Comicsphere: Freakangels Friday: Interlude

So, today there was something a little different being offered in stead of the Freakangels webcomic which is on a one week hiatus. Today Warren Ellis offers us some thoughts on his preoccupations with disaster fiction and the very British influences which have filtered into the story which we are logging on every week to read.

It comes in the thirteenth week, which struck me as interesting and may prove to be so. A breather before something big happens next week? A chance to re-cap? Or just a much needed break in the work schedule as is said? Probably or rather possibly all three. Anyone who follows Mr Ellis, and there are a fair few of them out there, will know that he has a pretty punishing work schedule — one he seems to constantly be working hard to make even more laden down with work. If there is one writer out there who you can see indisputable evidence of a work ethic with it’s Warren Ellis. And of course Mr Duffield is turning out six pages of the best looking comic I have seen for an age every week. That art work zings — it is alive, has slipped out of the two dimensional realm. This is like not seeing a friend for a week and not being able to phone them — I miss the characters and the world. I appreciate the musings though, as stated — Ellis is always readable; always makes you think. I am catching up on years of online archives I never really had access to until now — there is a lot of it.

Who knows, the interlude could be the perfect touchstone for someone to enter the story through? If I read it I’d want to see where the thought processes outlined there came to fruition, but then I’m a curious one.

Comicsphere: Dragon’s Claws

From the moment I saw that first advert for Dragon’s Teeth, as this series was originally to be called I was hooked on the idea. Back when marvel actually had an interest in a unique British market Dragon’s Claws was a stand out title. There was some great stuff that came out of that small boom: Death’s Head, The Sleeze Brothers, Knights Of Pendragon.

Most of the British titles steered away from any connection with super heroes, the usual staple of comics at the time. I was always a sucker for a dystopian future and Dragon’s Claws explored territory that at the time was only really being covered in 2000ad, at least as far as I knew. I mean the way in which I bought comics back then was radically different from the way you buy them now — you could actually walk into your newsagent and pick up the latest copy of a story. I have been confused for a long time as to why there is only a very small British comics industry when most of the writers who are of any merit in the International comic scene tend to be from the UK. Is it just that the buying public is too small? I find that hard to believe given the number of British voices I have witnessed on forums and the like.

Anyway, at the centre of this story you have Dragon, Mercy, Scavenger, Digit and Steel — the best game players in the world. The year is 8162 and the Claws are reactivated to help deal with the number of ex game teams that are running riot. Initially it seems that the main thrust of the story concerns the Claws and their arch rivals The Evil Dead but it is just as much about what is going on behind the scenes.

NURSE, the big organisation that runs the country, is moving people around like chess pieces, everything framed within the Machiavellian machinations of Matron the head of that group. If ever a story was ripe for revisiting — if ever a world deserved to be more fleshed out than a mere 10 issues allowed then it is this. it stands up to repeated readings — the art has aged really well and so has the story, which you can’t always say of these kinds of stories. Things about the future tend to oddly be very much of their time — I think this story is flexible enough to allow someone the room to move around in its skin and say what they need to say about the world in which we live today.

16 Flaws Launched

So, the first two parts of this massive project I am undertaking is up for your enjoyment — I hope you’ll all support me and leave me loads of comments to let me know what you think. I have something like a hundred and sixty characters to introduce you to and each story will be both interconnected and self-sustaining just in case you only want to follow one character.

Take Art: Peter Blake

Best known for creating the cover to The Beatles album Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band, Peter Blake is, for me at least, one of the most accessible of the pop artists. He is someone else I found through the Pop Art exhibition back in the nineties at the Tate Modern.

I don’t know if to say that there is something uniquely British about his vision seems too limiting? Because I don’t see it as a limiting thing. His work has character and part of the character has a national flavour. There are not many people as high up the food-chain in the art world that are ploughing the same furrow as Blake and that in itself makes him unique. His uniqueness is obviously not purely derived from this fact but it could be said to amplify it. How many figurative painters that are British can you name from the modern era? Not many I’ll warrant. Shit I could be wrong; could be my skewed view of the art world, but I don’t think so. There is of course Lucien Freud, who is great, and Jenny Saville.

Amidst all the abstracts, and pieces seemingly more concerned with the idea behind them than the end product Blake might have been seen as an oddity. His concerns in his paintings make him relevant though. He has forged connections with more than one musical genre by doing covers for people. He is a great argument against people who say portraiture is dead and done with.

Underappreciated: American Prayer by Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison is often dismissed as a poet — his lyrics are often ripped apart. Sometimes he was a dick, a drunken clown and a buffoon, sure, but that doesn’t mean all his work was worthless. I owned Lords & the New Creatures, American Night and Wilderness and hey there is work in there that stands up to anything Bukowski wrote. I will probably get bashed for saying that but sometimes I read Bukowski and wonder at what I am reading — when he’s great he’s great and when he sucks he sucks — Morrison is the same. There are some memorable lyrics, some iconic images and some interesting ideas.

