Pete Ashton's Weblog

Bit of a kerfuffle going on in the UK Small Press Comics world at the moment. Matt Smith, the editor of 2000AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine, is pondering opening up six pages in the latter to small press creators. They can do pretty much anything they want (subject to approval obviously) and retain copyright on their work but, and here's the rub, they won't get paid. Here's the full message:

"We're considering opening up 6 pages in the Judge Dredd Megazine for new writers and artists. It can be anything they like, within reason, and doesn't have to be 2000 AD-based. It will unfortunately be unpaid, but they will get a springboard by being published in a mainstream professional title. It should be a self-contained story, and should be supplied fully lettered. The published art size for the Meg is: Panel Area: 189x256mm, Trim Size: 210x276mm, Bleed Size: 216x282mm." And if you're interested, contact Matt.Smith [at] rebellion.co.uk

The reaction from many creators who do get paid to appear in nationally distributed, professional publications was if it's good enough to appear in the magazine then it's good enough for some kind of financial compensation. And the reaction from many other creators, some of whom aren't trying to earn a living from their work, was I don't do this for the money anyway and this will allow me to reach an audience of thousands for free. You can read the comments on the BugPowder mailing list (starts here) and the Pencil Monkey forum.

Given that I'm slowly drifting away from the comics scene generally I don't really have a strong opinion one way or the other, but I think a lot of the confusion comes from the perception of what small press comics are for to begin with. Of course the only accurate answer is they're for whatever the creator in question wants them to be for, just like any self published zine or, for that matter, weblog, but that doesn't help us at all in this situation.

I was reminded of a conversation I had ages ago with one of them there key figures on the small press scene about a debate he'd had with one of the luminaries of the UK comics industry (such as it is). The latter saw the small press as a breeding ground from which the next Alan Moore would emerge but the former thought drawing this kind of simple line from small press through British newsstand comics to American superhero comics and on to greatness was not only out of date but pretty insulting to many small press creators who had no desire whatsoever to work for DC Comics. Who's right? Well, both of them, naturally. There are, and always have been, a significant number of people who publish their own work in the hopes that one day they'll get to write/draw Judge Dredd or Batman. And there a significant number for whom the short-run photocopied pamphlet is the be and and end all of their ambition. And of course there are countless sitting at various points inbetween, with another countless not even on that matrix. Which is kinda the point.

The question, therefore, is what sort of small press creators is Matt Smith looking for? If he's after the sort of people who eventually want to be working for 2000AD then, yes, I think this is a little bit smelly. But if he's looking to publish the sort of people who wouldn't normally be suitable for his magazines then I think this could be a very interesting venture indeed. Let me explain with a bit of personal history.

I pretty much owe my many years involved in comics to 2000AD. Back in the mid 80s when I was an early teen who hadn't read a comic in years I spotted a dodgy reprint of Judge Dredd in the WH Smiths of West Wickham. For some reason I bought it, liked it, and started buying 2000AD regularly. I then discovered the local branch of booksellers Sherrat and Hughes stocked the Titan reprint volumes of 2000AD strips and I wasted many Saturday afternoons sitting in the shop reading them from cover to cover (which is why, when I was a bookseller, I could never justifiably complain about "customers" who sat in the shop reading for hours on end without buying anything...). This branch also stocked the monthly trade magazine Speakeasy who listed the forthcoming strips in 2000AD, so I started buying that, which introduced me to the concept of speciality comic shops which stocked 2000AD back issues. These shops also stocked American comics by old 2000AD creators, so I started buying those, erring towards the proto-Vertigo titles such as Sandman. Reading an interview with Sandman writer Neil Gaiman put me onto Cerebus, which in turn introduced me to the world of black and white alternative comics. In short, the fact that I've spent the last week or two re-working my way through the collected Love and Rockets can be directly traced to that dodgy Judge Dredd reprint.

(My route into small press comics starts in the same place and goes in different directions, but I won't bore you with that. It's probably buried somewhere in the archives of this blog anyway.)

So my point is that those people reading 2000AD and the Dredd Megazine aren't necessarily closed to the notion of comics that don't really belong there. In fact 2000AD has a long history of using artists who don't fit the mould. I have no idea if this is still the case having not seen a copy in years, but the precedent is there. I think that while many of the readers will look at these small press pages and think they're shit a significant number will like them and suddenly be made aware that the comics medium has a much wider potential that they'd ever imagined. That's assuming they go with the full spectrum of stuff out there.

