Steve Bell Royal Wedding Mug

The one piece of royal wedding memorabilia I would have wanted to own would have been this royal wedding mug from Guardian political cartoonist Steve Bell, but unfortunately due to it being a very limited edition print of 50, it is now completely sold out, and there will be no more made.



Featuring his now trademark condom-on-head David Cameron and a very unusual cross breed of pig/arse face/unicorn/George Osbourne. You can watch a brief video with Steve Bell talking about the royal wedding here, braving the rain to get his first glimpse of the royal couple here, and about his mugs here.

Also, if the royal had been anything like this I would have definitely watched it.

In other news if you happen to live in or around Bristol Steve Bell is giving a talk at the Arnolfini as part of the Bristol Festival Ideas on Saturday the 21st of May at 12.30pm. Tickets are £7 (£5 for students, OAPS etc) and are available here.

Animation of the week: Great-Bob Godfrey

One of the only decent people I share my last name with (sorry family) is British animation legend Bob Godfrey who was responsible for such childhood favourites as Henry the cat and the chaotic Rhubarb and Custard (both of which had amazing theme tunes).With a career spanning more than fifty years*(1) (Richard Williams is another British animator who can boast this) his less child friendly work carries a tongue in cheek British sensitivity to sex like Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em and the Carry On films but at times could be a little bit more risque (see Karma Sutra Rides Again or Dream Doll, which was made in collaboration with another renowned animation and film studio Zagreb Film based in Croatia)

The animation of his I have chosen for my animation of the week is his 1975 short Great (view part one here), a musical comedy about the life of famous engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Like his earlier satirical look at animation and commercial advertising The Do-It-Yourself Animation Kit, this uses the cut out technique where collage and cut outs are used alongside as well as instead of fluid drawings. This technique is sometimes mistakenly identified as being invented by Terry Gilliam but really it was Godfrey who had a huge influence on the Python animator and not the other way round*(2) (you can also see Godfrey's influence on Gilliam in the huge letters in the title sequences to all the Python films). Although Godfrey handles the subject matter and especially the Victorian period with a colourful irreverence (making fun of the empire's colonial powers amongst other things) you can tell that when it boils down to it it is tackled with love. Bright, cheerful, packed full of innuendo and achieves the near impossible feat of being a musical with not a single annoying song (not to mention the fact that it's educational!). There are some real strokes of genius in here, from 50's style rock and roll singers and found footage techniques that remind me a bit of Ralph Bakshi, to Freud calling Brunel 'a paranoiac with a pronounced phallic inferiority complex'. Also worth watching is this old BBC 2 documentary on Godfrey which was part of a series called The Craftsman. Click here.

I couldn't find any decent images of the film to post here but trust me it's worth watching.
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*He also worked on Yellow Submarine, an experience his more traditional disciplined training made it hard for him to handle, as there was no real script to work to.
(2)*I'd say that Godfrey was perhaps one of the first British animators to use this technique but you can see it in a lot of Russian and Polish animation of the early 60's-70's as well.

Back from the dead

Having last posted something here in November, I decided it was time to get back in to the swing of things. As well as adding brand new grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, I will be working my way back through old content and correcting, improving, and adding hyperlinks.

Short animation about autism...

I just came across this lovely short animation (linked from The Comics Reporter) about Autism. It's in Spanish but subtitled, and it was financed by the mobile phone company Orange. It's very sweet, touching, and a nice personal insight into the world of the parent/carer of an autistic child which doesn't patronise the child in question, and is full of love and pride. If you want a simplistic introductory explanation of autism which isn't riddled with too much medical jargon you couldn't go far wrong watching this. Click here.

Review: House-Josh Simmons

SPOILER ALERT!

