Semiotic Cohesion Comics & Art

Do you live in Cape Town??? Really??? Then you must know THE BOOK LOUNGE??? Surely???

Rumours abound that a compilation of my comicsxxxz will be selling there soon. Well Well Well. While trying to work out if the rumours were true or not I accidentally drew the cover. This is what it looks like with a yellow background and with grey instead of black lines:::

Please actually like this one for once. Just for once - Sebastian.

Hello. Look at how big you are now! You must be very strong.

So the last time I let you, the mysterious and handsome reader of this blog, know that I had been touting fine Semiotic Cohesion product upon the unwary public whilst surrounded by a jury of small-press comics publishing peers, it was February or some nonsense and I was banging on about Inverness. Well, listen here - I've been to four whole other events like that one and never even bothered to tell you about them. What do you think of that, dear reader? Do you want to fight? Did you know that I am over three meters tall? You cannot hope to win.

CHAPTER 0001: UK MINI AND WEBCOMIX THING, MILE END (like the song), LONDON

First up, I went to the UK Mini & Webcomix Thing, at some point it what was almost certainly March. My memories of this far-off time are few. The best part of everything was that the travel time was nil, since Melody lives right in Mile End I remember that there were some Germans running around asking pointed questions and laughing, always laughing, in German.

(Note: For reasons that vex and elude, I am unable to link directly to the site of these fine German fellows. Please, have a look for yourselves through the old-timey 'copy and paste' method of browsing: http://zettgeist.blogspot.com/2009/04/two-herren-and-british-invasion.html )

I took a photo of this lady, whose name and whereabouts are unknown to me.

Maybe she is the key to understanding UK Mini and Webcomix? Maybe I fell in love with her, but in the end she turned out to be a ghost.

This photo of Mike Rouse-Dean is my only other clue as to what happened that day.

I remember that we were discussing nudity. Here he looks quite grumpy. Perhaps the nudity was making him feel low? Maybe being away from his native Yorkshirian soil saps his strength and poisons his well? As a vaguely-native Yorkshirian myself, I can report that it is a horrible place and no one should ever go there.

Kate Beaton was kicking around there too. Sebastian and I had a plan to seduce her together. I would pretend to be him and wow her with his Hedgemony comics. Then we would have to keep up the pretence of me being Sebastian and many sitcom hijinx would ensue. It would all end terribly and we would be satisfied. Unfortunately, I right off the bat started talking about what a horrible place Yorkshire is (see above), which I suppose is quite a bad thing to say to someone who is all into history and whatnot. I withered under her protests and found myself confessing to its natural beauty and rich, possibly significant history, conceding that really it's only my gran's house that is awful because it is soaked in piss. My anti-pride shattered, I disappeared, never to be seen again. But not before buying one of her comics. I later gave it to my Mum, who proclaimed that it was the only comic she'd ever understood.

Also, Tom Meddings was there, moving his hands so quickly!

UK MINI AND WEBCOMIX THING
NUDITY QUOTIENT: LOW

CHAPTER 00002 - SPEXPO2009, STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN

Oh, here's a fine piece of continuity that seems to make sense of this saucy spaghetti of bafflement we call causality - In the bar after the Webcomix Thing, I ran into a man named Adam Cadwell and his hetero life-mate, Marc Ellerby. They told strange and wonderful tales of a land named Sweden and its only city, Stockholm. There was a small press comics expo of some description there, they said. They would be going - how cool was that? This stirred a memory or two in me.

INTERLUDE: CRACK PANTHER! ROME, ITALY 2008

Way back in the mist of 2008, while selling comics in the dungeon of a Roman castle built to scare the Pope, some upstanding Swedish citizens from the unfairly brilliant Galago outfit, told me that I would have a time and a half for sure at SPEXPO2009, as they liked to call it. Among these good Swedes were:

Kolbeinn Karlsson - Some kind of giant, living Viking, whose awesome new book sits now sits proudly on my bookshelf until it is time to give it to Sebastian, because it is totally his sort of thing.
Find him here: http://www.pappacomics.blogspot.com/

Loka Kanarp ( http://www.lokakanarp.blogspot.com/ ) - whom I was quite prepared to fall in love with. "You can't do it," said a trusted advisor, "Her boyfriend is the biggest publisher of pornographic comics in Sweden."
"I have hardly published any pornography at all!" I lamented.

