Laydeez Do Comics June 20th Meeting

Hi, my name is Mike Medaglia. I am a London based Cartoonist, originally from Canada. Check out some of my work at: http://www.facebook.com/taoistartist I have been going to Laydeez do Comics for a few months now, and this month I am honored to be blogging for it, which is daunting because this was a night to remember! I have never blogged before, so I am excited to make my first blog about this event!

At the start of each Laydeez Do Comics meet, everyone attending is asked to introduce themselves, and what they do, and then answer a question of Sarah or Nicola's choosing. Some people are fine with it and some people shy up but always there are many laughs to follow people’s answers and it gives the room a lighter more intimate feel. The question asked on the night of June 20 was,"What was something that frightened you this week?" The four speakers of the night answered thus:

Andrew Godfrey: “In ten minutes time I have to talk in front of you.”

Katie Green: “…The scariest thing is my mum and dad saying they want to come along and watch tonight…they’re not here.”

Charles Hatfield: “In flight turbulence.”

Joumana Medlej: “This presentation I’m giving.”

This was the start of what was a great evening for comics!

Andrew Godfrey

The first speaker to take the stage and impress us all was Andrew Godfrey. A Bristol based blogger and cartoonist who has focused a lot of his creativity on his work titled, The Clichéd Artist: Autobiographical Comics by Andrew Godfrey. The work deals quite openly with Andrew's own struggles with Cystic Fibrosis, which is a recessive genetic illness. Andrew referred to it as a “Sexy Disease” because of excess build up various fluids, Andrew's talk was sprinkled with his humor! Andrew's work deals with the various situations he has found himself in as a result of his degenerative illness. It shows the brutal physiotherapist he has dealt with over the years, which made him writhe in pain or the endless trouble that his digestive tract gives him as a result of C.F. It is very funny and very moving work.

As he talked about his struggles he was open, honest and confident which made the audience comfortable listening to his intimate experiences. He demanded no pity and has used his struggles to fuel his wonderful and expressive comics.

Andrew explained that a major inspiration for him was Bob Flanagan. He showed a clip from SICK: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, a 1997 documentary film directed by Kirby Dick about Bob Flanagan, a Los Angeles writer, poet, performance artist, comic and BDSM celebrity, who suffered from and later died of cystic fibrosis. He explained how he used his first piece of comic art, titled, The Selfish Gene, to explore C.F. with “no idealism about illness”.  He also talked about his experiences on web forums where he found people were sometimes not very supportive and even competitive stating that they were “Sicker then you”. Andrew found this less then helpful, and mentioned that for him sitting around talking about his illness is not great, that he would rather just get on with his life. This is an idea that can be translated to anyone who dwells on the bad and misses the good in life.

Andrew also has a website called Graphic Engine where he blogs about comics mostly, but also film and various other things! Check it out there is some great stuff on there: http://itsallaboutthecomics.blogspot.com/

Another aspect of Andrew’s life is his work as a feminist, which he sometimes struggles to identify with. He joking has been called a “Self hating male.”

Andrew’s talk was funny and his work was inspiring. It made me happy to see someone who has taken the struggles that he has been handed and turned them into personal and engaging art! I hope Andrew keeps going and keeps providing the world with his sequential stories and informative blogs.

Katie Green

Katie was the second speaker of the night and had a few similarities to Mr. Godfrey, she is a cartoonist and blogger, also from Bristol. Her first graphic novel titled, Lighter Than My Shadow (set to be released in early 2013 by Jonathan Cape) deals with her own struggles with sickness. Yet, being a very personal presentation the differences were greater then the similarities.

Katie focused on three different areas in her talk. First she talked about her on going zine titled The Green Bean, which she sells on her own itsy shop, check it out here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/katiegreen The Green Bean feels like a visual diary, compiling sketches and blurbs from her daily life. Including reviews of books she’s read and wonderful recipes she has created herself!

Second, Katie talked about her degree piece, which was a very intricate map, hand drawn which told a story of its own. It was a lovely piece and she has been asked to design something similar for the cover of Solpistic 4: http://solipsisticpop.com/2011/06/08/solipsistic-pop-4/ A magazine that complies various UK based artists.

Lastly, Katie told us about he first graphic novel that she is currently working on. The book deals with Katie’s very personal struggles suffering from and overcoming anorexia. After struggling to identify the sickness in herself and getting to the point where the doctors told her that she would only have two weeks to live if she kept going as she was, it has now been 10 years since she started her recovery. A great feat that has now found her, over the past few years, in a good spot to put her stories together into a book that will certainly become a resource for other people fighting with this disease. She was very generous with experiences and when she shared them with us it felt like she was giving us a gift or sharing something sacred. The audience was captivated and with each story the tension in the room became more and more heightened as a result of us all feeling closer to Katie and her struggles. She did not appear vulnerable and had clearly over come her sickness and turned it into 'armour’, knowing that if she could amount to so much, then she must be strong. It was very moving!

