From Under the Stairs

Hellfire was an unusually well-produced zine from David Roach (with the early assistance of Ian Jenkins). The first 1984 issue had a John Ridgeway cover and an interview with Alan Moore and Garry Leach (who were at that point doing their thing with Marvelman in Warrior). There was also a strip by David himself, Vander, and it was amusing to see this given I’d just read his latest Judge Dredd strip, which featured a woman who wouldn’t be out of place here (though better drawn, of course). In addition to the interview, the first issue had features on Starslayer, Born Again and French comics.

Issue 2 had a cover by Garry Leach and features on Batman, Alex Nino, Clarence Nash (the voice of Donald Duck), another episode of Vander, and a long David Lloyd interview, in which David is recounting the struggles to get V for Vendetta to people in a collected format. “Titan did very much want to do it [the album], but they wanted too much money… the original plans for V to be reprinted by Pacific have collapsed as most of you know, because Pacific’s gone under… vanished from sight.”

Issue 3 had a cover by David Roach and features on The Rocketeer, Milo Manara, Camelot 3000 and TV21. Commando and Warrior artist John Ridgeway was interviewed and there were strips such as Dicky Ducky and Rambo Goes to Russia…

I’m not sure how many issues of Hellfire there were in all, but it was a great fanzine of its day, good to read and as well produced as any.

Next up, a firm favourite: Chain Reaction…

Yesterday, February 15th, was Art Spiegelman’s 65th birthday, so here’s some of his stuff from under those stairs.

The graphic magazine that overestimates the taste of the American public. 

The torn-again graphix mag.

Open wounds from the cutting edge of commix.

Required reading for the post-literate.

and the first volume of Maus.

I covered Arcade earlier, and don’t forget you can read Alan Moore’s take on Art Spiegleman in issues 1 & 2 of our INFINITY magazine… Available for iPad here:

https://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/infinity-digital-graphic-novels/id540599442?mt=8

and as a PDF here:

http://issuu.com/russellwillis

Alan Moore’s view of Arcade vs RAW from the article:

“To me Arcade was an almost perfect culmination of the whole idea of Underground Comix. Granted, there have been worthy individual efforts by the various Arcade contributors since then, but somehow without the same flair. RAW is a splendid magazine, but it’s intimidating. I can’t bring myself to criticise anything that is that well printed and I find myself approaching RAW in almost the same way as I approach gallery art – coldly and from a polite distance.”

With the British parliament passing legislation to allow gay marriage, it reminds me again that cynicism about politics and politicians, whilst an easy and cool position to take, is not always merited. When I was born, homosexuality was illegal and civil rights in the US were still being violently contested. In 1987/8 when I edited the students’ union magazines above, the Conservative government was trying to make it illegal to “promote homosexuality” and Nelson Mandela was in prison. The 80s for me (as can be seen from the contents of OVERDRAFT) were a mix of alternative comics, Meat is Murder, anti-apartheid, anti-fascism and anti-sexist activity. At the time, shivering in the cold on yet another demo, I remember it all seeming a bit futile. But looking at where we are today, I think we can say that those efforts by millions in the UK, and around the world – including efforts by progressive politicians – paid off.

The world has changed to one where Nelson Mandela is an ex-president of South Africa, to one where Condaleeza Rice, as US Secretary of State, goes to Rosa Parks’ funeral, where the US has a black president and a woman is the favourite to be the next one – and gay marriage legislation is promoted by a Conservative prime minister.

These victories are not an excuse for inaction, or a lack of vigilance, but they are an argument against cynicism and an antidote to feelings of futility.

Viva!

AN INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN LOCK (PART THREE | THE HARRIER COMICS YEARS)

What made you start Harrier?

It gradually crept up on me.  BEM had been running serial strips, generally “H.M.S. Conqueror” and lighter single and part pagers, and had a couple of “summer special” issues with added extra strips by such luminaries as Eddie Campbell.  And the black and white independent comics boom, soon to become a glut, was just starting.  So somehow the idea came for “H.M.S. Conqueror” to go, boldly of course, into its own comic, soon accompanied by the anthology title Swiftsure.

