Paul Gravett, British comics' The Man at the Crossroads, talks about his new book, Comics Art (Yale University Press), the new exhibition he's curating for the British Library, Comics Unmasked: Art & Anarchy in the UK, the history of comics and his history within it, and the way virtually every lifelong comics reader's home winds up resembling an episode of Hoarders. He's one of comics' finest ambassadors, and it was a pleasure to talk with him during my recent UK trip.
"I'm probably slightly insane for wanting to go on looking and searching and questioning and provoking myself, trying to find stuff that doesn't give me what I know already."The Virtual Memories Show
Season 4, Episode 5 - Feeling Gravett's Pull
"Comics is a medium that isn't going to go away. It may just now finally be coming into its own in the 21st century. In this internet era, there's something very special about what comics do, no matter how much they get warped and changed by technology."
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Virtual Memories Show. I'm your host, Gil Roth, and you are listening to a weekly podcast about books and life, not necessarily in that order. You can subscribe to the show on iTunes and you can find past episodes, get on our email list, and make a donation to the show at our website, chimeraobscura.com/vm. You can also find us on Twitter at VMSPod at facebook.com/virtualmemoriesshow and at virtualmemoriespodcast.tumbler.com. I first encountered this episode's guest in a comic book, which is entirely fitting. The great cartoonist Eddie Campbell called him "The Man at the Crossroads" in his autobiographical comic, "How to Be an Artist." In reality, Paul Grovett's been at the center of the British comic scene since 1981, and in more than three decades, he's been a champion for comics worldwide. I have to say, my own comics education would have been a disaster without some of the books that he and escape press brought into print, includes Eddie Campbell's, Alec Book's "Violent Cases," which was the first collaboration between Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean and more. Paul's most recent book, " Comics Art," does a fantastic job of exploring what makes comics comics and what makes them art and how comics are adapting to globalization and sort of the cross-pollination of traditions. It's really a lovely book, and it turned me on to a ton of cartoonists I knew nothing about. Comics Art came out last year from Tate Publishing in the UK, but it's out right now in the US from Yale University Press. Now, in addition to comics art, Paul's also written manga, 60 Years of Japanese Comics, as well as graphic novels, "Stories to Change Your Life," "Great British Comics," celebrating a century of ripping yarns and wizard wheezes, and "The Leather None" and "Other Incredibly Strange Comics," all with co-author and partner, Peter Standbury. Paul's also the editor of the mammoth book of "Best Crime Comics," and "101 Comics," you must read before you die. We touch on a bunch of those over the course of the conversation. Paul reached out to me last fall about the show when he learned I was gonna be in the UK for business. We decided to get together and record. Now, I know this one's one of the longer episodes in our history, but trust me, we went on for like two more hours after I turned the mics off. Paul will tell you that I did most of the talking during that time, but he was pretty forgiving. You knew I hadn't really talked to anybody for a day or two before the trip out to England. And now, the virtual memories conversation with Paul Gravette, "The Man at the Crossroads." ♪ Lost the ocean, no land til America ♪ ♪ Someone built a shrine ♪ I had to limit my caffeine intake, but it's twice a day and about this size. - Yeah, I am naturally caffeinated. - I don't remember. I only started drinking coffee in my early 30s, but I really don't remember if I had that much energy before. - Oh, okay. - Yeah, I really don't wanna find out. (laughing) So let's talk about comics art. You have a new book, came out, well, came out 2013 in the UK, but coming out now in America. - That's right. - What's the nature of the book? Tell us a bit about it. - Well, it began as a project for Tate, as in the Tate Gallery, Tate Publishing, who have a line of books, all with the word art in them, like street art, which is a particularly good bestseller for them, but also installation art, video art, design art, et cetera, et cetera. So as it's Tate, as in Tate Modern, Tate Gallery, et cetera, it's Artie, Artie Fartie, if you like, a bit, Artie Fartie. And they kind of get to the further down the list of what they've done. They realize because we should do comics, maybe we should actually be in there, which reflects the fact that comics, in the last, sort of, certainly, since at least the last 10, 20 years or so, have been, sort of, one way or the other, smugly themselves into the art world and to art galleries, certainly. I mean, there's been, right now, there's a big show in New York of Art Spiegelman's work. There's been massive show of Robert Crum's work in that when they've had a Tokyo, the Mizidah Mondan reopened in Paris. So it's sort of being acknowledged in a sort of slightly peculiar way that maybe comics are some sort of art. God knows what, exactly. But my strategy, really, was to write it for the kind of visitor that goes to the Tate, who's hopefully, you know, alert, culturally curious, wondering whether there's something going on in comics that would interest them, that could actually motivate them. So in many ways, that was the audience in mind. And as so often, when you come to writing about comics, there's an enormous wealth, you know, wealth or not, or welter of stuff to sort of sift through and discriminate and decide, what are you going to present? And so, where to organise a book was to come up with some of the defining elements that people presume comics are, that make comics, whether it's the panels or the speech bubbles or speech bruise, which are presumed to be essential to comics, which, of course, they aren't really, in fact. And then to look at some of the peculiar and special forms of comics that I think can open up the medium to people who are still perhaps a bit resistant to it. So things like completely wordless silent comics, which I think are a very special form of this medium, and also the boom in autobiography, which I think has brought in a lot of people who otherwise would never have gone near that near the comics at all. - You know, it was interesting reading it. I always have difficulty approaching books of any field that I know something about. I never know quite exactly. Well, this isn't geared for me, but it also wasn't just treading over old ground as far as I was concerned. - Good, a practice effort and good, yeah. - But it was simultaneously, I think, accessible to an audience that understands what comics are, but might not have an excess of experience with, especially the sheer globalization of culture, as we know, at the amount of comics that we see from all different locations and eras now. - It has certainly changed a lot. I mean, we've seen a lot more international comics comics that are not in English as their first language, in a way, getting translated. It's true up to a point, but I still feel that there's a sort of agenda going on here where I've only, I've shown a little bit of Marvel comics, for example, but there's no, I thought there was no need to show the giant sort of Disney-owned Marvel icons or the giant, not too much of them anyway, and I'll talk about them for too much, because they are still, for most people, the only or the most visible form of comics that the people come across. - And certainly the case in America. - Yeah, but it's true pretty much everywhere. - But it's interesting, apart from Japan, maybe other countries, but certainly in the West. - But it's as comics become an accepted form in the art world and become this, well, again, a form of art. Simultaneously, we've seen this incredible rise of the, to be honest, the dumbest genre of comics in the superhero world. So it's good that, again, you could address that, but without having to play up the, hey, they're not just for kids anymore stuff, we're in an era in which we don't have to put that disclaimer in front of everything. - That kind of was the starting point that was before I started writing, so I was able to just move on beyond that if we can. But I do think there's an, I mean, I'm not actually, I don't see myself really as much as a, a much a historian or curator or whatever, as an activist when it comes to comics, which might sound a bit peculiar, why would anyone want to be activist about comics? But I do think there, they've had such a history, especially if you look back over all the controversies and scandals, whether it's Frederick Wertham and all of the moral panic and media panic in the 50s that spread around the world about the potentially harmful effects of comic books. - Think of the children. - Yeah, exactly. That's coloured, so many people's viewpoints about comics and how they're perceived. And I also think it's important to act to be honest with you because I am probably slightly, well, I shouldn't even say, I am quite concerned about the corporate control of comics, it doesn't just exist, of course, in American comics, I mean, there are plenty of giant corporations in other countries, I mean, giants like in Japan, like Caudancio and Shoui-Shan, Shoui-Shan, Shoui-Shan, who are the, it seems almost in every country you look at, about three quarters or more of the comics market is owned and controlled by pretty big media corporations. I mean, and then there's room in the margins in that sort of maybe 20, 30% for more experimental marginal stuff, but that's partly because of the idea of comics being mass market entertainment, and that's been a huge, merchandisable properties. This has been the kind of the way they've been perceived for so long, and I suppose it's really that other, so 20% that I tend to be slightly more interested in, because I believe that's where innovation tends to happen, but it's not always true, because in Japan, even amongst giants, publishing giants that I've mentioned, there is innovation, there is constant innovation, and even in the France, while you've got characters that can grind on forever and ever, as long as Superman and Spider-Man, characters like Spirit, for example, in Belgium, for example, originally. There's room for innovation even there, and room for new artists and new voices, new ideas to come in, and so coming back to