My Monthly Curse (Part Fifty-Two)

You might have thought I concluded the Borderline story a bit abruptly; sitting there like a sore thumb in the last chapter, finished but not concluded. That was because the magazine had one final part to play in comics history.

When I received an official invitation to attend the Lodz Comics Festival, in October 2003, as the guest of the British Council in Poland, the deal they were offering made me blink in disbelief. In all my years working in comics nothing like this had ever happened before. Yeah, I’d spent a few days working for a software developer in 1994 as a storyboard consultant on an X-Men computer game and earned £200 a day plus expenses (I could have quite happily continued doing that for the rest of my life) and that made me feel pretty important, but this was different. Here I was one of the special guests!

The offer of going to Poland came with a proviso. I had to do at least an hour’s worth of presentation on Borderline and spend time doing a signing and chatting to Polish comics fans. The prospect of this terrified me, I’d lost the knack of public speaking – something I had once been quite good at. When I say I'd lost it, what I meant was that I had smoked myself into a position where I lost my confidence. My sudden inadequacies came crashing home the same month as the invitation arrived. The Bristol Comics Festival in 2003, as I said wasn’t much of an event for me, and possibly one of the low lights of it was sitting in on one of the most popular panels at UK comics conventions.

Called ‘Hypotheticals’ it was the brainchild of Lee “Budgie” Barnett and Dave Gibbons (yes, the same one!) and was set on a fictitious world where the comics industry is an even playing field. The panel, a team of invited guests crossing all areas of the industry, have to discuss how certain hypothetical scenarios would pan out in that world. Essentially a scenario is given and the panel of guests builds a story around it. I was awful. I tried to be funny and it backfired. I was full of nerves that I couldn’t shake, and I had the overtures of a hangover from the previous night’s excesses.

After it finished I’d made my mind up that I was not doing it again. I was not going to get involved in this kind of fannish nonsense anymore. I felt out of touch and slightly queasy in the presence of so much concentrated sweat and my ego was deflated a little more when Jim Lee, one of the stars of comics, thought I was a retailer and had never heard of Borderline. I said to myself and some of my associates who had gathered to see my lacklustre performance that I was never going to go on a stage again, let alone attend a comics convention.

Now I was faced with not only having to do a presentation on my own, but in a foreign country and with no one I actually knew around me for support. I took a big gamble and emailed the British Council and asked them if it would be possible to bring my assistant editor and publisher of Borderline with me. I was told this would be fine, but they would no longer be able to pay me for the weekend, because what I was going to be paid would now pay for my assistant’s expenses. I was gobsmacked – of course I didn’t mind an unpaid weekend, just being invited all expenses paid was a dream come true! So much being offered and all from such an inconsequential country on the comics map – I figured Poland was going to be a blast. It was.

Martin Shipp has been a good friend, one of my best, for over 20 years. I recently said to the wife that I couldn’t really ever remember when we made the bridge between knowing each other and becoming good mates. We just became good mates. It happens like that in the world, you meet someone and you get on well with them and every time you see them again is a real pleasure. The first time I met Martin was in the spring of 1990 when he was the assistant manager of a new comics shop opening on the outskirts of London. The company he worked for, Stateside Comics, had bludgeoned its way into the comics buying public with its awesome display of comics that you just never saw. Stateside were outrageously expensive (one of the partners was the writer and compiler of the Price Guide), but they had the image that really suited the new breed of yuppie comics buyers. All the old stuff and comics fans dreams were out the back in a special ‘vault’ – a room with high tech security features with over £1million worth of stock there at any time. The front of the shop, while specialising in comics, had all the other ephemeral stuff that attracts people off the street – movie posters, videos, games, badges, trading cards – they stocked everything they had to and it was done with a verve that was lacking in just about every other comics shop in the land. They had a professional attitude to comics and it showed in their shop, I just couldn’t understand why they opened it in Barnet?

I was there with my new business partner Iain, he was a valued customer of Stateside and he hoped that we could forge some kind of business arrangement with them (which would of course benefit him in the long run), but that evening we were primarily there for the grand opening. There were some stars of TV and radio there and a number of artists and writers and the champagne flowed. It was a night of sophistication for comics retailing. Iain and I were talking to two of the three partners, Martin Gold and Paul Sassienie, when Mike suddenly asked me what I thought of their ‘fantastic advertising campaign’ and the ‘great new discovery they had found in Shaky Kane’, the artist. I wrinkled my nose and Paul asked me to be honest.

“Well… His artwork is a poor derivative of Jack Kirby at his worst. It looks colourful but it’s a bit vacuous and frankly I think while it will achieve the desired results, it’s a bit pooh.” There were some smiles and a man standing next to us with his girlfriend looked at me quite defensively. I smiled at him and said, “Well, it is, isn’t it? The guy needs to learn to draw first.”

This was the Shaky Kane...

Also present at that time was Martin Shipp who wheeled away howling with laughter at my comments. I shrugged my shoulders and continued to sample the buffet. Shaky Kane and his girlfriend drifted into the background. Well, someone should have warned me first.

I didn’t see Martin again until the following year’s UKCAC convention. He found me in a crowd, reintroduced himself, I remembered who he was. He’d left Stateside and was now working for a new British-based distribution company that he was hoping would challenge the supremacy of Diamond, who effectively held the monopoly on comics distribution in the UK. We had a chat and a laugh; I wasn’t interested in signing up for his new distribution company, so we went and had a beer instead.

Six months is a long time in comics and the next time I saw him was in, of all places, Gloucester. The shop was struggling badly and we needed to stretch ourselves pretty thinly. I had my brother-in-law and my late father go to a comic mart in Leeds; I left Scott and Phil Christian in charge of the shop, while Mammary Lass and I drove down south west to attend a West Country comics convention, that was taking place in a number of marquees in a park in Gloucester.

We had sent my dad away with some of the shop’s best stock, while Luan and I took as much junk as I could fit into my old Vauxhall Astra. The idea was we’d just sell as much cheap stuff as possible and turn some money over. We only needed to make £70 to cover all our expenses as I’d got the tables cheap and the petrol would amount to almost half that overall outlay. The event started at 11am and by 1.30 we’d taken about £5. I was bored rigid. We were promised that we would be invaded by an influx of people later when some of the other events finished and that was true. At 2pm we were overrun by the South West Nerds Society, and I had an inspired idea, one that Luan was game for. I suggested to her that she unzip her top a bit more so that she was showing a lot of cleavage and the brazen hussy was more than happy to oblige. We had swarms of people round the table, kids, adolescents, and a lot of Dads. Luan spent the next three hours thrusting her tits into people’s faces until they gave her money. I loved it. Martin loved it. I didn’t know, but he’d parted company from the distribution company and was between jobs and decided to meet up with some old friends in Gloucester. I had been looking for a pub and when I returned I found Martin doing his lounge lizard impersonation and trying to chat my assistant manager up. We spent the next hour chatting, he went back off to London and I went back to the shop with £400 on me.

Over the next couple of years Martin and I just kept in touch, we’d write each other letters, then when he went on-line it became emails. We just kept in touch. He flirted with comics writing for a while and won a UK Comics Award as the best newcomer, but while his buddy Marc Laming had limited success as a comics artist, Martin just didn’t seem to get the same breaks. But to be honest if you have a one in a hundred chance of becoming a professional comics artist, you have a one in 10,000 chance of being a comics writers. The reason is simple – we’ve already discussed it.

The two of us toyed for ages about ways of making money from comics and when, in 2001, I put together the Borderline team, Martin was one of the three people at the top of the list to become involved. We’ve often sat and wondered why two such good looking and talented men haven’t made more of our lives and we came to the conclusion we’re not creepy enough for this industry. Martin is still a bit of a US comics junkie and that is useful for someone like me who needs being told stuff I'm out of touch with.

