shewhomust | Entries tagged with comics

We have a glut of carrots (because reasons) so I baked a carrot cake. I don't often bake cakes, and I was not confident, but I found a recipe which used ingredients I already had (Josceline Dimbleby's Balinese Carrot Cake) and followed it almost faithfully: the honey wasn't as liquid as it should have been, and wouldn't amalgamate, and I reduced the amount of oil because I couldn't quite believe it, and I cooked it in a shallow oval dish, and it was fine. We had some of it hot from the oven for pudding, and some of it sliced as cake, and the latter was better. And there's more in the freezer for another time.

The car failed its MOT: a spring was broken, which I think was part of the suspension. I didn't know you could fail an MOT for that, but apparently so. The garage thought it should not have broken, and replaced it uner warranty, but they kept the car until they could get the replacement part.

I could still have gone to the Graphic Novels reading group, of coure, since I take the train into Newcastle anyway; but not having a lift to and from the station just made it that bit less inviting (also rain) so I zoomed in instead. I wasn't at the meeting which decided that for our next theme we would read comics on the theme 'Winter', and I'm not sure what they had in mind. I look forward to seeing what they come up with as a reading list. I had rememberd that Miracleman's daughter is called Winter, and this was noted, but it is cheating, isn't it? Bryan and Mary Talbot's Rain depicts a relationship growing against a background of floods and environmental action, but it is framed by the 2015 Boxing Day floods in Hebden Bridge, which is undeniably Christmas. And looking through piles of old comics, I found the four issues of Ollie Masters' and Tyler Jenkins' Snow Blind, which I hadn't looked at since I bought them: there's a cover endorement from Warren Ellis, who calls it "an elevated crime drama that feels like it should be the best indie movie of the year" (and I see that it has been made into a movie). Crime drama, certainly, and more than enough bloodshed, but I'd have majored on the coming-of-age aspect: boy discovers that his family is on a Witness Protection Program, and sets out to learn why. For my present purpose, what matters is that they have been relocated to Alaska, providing a dramatic snowy backdrop for confrontations. This isn't Winter, it's just North (which may be a pattern in my collection), but the relocation from Louisiana to Alaska provides an almost-seasonal contrast...

In a small domestic comedy diaster, I managed to drop a pack of black pudding down the back of the freezer. I was rummaging in the depths of the chest freezer for something else, and piled things higher than was wise; this small, flat package slipped off the top and through the gap between wall and lid. By the time durham_rambler was available to help move the freezer and rescue it, it was well on the way to thawing, so there was unscheduled black pudding for dinner last night. Fried with leeks, served with potato and celeriac mash, andI didn't know what wine to choose, but rosé worked very well.

The puffins are returning to the Isle of Muck (though probably not the Isle of Muck youare thinking of). I don't know why this pleasing but very small piece of good news has achieved so much news coverage. And I even more don't know why it is such big news in November, when it must have happened back in the summer.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to see a man about a plaque. Two men, in fact, one to veil the plaque and the other to unveil it.

Yesterday, at

durham_rambler's request, we visited the new, modernised Scapa Flow Museum. To do this, we drove to the ferry at Houton, as the morning mist was just lifting, and tatters of cloud still veiled the high hills of Hoy - from which, in fact, they didn't quite clear all day. But the sun was beginning to break through as we boarded the ferry as foot passengers, and half an hour later we disembarked and walked up the hill to the museum.

This was not our first visit. The first visit recorded in this journal, in 2008, seems not to have been the first either; and in 2022 we left Hoy the day before the reopening. About time for a return visit, then.

In its current incarnation, the core of the museum is the naval base at Lyness. The navy finds it easier to cope with ships, so all naval premises are regarded as ships, and Lyness was HMS Proserpine. I wondered if this was a quiet dig at the Orkney climate: six months of summer, but six months of every year in Hades? Apparently not. I asked Ross, one of the attendants, and he produced a copy of an account of the naming process. In 1939 various names were proposed and rejected before the Admiralty decided on Proserpine (I think there was a pattern locally of initial P). It wasn't entirely successful, causing postal difficulties as letters turned up addressed to 'Prosperine', 'Phospherine' and even 'Porcupine'...

Anyway, it's a big museum with many things in it, and even so I remembered from previous visits thing that I could not now find (mostly, I thought I remembered more about the details of everyday life on the base). But here are three of the highlights:

Despite the new extension, the museum is still built into the pumphouse. There's a limit to how much I want to know about the management of fuel oil, but there machinery itself has a certain visual appeal. I see that I felt the same way back in 2008.

You can no longer go into the big oil drum which looms over the site. But if you ask what is in that shed over there, a member of staff (the ever-helpful Ross) will get the keys and show you. All sorts of treasure, but we both loved the Otter Bank. It's a boat! which is also a bank!

You find a comics connection everywhere. The Museum has Jim Baikie's The Dome. Explanation by museum curator Ellen Pesci, who happens to be Jim's daughter; biographical piece about Jim Baikie from Orkney Museums Service (scroll down for a better image of The Dome).

