UK Underground Comix: Ar:Zak, the Birmingham Arts Lab, and Streetcomix #4 (3 of 3) by Maggie Gray

The Arts Lab Press

The Lab’s press itself operated as a kind of print workshop, with a similar experimental, interdisciplinary outlook and close ties to local community activity and activism. At first, Lab event publicity and programmes were produced using table-top silk screen and an A4 offset litho printer loaned from a local cash-and-carry. In 1972 the Lab expanded into the downstairs area at Tower Street, which allowed for a dedicated silk screen space, used by Hudson, Bob Linney and Ken Meharg to produce vivid, innovative posters. A better equipped darkroom was also set up, permitting image scaling, halftone screening, colour separation and production of printing plates, which enabled the press (having acquired its own second-hand A4 offset machine) to print a range of publications in significant runs, good quality and colour, including poetry magazines, music scores and, of course, comics.

But as well as printing their own material, the Arts Lab Press also partly functioned as a print shop for the wider community, used by local activist and cultural groups, students unions and bands to produce newsletters, flyers and posters. It additionally printed alternative local papers like Street Press – part of a movement of, often radical, localised independent media that flourished in the 1970s. As Emerson put it, the Arts Lab Press took a “more sympathetic approach than a normal commercial printer” (personal communication 2018). It was therefore part of a larger nationwide network of co-operative printshops supporting the community arts and alternative press movements which shared the Lab’s commitment to enabling democratic participation in arts, and was listed in directories of community presses. The Lab also ran its own magazine stall selling local and/or alternative publications.

Figure 5. Adverts from Streetcomix #4, Ar:Zak, The Arts Lab Press, p. 33; p. 22; p. 4. © the artists

Ar:Zak publications shared the same distribution channels as the wider alternative press movement, carried by the PDC distribution co-op, as well as Hassle Free Press (later Knockabout) – set up by Tony and Carol Bennett to publish underground comix, but also operating as a distributor of various alternative papers and magazines. Ar:Zak comics therefore sold through the same network of headshops, radical bookshops, record stores and comic shops that supported alternative papers, and equally avoided the de facto censorship powers of commercial wholesalers like WH Smith. This interconnection of comics and the alternative press was evident in the fact that many alternative papers carried comic strips – with Emerson’s work, for example, appearing in Street Press, Grapevine, The Moseley Paper and Muther Grumble, amongst others. It’s also apparent in the adverts in Streetcomix #4 (Fig. 5), which include ads for various alternative publications like The Leveller, Co-Evolution Quarterly, Undercurrents and Fanatic, as well as Alchemy’s Brainstorm Comix and Pyramidesx, and comic book shops like London’s ‘Dark They Were and Golden Eyed’ and Bristol’s ‘Forever People’ along with Birmingham headshops.

Figure 6. Mail order advert for Ar:Zak comics, Streetcomix #4, Ar:Zak, The Arts Lab Press, p. 4. Mr. Hepf’s Comix Briefs, Streetcomix #4, p. 49. © Ar:Zak, The Arts Lab Press

Ar:Zak

Similar ideas of making resources for independent media production democratically accessible, and supporting a wider movement in alternative publishing, framed Ar:Zak’s approach to comics. Emerson, who got a job at the Arts Lab Press in 1974 as a print operator, before taking over design and darkroom duties, had been self-publishing his Large Cow Comix series since 1972, using the print facilities at various ‘day jobs’ to run off small editions. The Arts Lab Press offered the perfect opportunity to print comics on a larger scale and in better quality, and so he teamed up with writer Paul Fisher (Streetcomix’ fictional editor Mr. Hepf), and Martin Reading (who had a background in theatre and came in to run the A4 offset litho), to form Ar:Zak. They were joined by cartoonists Suzy Varty (who co-founded Street Press), Chris Welch (previously involved with COzmic Comics and Nasty Tales) and Steve Berridge (‘a very young and angry punk’ by Emerson’s description), as well as Dave Hatton, who came in as a printer in 1976 to run a newly acquired A3 machine. Crucially, Ar:Zak didn’t just publish its own titles, like Streetcomix (first issued as a free insert in Street Poems magazine), or its members’ comics, like Emerson’s Zomix Comix and The Adventures of Mr Spoonbiscuit, but it also offered its services to others, printing David Noon’s Moon Comix and Mike Matthews’ Napalm Kiss, and thus supporting a wider UK alternative comics scene. Ar:Zak sold many such comics by mail order alongside its own titles, as advertised in Streetcomix #4, which also includes Mr. Hepf’s ‘Comix Briefs’ reviews  of these and other alternative comics in its backend editorial pages (see Fig. 6).

Notably, many of these titles were - like Streetcomix - anthologies, featuring work by a range of creators, with varying levels of experience, in a diversity of styles and genres. As stated, Ar:Zak offered wider participants in the Lab opportunity to get involved with comics. Playwright and journalist David Edgar, for example, (a board member whose shows were performed at the Lab and who acted there himself), collaborated with illustrator Clifford Harper on an anti-fascist strip for Ar:Zak’s most politically acute anthology, Committed Comix, published in 1977 at a time when a broad grassroots anti-fascist movement was confronting the neo-Nazi National Front. Perhaps the most important Ar:Zak comic in terms of British comics history, which similarly engaged with key contemporary political movements, was Heroïne, the first UK (near enough)-all-female anthology, put together by Suzy Varty. Varty was involved in feminist activism and had links to the U.S. women’s comix movement - thus Heroïne brought British cartoonists together with American peers like Trina Robbins, and included work by members of the Lab’s Women’s Art Group with which Varty was involved. Published in 1978, Varty sold the comic at the national Women’s Liberation conference taking place in Birmingham that year.

Figure 7. KAK ’77 insert, Streetcomix #4. © Ar:Zak, The Arts Lab Press

As well as sustaining the alternative comics movement by enabling creators to print their work more affordably than via commercial printers, and in higher print runs and better quality than was possible through self-publishing, Ar:Zak also helped it cohere by organising two national meet-ups. The first of these ‘Konventions of Alternative Komiks’, which included panels, exhibitions, workshops and jams, was held at the Birmingham Arts Lab’s Tower Street site in 1976, with the second at London’s Air Gallery in 1977. As well as printing posters and special souvenir comics KAK Komix and KAK ’77, Ar:Zak reviewed these conventions in Streetcomix. Streetcomix #4 includes a report on the London event in the form of a pull-out printed on blue paper, which the reader is invited to cut up and fold into a smaller, digest-size publication of its own (Fig. 7). It features photographs, the results of several of the comics jams, and summarises the key issues discussed. These included the financial and distribution challenges faced by those working in the scene, but in particular centred on heated debates over sexism and how it could be challenged without leading to censorship. Varty had taken artists whose work Ar:Zak printed, like Mike Matthews, to task for the way they depicted women (Huxley 2001, p. 84), and the Streetcomix write-up insisted that consciousness of misogyny had to be developed in the movement: ‘it is both sexist and defeatist for a man to give up and say “I’m just a boring old sexist fart and I’ll always draw tits and bums”’. In response to later accusations that Ar:Zak itself was sexist, Streetcomix #6 was dedicated to the issue, featuring interviews with Ar:Zak, Robbins and Clay Geerdes on the subject, alongside strips from a range of Ar:Zak stalwarts.

Figure 8. Table of contents, Streetcomix #4, p. 3, © Ar:Zak, The Arts Lab Press

M. Steven Fox of Comixjoint (2013) has argued that Heroïne can be seen as a bridge between the earlier U.S. underground women’s comix movement that kicked off in the early 1970s, and the later wave of alternative comics by women creators. Streetcomix itself arguably acted in a similar way, open to diverse contributions from a broad range of creators, it featured work which drew on an established underground vernacular, but equally pushed in a number of new directions. As its table of contents attests (Fig. 8), Streetcomix #4 includes work from Geoff Rowley and Chris Welch (whose strips had appeared in underground titles like COzmic Comics’ Dope Fiend Funnies), as well a comic by J. C. Moody supposed to have been published by COzmic before they went bust. Alongside this more ‘first wave’ work, are contributions from cartoonists with closer connections to the alternative press, such as Emerson and Steve Bell, as well as artists like Jerzy Szostek and Andy Johnson who cut their teeth in the punkzine scene. Experimental strips from Birmingham creators like Robin Sendak rub shoulders with work from Ray Weiland and George Erling of the U.S. newave minicomics scene – a connection augmented by the fact Ar:Zak titles were included in a list of ‘British new wave minis’ compiled by David Noon for the 1981 Collectors' Guide to Newave Comix.