Anyway! Back at London and closer to the present, Adam assured me that the tables were huge and the admission was free. Swift as a bunny, Melody and I booked a table and before long we were in grey old Stockholm, greeted everywhere by the image of the Swedish president, who is a naked older woman.

I said 'hello' to Johannes, who promptly spilled coffee on me, I was told I was the second person ever to have bought the new League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen book, and I promised Kolbein that I would be at the launch party of his book that very evening. I tried to go, but it was full. Girls in black t-shirts with radio earpieces told me in clear English that I couldn't go. My heart broke and everyone else had a good time. I went back to the hostel and read the latest chapter of The Saga Of The European King to Melody, and she was probably delighted.

We were placed in an English ghetto along with the aforementioned Marc and Adam, joined and made strong by the addition of the Lizzes Greenfield and Lunney, along with Matt Sheret, whom I kept on mistaking for Marc, to escalating embarrassment. Possibly leading their motley/charming crew was the fiercely competent Anna Petterson, who crops up again in the next chapter. Continuity!

Many words were spilled about the public spending in Sweden. They have wheelchair ramps on every pavement. No one dies. Another aspect of the country / city I found interesting is that there are no dogs. In London, one is used to seeing dogs and their salty leavings everywhere. In Cape Town, they roam the streets at their own leisure, making one feel that one is in a science-fictional community among sentients of every size and shape. We tracked down the only dog in Stockholm and asked him how he felt.

"I am okay with this," he said.

But it all ended well, with wraps.

It was back to London after that, just in time for a riot.

SPEXPO 2009
JEFFREY BROWN'S MUMBLES QUOTIENT: HIGH


CHAPTER 000003 - SMALL PRESS EXPO, BRISTOL, ENGELENLAND

Due to a lab accident, the once-mighty Bristol Comics Festival deal was cut to the quick. 500 people gathered in the hallways of the Ramada and jostled the fellow who played one the stupider aliens from Star Wars while, on the other side of a big church, Mal from The Fallen Angel and Mike Allred hosted a Small Press do that was brave and bold and new and contained no ridiculous guest stars at all.

Responses were mixed. Mr. Paul Rainey, at a table with Peet Clack, seemed quite pleased with himself indeed!

However, this fellow just across from me, Mathew J Pallett, of Stir Fried Product, did not appear to be having an exciting time.

The public, bless their hearts, were too busy being shocked by the European release of Sebastian's masterpiece, Mexican Piss Dream, to offer any comment other than coughs and splutters. Apparently the secret to selling Mexican Piss Dream to people is to actually -be- Sebastian. When I have the technology, I will conduct tests.

BRISTOL SPEXPO 2009
STARING QUOTIENT: HIGH


CHAPTER 0000004 - MCM EXPO, LONDON, GREAT BRITAIN

The MCM Expo was quite a different kettle of fish altogether. It is really more of a dazzling totem to greed and plastic than a bunch of shy people trying to modestly foist their comics upon passers-by. In the past, there has been little concession or even recognition of a comics small press at all and all comers were charged at the same rate as, say, Paramount's Revenge Of The Fallen display. But thanks to the brave efforts of the aforementioned Anna Petterson and Emma Vieceli, and a good man named Pud, there now exists a cosy Comics Village where the likes of me can inexpensively hurl copies of Shark Of Wisdom at friendly people dressed as the cast of Bleach. Good on them.

I tried to get to the ExCell centre and the heart of the show on the preceding Friday so that I could set up at a leisurely pace and talk shit up with folk. However, due to a hilarious error, I and my trundly case full of comics ended up in Leyton, which would be a terrible place to put an international conference centre. Anna and Emma's voices were soothing over the telephone. "Don't give in," they said. "Follow your heart. Come to the sound of my voice(s)."