America, I am concerned that we have so much extraordinary talent being pushed to do this corporate material, because it pays, and because it's steady work, and I'm completely in sympathy with the fact that creators, writers, artists are not gonna necessarily, some don't want to starve to own something, to own 100% of nothing, as opposed to maybe a tiny percent or no royalty whatsoever of a giant corporate thing like a Superman or a Batman story, but that, I do think, has got to change. I don't know if it's going to change. It is changing, I guess, but it's slow, it's slow. - It was interesting, in 1998, it was at the small press expo in the US, and Will Eisner was supposed to speak, there was a hurricane, he couldn't come, Frank Miller filled in for him, renowned for the Dark Knight Returns. This is, again, late '90s after his Marvel and DC were kidnapped, but he was still a big name, and he had to give a speech before the Ignatz Awards, and he said, coming to Maryland that weekend, he was planning on giving a big speech about creator rights and making sure you stand up, and when you're at Marvel, you have to argue for this and that, and he'd walked around the exhibitor floor all day and was picking up all these comics and talking to cartoonists, and he realized they had no interest in working on superhero books, they were pursuing their own, and it seemed to be a blind spot for him at the time, he didn't realize that a generation had changed in his wake, largely after him and Alan Moore and Art Spiegelman were very, very different cartoonists, I understand, but they all signified that same break from convention back in the mid '80s in the US, and I wonder now, if that promise held up, or if, as you say, people have to pay the pipe, or even Eddie Campbell once upon a time, well, I'll do a Batman comic, it'll be fun, and I found it to be one of his most lifeless works. - And the New Zealand artist, Alan Horrocks, also worked briefly for a producer working on things like Batgirl, and I found it a really dispiriting experience putting him off the medium as a whole, for some time. - Yeah, I think there has been a shift, certainly, and we're seeing generations subsequently, certainly, the current generation in the UK is extraordinary, because a lot of them simply, it doesn't occur to them to work for any of the mainstream, necessarily here or in or in America. I mean, many do, of course, but there's plenty of people coming into comics from other directions, from illustration or from other fields that just carve out their own work. Unfortunately, there are now mainstream general publishers, people like Jonathan Cape and newer specialist publishers like Self Made Hero and Blank Slate and others, no brow, particularly as well, who are nurturing people from the start and working with a completely fresh approach with no preconceived baggage or agendas, and it has really, really changed the landscape of comics in an enormous way, and all of these are minor, sort of, marginal things, they're not suddenly becoming obviously quite successful, we know things like Potee Simmons work in the UK, you know, appearing in the Guardian newspaper, winning awards in their book form, being turned into movies, for example, is just one example of that transformation. But I still think that there is something to be activist about, because, and I don't, I mean, it isn't just, sort of, breaking down the front doors of art galleries and libraries and getting, sort of, credibility, because I think that's another kind of mistake to make, to presume that we, that's the comics need that desperately. I think it's going to, it's coming, it's somebody who's already come, though there's still plenty of room for people to, for a backlash, for people not to be enthusiastic about, about the arrival comics. - Oh, we even saw it after the, I was at the Spiegelman launch in New York, at the Jewish Museum, and that same week, there was some nitwit, I think, at the New Statesman who had to find some contrary take to the idea of gallery exhibitions of cartoonists, and it was just one of those. It's the internet, we understand you have to come up with some idiotic argument just so people will read, but really, you know, the, is it art or not, is really not the argument. - I think most of us have moved on and you're quite right, most of them is just done to generate controversy, exactly, exactly, exactly. I mean, just recently, this year in Britain, there were two nominations were announced for the top literary award, one of the top awards here is the coster awards, and named after coffee, of course, 'cause you're meant to read the books in their coffee shops. - I don't feel that 'cause I was reading your book at the coster around the corner this morning. - Exactly. - That's why they didn't kick me out. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And two independent juries picked graphic novels amongst, in their category. One was "Doctor of a Father's Eyes", by Mary and Brian Talbot was chosen in the biography category, and the other was "Days of Bag, Molds Summer", by "Drop Winter Heart", it's a demographic novel, within of all things, the novel category, I mean, as best novel. And one of them won, I mean, "The Doctor of the Father's Eyes", which is partly a biography of a joys interwoven with the autobiography of Mary Talbot, who was the daughter of a joysian scholar. And in many ways, you could say, it pushed a lot of the right buttons for a literary jury, it was, you know, it had lots of nice illusions, and it was quite cleverly composed, so you could see the differences and contrast between different periods. It was, you know, really a good way in for people. - But it wasn't like that great David Lasky, Jack Kirby, James Joyce Pease. - Exactly, that's marvelous. - It's still one of my favorite cartoons. - Exactly, that was the Ulysses. It wasn't either. Lasky's brilliant, absolutely, it wasn't. And at the time, the Giles Corrin, who writes "The Spectator" did a similar kind of, as you mentioned, at this kind of inflammatory, that's just be, say something stupid, about how comics are meant to be for stupid people, and especially men, and the literary world, what's the literary world doing, sort of desperately trying to be cool, and giving awards, or whatever, to graphic novels. They don't need them, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, lots of, these kind of remarks inevitably get lots and lots of feedback, especially anyone calling comics sort of dumb, and for stupid men, is going to get feedback. - The internet is controlled. - Yeah, exactly, but it does, there were other interesting critics. John Walsh was writing in "The Independent", and when he heard the analysis, he was saying he doesn't like, he believes that novels are made to be done in words, and that he doesn't like being able to see the expressions of characters' faces. This whole kind of, which again is terribly satisfying, of what comics do, as if everyone drawn in a comic is sort of somehow gurning, and grimacing, in very obvious ways, and also necessarily showing what they feel. We certainly always do that, in every moment, in real life or in comics. So this is, that prejudice is never going to go away, I don't think, it is, it is lessening, but it'll be interesting to see what happens in the next year or two, as this seemingly inexorable rise, or ascendancy of the comics in, as art, or as literature, whatever continues. And whether, in fact, we do hit an eventual ceiling, or brick wall, and says, I'm sorry, this is, you're going above your station, you should know your place, you're just a lowly sort of mass entertainment-- - Oh, we have this silly thing going on in the US now, where that actor, Shia LaBeouf, basically made a short movie out of a Dan Klaus strip without crediting Dan Klaus, or telling anybody that's worth a script, and the imagery came from, in that notion that somehow, I don't know if it's just the fact that this guy has some sort of pathological condition, or the notion that comics are so far below cinema, we can just take-- - The convalescent appropriation approach, yeah. - Which I'm inclined to think it's more the sheer pathological messed up-edness of this actor, as opposed to getting something more intrinsic to the relationship between these art forms. - And how's Klaus reacted to it? - I think it was the Matt Groening response that copyright infringement is a sincerest form of flattery, but he's not happy exactly, and I think-- - I guess Matt Groening's, obviously, I was happy to experience that with this, but this is the early days when all the sense and things were being lifted, and how Groening did that comment once, and I don't know. - But it goes, now you would be cracked down on by the corporations. - Although I did once, I was at a comics event in Brooklyn, and just turning a corner smacked right into Matt Groening, which I felt bad about. He didn't fall over or anything, so I was able to not cause injury, but I realized he may have been the highest net worth person I've ever just body slammed. I just turned him, "Oh, you're back Groening, oh my God!" And you're worth more than everybody else in this entire place, multiplied by five, at least financially. - Bruce's a field since carefully. His son was there to back him up. - But in the book, you have this quote from Salvador Dali, pretty early on, that comics will be the culture of the year '37, '94, and specifically March 4th at 7 PM. So we're ahead of schedule, is what you're saying. - I think, of course, that was done in a very kind of arch, typical Dali, kind of crazy, crazy way, balancing a corrective water on his head, and sounding in an early form of a comic shop in Paris, but yeah, and of course, that is all around the time when you've got, in '67, you've got the Louvre, or in fact, it wasn't, more accurately, I've discovered subsequently the exhibition that was photographed, that we show in comics art, of this first exhibition, one of the first, certainly, in Europe, anyway, of comics as art in the Louvre. It wasn't actually in the Louvre, to be precise, 'cause it was in the Musée des Arts decorateef, which is part of the Louvre complex. But it was just down the way, I just actually got the chance to meet, just over the New Year, she is about Chavaro, who designed the exhibition with a limited budget, but with a very impressive and innovative display systems and lighting and this kind of thing. She was in London, I got to meet her, and she explained that, for the Americans, they couldn't really get around, they head around the Musée des Arts decorateef, it's