We made our way back to the ferry terminal, and were delighted to see that first off the incoming ferry was the mobile library, the celebrated Booky McBookface. Back on Mainland, we drove along the south coast, calling in at the Round Church at Orphir, and managed to snag an early evening table at the Foveran Hotel: big juicy scallops, served with really good vegetables and a zesty Chilean sauvignon blanc, and lemon posset for afters. And a huge picture window looking out onto the Flow...

On Thursday I went into Newcastle for my Reading Group, and as I had promised myself, I took my camera with me.

The town was heaving - the station was heaving, the train was heaving, and Durham station was pretty busy, too - mostly with people in black-and-white football strip. At first I thought there must be a home game, and muttered to myself about there being no closed season these days, but it turned out to be in honour of Sam Fender, local lad and superstar, who was playing that night, the first of three concerts at St James' Park. Much of this I learned from a lady who accosted me as I was sitting on a bench in the town centre: she told me I was the image of her sister-in-law, and wanted to take my photograph. It wasn't yet five o' clock, but the party had already started.

Even in Forth Lane there had been people (it's usually very quiet) but not enough to deter me from photographing the murals. I've started at the end, because that magpie is a detail of a mural which spreads across the wall at one end (the far end, if like me, you started at the Central Station): the lane is too narrow, and the light and shade were too extreme, for more than this detail of the picture, but it's an appropriate detail.

( The Forth Lane Gallery )

Then I went to the Library and had fun talking about comics.

After the count on Friday, since we were halfway to J's house, we took the roundabout route home, and called in for a cup of tea. And I'm glad we did, even though we then had a bit of a rush to make the Live to Your Living Room gig we had booked: luckily the start time was not the advertised 7.30 but 8 o' clock, and we used the extra half hour to inveigle our too-smart-by-half tv into showing us the live YuoTube stream.

Breathless, but worth it: a hybrid concert, with Nancy Kerr, James Fagan and Tim van Eyken, not a line-up I'd met before. It seems they used to play together twenty or so years ago, when they all lived on narrowboats, then other things happened - but now Tim van Eyken has moved to Sheffield, and they have relaunched the trio. This had a feeling of celebration about it, and I think was also an anniversary concert for the organiser (Live at Sam's), so it chimed well with our own celebratory mood: and lots of tunes, lots of songs, some old friends (Spirit of Free Enterprise is absolutely not celebratory, but always welcome!), some new to me - a setting of Locks and Bolts to the tune of Lads of Alnwick, dissolving into the familiar tune...

Nonetheless,

durham_rambler wanted a small celebration to thank his team of supporters (leaflet distibutors and one brave canvasser). This was of necessity held at short notice (wait for the election result, but as soon as possible thereafter) and this is a Bnk Holiday weekend: so the party ended up being a very small one indeed. I don't know what it says about this household that we had enough fizzy wine already in the cellar even before one of those well-wishers turned up with a bottle before going away for the weekend; but we had to go shopping to top up the supply of wine glasses! We also did some intensive dusting and vacuuming and moving of boxes in the sitting room, which is now looking almost presentable. We had a grand total of two guests, which is in my opinion an excellent number for a party, because you get to talk to everyone in some depth. Conversation was, quite properly, about the election, and what it will mean for Durham, and techniques for pushing leaflet through letterboxes, and gossip about local figures - and then veered off in an unexpected direction when the guest I knew less well removed her jacket and revealed a Sandman t-shirt...

Today we went to the VE Day anniversary celebrations in the Market Place: regard this as

durham_rambler resuming his civic duties rather than any desire to commemmorate VE Day. Actually, I'd be happy to celebrate VE Day, and suggested that we should make a 'War is Over' placard to do just that: but as I had feared, the historical re-enactors present did not seem to have heard that news; and the band - well, it was too loud for me to listen in comfort. There were fewer stalls than I had expected, too, but we went round the market, and chatted to people (including the Parish Clerk, so

durham_rambler gets his brownie point for showing up) and I bought a book from the bookstall.

On our way back to the car park, we called in at the People's Bookshop, where there was a small selection of hardbacks by Neil Gaiman, and a note saying 'if you want to read Gaiman without him profiting from it, buy secondhand' - I wasn't sure how to take this, but I selected a collection that I don't already have. So I discovered that the assistant who had written that note was a big fan...

Three celebrations and two conversations about Neil Gaiman: how's that for a themed post?

Builders - about half a dozen of them, with three vans - arrived right on schedule, just before eight on Monday morning to replace our windows. It should have been quite a gentle start: we thought we were ready for them. They had visited in advance, declared the dormer window in my attic study to be sound and not affected, and had measured all the relevant windows. The scaffolding was in place, so there external access, and we had cleared space next to the affected windows indoors. All we now had to do was take down curtains at the last minute. Builders would be working in one room at a time, starting with the purely external task of replacing the downpipe and guttering.

