Robin Barnard makes comics, he draws them, writes them, then copies, folds and staples them before distributing them amongst various people he knows. At a quick glance they look like comics that you might have seen before but closer inspection reveals…

Let’s start again; Robin Barnard REmakes comics, he REdraws them, REwrites them, then copies, folds and staples them… You HAVE seen these before, but you’ve not read them like this before. His ‘What Men’ facsimile takes sections of Moore & Gibbons‘ classic ‘Watchmen’ and rewrites it into a critique of the spin-off ‘Before Watchmen’ franchise and the people responsible – Gibbons included.

Barnard redrew each panel in Gibbons’ style and you’d be hard-pressed to spot that it wasn’t just a scanned copy of the original with new lettering. The book is structured in the most incomprehensible way too, it took me a few goes before I cottoned on that you could read it in four different directions. Starting from the back, front or center pages, various pages read in or out of the book, all in landscape format, it’s a bit hard to describe in writing.

In his own words, “What Men is (just) Chapter V of Watchmen: Fearful Symmetry, which is both completely symmetrical and full of mirrored images. I purposely took all the mirrored images and put them all opposite each other and then also put in mirrored dialogue with references to the opposite page as well. What was in my mind was to take those previously seen mirrors rearrange them into an infinite mirror maze and use them to reflect on the Before Watchmen thing.”

There are levels of meaning here and he makes probably the nearest thing to a readable comics mash up that I think I’ve seen and you can find out more on his Images Degrading Forever site. There’s plenty more food for thought concerning ‘What Men’ in the post about reflections on the same site. These are comics ABOUT COMICS or at least indirectly about the comics industry, Barnard is using the medium to comment on the medium rather than write a blog about it.

Another one of his projects takes the Marvel comics Preview Catalogue and lampoons the never ending solicitations of forthcoming series’, character cross-overs and final, FINAL, F-I-N-A-L issues with self-referencing in-jokes that fold in on themselves as ‘The Point’ of it all is sought. It doesn’t all make immediate sense if you don’t have a keen interest or knowledge of certain areas of the comics world and its internal politics, which sometimes read like a superhero cross-over series in themselves.

His newest is a comics mash-up proper: ‘Super Spidey Man’ or ‘Star Jaws’ (I’m not sure which) is a mixture of Spiderman, Star Wars, Sesame Street and Dr Doom among others (I won’t spoil where Jaws gets into the mix). This is part 1 of a 4 issue series which may or may not be available from Orbital Comics in London. I don’t know where he’s going with this one but it’ll be interesting to see how it unfolds as the mysterious packages arrive in the post. He does make some physical copies but these are very low runs (‘What Men’ was 10 copies I believe) – but all this material is available to view online at his site, Images Degrading Forever.

Back in 2009 I wrote a song with Natural Self that I titled, ‘The Illectrik Hoax’, the inspiration for which came from the comic strip by Pete Milligan and Brendan McCarthy – ‘The Electric Hoax’. This was one of the first (if not THE first) creative collaborations by the pair who (with Brett Ewins) went on to create some of my favourite comics of the 80’s and 90’s – Freakwave, Paradax, Rogan Gosh, Strange Days, Skin, Hewligan’s Haircut, Bad Company, Artoons, Sooner Or Later, various episodes of Judge Dredd and more.

The strip appeared in the weekly UK music paper, Sounds, in 24 parts sometime between mid ’78 and ’79. Each one a half page telling a vaguely coherent, if disjointed, story that seemed to throw up new characters with each episode. It’s a fascinating glimpse into a team’s earliest work and you can see them becoming more confident as the story progresses. McCarthy’s art improves, initially starting out with a lot of collage, and you can see him gain confidence with his figures and many different memes that would reoccur in his work surface for the first time. There are in-jokes and plugs for characters in 2000ad dotted amongst the numerous notes seen floating around in many of the episodes and personalities like Patrick McGoohan and John Lydon make appearances.