Katie said that it was difficult for her and her partner to be rehashing all these trying times in her past, but on occasion she has someone tell her that her work has helped them in their struggles. After that she knows it has been and will be worth it.

Katie had the great luck of twice being part of a wonderful course on graphic novels as part of the Arvon Foundation: http://www.arvonfoundation.org/pc652.html She has been asked to speak at it this year, which is very exciting! Check it out; it definitely seems like a great resource for aspiring graphic novelists.

Thank you Katie for inspiring people to tell their own story, whatever that may be, and to be proud of what you have been through as it defines the person you become.

See all of Katie’s work here:

• http://www.katiegreen.co.uk
• http://www.katiegreenbean.blogspot.com
• https://www.facebook.com/katiegreenbean?ref=ts
  

Charles Hatfield

The third speaker of the night was very intellectually stimulating, a true comics scholar. Charles Hatfield is a professor of English at California State University Northridge. Along with his English classes, he has started a number of courses focusing on the study of comics, some looking at the superhero in comics and others looking at newer aspects, such as the graphic novel.

A very humorous and sweet man, Charles said that being a professor of comics is like being part of a “perpetual, life long independent study.” Perhaps that is true, but it is people like Charles that will take comics into its next stage of existence, where it can be analyzed, categorized and through that evolve. Charles said that people struggle to develop the study of comics because of a lack of a formal degree, so that students will rehash old ideas as if new, simply because they are not aware of other discoveries in the field. There is already a strong intellectual conversation happening in comics but it needs to find its way formally into the ‘institution’.

On top of Charles wonderful work as a professor, he is also an author. He currently has one book published titled Alternative Comics, which explores the history of the world of independent, underground and alternative comics. Currently he is working on his second book looking at the fantastical art of Jack Kirby. These are two strands of his work on comics, and a third being comics in children’s culture, which is a natural progression for him since he also teaches children’s literature as an English professor.

Charles explained that as he works with literature, he loved having comics as part of his interdisciplinary practice. After a while he realized that he needed comics to be there for him, a feeling I can certainly relate too and I know a lot of other people who feel the same. Works of sequential art seem to enrapture the mind and the active reading of a comic demands the mind to experience art in a way no other art form can.

But is it an art form? The way that Charles stimulated the mind of the comic lovers in the crowd had us delving into such topics as whether comics can be art. I am sure the talk could have gone on all night and I hope that in the future there is a chance to delve further into the plentiful depths of Charles Hatfield’s mind!

Joumana Medlej

The final speaker of the night is a Lebanese comic artist, based in Beirut. Joumana Medlej is the creator of Malaak, Angel of Peace, who is the heroine of Lebanon’s first superhero comic. Check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/malaakofpeace?ref=ts or here http://malaakonline.com/ or you can even download the very sleek IPad app, just search Malaak! Working extremely hard, Joumana writes and illustrates all the Malaak stories, which is quite an accomplishment since the artwork is very intricate and beautiful.

Joumana grew up in Beirut during the unfortunate civil wars that Lebanon has faced over the past decades. Joumana remembers the wars and the bombing that resulted and says that when there were bombs that meant no school and she would be stuck indoors. But at these times Joumana learned to draw to pass the time and ward off boredom and all these years later now uses her ability to create the stories of Malaak. Through this she is able to help build Lebanon’s comics culture and to give her country a symbolic angel, Malaak being the Arabic word for angel.

Malaak is a heroine that is referred to as a guardian by night. She helps protect the Lebanese people from rather fierce looking nonhuman adversaries. Joumana did not want to have her character fighting other humans; she did not want to show more terror and violence between people (something real life provides more then enough of). Malaak was born from the nut of a Cedar tree, the cedar tree being a very powerful symbol of Lebanon. The cedar has always been associated with Lebanon and Malaak was born long ago and is as old as her country. This means that she was born before all the politics of Lebanon and the countries surrounding it. Be sure to check out Malaak, Angel of Peace, you can read it online!

Thanks for this wonderful talk Joumana and for sharing your history and the history of your fantastic country with us. You can find some of Joumana’s other work here: https://www.facebook.com/joumanamedlej

That is my account of this very special night at Laydeez Do Comics. The nice thing about having two bloggers as speakers is that we get blogs recording their own accounts of the night. Check them out here: http://katiegreenbean.blogspot.com/2011/06/after-laydeez-1.html for Katie’s blog or check out what Andrew had to say here: http://itsallaboutthecomics.blogspot.com/2011/06/laydeez-do-comics-20th-june-with-katie.html

Well, that’s all, until we meet again,

Mike Medaglia

Laydeez Do Comics May Meeting

So, it finally happened. I have been asked to be the Laydeez Do Comics Blogguest for the May event! A big honour, but also a big responsibility :)
Oh well, if I manage to survive the dreaded introduction + monthly question at the beginning of every Laydeez meetup, I can do everything :)

My name is Francesca Mancuso. I work as a web developer in London; I quite like it, but in my spare time I prefer more creative activities.