( Such optimism! )

This is work that needed doing, and I'm glad it is being done. At least, I will be glad when it is done. I'm just not enjoying the disruption of it actually happening. I would be tempted to go out and leave them to it: but

durham_rambler has a full schedule of online meetings this week. Also, from time to time the builders lock themselves out, and have to ring the doorbell for admission...

One of M.'s contributions to last night's Unity Folk Club was to get all of us, even those who had never heard of Pogo Possum, singing Deck us all with Boston Charlie - excellent stuff, and very silly. More information here, including (if you scroll down far enough) the song sheet as handed round.

I don't have anything coherent to say about A.S. Byatt. I have a vague affection for her, because I always enjoyed hearing this very literary grande dame praising Terry Pratchett. I enjoyed some of her books, struggled with others.

Instead, since today is the 70th birthday of Alan Moore, I thought it would be a pleasure to write about someone who is still alive. Admittedly, he has turned away from those of his works which have given me such pleasure over the years, but they have given me very great pleasure ...

And I've never written here about The Birth Caul... In fact, what have I written here? And why have I never tagged the relevant entries?

So instead of writing anything new, what I have been doing is tagging all my previous entries about Alan Moore. Not so much a birthday tribute as a meta-tribute. Oh, well.

We went to Sunderland on Saturday, to hear Bryan and Mary Talbot speaking to the Society of Authors - and anyone else who turned up - about their new book, Armed with Madness about the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington. It took place at the museum, and

durham_rambler kindly dropped me at the entrance to Mowbray Park, so I could walk through the gardens while he parked the car. Which is how I came to be right under the flight path of this tumult of pigeons:

I just happened to be photographing the walrus as a father and daughter behind me did something - I don't know what: rustled a paper bag, maybe? - and I think they were pretty overwhelmed by the pegeons' reation, too. (The walrus is an Alice in Wonderland reference, but that's another story).

The talk was maybe a little more 'story so far' and a little less about the new book than I had expected, but always entertaining. Here's the trailer, which is a good introduction:

Watch on YouTube

I knew very little about Leonora Carrington: no, less than that, since what little I did know was inextricably entangled with Dora Carrington, an entirely different woman artist (I think it's inconsiderate of them to have so very nearly the same name... )

( Now, having read the book... )

Thr plan was that after the talk, people would afjourn to the museum café; we were all for this until we realised that the only way to accommodate all those present was to sit outside. The sun was bright, but

durham_rambler and I looked at the black clouds, heard the thunder rimbling and decided on discretion. We reached the car before the rain began, but by the time we were out of Sunderland, the barrage of hailstines was loud on the windscreen. So we lunched at Homer Hill Farm shop (I recommend the cauliflower fritters).

I know people who meet friends over Zoom for a glass of wine and a chat: I am not one of them. If we can't meet in person, I'm happy to do one-to-one conversation over the phone. But Zooming a group conversation is different. Being able to attend the Graphic Novels Reading Group by Zoom has been a lifeline; we can even show each other the comics we are talking about (admittedly, my eyesight is bad enough that I get only the most general idea of what I am being shown, but it's better than nothing - and I hope others get more benefit from anything I might show them). Tuesday's session was a particularly good one, with interesting conversation about comics, but also - we are notoriously liable to go off topic - not about comics.

We are currently reading Richard Thompson's Cul de Sac. We have been looking at webcomics, and doing our best to have serious discussions about readability, and the potential of the unlimited page, and some of the strips have been quite fun. But Cul de Sac, which is not strictly a webcomic but an archived newpaper strip, is just so good: why have I never come across it before? Nothing revolutionary about the premise: scenes from family life, but beautifully done, and consistently funny. The centre of attention (because she demands to be) is pre-schooler Alice, but how could any bunch of comics geeks resist older brother Petey, who would happily spend his entire life lying on his bed reading his collection of 'Little Neuro' comics? Parents, classmates, teachers all get their moment in the spotlight, but more irresistible even than these star turns is the warmth of the relationships between them.

( Then we went off-topic for a bit... )

S. dragged us back to comics by flourishing his latest purchase: Forbidden Planet are offering Milligan and Fegredo's Girl at a very reasonable price. I was surprised, because I had remembered him as being rather dismissive of it when I contributed it to our discussion of Vertigo titles (funny: it doesn't show up in my post on the subject). But no, he was positive - with reservations - about it, and so was the other person who had read it, and it was a pleasure to share that enthusiasm - so much so, in fact, that here is what I wrote about Girl when it was new (long, long ago, and with page design that is of its time - please make allowances).