Tell us about Harrier New Wave and the comics publishing scene in the UK at the time.

Different comics had different amounts of input from me, and with titles like Second City, Deadface, !Gag!, Paris the Man of Plaster, and Rob Sharp’s books I wasn’t really involved except as publisher, I didn’t have editorial input, which was probably just as well, as people like Phil Elliott and Fast Fiction were a lot better qualified on that side than I was.  I remember Eddie Campbell being less than pleased with a “house ad” I put on a Deadface back cover, probably the Nightbird one on issue 4… We did have some overlap with Trident, and of course Valkyrie Press who took over Redfox… there were never any legal contracts, so creators were free to move if they wanted to.  It must have seemed a strange moment for the artist “Fox” when modern-day avatars of his two heroines turned up on his doorstep, but as a team they did pretty well;  I may be wrong, but I think that Redfox almost got its own “shared world” text story anthology, but there was some problem over the rights.

Why and how did Harrier end?

Well, the black & white independent market crashed, and Harrier did have the disadvantage of not being based in the USA, so we were very much at the mercy of how the comics distributors presented our titles in their monthly advance listings.  Creators had been bringing in their new work, and we’d been proceeding on the assumption that we’d be getting the level of order we were getting at that point; luckily I didn’t make firm promises, so didn’t end up paying people on spec, but when you expected orders for 3,000 or so copies, and the figure came in at around 850, days did appear to be numbered.

Have comics always paid your way (either as publisher, writer or dealer) or have you had a “day job”? 

I worked in the sales department of a chemicals company when BEM started, in offices in a wing of Bush House in London and my very first printer was in The Aldwych nearby; I’d tend to walk across to Dark They Were & Golden Eyed in Berwick Street in my lunch hour, or otherwise browse the shops in the middle of town.  When the company, who had their main factory in Droitwich, decided to move the head office to Worcester, that rather suited me, as it was a city I’d often visited with my parents to visit relatives, and I knew it well.  I can’t say that I’ve ever earned enough money from comics and fanzines to live on, it has just been a hobby.

What were the most stressful moment in your career in comics?

I’m not big on stress, though the tumbling order figures didn’t make for a happy time.  Nobody made a scene, luckily, so things just drew quietly to a close.  It’s a shame that the interest in black & white comics just faded away so fast - we had more projects planned, and Stephen Baskerville had drawn the whole of his strip for a “Jim Dandy in the Underworld” limited series, which was really excellent work… I’d worked on a back-up script or two and had an artist lined up for that.  As with the serial in Swiftsure, it was so tightly done that it really wasn’t suitable for publishing any other way.

What are the highlights of your career in comics?

Well, an Eagle Award was nice, though I suspect it was more for my fanzine writing than the comics.  Suggesting that “Fox” turn his fanzine-style Redfox into a regular black & white comic, and then getting massive orders for the issue, was fun, though I suspect that the artist/writer may well have been hoping I’d have such a bright idea.  If only we’d been geared up for newsprint-type printing at that point, instead of the more boutique style of my normal British printer, we’d have made serious money then!  Getting covers generously donated by people like Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, and John Bolton, who were thusly kindly aiding the newer artists we used like Steve Baskerville, Lew Stringer, Steve Yeowell, and the ever-reliable Dave Harwood.  Putting together the pulp/anthology-style Conquerer Universe… and of course each time one saw the finished fruit of one’s labours, the sense of achievement was nice.

What have you been up to since the demise of Harrier?

I made the decision to “sex up” Barbarienne a bit, and got it published by Fantagraphics in the USA, under their Eros imprint.  They did decree that it had to be mainly sex, though, which rather got in the way of the projected story arc.  Gary Groth and Kim Thompson took another couple of series, but their market eventually dwindled, rather.  The Barbarienne characters, with their clothes on, have made a few minor appearances since.  Otherwise, I’ve been relatively quiet, though I always have a few ideas bubbling away!