I've always loved drawing; I grew up watching every possible Japanese anime the TV was broadcasting (ie, loads) and reading all the manga I could read. Since I moved to London (from Italy) and met wonderful, talented artists/illustrators/writers, I've become more and more interested in graphic novels. The link to my website is http://www.dreamsaddict.com/illustrations

The first presentation was by Paula Knight
Paula has been a freelance illustrator for about 15 years. She has done a lot of children's illustrations, but recently she is getting into the idea of writing a graphic novel.


Initially she worked with torn paper collage and pencil crayon, but then she had to stop for a while because of a strain injury for tearing a lot of paper!
When she started working again, she began using acrylics.
She has an agent, who often complained that the eyes of her characters were too cartoony. I personally found that they were perfect, but I am a big fan of manga and cute cartoony characters :)


She also illustrated a lot of books for education, e.g. safety. We were shown some examples of these illustrations, which were done for publication both in the US and in the UK. So to make the drawings work for both audiences, the person driving the car was sitting in the middle of the car, neither on the left nor on the right!
Then came some samples of illustrations from an anthology of stories for girls (Chicken Licken, Wifred Wolfred), some Christmas card designs for John Lewis (digital work), and an illustrated Korean folk tale (Fat Fox and Fine Crane).
In recent years she has started writing her own stories. She has recently signed her first 2 contracts as an author for picture books (Bright Agency).
The last part of the talk was dedicated to a short story that Paula entered for the Cape Graphic Short Story competition a few years ago. The title is "How a baby is made - an autobiography of finding out". It was never meant to be a short story, more like a template for the graphic novel she is going to write. Still, it was surely a good thing for her to have a deadline to work to.


The story starts with Paula as a child, growing up and gradually discovering how a baby is made, which is quite entertaining. But it also includes the story of the 3 miscarriages she had, the last of which was quite painful.
I am personally looking forward to reading this graphic novel, I hope I won't have to wait too long! :)


Alex Fitch
Alex presents the UK only radio show about comics every Thursday at 5pm on 104.4FM. All the podcasts of his interviews can be found at http://www.alexfitch.com/.


He happened to work for the radio without having any training, starting many years ago working in a video shop in south London. He used to write reviews for the in-house magazine and for the covers of videos/DVDs. One day he tried to get himself fired by writing a terrible review for "A Shark's Tale"… The review started with: "This is borderline, sexist, homophobic and racist…"… And he got promoted!


At the same time he started putting a few reviews in the internet. Also his flatmate was doing a degree in music technology and he had some work training at Resonance FM, so he invited him to the programme he was producing.
The station was thinking of doing a film show every week and Alex was asked if he wanted to contribute to this show.
He ended up doing the 3rd episode that they broadcast and in a few weeks he was broadcasting every week on Resonance FM.
It didn't have to be just about film: every kind of narrative was fine, photography, history paintings, comics… Since Alex has always been a fan of comics, he started doing interviews with comic artists.
Paul Gravett was one of the first comics-related people he interviewed.


Soon Alex realised that the Films Show was becoming a Comics Show. He asked to change his show to a Comics Show and got permission. The new name was Panel Borders, mostly because all the other comic terms were taken by other people for websites and magazines!
The first big name he interviewed was Allan Moyle, and after that many doors were opened to him. Recently he has started grouping the shows around a single monthly theme.
Coming soon are medical comics, and next months' theme will be superhero comics.


Alex is also doing podcasts for other people, like Sci-fi London.
Most important, he does the podcasts for Laydeez Do Comics http://laydeezdopodcasts.wordpress.com :)


He also wrote a few comics, 3 in total, 2 of which were entered to the Observer Short Story Competition.
He commissions films reviews in comics format every month for a magazine call The Electric Sheep.


Jo Tyler
Jo worked for The BBC for 12-15 years, then launched a station called 6 Music in 2002. So her background was very much audio and music (originally a sound producer for the theatre), while in her spare time in London she was digging around comics shops, especially for independent comics.


She doesn't draw comics herself, even though she claims she is inspired by the fact that you don't need to draw beautifully to write a good story (same here Jo!).


She left her job because she wasn't allowed to do what she wanted to do, ie playing with sound. So, without regretting leaving her job, she went to Sundland University and studied for an MA in Radio Production and played around for a year, partly making radio drama, specifically adaptations of the comics she really loved.


After graduating, she did a phD about different radio and the use of sounds in different ways. She called her work (in progress) Pictures to Sound.


The examples we were shown/made listen to were the adaptations of 2 graphic novels.
1. Salmon Doubts by Adam Sacks
2. Lobo published by DC Comics
I enjoyed so much listening to these tracks. It's not something I can describe easily. I suggest that you listen to the podcast as soon as it is available!


Mary Talbot
Mary was welcomed with a big applause as soon as she was introduced :)


This is the first time she has given a presentation about her first graphic novel, written in collaboration with her husband Bryan Talbot who created the artwork. Wow, that's exciting!


As an academic she has been teaching and researching about feminist linguistic and gender studies. She has now retired from academia.