Streetcomix’ content was thus diverse, but it generally featured, as Ar:Zak themselves put it,  creators ‘working in a less commercial vein that that usually associated with the comics medium’ (Streetcomix #2 1976, p. 3). This included work at the borders of the comics form, echoing the intermedial ethos of the wider Lab – in the case of Streetcomix #4, contributions from Szostek, Bell and Gary Hosty more akin to Hosty’s contribution (more illustrated prose, Johnson’s enigmatic fine-line illustrations, and even a Mr. Hepf editorial narrating a story of the characters Warbler and Yates who would appear in strips by Fisher and Welch in Streetcomix #5 and #6.

Figure 9. Hunt Emerson, ‘Large Cow Comix’, Streetcomix #4, Ar:Zak, The Arts Lab Press, p. 24; p. 31. © Hunt Emerson

The graphic design of Ar:Zak comics adopted the same innovative, experimental approach seen in the strips themselves, speaking to the fact it enabled cartoonists to also be involved as designers and printers. Typography is varied and bold, including playful typefaces made of human figures and prominent striped page numbers. Streetcomix #4 equally showcases an ambitious approach to printing, with Emerson’s ‘Large Cow Comix’ mobilising the rich colour possibilities offered by higher quality print reproduction (and better grade paper) to stunning effect, using colour to create evocative texture that adds to the silent strip’s enigmatic use of panel layout (Fig. 9). Having access to their own printing press and darkroom facilities enabled the Ar:Zak team to experiment with what the technology could do, including the machinery as a core part of the creative process. As Emerson recalls, ‘We were printing from photographic negative on to metal plates, and we used to work on the negatives, scratching out and painting ... We’d be getting effects in the drawings, collaging things with feathers and bits of rubbish’ (Emerson 2013). This is evident in Streetcomix #4, not only in comics like Blake and Sendak ‘s ‘Ice Age’, but in its broader design, with several of the strips overlaid on backgrounds that appear to be made up of some of this experimental photographed material (see Fig. 10). Fisher’s self-referential Mr. Hepf editorial similarly affirms the centrality of ownership of the means of production, and affective engagement with it, to what Ar:Zak was able to do with comics: ‘[Mr. Hepf] pulls a switch and the world is pushed aside by the rampant beat of the multilith. His eyes glaze over, as the pounding fills his veins’.

Figure 10. Pokkettz, Streetcomix #4, Ar:Zak, The Arts Lab Press, pp. 34-35. © Graham Higgins

For more on Ar:Zak and the Arts Lab Press, see Maggie Gray, ‘The Freedom of the Press: Comics, Labor and Value in the Birmingham Arts Lab’, in Thomas Giddens (ed.) Critical Directions in Comics Studies. University Press of Mississippi (forthcoming 2020).

Bibliography

Baetens, J. and Lefèvre, P. (2014) ‘The Work and its Surround’, in Miller, A. and Beaty, B. (eds) The French Comics Theory Reader. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp. 191–202.

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (1998) The Birmingham Arts Lab: The Phantom of Liberty. Birmingham: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Emerson, H. (2013) ‘Back to the Lab: Hunt Emerson. Flatpack Festival: Projects.’ FlatPack Festival, March 24. Available at: https://flatpackfestival.org.uk/news/back-to-the-lab-hunt-emerson/

Estren, M. J. (1987) A History of Underground Comics. Berkeley, CA: Ronin Publishing.

Huxley, D. (2001) Nasty Tales, Sex, Drugs, Rock n’ Roll and Violence in the British Underground. Manchester: Critical Vision.

Long, P., Baig-Clifford, Y., and Shannon, R. (2013). ‘What We’re Trying to Do is Make Popular Politics: The Birmingham Film and Video Workshop.’ Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 33 (3), pp. 377-95.

Rosenkranz, P. (2002) The Underground Comix Revolution 1963–1975. Seattle: Fantagraphics.

Sabin, R. (1993) Adult Comics: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge.

- (1996) Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels. London: Phaidon.

Streetcomix #2 (1976) Birmingham: Ar:Zak, The Arts Lab Press,.

Streetcomix #4 (1977) Birmingham: Ar:Zak, The Arts Lab Press.

Streetcomix #5 (1978) Birmingham: Ar:Zak, The Arts Lab Press.

Steven Fox, M. (2013) ‘Heroïne’, Comixjoint. Available at: https://comixjoint.com/heroine.html

Wakefield, T. (2015) ‘Beau Brum: Remembering the Birmingham Arts Lab’. Sight and Sound, August 7. Available at: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/beau-brum-remembering-birmingham-s-arts-lab  

Maggie Gray lectures in Critical & Historical Studies at Kingston School of Art, Kingston University. Her latest book is Alan Moore, Out from the Underground: Cartooning, Performance and Dissent, Palgrave (2017). She is a member of the Comics & Performance Network and CoRH!, the Comics Research Hub. With Nick White and John Miers she co-runs Kingston School of Art Comic Club.

UK Underground Comix: Ar:Zak, the Birmingham Arts Lab, and Streetcomix #4 (2 of 3) by Maggie Gray

Figure 3. Hunt Emerson. ‘Birmingham Arts Lab 1970s’. Back cover, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, The Birmingham Arts Lab: The Phantom of Liberty (1998). © Hunt Emerson

The Birmingham Arts Lab

It’s useful to take a step back and identify what an arts lab was – an accessible, collectively organised, multidisciplinary, experimental arts space. Originating in London in 1967, they sprang up across the country in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, bringing together film and video, theatre and performance, music, dance and visual arts, as well as compound multimedia forms. The idea was to give artists a freer, more open space to develop and present their work; to facilitate experimentation in and across different forms and media through skills-sharing; to transform the way art was consumed via collaborative and interactive relationships with audiences; and to make the means of creative production more widely accessible and affordable.

The Birmingham Arts Lab was established in 1968 by a group of artists who decamped from the local council-funded Midlands Arts Centre to fundraise for a new, less creatively restrictive environment. In 1969 they acquired use of a building that had previously been a youth centre on Tower Street in Newtown, a working-class area of the city. They transformed the space with materials donated by local groups and appropriated from nearby building sites, creating a cinema with a home-made projection box (which screened a wide range of international arthouse films), a performance area for theatre, music, poetry and alternative comedy (adapted for immersive lightshows using hinged panels), workshop and rehearsal spaces and a coffee bar. Happenings and performances were also staged on the roof (where a show by visiting theatre company Sweetness and Light involving nudity caught the attention of the local papers), as well as in the city’s streets and open spaces. There was an emphasis on play and experimentation across disciplines, for example with a screening of René Clair’s Dadaist film Entr’acte accompanied by live piano, ballet dancers and experimental electronic sounds. Like many labs it also operated as a kind of commune, with members and touring theatre companies sleeping in the storerooms, water tank and even the spaces between the floors. Altogether it was an appealingly chaotic place, as captured by foundational Ar:Zak member Hunt Emerson in an illustration for the 1998 book The Birmingham Arts Lab: The Phantom of Liberty, which collated participants’ recollections (Fig. 3).

The Birmingham Lab was run on a co-operative basis and aimed to create an inclusive artistic space where ordinary people could get involved in creative practice, by making what was usually prohibitively expensive equipment publically accessible. It had strong ties to the local community, organising collaborative events and festivals with local arts organisations, colleges and community groups, running creative play sessions for neighbourhood children and involving local youth in an Arts Lab football team (Wakefield 2015). This was a key part of how the Lab connected to wider social movements, grounded in the conviction that creative autonomy was linked to political empowerment – that the ability to independently participate in cultural production was crucial to the self-determination of different social groups. Like many labs, Birmingham’s had a strong feminist presence, with a Women’s Art Group that organised exhibitions and participated in mail art projects like Portrait of the Artist as A Young Woman (and whose magazine, MAMA: Women Artists Together, Ar:Zak published and core member Suzy Varty illustrated). They also had close connections to local communities of colour, for example affiliated to The West Indian Narrative, a group exploring a distinctively Afro-Caribbean aesthetic.

Figure 4. Photograph by Derek Bishton, title page, Streetcomix #4, Ar:Zak, The Arts Lab Press, p.3. © Derek Bishton

Probably the most important way creative practice was made accessible to local people was via the Lab’s workshops, which included dance, music, sound, poetry, theatre, environmental performance, music and painting. Many of these workshops acted as a stimulus for broader community arts activity. For example, the film co-op based at the Lab initiated the Birmingham Film Workshop, which, by providing equipment, training and resources of production, distribution, exhibition and critical discussion, served to catalyse local filmmaking, notably film that engaged with the experiences of black and South Asian communities, such as the work of Yugesh Walia (see Long, Baig-Clifford and Shannon 2013). It was through involvement with such workshops that several key players in Ar:Zak  first got involved with the Lab – with Emerson joining Jolyon Laycock’s avant-garde sound workshop and Varty attending the dance workshop.

