Broken Frontier

For comics fans in London it’s been a couple of months of major events and exhibitions in the capital city. From the unmissable Comica Festival panels at the Institute for Contemporary Arts to manga-influenced archaeological mysteries at the British Museum right through to Sid the Sexist, the Fat Slags and Buster Gonad celebrating Viz’s thirtieth anniversary at the Cartoon Museum, comics have rarely had such a high profile amidst the city’s tourist attractions.

And, perhaps most tellingly, there’s hardly been a super-hero in sight! Broken Frontier’s Andy Oliver sampled just the tiniest tip of the proverbial iceberg of available events and looks backwards and forwards here at a winter when sequential storytelling made it big in the galleries and museums of England’s capital..

In an overview of exhibitions designed to appeaI to a broad cross-section of the public, it seems suitable to begin with an event that focuses on a comics publication whose popularity also crosses over into a non-traditional, non-comics buying audience. Currently at the Cartoon Museum long-running British monthly Viz, that peculiarly British mix of irreverent satire and gloriously indulgent toilet humour, celebrates thirty years of wickedly parodying DC Thomson comics and stamping all over political correctness in a special exhibition. Running until 24th Jan 2010 this is a wonderful collection of original art and strips plus assorted related tat from the adult comic that has been appealing to comics and non-comics readers alike for three decades now.

Its heyday of selling a million-plus issues may be long since gone but Viz remains something of an institution in the U.K. While some American readers may scratch their heads at the mention of characters like Sid the Sexist, The Fat Slags, Finbarr Saunders and his Double Entendres, Spoilt Bastard and The Modern Parents, their iconic place in British pop culture is now undeniably cemented.

The exhibition’s greatest strength, though, is not so much in celebrating the work and the characters involved; fun though that is for the broader-minded. What really strikes the spectator is just how invaluable a reflection of changes in British culture Viz has been over the last thirty years. Comics may still be dismissed as meaningless ephemera by the majority but one can’t help but feel that the quote in the Museum’s press release from long-standing Viz contributor Graham Dury has a certain irony – "We pride ourselves on the fact that you're no cleverer when you've read Viz. You might have had a few laughs, but you've not learnt anything." I can’t help to feel in years to come that quote will be turned on its head because, whatever else it may be superficially, Viz is also a lasting reminder of our social attitudes and mores from 1979 onwards.

And, even if you’re not persuaded of that, what other gallery in London is going to have displays of mock-ups of the Queen Mother’s teeth or the Elvis Presley Dambusters Clock Plate Of Tutankhamun (to name just a couple of the fake pieces of merchandise based on tacky Sunday supplement ads that Viz actually offered for sale over the years)?

Winding up at the tail end of November the annual Comica Festival, largely based at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and under the umbrella of which some of the other exhibitions mentioned here fell, was its usual unmissable mix of talks, creator conversations, exhibitions and films. It seems churlish to only mention a few names but with the likes of Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Bryan Talbot, Eddie Campbell, Pat Mills, Kevin O’Neill, James Jean, Tara McPherson, Cameron Stewart, Karl Kerschl, Ramon Perez and Ben Templesmith, all talking about either their own work or engaging in more general panel discussion throughout November’s events, it’s easy to see how the festival’s deserved reputation for promoting the breadth of the medium has been achieved. Overseeing all is the ever ebullient festival director Paul Gravett, whose infectious enthusiasm is as much an indispensable ingredient of Comica as the diverse itinerary of events.

For Broken Frontier alumni two Comica conversation panels this year were of particular interest. Reinhard Kleist, creator of the Johnny Cash graphic biography I See a Darkness, was on hand to chat with music critic Charles Shaar Murray. Kleist was interviewed by BF’s very own Bart Croonenborghs recently (Read Part One and Part Two here). Also interviewed for BF by Bart earlier this year was Belgian creator Willy Linthout, who was on hand for a poignant panel discussion that included author Michael Rosen (Michael Rosen’s Sad Book) to discuss his OGN Years of the Elephant. Both works deal with their respective authors coming to terms with the loss of a son. To read more about Years of the Elephant check out the Broken Frontier interview with Willy Linthout: Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

For more on the extensive list of Comica events at this year’s festival visit the official site and bookmark it ready for 2010...

Moving over to West London, The Science Museum is currently using the iconography of classic British comics hero Dan Dare to metaphorically parallel the huge growth in technological innovation in post-World War II Britain in its current exhibition Dan Dare and the Birth of High-Tech Britain, running until 1st November 2010. Dan Dare, of course, debuted in the seminal boys weekly The Eagle in 1950, obviously around the same time of the exhibition’s historical coverage. Apart from the illustrative use of Dare, as a teaching aid of sorts, there’s also a small selection of artwork, The Eagle ephemera and rare Dan Dare collectibles on show. One, perhaps, for the Dads (or the Granddads even!) to take the kids to...

There’s still just a handful of days to catch the exhibition of the work of leading Manga artist Hoshino Yukinobu at the British Museum. The creator’s popular character Professor Munakata appears regularly in Japan’s Big Comic and Hoshino visited the museum in October as preparation for a series of works that will depict his hero investigating artifacts from the museum. Based on the artwork currently on show in Room 3 of the British Museum the promised eventual English translation of the work looks well worth checking out. This one winds up on 3rd January 2010 so be very quick about it if you want to make the trip.

Let's not forget, either, that Orbital Comics has its own permanent gallery space in its Great Newport Street shop. The current exhibition, running until 13th January, showcases the art of legendary 2000AD artist and Deadline founder Brett Ewins. The previous event in the gallery space in December was the Caped Crusaid exhibition to increase awareness of HIV/AIDS featuring a variety of comics/pop culture-inspired doodles and sketchs from creators, performers and celebrities which were later auctioned on eBay to raise money for Crusaid. And from 14th January to 14th February 2010 the spotlight shifts to the work of that bastion of the British comics scene veteran artist Arthur Ranson in the premiere exhibition of his work.

For more details on any of the events mentioned be sure to click on the accompanying links above. And with apologies to all the many exhibitions not mentioned in this very brief taster, retrospective details of which can be found on the Comica site...