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/748554.html

Many of the comics I was sorting through at the weekend were things I had removed from the shelves for the Reading Group (many others weren't, but let's not get distracted): the Readers of the Lost Art had greeted the announcement that DC were closing down their Vertigo imprint with a look back at some of the shorter series published by Vertigo. So, not another Sandman re-read (though personally I'm always up for a Sandman re-read), and not Shade or Hellblazer, and there seems to be a degree of resistance to The Invisibles too. Which still left plenty to look at (Wikipedia has a useful list) and when I came to check my shelves, I found plenty of Vertigo titles of my own to explore. I should have returned them to the shelves by now (easier said than done, but nonetheless) but they have been waiting on the brain dump which follows, which started out back in the autumn as a Post in Progress (PiP) - if not, as mentioned in the context of the queue for authentic Belgian chips, a Post in Perpetual Progress - to enable me to keep track of what I had read, and in particular what I had borrowed from fellow members. As time passed, there has been a reversal in the direction of flow, and I want now also to record my pleasure at sharing my own collection, and in particular at discovering a shared enthusiasm for what I thought were my strange minority tastes. The Reading Group long ago wrapped up this theme, circumstances have closed several tabs which were supposed to push me into completing the post, so it's time to admit that it is never going to be finished, and post it anyway.

( Hey, kids! [Vertigo] Comics! )

tl;dr version, Vertigo was fun while it lasted, with a remarkably high success rate. Why am I not tempted by Karen Berger's omprint at Dark Horse? Other publishers have followed where Vertigo led, I guess. Anf now all I have to do is squeeze these comics back onto the shelves ...

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/694433.html

We didn't manage to snag cheap first class tickets on the train home this afternoon: I don't know if that would have helped. It was crowded, and overwhelmed by the surprise that all these travellers had luggage. Worse still, there was no internet. So I couldn't post, but I wrote anyway, and now let's see how far I can get with stitching that into something coherent.

It may be apparent from my previous post that I have been looking at the paintings of Hogarth - specifically, those in Sir John Soane's museum. The plan for the day was to visit the current exhibition, which brings together all of Hogarth's 'series' paintings and engravings, with the added advantage of a visit to the museum itself, which I had never seen, the possibility, if fine, of exploring the surrounding Inns of Court, and the pleasure of the company of

helenraven.

The Sir John Soane museum is Sir John's house on Lincoln's Inn Fields, which he extended into the house next door to accommodate his collection of antiquities, mostly statues and carved stones, including, right at the bottom, an Egyptian sarcophagus. This defines the size of the space, and the collection is arranged in rising tiers around it. I like the idea that this is the museum within the museum, but

helen_raven says no, it is Sir John's shed.

He also seems to have owned a number of paitings by Hogarth, (some of which he bought from the estate of David Garrick, who bought them from the artist - that's what I call provenance). The current exhibition uses this as the basis on which to bring together as many as possible of Hogarth's 'series' works, either as paintings or as prints. Some of them are genuinely sequential, telling a story (Marriage à la Mode. The Good and Idle Apprentices) some related in other ways (Beer Street and Gin Lane is the obvious example). The narratives can in part be read from the images, especially if you know what clues to look for, but they are clearly also provided with explanatory text (the names of the characters, for example) which in our case we had not got. I would have liked to know more about this, and it would be perverse to try to claim the whole experience as comics-related (though I may, regardless) but I enjoyed seeing these images in this setting.

When we were museumed out,

helenraven led us through Great Turnstile (it's a street) to a Korean restaurant where we ate a variety of tasty fried starters,

durham_rambler found a dish of rice and kimchi topped with bacon, chorizo and a fried egg (which makes it a Korean all day breakfast, doesn't it?), I attacked a big bowl of noodles in black bean sauce with spoon and chopsticks (I won, but at the cost of any table manners I might pretend to) and the ice cream menu ofered impossible choices: should I have black sesame or golden walnut? red bean or green tea? We caught up on recent funerals and current reading (both of us have been reading and much enjoying Kate Charlesworth's Sensible Footwear: A Girl's Guide).

After lunch,

durham_rambler and I resumed our exploration of the Inns of Court, hampered by the area currently being in use as a film set (Last Letter from Your Lover, apparently). Gates which might otherwise have been open were closed to us, and architecture which might have been impressive was obscured by parked vans. But I saw enough to feel I'd been right that it would be worth a look, and maybe another time we'll be luckier. We came out behind St Clement Danes, which was also, coincidentally, closed, so we headed down to and along the Embankment. This was harder work than we had expected, because we were working our way against a tide - a tsunami, says

durham_rambler - of Santas, row upon row, four or five abreast, all in high spirits and taking no prisoners. If this is the same phenomenon we encountered in Greenwhich with

helen_raven years ago, it has grown mightily in the interval. We were still meeting stragglers at Blackfriars, where we caught the bus home.

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/703364.html

Sunday morning was bright and cold - a change of weather for the change of month, except that yesterday was even colder. November had been wet - in fact the whole autumn has been rainy. I'll start this post with the previous Saturday, and it was raining steadily then: which was appropriate if not very agreeable, because that's when I took the train into Newcastle for Bryan and Mary Talbot's presentation of RAIN at the the Books on Tyne book festival.

durham_rambler had been to the actual launch, in Kendal, and had had our copy signed then, but I had skipped that because it clashed with a talk about Belgian comics, and because I knew there'd be another chance in Newcastle. So S. and I met for lunch in the Tyneside Coffee Rooms, in all their art deco splendour, and went together to the talk. Which was not as well attended as it deserved - but then it was very cold and wet, and Bryan and Mary barely made it, having taken an hour and a half on the road (a half hour's journey); and the audience was an interesting mixture of people who were interested in climate change and flood prevention, people who were interested in comics (only myself and L. from the Reading Group, though the man in the front row in a Luther Arkwright t-shirt was clearly a hard-core fan), and people who were making the most of the Books on Tyne programme. Someone asked "But who is your intended audience?", which rather nonplussed the speakers. But they seemed to be selling plenty of books, so that's good.