Thus involvement with the workshops opened doors to participation across the various artistic activities undertaken at the Lab and involvement in a range of creative outputs. This collaborative, interdisciplinary approach, and its connection to a broader community arts ethos, is also evident on the title page of Streetcomix #4. Above the colophon and beneath the table of contents is a photo by Derek Bishton (Fig. 4), a photographer and journalist who was the Lab’s publicist and involved in its photography activity. Bishton was highly engaged with community photography in Birmingham, establishing the design group Sidelines in 1977 with Brian Homer and John Reardon. Based in Handsworth, a multicultural area with significant British Asian and Afro-Caribbean populations, they worked with community groups producing reports, booklets and newsletters on issues like housing, unemployment, policing and racism, as well as projects like Handsworth Self Portrait, which enabled local residents to produce their own photographic portraits. They also began producing the magazine Ten.8 at the Lab, which showcased local photography while also discussing critical issues of politics, race and representation, strongly influenced by the work of figures like Stuart Hall at Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies.

Streetcomix often featured such other, ‘non-comics’ work coming out of the Lab, including Siobhan Coppinger’s etchings and sculptures, illustrations by poster artist Ernie Hudson, and articles by poet and performer Nick Toczek and comedian John Dowie - evidencing the role played by Arts Lab Press publications in communicating and cohering the Lab’s identity as a multi-/interdisciplinary space. By the same token, Ar:Zak members also participated in collaborative work across different media, with Varty making costumes and props for the performance Dogman written by Paul Fisher (which then appeared in comic form illustrated by Emerson).  As Emerson later put it, ‘the Lab was always like that. People would suggest something and you would get involved and find yourself knocking together a film set out of rubbish’ (2013).

Maggie Gray lectures in Critical & Historical Studies at Kingston School of Art, Kingston University. Her latest book is Alan Moore, Out from the Underground: Cartooning, Performance and Dissent, Palgrave (2017). She is a member of the Comics & Performance Network and CoRH!, the Comics Research Hub. With Nick White and John Miers she co-runs Kingston School of Art Comic Club.

UK Underground Comix: Ar:Zak, the Birmingham Arts Lab, and Streetcomix #4 (1 of 3) by Maggie Gray

Figure 1. Streetcomix #4 November 1977, Ar:Zak, The Arts Lab Press. Cover art © Pete Wingham. Streetcomix #5 March 1978, Ar:Zak, The Arts Lab Press. Cover art © Hunt Emerson

A chance encounter with the UK underground

I first came across Streetcomix in 2006 at the London Comic Mart, which used to take place in the Royal National Hotel, just around the corner from University College London where I was doing my PhD. Although London Comic Mart mostly focuses on U.S. comics and collectables, you can also pick up the odd British title, and I was hunting for copies of Warrior, a later UK anthology of the early-to-mid-1980s in which several well-known strips written by Alan Moore (‘V for Vendetta’, ‘Marvelman’ and ‘The Bojeffries Saga’) were first serialised. Rifling through the boxes I was taken aback by the intense saturated colour cover of Streetcomix #4, promptly followed by Hunt Emerson’s striking issue #5 artwork, with its luminescent bugs threatening to scramble off the page onto my hands (Fig. 1). These comics had recognisable underground markers (‘-ix’ not ‘-ics’, poking fun at cops), and a dose of late 1970s punk attitude (brash, graffiti-like typography and lurid colour), but they were also quite lush material objects, with full back cover illustrations, high production values and decent quality paper stock.

My focus at the time had been on Warrior as a ‘ground-level’ indie comic, attempting to realise the artistic freedom and creator’s rights of the underground while competing via newsagent distribution with mainstream titles like 2000AD. But Streetcomix, the Ar:Zak imprint that produced it, and the Birmingham Arts Lab where Ar:Zak was based, grew increasingly relevant to my research as I became more and more interested in Moore’s earliest work for underground anthologies, alternative papers and the music press. This space of comics production carved out in Birmingham seemed to be a fulcrum of underground and alternative comics in Britain in the 1970s, bridging those scenes in ways that blurred the borders between them, and sitting at the centre at some of their core debates and developments (notably confrontations over sexism and the coalescence of a UK women’s comics movement). And Ar:Zak equally appeared to be deeply entwined in the same broader oppositional cultural formations, particularly the arts lab and alternative press movements, that had such a crucial impact on Moore and his creative practice.

Underground and Alternative in UK comics scholarship

Not much has been written about Ar:Zak, partly due to the fact that not much has been written about UK underground and alternative comics in general. In the historical narrative that does exist, most notably David Huxley’s Nasty Tales: Sex, Drugs, Rock’n’Roll and Violence in the British Underground - still the only academic book dedicated specifically to the subject - British titles are divided into two waves: the first underground, the second alternative. The first wave, catalysed by Robert Crumb’s Zap, spanned the late ‘60s to the mid ‘70s and was led by publications like Cyclops, Nasty Tales and COzmic Comics, spun out of hippie underground papers IT and Oz. This wave coincides most clearly with the chronology of U.S. comix as charted by Patrick Rosenkranz (2002) and Mark Estren (1987), and was impacted by similar issues of censorship (with police raids on publishers and high profile obscenity cases like the Nasty Tales trial), escalating costs in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, and a wider waning of the counterculture. The second wave saw the sex, drugs and anti-authoritarian politics give way in late ‘70s and early ‘80s titles like Near Myths, Graphixus and Pssst! to greater concern with production quality, stylistic experimentation, narrative complexity and/or fantasy, horror and science-fiction themes, more in the vein of artistically ambitious European comics like Métal Hurlant or À Suivre. Distribution through hippie headshop networks was superseded by the emergence of specialist comic book shops, and publishers were more professionalised and market-minded.

However, as Huxley acknowledges, the contours of these waves are somewhat hazy, and it is difficult to situate Ar:Zak squarely in one or the other.  Huxley positions Brainstorm Comix, produced 1975-77 by headshop owner Lee Harris’ Alchemy Publications and prominently featuring Bryan Talbot’s work, as marking ‘the death throes of the underground movement’ in the UK (2001, p. 47). Yet others, like Roger Sabin (1993; 1996), situate it, alongside Streetcomix, as part of a partial, more regionally-dispersed revival of the UK underground in the mid-to-late-1970s, which maintained the counterculture’s ethos and organisational forms while registering the impact of punk.

Part of the challenge comes from Ar:Zak’s relative longevity, running from 1974/5 (when COzmic Comics was still going) into the early ‘80s (when Warrior was being hatched). But an inescapable factor is its foundation in the Birmingham Arts Lab, established as part of the counterculture’s autonomous infrastructure, which fought to maintain an experimental, collective and participatory approach to cultural production throughout its own comparatively extended lifespan from 1968 to 1982. As the UK’s longest running lab it engaged with the social and cultural movements emerging out of the hippie underground, above all the alternative press and community arts movements, which extended and developed many of its core principles in more decentred, networked, regional and local contexts.

The way Ar:Zak bridged the first wave of underground comix and later, more localised DIY comics publishing; its significance in sustaining an emerging alternative comics movement; and how that was contingent on its roots in the Arts Lab as a countercultural space; can all be read in those issues of Streetcomix I stumbled across at the London mart. And because Ar:Zak’s importance to British comics lies less in any one strip or artist featured than its overall role as publisher, printer, and coordinator, its significance can be most clearly discerned by looking at what Jan Baetens and Pascal Lefèvre (2014) call their ‘perigraphy’ - front and back matter, colophons, editorials, advertising, etc. Therefore this article will explore the perigraphic features of Streetcomix #4.

Figure 2. Colophon Streetcomix #4, p.3. © Ar:Zak, The Arts Lab Press

The colophon on the title page of Streetcomix #4 (Fig 2.) notes it was ‘Published, Designed and Printed by AR:ZAK, The Arts Lab Press’. This immediately tells us something crucial about Ar:Zak – they printed their comics themselves. And this was possible because the Birmingham Arts Lab ran its own press.  It additionally tells us that they addressed readers as potential contributors and ascribed copyright to creators, suggesting a less exploitative, more participatory and inclusive approach than the mainstream comics industry.

Maggie Gray lectures in Critical & Historical Studies at Kingston School of Art, Kingston University. Her latest book is Alan Moore, Out from the Underground: Cartooning, Performance and Dissent, Palgrave (2017). She is a member of the Comics & Performance Network and CoRH!, the Comics Research Hub. With Nick White and John Miers she co-runs Kingston School of Art Comic Club.