Can I assume I’d be right to say that you are now in your 60s?

You can, yes - well, early sixties, anyway.  A relative sent me a photograph she took on an outing to Bekonscot a few months ago, and I didn’t recognise myself for a moment; I could audition for a role in Last of the Summer Wine if it was still going!  Fandom used to be a young man’s game, but people have stuck around, and I guess it’s okay to be grey now.  And of course some of the people we used to know, like Rich Morrissey, Steve Whitaker, Martin Skidmore. T. M. Maple, and a few others, are no longer with us, so growing old is definitely better than the alternative…

I’m sure I’ll be joined by a large number of people from the UK comics world when I thank Martin for all his great work over the years and wish him the best in his future endeavours. In a private email he hints at some new comics-related activity in 2013…

More FA covers….

AN INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN LOCK (PART TWO | THE FANTASY ADVERTISER YEARS)

So when BEM was unable to be published due to NMP’s bankruptcy, you resurrected Fantasy Advertiser. How did that  come about?

Martin: I was checking upstairs to see what issues I still have, and found this in my last issue publishing Fantasy Advertiser, number 89 - so as my memory of such things was fresher then, let me quote from that “Publishorial” from February 1985:  

“I never intended to revive FA, which was comfortably in limbo back in 1981.  What I was expecting to do was take over Fantasy Trader from Mark Ellis, since he seemed to have come to a halt as far as actually publishing issues went, and I was a previous editor of that particular fanzine.  However, Mark kept assuring me that he wanted to publish one more issue before retiring, and in the end I lost patience; once he actually publishes that last issue, maybe FT subscribers will get transferred to us even now.

“So, if FT wasn’t available, what about FA? It was not a fanzine I’d had much to do with, beyond a few letters back when I was a very new fan, and one article, but the more the idea rattled around, the more it seemed logical.  I phoned up Dez Skinn [who had been a former editor of FA], and he squared things with founder Frank Dobson; we were in business!

“I was still involved with another fanzine called BEM at the time, and was thus in contact with quite a few prospective advertisers and contributors.  The new FA wasn’t going to be a very lavish operation, with a few columns, letters, lots of advertising… There was an obvious need for a new source of comics news for Britain, so maybe about 3 pages of news would be a good idea too.  There wasn’t a subscription list for FA to take over, but Colin Gould, whose comic shop duties forced him to give up the fanzine called Ogre, passed his subscribers over, and Mike Taylor, unable to continue the much-acclaimed Masters of Infinity, officially folded it into the newly-revived title.  They might not have exactly volunteered, but we had subscribers!

“Fantasy Advertiser #70 had 32 pages, with a two-colour cover featuring Dark Phoenix.  Dez Skinn kindly wrote us an introduction, which just happened to mention his new Warrior project once or twice.  There was news, starting off on the latest price-rise from Marvel, following DC to 60 cents; would the Wolverine mini-series be drawn by Frank Miller or Mike Golden?  DC were to start issuing annuals, after a lay-off of 17 years; and Pacific’s second title, Starslayer, finally was ready to be printed…

“The SF section was less than half a page; the strip from Masters of Infinity, “Moonstone”, by Mike Collins and Mark Farmer, took up residence; and ‘big news about BEM’ was promised.  And we had some columns, too, including, as another MoI refugee, Kev F. Sutherland’s FA debut.

“FA #89 I haven’t seen as I write this, and, for the first time, it’s so much in Skidmorian hands that I know very little about its contents, but I think I can safely say that this magazine has developed in the course of my 20 issues.  More pages, more colour, more articles - and a news service that would make a reader of BEM’s old competitor, Comic Media News, have palpitations!  Much of the recent improvement in FA is down to ‘Skidders’ of course, who, after a guest-appearance in #81, came aboard as ‘Managing Editor’ in #85.  I didn’t have enough time to develop FA as much as it, and you, deserved; and now that I’ve got not only Conqueror but also Swiftsure to run, even a couple of weeks of my time is more than I’m able to give.  Exit Lock, leaving Skidmore as Martin-in-Chief.