The decision to make Martin, the publisher of Borderline, was taken because he was the only contributing member of the team to actually bankroll us during the worst of the financial crises. He had effectively taken on the role of publisher when the amount of time I could spend on dealing with people became completely limited by my day job. If the invite had come three months earlier I probably would have taken Mike Kidson with me to Poland. He had a huge knowledge of European comics and had attended more conventions on mainland Europe than most comics people in Britain. But Mike had parted company with Borderline because he simply couldn’t afford to work on it anymore. And Martin gave me something that Mike probably couldn’t have given me – a brilliant presentation that literally blew the convention organisers away.

I work well with most of people and believe that the creation process needs input from different angles. Martin works in a similar way; we think it gets the best out of people because they feel part of the process. I knew that Martin would be great company for me, I felt I needed someone with me I was comfortable with, because if I didn’t, I would probably have had some kind of breakdown. As it happened I almost did, but for different reasons.

So, there was I with a massive invite to a huge convention in Eastern Europe, I had managed to wangle it so my mate could come and I was the editor of nothing at all! By the time everything was firmed up, the flights booked and hotels reserved we had effectively stopped doing Borderline. I spent a month panicking and doing nothing at all, while Martin sat down and wrote a presentation that was funny, articulate and told people exactly what they needed to know about us. This inspired me and I opened up Microsoft PowerPoint and set about putting together a really visual presentation to act alongside Martin’s scripted double act.

The actual presentation comes later, because a lot more happened before we took to the stage at the Lodzki Dom Kultury on the 25^th October, 2003.

I arrived at Euston Station at the ridiculously early time of 6.30am and found Martin, with case, waiting for me by the Northampton departure ramp. We actually had 3½ hours to make it for check in at Heathrow, but Martin assured me that it would take a long time to even get to Heathrow – there had been a series of strikes and things were only just getting back together on the Underground system. We checked in at Heathrow at 9am and waited for our flight to board. In the wake of 9/11 travelling anywhere in the world had become a far more complicated thing – searches on the way out as well as the way in, so everything seemed to take considerably longer than I remembered when I went to San Diego in 1994.

We arrived in Poland at around 3pm and the first thing that struck us as we walked out of Warsaw airport was the temperature. It was easily below freezing compared to the relatively mild 10 degrees in the UK. The pretty Anna Palonka, our liaison with the British Council, met us. It was like something out of an old Sixties film, she was standing there with a large sign that said British Council. Martin and I found her first, we weren’t aware that the other two British guests Pat Mills (the creator of 2000AD) and his current art partner Clint Langley were on the same plane and sitting just behind us. We all introduced ourselves to each other and were hustled into the back of a transit van mini bus. Anna’s English was almost perfect, as were most of the people who worked for the BC. We arrived in Warsaw City about an hour later and after spending an hour at the BC sorting out our spending money (Yes, they gave us spending money for beer!) we ventured into the Jewish Old Town for a spot of sightseeing and some Polish cuisine.

The food was one of my worries, being a vegetarian I’d heard that Poland wasn’t big on people who didn’t eat meat, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared and being something of an amateur mycologist (mushroom fancier) I was amazed by the number of mushroom dishes on offer. I sampled most and enjoyed all (apart from pierogi, a dumpling, which I found most unpalatable and a great source of indigestion).

After our tour, in the fading light, of the old town, we piled back into the minivan and headed off to Lodz, which is about 100 kilometres south of Warsaw and is famous for being the birth place of film director Andrzej Wajda, although a number of other famous Poles have been honoured on the Piotrkowska – the longest and straightest road in Poland. We arrived a little before 10pm and Renata Senktas and Agnieszka Wrycza, two more BC employees and effectively our personal assistants for the weekend, joined us. The plan was to freshen up and then go out for a drink before heading to a rave that had been organised by the BC. The night life in Poland is different than that of the UK, for starters people don’t actually start going out until later in the evening and the pubs and Polish bars begin to get really busy about 10pm and you can drink through until when you finish (unless you have an unsocial bar owner). Beer was very cheap, less than £1 per pint and is both very strong and free from all the shit chemicals that are pumped into our beers. Subsequently you drink it easier and you get pissed faster! By the time we arrived at the rave Martin could only stand so much and decided he needed to go back to his bed and sleep to prepare for our big day. I wasn’t quite as sensible and we stayed at the rave until I thought my ears were going to bleed and I asked the girls if they fancied going somewhere a bit quieter. It appears that they were hoping for us to say this for the last hour, so a relieved troop of Brits and Poles left the rave and headed for the bar next door to the hotel. I was amazed that we were even let in at 2am in the morning, but we were and along with a couple of friends of the BC girls, we sat and talked and joked and got to know each other for two more hours before I realised that if I didn’t find my bed I would probably die. I managed to crawl into bed about 5am.

My phone started ringing about 8.30 but I was oblivious to it. At 9.45 I finally answered it. It was Agnieszka, where was I? In my room I said. “You must hurry we are expected there in ten minutes.” Okay, I said, put the phone down and fell promptly back to sleep. The phone jolted me awake again ten minutes later. It was Martin, I told him I needed to shower, so I’d catch them up, but I would be there, so not to worry. What followed was a perfect example of why drink should be completely banned from everywhere.

I had taken some stinky marijuana with me in my underpants, not a sensible thing to do but under the circumstances and my rather fragile state of mind (my father had died less than a month earlier); I decided it was a risk I was going to take. My only concern about having it was in case one of the maids smelled it and reported me to the desk staff. This was many years after the downfall of communism, but you just didn’t fancy arguing with some of these strapping women or the possibility of having to explain myself to non-English speaking Polish policemen with guns and big sticks. Anyhow, I got up and staggered to the bathroom wondering why it was that every convention I ever went to ended up with me sitting in my bathroom the next morning wishing I were dead? I finally hauled my arse into the shower and at 10.15 I was almost human and getting my shit together. I decided that what I really needed was a big reefer to get me going, so I rolled one, smoked half of it and decided I’d have the other half at a good opportunity during the morning, maybe outside the convention centre, even if it was sub-zero again and threatening snow.

I walked out of the front of the hotel and onto Piotrkowska; you remember the straightest and longest road in the whole of Poland. Piotrkowska became my personal nightmare.

Now this is simple, the hotel was actually about 1000 metres from the convention centre. You had to walk out of the front of the hotel, turn right and then immediate right and follow your nose. I had this vague recollection of where the convention centre was and through my alcohol pickled memory and drug addled mind, I distinctly remembered we approached the hotel in the van from the right, my left as I stood there. So, I turned left. It was 10.30am. I walked, expecting to see the Lodzki Dom Kultury on my left within a few minutes, so why on earth when I’d walked for half an hour down Piotrkowska didn’t I realise there was something wrong?

It was cold and I basically found that I’d warmed myself up no end with my relentless forward marching. At 11.00 I stopped and had a look around. I was also quite exhausted and felt really dehydrated, but couldn’t speak Polish and didn’t really have much hope of finding someone who could speak English. To make matters worse I could not remember the name of the building I was supposed to be going to and I’d forgotten the name of the bloody hotel I was staying in. I suddenly felt very isolated, very small and very, very lost. So I did the obvious thing, I continued walking further away from the Grand Hotel and the Lodz Centre of Culture. At 11.20 I realised that something had gone very wrong and began to have some flashbacks to the night before. I suddenly thought I was going to have a heart attack, I felt hot and dizzy. I sat down on a bench and figured the only thing I could do was go back the way I’d come. But first to calm my nerves I finished the half a spliff from earlier. That could have been disastrous because I suddenly had a moment of inspiration, I knew where the convention centre was, it was actually behind the hotel and that meant that if I just took a right at the next road and then took another left at the one after that I would soon run into it.