sort of, so they just, it's the Louvre. - It's a Louvre. - Much easier to say, comics in the Louvre, the Louvre, sorry, to make it more accurate. And so it wasn't quite, we didn't quite, 'cause it didn't quite get into the classist establishment. They probably, they have, of course, since, interestingly, the Louvre, which I didn't think I even mentioned in here, perhaps in the book, is have, in the last, maybe, well, several years, maybe four, five years now, at least, have commissioned each year, a top French comics artist to do a story, just responding to, in whatever way they want, playfully, satirically, whatever, two works in the Louvre. And in fact, of those, one of the most recent artists last year was Enquibilau, who's one of the big, big next, you know, French comics. And his, his book was not actually a narrative, it wasn't a graphic novel, it was essentially taking photographs of objects in the Louvre, and then imagining ghostly figures who would have interacted in some way with the characters or creators of these paintings. And those pictures were actually exhibited in the Louvre itself. - So we got it? So we're in it. - Yeah, we're in it. - We're in that, yeah. - Well, let me ask you, as far as I know from your history, which largely comes from reading Eddie Campbell comics, you were around in the very early 80s, running the fast fiction table for comics and these bi-weekly fairs. - By monthly. - By monthly. - By monthly, sorry. - By monthly. - By monthly, yes. - By monthly, yes. - Did you think back then, did you even think of the future 30, 30 plus years in the line? - Yeah, could you imagine what it'd been? - I think I must have done, 'cause I think in the end, if you want, you know, things happen, don't just happen sort of without imagining them. And the fact is that within a year or two, I've been to, for example, to Angua Lem, the comics festival, I go, this is my 30th visit, actually, coming up at the end of this month, in the January, and it is always, I mean, inspiring, but from the beginning, you could see the first visit was just so extraordinary to see the vibrancy of what comics could be. And so along the way, I just, my horizons have just continually been opened by comics, and I think it's such a rich medium, and such an un misunderstood and despised one, and so part of me sort of wants to speak up for the underdog, I guess. And another side of me also, I am genuinely shaped by the comics I read and what I learned from comics, and I don't, I know I'm probably missing out. I know they were talking about getting books of Stefan Zweig, who I think I've probably read something about him. I have read a very nice, custom and graphic novel about Zweig, actually, a real French one, biographical graphic novel, quite well done. I presume quite well done, but for many, many ways, if I've only got, we only have so much time to take in material, and comics not necessarily speed reading, they need to be thought about and-- - Oh, I've still got nine pieces of building stories left on my coffee trip. I've only gotten through five of them, and I keep going-- - I get back into that, and, you know-- - Yeah, you can return and read it again, and I've done another order. - Christopher, it could be a challenge, yeah. - Yeah, that is quite an daunting work, isn't it? But the fact is that they can really inform and add to your view of the world, just to your knowledge and your humanity, hopefully, too. - Yeah, that's what I keep trying to argue, you know, I don't have those books, it's comics, it's fine, I get something out of these things. As, again, from just reading Eddie's work over the years, I've gained a lot about the way one's life progresses, and the universality of our lives. - Let me ask you, you were the first official publisher of Eddie Campbell, I think. - Thank you. - Or you brought the Alec books into print. - Yeah, true we did, and of course, we serialized, he was previously self-publishing Alec in small print items, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, it's only one of the first, anyway. - And the first person to publish a Neil Gaiman Dave McKean collaboration. - Yeah, without the risk of, you know, telling, asking whichever children you love the most, who are you proudest of discovering as a publisher, and bringing into a larger audience. - Yes, really tough to think about Gil, 'cause I don't perhaps think about them a pride particularly. No way, I'm, of course, I am very pleased to see what develops out of what you set that in motion, perhaps by looking for people at platform. So it's difficult, I think it wouldn't be fair for me to, I don't think, I even can think of one. - I think it's still, yeah. - I think, and there are, I would also say that along the way, for all the, for every Eddie Campbell, or McKean, or McKean, or Jamie Hewlett, or however these names that have come along, there's been plenty that I think should be, in another world, would have been more-- - That's my next question, actually. Who's the most under-appreciated cartoonist whom you absolutely adore? - Yeah, gosh. - Who'd you love to see? - I would, I think too, I would like to mention, certainly would be, and one, at least it's had a reasonable amount of recognition is Chris Reynolds, who we used to run in Escape magazine, and Seth, a great Canadian cartoonist. - Oh, I'm interviewing him in June. - Yeah, he's a great admirer, and wrote a superb essay about Chris Reynolds' work. Having only just, in the last year or so, reconnected with Chris, I think even he was impressed with Seth's analysis and understanding of the work that even perhaps he hadn't fully understood what he was doing, in pulling together this world of Mauritania and monitor, which had a brief moment of a high profile publication, because after the sense of mouse, penguin commissioned a few, or you get to do the new works for them, and one of them was Chris, and I often wonder whether it was because Mauritania would sit alphabetically right next to mouse, but of course that wasn't why, but it was in the same format, and it was a really special, strange, important book, and in time, these artists, it might take a long time, but in time, these sort of artists will get, we discovered and get appreciated, and so having people like both Seth and Chris were admired by Reynolds' work should be a sign people should check him out. And another is Ed Pinsent, who is not as well known as he should be, who moved away from comics, because of his deep passion for music, both making it and writing about it, writing extremely eloquently, vast knowledge of avant-garde and pop and rock and all kinds of music, and he has his own radio show on resonance here in London, but his comics, again, are sort of intuitive and strange and haunting. He has series like "Wendy Will the Force" and Henrietta, "Asterial" stories. He's had a very nice anthology of his work produced called "Magic Mirror," which I put into the 1001 comics you must read before you die, even though probably hardly anybody else on the committee that I discussed, was even aware of it, just thought, let's get him in, because... - He's got 1001, so... - About 1001, yeah, there's a few spare, and also because I do think generally, because I think his work is just visionary, extraordinary, and, again, somebody, like Chris Reynolds, who doesn't necessarily understand what it is he's doing, and we don't always understand it, but there's something bigger there but still to be appreciated, I think, and teased out, and these are these kind of marginal figures of which there are so many who often kind of come from other fields or do a brief moment of working comics and then sort of go, "Well, they don't get the success, they move away," that are fascinating and often move the medium forward when they're eventually... - Oh, we discovered. - One of the great conversations I had, and somebody I'll be recording with this summer, you also mentioned in the book, Richard McGuire, I met in 2012, and had to explain to my wife what he did in the late '80s with one comic strip that blew everybody's mind, and apparently no more comics work, subsequently. - He's done a few bits and pieces, he did too. Obviously he did, yeah, he did. - I started having to hunt him down after that. - Yeah, it was not longed, yeah. - So we'll get together, 'cause he's doing a longer version of this one amazing comic strip here, but it was that sense of you came up with something that was so avant-garde, that's so absolutely amazing, and yet, okay, this is it, I don't have to keep churning stuff out, I've worked in other genres, I've got music, I've got a lot of art. - Yeah, well, he's a real polymath, as you know, and of course, he also has a fantastic animated section of "Fears of the Dark," the animated anthology film, which is a masterpiece, but he's done some stuff from Xtreme News, and yeah, I mean, I saw a few bits and pieces of what was developing for this much more expanded version of here, which I just hope it gets done, of course. - I saw him at the Brooklyn Festival in December, he's-- - It is developing. - He still says, this summer we'll sit down and talk, and it should be on this fall, so. - Oh, as soon as this year? - With a big interactive component, too. - Yes, it's going to-- - It's going to, yeah. - Yeah, I suppose again, I think. - For listeners, there's no real way to explain what this comic strip is, but I'll put a link to it in the post that accompanies this episode, 'cause it's, it was something that, as our resident comics expert, Tom Spurgeon, put it, it was the moment when cartoonists realized that they were using musical notes and Richard Maguire was using chords. He just advanced the art form in a way that just hadn't been done before. - And maybe from the first question of here, is like a sort of a minute after something whereas the graphic novel will be the full symphony, perhaps, yeah. - Well, but too many expectations, but we're going to be way too much on this one. - It's going to be, yeah, yeah. It's going to be very exciting, too. Him revisiting this and expanding what he could do, yeah. - But again, over the 30 plus years, did you really expect that things could progress like this, that both in terms of cultural acceptance and in terms of advancing the art form? - Yeah, I mean, I guess, I remember when I was first promoting comics, sort of literally dealing with the public, this was way back in the early '80s when I was promoting a magazine, I wasn't publishing, I was involved with a called "pst" in which is the most ridiculous name for any magazine, really, and how do you go into