“I’m going to miss it, of course; I’m going to miss fanzine publishing in general, after 36 issues of BEM, 20 of FA, an ‘apazine,’ my Fantasy Trader stint, and work on other fans’ titles, such as Fantasy Unlimited and Comic Media.  I may even miss the endless collating weekends, surrounded by pile after pile of FA or BEM sheets, or the times I’ve ended up working 12-hour days at the printers just to make sure that the magazine came out on time, doing part of almost every stage of the work from plate-making to stitching.  I’ll miss the news-gathering chats with 2000AD, Dez, Nick Landau, Alan Moore, and British Marvel.  All the interesting news release packages, and letters, and complimentary copies…

“Say, is it too late to change my mind?

“Anyway, Martin Skidmore has some good plans for FA, and I hope everyone supports him in his endeavours.  FA was needed when I brought out #70, and it’s still needed now, to keep British fandom in touch with itself.  Once upon a time, there were about five or six main fanzines that could do this, and the end of one of them was unfortunate, but no tragedy; the editor could afford to say ‘If I can’t continue, nobody else can take over my creation, and I’d rather refund all my subscriptions than give my old rival a circulation boost by handing them on’, and it didn’t matter much.  But none of the competitors to FA these days are big or regular enough to do FA’s job, it seems to me, so be good to old FA, & treat Skidders well.  I want to see issue 100 within two years, and I want to see Martin Skidmore editing it.

Fanzines may come and go, but FA goes on and on and on, to misquote Dez from #70.  May it ever be thus!”

Next: Martin Lock on Harrier Comics

Cerebus Meets Howard the Duck by Dave Sim

BEM has some great interior illustrations, but there’s no time to show them all… but how about this one by Dave Sim? Love it! 

By 1981 Howard the Duck had become my favourite comic (I was still filling in gaps in my collection as many of them weren’t distributed in the UK). HTD #24 was a comic I read and re-read, and I would imagine would be my choice for my favourite Marvel comic ever. Steve Gerber became the first comics writer whose comics I’d buy on the name alone. In fact, I think he was the first writer, other than Stan Lee, to have his name splashed on a Marvel cover as a purchasing incentive (Omega the Unknown #9).

I’d seen Cerebus but it was expensive and although I loved the artwork, I didn’t get into it at the time (I now have a whole shelf with all the “telephone books”). 

But it was great to see this illustration in BEM #34 from 1981. Hope you like it too!

Martin Lock on Fantasy Advertiser tomorrow, promise!

Even more BEMs, including the Summer Comics Special and … BEM #1 from 1973!

More BEMs

More BEM covers from 1979 and 1980… we continue with the Martin Lock interview tomorrow.

AN INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN LOCK (PART 1 | THE BEM YEARS)

Looking through British comics fanzines of the 70s and 80s there’s one name that comes up again and again: Martin Lock. It was Martin’s BEM fanzine that introduced me (and many, many others) to comics fandom. I think that from the late 70s to the mid 80s no person was more influential in British comics fandom. BEM and FA’s letters columns (“Reaction” and “No Man’s Land” respectively) were a rival to The Comics Journal’s, with issues of the day being debated by fans and pros alike. The later issues of BEM were professionally produced featuring covers by the likes of Brian Bolland, Mike McMahon, Bryan Talbot, and Dave Gibbons. And, unlike almost every other zine of the day, Martin made sure his came out on a regular schedule. BEM ran from 1973 to 1981, when due to business difficulties with Hal Shuster’s NMP, BEM ceased publication and Lock revived Fantasy Advertiser (FA) which he edited and published until 1985.

