OFF LIFE issue three

FEATURING AN INTERVIEWWITH BRYAN TALBOT AND COMIC ART FROM THE BESTINDIE TALENT AROUND

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Designers in Residence

2013

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Deadline: 28

February 2013

Welcome to OFF LIFE, the street press anthology that shoves

smart, adult comics under unsuspecting noses.

The last two months have been a funny time for us. While a CostaBook Award for Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes gave comics a deserved rub of authenticity, with it came lazy journalism and worn arguments. Can comics deal with adult themes? Are theyjust for children?

Even the quickest Google search would tell critics that twodecades ago Maus was already detailing the Holocaust, and Our Cancer Year terminal illness. Perhaps journalists should trialGarth Ennis and Steve Dillon's scathing social satire Preacher onthe BBC children’s book list and see if any parents would deemthese comics ‘Kid’s Books’. Anyhow…

As many people have enjoyed telling us (in what we hope were compliments), Issue Two was a big step up for OFF LIFE.This time around we’re honoured to have received contributionsfrom the likes of Jack Teagle, Kyle Platts, Sally Thompson and DanBerry. We’ve also unearthed some almighty new talent and we hopethat you enjoy discovering them as much as we did.

So please, enough talk! Follow us @OFFLIFE_comic to takepart in our weekly Quick Draws and a special mega live eventcoming up in March. If you enjoy this print issue then let your friends know they can read free digital editions at offlife.co.uk – and most importantly, if you like an OFF LIFE artistthen go online and check their body of work. We promise it’ll beworth the effort.

DANIEL HUMPHRY

Founding Editor, OFF LIFE

COMICS

Pages 2 — 27

BRYAN TALBOT

Page 12

YOU HAVE BEEN READING

Page 28

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FOUNDING EDITOR

Daniel Humphry@Daniel_Humphry

ART DIRECTOR

Steve Leard@SteveLeard

COPY EDITOR

Lucy Rice

COVER ART

William Exleywilliamexley.co.uk

DESIGN

RANDLwearerandl.co.uk

[email protected]

@OFFLIFE_COMIC

1

You’ve been creating comics since the late seventies.

What was it that first drew you to the medium?

My folks bought me nursery comics before I could evenread. By about eight I started creating comics of myown, just stapling Woolworths typing paper togetherand making my own books. By the time I was a lateteenager American underground comics had startedgetting really big: Robert Crumb and Gilbert Sheltonwere making a big impact – reclaiming comics as anadult medium.

So when I went to college doing graphic design I started drawing my own underground comic, justthree or four pages of it. I hitched down to London onesummer and met a guy called Lee Harris who ran ahead shop in Portobello Road. He saw the pages andsaid if I ever finished them he’d publish it – not thathe’d ever published a comic before, mind.

Two years later I was unemployed and living inPreston with two kids of my own. I was looking forwork doing all sorts – dustman, didn’t matter – and so

thought I might as well finish this comic for Lee. I hitched back down to London and, true to his word, he dropped everything and published it. We ended up doing about five or six copies of thatBrainstorm comic.

That’s pretty unique. Not many artists can claim

to have had their first comic published out of

a head shop…

Well the amazing thing is that Lee’s shop is still there.You go down Friday or Saturday and he’ll still be down there.

You must have noticed some significant changes in

the industry since then?

None more so than the declining market for monthly superhero comics. In the early eighties if a DC or Marvel comic dropped below 40,000 sales they’daxe it. Nowadays some Vertigo titles are lucky to sell4,000. Sales have dropped all over.

TWO MONTHS AGO, MARY AND BRYAN TALBOT’S DOTTER OF HER FATHER’S EYESBECAME THE FIRST EVER GRAPHIC WORK TO WIN A COSTA BOOK AWARD. OVERNIGHT BRYAN WAS LIFTED FROM LONG-TIME CHAMPION WITHIN THE

COMICS INDUSTRY AND PLACED BANG CENTRE IN THE ARTS MEDIA’S LATEST DEBATE ON COMICS AND THEIR ARTISTIC CREDIBILITY.

EARLIER THIS MONTH BRYAN TOOK THE TIME TO SPEAK WITH OFF LIFE ABOUT HIS OWN VIEWS ON THE COMIC INDUSTRY, ITS PLACE IN CULTURE AND WHY

THE MEDIUM IS YET TO GAIN MAINSTREAM APPRECIATION.

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BRYAN

Why do you think the comics market has declined

so much since then?

Comics have lost their core audience I think. They used to be aimed at kids, 12 to 14 year olds, but now they’re aimed at the people who grew up with them. The averageage is now probably about 25 and they’re missing the younger readers. Youused to be able to buy comics on the newsstand ofany newsagents – distributionwas everywhere – but sincethe direct sales marketstarted all that reach ispractically gone.

Is the fact that comics have

retreated to within comic

shops a problem?

Yes, I think it is. Comics havebecome ghettoised, sold inspecialist stores to a nichemarket. The decline inmonthly sales has seen a rise in the big graphic novelsthough. We have amazing quality graphic novels nowand a huge range that play to all sorts of taste. Theyseem to be stable and holding their own.

Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes became the first

graphic work to ever win a Costa Book

Award. What do you think that says about

where comics are at the moment?

Aside from a nice bit of publicity I think what it really says is that they’reentering the mainstream,what Stephen Holland wouldcall the “real mainstream”.Mainstream comics tend torefer to superhero books butthe real mainstream is thegeneral public, and so itseems that now, slowly,they’re opening up to theidea of reading graphicnovels. Every major literaryfestival has a graphic novelsection nowadays, so it’s been growing graduallyfor decades.

A lot of North American

artists say they love how

Europe takes comics seriously. Do you think that’s

fair to stay of the UK?

No, we’re nowhere near France. We’re probably at alevel in the UK where France was in the mid-sixties,

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TALBOT

when they dubbed it the ninth art. I was told a statistic,which I hope is true, that one in three books sold inFrance is a graphic novel. One stat I do know that’s trueis that in the UK between one and two million graphicnovels are sold each year. In France it’s 43 million.

You’re launching a large comic festival in the Lake

District this year, what are you hopes for it?

Well, I went to my first European festival in 1981 as aguest to represent British underground comics. I wasn’t making a proper living in comics at that time,in fact I was on the verge of packing it in, we were sobroke. But I went there and met all these greats like

Hugo Pratt, got treated like an equal, and came backwith fire – I wanted to make comics. I don’t know if itwas coincidence but within a year or two of that festivalI was full-time, self-employed doing comics.

We want this festival to take over the whole town:there’ll be over half a dozen exhibitions, events andtheatre in the street, all schools being involved,publisher’s tables. I’m hoping this festival will beanother stage in the acceptance of comics as alegitimate art form in this country.

And what are your hopes for the UK comic industry

as a whole?

The more we have serious festivals like the one we’replanning, and the more things like this Costa Awardhappen, hopefully it’ll open up. I don’t know if it’s justmy selective vision but it seems like there’s a snowballeffect at the moment where comics and graphic novelsare being mentioned more and more in the media. The more events, the more comics will dig in to theconscious of people. A comic conscious, if you will.

Thank you for your time Bryan.

No trouble.

YOU CAN SEE BRYAN’S WORK AT

BRYAN-TALBOT.COM

14

KA-BOOM!

February/March 2013

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OFF LIFE issue three

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