a news agent and ask, have you got a copy of "pst" or "pst" or whatever? Anyway, and at the time, I was in some radio program in Manchester, and someone said, I think you should be called Paul Mission to Explain Gravette, and I've got them in the back of that kind of lodge, I guess. And, yeah, I've never reset this, I suppose, before, but one thing I know that my grandfather always used to sort of wonder whether I would go into the church for some reason or become some, because I don't quite know why, but I was, he was very theatrical, he used to write sketches, he was very good with words, he wrote poetry, he performed with my grandmother on stage, they did sort of humorous numbers and things, and my mother also was a sang in local operatic, she was the star of things like "Merry Widow" and "South Pacific" and things like that, these kind of great shows, I used to see her growing up, so I've had a kind of bit of performance background, genetically, perhaps, and experientially. And I do think that's probably why I'm here, and I think, so yes, I would be wrong to say that I'm not, as I'm totally surprised by what's going on, I think it is a generational thing, it's a transformational thing which is allowed the fact that people who, like me, perhaps, love comics and see this medium as being rich of an is, have managed to get themselves into positions of cultural power of some sort or another, and can therefore open doors and opportunities follow from that. And of course it is also, they created themselves, literally carving out a space for themselves away from so many of the demands and the expectations of vast production and deadlines and catering for what exists already, for what is always sold, and finding stuff that's new, yeah. - Speaking of your cultural power, your co-curating exhibition at the British Library on British Columbia, what's the exhibition going to entail, what's the theme and how are you selecting what's going in? - We've narrowed down a title which has taken the whole fascinating process of what do you call it, focus groups and these kind of testing of the public. Exactly, and other people say that a camel is a horse designed by a committee, but actually a camel's worked terribly well, and they get across the desert pretty well. The title's gonna be Comics Unmasked, Art and Anarchy in the UK, and that's obviously with a strong punk reference there, but adding in the word art as well. And the approach is not, of course, to be some sort of comprehensive survey of British comics, it's British comics, comics actually made in Britain or made by British people, so that allows us to cover the considerable output of British creators for American comics in particular, put up elsewhere around the world, particularly for things like Watchmen, et cetera, et cetera, all the big work, authors like Moore and Morrison and Gaiman and others, Ennis and Ellis, et cetera. But the Unmasked aspect, of course, might submit people think it's all gonna be superhero based, and it will have an element in there because there's no getting away from that, these are major figures, but the subversive aspect is what we're keenest to try and tease out here. And the way that comics have questioned authority or the way that they've upset the establishment, why do they still actually antagonize and alarm people? I guess that one of the missions behind it also is just to look back at some of the controversies, the trials, we've had our own version of the 1950s horror comics campaign here, which actually, unlike America, which resulted in the internal self-centred of the comics code self-regulatory approach. In this country, we had an act parliament legislation that was discussed by the highest levels, an act that still is in power, in theory. And we've had all sorts of other scandals about underground comics, which, again, were taken to court and resulted in surreal situations, which I think we're already now in 2014 to look back on and re-examine a question, why did this happen? What were we so anxious about? Should we be still anxious, so anxious about comics? We're not pretending in this exhibition that the medium is entirely and inherently sort of anarchic and subversive and going to be, 'cause there's no end of comics, probably, in fact, the majority of comics, that tend to kind of toe the line and reinforce pretty, perhaps even sometimes quite worrying values from a very early age. I'm reading this book right now, which is around before, called "Catching Them Young" by Bob Dixon, which is from the '70s cover, actually, "Biapoty Simmons", which is looking at British kids' comics, children's weekly, in particular, ranging from those who titles through to kind of boys' action and adventure stuff. And it is, I mean, you can't get away from that. There is a lot of very stereotypical racist, sexist, classist ideas just being pushed and pushed all the time in it. Of course, the point is that those same values are on great many other things. I mean, now that you find them in movies and TV and culture, and then it's been everywhere. And it's been a very good book, I think, about the whole kind of consumerist aspect of comics, the comics selling the aspirational lifestyle that you must, you haven't got the latest such and such than your behind kind of thing. That goes way back, even to the origins of American newspapers strips were often advocating that. I think of Blondie or even, you know, the bringing up father, Maggie and Jiggs, where, you know, in the end, there was still there's a balance between the aspirational and the let's just have fun and go and have corned beef and cabbage down at Dinty-Mores and be a relaxed Irish sort of cut type as it were. So those, we are, we can't ignore those, but we're seeking out the stuff that's edgy, the stuff that's perhaps been shelved in the restricted access department of the Brielle, the British Library, which is where fascinatingly a lot of the comics are. Quite a lot of certain comics anyway, those particularly more controversial ones are sat along similar shelving, or just near them is all the pornography, the stuff is all the stuff. Actually, if you want to look at it, you have to get sometimes special permission and sometimes you'll be supervised. - That's okay, one of my previous guests-- - As you read. - Well, he needed a note from his priest to be able to read Bertrand Russell because it was on the index per hibitorum at the church, so his father-- - His hibitorum. - His father was really free to ask, "No, no, I have a note from the priest. It's okay, so he wants upon a time that meant something apparently." - Yes, yes, yes. - So that's part of it, and I think what we're finding is that there really is quite a lot of material that simply hasn't seen the light in a long time, and a lot of preconceptions that particularly about Britain and the British being a nation that doesn't particularly like comics, that doesn't consume them, although there are particularly aimed at a sort of lower-class, working-class sort of whatever audience. A lot of these things, these are presumptions that we're trying to puncture and try to question at least. And one of the important recent discoveries that made a fact by several researchers, but one in particular needs to be singled out named Tyrious smoldering, who is a comics writer, a very, very good one. He's in a marvelous three-volume, written in a series of von Desenie in France called McKay about Windsor McKay, which is just a beautiful, beautiful work. He came across in Hay, Hay on Why, the famous home of the book festival, and one of the towns in Britain with the most bookshops, probably with the most in fact. He came across these extraordinary comics from the Victorian era, 1860s, '70s, '80s, this sort of period, in very classy magazines, classy newspapers. One was called The Illustrated London News, which, okay, it was illustrated, but to a large extent was always presumed to be more kind of single-panel or in not sequential, as it not to have very much in the way of what we think of as the more-- - I don't know, these aren't comics. This is illustration. - Exactly, exactly. And there was also another very important paper called The Graphic, as its name implies again, a lot of illustration, but for some reason, previous historians and researchers had either ignored them or had never even considered that this is where comics might be found. And the ones that were found, they were-- sometimes they were done for special Christmas supplements in glorious color, very impressive color. Other times they were sprinkled throughout the paper are really innovative, really, and they clearly are not-- I mean, these papers were read by a wide audience, they would have certainly been read by all the classes and almost more likely more the upper, middle to upper classes. And as we are still hugely class-ridden and complex in this country, not that America perhaps is that class disease, but we have a particularly complicated system. - Yeah, we have a different one, but it's just as restricting as much as possible. - Exactly, exactly. This is gonna be one of the elements in the exhibition we're going to look at and to address the fact that actually possibly many more classes in Britain were reading comics than has been acknowledged before. - Now, what do you see as the key differences between UK and US when it comes to comics tradition? And do you see those more interweaving now? Go with the first question, what differences do you see between them? - That's interesting. - Or do you think? I mean, obviously in terms of their format, we've never had really the monthly periodical, the American comic book. There's never really been that established here. I mean, certainly the main format has been, which is closer to some of the early anthology comics, think of action comics or whatever were the funniest, for example, which were anthologies, mixtures of things. - Two pages of this, 16 pages of that. - Exactly. We only have maybe one or two or three pages 'cause our comics were cheaper and thinner and in that sense, that's one considerable difference. I guess the other thing, but I suppose, would be that we've got major characters, but the big problem often is that with exceptions, one or two, all of them have only had their moment of glory for a certain period and then they've kind of been forgotten. And it's hard to think of any characters except perhaps some of the biggest sort of childhood characters. - Judge Dred, you can say it. - Yeah, of course, I'm thinking about it, but I'm thinking of going back to say to the early period where you've had