Did I say that comics fans were imbeciles? Include me in that. I started left at the first opportunity and soon realised the road I was on was not like the other grid system roads, it was winding away and in the wrong direction. So I cut across a small park and found myself on another road, one I’d passed about 10 minutes earlier. I then got a text message and suddenly I realised my troubles were over, I could phone Martin and all would be sorted. Except my mobile didn’t work, I couldn’t ring him. The text was asking me where I was and I replied I was lost and hopefully now I’d worked out where I was I should be about 45 minutes away. Martin’s reply was ???? and I could understand why, it had taken him 3 minutes to get to the centre. I realised that I had to go back to Piotrkowska and just walk back to the Grand Hotel and that’s what I did. I worked it out that by the time I got back to the Hotel, at 12.45; I’d walked 7 kilometres (possibly more as I’m a fast walker and have a long gait) on a hangover and severely dehydrated. I had missed the opening ceremony – one of the star guests had failed to show and poor old Martin was left apologising for his associate’s bad manners – but we weren’t due on stage until 4pm that afternoon, so I figured I could properly sort myself out before going to the culture centre, which, after looking at the details I’d failed to take with me, I realised was so close I was going to be a tad embarrassed. I took another shower, drank a lot of water and rolled myself another spliff, which I smoked on the way to the centre. I got there at just after 1.15pm still feeling pretty crappy and was rather taken aback by the place – not only did it have mine and Martin’s name in 6 foot high letters out the front, people seemed to know who I was and were letting me wander past them into the centre. The guy who would act as our translator, a local lad called Zbeshyk who had spent three years at Dublin University and had a distinctly Irish brogue to his Polish accent, greeted me. Everyone was panicking, the schedules had been changed and we were going on at 2.30pm instead of 4. I looked at him and laughed. “I need liquid and some place quiet where I can collect my thoughts.” They of course wanted to know where the bloody hell I’d been and I figured the best policy was honesty, so I told them, much to everyone’s hilarity.

Neither Martin nor I had done any preparation; in fact, we’d only recently both looked over the script. It all seemed to be unravelling before our eyes. To make matters worse after being given enormous amounts of assurances that Poland was equipped with all the latest technology, they didn’t think the centre had either a laptop or a projector. Fortunately they did and we began to set up in the main hall. I felt like shit and was drinking too much water. Martin told me to just sit and follow my script if I felt bad (which I did). We went away and spent twenty minutes doing some rehearsing and then we were called. By the time we arrived at the main hall it was completely packed out, there were people waiting in the wings, up the stairs, hanging over balcony, there was nearly 1000 people all counted and my sweats were turning cold. Our translator ran through a few things, we would have to pause every other paragraph so he could tell it in Polish, this broke up our rhythm slightly, but it actually added to the fun in the end.

We took to the stage, me sitting in the shadow of the big screen and Martin dancing around the stage like he was born to it – he reminded me of a sort of manic Tommy Steele. He did a little ad-libbing and asked the audience a few questions, which the English speakers answered. We then got underway, I had given Renata the important job of operating the slide show and the audience fell quiet. A Polish creator, one who we’d given exposure to came on stage and introduced us to rapturous applause. We began, and I was a bag of nerves and felt awful. Martin kicked off, but I stopped him, he looked at me with utter horror in his face – he’d already thought I’d bottled the opening ceremony, what did he think I was going to do now? I turned to Zbeshyk and asked him to translate for me. “Before Martin starts I’d just like to say I think Poland is a great country, it has many beautiful women [shouts of agreement from the English speakers] and wonderfully strong and cheap beer! Does anyone have a cure for really bad hangover?” This got a laugh and the ice was broken, Martin introduced me and I introduced him, the slide show got underway and after about five minutes I realised that if I stood up and walked around the stage I’d probably feel a bit better. So armed with our scripts we roamed the stage and entertained the Poles.

We should have been on 45 minutes, but we ended up on stage for over an hour. We were asked many questions, we told some funny stories, and we talked about the slides and what we’d achieved and how grateful and humbled we were to be invited over. After the presentation we were mobbed by creators and fans from all over Poland and the surrounding countries, it was overwhelming and Martin was feeling the same way as I did – humbled. We were nothing in comics, really. A couple of failed editors with a couple of good things on our CVs being treated like Stan Lee or Bob Kane. But they explained to us why; we had done something for them, for the Czech Republic and for other countries that no other English speaking magazine did – we acknowledged their existence and told the world – look, these guys are good! This was the ultimate accolade for them and because we were responsible for such a well-received and professional magazine they couldn’t understand our humility – but it meant for an even playing field when we talked to them.

It was a fabulous weekend and not because of this adulation, we were treated like friends and made to feel very welcome. The Poles know how to party, and I think you need a healthy dose of occupation in your past to be able to really appreciate life, and they go about enjoying themselves with such gusto that even crap 1980s pop music takes on its own charm when you are in the presence of a far greater ratio of beautiful women than males.

I had always gone to British conventions knowing that it was the social side that was what I really went there for. The Poles made British partying seem so… British. And of course the weirdest thing was when gorgeous young nymphs walked up and asked you dance, as soon as they realised you were English you could probably have asked for the Earth and been served it on their naked bellies! And what did these wonderful young women think when they found out we were there for a comics convention? They thought it was ‘cool’. That was about the most derisory comment made about comics all weekend. It might be a different culture and a different way of life, but they haven’t got preconceptions of anyone – a person is assessed on the person and the not the things he or she is into.

The Polish comics industry is also a healthy business and comics are cheap, therefore people have no qualms about buying them, even in a country that is desperately poor. The publishers are approachable and friendly and talk to you like businessmen rather than promoted fanboys. The creative people, while obsessed with working in the US (we now know why this is such a dream for them), are eager to impress people with their talent. They’ll go out of their way to accommodate you and one such artist had to use a translator to tell me that the article I had put together on him earlier in the year had led to him getting more offers of work not just in Poland and he was now regarded as the hottest artist in Poland! He said it was all down to me and my magazine and that made me feel a hundred feet tall.

Did I say we felt humbled? We both felt we had to do something and that night at the restaurant we told Pat, Clint and the BC girls that we were going to put together a special Polish edition of Borderline as a thank you to the people. The idea went down extremely well and we began to feel that Poland had so much more to offer us than the UK. I think if Martin and I could have walked away from our responsibilities and moved there we might have. It would have been easier for Martin, as I doubt my wife and menagerie would have been pleased having to locate to Eastern Europe – however cheap.

The British Council had organised a day of sightseeing on the Sunday but Martin and I declined to go, asking instead if anyone minded if we went back to the convention and talk to the people we didn’t get the chance to talk to the previous day and forge some more links. I think the girls at the BC were quite touched by this and Renata decided she would accompany us as our translator and guide. The three of us did the convention, said ‘do widzenia’ to lots of new friends and then did some shopping on Piotrkowska, which now didn’t seem quite so hellish, but just as long. We had been blessed with a snowstorm the night before, so we got to see Poland under an inch of the white stuff for a couple of hours, which seemed to brighten the dingy Soviet-styled architecture. We had both fallen in love with Poland and we felt we owed them for their hospitality. So we returned to the UK with big plans and we had a new team of contributors on board, a bunch of willing and talented Poles.

[A quick aside: Polish pizzas are vile things – never be tempted if you go there!]

Unfortunately the response from most of the old contributors was not good. We had decided to reinvent Borderline as a magazine that spotlighted particular countries. We would do two editions, one in English and one in the most widely spoken language in the country we were focussing on. It would be entertaining while teaching the rest of the world about the comics of other countries, and it would act as a great advertisement for the creative talents of whatever country we looked at. We also had a definite way of approaching European publishers for either sponsorship or advertising (and the idea came up that we might talk some publishers into producing a printed version of Borderline for that country’s newsstands and speciality shops). Martin and I were so full of enthusiasm that we didn’t really consider that we were the two who had just had the free trip and all the praise, now we wanted the rest of the team to just get back on the horse and help us repay something they didn’t see any of. It was an understandable feeling and I wasn’t surprised when we had less than an enthusiastic response. It was down to Martin and me, with some help from Jay, Mike Kidson if he could and Dennis Wojda, our new Polish assistant editor. The Poles did what they said they would, from the articles to the translation they delivered and this lifted us because everything else was falling apart.