Of course it'd be nice if they paid a page rate too...

A few days ago we were sitting in the living room watching some movie or other and I was humming along and tapping my feet to a piece of classical music on the soundtrack. Noticing this, Andy G commented that he'd forgotten that I have a thing for the classical which is true, I do, except I'm also incredibly ignorant, which is why I never mention it. Here's the story...

I was brought up in a predominately classical household. My mum is a classically trained singer, my step-dad was a conductor of orchestras and my sister is an accomplished violinist. There's a shocking amount of classical music in the house, both recorded and in sheet music form. It's not an obsessive presence by any means, but it's certainly there. In short, there was always a piano in the house when I was a kid and it was always in use but the only rock or pop music was some Beatles singles from my mum's childhood and whatever I'd accumulated in my vacuum. Mainly Queen as it happens.

During secondary school I played the trombone, which while a potentially great instrument isn't exactly cool. Well, it's cool compared with the French horn or the cello but it ain't no electric guitar. I did my stints in the local school orchestras and the like but when I moved onto 6th form the trombone went into the attic where it still lives to this day, not having much of a resale value when I'd finished with it.

And since then I've never developed any musical talent for some reason even though it's all sitting there in my brain. I have a good musical ear, a reasonable sense of rhythm and can even sing fairly well thanks to my genes but I ain't done nothing with it. If there's a reason it's probably the same as my mental block on learning languages (mum's also a retired language teacher and sister did a German degree) or why I'm not a geologist like my dad. It's all down to some stubborn teenage rebellion in my subconscious whereby I reject the talents of my parents in a half-arsed determination to forge my own way, whatever that may be. With music this meant rejecting the prescribed dogma of an orchestral score in favour of random dissonant noise, taking pleasure in happy accidents rather than perfect reconstructions. Well, that's one explanation anyway. It could just be that I'm scared of the potential for failure when perusing perfection or some shit, but that's getting a little too close to psychoanalysis so I'll move on.

But despite rejecting this classical background I do have a latent appreciation for it and even the vestiges of critical capabilities. It's quite possible that because the essence of the classical is deep inside me, when combined with my ignorance of the accepted rights and wrongs I could be quite a powerful force, cutting through the bullshit and slaying sacred cows left and right, but I'll never know because it's quite a steep learning curve and I can't really be bothered

So I have this appreciation of the whole thing and I should really make the most of it, for the entertainment value if nothing else. If you've never heard a full orchestra perform a storming symphony in a hall with decent acoustics then you've never lived. The power of 100-odd instruments working in perfect harmony with each other is the ultimate gestalt wall of sound. My sister, having gotten over two years of intensive baby production, is taking part in a concert in Banbury on November 19th and I'm popping along for it. "Tschaik 4th, some Rossini and Liszt" she says and I have no idea what that means but I'm sure it'll kick arse. I think the last time I saw her play was in Leeds in 1995, which is rather tragic of me.

I've also been looking into the various recitals and performances put on by the local Quakers in Bournville and shall report on my findings...

I have a rule, well it's more a guideline than a rule as I can't always enforce it, but I always endeavor not to move house during the warmer months of the year. The reasoning is that wherever you're moving to will always seem much nicer over the summer and it's only in the autumn and winter that you'll see it for what it really is. This guideline was instigated in 1998 when my then house-chum James and I moved into a flat in Balsall Heath sometime around July. The clement weather meant we didn't really comprehend the implications of the following features of the flat:

1. Being above a butcher's shop. A butcher's shop is essentially a big fridge.
2. Having a flat roof, ie no insulation.
3. Metal window frames that don't produce a tight seal. Kinda drafty.
4. Freshly painted walls may look nice when you move it, but what are they hiding?
5. No central heating. Warmth provided by small individual electric storage heaters plugged into the mains. Also, an electric meter that is topped up using a prepaid card scheme.

By late November we were living in a very cold and drafty box. Attempts to stop the drafts by sealing the windows in plastic sheeting encouraged mould on every external wall (meaning most of them). We left after 6 months and didn't even dispute not getting our deposit back.