This album takes the readings and dresses them up with music that is as perfectly tailored to his poetry as it was to his singing. If you believe some accounts it isn’t what Morrison wanted for his spoken word but the fact that it is listened to and appreciated  as something other than the music of The Doors might have  made him happy. But it under-appreciated — it is something that turns up only after a bit of digging. People who find it get a lot out of it and sonically there aren’t many better settings than within the music  on display here  for what Morrison wishes to talk about. The band let his words breathe and never try to steal the show; they were very respectful I think — very creative. This is, the two Doors-sans-Morrison albums not really there sonically, the last real example of The Doors unit functioning in perfect harmony — regardless of the fact that it was recorded after one member’s death.

The Lizard King couldn’t do everything but he had the balls to try at least — gotta give him kudos for that.

People Watching: Valerie Solanas

Of the people who went in and out of the doors of The Factory she stands out perhaps most of all. Why? Because she is the woman who shot Andy Warhol. Which bring me neatly to how I heard of her — the film I Shot Andy Warhol. That film was a great portrayal of someone who felt she belonged within the world of the great artist who was briefly taken in and then cast aside (not an uncommon it seems in Warhol’s world).

I think the other route a lot of people may take to her is via the album Holy Bible by The Manic Street Preachers which had a song called Of Walking Abortion which is named after a line from S.C.U.M Manifesto the text for which she is primarily known.

She had ideas and she had written them down in an erudite if confrontational manner. The Society For Cutting Up Men was never going to be something that was going to go down well with many people and would people even be reading it if she hadn’t shot Warhol? Probably not. But because of her ideas, because of what she did, because of who she did it to, she is an endless source of fascination for me, and I know I am not the only one. Check the film, try and find a copy of the book — see something that might qualify as the antithesis to The Factory, something that nestled close to it’s breast like a viper.

Take Art: Jean Michel Basquiat

The film by Julian Schnabel delivered the tragic yet charming story of Basquiat to me before I found it, which I eventually would have through my exploration of Warhol and the world of The Factory.

His art is unlike anything else that I have seen before or since — it has a musical quality to it; a physicality that shouts at you from the canvas. To say that it is vibrant and quirky and captures something of the artist in it is to say something that is not true of a lot of artist’s art — their art exists apart from them and has more the quality of an object. Basquiat reflects the process, the jazz of the art, it encapsulates it — that is the art. I don’t mean to speak as if I know the artist, which I obviously don’t — I wish to speak purely of the feeling it creates in me and the thought processes that it triggers.

Again, as with his friend Warhol, you can focus on the life that went on behind the work, but do you need to know about it or understand it in order to appreciate the art? I don’t think that you do. The art is beautiful, evocative, and still fresh despite its age. Great art creates its own time bubble — its own continuum: that is where Basquiat’s pieces dwell. He is one of my favourite artists, check him out — you’ll see why.

Take Art: Andy Warhol

When I first saw the works of Andy Warhol i have to admit to being totally non-plussed. It was at a Pop Art exhibition at the Tate Gallery and lined up next to the other people there for me he didn’t stand his ground. I think I was arrogant enough to think I knew what art was and I knew what I liked and compared to Peter Blake and David Hockney this was disappointing.

I think appreciation of Warhol’s aesthetic and of his art as true pieces of art is something I had to grow into in a similar way to the process that people describe going through with growing into Woody Allen films. The key that unlocked Warhol for me though wasn’t any book or any viewing of his work but an album by Lou Reed and John Cale of the Velvet Underground.

I love the Velvet Underground and Warhol’s cover for their first album earned him some cache with me. I bought ‘Songs for Drella’ not knowing that it was about Warhol who they paint as a cross between Dracula and Cinderella. Contained therein were songs about Andy’s ideas behind his work, his work ethic, his attitude to art and some of his personality and personal life laid out as seen through the eyes of two people that knew him quite well (as well as anyone was capable of knowing someone like Warhol.

There are film versions of Andy, there are Andy’s various versions of himself, books galore that discuss him — all this ephemera and apocrypha which directs one back to the lasting legacy of his art. He has one of the most instantly recognisable aesthetics of any artist and his ideas are ripped off and repackaged all the time as if they were something new. No one has really taken on the spirit of Warhol though people like Damien Hirst might be able to lay some claim to that; he was ahead of his time and most people know of him because of his fashionability. He escaped fashion, transcended the moment and became timeless.