characters who've become forgotten, whereas America's very good at maintaining characters over a long period and adjusting them to suit the times. You only have to think of how Superman has changed so many times over the years or Batman, for example, in Britain, we simply haven't had that. So you have successful characters that are sort of known, but are also lapsed out of the culture. And that I think is probably related to the fact that they probably just simply didn't realize what they got and capitalized on that. A character like Dander, who is a '50s space hero, has had a few sporadic reincarnations over the years, but it hasn't been consistently published and isn't really a consistent figure in the same way that you would have, say, with a Spider-Man else. Whereas in other countries, other, certainly in America, you would have, that would have kept going forever. So we've, and a great character like Modesty Blaze, which is a brilliant, sexy, sort of, avengers, as in M.A.P. or kind of, exactly. Sort of female spy character, whatever. She, in another culture, she would suit freedom. She'd been an American character. There would have been the Tarantino movie. There would have been, you know, there would have been the TV shows. There would have been all the stuff that we associate with a successful franchise. So that's a pretty big difference. And it reflects, I just think, the fact that we don't understand how powerful these things could be. And we're only now starting to do that, perhaps, with characters like Dred. I mean, those recent Dred movie of its type was extremely good. - Was it? - Yeah. - Like, I didn't see either of them. - And I don't know how big, how easy it is to sell it. But we know that, you know, as an export, maybe it wasn't so successful. But certainly here, it was a big hit. - Well, you can compare it to the first one. And it is a relatively easy sell in terms of saying that Rob Schneider isn't in this one. And that's, in America, that's probably enough to get people to go. (laughing) - Yeah, absolutely. - Yeah. And that is one of those things I tried explaining to my wife how almost every great British cartoonist who's made a splash in America has put in his dues at 2,000 AD, sure doing Judge Dred's strips. Whereas, I guess, in America, you would have some variety. You would have been doing a Spider-Man. You would have, you know, some attempts, or at least some different types of titles you'd come up with. Whereas it just seemed, for my, you know, thousands of miles away, viewpoint that, you know, that was sort of the nexus for a lot of people. - That continues to be one of the kind of training grounds and conduits and hot beds of talent for America. But it's not the only one, of course, but it's probably because I suppose the aesthetics of 2,000 AD are closer to what it seemed to be the aesthetics of most mainstream comics and there's a certain kind of uniformity there. And of course, as we know, American comics, the main Marvel DC and perhaps now image, but certainly Marvel DC are always, are talent pooling around the world now. And they used to, they've dipped into the Philippines sometime in the past. Britain became a kind of brat pack, brat pack kind of cool for a period with, on the wings of people like Gibbons and Bolland and obviously I'm more particularly in others. But now, I mean, the artists come from all over the place. And I suppose my feeling about it is, as I just touched on it briefly in comics art, is that, I mean, there is a fantastic talent out there. I've met over my travels and you meet artists who are working, have worked on American figures, like Spiderman or whatever it might be. And the illustrators are often extremely talented and there's enormous polish and facility to their work. There's often, perhaps not as much individuality to it because it's got to conform. Well, perhaps they have to, there are certain how styles I believe certainly within, more so perhaps within Marvel than within DC where I gather, Marvel does tend to kind of want a particular steer people in a certain way. - You either draw the webbing under the armpits. - Yeah, but there are, there are, there is that. But it just slightly saddens me that these people, I mean, maybe they have to do that tour of duty. They get a fan following and that fan following will then follow them to stuff that they can create there's more their own and it creates a role but also self expressive a bit more. - Well, that's a question I had after the US-UK issue that sense of globalization does it lead largely in your perspective to more homogenization or do you, I mean, you mentioned within the book a lot of diversity, both springing up in the art comics world as well as artists from other nationalities, you know, working for US titles. Do you see it ultimately is a good thing? The way that the traditions and the American art form proliferation around the world sort of impacts local artists. - Yeah, 'cause I think we've seen examples where manga is the obvious example where it's spread around the world and become a set of cliches in many ways, a set of sub styles that can be taken off the peg and there are of course to be plenty of people making manga of their own wherever they go. I've seen it, I've seen it in many countries, I was in Algeria a few years ago and saw Algerian manga and I thought it was a lie. I didn't know it was even happening, but it is. But hopefully, and it does happen, there's something almost unavoidably local, specific in the culture that means that whatever that was produced, some of it at least is going to be impossible to say, well, that's just like comics that come out of Japan. It can't probably never be exactly like that and it will inevitably go from being globalized to globalized, one of these awful words that I've come across, but it does seem to happen. And I think that we shouldn't forget that we think of today as a global world and everyone's into it. But in fact, if you go back to some of the earliest days of comics, I mean, even back to Progoth's Prince, for goodness' sake, which are pretty early when it comes to British comics, these things were being moved around, they were being discussed certainly across Europe, for example, things were more fluid and more exchanged historically than we tend to think. Of course, now it's much quicker and much easier, but things have always moved. And I think they instigate and inspire wherever they go, there's a chance to add something fresh to that to the mix. To give people a bigger lexicon and armory of how to make comics has got to be a good thing, especially because otherwise, if we tend to kind of keep things in there, kind of set little spaces of, this is the stuff, this is how you do it kind of thing, you get copies of photocopies of photocopies, things become incestuous and in dread. - As we saw for 10 years after the Watchmen, we continue to see, as we saw it in-- - Things don't move on. - Yeah, things don't move on. - What do you think it is about manga that just infected the entire planet? Do you think there's anything inherent? What do you think it is about the form, I guess, that became so appealing to so many, both consumers and artists? - Well, at its earliest entry points, often through, of course, the ambassador of anime being on TV or available in various forms, it obviously gave young people something that was theirs that their parents probably didn't like or even actively disliked, and it was peculiar because, okay, in some cases, it was back to front. It was certainly had all these weird stylistic things that people assumed equated manga entirely as in the big eyes and explosions, et cetera, et cetera. And so that was crucial, I think, because it marked the fact that at that point, in many cultures, even in somewhere as comics rich as France, the comics weren't, for some reason, connecting to a young audience, and that this was an alternative. I also think, as I said in my first book, actually, 10 years ago, I did my first book on comics about manga, manga '60s, Japanese comics. I think it also, the values and ideas put across in manga, often don't conform, they still have conformities, of course, but they don't conform so much to the kind of good versus evil, good beating evil, the clear-cut moral definitions that pretty much underpin a lot of Western, certainly, and American, probably mainstream to the popular comics, the venture comics material. That would be the kind of starting point, of course, and then, you have to remember that in the West, we received manga in a very peculiar way, because there were attempts to do weekly anthology titles like the sort of phone directory size giant, sort of things like shirt and jump and things like that, but by and large, what the format that stuck and was pushed particularly first by Tokyo pop in America and Britain too, were the volumes, the paperback volumes, which is what we now think of as manga, really, which means that we cut out a lot of the other process, the addictive weekly thing, but it became, instead of an addictically, sort of monthly, quarterly, whatever, thing where another volume would come along, and we were getting stories much more quickly than the Japanese themselves were, because often there was a huge backlog here, we've got so many volumes of Dragon Ball or whatever, we've got them all done, we can pump them out every month, and this meant an enormous, immersive power of the medium was there regularly and addictively, in that sense, in a way that it wasn't in Japan. So those are some reasons why I think it caught on in a very, very powerful way, and it was hard to compete with, I mean, the sheer volume of material that could be translated once something took off. - Yeah, especially once they gave up on trying to do it from left to right and just stuck with the original formatting and just trusted that people would learn. - Yeah, but still, of course, enormous amounts of manga, which haven't crossed over, they haven't found an audience, there were lots of expectations of what would work. - Oh, I'm still waiting for the last five volumes of "Chromardi High School", that's, you know, Tom Spurgeon turned me out of that, and I just-- - I saw the live action movie of that, it was hilarious too. - Yeah, I saw some of the anime, but I haven't watched it like that. We do, there's a football player named "Chromardi", and any time he goes up to try to block a pass, which is laughing. - Is it "Chromardi" rather than "Chromardi"? - Well, yeah, they call him "Chromardi", yeah, and I just joke that it's, you know, he's gonna go up, the hellman will