I didn't hang around town after the event: cold and wet, as I said before; also I had a tummy upset about which I won't go into detail, but I was ready to go home, so I did. The next day I was - let's say - 'better, but still not well', so we took things very gently, visiting Broom House Farm for lunch and a little light shopping. It was already misty when we left home, but as we drove up the long hill to the farm, the fog thickened, and at the top you could barely see from the parking to the coffee shop. I may have been a bit hazy myself: being wrapped in cotton wool felt entirely appropriate.

The rain continued through the week - we got soaked on the way to the Elm Tree on Wednesday - but Saturday morning was bright and frosty. It felt like a new month: I turned the page on the kitchen calendar, so we could compare commitments for the week ahead, and the calendar, which has been a sad disappointment to me all year (you'd think a National Geographic calendar of islands would suit me, but it's obsessed with tropical beaches) finally, at the last opportunity, gave me something to enjoy: a pair of blue footed boobies (in the Galapagos). It felt like December, too, because this has been the weekend of the Christmas Festival: the kind of festival that is all about shopping, and I went out and shopped.

durham_rambler accompanied me for the first stage of the shopping, in which we did some errands and failed to buy a haggis: the cheese stall had not stocked up for St Andrew's day, and had sold out. We didn't buy any cheese, either, because J, who had spent the night with us on THursday before catching the very early morning train for Milan, had given us a miniature brie (given the diameter of a full-size brie, a miniature one is still a substantial cheese). Besides, I knew there would be cheese sellers at the profucers' market in the cathedral cloisters. We went there next, and we did indeed buy cheese, also bread, and some smoked foods (haloumi and black pudding, separately).We lunched together in the cathedral café, which was pleasant enough but very busy.

And then

durham_rambler unleashed me to do my worst in the marquee, which in theory is dedicated to crafts, but also offers various edibles: in fact, a major reason I didn't want to mss the festival is that I wanted to buy some wine from the Domaine de Palejay - anf I did, and it was delivered that evening, so I have shopped successfully, which is good. I also had some entertaining conversations, including one with a cartographer (ah, here he is!); bought a couple of small gifts (not as many as I had hoped, but when does that ever happen?); bought myself a garment (picture the least you would have to do to a scarf to turn it into a jacket, and it's one of those). And did I mention the cheese? I had forgotten that Lacey's were likely to be there, but since they were, and since they make very good cheese, I chose a couple of pieces - but I was greeted like an old friend (which I am, but) and it's three for a tenner, and that's not a very big piece, have this one, and this one, and look, have this as a gift... We will not be running out of cheese any time soon (which is not a bad thing.)

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/701718.html

I did not recognise the name Alison Prince, but the Guardian's obituary suggests I should. She wrote, among other things, the scripts for Trumpton, and I enjoyed the description of how that came about. This turned out to be drawing heavily on an earlier 'making of' article (and all you need to know about Trumpton - indeed, all I know about Trumpton - is that it's about life in a small town from the point of view of its Fire Brigade):
...So I was dispatched to a bitterly cold converted church in the East End of London, where Trumpton's creator Gordon Murray was filming a test sequence using stop-motion animation. It dawned on me how quaint the remit was. You can't depict flames using stop-motion, nor can you do smoke and water. So I realised I would have to write 13 stories about a fire brigade that never went anywhere near a fire.

I love stories about how a piece of art is shaped by the constraints of its material - but what made Gordon Murray, working in stop motion animation, choose this particular subject?

Myfanwy Tristram spent a half term holiday in Barcelona, and then she published her sketch diary online. Warning: her website is very ad-heavy; also (though this may just relect the sizr of my screen / state of my eyesight) I did quite a lot of clicking through to larger image / struggling to find my place on the large image. I was really glad that I had read the taster of this and other travel diaries in Two Birds, her collaboration with Zara Slattery. But it was worth persevering to read the full diary, and it made Barcelona look like a great place to visit.

radiantfracture asked about newsletters. One that I not only subscribe to, but actually (mostly) read is Warren Ellis's Orbital Operations. In the latest, he is dipping a toe into poetry, specifically Alice Oswald's Nobody. I was very taken with one three-line fragment that he quotes - the rest of it, not so much, but this, yes:
There is a harbour where an old sea-god sometimes surfaces
two cliffs keep out the wind you need no anchor
the water in fascinated horror holds your boat

Why yes, thar's 'Nobody' as in Odysseus, that talkative, bald-headed seaman: the book is a collaboration with painter William Tillyer (there's just a glimpse of the paintings on his website.).

