SMALL PRESS DAY IS COMING!
Saturday July 9th sees the first Small Press Day in the UK and Ireland – an event that seeks to spotlight the exciting new voices in self-publishing and celebrate the ethos of the small press scene. Across both countries shop signings, workshops and associated events will be taking place. You can find out all about it and what’s on in your local area at the official Small Press Day site here.
This week, as part of our SPD coverage, we’re pointing you in the direction of some of the most interesting uses of the form by UK-based small press creators working in a number of different fields of comics practice. Today we start with ten top examples of slice-of-life comics work covered here at Broken Frontier over the last year or so that spotlight the diverse ways that creators approach the autobio strand of storytelling.
If you like what you see then you can investigate further with the online store links included…
Smoo Comics
Simon Moreton’s elegant minimalism in the pages of Smoo Comics is an established favourite in this column. The long-running autobiographical series came to an end last year but Moreton’s subtly powerful storytelling continues in his new project Minor Leagues. The final issue of Smoo is a most fittingly thoughtful coda to the 10-issue run.
Small Pressganged review here
Small Pressganged soundbite: Simon Moreton’s ruminations on life, memory, environment and identity in the pages of Smoo have been so much more than just autobiography over the years. They’ve been a pool of shared experience, an emotional meeting point, and a haunting reminder of the commonality of the human condition.
Buy copies online here including a mega-deal of the last three issues of Smoo for just £5.00.
Rabbit Thoughts
Nominated for a Broken Frontier Award in 2015 in the Best One-Shot category, Rabbit Thoughts was the debut comic from 2016 BF ‘Six Small Press Creators to Watch‘ artist Kim Clements.
Through her on-page rabbit avatar, it tells the story of a period of the creator’s life when she felt lost and alone in the big city. Heart-breaking but beautiful, it also fits broadly into the graphic medicine area of comics.
Small Pressganged review here
Small Pressganged soundbite: There’s an emotional intelligence and empathetic quality to these pages that means that you experience Rabbit Thoughts rather than simply read it. With its poignant fragility and haunting beauty this is a truly unforgettable debut comic.
Buy copies online here priced £4.00
Kim Clements will be signing at Orbital Comics on Small Press Day. Details here.
I Drank Holy Water
Olivia Sullivan, aka Zen Bucko, first came to prominence in the pages of noted British anthology Dirty Rotten Comics and has been slowly releasing her own self-published comics since. I Drank Holy Water is her look back at her Catholic upbringing, how it affected her in her younger years, and how it shaped her later ones.
Uncompromising in tone and unorthodox in presentation, it marks the arrival of an artist to watch this year.
Small Pressganged review here
Small Pressganged soundbite: If such a thing can be said to exist then it could be argued that Zen Bucko’s art has a strangely caricatured realism to it – a distorted verisimilitude that echoes its dark and very personal monologue.
Buy copies online here priced £6.00
Tales from the Wedding Present
A timeframe-jumping account of life on the road with the popular indie band, Tales from the Wedding Present looks back on three decades of Wedding Present front man David Gedge and company’s adventures in a series of short anecdotal comic strips.
With a deadpan wit and clever comedy pacing, it’s also full of sly fun references to comics history and continuity. Artist Lee Thacker’s clear line and top visual characterisation plays a huge role in the often dry humour on show.
Small Pressganged review here
Small Pressganged soundbite: It’s that ability to walk the line and provide a product that will appeal to both Wedding Present and non-Wedding Present fans alike is perhaps one of the book’s greatest strength.
Buy copies online here.
David Gedge, Terry De Castro and Lee Thacker will be signing at Dave’s Comics in Brighton on Small Press Day. Details here.
Fear of Mum-Death and the Shadow Men
That the work of Wallis Eates remains largely unrecognised outside of the London small press circuit remains one of the great mysteries of the comics world to me. Fear of Mum-Death and the Shadow Men is a powerful, heart-rending examination of Eates’s often fractious relationship with her mother, growing up in a single-parent family in the 1980s. But it’s her examinations of memory, its reliability and how we let it shape our pasts that is equally fascinating. The perfect entry point into Eates’s deeply personal narratives.