come off, it'll be Freddie Mercury underneath, you know, just, you know, once these things infect you, you're pretty much done. - Yeah, 'cause those are the kind of, those are the kind of minor, of course, which I also love because they do, they're just kind of concepts that you go where as this comes from. And it's part, also, of course, we have an extra level of laughter that perhaps, which is maybe the danger of being slightly superior or slightly kind of, those weird Japanese, where do they get their ideas from, which is a bit tricky, but it is, you kind of join on that level, too. - The fact that all of the high schools are named after American baseball players, it's just, you know, these oddball touches, like, okay, well, I'll just keep traveling along, you just, you're making me laugh, this is gonna work fine. - And I think that does, that, and another example of the comments that I've been in, I'm younger, I've been enjoying currently things like "Firmi Roma", which is an amazing one about a Roman, an ancient Roman architect of baths, spas, or whatever, who finds a time warp in his, in a bath, he's built that transports him forward to modern day Japan, and he encounters their culture, of course, of bathing, and spas, et cetera, and learns from it and brings it back to the past to become a remarkably successful and an innovative architect, which is, of course, perfectly does what the Japanese pull up, because on the one hand, you learn about the ancient Rome and its bathing culture, but, of course, you also have this particular, that the Japan is the source of this, which, of course, is completely upside down, but it's educational and crazy, and it's so successful, a bestseller, it's made into an live action movie that was in a box office, number one, I believe, in the last year or so, and you think, that's marvelous, and that really, I've said it, perhaps before, but I think the manga is an example of what happens when comics become very, certainly ubiquitous, and become just free to get on and do all kinds of imaginary, imaginative storytelling, and to respond to the spirit of the times, but also just to allow artists to bring all kinds of experience and knowledge, and the author of Therma Romeo, who's never mind, he could be, I don't remember her name, but I met her at the Paris Book Fair, but she had unusually lived in Europe, she had actually fallen in love in Italy and knew and studied a lot about their culture and history, so she was bringing all of this knowledge into her manga, which is the kind of thing you go, well, this is what will happen, people should be able to bring all kinds of things into manga and not simply have to stick to tied and tested tropes and cliches. - We've done a lot of comics history here. What's your history with comics? When did you discover them? - Well-- - None of us can remember the first thing we read, but-- - Not really, no, of course not, no. Well, it's strange because I'm curating this exhibition on British comics, and I realized that much as I appreciate a lot of British comics, I didn't grow up with very many of them, and the ones I grew up with were quite kind of classy, I guess, and my parents basically bought me and my younger brother, look and learn, which was an educational magazine that happened to include some comics, a fantastic illustration, and of course they bought it because it was educational, and my brother and I didn't really bother to read very much of the text, he was quite text heavy and a bit dreary, but the thing we loved-- - comics, yeah. - Were the comics, there was a two-page comic called The Rise and Fall of the Tragon Empire, which was a wonderfully fully painted comic, which is one, actually it's something we were discussing in differences between American comics and British comics, and one of the things that the British pioneered, as far as I can work out, certainly, when you look at global comics were fully painted comics, comics done in a kind of high definition, often very realistically painted comics. Pretty, of course, on, in photo review, very often, kind of printing that simply wasn't used in American comics, and we really excelled at that, whether it's Frank Hamson's down there, or in this case, Don Lawrence's art work on Tragon Empire. And it's peculiar, basically, because it was science fiction, but it was also Roman epics, it was kind of like Quovardis meets Flash Gordon, or something like that, I suppose, but it was really peculiar and very sort of English, sort of like, you know, the Empire thing was there, and had ancient Rome mixed up, and it was just electrifying, because it was serialized every week, and we were hooked on that. And then also, I grew up on the Gerry Anderson TV puppet shows, which I think is sort of known in America, but, and they are certainly a little bit known in them, in, of course, Europe, but in the UK, though they were, if you're at the right age, they'd completely hypnotized you. And you didn't, you didn't see the strings, however clumsy, I can tell you, I didn't really notice them till you sort of grew up a bit, you just believed in these things. And I can remember, actually, the first episode that, my brother and I watched, my brother was younger than me about about two years, and he was really quite traumatized, because at one point, there was a puppet with bandages all around his head, he'd been in some terrible accident, and it was quite frightening for him. And it involved this marvelous creature called something like "Sidewind" or something, which was a bit like those kind of walking craft things that walk on the planet Hoth in Star Wars, but this is, this is at the next days, and it had like, was chopping down, it was mainly a tree-logger, but then it was, it was some kind of jungle cat creature like giant machine. And so all the machinery completely captivated us. And there were comics, there was a comic called TV 21, that was published with a cover date at one century ahead, as if it was a newspaper with photographs from the TV show on the front cover, it wasn't a comic at all, in fact, that sense. So it would plop through the letterbox onto our doormat, and we would imagine that we were getting this newsletter from the future. And inside, there were stories of all the Gerry Anderson puppet shows, as they came along, including ones that followed Sting Ray, and then Thunderbirds, and then Captain Scarlet, and Joe 90, all those wonderful programs in full color, glorious color. And of course, in those years, you couldn't watch the programs again, you had to be there when it was transmitted, or that was it, no videos, no internet, no DVDs, whatever. So in between, this was the stuff that we looked at, and poured over and over, because it was the world we could go back to whenever we wanted to. And how has the comic scene changed, exactly? You know, both in terms of, as we've talked about, the sheer proliferation of cartoonists out there, but how is the scene that you came up with, you know, what's it like, I guess, nowadays? And how tough is it for you to keep up with what's going on nowadays? You mentioned just not having enough hours in the day for comics. How much of a challenge is that? Yeah, I mean, if you're talking about the scene, not just in this country, but I try to get-- I'm probably slightly insane, really, to be wanting to get some sort of global perspective. There aren't many, many people that do this. That's why you should do it? I think it is. I think it's why I'm here. It all goes back to having holidays when I was growing up, even if just to Europe, for example, and just wanted to know what else was out there, always being curious about comics. When I was a little kid, I knew where we went. You looked in the phone book to see bookstores and comic stores, because you wanted to see your parents. Could you just take me over to this place? I just want to see you know that's-- For me, obviously, even before the era of comic stores, in the early '70s or so, when I was having holidays, say in Germany or Switzerland or wherever it might be, I would always buy something off the newsstands. My parents would go, "It's OK because he might be improving his French and German, but she probably did help a bit." But also, I just wanted to learn, to learn all the time. And also reading Morris Horns, he was the editor of the World Encyclopedia of Comics that came out in about '75 or '75 or so. I remember being a year or two later in the public library in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I lived for about a year and a half, just a year or so, a year and a half or so, after graduating from Cambridge. And there, I would go in almost certainly a couple of times a week because it was near the campus at the University of New Mexico. And I was just reading through the entire-- it's the Wikipedia, I don't think so much of it stuck, but I was just amazed to see how much more there was out there. And knew that even that was only got a tiny amount. And that's, as I say, perhaps the beginning of the book here, that is perhaps the slightly paranoid idea I have. If I stop and think from, just how much comics are still being made at this very moment around the world, if you become overly aware of it, you start to go, "Stop! Do you just stop, please?" But in terms of a perspective, this is a medium I think that simply isn't going to go away. No matter how many times it's been attacked and critiqued and taken to court and censored and constrained or whatever, it is now perhaps coming into its own in the 21st century. In this internet era, there's something still very special about what comics do. How much they get warped and changed into motion comics as I've touched on the last chapter, these new digital forms of comics the way I have read and do read comics on my iPad. And it's something I'm still having to get used to, because I also appreciate the different way of reading and the different appreciation of comics that that brings. The future is very, very positive for comics, I think. But I think they're going to go on transforming and hopefully go on developing. One of the best quotes I came across a little while ago, there's an editor I was reading of an amazingly interesting, monthly Japanese manga magazine called Iki, I, KKI. It's where artists like Taya Matsumoto, who did Tekon Kinkreet and he's currently doing this wonderful series called Sunny, which is one of the most beautiful manga you could possibly read. It's about partly, I think partly about his experience or close to his experience of sort of day care or hostels, stroke, orphanages, basically places