Solipsistic Pop Volume 4 and Why We Need Anthologies.

Anthologies are important.  When I first became seriously interested in comics it was An Anthology of Graphic Fiction edited by Ivan Brunetti, that really began to open my eyes to the true breadth of creative innovation being done in the form.  From within those pages I first discovered everything from the twisted worlds of Kaz and Gary Panter, to the unsettling work of Henry Darger, and the sweet and evocative autobiography of Jeffrey Brown and James Kochalka.

I mean, I knew about a lot of fantastic artists already - Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, Adrian Tomine - but this volume opened things up, bringing a whole range of artists together in one place, defining a moment in comics history, while delving back into the geology to show where we've come from.  Sure, I didn't like all of it - some of the artists I found to be too willfully obtuse and 'underground' for my liking - but that's not the point.  Anthologies are necessary because they open things up.  In a culture where increasingly we're asked to narrow our tastes down to a specific trend, and buy into niche fashions and ideologies while writing off others, the anthology threatens to push back against those narrowing influences, and challenge us with something new.

My encounter with Solipsistic Pop did the same for me three years later as Brunetti's anthology had.  It opened things up and showed me a whole mess of comics I wouldn't have encountered otherwise.  Tom Humberstone, editor of Solipsistic Pop, brings together artists from across the UK, working in a number of styles and with a number of voices, and is putting them in one place.  Each volume is like the ring in a tree trunk, an exciting and fascinating moment in UK comics history.  Through Solipsistic Pop I got to discover Luke Pearson, Kristyna Baczynski, Stephen Collins and Mark Oliver to name just a few.  And from there I went on to investigate more and more.

Bits and Bobs

It's been a busy few weeks and there's a lot of 'work in progress' at the moment.  But here's some cool stuff in the meantime.

I did another Drop In + Draw with the Edinburgh League of Comics, which went surprisingly well after a faltering start on the first day of the event.  Doing a comic book drawing session in a Shopping Mall had its pluses and minuses - benefits being that we got to take comics drawing to an interesting new location and give kids a chance to do some drawing who might otherwise not always get the same kinds of opportunities.  The downside of course was that most people were there to shop!

Still, it went very well in the end and our Sunday session was packed with people who had come out especially.  You can read more about the event at the ELC Blog.  I drew this stuff while I was there:

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Meanwhile, Patrick Tobin has written a lovely and insightful review of Filmish for 'Multiversity Comics'.  It's well worth a read if you're interested!  From the review:

Where most academic film writing is a closed (and often locked) door, Filmish is an open invitation, and all the better for it. [...] Filmish exists in one of the spaces between nerddoms, where ideas from different media and disciplines can freely bleed into one another and create something unique.

-Patrick Tobin

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And in other news, Paper Science 5 arrived in the post.  It's the newspaper format comics anthology edited by Matt Sheret that's just a beautiful collection of absolutely top class comics work from UK based creators.  And I'm in it too, with a short piece called 'Dust', my first ever wordless comic story.

You need to buy yourself a copy, or better yet a subscription to a whole year's worth of tasty comics. Go here and do that now!