For starters I couldn’t import any of the Polish documents into the DTP system I used to produce Borderline and when we finally cracked it, it imported it as plain text and stripped out all of the Polish Cyrillic language and replaced it with unusable symbols. I then decided to try and produce the English version first and the changes I’d made to my operating system meant that I now had a similar problem with English texts, they wouldn’t import and the only way I could get them into a document was to strip away all the house styles that had already been put in place. We also had a deal with a Polish website, which was going to host the Polish version, but our contact with them disappeared and for three months we didn’t know if they were still interested. By the time Christmas came and went and we entered into 2004 it was just becoming too much of a chore, only part of the issue was finished, our host for the UK edition had already put a limit on the amount of downloads we could have and I just sat at my desk one evening in February and decided enough was enough. We sent a press release out stating we were no longer going to try and produce Borderline anymore and even though it had been nearly a year since the last regular issue we had hoped to keep going and re-launch, but that wasn’t going to happen. We finally heard from the Polish website and they offered to take the issue from us and put it online in English and Polish and give us all the credit – we accepted, we felt that the work the people had done deserved to be seen by more than just a handful of us.

Borderline was officially over.

Next up: what Phil did next

My Monthly Curse (Part Fifty-One)

So far my life in comics has seemed to be full of lots of lows punctuated by the odd high and many of you must be wondering why I persevered with it for so long.

I think I’m a pretty cool bloke for someone fast approaching 50. I have a wide range of friends who all put me years younger than my actual age and I think that in general I’m a pretty well adjusted guy. I’ve managed to spend many of my years as a dedicated comics lover and campaigner for the medium, yet I’ve never allowed comics to rule my life - I know how weird that statement must seem, but it is true; I could go home at night for the most of it and concentrate on something else. I have, to a certain extent, kept comics in the closet, but in truth that actually isn’t the case. I wear the badge with pride at times because I can walk out of a comics convention and just look like an ordinary Joe on the street. I’ll talk about comics to anyone who wants to listen. I have straddled both worlds and managed to survive. Whether I have all my sanity has yet to be decided.

What drives us to be obsessed with something? I have watched Star Trek fans attend conventions dressed as Klingons talking in some gibberish made up language and thought, ‘for fuck’s sake get a life you sad pathetic bastard’ but never really considered that some of my peers might be watching me and saying ‘Ere, old Phil’s into comics; he’s just like them Trekkie sad bastards!” Fantasy, science fiction, horror and comics have all attracted their fare share of weirdoes over the years and it’s because some people only have their fantasies. Fandom, whatever genre or medium it belongs to is about community and acceptance. Fans know you hate them, pity them and take the piss out of them, but living life as a bit of a misfit tends to give you a very thick skin. Either that or you’ve killed yourself already. Comicbooks are escapism and if you live a dull, meaningless life or a full, vibrant life, everyone needs their own form of escapism. Someone could be sitting naked in front of a webcam masturbating for the pleasure of thousands (there’s a terrible chance that someone might be a comics fan) and that can be their bit of escapism. It doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t harm anyone.

Think back to that spoof news story about the comics store owner who was gunned down after initiating a small child into comics. If you are an individual with an interest that isn’t football, TV soaps, talent contests or the cult of celebrity then you are immediately not the target audience of today’s world. The further you go down the scale of weirdness the more you are pigeonholed into a category. Comics fans seem to always get placed next to rapists, murderers, kiddie fiddlers and people with urinary infections – but that might be because whenever a murderer or rapist appears it’s not long before someone in the press notices that the perpetrator has a Batman collection in his loft. But let’s be realistic about this, we just live in a society where isolation has become a necessity for many people, just because he looks like a comic fan/serial rapist doesn’t mean he’s not just a shy accountant with personal hygiene problems.

The more perfect your idea of yourself, or the higher your own self-esteem, the easier it is to sneer and deride the less fortunate than yourselves; yet it is all down to perception and the freaks – that’s the ones who look like freaks – who I’ve got to know over the years are more normal than you or me. It’s the quiet ones you need to watch! There might be a lot of sad people associated with the image of comicbooks in the US and UK, but in reality the freaks are everywhere and comics shouldn’t be pigeonholed because of an ingrained perception of them.

The irony is that us Brits and them Yanks were brought up on comics. Most of my generation grew up on standards like The Beano and The Dandy. The British have had a long love affair with Viz – the rag week like adults only comic that takes the greatest of pleasure out of lampooning the comics we all grew up with (and the irony of this hasn't escaped me) – and it is the biggest selling comic in the UK (selling more 6 times a year than most US comics manage in 12 months). If the image of comics can be overcome and believe me there isn’t the same problem abroad, then there must be reasons why comics is a continually contracting industry. Forget the fuck ups the publishers constantly make, the genre as an industry is not healthy or big in some countries, most prominently the UK and the USA.

Computer games are one of the reasons, the MTV generation is probably another. Comics are expensive (in our countries at least, because the people who are more likely to be able to afford to read comics are the ones who can’t afford the other entertainments in life and now find they can’t afford comics either!), the stories are difficult to understand or break into, but the medium demands the sophistication of 21^st century storytelling and no one wants to move an inch to try and change it. They will only change if they have no other option; comics stories are for the fans now; there's barely an indication that the publishers want new readers.

It might be that they don’t have to. I’m seeing a change in attitudes – a change for the better and initiated by the newest generation of comics readers. It could be that comics might still end up being treated in the USA and UK the way they are in other countries.

My personal experiences of world comics (an expression that is an all-embracing term) were limited until I started to produce Borderline. My experience of the delights of European comics were limited to a few Tin Tins, an Asterix and a few unbelievably gratuitous sex comics Dez brought back with him from Spain. Who were these foreigners with their colourful comics that just didn’t have the same appeal as my spandex clad heroes? These foreigners were some of the biggest selling comics characters and creators in the history of entertainment. The money comics generate in these other countries would keep a large city in electricity for a decade. People will sit on buses and read comics openly and without fear of being ridiculed or sneered at. In fact, the comics they read actually generate interest from other passengers – genuine interest not amazement.

However, I wouldn’t be doing a proper job if I didn’t quantify this – not every country in the world treats comics like the second coming of Christ, there are countries that don’t have a particularly long history with the medium. The attitudes towards comics don’t really change from those where comics are recognised, it’s just that some countries, Germany, Greece, Australia, etc., mainly produce their contribution to comics using US material.

I’m a poor tour guide but let’s have a look at some of the countries I know about – beginning with a country that is beyond belief in terms of its comics consumption and the man behind the phenomena is one of the richest people on the planet and regarded in Brazil as bigger than Walt Disney.

The following article is from the third issue of Borderline:

MAURICIO de Sousa Productions is a Brazilian children’s comics enterprise which just happens to be the world’s fourth largest art studio. Despite the UK, USA and Japanese comics industries still suffering from struggling sales, not all countries with comics traditions are finding it tough going. In fact, one character is so popular in her native Brazil (and other Latin American countries) that sales of her comics eclipse US market leaders the X-Men.

Mônica, a pint-sized, buck-toothed, bright little girl, is the lead character of Mônica’s Gang, a collection of cartoon characters modelled after real children between the ages of 5 and 10. The eternal rivalry between boys and girls to lead the gang gives rise to lively, action-filled stories starring Mônica and co-star Jimmy Five.

Mauricio de Sousa - a Brazilian cartoonist, animator and filmmaker, the creator of these and some 200 other charismatic children’s characters – has been creating comics for nearly 40 years, building a comics empire that has earned him the title of “Walt Disney of Brazil”.

Mauricio de Sousa Productions’ strength began with newspaper strips and comic books, read by almost every Brazilian in the country at some time in their life. Today, in a nation of some 165 million, the 11 titles of Mônica’s comic books currently add up to a nationwide distribution of 50 million copies a year and are read by an estimated 24 million readers a month. This represents over 75% of the children’s market in Brazil. Just as significantly, a 1997 Gallup Institute survey found that 58% of the readers of these comics were over the age of 18.

In addition, MSP is strong in areas such as licensing, animated cartoons, theme parks, promotions, live shows and cultural projects, as well as a 10,000-page free website with over 90 million hits per month at www.monica4kids.com or www.monica.com.br.

