Angouleme Comics 2011

My second visit to Angouleme was a more relaxed experience than the first.
For starters I knew now that spending six days with my chosen companions would not ruin our friendship. This year, Dan Lester, Sean Azzopardi, Oliver Lambden and myself were joined by Sally-Anne Hickman and Rob Jackson. Though quite a large crowd to squeeze behind a table, we rubbed along fine, wandering off at will to check out the rest of the festival. Our spacious lodgings meant we could chill out by the fire and play pool when we had tired of the frenetic bar-hopping and party-seeking. Having scoped out the layout and the town previously made it easier to plan my sorties and hone in on the bits I fancied seeing. And not being so overwhelmed by the whole hugeness of it all made it easier to take in.
There were familiar faces – it was lovely to catch up with Abby Denson, Tim Fish and Xavier Lancel back again on the LGBT stand. Sally Anne and I popped over to the theatre where they appeared on a panel alongside Fred Harper and Charlie Adlard.
This time I checked out the permanent collection at the museum as well as the excellent Parodies exhibit, while Baru's wall of artwork was pretty humbling.

We made the effort to get to the Castro Building on Saturday morning where Dash Shaw, Marc Bell and John Pham gave a most entertaining and informative talk.
There were more brits than last year: the Nobrow group and Pittville Press were also exhibiting, Karrie Fransman brought a delegation from the London Print Studio and Dan Berry was teaching at the Maison des Auteurs. Let's not forget Ellen Lindner, gamely touting the Comix Reader, who could be found recovering in Le Chat Noir alongside Stephen Betts, Cliodnah Lyons, Tanya Meditzsky , Patrice and John Aggs and Gary Northfield. We even bumped into Alex Potts of Turd Party fame.
We had some fantastic neighbours in the tent. Adriano Barone and Christian Marra of Passenger Press were unfailingly warm and their sense of humour was as off-colour as ours.
Now home and suffering from a mysterious virus, I am working my way through my bunch of swag. Wednesday's official Comix Reader launch party helped to alleviate the withdrawal from 24hr comic immersion, and most cheering was a favourable mention of my contribution in this review of Solipsistic Pop 3

Punk pub and outsider art : weekend win!

Went to Fulham today for Ned's rugby club lunch.
We spent a lovely afternoon in the Wheatsheaf on Fulham Road with excellent company and food, and to top it all the pub happens to be run by the son of old mates of Nick's from the punk days. The framed vintage posters on the walls led to conversation with the manager - turned out they were his Mum's!
Whilst on the subject of punk, Nick has handed me the next installment of the memoir, so need to get on with drawing...



If you have the chance, I heartily recommend you get over to Primrose Hill and check out the Museum of Everything. Tucked behind the Library off Regent's Park Road, enter a wonderful space filled with all sorts of strange and brilliantly mad outsider art. It's on until Dec 23rd, it's free (donations gratefully received) and it is quite extraordinary.
Meanwhile Angouleme is becoming more and more of a reality. Well obviously it IS a reality as we have booked a table and now we have train tickets and we have ALMOST got our accommodation sorted.

Serge Clerc's Le Journal

On my trip to France, along with a couple of other titles, I picked up a copy of Serge Clerc's Le Journal, his frenetic story of Metal Hurlant magazine. The perfection of Clerc's line always takes me back to the golden age of the NME when they had decent writers. I would devour it cover to cover week after week, and marvel at the composition of his retro illustrations. I now find out that this rigourous stylist, whom I could only dream to emulate, was creating these formally impeccable images out of what appears to be turmoil and chaos.
Plucked from the provinces when barely grown to collaborate with the sophisticated Dionnet and Manoeuvre, he is bombarded with culture and has to absorb a lifetime's knowledge of scifi, cinema, comics and rock n roll at an accelerated rate, while at the same time trying to get to grips with alcohol and women (and I'm only half way through).

I had been slightly disappointed by the narrative quality of those Clerc albums I had read up to now, finding his style to dominate over content, a certain glacial distance.
But here is a work that gives me a sense of the man wielding the pen, of his struggle for perfection, of his fear of being sidelined by rivals, of his feet of clay.
Clerc will always represent an unattainable summit of graphic excellence, but with this book he has managed to make me warm to him. He reveals his self doubt, his relentless desire to learn and improve, a kid trying to keep up with and impress the adults around him.
The contrast between the fautlessness of his line and the disjointed insanity of his storytelling has turned my admiration into love.