20three » comic books

Now in Lemon: lo-fi art & illustration

Owen — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:33:03 +0000

Now In Lemon is a 40 page black and white zine produced by Dan Drakeford and myself. I won’t try to describe it, you can see it all here.

Available for the majestic price of £3.00 plus postage at the Now in Lemon website.

Now in Lemon was printed by those nice people at Footprint Workers co-operative.

Barry Windsor Smith: Machine Man covers, 1984

Owen — Mon, 16 May 2011 18:12:11 +0000

Most comic geeks will probably be familiar with Barry Windsor Smith from his Weapon X series featuring Wolverine (Which Smith both drew and scripted) and from his work on Conan. I came by Smith via another route: Machine Man. Specifically a four issue series set in an alternative future scripted by Tom DeFalco with art by Barry Windsor Smith and Herb Trimpe. The series is now probably now more well known for its depiction of an ‘evil’ future Iron Man, Arno Stark.

Apart from a now very crispy Daredevil collected trade I have from 1988, my Machine Man collected trade is my oldest comic book (apart from some Asterix comics I have – sadly I lost what 2000AD comics I had). Why do I love it so much? Mainly because I think robots are cool – and Barry Windsor Smith draws cool robots.

Smith also drew a one issue epilogue to Iron Man’s original ‘Armour Wars’ series. Worth checking out if you like his stuff.

Please enjoy these four covers that make up the series, first published in 1984:

Machine Man one

Machine Man two

Machine Man three

Machine Man four

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David Mazzucchelli: Asterios Polyp

Owen — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:28:38 +0000

My previous experience of work by David Mazzucchelli is his re-working, re-interpretation, re-whatever you want to call it of the first story in Paul Auster’s trilogy City of Glass – a graphic novel which blew me away with its art work, mind bending story and ’silent’ passages describing the vortex of the mind of a man going slowly mad. After getting round to reading the novel a couple of years later, I re-read David Mazzucchelli’s City of Glass again and was even more impressed. My round about-discovery of both seemed apt considering the subject matter.

So, I was in Dave’s Comics, Brighton, a Saturday afternoon, wanting a comic book fix. 2000 AD re-issues are just not doing it for me. I bought Asterios Polyp on the recommendation of the shopkeeper and on the brief flick through I gave it – and also, the nice hardback copy abated my ‘nice book’ addiction. It was only on getting home and giving it a proper inspection that I realised I was familiar with the author/artist. But I am crap with names. And facts.

Asterios Polyp, the protagonist, is a fifty-ish ‘paper’ architect – belligerent, arrogant, won lots of awards, recognised, but not one of his designs have ever been built. Already I liked Asterios, but saw the flaws, what I was supposed to think. His story is ‘a journey of discovery’, can’t put it in any other way – he is brought down, escapes, goes on a journey, discovers himself, meets interesting characters along the way and finds some sort of redemption. Sounds pretty average and run of the mill but this is anything but and so much more. Mazzucchelli manages to comment on relationships, compatibility, art theory, aesthetics all within his narrative and combines these themes with some very off the wall characters.

The artwork, so different to City of Glass, is itself subverted to become part of the narrative, different styles denoting mood, illustrating compatibility. The way he has combined his lettering, colour and page composition, all coming together in a way that communicates vast amounts on a single page, seems such a natural part of the evolution of comic books (sorry, Graphic Novels). Every character, however minor, had their own stylistically different lettering reminding me of Asterix books of my youth, the Goths with their blackletter style lettering, Egyptians talking in hieroglyphs. But Mazzucchelli uses this approach, spins and multiplies it to create a quite unique vision.

I bought a copy for my brother for his thirty eighth birthday. It was the last one in the shop. Must be good then.

Buy it here

Read an 2000 interview with David Mazzucchelli

Jason Lutes: Jar Of Fools