The graphic novel is a graphic memoir, a combination between personal history and biography of James Joyce's daughter, Lucia Joyce. It starts with her sitting on a train, reading a biography, falling asleep. The plot is a combination of coming-of-age stories, set in two different historical periods, both contrasted by social expectations and gender politics.


Why this connection between Mary and Lucia? Both the women's parents are called James and Nora. Also, Mary's father was a Joycean scholar.


Mary's childhood is set in the 50's, in Lancashire, in an Anglo catholic environment. She had four big brothers. She discovered gender only at school. At that time girls were segregated and secluded. Father was busy, always argumentative, talking a lot with quotation, Mary a little bratty teenager. The graphic novel explores the contrasting relationship between father and daughter.


I love the fact that Mary's boards are coloured in sepia, while the scenes from Lucia's life have a blue tint.


The story follows the fortunes of Joyce's family. For a while they lived in Trieste (I know this very well, Trieste is my home town!). James was working as an English tutor with methods, that were as unconventional as his personal life. They moved then to Paris, where James found a publisher (Sylvia Beach) and a patron. Lucia was an accomplished dancer. Mary was a dancer as well, even though apparently a much less accomplished one: she didn't last long, while Lucia did.


Lucia lived in a wonderful period, in the 20s, when she could be involved in a lot of experimental (modernist) dance, while her father was involved in experimental (modernist) writing. She didn't get support though from her father for her dancing career. Both her parents very discouraging. She was told to stop dancing because it was too hard for her, an obsession that had gone too far.
This had tragic consequences for her. She spent most of her life in mental institutions.


The book is called  Dotter of her Father's Eyes, is scheduled for publication by Jonathan Cape in the UK and Dark Horse in the US in March 2012, even though it is already complete! Boo, I can't wait!

Laydeez do Comics April Meeting

Edd Baldry by Lucy Bergonzi

I am Abi Higgs. I'm a massage therapist and studying counselling. My link to drawing is all quite new, I made a selection of mini one page comics in 2004/2005 about the Sun & Moon chatting in space and as of last year I started getting into it more and making comics that are usually autobiographical or in someway related to my own experiences.

There was a good turn out at tonight's event with a lot of hustle and bustle at the
beginning. The evening took off with the question, "Have you read anything
interesting recently?" This was a good question and 
Carly Guest who I was sitting next to and I, kept writing down titles of books people mentioned.


Edd Baldry 


Is a positive, smiley characther who's comic I actually swapped with (his The Death of a Salesman) at my very first LDC and which I have mentioned to people in conversation a few times. He does a number of things but he first started making zines before comics. He started with one him and his friends created when he was seventeen to which they gave the title Rancid Zine. They pulished 5000 copies of this zine and sold them all and so Rancid was born! This zine catered for the punk scene in the early part of the naughties. It changed its name from Rancid to Last Hours because they didn't want to be associated with the punk band Rancid. Last hours included cultural aspects of things as well as music. 


Edd and his friend Natalie got involved with the network and community of zines and this led to the start of the London Zine Symposium. When Edd suggested to his friends the idea of the Zine Symposium it was laughed off, however they put one on anyway and it was a BIG success. Before the Zine Symposium there hadn't been an event where everyone could meet up and so the Symposium grew into an annual event and has just got bigger each year with different people attending and taking part in each event.


He mentioned how the zine world has changed in the last six years. The content isn't so much about the punk anarachy politics anymore but has broadened out into different areas. People are now expressing their thoughts, visions, creativity through the method of zines in a multitude of topics, I guess the same way music genre has expanded.


The big questions lies with "What is the future of the Zine Symposium?" since Edd plans to step aside. He wonders if it'll still carry on? He also wonders whether the Symposium should try and get funding or go back to being smaller with just punk zines?


Edd moved onto making comics which he started doing in 2007, beginning with one about cancer cells. He's really into french comics and so learnt french by doing so. In his comics he draws himself as a monkey, so works under the psyeudonym of Hey Monkey Riot. He started making diary comics as a strip where he noticed how much his drawing improved from the early part of the diary to later on.


When he went to the G20 protest in 2009 he was really close to the Ian Thomilson incident and made a comic of his experience, which was a vey thought provking piece. In Death of a Salesman it was the first time he had played around with metaphore. Edd didn't want to just publish his own comics, especially since the G20 is a generalised thing.  He decided to publish an anthology against the police and had different people contributing to it from all around the world.


His current working project is based on the Wind In The Willows as an allegory for what's happening on the West Bank in Palestine. He showed us some snippets of the drawings from this project. In some of his work his drawings can be quite sinister with a dark edge and he gives across strong messages with refreshing ideas.


Carly Guest 

A  PHD student looking at Young Women's Feminist Stories. She started gaining interest in this area because of the different ways in which the history of feminist theory in activism has been related through various voices. She talked about how there is a lot

of research about young women's relationship to feminism and how their lives have been touched and influenced by it and feminist ideas. Also, in the last 10 years the internet has made people a lot more aware of different things that have been going on and Carly said she found it interesting how some of these activist groups, either online or off reference the feminist ideas of the 1970's.