Inspired by the article I posted a link to about comics and architecture, I recently bought a copy of Josh Simmon's wordless graphic novel House. Being wordless you'll read this in about five minutes, but just because its easy to digest doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile. In fact the decision to make this a wordless graphic novel has certainly weighed in Simmons favour. All the tension, the atmosphere, every last nuance is achieved perfectly without having to resort to a single word balloon or caption explaining the situation. House starts off like a slightly more grown up children's adventure/buddy movie (see The Goonies, or even traces of Stand By Me) as three teenage friends meet up to explore an abandoned mansion in the woods. We get subtle hints at a budding romance, and sparks of jealously alongside beautifully rendered structures (that old cliche of beauty: urban decay) that at times seem like fantastic other worlds (for example the scene where they find a lake littered with the sunken corpses of other houses). Soon however the atmosphere changes. I make the cinematic link because House reads like a skillfully rendered storyboard to a very successful horror movie. As a fan of horror films whose occasional inability to empathise with characters makes it difficult for them to feel fear (except of the unknown jumps and starts that litter any film) I know House does a good job because it manages to make me feel the teenager's fear, their claustrophobia, their eventual hopelessness, all without the aid of a tension building soundtrack. That old mantra 'it's what you can't see that scares you' is pretty well suited here.

It is similar in a vein to Spanish horror film REC or a less hyperbolic Saw. It manages to make me wonder how I would cope in the same situation, the ultimate compliment for any horror film/comic. The eventual engulfing of the black panel borders onto the images themselves represents the fading light of life and hope in the situation, the desperation, the claustraphobic element of their surroundings. A partial blur of an unkown figure seen by the boy who has lost is glasses is also a nice touch. The ending comes as a twist, it is a rare thing in a horror movie (especially where a teenage cast is concerned) that no one survives, but this is the shocking power of House, and the fact that they mysterious forces at work in the mansion are never revealed is also another teasing and tantalising touch. A perfectly chilling read!

Blog of the week: Avoid The Future

Avoid The Future is an incredibly well designed blog 'based on a secret island fortress somewhere between the UK and France' (taken from the about us section of the site). It's great to see a blog that not only seems to have its finger on the pulse of the international small press scene but it also nice to look at too. The writers at ATF wade through the yards and yards of juvenile crap you often find at a comic convention (big breasted super heroines a go-go) to bring you the tastiest looking treats which tell me I've still got a way to go when it comes to knowing my shit about small press comics. But I'm not proud, I'm glad that ATF are out there to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and introduce me to stuff I may have otherwise never found on my own. They also review and interview indie heavy weights such as James Kochalka and Johnny Ryan as well as industry professionals (they seem to have pretty good links with Toronoto based Koyama Press) and comic book shop owners. Their interviews seem pretty well researched, in-depth, and yet with a touch of playful irreverence. Their latest batch of one question interviews will introduce you to a world of lesser known artists and interesting sounding projects (such as a Tintin sketchbook and probably the only appealing comic from Slave Labour Graphics* that's ever caught my eye-Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer). Check out ATF here.

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*Slave Labour Graphics are notorious for some pretty cringe worthy goth themed comics

Webcomic of note #1

Jin and Jam No 1-Hellen Jo

Comic artist Jordan Crane's website What Things Do is a haven for reading good comics online. He's made available early Yeast Hoist stuff by Ron Rege Jr, a bunch of Sammy Harkham strips, the entirety of his own graphic novel The Clouds Above, and much more besides. He also has a news/blog roll that runs alongside it.
The latest edition to the site is a fantastic hybridisation of manga and American comics and Calafornia culture, Jin and Jam by Hellen Jo. It straddles that line between East and West precisely because Jo was born in America and considers America her home, but is also Asian. Artistically it sits somewhere between Jillian Tamaki's artwork for the graphic novel Skim (especially with the large chins of her characters) and the grotesque surrealism of Taiyo Matsumoto (she quotes Black and White at the beginning of the comic). The addition of a cat fight with con-joined twins is certainly very reminiscent of Matsumoto (as well as Charles Burns and the kind of off the wall characters you'd find in Jim Rugg's Afrodisiac). Traces of oriental folk art and art nouveau burst through in some of the details, such as the twins hair during the fight scene. This comic is violent and stupid, but also warms your heart ever so slightly. It makes us remember that the people worth talking to, the people worth hanging out with, aren't really the popular ones, but the outsiders, the ones who don't really fit in anywhere, and thus bind together, and generally have more fun. Whereas Skim by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki also deals with outsiders, and the superficiality and shallowness of school life, it is a great deal more angst ridden whereas Jin and Jan seems carefree and optimistic, ready to face the new adventure of adult life, but in no rush to leave the current adventure just yet. I liked Jim and Jan so much I bought it, reckoning it would be a nice thing to own in print/hard copy (the cover and end pages are finished with great watercolours).
View Hellen's site here.