where kids would be sometimes left for a longer or shorter times, depending on what's happening in the family. And Iki is a, the editor was saying we're still at the dawn of the age of manga. That to me made, you know, that was for him to think that we haven't even, we're still starting. There's still lots of new ways of telling and things to tell that we haven't got to yet. - Okay, the fact that, you know, just, it was only a few years ago that Otonmo, not Otonmo, oh gosh, the ad drifting life. - Oh yeah, Tatsumi, yeah. - Yeah, we've only just discovered him in North America in the last few years, it's one of those. Oh, and you have 35 years of work plus sitting back here that we haven't even touched, you know? - I think the counter that should be added that I think there's also, there's, in some ways you could, if you looked at, just in terms of balance, the Japanese haven't really discovered very much of our comics in the last sort of few, well, several years, probably. There are some additions of European comics, there's bits and pieces that have been put into, certainly Korea, perhaps slightly more, responsive to that. But I think the interchange of work, and even perhaps as important, the theories and ideas behind comics, we need to learn more globally than we have done, there's more to be done. In some ways, in some ways, the manga world doesn't need, perhaps, to see more from abroad, but I think it would benefit from that. - It gets that cultural cross-pollination that we're talking about. - Yeah, I think so. - One of the questions that I've been hitting on lately, largely because my comics experience sort of peaked in the early '90s, from the '80s, so that my conception of great cartooning is Eddie Campbell, the Hernandez brothers, Jim Woodring, Seth and Chester Brown, all guys who were producing around that same era, something I always ask Tom, who's around nowadays, who's young and upcoming, who's in that Dan Klaus, Chris Ware, obviously in that trajectory. Do you see anyone young approaching that sort of pantheon level, or do you think there's the industry and the art form even permit that sort of progression nowadays? - Right, yeah, there definitely are artists that are younger and developing in very exciting ways. Not all of them are going to necessarily blossom to the same extent, perhaps. I mean, as an example, I suppose, some of the new artists developing out of the UK publisher, Nobra, particularly Lupius and Tom, and John McNaught, I think are doing important early work. I think perhaps there's been a lot of excitement about them, which perhaps is still a little bit early, but it's there, there's something there. - That's the point of wondering, yeah. Is there too much expectation and too much industry structure now that doesn't even allow that sort of growth and, you know. - Yeah, things are very visible, of course, now. And with the internet, certainly anything exciting, perhaps a lot of the time exciting get picked up and can get perhaps exaggerated sort of enthusiasm brought out here when it's still perhaps an early point, but there is great potential amongst them. And certainly, you know, across internationally, there's no shortage of new names popping up all the time. And artists who are perhaps who are not perhaps quite so new or young, should we say, who are clearly just going on and producing more and more amazing material work. And so one of the debuts for this year, for example, I think, an artist who happens to be Japanese but is based here in the UK is a guy called Fumio Obata. His debut graphic novel published here in the UK is called Just So Happens, which is a beautiful work and is partly based on his own, is partly autobiographical, but it's to do with a woman who loses her father in Japan, a Japanese woman who has to travel back to Japan and reconcile the large divide between her and her father. And it's a fascinating sort of hybrid we talked about. Is there a danger of some sort of world comic style developing where it's, everything's gonna look the same? Well, no, I don't think there is because there are so many forms of comics, even if you were to say, well, let's take a bit of Western and European and manga and put them together, you'd still end up with so many variations that it would just go on exponentially being different as opposed to the same. And for example, in a couple of weeks, I'm interviewing Paul Pope, who's over for a post at the Angolan Comics Festival. And he's another artist who just goes on with such energy and innovation. And he's now shifted to doing this beautiful boy's comic battling boy, which makes me want to be 10 all over again, really, because it's just so exuberant and also actually very quite, really quite, gets to settle the feelings of can you live up to expectations and this kind of thing. It's just really inspiring to see that. In terms of where the new talent's going to come out from, there's also of course the rise of women who I've not really touched on even enough in this conversation. And it's hard to kind of, I won't pin down just one or two, but the point is that that cannot be underestimated. It is such a crucial shift. - Having more women within cartooning? - Yeah, and of course more women readers, more women advocates for the form as well. It's about bloody time, basically. And it still is something that people have fully adjusted to, I think. It's, at least in the US, we see it just at conferences and events now there's the, in a sense, as the internet has allowed for a lot more communication, a lot more openness about art for women too. At the same time, it's also really, really magnified the misogyny within a lot of different scenes. And so it's, yeah, there are a lot of issues. - Are you going out within a no-day? - Yeah, well, yeah, I'm always a little bit concerned when any kind of event has virtually no women on their guest list, which still happens, 'cause this is the part of the comics world is obviously very boyzy and bloke-ish and locker room-ish. And also, even if they do have them, perhaps they have a one special, sort of usually, it's the Sunday morning slop, and no one's gonna go to where it's the women in comics, exactly, which amazingly does still happen. I mean, in fact, Thought Bubble at least last year, which is one of the main comic, major comics festivals that was based up in Leeds last year, changed their women in comics too. I think women and maybe LGBT or something, in cards, but it's slightly, which is a step forward, but it's still kind of this vectorizing and living thing. - Kate Beaten went bananas, I think, last year, which was a millionth, you know. So what's it like being a woman in comics? She's a cartoonist, you just let me be a cartoonist, I don't have a female cartoonist. - Actually, let's just think about you making sure that women are included alongside, as everybody should be, in a much more equal, much more regular way, just seeing that they're part of the medium now, they're not some special case. - Right, but that's, yeah, just the way we, everything is an adjustment period, which we're trying to make our way through. - Yeah, it is, and I think it's going positively, definitely. I mean, the key activist element of the rise of comics in, of women's comics in Britain, is this group called Ladies Do Comics, L-A-Y-D-W-E-Z, Ladies Do Comics. And they've spread from starting in London a few years ago to having offshoots in Glasgow and Dublin and Leeds. But also, they've had, they've got one regularly now running in Chicago, for example, they've had ones in Brooklyn, they've had them in other places. And then I think it's very, very important because it's run by, and for women, but doesn't exclude women, it's very exclude men. So I joke it also, it allows laddies to come up as well, of course, and it is very welcoming, and a lot of women are coming to these meetings, sort of often from other forms, they might be doing art or filmmaking or goodness knows what. And they, finding their way to comics, or at least exploring, is this, could this be the medium that suits what I want to express? And so it's actually nurturing new talent, new work, that is going to really be important, I think, is already. So that's tremendously exciting. I've had their meeting tomorrow night at Foyles, they meet once a month in London, and it's always a delight to go on to that. - And you have to give your card or anything? - No, no, you just book up, it's only like 150, and they provide cakes, which is important, of course, too. And it is often very, very moving, too, because a lot of their discussions are, that material often tends to be about everyday life, not exclusively, but now autobiography comes into it, too. And sometimes these are artists, maybe making a short presentation, who've never presented their material before. So, and there is supportive feedback, it's not just big names and star studied or whatever. And I think it's a model for the kind of communal things that need to be, that are already happening, supportive groups, places where people can show work and share work, I think is happening everywhere, like this. - That's great. Last couple of questions. First, comics artists coming out, well, it's coming out early February, it's already out in the UK. You mentioned before we started recording that you're working on another book. - Yeah. - What's that? - Well, this will be the book that goes with, but isn't the author, but with comics on Mars, exactly. Yeah, so it's gonna be the same title, of course. - Which means you have to get it done in a big hurry. - It's ridiculous. I've never actually ever quite experienced, sort of putting an exhibition together at the same time as putting a book together is quite interesting. - Are the interviews with that? - Oh, yeah, very much. - Because I figure you're looking at the material at the time of the book. - Sure, sure. And of course, if people often say, well, anyway, this book has got, this hasn't got all the material in the exhibition, that's because the book has has to go to the printers, at least a couple of months ahead of the actual exhibition going to being put together. But it is very good, and it's also great to work. But my co-curator and co-author is John Harris Dunning, who is a very knowledgeable and enthusiast about comics. He's been promoting them for many, for many years. In fact, he helped me when he was at the ICA, the Institute of Contemporary Arts. He was working at the ICA in 2003 to help me start Comica, which is the comics festival I co-direct still to this day. And he's also the author of a very good, strange graphic novel