The Electric Hoax Pt.1 – click image for larger version

There’s a definite sense of post-punk Britain in the strip, both in the artwork and the tone, a crumbling state gripped by strikes and pre-1984 paranoia. Interestingly, some of the character designs already mirror that of the Mad Max films that McCarthy was later influenced by, even though this pre-dates the opening of the first film by a good 6 months. In a lot of ways his Thought Police could be described as cyber-punks before the phrase was invented, a clear mash up of the then-current punk fashion and the dystopian sci-fi setting of the strip.

Last year saw the publication of ‘The Best of Milligan & McCarthy’ hardback which reprinted selections from many of the titles listed above but not the full run of ‘The Hoax’. After years of searching for back issues of Sounds for episodes and the few instances where they crop up on the web, I lucked out when an eBayer put the complete run up for sale, all neatly clipped from the various issues they originally appeared in. I intend to share these, week by week, here on the blog but I urge you to check out the excellent Dark Horse -published ‘best of’ mentioned above which can be bought HERE.

Both creators went on to bigger things with Milligan writing for everyone from Marvel to DC, Vertigo to Dark Horse – his run on Shade The Changing Man reinventing the character. Since then he’s written just about all the greats: Batman, Hellblazer, Animal Man, Justice League, X-Men (in all sorts of varieties), Spiderman, The Punisher, Thor… you get the idea, he’s a big deal in comics writing. McCarthy went to Hollywood to design and storyboard film and TV concepts for films like Highlander, Coneheads, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Lost In Space and the first cgi TV show, ReBoot. He was also asked by director George Miller to design and co-write the fourth installment of the Mad Max saga, ‘Fury Road’ which has finally made it out of development hell to be released in 2015. Now working back in comics as well with his excellent ‘visual autobiography’, ‘Swimini Purpose’, new episodes and covers for Dredd, a Spiderman / Dr Strange crossover and the psychedelic ‘The Zaucer of Zilk’ all carrying on his unique take on the medium.

NB: My different spelling of ‘electric’ was intentional and the lyrics of the track in question have nothing to do with the strip itself, it was my coded nod to two of my favourite comic creators.

I know Mike Mignola does the same style and composition over and over again in his covers but when they’re this good why change?

Hellboy in Hell 5 finally out in 2 weeks with Sledgehammer 44 – The Lightning War pt.1 next week.

I visited the London West Bank Gallery on Friday to see the Mark Bodé and Cheo exhibition, Junkwaffel. Mark is the son of Vaughn Bodé, the famous comic artist who created Cheech Wizard and whose style and characters were later given a new lease of life by graffiti artists worldwide.

Mark keeps his (now deceased) dad’s legacy and creations alive and can turn out a mean imitation of Vaughn’s style. It’s always nice to see Bodé’s unique vision in new contexts and there were characters painted on metal and subway maps as well as largely unseen original sketches from Vaughn’s note books.

Cheo is a graffiti art from Bristol whose style is influenced by Bodé and his creations are a perfect fit stylistically with Mark’s. His Egg Head character is an obvious nod to Cheech and he even incorporates the Wizard and the infamous Bodé Broads into some of his work. He also works in 3D with cut out characters, furry Bees and a huge marker pen trailing paint out of a frame into the middle of the room.

It’s only on until Nov 21st and Vaughn’s sketches go back to the US with Mark after Sunday but it’s free and at the London West Bank Gallery, 133-137 Westbourne Grove, London, W11 2RS.

I was hipped to a blog today called Kirby-Vision, a place where artists can indulge their inner Jack Kirby fantasies or just pay homage to the King of Comics. By far the best find was the incredible work of Giorgio Comolo who, not only nails Kirby’s style, but also takes the characters somewhere else by his own hand.

He definitely joins the ranks of Shaky Kane, Tom Scioli and Edmund Bagwell as an artist who can invoke the spirit of Kirby in a fresh way. Not to say he’s the only one though, plenty of others measure up.

Mike McMahon on Hellboy this December apparently, even if this is a one-off then it’s a match made in heaven (or should that be Hell?). Mignola and McMahon go Mexico for a follow up to the Hellboy in Mexico story, out in Dark Horse Presents #31