There was a takeaway pizza menu on the doormat, in among the election literature (only the LibDems so far, which I find odd). Previously unsuspected pizza options are the Northern Delight (cheese, tomato, layers of kebab, onions and jalapenos) and the London pizza (cheese, tomato, chips). Or perhaps it's just a spoof? Can they really be selling a Seefood Delight ((cheese, tomato, garlic, prawns, muscles & tuna)?

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/700944.html

Where yesterday's programme had been full of hard choices, interesting events overlapping each other, today's was, if anything, on the sparse side. This is partly a function of my own tastes, of course, a considered choice not to attend things that were on offer. Making allowance for that, and despite Peter Kessler's opening remark that the festival was bigger, with more guests, than ever before, it felt less rich, less abundant. I enjoyed everything I did, and I certainly seem to have bought more books than usual, but I've also had more time to pause between sessions. Of course, if the sun were shining (or even if it just wasn't raining) I'd be enjoying having time to explore the town...

We had time before the morning's first event to call in at the Clocktower, where I surprised myself by buying two books from Myriad as well as one by Myfanwy Tristam and Zara Slattery (hooray!). Neither of the Myriad books was by Darryl Cunningham, who we were about to hear talking about billionaires, at a panel titled Visible Invisible: a neat device to bring together the secret manipulators of the world with the hidden history of lesbians, as represented by Kate Charlesworth. I'm not sure the two really fitted together, but Bryan Talbot chaired as even-handedly as he could. I'm looking forward to reading Kate's memoir / history, and to seeing whether the family likeness to Bryan's Alice in Sunderland (suggested by the slideshow) really exists.

In the break before our next panel, we returned to the International Marketplace: having already bought books here yesterday from the Belgian artists I'd been listening to, I was quite restrained - well, comparatively!

Finally, the writers' panel: and the first panel which actually behaved as a panel, in the the participants talked among themselves, and there was actual conversation. Participants were Garth Ennis, Rob Williams and Si Spurrier. Garth Ennis is the only one of three whose work I have read, and not very much of it. He deals mostly in material that is too brutal for me to enjoy - respect, yes, enjoy, no - which I occasionally regret, because I love his quiet moments, the conversations between his characters. I thought it would be interesting to hear what he had to say, and it was. Si Spurrier I knew by name, Rob Williams not at all, and while I didn't come away with the urge to buy their work, I did think it would be worth checking the library.

So far, so good. There was one more thing I wanted to see, a project called Next Frame, which invited artists to look at works in the Abbots Hall Art Gallery as if they were the first frame of a comic, and to supply the next panel: this took place yesterday, and the work was to be on show until three o' clock today. We put aside thoughts of a leisurely Sunday lunch, and after a quick sandwich set off for the Abbots Hall in the rain, to find it closed, and with no indication that it might ever have intended to be open. Later, we asked about this at the Clocktower, where by chance the organiser was in conversation with the volunteer we asked, and so was able to apologise: he had not realised when he scheduled the event that the current exhibition having ended, the Gallery would not be open on Sunday. The suggestion that this fact could have been publicised seemed to surprise him, but he agreed that it might have been an idea. Meanwhile, we went to the Tom of Finland exhibition, which was what it was: though the effect of a large number of (almost exclusively) black and white images, regular in size and therefore in arrangement, in a white exhibition space was paradoxically chaste.

On a brighter day I might have lingered in town and explored more of the Windows Trail, but not today. I liked this window, though, only just down the hill from our cottage:

Which came first, the monster or the egg?

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/697902.html

We started the day with a panel on banned books - comics censorship in the 21st century. Waiting outside, I fell into conversation with a lady dressed in a black suit, complete with black lace wings and a silver badge: she explained that she was role-playing a character from a comic by a friend of hers, about a retired fairy godmother who joins the Vancouver police force as a detective. If I had had my wits about me, I would have asked if I could photograph her (and the copy of the book she showed me): but I didn't, so there is only this verbal record, and a note that the book might be worth a look, if I came across it. The panel itself brought together five interesting speakers, any one of whom I would cheerfully have listened to at greater length, but who somehow never added up to more than the sum of their parts. Charles Brownstein of the CBLDF was a polished and sympathetic speaker, and Elyon's, a Cameroonian working in Congo Brazzaville, brought a different perspective to the question.

We had just time for a little shopping before our next events: the Oxfam bookshop, where I found a copy of Astérix en Corse, and Page 45 for less random purchases. The

durham_rambler stuck with Plan A, and went to the launch of Rain, and I headed back to the Brewery to hear Benoît Peeters talking about Belgian comics from Hergé to Brecht Evens. This fell into the inevitable trap, was too leisurely talking about Hergé and ran out of time to consider the more recent and less internationally known artists: I was going to say I would have liked to hear more about Brecht Evens, and that remains true, but I'm embarrassed to see a familiar cover on his website: did I actually order one of his books from my comics supplier, and is it in a to-be-read pile somewhere? Takeaway fact: the use of the term ligne clair to describe Hergé's style originates with Joost Swarte, in Dutch, so we really ought to be talking about klare lijn.