She has two studies on the go...In the first one she is looking for female volunteers aged between 18 and 35 to take part in a study of young women's feminist identities. She wants to speak with women in this age bracket about how they developed a feminist conciousness; who influenced them and how they came to see

themselves as femnists - what being a femist means to them. She's interested in talking to them  about personal photos and images that say something about their feminism and identity.

The second study she is working on is a memory group; a group of women who will be invited to write a collective memory. The idea behind this method is that you are thinking about how your personal memories are social memories.  You write memories in response to trigger words and you look at them as a group.  You look for similarities and differences, it's a way of looking at how your personal memories connect.


If you are interested in taking part in this study, or would like further information please contact Carly Email: feministstories@yahoo.co.uk

There was a break for tea, cake, alcohol and the like, with chats and new "Hellos" and the cake was wonderful again!

After the break was the London Print Studio Collective members talked about their works


John Phillips 


is the director of the London Print Studio and told us all about the studio itself. The studio is a space used creativly with traditional and digital print facilities. John noticed the hardship of people coming out of university and how there were never any opportunites for jobs or development. He spoke with an intern who worked at a gallery who mentioned how hard it was and he said that he would commission her to research the idea of an internship scheme for London Print Studio.


They successfully raised some public funding to initiate the internship scheme at  the London Print Studio, which they decided to give a comics focus. Then the talk was handed over to 


Karrie Fransman 
who was employed to manage the scheme.  She spoke about the internship scheme, which is an opportunity to develop professional skills in the creative industry; run comic workshops for 16-20 year olds; receive mentoring from top professional comic creators and publishers in developing your own artistic projects and taking part in creating a graphic novel publication (the anthology). She talked about all the fantastic applications they recieved for the internship. The CV's often including both pictures and words. They selected five lucky people to participate in the six month scheme. They chose the current five because they were brilliant artists and storytellers and they were interested in educating and teaching. The scheme will run again and details will be announced shortly.


Next  the interns spoke about their individual experience of the scheme. 

Isabel Greenberg

graduated from illustration at Brighton. She said the best part of the internship was the workshops and the most rewarding part was working with the kids, that it was a super experience and she strongly recommends it.

Joe Kelly
said he likes reading comics and it was comics that made him start drawing. He wanted to tell stories as well and not just do single images. He found the internship really useful making him think about what he wants to do next. He wants to make his own graphic novel.

William Goldsmith 

or Bill spoke next. He wanted to use the internship to try different things. He was writing a graphic novel before he started the internship, he mentioned that he likes the rhythms of words and sounds of things and how black text on white or white text on black can create a rhythm. He said that the internship has been the nicest thing and it had been cool seeing everyone's work and refreshing to talk to comics people.

Rachel Emily Taylor 

is really interested in narrative art and storyteling. She does 3D film and illustrations, she likes storytelling through all sorts of methods and that's one of the reasons she wanted to do the internship, plus she's always been interested in comics. She chooses not to use speech bubbles in her work so instead had them very poetically written and emerging in her work. She said the internship has been really inspiring and she loved teaching the 16-20 year olds and seeing their talent grow.

Freya Harrison

was unable to come, so Karrie spoke in her absence. Freya has done a lot of freelance illustration. We saw a picture of her doing a mural. She's aware of text and image and her style is quite digital. She also shuffles her images around on photoshop and plays around with them.


The launch of the anthology will be available from the 9th June from London Print
Studio exhibition.


And so this brought the night to a close. One of the reasons I like going to LDC is meeting all and hearing all the inspiring people that also go along, whether they are there just to listen or to talk and how anyone can get involved. So, another good night of creative souls.


The illustrations included in this blog are a mixture of my own and Lucy Bergonzi's.

The ideas of March

Another excellent evening at Laydeez do Comics. Anyway very exciting… two excellent speakers this week, Ros Archer, fine artist turned or turning comic creator and Woodrow Phoenix author of the groundbreaking Rumble Strip.

As usual we met in The Rag Factory off Brick Lane a lovely secret-ish venue – a lot warmer at this time of year, the first time for awhile the heaters haven't been blasting. We started off in the usual way – everyone introducing themselves and answering a question posed by Sarah or Nicola, this time we all grapple with 'What have you recyclced this week' A nice way to break the ice and get things going. Sarah completely excelled herself with not one, not two but three cakes. Chocolate, apple and carrot. Worth the trip alone.

Ros Archer not published, but I suspect soon will be, has been preparing work to apply for an MA. Ros is super enthusiastic and thoughtful and also very funny. She showed us very beautiful work, pencil, ink, charcoal, lithographs and sculpture. Exploring, narrative, ideas, dreams, memory layering of meaning, use of physical space. In other words lots of ideas and content which I can't really do justice to in words.