It was a bit of a shame because, other than the psychotic neighbour and dodgy landlord, it wasn't a bad place to live. Balsall Health is one of the predominantly Asian inner city areas of Birmingham which some might call a slum, but I kinda liked it because it was quite a tight community. The Pakistani shops sold pretty much everything you needed plus stuff you'd never heard of before and there was always some kind of activity going on, but it was never particularly threatening. But the flat was shit so we got the hell out and moved to Bearwood where the landlord was impressed by my casing of the joint, checking external walls for evidence of damp and inspecting all the windows for drafts. Fool me once...

Anyway, this autobiographical ramble is just me trying to justify a hugely vacuous post. Autumn is here. You'll remember I moved into The Bournville Flat (that is it's name for it is legend) back in May which meant I've gotten used to it during the long, hot summer months. And boy was it hot in my attic room, but Bournville was lovely - lots of bike rides, sitting on the green drinking tea and incredible sunrises. Bucolic would be a word. And now it's autumn - the sky is grey, the temperature is low and it's all quite different.

Unlike every other place I've lived I knew what I was getting into when I moved here since I'd known this flat for years. I knew, for example, that the kitchen gets very cold while the rest of the flat stays toasty thanks to the building-wide, included-in-the-rent central heating. So when I'm sitting in the kitchen with my hoodie up covering my pre-winter-shaved head* huddling by the cooker to warm myself on the pan of boiling pasta I'm cool with that. It's not a problem. There are countless plus points to outweigh the chill, such as being able to keep vegetables out of the fridge for a start. See? Positive. All good.

But the shift is seasons does have an effect. It turns the area into somewhere else and it always catches me slightly unawares. This new Bournville is subtly different to the one I'd gotten used to. No more sitting on the steps in the morning sun with a cup of tea, that kind of thing.

The most disturbing aspect of this shift is it reminds me more of Kingstanding that anything else since I spent the last two winters there and the weather is similar. Soon enough I'll adjust and the peculiarities of Bournville in this season will become normal to me, but right now my mind is looking for comparisons to build coping strategies and Kingstanding is all it can find.

I'm sure it'll all be okay come November. I just need to learn to nest indoors a bit more.

* Like a small mammal I tend to grow my hair out over the winter to keep the warmth in, but I don't like it to get too long. So every when the cold first hits I make sure I have a good shave. That way when the first frosts come I'm well covered but not too covered.

Today Alex decided she wanted to buy a bike and Lewis decided to come over for a visit so we all went to Selly Oak Cycles to buy one. It's a weird little shop with five or so sad looking bikes chained up by the desk with a dark workshop stained with decades of grease stretching to the back. So different to the bright emporiums of cycling joy you usually get and a tad discombobulating.

Alex was after a bike for bimbling about the place, going to the shops, that kind of thing. And it had to be cheap for budgetary reasons but also because there's a significant chance of it being stolen in Selly Oak. A small-ish blue bike caught Alex's attention and after a bit of thought, but not too much, we were on our way home with something not quite resembling this for £35. The bloke in Halfords, where she spent nearly as much on a lock, pump, bungies and, god help us, a horn, said it was a Raleigh Shopper and was well impressed. Lewis rode it around the car park and, with his long ginger hair and cheeky grin, looked like an extra in a Supergrass video.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in the garden sorting it out, tweaking the brakes and mostly fitting the horn which being cheap and essentially a toy didn't have a particularly effective attachment system and thus required a bodge. Alex said she would normally have liked to do all this herself but it was nice to just sit and watch me work with Lewis assisting and I was taken back to the early 1990s when I used to, in retrospect quite bizarrely, hang about with greasy bikers. Back then it was the other way round as I'd sit in garages watching these guys fiddling around with engines and talking in a language that might as well have been Chinese. I never did learn much about bikes but I did drink a lot of tea and learned a shedload about life. One day I should really write about this chunk of my life in detail, but it occurred to me that most of these bikers were in their 30s while I was just out of my teens, and here I am, in my 30s with Alex and Lewis just out of their teens, fiddling with a bike and drinking tea. I somehow doubt they're learning quite so much from me though.