Lunch was enabled by the Flemish government:

I think a chip van is an excellent form of cultural outreach. I was next to Duncan Fegredo in the queue, and was tempted to squee at him: the Graphic Novels Reading Group is currently revisiting some Vertigo titles (there is a Post in Progress on this subject) and I have just enjoyed rereading Enigma. But never come between a man and his chips...

After lunch I went to two separate panels titled Belgian is Best, in which first Paul Gravett and then Alex Fitch attempted to wrangle some sort of coherence from a disparate bunch of creators. Alex Fitch was slightly the more successful of the two, in that he had gained a degree of control over the slide show: we still had a selection of images from the featured artists in constant rotation, but at least now they could call on him to stop! there! no, back!.. Even so, I came away from both panels thinking I could probably match image to artist for about 60% of the slides. Paul Gravett's task was complicated by the inclusion of one artist who required an interpreter, but then Alex Fitch had one who hadn't asked for an interpreter and probably needed one. In addition, this being Belgium, it wasn't always clear what each artist's original language was: I was grateful to Joris Vermassen for commenting, very late in the panel, that he had had to come to England to meet fellow professionals from as small a country as Belgium, and launching us at last into a conversation about that fractured culture.

And that, bar a little book buying in the International Marketplace, and a visit to Booths to buy chili for dinner, was that.

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/697773.html

We are spending the weekend in Kendal, at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. Another year, another cottage: I'd happily return to the Marketplace Hideaway, but it was already taken. So we are on Beast Bank, which is very handy for the Brewery during the day when the back gate is open, and not much further along the road after dark.

We took the direct road, as it was past midday by the time we set off: but the A66 is still spectacular. It was sunny east of the Pennines, but the west has a reputation to keep up: the hills were green and grey and dotted with white sheep, the sky was grey and silver, and the margin between was blurred. We were safely in our cottage before the heavens opened, with a great clattering on the plastic roof of the lobby - and it had stopped by the time we'd had a cup of tea and were ready to go out, so that was OK.

I arrived at the festival knowing only of one event that I definitely wanted to go to: the official launch of Bryan and Mary Talbot's Rain. I hadn't looked in detail at the programme (actually, I hadn't looked at the programme at all) because I find the website very hard work. So it wasn't until we picked up our passes, and a paper programme at the box office - they also gave us a handy calculator to display what's on when, so I suspect I'm not the only person who struggles with this! - that we realised that there are several interesting things overlapping that timeslot. Luckily we saw Bryan and Mary in the foyer, so I was able to apologise and say we would join other members of my reading group and go to their event at Books on Tyne, and tomorrow we would go and learn about Belgian comics instead. They were very understanding: Oh, said Mary, I wanted to go to that!

The Gala opening event was a celebration of Viz, a panel of artists attempting the world record for drawing 150 characters from Viz in an hour: they say there is such a thing, and who am I to disbelieve the guys from Viz? I was impressed at the ability of the audience to recognise a huge number of characters. I recognised one or two myself: it's not that I don't think Viz is a good joke, but it is still just the one joke. It felt like a very long hour, and although I was interested to compare the artists working on paper under a camera, and those working direct on a tablet, but I wish we'd had time for Hannah Berry to say more about the progress of her laureateship.

And home, past some of the shop windows displaying art in the town's Windows Trail: tomorrow, more Belgians than you can shake a stick at.

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/697501.html

The Graphic Novels Reading Group I attend is not as other reading groups, as I explained when our theme was 'Comics of the Ancient World'.

And now we have moved on to something completely different: Space Opera! ( Whatever that may be... )

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/672607.html

We knew there was a Captain Pugwash exhibition at Ushaw College - actually, Ushaw having been until not so very long ago a catholic seminary, an exhibition of the work of John Ryan, creator of Captain Pugwash and long-time cartoonist for the Catholic Herald - and had every intention of visiting it, sooner or later. Then, on Wednesday, I received an e-mail: sorry about the misinformation in the previous e-mail, Isabel Ryan will be lecturing on her father's work on 29th NOVEMBER.... I hadn't seen any previous e-mail, and the 29th was the next day, but we decided to go for it - and I'm glad we did, because the exhibition was charming but, let's say "minimalist", and the talk was excellent and provided all sorts of material that wasn't in the exhibition. So, here's the Captain Pugwash exhibition website, and here's the exhibition at Ushaw:

( Things could have been better organised. )

However. The talk itself was joyful. My memories of Captain Pugwash are of the television series (and accompanied by the Trumpet Hornpipe, known in this household as 'the Black Pig', after Captain Pugwash's ship). I had forgotten, if I ever knew, that it started out as a comic. The first Captain Pugwash strip appeared in the first issue of the Eagle, but after a few weeks, Eagle decided that Pugwash was 'too childish' for them, so Ryan drew them Harris Tweed instead. Him i do remember as a comic, and Lettice Leefe, too, though I don't think I ever connected them with Captain Pugwash.