One particularly good example was her first story using a clockwise narrative. There was good debate about how unexpected layouts or paths can be communicated without having to have extra instructions for the reader and if that adds or subtracts from the experience…

The second story Ros showed us was a love triangle set in a circus between the Fire Eater, the Strong Man and the Bearded Lady. Some top advice from Ros at this stage: give your work to your friends as people respond to things in very different ways, some think things are funny, others don't see humour at all – everyone gets something different. There is no absolute right and wrong.

Ros brought out a very neat thing called a Flexigon. (check out www.flexagon.net there is a whole enormous world of flexigon people out there) It looks like a hexagonal folded piece of paper but then opens in all sorts directions revealing different facets. On this particular one there were comic pages which could be revealed in different ways – another inventive use by Ros of narrative, time and space. There was much hilarity as Corinne from Myraid Editions managed to dismember it almost immediately,  thereby depriving everyone else of the pleasure of playing with it. But I won't mention that as it would be rude.

Ros say she loves David Mazzucchelli. City of Glass written by Paul Auster and more recently Asterios Polyp. If you haven't read Asterios Polyp, DO the drawings are beautiful and elegant, all in cyan and pink and the story is multi-layered and complex.

We then got a glimpse of an intriguing Paula Rego-esque (compliment) ballerina which is part of Ros's new work. Dealing with the idea of 7 characters/ archetypes, 7 plots and more…

Near the end of her talk Ros revealed that she has been accepted for and MA in Authorial Practice at University College Falmouth. What does Authorial Practice mean I hear you all ask? It means COMICS!!!!!!

Ros's interest in sculpture and comics leading on nicely to the notices:

N O T I C E S

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Paul Gravett says: The first ever symposium of Sculpture and Comic Art by The Henry Moore Foundation is coming up this year. See more at: www.henry-moore.org/hmi/research/calls-for-papers/sculpture-and-comic-art Call for Papers: Sculpture and Comic Art. Conference, Wednesday 16th November 2011

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Jimi Gherkin says: Still some table available for the International Alternative Press Festival 2011 27th May - 13th June 2011 A festival including comix, zines, printmaking, book arts, talks, workshops, exhibitions and performances featuring artists from the UK and Europe. There will also be a film made of the whole festival. www.alternativepress.org.uk/

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Jenny says: Are you feed up of drawing nude models? Then draw some clothed ones at The Art Breaks Meetup Group 'Drawing each others portraits' That was on Tuesday 22nd of March so you have missed it. Contact Mark 07939 346 930 to find out if there will be more.

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Other comic stuff going on:

Winshluss - Pinocchio 29th March 2011 9:30am - 9th April 2011 6pm Charing Cross Road www.foyles.co.uk/events-at-foyles An exhibition of original artwork from the French comic artist Winshulss's version of Pinocchio, reinvented for the modern age.

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Insider tip checkout Zoom Rockman very busy 9 year old comic creator Orbital Comics KALEIDOSCOPE: A NEW LOOK AT BRITISH COMICS 06.03.11 – 31.03.11 www.orbitalcomics.com/events/

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A quick break for more cake and a chat and then… Woodrow Phoenix creator of Rumble Strip.

A real break with tradition Woodrow doesn't have a Powerpoint presentation!!!!! He has pinned ACTUAL pen and ink drawings to the wall. Radical. This deceptively simple act sums up Woodrow's talk and work. A bit different, insightful, lateral and with real content and ideas. Also, Woodrow is a natty dresser.

Woodrow had lots and lots of interesting things to say. I have tried to report them in point form, some of them are pretty good aphorisms…

WP says he hasn't talked the much about this book since it was done a couple of years ago.

But UK comics are in a weird place at the moment, in that there aren't many educated practitioners in publishing. Editors and commissioners are not experienced in dealing with graphic novel/comics – they just don't have any knowledge about why things are the way they are.

WP started as a lettering artist, then started drawing other people's stuff, then mini comics, then his own stuff. (I guess that's the 10,000 hours taken care of).

Because comics are easy to read people think they are easy to make. It can years, and that's working everyday, drawing all the time.

In the 90s all of the publishers disappeared leaving a vacuum that has been replaced by the internet and has also laid the ground for lots of new creators… but the internet lacks a critical voice. You put your work up and get lots of "love it", "wow", "fantastic!" but anything else seems like sour grapes. It's something to work on.

This is a tricky one as it's all about respect and context, I would never just take work out to the park and ask passers by what they thought, but a group of people whose work and abilities… respect, that's different… this was discussed later on as a group.

Comics are about talking about what's inside you. The best work is going to be difficult to make meaningful and engaging…

When you are in your 20s and you go to art school it's a big shock to realise that you are NOT the best drawer in the class. Ha Ha I think most people thought this was pretty funny. And true.

Rumble Strip, it's not a book about cars it's a book about how society is structured. While working in LA WP was forced to have a car, as he soon came to realise that no car = no food. You just can't get ANYWHERE on foot. And only with a car does LA become understandable as a city. But as you have to be in the car most of the time on your own, it's isolating, lonely and weird. What happens when you drive a car? What happens to your brain? How is it different to when you walk around?