In 1998 MSP signed a contract with Globo TV in Brazil for the production of a daily TV program and a full length animated Mônica’s Gang film. MSP now holds 70% of the children’s licensing market in Brazil, a sector that has grown by nearly 500% in the last seven years. As stated, the MSP studio is the fourth largest art studio in the world, employing some 200 full-time artists.

Mônica’s Gang comics are published as Sunday pages and strips in over 100 newspapers. They also appear on the award winning 6,000-page website which includes strips, comics stories and longer, serialised comics. The site is updated weekly and has had over 40 million hits since its inception.

The Mônica’s Gang characters have appeared in comics in magazines in Latin America, Europe and Asia, published variously by Editora Globo, Abril, Best, Nova Fronteira, LP& M, Hemmet Journal, Hjemmet Bladforlaget, Ehapa Verlag, Gutenberghus, Egmont Publishing, Editorial Cinco, Perfil, Planeta, Recreativas, Editora Sanrio, Psaropoulos and others. Worldwide interest in Mauricio’s work is steadily increasing. The fact that it has been translated into as many as 13 languages in 38 countries attests to the international appeal of the stories and the characters.

The MSP film library currently includes 15 videos (13 animated cartoons, 2 live-character stories) and Mônica’s Gang vignettes totalling 600 minutes of full animated cartoons.

In addition, Mônica’s Gang is present on some 3,500 licensed products manufactured by over 100 companies; in a growing series of animated films, videos and CD-ROMs; in theme parks designed mainly for children (the largest indoor parks in Latin America, now in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro); in storybooks and activity books.

Brazil may still be suffering from the throes of recession, but MSP is flourishing. International vice president Yara Maura Silva told Borderline, “The economic crisis has affected all countries, and Brazil, which had managed to stabilise its economy for a few years, is being hit by it, as you are surely aware through the world news. Nevertheless, sales of Mônica’s Gang comics continue to be strong, with the 11 Mauricio de Sousa titles in the 11 top slots for sales, which currently average a total of 50 million copies a year.”

Not content with sewing up the market in Latin America, Mônica’s Gang has made its presence felt as a world player in toys. MSP remains a cross-marketing gold mine for de Sousa.

Okay, it’s Brazil, but the point is it then was still classed as a third world country, despite its burgeoning economy and yet over 5million people could afford to buy comics every week. They were, and still are, cheap; they are throwaway - ephemeral - and more than anything else they are accepted as part of the culture the way music, art and dance are.

Over the last decade I’ve built up strong ties with Brazil and do you know what the most frightening thing is – most young artists there want to draw the iconic superheroes like Superman, Batman and Spider-Man. It is their dream to work in America and earn the kind of money that Americans earn. The sad fact is most artists who work in economically unstable countries want to work for the USA because they perceive the US comics industry as being the pinnacle. Break into that and you’ve made it. However for iconic Brazilian artist Mike Deodato Junior his reason was to emulate his heroes, “I don’t know about the others, but, me, I’ve grown up reading American comics. I’ve learned to draw watching and copying the work of masters like Kirby, Buscema, Neal Adams and many others and I’ve always dreamt about drawing those superheroes one day. I’m just fulfilling my dream. But, yes, the money is good too. Page rates in Brazil I believe are ten times less than in the USA. Plus, I don’t think I’d get enough jobs to survive. I’d probably work in advertising again instead of comics to make the same amount of money in Brazil.”

Isn’t that sad? But it does make a lot of economic sense – during the 1970s there was an influx of Philippine artists recruited by Marvel and DC – the companies paid them less than US artists, but still a king’s ransom compared to what they could get in their home countries.

Of course the problem is that already people know that Marvel and DC pay good money and if you’re good and speedy they pay great money. But it is the same in many of these countries – only countries like Spain, France, Holland, Belgium and Japan do the artists who work there want to remain there, just about everyone else is looking at what they perceive to be a gravy train. It isn’t, not any more.

Next: Poland and me

My Monthly Curse (Part Fifty)

v) the parallax view.

In this final section I had to make a lot of hard decisions. As I’ve made it clear, I wrote this between 5 and 7 years ago and apart from having to change the tenses of many of the previous paragraphs, the majority of it has been historical. This part was a mixture of miscellany and what I and many others saw as the future of comics. Arguably, with a bit of work, I could have said something like: This is what everyone thought would happen in the next 5 years and here’s what did happen! But even that wouldn’t have worked; a lot of water has passed under the bridge and emphasises have changed and a lot of the things people were sure about didn’t happen. But there is one major element missing from making that idea work. I haven’t been involved in comics for a long time and I was the ‘comics economist’ in the industry and no one has really replaced me. Yes, there are people out there who are statisticians or are industry commentators, but the things that I focused on aren’t focused on by these people. This is not a criticism; I’m pretty much happy to admit that aspects of the comics industry interested me considerably more than just about everyone else. I worked on the Comics Economics section of Comics International for many years and changed it from just a list of sales figures into a full blown economic breakdown, one that examined trends and delved into the pure maths of comics economics. It was boring, but Dez Skinn liked it because it gave CI some gravitas and did something no one else attempted.

So, I was left with a decision to make when I approached the editing of this tome. Do I risk embarrassment and run the entire section of this ‘book’ as it was in May 2005, or do I hack and slash this last section and rewrite parts of it?

I did a bit of both.

But first, let’s take a break and talk about people with a serious lack of humour.

About six months after Borderline started something new appeared on the Internet, it had actually begun life twelve months earlier when I was sitting, bored, looking at a Warren Ellis daily editorial, which he, without being asked to do, circulated round the US comics world like he was speaking the word of God or at least had borrowed Moses’ tablets and was doing his own updated version of them. To me, he was using the Internet news services as a tool to force his opinions on other people – not that there’s anything wrong with that, he’s just one of thousands of people who do it every day, it's called Blogging.

To counter his daily editorials, I created a character called Warren Ellis-Bextor – I created a bogus e-mail account, also a bogus Internet forum (like Ellis’s) and started to post on the web as regularly as Ellis himself was. All the columns were trying to do was put a humorous spin on this comicbook spin-doctor. After the first few spoofs appeared the response was great, people liked the irreverence but probably enjoyed the fact that someone was taking the piss out of the master of the putdown. I admit, this was done with a soupçon of spite.

This immediate impact gave me an idea, coupled with another idea that was given to me. I liked the idea of doing something regularly that lampooned the comics industry – I wouldn’t be the first, but I wanted to be the most cutting edge and it to have the most vicious satire I could muster. A couple of friends knew what I was doing and they proved invaluable over the coming months. At the same time I received, at the bogus email account, an invitation from one of the wannabe comics websites called Silver Bullets Comicbooks asking me if I/we would like to write a column for the website. No monies were offered, nor could I receive any without giving away my identity and anonymity was vitally important because like any good coward I needed to hide behind something to be able to get away with what I was doing. I toyed with the idea, was given an editor who basically couldn’t edit, told Silver Bullets that I did it without an editor or not at all and they agreed. How very Alan Moore of me!

Spoof Central was born. The first column appeared late in 2002, around the time of the rather confusing decision by the USA to punish the Iraqis for not having anything to do with 9/11. It didn’t pull any punches:

Comic fans included in Bush’s list of ‘Alliance of Evil’.

It’s funny, but not so long ago a famous person said, “a well-placed strategic missile would rid us of these hopeless wank stains once and for all”. Of course that specific famous person was talking about comics fans.

It now appears that the above statement might not be as shocking or as stupid as you might think, now the US has included comics fans in the list of potential aggressors to the free world. In fact, US intelligence has released information suggesting an attack at the height of convention season would be the optimum time to launch a pre-emptive strike or counter-offensive. The Free World Alliance led by US President George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is currently looking at a way of maximising its attacks. However, one source close to the President revealed to this reporter, “We believe if we indiscriminately bombed US comics conventions, someone would probably notice a pattern and by the third one the effectiveness at ridding the world a large portion of the comics community would be lost and these stinky buggers would probably drive everything underground, making open attacks either by missiles or ground forces difficult.”