Back in 1989 I'd never published a fanzine before but I kinda knew what they were about and intended to do one. Why, I have no idea, and probably had no idea back then either, but do one I would. Without that fanzine I probably wouldn't be where I am today, and whether that's a good or a bad thing I'm never quite sure. The fanzine was called PDS, named after a mate's side-side-side-project band because I liked the sound of it, a name that would crop up a few more times in my zine publishing career. It was shite, but it had to be. That was the point.

I was living in Croydon at the time and my local comic shop was called Phantom Zone where I would spend most of my time and money. Neil Gaiman was doing a signing tour and me and my mate Phil asked them if we could ask Neil for an interview. Neil said yes. And so with my sheet of questions and Phil for moral support, the three of us sat around a tape recorder in the back room of Phantom Zone and talked for 45 minutes. Or rather Neil talked and we kinda got in the way. I remember when transcribing the interview I had to re-write my questions so they fitted his answers which was not a problem as his answers were more interesting that my questions.

The interview was published in my shitty little zine. I sent a copy to Neil and heard nothing back, which was not too surprising as it really was the only decent thing in the publication. The tape was stuck in with the rest of my tapes and while I never dreamed of throwing it away it was never listened too again.

The other day Andy G and I were going through our respective pre-CD music collections and he stumbled across the Gaiman tape. I told him the story and he asked if he could borrow it. Yes, I said, but you mustn't listen to it while I'm in the room. You should digitize it and stick it online, he said, and I scoffed, but only slightly. It lurked on the kitchen table for a while and one afternoon I snatched it up and popped it in the tape deck. My main concern was about myself coming over like a spoddy little teenager who doesn't know what the hell he's talking about but it didn't seem so bad. I guess I'm far enough away from that version of me now.

I emailed Neil through his site asking if he'd mind this going public and he got back to me in about 10 minutes, which was impressive but also meant he hadn't actually downloaded and listened to the thing. Since he's now somewhat incredibly popular in internet land with his journal and all (11,215 reading via LiveJournal alone) I doubted my bandwidth could deal with hosting it so it was OurMedia to the rescue.

And so here it is. My first, and last, comics-related interview. This is the OurMedia page, and here's the direct mp3 link. It's 17.6mb, 38 minutes long and only a little bit fuzzy. Enjoy!

When I was younger, growing up in Croydon during the late 80s, I didn't feel particularly patriotic. As ever the reasons are complicated by the naive idiocy of youth along with a hefty dose of nihilism but one of the main reasons, or at least the reason that still stands up to scrutiny, was that people I didn't like tended to be patriotic, ergo I wasn't patriotic. Thatcher covered herself in the Union Jack for a start, and then there were footballs fans. There wasn't some complicated socio-political thing going on - I didn't like the Tories and I didn't like football. Since the teenage way of expressing your distaste with something is to reject everything everything associated with it, I rejected patriotism.

Then when I was 16 I went to the States to visit my dad for the first time in years (messy divorce, ask me another time) and I remember being very aware of my Britishness, which isn't hard as Americans, and particularly Texans in my experience, are endlessly fascinated by us. As, I should add, are we of them. But anyway, I started noticing things about me, things I liked and things I believed in, that could only be explained by the country in which I grew up. Did this make me patriotic? Is there any real difference between identifying with things this country had infused me with and loving this country?

Skip forwards a fair number of years and bring the internet into play. Since it's inherently untrustworthy and full of errors, one has to develop a system of filtering in order to get the most out of it. Who has written this? Who linked to it? Who links to the person who linked to it? What else do they write about? What communities to they belong to? Why should I listen to them?

Another way of sorting it all is to make snap judgments based on appearances, just like in the real world. I'm guessing the what we're looking for when we do this is someone who is kinda like us. So since I'll be holding myself in very high regard when judging others I'll be looking to see if they write well in a slightly self-depreciating, witty and insightful manner, read what I consider good books and comics and listen to what I consider decent music, have their own domain rather than a LiveJournal or BlogSpot blog, have designed their site themselves rather than using a default template and, this is probably the most crucial point, provide a well constructed full RSS feed for their blog. And then they turn out to be a twat, but I digress.