WP talked about how in all the drawing, the captions or speech blocks are all in the vanishing points, a deliberate device to make you read the text and be a purposeful irritant. They are used in a very obstrusive way, unlike many comics where the speech devices are unobtrusive. The captions take the place of the protagonist. It is annoying but it makes you think about why they are there and what they are trying to do.

Rumble Strip combines different points of view, case reports and a variety of different personal experiences.

I liked this social transport hierachy and it's definitely worthy of one of those pyramid charts:

Expensive/sports car = unlimited rights

Reasonably priced car = many rights

Motor bike = some rights

Cycle = no rights

Pedestrian = absolutely no rights

I would add in here Pedestrian with pushchair definately right at the bottom. Not only has it no rights but for some reason irritates all the other more important people.

You see it in how people defer to each other on the road. The guy in the expensive sports car has more rights, he knows it and you know it. But we all pay taxes, apparently, doesn't that make us all equal? And this isn't just in the UK, it's universal.

One of the things that I thought was really interesting was they way Woodrow said that we tend to think of comics as a genre (action, thriller, comedy) NOT a medium and that limits the kinds of things we do with them – in Japan you can even get comics that show you how to fill in your tax return.

There was some great discussion about hand drawing and pens and inks, limiting your tools, electric pencil sharpeners - different types of Indian Ink Sennelier a la Pergode being WP's choice (more expensive per litre than petrol – the irony!)

Although not autobiographical, WP does have first hand knowledge of friends and family who have been injured or killed in cars so in a sense Rumble Strip is a work of catharsis - but it is primarily a book of IDEAS. And sometimes complicated ideas are hard to sell…

All of this led onto general discussion about cover designs, plotting, traffic, shared traffic schemes and amazing film of Central London in the last century with many forms of transport all weaving in and out without any apparent street markings or organisation.

If you haven't read Rumble Strip head straight for the library or book shop off ramp, or should I say pedestrianised zone…

STOP

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Blogged by Marcia Mihotich, graphic designer and illustrator – this week's substitute or understudy blogger, the first designated blogger not appearing as planned.

Do you speak Comic?

Karrie Fransman introduces the London Print Studio Comics Collective

Laydeez Do Comics. Could be described as the grape vine of the comics world, and you know, even the bean stalk as well! I'm very happy to have been invited this week by Nicola and Sarah to report on the latest goings on.

My name is Frankie Sinclair, I'm some sort of an artist, one who sees the world through cartoon eyes! Last year I focussed on starting up a group called the Cartoon Heart Club www.cartoonheart.com and www.meetup.com/cartoonhrt I've currently whooshed down a sort of rabbit hole of photography wonderland... When I come out again, I will no doubt run a few more cartoon related events. In the meantime, if anyone is running, or thinking of running a cartoon related event or project and you would like to invite people to attend or participate, feel free to contact me about posting it to or from, the Cartoon Heart Club (contact thru any of the websites).

Well, certainly things rarely do just happen overnight (on the beanstalk theme) but meeting people along the way and being open to talk and exchange can certainly bring golden opportunities and experiences. Something of a theme last Monday night was the comic artists' discovery and appreciation of the comic scene. Groups and networks like Laydeez have really touched the lives of some artists. The discovery of one group can connect an artist into a whole network, internationally and at home. Although as we discovered, language can sometimes be a problem...

It was a packed night at the regular Rag Factory venue There were four main presentations. Three comic artists described their work, recent and past:

Sean Azzopardi

Francesca Cassavetti

John Miers

plus the London Print Studio Comics Collective comic interns (phew long title) reported back from the Angoulême International Comics Festival.

Sean Azzopardi

As a somewhat angry young man, Sean loved to create mini comics naming and shaming the evil characters who plagued his working life as a concierge. Sean is (perhaps controversially) unapologetic about using people's real names in these minis which were later put together to form a book called the "Twelve Hour Shift".

There was also horror in the background in Necessary Monsters (created with Daniel Merlin Goodbrey), a genre based story with monsters and spies which was intended to be a commercial project. It started twice a week on the internet and was meant to bring them both fame and riches. It didn't, and Sean actually changed his mind about the direction he wanted to go.

Not as horrible as the dirty fact that Sean confessed to having thrown away three whole bags of his own sketchbooks in a big clear out before Christmas. Hope there aren't any Azzo fans out there now, or in the future who would kill to touch one page of such a sketch book. But hey, murder your darlings.

Having exorcised the demons, or at least 'poured all [his]... derision into it' Sean decided to bring some Ying to the Yang and worked on 'Ed' for five years. This he finished just before Christmas last year. He describes this as being a light romantic tale about a girlfriend, flatmate, sunshine, cats and flowers. Just right for Spring then.

Lately Sean has moved away from grey scale drawings and he's experimenting with cartoon water colours, getting tactile with the medium as a change from the intensive Photoshop square eyes experience. In other words (his) he's gone all 'touchy feely'.

