It’s nearly Gosh! Comics/Broken Frontier Drink and Draw time again as our popular collaborative event returns this month on September 20th. As ever, your co-hosts for the night are myself (Broken Frontier Editor-in-Chief Andy Oliver) and Gosh’s very own Nora Goldberg. The evening begins at 6.30pm at Gosh on Berwick Street before we head off for our sketching and imbibing antics at 7pm. Don’t forget you can join the official Facebook event here.
This time around we’re at the The Crown pub in Soho’s Brewer Street with no less than four featured artists – Hannh Berry, ILYA, Joe Decie and Rebecca K. Jones.
Hannah Berry’s debut graphic novel was the acclaimed noir thriller Britten and Brülightly from Jonathan Cape following the investigations of a worldweary private eye but with a deliciously surreal twist. In 2012 her second Cape book, the tense horror story Adamtine (below left), was published. I described it here at Broken Frontier as a “labyrinthine, twisting tale of murkiness and guilt that cements Hannah Berry’s rep as one of the most exciting talents to break out in the UK comics scene in recent years.”
Hannah also contributed to Ravi Thornton’s Broken Frontier Awards-nominated graphic memoir HOAX Psychosis Blues (below right) alongside artists like Bryan Talbot, Karrie Fransman, Mark Stafford and Broken Frontier ‘Six to Watch’ creator Rozi Hathaway. She has contributed to anthologies like Team Girl Comic and The Strumpet, is a regular host/interviewer at comics events and one half of the presenting team with Dan Berry on the No, YOU Hang Up! podcast. She is currently working on her new graphic novel Livestock.
One of the great stalwarts of UK comics, ILYA’s career has seen him work on such diverse projects as his acclaimed The End of the Century Club, collaborations with Eddie Campbell on Bacchus, and an adaptation of King Lear from SelfMadeHero’s ‘Manga Shakespeare’ line.
ILYA’s 2013 graphic novel Room for Love (below left) – the powerful tale of the unlikely relationship between a teen runaway and a middle-aged romance writer – was reviewed here at Broken Frontier by Conori Bell-Bhuiyan who said of it “It’s a story with a raw honesty that demands attention, and one that you won’t regret reading.”
In 2014 ILYA edited a fantastic collection of near impossible to find comics in Robinson’s The Mammoth Book of Cult Comics (below right) which I covered here at BF. It included work by Gregory Benton, John Welding, John Bagnall, Jonathan Edwards, Paul B. Rainey, Paul O’Connell and Daniel Locke. He has also edited a number of volumes of The Mammoth Book of New Manga and his prose novel The Clay Dreaming was published by Myriad Editions.
Joe Decie has been a long-time favourite here at BF for his hauntingly different take on autobio work that mixes the mundanity of real life with bizarre flights of fancy. I first reviewed his work on the old Broken Frontier site including The Accidental Salad from Blank Slate Books and his self-published Pocket Full of Coffee.
In 2013 Blank Slate published The Listening Agent (below), a hardcover edition of his work which I called a “laconic and beautifully understated collection of work”. Joe was a contributor to our ‘State of the Small Press Nation‘ series of articles last year and I also covered his LICAF-commissioned comic There’s No Bath in this Bathroom in 2015. He’s currently working on a graphic novel for Jonathan Cape.
Rebecca K. Jones is an online and print self-publisher who joins an illustrious line of small pressers to be featured guests at our Gosh/BF Drink and Draws. She’s published the 24-hour comics Whale and Night Out as well as Let’s Go Home (below right), dealing with issues surrounding the topic of housing, and the zine Cat Disco.
Rebecca was also the co-creator of the Cats Vs. Bunnies webcomic with Teresa McLaughlin. You can check out her Cat Disco webcomic (below left) here.
Join us next Tuesday night, then, for another fun evening of drinking, drawing and comics camaraderie. We kick off at 6.30pm in Gosh with a chance to get hold of signed comics and books from our featured creators before moving over to the The Crown for 7. We look forward to seeing you then!
You can find the Facebook event group here.