I know I am probably not saying anything new, nothing that hasn’t been said a thousand times, but then reproduction of an idea seems somehow fitting in Warhol’s case. Despite all I have read and all I have seen I don’t think I could say what Warhol was except for an artist, except for an ideas man. People seem overly eager to box him, to define him, to paint him into a corner, to portray him in a certain way. Who really knew him? He was a gravitational force with a thousand satellites but who really got close enough to say they knew him? A few maybe, but not many. And there are very few clues in his art — do the concerns of someone tell you who they are? Maybe, in a funhouse mirror kind of way.

What to say? Andy Warhol — check him out and if you dismissed him the first time give him a second try, he is definitely worth it.

Rebellious Jukebox: Throwing Muses

For some reason they never seemed to attain the status that The Pixies did which I always thought was unfair though maybe understandable: the Pixies despite being fairly twisted by most standards were a more straight forwards proposition than Hersh’s band. They are the great unrated group that if you know them you love them. Kristin Hersh has had more success as a solo artist but could still be considered something of a cult phenomenon. The most success that was seen by a member of Throwing Muses was Tanya Donnelly’s Belly who had a one album surge of popularity that sadly evaporated by the second offering.

I came to the group ass-backwards through Kristin Hersh’s solo single ‘Your Ghost’ which I was hipped to by Michael Stipe’s presence on backing vocal duties — I suppose this is how a lot of people would have found them. The first album that I owned was House Tornado which was like Plath, Burroughs and a whole host of literary references that I shouldn’t include here all mashed up together and delivered with fierce guitars and one of the most distinctive female voices around. The whole loudquiteloud dynamic of the Pixies here had, for me at least, a weightier punch, a more emotional core. The front cover’s collage was like a map to how the music was put together — it was at once somehow domestic and otherworldly. Donnelly’s two track writing contribution to the group added a softer side but you sensed even just on one album’s evidence that this was Kristin’s show.

The next three albums I bought in a single trip to the music shop: ‘Hunkpapa’, ‘The Real Ramona’ and ‘Red Heaven’. Hunkpapa was softer and in some ways perhaps more whimsical than House Tornado had seemed. But it is one of those albums that has barbs buried in the ice cream sweetness. Shit, there is no wat to easily box up or pin down one of these albums. I think of ‘The Real Ramona’ as being more experimental sonically but when I say that it seems to set up a false opposition with the other albums that just doesn’t exist. Red Heaven has harder sound and seems more guitar driven than vocal driven which seems to be the way it falls with Hersh — her muse arriving either through what she sings or what she plays (this is pure conjecture I hasten to add).

The came University and the self titled album. ‘Throwing Muses’, having come to it almost last on my learning curve for this group, has that energy and chaos that often typifies a debut album. In my opinion it’s one of the best and most complete debuts I have in my collection and I have a lot of music — all the ingredients that we see played out and developed on later albums are within the whirling maelstrom of this offering. ‘University’ tops ‘The Real Ramona’ for experimentation — it is a fluid album, but possessed of the fluidity not so much of a stream but of the rippling heat haze of a desert. The first track ‘Bright Yellow Gun’ is an instant classic that punches you square in the solar plexus, whilst the rest of the tracks push that edge through some psychedelic surf guitar with the melodious punk sensibility Hersh is known for.

Limbo is the last one I am going to concern myself with, though it is not the last album, although it represents the closing of a chapter. It floats, it burns, it sizzles and pops and introduces into an electric landscape that perfectly fuses all the concerns of Hersh solo work and the previous Muses albums.

There isn’t a bum note in the whole of Hersh’s career as far as I am concerned and there isn’t one album that is a better entry point than another — they are all the kind of crazy-paved reflection you get from a broken mirror with themes and sounds traveling backwards and forwards through time to make something complete and timeless. Throwing Muses are an inspiration.

Comicsphere: Batman Black And White

Batman and reinvention go together like a horse and carriage or whatever other pair of inseparable ideas you wish to use, hmm, maybe Batman and Robin. I said something similar earlier with works about the character that were operating under the same kind of mission statement: to reimagine the world of Gotham’s Dark Knight.

Anyway this collection gathers together some legendary names from the world of comics including Gaiman, Jim Lee, Chuck Dixon and Simon Bisley to name a few. Everyone wants a stab at the iconic characters and his great cast of villains and this is top notch stuff. Strangely there was only one story that disappointed and that was Gaiman’s — the whole framing device and post-modern take, deconstruction angle really didn’t work well for me at all … now that’s either because it just didn’t work or down to personal taste — I know what i think but you must make up your own mind. In a book of this size one bum note really isn’t going to derail the train.

The art is great — and the plasticity of the character really comes to the fore. That he can be all these things and still retain an essential quality of ‘batman-ness’. Ted McKeever for me turned in the most interesting take and covered the investigative side of Batman, kind of Batman CSI, for a look behind the curtain that is sometimes lacking in the pantomime stories or the action blockbuster batman tales.

This is one you can read over again and again and never tire of, each story, even the ones you may be less fond of, adding a different layer to an already multi-layered character.