Adventures Under Ground: UK Underground Comix (1969 – 1982). A Memoir (2 of 2) by Dave Huxley

Regional Centres

The rise of several Free Press centres – community presses dedicated to cheap printing for local organisations - allowed for the creation of several regional centres of underground or alternative comic publication.

Birmingham: The most significant of these regional centres was Ar:zak in Birmingham. It’s most significant artist was Hunt Emerson, who became a major British underground figure, and also worked for mainstream publications like the BBC’s Radio Times magazine and drew Firkin the Cat for Fiesta magazine. His style was dynamic and easily accessible, and showed the clear influence of American cartoonists. Ar:Zak also featured the work of David Noon, who gave a bold design feel to the comics, which were already probably most graphically sophisticated of UK underground comics at the time.

Figure 11 . David Noon, Street Comix 2, 1976

Newcastle upon Tyne: The Junior Print Outfit was the brainchild of comic artist Angus McKie. As well as science fiction cover illustrations and commercial work for publications as diverse as House of Hammer, Metal Hurlant/Heavy Metal, McKie had been published in Cozmic Comics’ Half Assed Funnies. After an accidental meeting at the Tyneside Free Press in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1977 McKie joined forces with Mike Feeney, myself and Alan Craddock to form the Junior Print Outfit, and produced two issues of Either Or Comics. Difficulties with printing and full time jobs restricted output, leading to an A5 four page Neither Nor Comics.

Figure 12 . Neither Nor Comic, 1977

The final publication of the group was Comic Tales, a full colour hardback comic produced in conjunction with Titan books.

Figure 13 . Advertising poster for Comic Tales, 1982

Edinburgh: In 1978 Rob King’s Near Myths featured a range of artists, and most notably Bryan Talbot’s Luther Arkwright. The comic had full colour covers and was well produced, but it only lasted five issues. It also included early work by Grant Morrison.

By 1976 there were enough of these groups, and of course London based creators, to organise KAK – the Konvention of Alternative Komics (although notice already the dropping of underground for the more user-friendly alternative). This was followed by KAK 77, with both events organised by Chris Welch and Hunt Emerson. Interest in the field also led Mal Burns to produce Comix Index in 1977, which attempted to list all artists and writers who had appeared in British underground comics up to that point.

Figure 14 . Title page of Comix Index. Caricature of Mal Burns by John Higgins

This publication was invaluable to me when I later undertook a PhD on the subject, completed in 1990, which, with additions and changes, turned into the book Nasty Tales.

Decline

The general increase in interest in comics led the comics historian Denis Gifford to produce Ally Sloper, named after the important nineteenth century English comics character. However the mix of the nostalgic (reprints of work by earlier artists like Terry Wakefield) new work by major contemporary professionals (Frank Hampson and Frank Bellamy) and ‘underground’ artists (Hunt Emerson, Kevin O’Neill) seemed to be to just too diffuse to find an audience, and it only lasted four issues.

Figure 15 . Ally Sloper letterhead, latter to the author, 1976

As Cozmic Comics and Nasty Tales folded by 1975, the final phase of what might be called underground comics in the UK centred again on London, and the more professionally produced Graphixus and Pssst, despite their achievements, became the death throes of the form (although not in mainland Europe, but that is a whole different story). Graphixus was an ambitious title featuring, amongst many others, Brian Bolland, with his work sometimes being controversial, particularly his ‘Little Nympho in Slumberland’ strip. Yet again the comic failed to find a big enough audience, and editor Mal Burns explained its demise;

‘Graphixus, surprisingly enough, was doing better and better. It was actually let down by what was, in retrospect, was an extremely self-indulgent and obscure title. It was actually going to change to High Vision with number seven. The problem was my American distributor going bankrupt on me. I never got paid.’ (interview with the author)

Pssst was the most ambitious of all the later British ‘alternative’ comics. Bankrolled by Frenchman Serge Boissevain, it was also edited by Mal Burns, (and Paul Gravett amongst others). It featured some full colour strips and was vaguely based on similar French adult comic models. Despite a lavish outlay the comic struggled for good distribution and a solid market. It lasted ten issues and finished in 1982, but not before it had published work by veterans like Bryan Talbot, Mike Mathews, all of the Junior Print Outfit and newcomers like Glenn Dakin.3

Figure 16. David Huxley, ‘Mike Brutal’, Pssst, 10, 1982

Talbot comments, ‘Pssst was ahead of its time, but it was designed by committee and reputedly lost one hundred thousand pounds. There were five good issues out of ten.’ (interview with the author) The one exception to this decline was Hassle Free Press (an ironic title if ever there was one) which morphed into Knockabout Comics, although they were partially dependant on American material, in particular Gilbert Shelton and Crumb. Tony Bennett at Knockabout survived legal problems to import Crumb’s material, and Knockabout Comics became the home of Hunt Emerson, and published many other underground artists, including Bryan Talbot, Kevin O’Neill and Mike Mathews. History repeated itself in that Knockabout’s censorship problems and customs seizures caused great problems but lead to an outstanding comic in response – The Knockabout Trial Special, in 1984.

Figure 17 . Hunt Emerson, The Knockabout Trial Special, 1984

Legacy

One obvious legacy of British undergrounds was the nurturing of homegrown talent that went on to make significant contributions to comics as a whole (and particularly the US mainstream). Writers Alan Moore and Grant Morrison and artists Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons and Kevin O’Neill all honed their skills on British undergrounds.

British undergrounds also helped to spread the idea, begun in America, that comics could address a whole range of issues in a whole range of styles. The listing of British underground comics done for my PhD and appearing in Nasty Tales ended in 1982 partially because new ways of producing comics (such as easily accessible and cheap photocopying) made any comprehensive listing impossible. The list, looking back, is woefully inadequate even for the earlier periods. On the other hand these methods, and all the technological advances that followed, mean that small run comics of all kinds are very easy to produce. The underground comics mentioned here provided the inspiration for many later artists. Thus a significant legacy of the underground is that it is possible in many cities across the world to find comics shops that stock a small number of eccentric, unpredictable small publications in amongst the mighty output of DC and Marvel.

Oh yes, I forgot to try and define underground comics, comix, alternative and ground level comics…

Notes

1. Leo Baxendale was the creator of many longstanding British comic characters (mainly for Dundee based D C Thomson) including the Bash Street Kids, Minnie the Minx and Little Plum.

2.  As well as the article in Art and Artists, Patricia Dreyfus discussed the impact of the underground on graphic designers in 'The Critique of Pure Funk' in Print, November/December, 1971, p.13.

3. As I drew and wrote comics, does this make me an Aca-Praca-Fan?

Bibliography

Bizot, J. F. 2006. Two Hundred trips from the counterculture Graphics and Stories from the Underground Press Syndicate, Thames and Hudson.

Huxley, D. 2001. Nasty Tales: Sex, Drugs, Rock’n’Roll and Violence in the British Underground. Critical Vision.

Huxley, D. (forthcoming) Robert Crumb and the Art of Comics in Worden, D. (ed) The Comics of R. Crumb. University Press of Mississippi.

Huxley, D. 1995: ‘Ceasefire: Women against the War’ in J Walsh (ed) ’The Gulf War Did Not Happen’ Politics, Culture and Contemporary Warfare, Arena.

Sabin, R. 1993. Adult Comics: An introduction, Routledge.

Sabin, R. 2001. Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art, Phaidon. 7

Skinn, D. 2004. Comix: The Underground Revolution. Collins and Brown.

Regional Centres

The rise of several Free Press centres – community presses dedicated to cheap printing for local organisations - allowed for the creation of several regional centres of underground or alternative comic publication.

Birmingham: The most significant of these regional centres was Ar:zak in Birmingham. It’s most significant artist was Hunt Emerson, who became a major British underground figure, and also worked for mainstream publications like the BBC’s Radio Times magazine and drew Firkin the Cat for Fiesta magazine. His style was dynamic and easily accessible, and showed the clear influence of American cartoonists. Ar:Zak also featured the work of David Noon, who gave a bold design feel to the comics, which were already probably most graphically sophisticated of UK underground comics at the time.

Figure 11 . David Noon, Street Comix 2, 1976

Newcastle upon Tyne: The Junior Print Outfit was the brainchild of comic artist Angus McKie. As well as science fiction cover illustrations and commercial work for publications as diverse as House of Hammer, Metal Hurlant/Heavy Metal, McKie had been published in Cozmic Comics’ Half Assed Funnies. After an accidental meeting at the Tyneside Free Press in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1977 McKie joined forces with Mike Feeney, myself and Alan Craddock to form the Junior Print Outfit, and produced two issues of Either Or Comics. Difficulties with printing and full time jobs restricted output, leading to an A5 four page Neither Nor Comics.