However, one prominent US general said, “If we were to bomb the San Diego Comics Convention and Wizardworld in Chicago, two major conventions with a huge turn out of people, we believe we can wipe out a big percentage of both fans and creators. The beauty is whatever havoc is wreaked at one, more will turn out at the other to praise, eulogise and generally fawn over their fallen heroes, thus making the second strike as devastating, if not more so, than the first.” Allegedly Mustard Gas hasn't been ruled out as an alternative if comics people relocate to their original homes, believed by the CIA to be the sewers.

The British government is deciding whether or not to bomb the Bristol comics convention in May. Geoff Hoon, the UK defence secretary said, “We’ll target smart bombs to hit the local pubs to make sure we kill all the UK creators and their hangers on, and we could send in the SAS to take out the UK fans.”

As the situation escalated closer to the brink of war, The US government explained why comics fans and creators are such a threat to national security and rough plans on how they will rid the world of this unpopular scourge. The Surgeon General issued this statement: “Comics fans pose a threat on a number of fronts – not only do they have knowledge of weapons of mass destruction, they also pose a serious chemical, bacterial and biological weapon threat. They operate out of covert operational cells, exchanging information and tactics with other fans all over the world. These comics fans pose a serious threat and have to be stopped. Remember it is your duty as an American citizen to wipe out these threats to American life and independent obesity.”

The US is currently on DefCon 1 and one lesser General said, “We got a call from one comics creator who said we’d have an even bigger impact if we had a Defcon ½ or even a Defcon 0 with an embossed variant cover. Whatever happens, in the event of an attack, it doesn’t matter about the civilian casualties this is a strategic defence scenario. A kill or be bored to death scenario of the likes never seen before on this planet.”

One fan, taken into custody by the CIA, professed to have knowledge of a powerful and cosmically destructive weapon called The Ultimate Nullifier. It is said that President Bush wants this weapon and has asked for Stargate SG-1 to be deployed with the Starship Enterprise to find this weapon. The fan, a resident of southern California and believed to be in his 50s, has been sent to the US military’s secret base in Cuba.

Both US and UK governments are emphasising that the threat to civilian safety is very much a reality. “Even if the nucleus of these comics fans is destroyed, there are likely to be cells all over both countries,” said Bush in a forthright speech to the Chimpanzee Guild of America.

It is believed there are cells of fundamentalists all over the globe, but only US and UK comics fans pose any real international threat. These cells can consist of up to 3 people, but rarely any more as these obsessive creatures tend to disagree over even the most fundamental elements of their religion.

All of these cells are also capable of sustained chemical and bacterial warfare. The Surgeon General also said this, “If seen in the street, members of the general public are urged not to approach them. We do not know as of yet whether they possess any members fanatical enough to become suicide bombers, but evidence from tests conducted by the FBI, on comics fans already in custody, suggests that exploding one of them could result in fall-out stretching a 60 mile radius – all of which could be fatal or seriously harmful to any living creature that comes in contact with the debris.

These fans are believed to be working for either Hydra or AIM – secret organisations the CIA are currently investigating thoroughly. The White House issued this statement: “If you have a neighbour or a tenant in your building that hasn’t been out for many weeks, has his food shipped in and/or spends hours typing or watching old episodes of Star Trek. Do not approach him even if he hasn’t paid the rent. Inform your local law enforcement agency and they will deal with the potential miscreant.” However, it is believed that 78% of all Americans have no idea what a ‘miscreant’ is.

Representatives of the French and Japanese governments were last night demanding the United Nations take action against the US and UK because of this unjust and bullying tactic aimed at a group of individuals with only mitigating evidence to suggest their involvement with weapons of mass destruction. French President Jacques Chirac said this, “Je pense les Anglais et les Américains sont un groupe de chattes effrayant.” And quite frankly this reporter agrees with him up to the point where he involves the British.

It now looks like a conflict will not be averted. The President is adamant(ium) about his decision and his chiefs of staff are all spineless jellyfish. The comics industry is aware of the devastating effects this will have on the industry, that profit margins will drop through the floor and comics would no longer be a viable proposition. Nor would they have an audience devoted to Swimsuit Specials any more.

During a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Donald Rumsfeld was heard to say, “Have you managed to get through an entire day without a gas mask around them? If we rid the world of this menace now, we can build for a better comics industry, with less smelly and socially unacceptable misanthropes involved. We’re planning on bringing a series of laws that will restrict comics creators to a maximum weight of 170lbs and all comics fans have to register a sexual partner. Preferably of the opposite sex, but we will consider very sexy lesbians, who are inclined to swing both ways, especially in illustrious company.”

However, the US government is offering a regeneration package worth billions of dollars in aid to the stricken industry, just so long as it can bomb the shite out of the fans right now.

You could gauge the impact by the amount of silence that greeted it. Then the bombshell hit. A guy you’ll be meeting later did something no one else thought about doing, he tracked back the email address to the server and narrowed it down that Spoof Central was either me or someone very closely associated to me. I had a problem, but I had a solution and a way to cover my arse before the comics industry’s now best-known gossip columnist exposed me. The help I needed came from Dan Black, Borderline’s PR man and famous (to me, at least) for perfecting the bogus on-line identity. He offered to post all the Spoof Central stuff from his laptop so the IP address differed. It allowed me to come up with a slightly unlikely, but also plausible explanation to the ingenious detective. If he checked the IP addresses of every post he would see that no two on the trot were the same and all I was doing was helping out some mates, who I knew were Spoof Central, maintain their anonymity and now I was in danger of getting the blame for something I was only helping out with. The detective bought it, whether he believed it or not, I don’t know, but he never mentioned it again and a few months later when he got involved in a conversation with Spoof Central he acted like he didn’t know who he was dealing with and that suited me fine.

Spoof Central grew, not just in Internet presence but also in numbers. By the time the column had settled into a regular weekly slot at Silver Bullets there were actually five of us ‘contributing’. I was doing most of the writing, but Martin Shipp and Chris Spicer produced some sharp stuff for it under their own pseudonyms, Dan Black kept our identities safe, while our fifth member manned the email accounts and tended to our on-line persona, when I wasn’t able to. The problem with our fifth member was he was an ex-comics fan who felt more negative emotions towards comics than he could control, he was also quite possibly the most naturally surreally funny person on the team. But he hated comics fans, the ultimate nerdiness of them was something he could never get his head around and he disliked people who used the Internet to be all holier than thou – and in comics there are lots of them.

It all started innocently. Martin was in Spain, I was in Scotland, Chris was shagging his then girlfriend and pootling about on his motorbike and Dan (Mark) was off in Greece with his missus watching Radiohead play. We left the person only known as Frances Ploot in charge. Within a few days he’d managed to annoy most of his fellow Silver Bullets colleagues to the point where none of them wanted us there anymore. Frances then descended on Usenet and a host of other forums and basically told the comics reading public what a sad bunch of wankers they all were, by the time I got back from a truly dreadful holiday Spoof Central’s already fragile existence has been destroyed. We’d been going for about 4 months and not only didn’t have a home but didn’t have that many supporters any more. I sat at home with my head in my hands wondering how Frances could have let it slip. I attempted to do some damage limitation and managed to stem the tide of abuse being hurled our way but Spoof Central as a concept was finished, we had ideas to bring it back in a different incarnation but it was a pointless idea, comics fans really don’t like people taking the piss out of their subject unless it’s good, clean, relatively harmless fun. Something as vicious and nasty as Spoof Central was always destined to be a loser. In all fairness to Frances he didn’t go out of his way to deliberately ruin us, he was goaded into it. Frances had been having, what he believed was a bit of harmless fun with one of our Silver Bullet colleagues when another colleague launched into a full scale personal assault on the Spoof team. Frances wasn’t about to let some no mark insult us, so he fired back with both barrels. I’m sure it was fun while it lasted, but it didn’t last.