Meanwhile, the Pugwash strip found a home in the Radio Times, and from there it was a small step to the BBC asking for a television version. It seems to have been Ryan's idea to animate this by combining static images with a limited number of moving parts - eyes, mouths, arms, a ship at sea - which could be operated using cardboard levers, in time with the soundtrack. Amazingly, the first episodes were broadcast live, with Ryan and his wife frantically pulling and pushing the cardboard tabs, and trying not to giggle as Peter Hawkins played all the voices. This must have been absolutely chaotic, and they soon started to film the show. Isabel Ryan had brought some examples of scenes with moving parts, for her audience to try out; she told us that on her much delayed train to Durham the previous day she had had an entire carriage of travellers acting out scenes, and so caught up in the process that when they finally saw a train pass their windows, they cried in unison no, it's the scenery that's moving!

( Captain Pugwash's puffin? )

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/663304.html

Here we are at last, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the hundredth year, and I am pretty much poppied out. I have been genuinely touched by many moments of commemoration and reflection during the past four years, and some of them have involved the imagery of the poppy (I wish I had seen the Weeping Window in one of its manifestations...). But as the hour approached, and the crocheted poppies have spread across the country, and FB group for the local paper's camera club has become more and more speckled with red and the declaration "We will remember them..." is appended to every photoshopped image... I'm sure it's all very sincere (even the 'poppy run' which I initially thought was an ultimate piece of cashing in, turns out to be a British Legion fundraiser, so I guess they are entitled) but I think more and more bitterly of that 'war to end all wars', and how it didn't.

I must already have been starting to feel this way last month, at the Lakes Comics Festival launch for the Traces of the Great War anthology, because I was particular attracted by the invitation not just to "remember" but to consider what came after, what marks the war has left on us today. It opens with a challenge from Robbie Morrison and Charlie Adlard. They have written before about White Death, the use of avalanches in mountain warfare, which continues to release the bodies of its dead: how would today's teenagers react to this very material trace of war? Mary and Bryan Talbot examine the demand for Germany to make reparation for the past war, and how this helped cause the next one (reflected in Mikiko's depiction of the German side of remembrance: there are no winners in war... only hunger, suffering, death, grief...). Other contributions point out that in Russia the war is eclipsed by the revolution it surely helped to trigger; Orijit Sen, meanwhile, chooses to remind us of the pressures that sent a 'Ship of Liberty' from India to Canada, and back.

Perversely, among all this internationalism, the two pages which most move me are the double page spread in which Simon Armitage and Dave McKean consider that most parochial residue of the war, the village memorial, with its list of names:

...what better way
to monumentalise
the dead and lost

within the clockwork
of the mind

than honour them
with stone and time

As a counter to this intensely local meditation of the act of memory, and again perversely, contradicting anything I may have said about welcoming the book's emphasis of traces, residue, looking back, I am particularly grateful for the contribution of Riff Reb's, which introduced me to the haikus of Julien Vocance. I know that it's too much to ask that a book published simultaneously in English and French should also produce a bilingual edition, just for me: but here, more than with any other contribution, I wished that was possible. Three cheers for the internet: here are the original haikus, one hundred visions of war, written on the moment in the trenches, panoramas of ruined countryside and tiny close-ups, moments of horror and moments of rest. (This essay on haiku in the Great War gives some examples with English translations.)

There's only one way to conclude this incoherent collection of thoughts and emotions:

"Phil Ochs - The War is over" (Watch on YouTube)

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/659991.html

While this post has been under construction, the death has been announced of Anthea Bell: since this is the all-comics version, impossible to pass by without mentioning her!

Then back to Kendal, and picking up where I left off, We continued to have trouble throughout the weekend locking and unlocking the door: we decided blame the wet weather. But on Friday evening we eventually persuaded a key to turn in one of the two locks, decided that would do, and headed to the Brewery to collect our tickets and passes. I'd hoped to have a look at the Hunt Emerson exhibition, but it was in a space also occupied by a band making music at a volume too loud for comfort, so we retreated. From two floors away, it sounded rather good, and I wondered what it was, but I don't suppose I shall ever know. In the bar we found Bryan and Mary Talbot, and Mel Gibson (no, silly, the real Mel Gibson), and there was pleasant chat before the doors opened for the evening's event.

( Friday evening gala: Marvel vs DC )

( Saturday: crime, hate, loathing, rain and the Great War )

( Sunday: Russia, Portmeirion, Jerusalem )

Crossposts: https://shewhomust.livejournal.com/657052.html

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The Shadow Gallery

January 2026

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News from Nowhere

Entries tagged with comics

Five things make a week (compressed)

HMS Proserpine ahoy!

Magpie city

Celebratory

The good, the bad and the builders

Duck us all in bowls of barley...

Happy birthday, Mr Moore

Surrealism in Sunderland

Talking about comics (mostly)

Vertigone

Home from London

Rain, mist, frost and an inordinate quantity of cheese

Clearing my desk five things at a time

A damp Sunday

Being Belgian

West of the Pennines

Where did she go? Out.

All at sea with Captain Pugwash

Poppies for oblivion

All comics, all the way!