Figure 12 . Neither Nor Comic, 1977

 The final publication of the group was Comic Tales, a full colour hardback comic produced in conjunction with Titan books.

Figure 13 . Advertising poster for Comic Tales, 1982

Edinburgh: In 1978 Rob King’s Near Myths featured a range of artists, and most notably Bryan Talbot’s Luther Arkwright. The comic had full colour covers and was well produced, but it only lasted five issues. It also included early work by Grant Morrison.

By 1976 there were enough of these groups, and of course London based creators, to organise KAK – the Konvention of Alternative Komics (although notice already the dropping of underground for the more user-friendly alternative). This was followed by KAK 77, with both events organised by Chris Welch and Hunt Emerson. Interest in the field also led Mal Burns to produce Comix Index in 1977, which attempted to list all artists and writers who had appeared in British underground comics up to that point.

Figure 14 . Title page of Comix Index. Caricature of Mal Burns by John Higgins

This publication was invaluable to me when I later undertook a PhD on the subject, completed in 1990, which, with additions and changes, turned into the book Nasty Tales.

Decline

The general increase in interest in comics led the comics historian Denis Gifford to produce Ally Sloper, named after the important nineteenth century English comics character. However the mix of the nostalgic (reprints of work by earlier artists like Terry Wakefield) new work by major contemporary professionals (Frank Hampson and Frank Bellamy) and ‘underground’ artists (Hunt Emerson, Kevin O’Neill) seemed to be to just too diffuse to find an audience, and it only lasted four issues.

Figure 15 . Ally Sloper letterhead, latter to the author, 1976

As Cozmic Comics and Nasty Tales folded by 1975, the final phase of what might be called underground comics in the UK centred again on London, and the more professionally produced Graphixus and Pssst, despite their achievements, became the death throes of the form (although not in mainland Europe, but that is a whole different story). Graphixus was an ambitious title featuring, amongst many others, Brian Bolland, with his work sometimes being controversial, particularly his ‘Little Nympho in Slumberland’ strip. Yet again the comic failed to find a big enough audience, and editor Mal Burns explained its demise;

‘Graphixus, surprisingly enough, was doing better and better. It was actually let down by what was, in retrospect, was an extremely self-indulgent and obscure title. It was actually going to change to High Vision with number seven. The problem was my American distributor going bankrupt on me. I never got paid.’ (interview with the author)

Pssst was the most ambitious of all the later British ‘alternative’ comics. Bankrolled by Frenchman Serge Boissevain, it was also edited by Mal Burns, (and Paul Gravett amongst others). It featured some full colour strips and was vaguely based on similar French adult comic models. Despite a lavish outlay the comic struggled for good distribution and a solid market. It lasted ten issues and finished in 1982, but not before it had published work by veterans like Bryan Talbot, Mike Mathews, all of the Junior Print Outfit and newcomers like Glenn Dakin.3

Figure 16. David Huxley, ‘Mike Brutal’, Pssst, 10, 1982

Talbot comments, ‘Pssst was ahead of its time, but it was designed by committee and reputedly lost one hundred thousand pounds. There were five good issues out of ten.’ (interview with the author) The one exception to this decline was Hassle Free Press (an ironic title if ever there was one) which morphed into Knockabout Comics, although they were partially dependant on American material, in particular Gilbert Shelton and Crumb. Tony Bennett at Knockabout survived legal problems to import Crumb’s material, and Knockabout Comics became the home of Hunt Emerson, and published many other underground artists, including Bryan Talbot, Kevin O’Neill and Mike Mathews. History repeated itself in that Knockabout’s censorship problems and customs seizures caused great problems but lead to an outstanding comic in response – The Knockabout Trial Special, in 1984.

Figure 17 . Hunt Emerson, The Knockabout Trial Special, 1984

Legacy

One obvious legacy of British undergrounds was the nurturing of homegrown talent that went on to make significant contributions to comics as a whole (and particularly the US mainstream). Writers Alan Moore and Grant Morrison and artists Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons and Kevin O’Neill all honed their skills on British undergrounds.

British undergrounds also helped to spread the idea, begun in America, that comics could address a whole range of issues in a whole range of styles. The listing of British underground comics done for my PhD and appearing in Nasty Tales ended in 1982 partially because new ways of producing comics (such as easily accessible and cheap photocopying) made any comprehensive listing impossible. The list, looking back, is woefully inadequate even for the earlier periods. On the other hand these methods, and all the technological advances that followed, mean that small run comics of all kinds are very easy to produce. The underground comics mentioned here provided the inspiration for many later artists. Thus a significant legacy of the underground is that it is possible in many cities across the world to find comics shops that stock a small number of eccentric, unpredictable small publications in amongst the mighty output of DC and Marvel.

Oh yes, I forgot to try and define underground comics, comix, alternative and ground level comics…

Notes

1.       Leo Baxendale was the creator of many longstanding British comic characters (mainly for Dundee based D C Thomson) including the Bash Street Kids, Minnie the Minx and Little Plum.

2.        As well as the article in Art and Artists, Patricia Dreyfus discussed the impact of the underground on graphic designers in 'The Critique of Pure Funk' in Print, November/December, 1971, p.13.

3.        As I drew and wrote comics, does this make me an Aca-Praca-Fan?

Bibliography

Bizot, J. F. 2006. Two Hundred trips from the counterculture Graphics and Stories from the Underground Press Syndicate, Thames and Hudson.

Huxley, D. 2001. Nasty Tales: Sex, Drugs, Rock’n’Roll and Violence in the British Underground. Critical Vision.

Huxley, D. (forthcoming) Robert Crumb and the Art of Comics in Worden, D. (ed) The Comics of R. Crumb. University Press of Mississippi.

Huxley, D. 1995: ‘Ceasefire: Women against the War’ in J Walsh (ed) ’The Gulf War Did Not Happen’ Politics, Culture and Contemporary Warfare, Arena.

Sabin, R. 1993. Adult Comics: An introduction, Routledge.

Sabin, R. 2001. Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art, Phaidon.

Skinn, D. 2004. Comix: The Underground Revolution. Collins and Brown.

David Huxley is the editor of The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (Routledge). He was a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University until 2017. He has written widely on comics, including works on various artists, underground and horror comics, superheroes and also popular film. He has also drawn and written for a range of British comics, including Ally Sloper, Either or Comics, Pssst, Oink and Killer Comics. His most recent publication is Lone Heroes and the Myth of the American West in Comic Books 1945-1962 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018).

Adventures Under Ground-UK Underground Comix (1969 – 1982): A Memoir (1 of 2) by Dave Huxley

Definitions?

If there is some doubt about the definition of ‘underground comics’ then perhaps the material dealt with here will be constitute a working definition. For the moment I will lean on the ‘I know one when I see one’ defence. As for ‘alternative comics’, ‘comix’, ‘ground level comics’ …

USA, UPS, Oz and International Times

Whatever uncertainties there are around the field, there can be little doubt that British underground comics owed a massive debt to their American counterparts. And unlike the debate around UK/US punk, there is no doubt about who was first – the movement clearly originated in the United States. This is not to say that there was also some stylistic influence from UK artists. British underground artist Hunt Emerson, although hugely influenced by Robert Crumb and Mad magazine, comments, ‘Leo Baxendale is of prime importance to all English cartoonists. Whether they admit it or not. He’s formed part of our general world view.’1 (interview with the author)

I can remember first seeing the work of Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton in Oz magazine and International Times in the early 1970s. Both benefitted from the Underground Press Syndicate agreement that allowed free reprinting from the various underground publishers around the world. Thus articles and illustrations could be freely reprinted by any members of the international UPS movement.

International Times also published homegrown artists such as Edward Barker. The co-founder of the magazine, Barry Miles, explains that, ‘At IT we originated our own cartoon strips, not wanting to the paper to become too American, but after about three years the work of Crumb, Shelton, Spain, Clay Wilson and the other American underground cartoonists had become so good that we started to reprint it.’ (quoted in Bizot)

As I don’t believe in throwing interesting print material away I still have these publications. The Crumb comic ‘My first LSD trip’ was reprinted on the cover of IT (14 June, 1973) with the addition of two colour overlays.

Figure 1 . Robert Crumb, ‘My first LSD trip’ IT 14 June, 1973

Gilbert Shelton was the other artist who was most widely reproduced in the British underground magazines. His Furry Freak Brothers were a natural fit with the pro-marijuana stance of most of the underground. In Oz number 25 (December, 1969) reprints a full page strip where Freewheelin’ Franklin, hassled by two rednecks, destroys them with aid of amyl nitrate.