In 1984,as his tenure at FA was finishing, Martin started Harrier Comics, which, in addition to featuring his own Conquerer work, also provided a more polished and better distributed outlet for comics by Eddie Campbell, Phil Elliot, Glenn Dakin, Paul Grist, Ed Pinsent, Woodrow Phoenix, and Steve Way, amongst others.

I was delighted to be able to get in touch with Martin, now in his sixties, and thank him for all of his work back then… and he was gracious enough to answer some questions I had for him.

How did you become involved in comics and comics fandom?

Martin: It was all a scary number of years ago now, but comics were a part of growing up - mainly British ones like Swift and The Beano, with the occasional Marvelman perhaps; I may even have been exposed to Superman and his friends back then, and I do remember an issue or two of the Alan Class-published 64-page reprint mystery comic compilations.  In many ways I was more interested in science fiction at one stage, which led me to specialist shops like Dark They Were & Golden Eyed, Fantasy Centre, and one or two less central places, and becoming a “regular” exposed one to the comics side, and the fanzines.

You were a regular contributor to fanzines, which one influenced you most? 

Martin: It would be hard to pick one; there was Nick Landau & Richard Burton’s Comic Media, and Richard’s spin-off Comic Media News, and of course Alan Austin’s Fantasy Unlimited, later Comics Unlimited.  Comic fandom had already been going for quite a while when I stepped aboard.  I like to think of the way comics fandom was set up as a kind of precursor to the internet, especially with things like amateur press associations, though the connection speed was rather slower. 

Why did you start BEM? 

Martin: The other people I was involved with had their own fanzines, so why not me as well?  I’d helped with the production of Comic Media, which was always more high-tech and professional.  As a title “Bemusing Magazine” sounds more like an SF thing than comics, but the shortened version was suitably punchy. 

When did you feel that BEM had taken off and become Britain’s leading fanzine?

Martin: I can’t say that I noticed that particularly, there were always some other strong titles around; I did tend to shamelessly play up the “comics news” or “comic mart special” side to bring in comics readers who weren’t particularly part of fandom, hopefully some of them did stick around.  You jog along, doing your best, and eventually you notice you’re in the lead, at least for a while…  With the early issues, I’d go outside the London comic marts and happily sell them to the people waiting there before the doors opened.  I think that, strictly speaking, Richard Burton and Comic Media News had the permission to run news and covers from The Comic Reader, from Paul Levitz, but I was very kindly allowed access too.

At their peak, how many copies did BEM or FA sell? 

Martin: It’s hard to remember, now; I’m sure we got well over a thousand, so collating the issues did become a bit of a task - at some stage we were able to switch to the printer doing that, much to my relief.  There was a time, early in the Fantasy Advertiser run, when I’d go along to the printers, basically a two-man operation, and help out.  They were nice people, but some issues of the fanzine do look a little smeary in places.

Why all the pseudonyms? 

Martin: Well, superhero comics are all about alter egos.  It was kind of fun to see a village name on a signpost while on holiday in Cornwall, and then decide it would make a good pen-name.  Basically the idea, I suppose, was to have a welcoming community that new arrivals would like to join, rather than have an intimidating one-man show, like those spoof credits for a movie where the same name is director, producer, star, key grip, cameraman, caterer, and chief location scout, et cetera.  Since the production method did involve re-doing contributions onto squared paper to be able to have justified columns, being responsible for a number of features didn’t really add to my workload. Occasionally a new person would come along, and my pen-name could gracefully retire.

Just to confirm, you hand-justified the columns of text in BEM and FA by writing it out in pencil one letter per box on graph paper and then seeing how many spaces you had to add to get things to line up?

Martin: It does seem hard to believe now, doesn’t it?  I’d add red spots to show where I needed two spaces between words, or black signs where I’d need to squeeze more in by only having half a space between words, as the ol’ electronic typewriter did have a “half-space” function.  And if the writer was me, I might well choose the phrasing that would fit most conveniently. I’d type on large A3 paper, typing all three columns, or whatever, at once, line by line.  You will find some professional typesetting in some issues, but one still needed to supply typed copy, and it needed to be carefully proof-read and annotated and re-done, so it wasn’t that much of  a time-saver. I suppose I watched a bit less television than most people, and of course there was no Internet for online gaming and browsing…

What were the highlights of producing BEM?