But before we close that small chapter a few more interesting things happened while we were doing Spoof Central. One of the things we specialised in was a regular fake interview with big comics stars – it was my particular speciality. I decided very early on that I wanted to do something a little bit odd, so I chose an obscure 1970s comics writer called Tony Isabella, who had basically been in semi-retirement for the last 20 years, but had maintained his profile by being ever-present on the Internet. I recreated Tony Isabella, gave him a completely made up origin and started talking about him as the long-lost comics genius, who walked out on Marvel and DC in the late 1970s because he was simply too good for them. Spoof Central kicked off its interviews by heaping more onto the myth we were creating by interviewing Isabella. The comics community thought it was quite touching, Isabella became an overnight fan of the spoofers and his profile increased more in a couple of months than it had in the previous 20 years. All of this despite portraying the writer as a egotistical buffoon with a penchant for schoolgirls in PE kits… We followed him with a number of actual comics greats, all of which were completely made up, all of them paying homage to Tony Isabella.

It got to the point where I started to get emails from pros who wanted Spoof Central to do some expose on them – it seemed that like with other innovations in comics that the pros were the ones who were embracing it the most. Incredibly, one such email was received from Dez Skinn, who felt he was prime material for the spoofing treatment. I replied that ‘people who ask don’t get’ and I never heard from him again, although he did get spoofed a little in one column.

But Spoof Central’s main target was the comics fan, the one we’ve talked about throughout this book so far. I suppose Spoof Central was the nucleus for this book, because I (and my humble assistants) attempted to show comics fans just what the rest of the world thought of them, or saw them as and instead of taking it as a joke (and maybe a heads up) it was greeted with extreme hostility – the fans ended up being the ones who wielded the power in this scenario – Spoof Central had crossed the line with them far too many times. I suppose one of the straws that broke the proverbial camel’s back was a series of articles, like the one printed earlier, which targeted the worst kind of comics fans. The article for which we received the most scorn from fans was this:

We’re in that wonderful period during the year where Comics Conventions are half a world away. The convention season, especially in the USA and UK, has been referred to recently as ‘The Sweat Bowl’ with San Diego being the ‘Super Sweat Bowl’ – a convention as much about body odour than comics.

Steve Horowitz, a security guard at the San Diego Convention Centre since 1992, said, “Jeez, man. Why do they hold that damned comics thing in the middle of summer in one of the hottest cities in the States? I think someone somewhere is having one God almighty laugh at us.”

It isn’t just the convention centre employees that are finding the annual BO fest tough going. Dick, of Dick’s Last Resort – one of the cities more popular hang outs, said, “We’d never turn away the business, but we feel really sorry for our regular customers, especially during the last week in July. The bar gets invaded by a horde of comics geeks, either sweaty fanboys or lard-assed creators, with huge appetites for Buffalo Wings and fizzy sodas.”

Dave Pantanzian, a resident of San Diego and a self-confessed comics geek, was a little more philosophical about the annual gathering. “There are comics conventions all over the USA, ones that attract all number of fans and creators, but this and the Wizardworld event in Chicago are the two biggest comics conventions the world has ever seen and all of this negative energy is going to have a downer affect on everybody’s feelings. Comics are the lifeblood of our future genre writers and therefore these gatherings are the ideal place for the adoring public to give thanks to these unheralded stars of modern literature and art.”

It is believed that the comics convention was born shortly after the creation of the world’s first comic book – believed by many to be The Yellow Kid #1 (but more logically it was probably done by someone else in a foreign country). Just behind a dark and dank alley in Brooklyn, or maybe New Jersey, three guys who all bought copies of The Yellow Kid #1 started to have a discussion about the merits of the medium, how finely rendered it was and if Doc Doom would be a future villain of the Kid’s? Within weeks the world saw a number of these comics speakeasies starting up and by the start of the 20th Century they were being organised in as diverse places as Montevideo, Brighton, Corfu and Melbourne, Australia. According to comics historian E. Warner Spoon, it is possible that Arch Duke Ferdinand might have had a comic book in his possession prior to the outbreak of World War One.

By the 1960s comics conventions had become so big that they had to be held in scout huts. Elias P. Shuggoth, the organiser of the first Dragon*Con – a mixture of comics, Sci Fi and Frog Wrestling – said, “we had to send out for extra chairs and by 1967 we needed a PA so that the tape of Jack Kirby talking could be heard above the chatter of the 17 attendees. These were heady days indeed.”

However, it was after the assassination of Martin Luther King, now believed to be because he was a fan of the Silver Surfer rather than for his racial and political beliefs, that really put the convention on the map. Shuggoth continued, “With King’s death and the rumour circulating underground that it might have been because of comics rather than his political beliefs, comics all of a sudden became as hip and trendy as Afros. We had brothers and sisters queuing up with geeks and white boys and the world was a peaceful place.” But then things started to go slightly Pete Tong. With comics taking over the cultural world and sales of a myriad of comics exceeding 1million per month, proper organised conventions became the norm and the summer of 1967 (or maybe 69) also became known as ‘The Summer of Comics’ as well as the Summer of Love. However, during Neil Armstrong’s now famous moonwalk (many years before Michael Jackson ever tried it) NASA picked up the following message spoken privately to Buzz Aldrin, “Hey Buzz, you like comics, don’t you?” “Yeah,” replied Armstrong’s co-pilot. “You are such a sad bastard,” was the Captain’s reply and with that off-hand, and some say humorous, quip comics were banished to the back row as being something slightly dirty and sordid. Forget Seduction of the Innocent, Neil Armstrong effectively destroyed comics’ street cred with one comment.

It didn’t matter how low the industry sank in the 1970s, it couldn’t ruin its image any more than Armstrong had on the Sea of Tranquillity. And while comics struggled to be accepted by anyone, the conventions went back underground and with that followed the transformation of the comics fan from respected man about town to misanthropic stink magnet. By the time Frank Miller and Alan Moore had attempted, almost single-handedly, to rescue the comics industry from ignominy, most comics fans were locked into their bedrooms with porn movies and heavy metal soundtracks. In fact, by 1985, just prior to the advent of the Internet, comics fans were in danger of becoming as ridiculed and derided as child molesters, train spotters and New Romantics. However, while the Batman movie saved the comics industry, it also gave the newfound keepers of comics the opportunity to further annex the devoted fans and their much-loved conventions.

The Wall Street Journal ran this famous headline in August 1988: All Comics Fans Are Twats. There was an outcry, uproar and something else that had pinko-liberals all in a huff. The United Nations were approached, but refused to be drawn into the debate. Former UN secretary general Boutros Boutros Galli said this, “How could we acknowledge comics fans as a minority and oppressed race, when the majority of comics fans throughout the world, civilised and uncivilised can be fans and live normally, have wives, children, mortgages and most importantly have lives!” This apparently seems to be a problem faced by only US and UK comics fans. In fact, during a scientific experiment conducted at Huntingdon Life Sciences Research Centre most non US and UK comics fans were diagnosed as being alive, while the fans from USA and its unofficial 51st State were found to have traces of life on them but very little else.

In the last decade conventions have become a haven for the unshaven; a Lourdes for the hordes; a massive bash for the great unwashed (OK, so that wasn’t as clever as the first two, this isn’t alliteration 101!). Comics conventions now attract many thousands of excluded people from both these blighted countries. Byron Stott, one-time co-organiser of Nerd Con summed the situation up nicely, “Conventions are now the place to be. Nerds and geeks are high profile and big business. We’re wanted now as possible consumer tools and this is why these twice-yearly mega-cons are organised. Regardless of the health risk there is a great sense of camaraderie. We know of one young man that actually managed to speak to a female security guard this year. We see these conventions as a way forward rather than as a place where normal people can gloat and point fingers.” Even if people do and have a great time doing it.

This brings us nicely back to the smell factor. This year’s major US conventions are to be sponsored by Right Guard, with a special can of deodorant issued to any attendee that sets the ‘smellometer’ off. Also staff and non-comics convention attendees will be issued with special facemasks and miniature canisters of oxygen in case of any bad smells or offensive body odours.