Crumb’s work was also used in spot illustrations, sometimes with only a peripheral connection to the article they adorned. Reading these magazines at the time, it was Crumb who was particularly striking. However salacious or shocking the content, his method of rendering his drawings in a cute rounded style reminiscent of the Fleisher brothers crossed with Disney (and turned up to eleven) helped to create a visual style for the underground. This phenomenon was noticed in British art and design magazines, such as the respectable publication Art and Artists.2

Figure 2 . S Clay Wilson, cover of Art and Artists (as Art ‘N’ Artists), December 1969

Given the current reputation of some of the work in underground comics – and particularly Crumb – it has to be said that, nevertheless, as art students at the time, many of us saw the use of comics to address issues of drugs and sex etc as a liberating force. Crumb directly influenced many British artists, including Hunt Emerson, Angus McKie and Steve Bell. Bell, who later became a major political cartoonist working for the Guardian, comments,

‘The only one I copied was Crumb…it was a complete eye opener just to think that you could deal with that very real topic in a strip cartoon. Sort of warped, but I love his pen work, so that was the one who influenced me directly. I certainly copied his style.’ (interview with the author)

In 1970 I was a fine art student at Birmingham College of Art, becoming re-interested in comics of all kinds. Post-Roy Lichtenstein it was the case that comics were also semi-respectable in some art schools, although at Birmingham, as I used comic book imagery in my paintings, I was told in no uncertain terms that ‘representational painting is dead’. The 1960s had seen a gradual change from the drab conservatism of the 1950s and the early 1970s seemed, at the time, to be taking new freedoms even further, and this was seen by many students as ‘a good thing’. Greg Irons, Jaxon, Corben and others produced strange horror titles that were something from Fredric Wertham’s worst nightmares. All good dirty fun, it seemed. Looking back some of the material that was produced on both sides of the Atlantic looks like naïve juvenilia, albeit not without interest. The best has stood the test of time, and is still in print.

Availability

For those so used to the internet it can be difficult to comprehend how difficult it was to obtain somewhat obscure publications (or even some mainstream American comics in the UK) at this time. Underground publications were sold in the street in some major cities in the UK, and at various rock concerts. There was the Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed shop in London, which opened in 1969, but that covered a range of comic and science fiction material and did not specialise in undergrounds.

Figure 3. Steve Bell, Advert for Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed in KAK booklet, 1977

In Birmingham there was a similar shop, Nostalgia and Comics, but this had the same kind of stock, and underground material was not their speciality. Thus although it was possible to obtain whatever undergrounds they stocked (and these tended to be major titles like Zap) it was necessary to use mail order to try and obtain other comics. It should be pointed out that for many there was a general interest in comics that extended to anything that seemed adult or challenging. Even underground papers such as IT covered interesting mainstream publications, particularly from Marvel. Fanzine publications such as Fantasy (Comics) Unlimited, from Alan Austin, contained detailed history of Marvel and DC characters, and a large mail order section. As a collector it’s best not to look at how cheap second-hand comics could be then. But these titles also featured artwork by artists who would be central to both underground and mainstream comics. Covers were drawn by artists as varied as Kevin O’Neill and Antonio Ghura.

Figure 4 . Fantasy Unlimited covers. Kevin O’Neill , October 1973, Antonio Ghura, June 1975

Some listings also began to carry more undergrounds, such as Eddie Walsh’s Fandom, which also had short columns about comics, television and film (e.g.. in issue 13 we have ‘The next Star Wars saga may be titled Revenge of a Jedi’). Mail order was also the only way to obtain rarer American undergrounds, and it was possible to get these direct from the US, from dealers such as Bud Plant.

Figure 5 . Bud Plant leaflet, 1977

Through this period comic conventions and comic marts began to appear with increasing regularity. Comicon in London was the largest annual event, with many smaller marts around the country.

Figure 6 . Comicon leaflet, 1972

Figure 7 . Comic Mart advert from Fandom 13, 1980

These all remained an important source of all kinds of comics, even as an academic. By the 1980s it was possible to find two academics (rather more mature bearded gentlemen, Martin Barker and myself) mixing with fanboys and fangirls as the burgeoning academic interest grew in the UK.

Some readers will undoubtedly be asking where are the female or ethnic minority creators in this story? Unlike the US, where there were key contributions by creators like Trina Robbins, Melinda Gebbie and many others, in the UK, at this period, there was one major female artist, Suzy Varty, working out of Ar-Zak in Birmingham. In 1977 Heroine Comics was produced by Varty and other female artists, including Trina Robbins. The comic featured a refreshing range of different styles, including Julia Wakefield’s ‘Bull Ring’, a comedic meditation on consumerism and sexuality.

Figure 8 . Julia Wakefield’s ‘Bull Ring’ in Heroine, 1977

Heroine was followed by Sourcream in 1979 and Sourcream 2 in 1981, the latter featuring thirteen female cartoonists, including Fanny Tribble. Some of the strips had appeared in the feminist magazine Spare Rib, and it was published by Sheba Feminist Publishers in London.

Figure 9 . Sourcream 2, 1981

It was not until the later 1980s, outside the period under consideration here, that some female creators, such as Myra Hancock came to the fore, and Carol Bennett formed Fanny, a group of female comic artists in 1991. This would eventually lead to greater engagement with comics, with organisations like Nicola Streeten’s Laydeez do Comics, formed in 2009.

Cozmic Comics and Nasty Tales

Cozmic Comics and Nasty Tales grew out of Oz and International Times respectively, and were the two major and most easily accessible British underground comics, running from 1971 to 1975. Much of their history has been covered elsewhere, so I will just mention some of the highlights, and lowlights, of these publications. Cozmic Comics branched out into various one-off titles such as Half-Assed Funnies and Tales from the Void. As well as reprinting American artists like Crumb these comics gave the opportunity for home-grown artists such as Edward Barker, Dave Gibbons and William Rankin to see their work in print. Nasty Tales was, in many ways, very similar in content. However it became most famous for an obscenity trial based around Crumb reprints in issue 1 (1971). Although overshadowed by the earlier and more famous Oz obscenity trial, the comic was defended by, amongst others, Germaine Greer and George Perry, and eventually acquitted. This also led to The Trials of Nasty Tales, a comic giving a detailed account of the proceedings at the Old Bailey with artwork by Dave Gibbons, Edward Barker and others. All this, however, spelt the end for both these titles, and it was left to other publishers to continue

It should also be mentioned that there were some eccentric individuals who produced their own comics virtually singlehandedly. Foremost amongst them were Antonio Ghura and Mike Mathews. Ghura, drawing in a distinctly mainstream American style, produced several comics, such as Amazing Love Stories and Raw Purple (1977) whose parodies centred on extremes of sex and violence. Mathews, although using a style closer to Richard Corben, mined a similar vein of sex and violence in titles like Napalm Kiss. Both artists, writing, drawing and publishing on their own seemed intent on offending even the liberal sensibilities of other underground creators. For the more minor publisher/artists like Mathews, both printing and distribution were still a headache as he explained in a 1985 letter.

Figure 10 . Mike Mathews, letter to the author, 1985

David Huxley is the editor of The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (Routledge). He was a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University until 2017. He has written widely on comics, including works on various artists, underground and horror comics, superheroes and also popular film. He has also drawn and written for a range of British comics, including Ally Sloper, Either or Comics, Pssst, Oink and Killer Comics. His most recent publication is Lone Heroes and the Myth of the American West in Comic Books 1945-1962 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018).

Tracing Scottish Comics History (3 of 3) by Chris Murray

While much of Cartoon Art Production’s output was due to the industriousness of Reader, they had other talents, such as Crewe Davies, who drew Dane Jerrus, Agent One of the Interplanetary Solar Force, and Captain Magnet. Another key creator who worked between Glasgow and Dundee was Irish artist Paddy Brennan, who became a DC Thomson stalwart. His first published work was for The Magno Comics (1946), a one-shot published by Cartoon Art Productions, for which he drew ‘Jeff Collins - Crime Reporter’. Brennan then produced the wonderfully offbeat Marsman Comics (1948), a single issue also for Cartoon Art Productions (Fig. 15). He then went on to work for their flagship title, Super-Duper Comics, which ran until 1950, at which point the company seems to have shut down, possibly due to the fact that an exhausted Reader had quit by this point.  

