company. Figures in the USA seem to be easier to get, but ambiguity remains. Should The Walking Dead collections be included in the figures for ‘literary graphic novels’ just because they’re not superhero books? And if they are, then we need to know what percentage of the total they represent to account for the distorting effect of a TV-‐powered publishing phenomenon.
MARKETING MILK So what’s the real size of the market, and why does it ma6er? Well, firstly, a market for your work is something that every creator and publisher will care about deeply – and readers should hope for the financial success of graphic novel publishers if only to ensure they get more good graphic novels. Secondly, at least in the UK, discussions are being had about geWng together graphic novel publishers and combining forces with creators and readers to promote the art form that we all love. The organisaEon is sEll in the discussion stages but would be something akin to a ‘Milk MarkeEng Board’ for sequenEal art, pooling publicity and markeEng techniques and using help from comics-‐related celebriEes to bring the art form to the a6enEon of the general public – without the Bam! Pow! Biff! headlines... In an issue or two, we’re planning to run a special – and hopefully authoritaEve – feature on the market for graphic novels in North America and the UK. We hope that we can tease out baselines that will help us track progress as the ‘MarkeEng Board’ goes into acEon. Your help and feedback are very welcome!
RUSSELL WILLIS Russell has worked in publishing for over 25 years, specialising in digital media. In 1993 he set up a mulKmedia development company in Japan which produced customised language-‐ learning sooware for Canon and published a large number of successful language-‐learning sooware products, including Finding Out, a joint venture with Macmillan described by Modern Educa<on as the ‘best language-‐ learning sooware for children available’. He has created products for TIME, the BriKsh government, Oxford University Press, and many more. Russell’s audiobooks, podcasts, and iOS apps have all reached the No.1 spot in Apple’s iTunes charts in Japan. He is the president of Panel Nine.