Martin: Producing a new issue’s highlight was when it was finally finished, when all the pages had been collated and stapled together, the subscription copies had been trundled to the post office, and I could sit back and feel that the job had been done, and wait for the letters of comment.

What actually happened with the last two issues of BEM and NMP?

Martin: Hal Shuster of New Media Publishing/Irjax seemed to be a successful publisher of independent comics, and fanzines like Comics Feature, so when he was interested in bringing BEM to a US audience, I was flattered of course. I think the first idea was just for me to ship copies to the USA, so I’m glad that things changed to me just supplying the pages and the magazine being printed over there, or I could have ended up seriously out of pocket.

My Hereford-based printer had been doing the necessary photography work for those two issues, but luckily he considered that he was working for Hal Shuster rather than me, so didn’t chase me for the money he was owed when NMP suddenly ceased trading.

How do you feel about the Internet replacing the printed comics fanzines? Are we better or worse off? 

Martin: Times change, and we change too - producing BEM took an awful lot of time, looking back, but now one just needs to log on to a blogging site, type away, and then hit the “publish” key.  As I was saying, there was something of the spirit of an online community in fandom, with our contacts in far-flung places, amateur press associations where everyone would contribute pages to the next mailing, and lengthy letters columns with individual answers to the points raised.  One can mourn the passing of individually hand-crafted items, but the immediacy of the web, pulling a fanzine, or its website or blog equivalent, onto your computer or tablet at the press of a button, gives great opportunities, and gives us a chance to keep the community spirit going. 

We’ll have more from Martin about Fantasy Advertiser and Harrier Comics next time…

Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out 35 years ago… I must have seen it in Brighton in 1978 when I was 10. It was magical and like a lot of kids that age, I became obsessed with UFOs. I would have been taken in by absurd lines like “There is no scientific evidence that UFOs don’t exist.” There equally being no scientific evidence that the invisible flying teapots of Saturn don’t exist.

I learned about acronyms when Starburst magazine was featuring CE3K and used that acronym. For ages I thought they were referring to another great SF film (I knew of THX 1138, so felt it was quite likely a film title) and felt a little cheated when it eventually dawned on me that it was referring to Close Encounters…

And here seems as good a place as any to feature some Starburst covers from 1978… I bought the first 4 issues by mail order, because of the Hulk cover (which I no longer have) and for ages afterwards would regale my father with trivia like “did you know the Disney’s the Black Hole uses more matte effects than any other film?” Poor man.

The Starburst #4 cover here is swiped from Dez Skinn’s website, and if you like From Under the Stairs, you’ll be interested in the great collection of his own work there — truly impressive!

Strangely, there are only two annuals that were under those stairs… but they must be two of the most beautiful annuals published around that time. The Judge Dredd 1981 annual has a cover by Brian Bolland and some stunning interior strips: John Wagner and Mike McMahon on Dredd, Alan Grant and Casanovas on Max Normal, a Walter the Wobot by G.P. Rice and Brendan McCarthy and a Shok strip by Rogan and Kevin O’Neil – not to mention a text story by Jack Adrian with terrific illustrations by Dave Gibbons. It’s rounded out with some great editorial material (“The First Dredd”, “The Changing Face of Dredd” “Lawgiver, the Justice Gun”, “Judge Dredd’s Lawmaster”)… Wow. What an annual!

Along with that is a gorgeously illustrated Doctor Who annual from 1979 – all by Paul Crompton. Two perfect annuals, put together with real editorial care. So different from the annuals that Marvel sometimes put out at the time, where they basically slapped a standard colour Marvel comic between cardboard covers and called it an Annual…