Folks, I did what they said and I slid my wheely case under my table just as someone told me to get the hell out of the hall. I was rewarded with an invitation to drinks at the nearby public house, where the voice of Anna was revealed to be played by the same Anna from Stockholm and I tried to talk to Adam about Transformers and failed. Tony Lee ( http://tonylee.co.uk/ ) called me terrifying, then said some mean things about cosplayers and I got drunk on just two beers. Then I returned to Wandsworth, where my housemates were having an impromptu barbecue. They have been acting suspiciously happy ever since the painfully dull New Zealand housemate moved out. After about fifteen minutes sleep, it was back to the ExCellodrome, by route of a hundred rail replacement buses, whereupon I was met with many wonderful sights.

Like Philip Spence eating a sandwich!

Or the Weighted Companion Cube hugging a lady, for free!

I saw these guys again. Hi guys over there!

I saw Claude TC and Jon Scrivens talk to some Sims.

I had a shameful conversation of the sexual merits of various incarnations of Blackarachnia from Transformers with a girl dressed just like her. Conclusion - the one from Beast Machines doesn't even count.

Even famous grouch Gavin Haynes left the building with "a newfound sense of goodwill for mankind and his works." It was all that hugging that did it.

I even managed to expand the fanbase with some young wizards. Always handy in a fight.

And then Melody dressed up like a French maid. She's written all these events up too, and she provides a Mandarin translation too! Go and have a little look:
http://idbi.us/tpblog/

MCM EXPO
GOODWILL TO MANKIND QUOTIENT: MODERATE-TO-HIGH

So now we are all up-to-date and ready for a triumphant return to Rome for Crack On, where Sebastian and I may well meet again, and LUC the very week afterwards. I shall possibly wait many months till I blog about those.

In the meantime, The Ancient Shark Of Despair's blog will be wrapping up very soon. It may be hard to discern to the untrained eye, but I've been building up to a climax for a few months now. With the story polished up, it will be time to get the first book produced. The Saga Of The European King should be back to more regular updates too, along with more illustrations. A new webcomic is also in the works, entitled 'Cowboy Love Is Pure.' It looks a bit like this:

Onwards! Onwards to the future!

The magical Michaela Verity and I embarked on yet another photo shoot yesterday. At one point we took a breather and I guess I did what I do every time Fortuna hands me a couple of quick secs; I read through copies of my little Mexican Piss Dream to make sure that they all really were identical. The fear that they might not be stems from my first burst of selling on campus when it was reported to me that some people had bought copies where one of the four sheets that in compilation make up the comick had been included backwards, hence adding a large dose of Lynch. Anyways, that always-on voyeur Michaela caught me right there in the moment with this pic.

--- Sebastiank

Okay, guys. Remember how I told you that Scott from Journey to Mt. Moriah decided that I was so brilliant I deserved an original watercolour illustration of his? Well, he wasn't just paying idle tribute, I received the package yesterday and was more than just pleasantly surprised by his choice of award. I am now the proud owner of 'Yo', which is not only one of my favourite Mt. Moriah comics, but also one of my favourite comics in general. Go figure!

Click image to see the 'Yo' comic in its natural habitat.

Also, not to let an entire log-post go by without talking about myself, I am nearly finished an alternate ending of the Picnic Champion comic. Remember that comic with the two dudes wrestling naked for no real reason except maybe honour and inappropriately matching the effort another person should have to go through to receive such a petty prize as a cigarette from oneself? Well remember how it was totally cool and hetro-normative until that last pesky panel with the snake? A little bit weird, right? Tell me about it!

Well, no more! It's all going to cool the heck down with this revision.

(This isn't really the reason, dudes. It's actually 'cos I had to wrap it up real quick to have it ready for Grahamstown festival last year and couldn't do the original ending because it was probably going to be too timeguzzling. Well, Tom McNally (or Terome as he advertises himself) has boldly declared that Semiotic Cohesion Volume 5 will be featuring this idiosyncratic mess of man-bod'. To match the upscaling of print quality and... scale I'm going to try push it to its original limits.)

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- yO, 'bASTIAN. dON'T LIMIT YOURSELF 'bASTIAN.