Possibly the most important thing in this woefully inaccurate judgment game is where they're from. The areas of the web I tend to surf around tend to be dominated by Americans, usually from the States with a decent smattering of Canadians. When a British voice pops up on, say, MetaFilter, I notice it and pay attention. Conversely when I discover that some blogger I had assumed to be British due to their dry wit and effective use of sarcasm turns out to be a Yank I feel a palpable sense of disappointment. Similarly, when British bloggers win US-centric awards or get published by US based publishers I feel proud of them.

I even go so far as to consider some Americans honorary Brits which I'm sure would weird them out if they knew or cared about it. Maybe, if I'm not the only one who does this, we should start a directory or poll of honorary Brits from the western colonies? I wonder if they'd consider it a compliment or not...

It goes hopefully without saying that this is all very stupid of me. At the end of the day it doesn't make any difference where someone is from as long as what they're doing is good in some way. The beauty of the net is that I can have a communication with someone on the other side of the planet as easily as I can with someone down the road. So why, even though I know it's idiotic, do I do this? Could it be the net has made me more patriotic than I would have been otherwise? Does exposure to a wider range of "others" make you more protective towards those who are more like you? All I'm doing is whittling it all down to something manageable, but why on this criteria?

It's an interesting one, I think. Xenophobia and racism usually comes about in communities that don't have any contact with or understanding of people outside their self-contained and self-sufficient little world. This is different to becoming more aware of people outside your physical community, but how different? I don't think other cultures and countries are worthless but I do give people, ideas and notions from my country more weight and importance. How does this differ from the flag-waving BNP moron down the street?

What I think I'm driving at is can I be patriotic and not be a wanker?

Following on from back in the day...

Jeremy asked: What do you dream about? Daydreams, night dreams, anxiety dreams, whatever. Do you ever end up dreaming about work?

I heard somewhere, and I think it's a fairly well accepted theory, as much as theories about dreaming can be, that the dream state is when the archivist in your brain comes it and shuffles everything around, cross referencing all your experiences and putting them in order. In the same way that resting allows your muscles to rebuild, you knowledge base, both rational and emotional, uses this time to get organized so it's more useful. I like this idea, not just because it's a cute metaphor but because it goes some way to explaining why my dreams are so realistic.

I don't mean realistic as in "I was flying over an alien mountain range with dolphins and it was so realistic". I mean realistic as in really quite normal, so normal I often confuse my dreams with reality.

A favourite story was back in the old fanzine days, circa 1995. I'd been doing a night shift job for a couple of months and had gotten into the habit of checking my mail before going to bed. Rol had sent a copy of his self published comic, The Jock, to which I usually wrote a letter which usually got published. I read said comic and went to bed. A month later the next issues came though and I was mildly pissed off that he hadn't printed my letter until I realised I'd dreamt it and had believed my dream ever since. And that's one of the more interesting ones.

I've stopped reading novels in bed because if I fall asleep I tend to dream the rest of the story in such a plausible way I can't find my place again because I can't find that bit which wasn't there to begin with.

I frequently dream about people I know, but people I know shouldn't get weirded out about that because it's all quite innocuous. I'll dream about us going to the pub or talking about something innocuous. This again can get confusing later on when I think back to things we've talked about, which might explain why I have a terrible memory of conversations I've had. To avoid embarrassment I just blank them all out, real or made up by my subconscious.

The dreams tend to be quite short term, so if I've met you a few times in the last week the chances are you'll crop up in a dream but if I haven't seen you for a few months you won't. With my current somewhat restricted social life this means that with a few notable exceptions I tend to have quite dull people in my dreams - fellow temps, managers.

I very rarely, if ever, dream about fictional characters. When I was watching whole seasons of Buffy in one sitting characters from that might have popped up, but not in the sense that people usually dream about Buffy, I'm sorry to say.

One difference which does help me tell the difference is that in my dreams I'm always trying to catch up. Events and people are always moving on at a pace I can't keep up with. This is probably some anxiety thing and nothing to worry about, but it's rather odd and does make my dreams run at a slightly faster pace than reality, although given how slowly my reality runs right now that isn't too hard.

Specific details about dreams I can never remember. On the rare occasion that I do have a really interesting dream it'll fade a few minutes after I wake up.

As I was typing this Sam came downstairs and asked what I was writing about. She's one of those people who has really fucking odd dreams about quite disturbing things which, at least amongst people I know, seems to be the norm. I'm not sure if I'm jealous or not.