The address given on many of Cartoon Arts comics was 141 Bath Street (Fig. 16). In the midst of writing about Cartoon Arts for my book The British Superhero (2017) I made a short pilgrimage to Glasgow to stand at 141 Bath Street and wonder at the marvels that had been created behind those walls. This was frustrated by the fact that this exact building has been demolished and replaced with a more modern building. This is just a short walk from Hope Street Studios, which I was also visiting as part of this comics pilgrimage. At this point I must acknowledge my long-suffering wife, who having driven me to Glasgow and being dragged around a comics inspired tour of the city, made every attempt to muster patience and understanding as I stood on the corner of Bath Street staring at a new building while lamenting another lost piece of Scottish comics history, lost in reverie at a place that had come to occupy an almost mythical space in my imagination.   

Fig. 15: Marsman Comics by Paddy Brennan (Cartoon Art Productions, Glasgow, 1948)

Fig. 16: Cartoon Art Productions annual, showing address as 141 Bath Street, Glasgow

Foldes Press

Another British superhero, Ace Hart, the Atom Man, starred in Superthriller Comic, which was initially published and printed by Foldes Press in 1947 (Fig. 17). Foldes was based in Joppa, Edinburgh, but after a few issues the title was bought by World Distributors Ltd (Manchester), who published the series from 1948 to 1952. After World Distributors Ltd took over Foldes continued to print the comic, and they are quite wonderful comics. The building where Foldes was based still stands in Joppa, but is now a MOT testing centre on one side, with the other side of the building having been converted into a row of houses. After the Bath Street debacle I knew the chances of getting my wife to take me to Joppa (she’s the driver in the family) were negligible. Upon explaining that I wanted to stand outside a MOT testing centre in a kind of comics history reverie, those chances shrunk to zero. Still, the wonder that is google maps street view allowed me to spend a long time examining the building in detail, trying to find of trace of its former life, but it’s just not the same. Some people have a longing to get away on a sunny holiday to some Mediterranean paradise. In wistful moments, my thoughts turn to Joppa. When I eventually manage to find a day when I’m not buried under the endless piles of paperwork, admin and teaching that come with academic life, I’m going to get myself to Joppa. I am not sure what practical or scholarly purpose this will serve. Maybe tucked in the back room of that MOT testing centre is a huge pile of SuperThriller comics, abandoned for decades, just waiting on me… a comics scholar can dream.

Fig. 17: Ace Hart in Superthriller Comic (Foldes Press/World Distributors Ltd, Edinburgh, late 1940s).

The comics produced by small publishers in Scotland tell an intriguing story, as do the spaces they once occupied. Tracing this almost lost and forgotten history of Scottish comics has become something of a weird obsession, but one that is currently finding a healthy outlet as I write my next book, Comicsopolis – A History of Comics in Dundee, which will hopefully make an appearance in 2020. There is so much more history to uncover, and, at the risk of stretching my wife’s patience beyond breaking point, so many places to visit. So, if you ever see me standing on street corner, staring in reverie at some old building, skulking about an MOT testing centre, or glowering at a Primark store, you’ll know why.  

Professor Christopher Murray is Chair of Comics Studies at the University of Dundee. He runs the MLitt in Comics and Graphic Novels (https://www.dundee.ac.uk/postgraduate/comics-graphic-novels-mlitt) and co-edits Studies in Comics (https://www.intellectbooks.com/studies-in-comics). He researches British Comics, and is author of The British Superhero (University Press of Mississippi, 2017) and Comicsopolis – A History of Comics in Dundee (Abertay Historical Society, 2020). Murray is director of The Scottish Centre for Comics Studies and Dundee Comics Creative Space, and is editor if UniVerse Comics. He has written several comics, including a number of public information comics on healthcare and science communication themes.

The ‘Remembering UK Comics’ series is curated and edited by William Proctor and Julia Round.

Tracing Scottish Comics History (2 of 3) by Chris Murray

The end of a comic book era!

Valentine & Sons

During the course of my research on Dundee’s forgotten comics I heard whispers of some comics produced by Valentine & Son, a publisher much more well-known for postcards. James Valentine started his printing business in Dundee in 1851, building on the previous business owned by his father, John Valentine, who was involved in textile printing in the city. The business later moved into photography, and became world-renowned as a printer of photographic postcards and greetings cards. Valentine & Sons produced two one-off comics in 1948. These were Ace Comics and Super Bumper Comic and are extremely rare and little is known about them, other than the fact that they were largely produced by artists who worked in the studios, such as Len Fullerton (who ran the studio with Bill McCail), Sam Fair and George Blow. The lead strip in Super Bumper Comic was ‘Clint Cairns’, an American style Western strip drawn by Fullerton about a daring cowboy adventurer who takes on thieves who rob a stagecoach (Fig. 11). However there were also humour strips in the British tradition, including ‘Bertie Bulger: The Fat Boy of St Merlins’, which was based very closely on Billy Bunter by Frank Richards, who originally appeared in the weekly story paper The Magnet, published by Amalgamated Press between 1908 and the 1940s. Bulger displays many of the characteristics of Bunter, from his vanity to his playful deceitful pranks which inevitably lead to trouble. Following this was a crime story about mysteriously vanishing train, and a science-fiction story, ‘The Menace of Asteroid X’. Fullerton also drew ‘Alpha’ and ‘Hugh the Rover’ for Ace Comic.

Fig. 11: Clint Cairns by Len Fullerton, in Super Bumper Comics (Valentine & Sons, Dundee, 1948)

It is not known why Valentines decided to embark on this experiment with comics, but for whatever reason second issues of Ace Comics and Super Bumper Comic never appeared, but it seems likely that their mix of British and American style comics was not as appealing to readers as the more blatant copies of the American comics style that were being produced by Cartoon Art Productions and the other small publishers (see below). Fullerton continued to work for Valentines, producing postcards and calendars, finding that his true inspiration was drawing from nature rather than drawing adventure strips. Fullerton left comics behind and embarked upon a very successful career as a nature artist. Valentines continued to operate in Dundee until 1994, but never ventured into comics again after that experiment in 1948. The long history of Valentines in Dundee has left its mark on the city. There are many buildings associated with the company, and the Publishing Department was housed in the main administrative building at 154 Perth Road, just a short walk from the University of Dundee where comics are studies and produced today (Fig. 12). This is likely the location where the two comics were developed in the late 1940s, at the same time that the McCail studios were supporting the comics industry in Dundee. It has been fascinating to visit these places and to consider what might have been. The appetite I was developing for visiting places where Scottish comics has once been produced quickly led me to Bath Street in Glasgow.

Fig. 12: Valentines & Sons, 154 Perth Road, Dundee, 2019.

Cartoon Arts Productions

The company that started life as International Comics and then became Transatlantic Comics, and then finally Cartoon Art Productions, seems to have operated out of several locations in Glasgow from the mid-1940s until at least 1950. Glasgow was a natural home for such an outfit as there was a significant American naval base nearby and American comics often found their way into the hands of children on the West coast of Scotland via that route. The company reprinted American material, but also produced some original material that attempted to mimic the American style. One of their first attempts was Dynamic Comics (1945) which featured a superhero called Mr Muscle by a young Denis Gifford (Fig. 13). The influence of American wartime propaganda comics like Captain America is clear. By 1946 the company had changed its name to Cartoon Art Productions, and was sometimes referred to as CAP-toons.  They were now ready to scale up their operation and to produce more American style comics. The result was Super-Duper Comics (1946-1950) which was an anthology featuring a mix of genres, comics and text stories (Fig. 14).

Fig. 13: ‘Mr Muscle, Britain’s Superman’ by Denis Gifford, in Dynamic Comics (International Comics/Cartoon Art Productions, 1945)

Fig. 14: Super Duper Comics #4 by Dennis M. Reader (Cartoon Art Productions, Glasgow, 1947).

These comics were smaller that standard British comics, looking more like American comic books, but they were often quite slim, sometimes running to just eight pages. Cartoon Art Productions also had a very clever but slightly dishonest marketing strategy, putting an American price on the cover (usually five cents) in order to give readers the impression that this was an authentic American comic, or that the company traded on both sides of the Atlantic, an ambition signalled by their earlier names (International Comics and Transatlantic Press), but this was far from the truth. It was a clever ploy and hinged on having artwork that could pass as American. Fortunately they had employed a talented young English artist called Dennis M. Reader, who had first found work with Swan in 1944, where his ability to create comics in the American style was instantly recognised. Reader’s work soon brought him to the attention of Cartoon Art Productions, where he produced a number of crime comics, and many superheroes, including Powerman, G-Boy and Wonder Boy, Electro Girl, Phantom Maid, and Acromaid.

https://www.dundee.ac.uk/stories/comicsopolis-public-appeal-unearth-more-dundees-comics-history

Bio

Professor Christopher Murray is Chair of Comics Studies at the University of Dundee. He runs the MLitt in Comics and Graphic Novels (https://www.dundee.ac.uk/postgraduate/comics-graphic-novels-mlitt) and co-edits Studies in Comics (https://www.intellectbooks.com/studies-in-comics). He researches British Comics, and is author of The British Superhero (University Press of Mississippi, 2017) and Comicsopolis – A History of Comics in Dundee (Abertay Historical Society, 2020). Murray is director of The Scottish Centre for Comics Studies and Dundee Comics Creative Space, and is editor if UniVerse Comics. He has written several comics, including a number of public information comics on healthcare and science communication themes.