Francesca Cassavetti

It should have been "The Most Natural Thing in the World" to be a mother, but it wasn't, so Francesca decided to draw about it. She longed to be a famous cartoonist, meanwhile there were nappies to change. Despite the obvious difficulties of creating and mothering at the same time, Francesca carried on cartooning for years and years with very little readership. She said,

"Some strips got into magazines, then the mags would fold and that would be it."

Her semi-autobigraphical work, drawn up in black and white lines just grew and grew organically. She showed it to the odd publisher, but they would say 'nice but we don't know what to do with it'. However, the value to her was immense as the comics acted as a sort of self-therapy when she felt trapped and frustrated with the whole kids and family situation.

Eventually, she met Gary Norfield who suggested DIY, publish your own, and that was the turning point. Whereas in book publishing, 'vanity' tends to be frowned upon, in the comics world it's defacto, and as everyone at Laydeez agreed, the way forward.

Francesca made mini comics and put them in Gosh. Paul Gravett invited her to do '24 hour comics' (a one day a year challenge to make a 24 page comic in 24 hours). "A fantastic exercise - you don't worry about what you're doing". Things started moving, she was connected! Comics conventions, the London Underground Comics stall at Camden market. She says it's all a bit like the punk rock scene: make your own records, control your own work, please yourself and not a target audience.

Which segues in nicely to a mention of a current project she is working on with her husband: an expose of his years as a punk rocker. He tells the story of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll and she draws the pictures. But how much does she really want to know about those years (the years before they met even) and can their relationship take it? They seem to think so and they aim to create an 'accurate, unflinching, honest but not hurtful' story, with the consent and co-operation of his ex-girlfriend!

Also mentioned was B.A.S.T.A.R.D.S a striptacular antholgoy comic, turned around in one month, for the Angoulême festival. It stands for 'British artists standing tall and reaching distant shores'.

London Print Studio Comics Collective 

They reported back from the Angoulême International Comics Festival in France for us, in comic form. Just to say, they are five artists working as comic interns at the London Print Studio. The project, set up by the director of of the London Print Studio, John Phillips is currently being led by Karrie Fransman.

Isabel Greenberg: wasn't allowed to take gouache on the plane to France!

Rachel Emily Taylor: loved the tents where all generations of people from Granny's to babes appreciated comics.

She is in love with Brecht Evens who painted her a comic.

William Goldsmith: used the opportunity to shamelessly network and got told off for not speaking French. Tant pis!

His Vignettes of Ystov has just been published by Random House

Joe Kelly attended as many talks as possible by as many artists as possible and created a fab tribute strip, perfectly in the style of his faves.

Freya Harrisson: visited the truly awesome comic museum, which is 5138 times better than the cartoon museum (in London) and where comic artists are treated as rock stars, and you can sit in comfy seats and read comics, and the fountains spew out lemonade!

 John Miers 
whose work I may find it difficult to blog about since it is highly informed and grapples with concepts.

John teaches full time, balancing his 'real' job with comics. But he finds that when time is more precious, he somehow gets more done. Like the others, he's also experienced something of a turning point since he plugged into the comics community last year.

John is interested in formal experimentation. He ponders on 'what is comics and how does it work?' and he attempts to convey these tricky questions and some answers in comics themselves.

At first his comic creations were slab characters. Simply a rock with a slit gouged out for a month. Then he added stereotypical features to differentiate the slabs. Before teaching, he worked in an office and he's very proud that he produced his 'Intellectual strip' entirely on company time using Microsoft Paint, in Word. It features crude humour and office alientation.

He imagined the Genesis of slabs, with the creation and eventual destruction of the world in 10 pages.

In another grapple with his subject, he created a pictographic comic with no words (well, no words as we know them). A circle man speaks with round language

and a rectangle man with squared language. Pictorially. They try to talk to each other about a plane and successfully communicate about a roundish, squarish plane.

Sometimes it seems only futility to ever try to represent anything. Especially if you're a street portrait painter in a comic strip by Miers. As your sitter's mood changes, so does your portrait and you end up with a cubist painting, incomprehensible to your customer.

Perhaps Miers most ambitious project to date has been his story of the tower of Babel, which explores language and how its used in comics. It was created using Illustrator docs drawn on top of with a wacom tablet and printed out on giant (in comics terms) sheets. The whole project impressed the International Comics Art Forum to such an extent that they asked him to present a 45 minute talk about the whole project.

I won't even begin to try and describe this work. But the 45 minute talk on CD and comic is available from John. Just to say that people communicate successfully because they use pictures. They conceive of a tower to reach up to heaven but God comes down and confounds their language so that they can't understand one another's speech anymore. They can't communicate sufficiently to finish the tower and their picture language starts to conflict in fascinating ways.

Finally, John wowed us with a comic featuring ninjas and a guy who wakes up only to discover that he is John Humphreys. I liked this one when the character has been knocked out, and strikes back by ninjing his opponent with a handy 'dazed' star from the circle around whizzing round his head.

Over and out Laydeez and Gentz!