Are boring dreams a bad thing? In some ways it'd be nice to have a really wild subconscious life but at the same time sleep is when I rest and escape from the madness of the real world. When I'm feeling depressed or anxious or scared my immediate solution is to go to bed and sleep for as long as possible because there it all makes sense. I'll leave the freaky oddness to the real world.

More questions please - I think ones about me, rather that asking what I think about something, are the best. I'm in an autobiographical mood, god help me...

When I first worked in Birmingham as a bookseller from 1998-2000, three of my colleagues shared a flat in Bournville. Now, Bournville is a rather strange place. All areas of Birmingham have their own characteristics and quirks, especially in the south, but Bournville is like a nature reserve, only it's urban. There are no pubs, off-licenses or major commercial developments, gardens have to be kept tidy, none of the eyesores of modern life (satellite dishes, etc) are allowed and in order to live there you have to abide by strict rules of conduct. Thankfully within walking distance is skuzzy Stirchley which seems to make up for the absence of vice in Bournville itself, but it really is like arriving in some idyllic village in the middle of the Cotswalds. All very nice and yet at the same time all rather wrong.

But anyway, Andy, Andy and Dave moved into this flat on the edge of Bournville Green over one of the shops. The flat backed onto the Cadbury factory and had no immediate neighbours thus was the perfect venue for a party. And so, as 1998 drew to a close, a rather large number of our peers from the world of bookselling and elsewhere descended on sleepy Bournville for a nice cozy soiree that turned into something much much more.

I'm loading a pallet onto the shrink-wrapping machine and the radio news catches my ear. I turn to the guy in the booth. You what? "Some people are going to be pretty upset about this" he says. Yeah, me being one of them. As Teenage Kicks starts it's unexpected stint as most playlisted song of the day I find myself slightly stunned, unable to compute this information. He'll never broadcast again. I'll never hear his show live again. Kids discovering music now and in the future will not have his guiding voice. It's over and it's too early, far too early.

I continued my work in a daze, making little mistakes and bumping my pallet truck into things, as it sunk in. I sent a couple of text messages to people I guessed hadn't heard and got bemused replies. Is this a wind up? A little later some guy is singing raucously along to Teenage Kicks obviously oblivious to why it's being played. That phrase, "some people are going to be pretty upset about this" is flowing through my mind. I'm probably the only person in this warehouse who's affected by the news.

I can't remember when I first heard his show. It was probably around 1989. I was 17, had just discovered The Pixies and was making up for some seriously lost time music-wise. Up until then my music taste had been pretty terrible, growing up in Croydon and listening to Capital Radio. As I moved to Winchester Radio One moved to FM and became my chosen station. At the time he was playing music in trios. A guitar track, a dance track, a world track, a guitar track and so on. I loved the guitar stuff, hated the dance stuff and was bemused by the world stuff, but I stuck with it. Soon I came to tolerate and eventually love the whole show, which is kind of the point.

Throughout the 90s I tended to be the only person in my immediate group of friends that listened to him. As time has progressed this has changed as when that identification is made one tends to have made a friend for life and this evening nearly every weblog I read has a post like this on it. I don't think he has fans as such or followers. Rather he made a certain frame of mind acceptable and this, I think, is his real legacy.

In fact I'll go out on a limb and say it's not really about the music. The music is a conduit for something else, something quite intangible which I think comes down to that fucked up sense of juxtaposition he imposed on us. He made having an open mind cool, which is saying something when you think about it. Once you'd accepted that you could listen to every form of every form of music and appreciate it on its own merits then you could apply this to everything else in life. Any form of creative endeavour is worthwhile. The fact that someone, anyone, is doing something different and interesting becomes vital.

On the whole fans (for want of a better word) of him tend to be sensitive folk who just want things to be nice, who feel beaten down by the relentless enforcement of mediocrity. He not only provided a place on the radio for us to retreat to, his spirit encouraged others to do the same. Every small club, fanzine, website, setup of any description that implicitly encourages people to just do stuff owes him a debt, and they know it. The generation, generations really, that grew up with him learned something important and it stuck with them. We're the ones who smile when we see enthusiasm, who know that there is so much more to life. We're the ones who get it.

John Peel, thank you.