To sum up this story quickly, The San Diego Tourist Board said this about comics conventions in its yearly brochure: San Diego is a wonderful place. One of the cleanest cities in the United States of America we strongly urge anyone thinking of visiting our fair city to do so during the months of August thru to June. July is very hot and stinky and there are comics geeks in the bars, so it’s best if you go somewhere else that month.
In conclusion, unless these conventions centres provide showers or baths then there will always be some kind of bacterial risk to the health of normal San Diegans. However, Antonia Consuella, the mayor of Old San Diego had an innovative idea of her own. “Let’s not risk the lives of our boys in Iraq, let’s just drop comics fans on them Iraqi bastards.”

Very few people were aware of who Spoof Central were, so I decided to try and persuade certain people that we were actually a bunch of other people – semi-famous writers and artists based in Brighton. But if people posing as Nigerian millionaires can find a sucker every day then comics fans will believe anything you tell them, within reason… The other irony about getting people to believe that the offensive Spoof Central team were based in Brighton was that Dez Skinn had just recently moved Comics International down there… I expect any of the suckers who fell for it will read this and think, 'yeah, it figures...'

Next: moving on

My Monthly Curse (Part Forty-Nine)

I've touched on this before, but probably without the right depth. DC killed off Superman, then brought him back. The great con about this was that it had happened several times during the Silver Age of comics; they were called 'imaginary stories', which, I think you'll agree, is a bizarre description for something that is already fictional. This modern age death was hype and commercialism gone mad and even more ironic is that DC brought back the same old Superman; not new, not improved, no new costume or powers - just Superman.

Twice more during my tenure at CI did a publisher try and do a similar thing. The Beano got a lot of press for the new-look Dennis the Menace; there was even serious debate about the whys and wherefores of doing it. The makeover lasted ONE issue and was really just one of a series of jolly japes and wheezes by DC Thomson to keep The Beano in the human consciousness.

The other bit of pseudo-hype happened in the early 1990s and was also perpetrated by DC Comics. It involved Batman and the apparent new look he was receiving. Out was the old bat costume, in was a new body-armoured, hi-tech hero. There was a comics public outcry when we released the news and this allowed Dez Skinn to get on his soapbox and explain in no uncertain terms to the braying public that this was a gimmick, a publicity stunt, and that Batman would not be changing permanently; he would be back as normal within a year.

The word of God had been spoken and the masses accepted his diatribe. However, one young wannabe journalist in Devon took serious umbrage to this and reeled off a letter to CI admonishing Skinn on a number of things, not least taking away the pleasure and innocence of the reader. She accused Skinn of using CI to look clever and then sadly went off in a direction that left an initially excellently scathing letter in tatters. She spent half the letter explaining why she liked the new Batman and suggested that Skinn apologise to her in ten years when she's been proved right.

Batman was back as his old self within a year.

The point I'm trying to illustrate is that comics people aren't stupid; maybe a little short sighted, but not idiots. Sometimes you need to shake up stuff. A snow globe looks pretty, gets a boost when you shake it, but settles back down to conformity after a while - this is comics. The bread and butter of comics journalists is when the snow globe has been shook. Anybody calling themselves a comics journalist or commentator knows this and if they don't they can't call themselves serious. Even comics journalism is governed by the law of the illusion of change. Pick up any comics magazine of the last 20 years and the bulk of it is news about imaginary stories. New looks, new villains, new writers, artists, supporting cast - the list is endless and the regurgitation of it is relentless.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to realise this. The X-Men went through a number of new-looks and directions in its initial 66 issue run; but this was just decoration. Spider-Man got a black costume in the 1980s and it seemed that Marvel was intent to keep it, but Spidey went back to his red, blue and web look, eventually. He is an icon, after all.

DC were the first and really only publisher to really change things, but even that was just the most elaborate 'illusion of change' ever tried and it was one of the first. I've mentioned Crisis on Infinite Earths elsewhere, but this re-invented and re-launched the DC Universe. Gave us new heroes, new costumes, old heroes with new identities and it tried to reinvent itself as another Marvel universe (which, to my knowledge has never ever had to reinvent itself out of necessity). Shared universes work better when they are small and compact, not sprawling and impenetrable like DC's had become (I believe there was something like 15 alternative dimensions operating simultaneously at any one point; Earths 1 thru 10, A, B, C, D, X and a few others). But this was only down to the people running comics companies being comics fans themselves.

Most of DC's hype was unnecessary; they could have just re-launched without trying to appease the wishes of a small minority of hard core fans. It would have worked just as well. But, they chose to produce the equivalent of 15 standard sized comics to feature just about every character that has ever appeared in a DC comic to give it 'closure'. It worked, but over the 25 years since it happened the then new readers are now as jaded and confused as their predecessors. Which is why, presumably, DC did the reinvention thing again in 2011.

I first learned about DC's plans to do it again earlier this year [2011], but dismissed them as just more hyperbole. Having avoided any news about it like the plague, I write this with no real idea of what is happening or going to happen, only that Superman has been reinvented, this time without the trunks outside his tights. The idea is to make DC the comics company of choice for the 21st century - to attract new readers and a new generation of comics fans. Good luck to them, because at $3.99 an issue the most immediate thing prohibiting them is the price.

The thing about re-launching titles or starting again is that there is a perverse sense of loyalty to the numbering of a comic series. DC did this once before, but kept the actual number of the comic prominent. this was issue number 1 for you new kids, but issue number 751 for those of you that have been reading it for a while.

I think the thing that allowed Dez Skinn and I to be better comics journalists was that we understood how the machine worked, but we were rarely caught up in the hype. We looked forward to major events like everyone else; we just didn't allow our sense of reality to be lost. For a few years, CI had some of the most subversive writing in it you could imagine. To be able to be objective about comics you have to be able to rise above it and be irreverent and there are few who can do that and the rest of the industry doesn't like them because they call a spade a spade.

People who have worked as 'comics journalists' and there are few of us, are either sycophants or mavericks. Some will be fed stories continuously and will regurgitate to please the people who have little or no loyalty to them for all the hard work they do for nothing; the mavericks will forever be a thorn in the sides of marketing executives, because they don't play by the rules. Mavericks don't hack phones or bribe people, but they often ask the missing question from the who-what-where and when mantra - why?

The Comics Journal, Borderline and for a while Comics International have or were never afraid to ask difficult questions. They were reporting on a part of the entertainment industry and the people producing comics - from the publishers to the creators - were just as culpable for what they do than a film producer or TV network exec is. The private life of comics is rarely delved into; as I've said, fans don't want it and publishers are ambivalent because any publicity is good publicity. When Image Comics started there was a feeling that comics creators were the new rock stars and we'd hear about Todd McFarlane buying baseballs, or Rob Liefeld starring in a Levi's advert. Being an artist in comics was a short-lived road to stardom. Yet, it was the comics buying public who were fooled by this Will'o' th'wisp phenomena; they bought into it and then started to get upset when their real life heroes started being reported in a lesser light.

I was at a big comics convention at Alexandra Palace in the mid 1990s. One of the huge rising stars of comics, Simon Bisley, was there. He was showing off his batmobile, what he bought with all the money he had been making. He was also doing sketches and signings for fans and when the time came for him to stop, he stopped. There was maybe a half dozen people left in the queue and he could have taken an extra 10 minutes to sign a few comics; but he didn't and was quite arrogant about it, especially to a young lad at the end of the queue who was upset at missing the chance of meeting one of his heroes. Bisley laughed at this - he was so rock and roll.

CI never ran this story; Dez felt that it painted a picture of creators that people didn't want to see - he had also just got friendly with the artist.

The point is, comics fans don't like journalists like I was; they do not want the real world entering their fantasy; but someone has to do it. Comics journalism isn't about announcing that Lex Luthor will be of Iranian origin; it's about reporting on the industry - all aspects, even the ones you might feel uncomfortable with.

Next up: the final section begins...