called Salem Brownstone, drawn by a fellow South African called Nicholas Singh, which was published by Walker a few years ago. And he's a very strange sort of Beardsley-esque, Doctor Strange kind of comment that's not really, perhaps really for children. Certainly, it's meant to be for young people, but it's quite odd and quite dark, and of course, tremendously interesting. So he brings in a lot of other knowledge, a lot of other perspectives. And then, of course, we've got the people internally at the BL who have their expertise. And so having those discussions has been tremendous, been tremendous. And ideally, of course, we'd have even more time to explore. We could be there forever, of course. But the BL hasn't put everything, but it's got a hell of a lot. And a hell of a lot also things that we've never seen the light of day really before. You think this has been sitting on a shelf and probably no one's ever looked at it. So that at least sort of the importance of the exhibition and the company book will be based on fascinating things that have often not been shown before. And come back. Yeah, it's going to be on from May the second till August 19th. And there'll be a whole amazing program of events going with it, big names, not just talks, but also music, performance, all kinds of stuff related to it. And it is quite an important sort of-- we're seeing it. John and I really, as a kind of call to arms for comics in the UK, for the creative industry, for readers, to sort of-- for the whole culture to come, to be acknowledged, I think, on another level. And we hope it inspires, actually, many people that visit to contribute to the ongoing creativity of comics in this country. Last two questions. What did you study at Cambridge? I studied law. My dad was a solicitor. The option was otherwise for me to study modern languages. I was quite good at French and German. But I was told there were fewer sort of career prospects, I suppose. And God knows how I got through it. But I mean, to be honest with you, my heart wasn't in it. But I did it. But I know it probably helps having this kind of legal stuff somewhere in my brain. But my parents were incredibly understanding for me and my brother, too, that we've both been allowed to pursue our passions and make them more or less into some sort of career stroke job. It's going to be the next question. Yeah, how did your parents sort of-- how supportive were they? So that's good. Yeah, I guess the one thing-- they said it gave me enough pocket money. I was quite-- I can't pretend I didn't come from a desperately struggling background. On the other hand, we weren't-- so I had enough money to basically blow all my money on comics almost all the time. And they indulged me. Although, admittedly, at one point, my conception got too big. And when I had my own place, my mum insisted that I had to clear them out and put them to storage. I put them somewhere. And right now, I've got just an absurd amount of them. So as you could probably imagine. I have to help out my cousin in Connecticut-- well, he left all of the comics with his parents in Connecticut. And we have to figure out eventually where all of these late '60s into '70s Marvel and DC books have to go. Yeah. I mean, ideally, I have this kind of mad idea that there would eventually be some sort of library-- I don't know who knows what it's going to be. It's back in Ohio. Go to the middle of the island. Yeah, but there should be some place where this stuff could be made available to more people. Because I've got something-- I mean, up to a point, you don't need to have a lot of the stuff that everyone tends to have, or it's endlessly reprinted. But the more interesting, the unusual stuff I've got deserves a place that people could use as a resource. With the Paul Grivitt Library. That'll be your next year. Besides the Bob Dixon book, what other books are on your nightstand? What are you reading? And it could be "Prosan Comics," whatever. Yeah, OK. You think, well, I'm reading them right now. I'm reading Barnaby, a whole lot of them. I've read it before. The lettering always drove me insane on that. Yeah, it's all type-set, isn't it? I know what you mean. That's probably one of the reasons why-- because it's type-set. It was slightly more loved by the literary types. Because the headletting always makes literary types a bit kind of uncomfortable, I think. It was all capital letters for a start, unlike tinting, perhaps. But it's very enjoyable. Well, I'm enjoying that. And I bought a really interesting Portuguese comic. I came across. It was on sale in Gosh, which is the best comic shop really in London, by Francisco Sousa Lobo. And it's called "The Dying Draftsman." I think that's the title, yes. And it's really interesting, philosophical, experimental. I've seen so many comics that I'm afraid I have difficulty, sometimes, in being surprised, I guess. And I kind of have an intuition that, if you open something within a few pages, I can go, I haven't seen anything like this before. I'm going to have to read this. I'm glad you still have that experience. Yeah, I suppose to a lot of stuff which might be wonderful and just happen to be drawn in a very conventional way. And therefore, my eye tends to go, oh, I don't. But my intuition is that these are people that haven't thought about doing anything differently. And that's where my hunger still is not satisfied. Because I think I really am not a very typical reader. I'm not loyal to characters. I don't really care, toppings, about what happens to really any characters. Even ones that I mentioned Thunderbirds growing up without, I wouldn't be very interested in seeing another Thunderbirds episode even now. I know it's great. I've loved it. I can still joke about it. My parent and my brother and I, we still have that language of it, of the FAB and this kind of stuff. Spectrum is green, that kind of stuff. But it's not something where I know other people-- and it's not wrong, other people love particular characters. It's usually a character, it's more than anything else. And they will follow them for a lifetime. And fine. And actually, probably more sensible. More sensible because I'm probably slightly insane from just wanting to go on looking and searching and questioning and provoking myself, try to find stuff that doesn't give me what I know already. And that is the great thing. Comics are just, if you look around enough, they are an inexhaustible supply for adding so much to your life. Final question, like it or not, you are a comics historian. I'm an activist, too, though. I know, you're an activist. And that's how we'll introduce you with that. Where do you see your place in the history of comics? Ah, good. Well, I don't know, let me think. Well, I think there are people that do all kinds of things in comics and a certain plenty of people that can write and draw them and publish them. And I've done that a little bit. I've done a bit of publishing, course, and editing. But I do think this is this sort of thing, which is why the role of communication, the role of presentation of comics and the medium in its richest form is what I'm here to do. I mean, now everybody gets the chance to actually do what I may be deluding myself here. Goodness knows, I'm not particularly religious or anything. But I do think, you know, this is sort of why I'm here. It's what I-- and that's the whole mission to explain, I guess, is the whole man at the crossroads thing. It's sort of like, this-- who else is going to do this? Maybe I'm hopefully-- many other people will-- other people are doing it. Of course, I shouldn't pretend I'm-- it's one lone person doing this. But perhaps I will be seen as someone that contributed to that greater awareness of comics. Because I do think-- I'm sure, in many years, maybe we have got to wait until Dali's year of '37, '84. I hope not. But at some point, we're going to have some sort of shift. It's already happening. It won't be seismic. But it is already happening in a series of tipping points. The dominoes are falling, where we will go, why did we ever think that comics were sort of inferior or sort of encouraged delinquency or literacy or was somehow not the right mixture of art and writing, that they were somehow just to be ignored or put down? Because we've been wrong culturally. We've been wrong about so many things. People look back now and we can see, actually, people that were pro-slavery, people who were sexist, racist, whatever you want to say, all the things that we know we've got wrong. We know that the religions got plenty of things wrong over its over the years. We can now continually, strugglingly, getting things right and looking back and correcting. And I think comics and their position is one of those things that's going to eventually get readjusted correctly, just to be seen as something important, actually something rich, as important as any other expressive art form. I'm glad you helped shepherd that along. Paul Grapette, thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Gil. [MUSIC PLAYING] And that was Paul Grapette. Check out his new book, Comics Art, from Yale University Press at your favorite bookstore or comic shop. He's written and edited several other books, like I mentioned. He does a lot of writing on comics, and you can find all of that at his website, PaulGravette.com. That's P-A-U-L-G-R-A-V-E-T-T. And that's it for this week's virtual memories show. Thank you so much for listening. If all goes according to plan, I'll be back next week with a conversation with Bean Gillsdorf, an artist and writer I last saw in 1991 or so when she was under a different name. If we don't end up meeting, then I don't know. Maybe I'll record the monologue that I wrote during my UK trip and subject you to that. In the meantime, I am a few weeks from becoming unemployed, so I would appreciate it greatly if you'd visit the show's website, chimeraobscura.com/vm, and make a donation to the show via PayPal. You'll see the donate button in the right side column. It's hard to miss. Now, I do this podcast out of love, and I don't plan on putting ads on it any time soon, but it would be nice to see a little money come trickling in as some sort of measure how much you guys appreciate this stuff. As ever, if you've got ideas for guests, you can drop me a line at groth, G-R-O-T-H, at chimeraobscura.com, which I'm not going to spell for you, or V-M-S-Pod on Twitter, or at our Facebook page, facebook.com/virtualmemoriesshow. Until next time, I am Gil Roth, and you are awesome. Keep it that way. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]