Tracing Scottish Comics History (1 of 3) by Chris Murray

I’m fascinated by Scottish comics. This should come as no surprise. I was born and raised in Dundee, the home of DC Thomson, publisher of The Dandy and The Beano, and countless others. The indie Scottish comics scene is vibrant, and Scotland can boast of industry legends like Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely, Mark Millar, Alan Grant, Cam Kennedy, Eddie Campbell, Ian Kennedy… the list goes on and on.  Also, I teach and research comics at the University of Dundee, which provides many wonderful opportunities to meet and collaborate with the wealth of Scottish comics talent, and through our classes, and initiatives like Dundee Comics Creative Space and Ink Pot studio, to help support the next generation of comics creators and scholars. But the thing that really fascinates me is the all but forgotten history of Scottish comics.

Comics publisher and historian John McShane has made a case for the Glasgow Looking Glass (1825) as the world’s first comic, and whether or not that holds true, he has certainly put this long overlooked periodical back on the map (Fig. 1).[1] Likewise, over the last several years I have been keen to shine a light on some neglected corners of Scottish comics history, researching the smaller comics publishers, and particularly, trying to trace some of the actual locations of defunct publishers, printers and studios. There is an element of detective work here, which is hugely enjoyable, but there’s also frustration that comes from the fact that some of this information is extremely hard to come by, however, a story is slowly starting to emerge about Scottish comics publishing beyond the well-known story of DC Thomson. Apart from the Glasgow Looking Glass there were many illustrated magazines employing cartoonists, especially in Dundee and Glasgow, in the nineteenth century and well into the early part of the twentieth century. Also, several small Scottish publishers emerged in the 1930s and 40s, such as Glasgow’s Cartoon Arts Productions, Foldes Press, which was initially based in Edinburgh before being bought by Manchester-based World Distributors Ltd, and Dundee’s Valentine & Sons. A considerable volume of comics emerged from these publishers, in addition to the huge output of DC Thomson, who had an in-house comic art department, but also utilised an extensive network of freelancers. Moreover, this industry was supported by a number of private art studios. The Scottish comics industry is more varied and complex than has been appreciated, and this creative economy has not yet been properly mapped or understood. Here I would like to outline some of these aspects of this industry, and the physical traces that it has left behind.  

Fig. 1 Glasgow Looking Glass, Vol. 1, No.1 (John Watson, June 11th 1825).

Livingstone and Strathmore Studios (Dundee) and Mallard Features (Glasgow)

The brothers Jock and William (Bill) McCail came to Dundee from Hartlepool to work for DCT in the 1920s, but fell out of favour for political reasons and went to work for Amalgamated Press and Swan in London the 1930s and 1940s. The McCail’s also set up art studios in Dundee and Glasgow in the 1940s, which were mainly run by Bill, and the Dundee studios were co-run with Len Fullerton. The Dundee workshop was established in 1942 and was initially called Livingstone Studios, but then became Strathmore Studios, and was located in the High Street. It then moved to nearby Commercial Street. The Glasgow workshop was called Mallard Features Studios and Bill used it to combine his interests in comics and nature illustration, and particularly horses, for which he was well-known. This was seen in The Round-Up (1948), a superhero/cowboy mash-up starring Quicksilver, The Wonderman of the West, which was produced for the Children’s Press in Glasgow (Fig. 2).[1] These studios were instrumental in supporting freelance work in Scottish comics, and gave several artists crucial training.

Fig. 2: The Round Up by William McCail (Mallard Features/The Children’s Press, Glasgow, 1948)

The McCail studio in Dundee High Street was based in a building, now demolished, that was famously the headquarters of General Monck when he laid siege to the city in 1651. This building was demolished in the 1960s when the Overate area of the city centre was being remodelled (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3: Centre-Left, The building known as Monck’s Headquarters in the Overgate area of the city centre.

The studio was home to comics artists who were based at the McCail studios included Len Fullteron, a comics artists who, like Bill McCail, was also a celebrated nature artist; Sydney Jordan, a Dundonian who went on to create the popular science fiction newspaper strip Jeff Hawke; Sam Fair, a Dundonian artist who had contributed to The Dandy in the early years and throughout the war; and Colin Andrew, another Dundonian who worked as a junior artist in the Dundee studio at a young age and then went on to work for King-Ganteaume studios, producing art for Len Miller and Son, and then later working on The Eagle and TV Century 21 in the 1960s. Though the building is long gone, a ghostly trace of it remains. The statue of Desperate Dan now strides purposefully through the city centre, and towards the shopping centre where the building once stood, now the site of a Primark store (Fig. 4). The beloved Desperate Dan statue, designed by artists Tony and Susie Morrow, has become an iconic part of the city. It is commonplace to see tourist posing for photographs, and comics students also always pose with Dan at Graduation. The University Chancellor may officially confer all the degrees with a pat on the head from the University cap, but Comics Studies students only really graduate once Dan has done his part, doffing them on the head with a rolled up copy of The Dandy (Fig. 5 and 6). Also, upon hearing that The Dandy would cease publication I had to console Dan, or more properly, he consoled me (Fig. 7).

Fig. 4: Desperate Dan and Primark, High Street, Dundee, 2019.

Fig. 5: Comics students graduate at Desperate Dan statue, 2016.

Fig. 6: Comics student Megan Sinclair being graduated by Dan, 2015.

Fig. 7: Dan consoles Chris as The Dandy ceases publication in 2012.

The Desperate Dan statue is also sited very close to New Inn Entry, where the illustrated periodical, The City Echo, was published in 1907, in the tradition of the Piper O’ Dundee and The Wasp, late nineteenth century periodicals which featured many cartoons and comics artists. This is also short walk away from Meadowside, which is dominated by the DC Thomson building, often referred to as ‘Thomson Tower’, or ‘The Fun Factory’ (Fig. 8). Also nearby is the old Leng building, which housed the John Leng and Co, Ltd, the great rival of DC Thomson before the companies merged (Fig. 9). Leng employed the first cartoonist contracted to a newspaper, Martin Anderson.[1] I walk past these places on an almost daily basis, and can feel the history of Dundee’s comics. This extends from the celebrated and still thriving comics publishing industry based in the city to the all but forgotten and lost places associated with comics production. It is notable that DC Thomson has long maintained offices in London, and re the only publisher still located on Fleet Steet, which was once the heard of the publishing industry (Fig. 10). I confess that the thrill of finding and researching these places has given me something of a bug for finding more places associated with comics history. And there was yet more Dundee comics history to uncover.

Fig. 8: DC Thomson’s ‘Fun Factory’ at Meadowside, Dundee, and McMenace exhibition at McManus Art Gallery and Museum, artwork by Nigel Parkinson, 2018. Copyright DC Thomson.

Fig. 9: John Leng and Co Ltd, Bank Street, Dundee.

Fig. 10 DC Thomson offices on Fleet Street, London.

Notes

[1] Matthew Jarron, Independent and Individualist: Art in Dundee 1867-1924 (Dundee: Abertay Historical Society, 2015), p.125. 

[2] Chris Murray, The British Superhero (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017).

[3] John McShane, ‘Through a Glass, Darkly: A Revisionist History of Comics’, in The Drouth #23 (Glasgow: The Scottish Arts Council, 2007).

Bio

Professor Christopher Murray is Chair of Comics Studies at the University of Dundee. He runs the MLitt in Comics and Graphic Novels (https://www.dundee.ac.uk/postgraduate/comics-graphic-novels-mlitt) and co-edits Studies in Comics (https://www.intellectbooks.com/studies-in-comics). He researches British Comics, and is author of The British Superhero (University Press of Mississippi, 2017) and Comicsopolis – A History of Comics in Dundee (Abertay Historical Society, 2020). Murray is director of The Scottish Centre for Comics Studies and Dundee Comics Creative Space, and is editor if UniVerse Comics. He has written several comics, including a number of public information comics on healthcare and science communication themes.

The ‘Remembering UK Comics’ series is curated and edited by William Proctor and Julia Round.