Small Pressganged review here
Small Pressganged soundbite: Fear of Mum-Death and the Shadow Men is the perfect gateway into the sequential art and illustrated prose of this vital voice in UK autobiographical comics. Wallis Eates continues to produce comics that speak to us all with their emotional immediacy and unyielding candour. This is work that doesn’t just deserve a wider audience, it’s owed one.
Buy copies online here priced £5.00.
Katzine
A very personal project, Katriona Chapman’s Katzine is a quarterly collection of moments from her life that range from travel comics and personal mini-essays through to illustrated pieces on her favourite local shops and plants. Chapman’s distinctive shaded drawing style and amiable presence makes this a truly charming example of autobio comics/zines.
Small Pressganged review here
Small Pressganged soundbite: I’m a little loathe to use the term “endearing” about Katzine in case it comes across as inadvertently patronising but there is something very appealing about the intimate tone – the sense of connection between creator and reader – that Chapman fosters here with her self-deprecating and modest on-page voice.
Buy copies online here priced £6.50.
Katriona Chapman will be signing at Gosh! Comics on Small Press Day. Full details here.
Tracks
Whether it’s his many years of practice, or in his role as co-ordinator of the Crouch End Cartoon Art Festival, Sean Azzopardi is one of the most established and important creators in the UK small press scene.
He has a long background in autobio work with books like Twelve Hour Shift and Ed but his slice-of-life work really came into its own a few years back when he abandoned the avatar characters he had adopted to distance himself slightly from the narrative and instead left the reader in no doubt that on-page events were taken directly from his own life. Tracks is a self-deprecating and honest, yet accepting and celebratory, “coming-of-middle-age” story.
Small Pressganged review here
Small Pressganged soundbite: Contemplative but never melancholy, this is some of the finest work to date from one of the true mainstays of the UK self-publishing community.
Buy copies online here
Sean Azzopardi will be signing at Orbital Comics on Small Press Day. Details here.
Querstret Comics
The prolific autobio comics of Elizabeth Querstret are an essential addition to a list celebrating the DIY culture side of self-publishing. Querstret’s work is concerned with catching the moment rather than over-elaborate draughtsmanship and, as a result, her diary-style comics have an engaging and almost ephemeral feel to them. Whether she’s talking about a disastrous employment history or a botched avian mercy-killing, her lack of self-editing ensures her many Querstret offerings have an honesty to them that is raw but always appealing.
Small Pressganged review here
Small Pressganged soundbite: I find it impossible to dislike a Querstret comic – they have a charm and a pull all of their own and a creative voice at their core who, quite simply, redefines the term “idiosyncratic”.
Buy copies online here and read her online comics here.
Killjoy
Does anyone in UK small press comics do awkwardness quite as well as Robert Brown? Killjoy is his warts-and-all look back on his younger days and a book that is never unafraid to present its protagonist/creator in an unflattering light. From evoking familiar feelings of guilt at youthful wrongdoing to re-creating that sense of childhood awe and discovery at the world around us, Brown is adept at reminding us of our own younger lives through his perfectly observed reminiscences of his own.
Small Pressganged review here
Small Pressganged soundbite: Oh-so familiar childhood recollections that will, in turn, make you smile, wince and nod knowingly at his spot-on depictions of those most awkward rites of passage.
Buy copies online here
Ollie & Alan’s Big Move
The inclusion in this list of Broken Frontier Award-nominated Danny Noble’s comedy duo Ollie and Alan – a re-imagining of actors Oliver Reed and Alan Bates living in reckless, naked, drunken abandon since around the early 1970s – may seem a little odd on first consideration. But anyone who has been studying Noble’s work for any length of time will be aware just how much of it is based on her own life experiences, albeit wittily distorted for the comics page. This most recent collection of their exploits sees the pair moving house with their usual casual incompetence at the fore. Unique work from a unique talent.
Small Pressganged review here
Small Pressganged soundbite: Danny Noble’s comic genius is surpassed only by her comics genius. In a decade of Broken Frontier reviewing I have never encountered an artist with a more naturally instinctive command of the unique storytelling possibilities of the comic page.
Buy copies online here priced £5.00
For more on Small Press Day visit the official site here and follow SPD on Twitter here.
For regular updates on all things small press follow Andy Oliver on Twitter here.
