As of today Martin Steenton will be heading up our publicity and marketing department. Many of you may already know Martin from his regular posting on the excellent site Avoid the Future, which he owns and runs with Judith Taboy. I worked with them on the translation of Luchadoras – actually they did pretty much the whole thing – and I know Martin will bring a deep love of comics to the job along with his marketing experience and a great eye for detail. Given he is also a huge fan (and has Judith backing him up with her ideas) expect him to be more involved in Blank Slate than just being our all-important publicity guy. These guys love French comics so expect more from them on our list.

For the last 4 months Kayla Marie Hillier has been filling this role and we want to thank Kayla for her many efforts as our point girl over this period. In November our very ambitious Nelson book will be released and it wouldn’t be happening without the focus that Kayla has brought to the project, co-ordinating everything behind the scenes and helping editors Rob Davis and Woodrow Phoenix. Kayla, good luck with whatever you do next!

Our Chalk Marks project is starting to get to the publicise it stage so here is a little sneak peak of what’s coming

Joe Decie’s The Accidental Salad is done and will go to the printer tomorrow. I love Joe’s style – not really like anyone else’s – we are hoping it will find an audience for his work. Official launch will be at TCAF in early May but expect some copies in store in April.

Nick Edwards is well underway with his Dinopopolous book which is sure to show why he is a future star. The cover above is just the start of a pop culture melting pot.

Luke Astorigin is about 3/4 finished the first issue of 3 which will make up his Pablo Apple Tree story. To my eyes it’s a really attractive hybrid of Manga and western comics. Here’s a pencilled page prior to being inked up.

Last but by no means etc… Here is an internal page from William H. Morris’ enchanting Silver Darlings – a story of Ayrshire fisherman which shows off Will’s amazing design and draughting talents.

All in all – I’m really looking forward to these. All will be in the Fantagraphics Ignatz format and should be out by late summer. Then we’ll be chasing you to buy them…

best
Kenny

2010 has been the year Blank Slate started to get itself organised. We managed to put out 5 books having taken 14 months for our first 4 and we’ve found our way around production and distribution issues that we had to learn our way through. We’ve also had a decent size ‘hit’, well in relative terms, with Darryl Cunningham’s Psychiatric Tales that has meant the strain on my pocket getting books to print has been lessened somewhat. We’ve also seen the UK comics channel expand with the fantastic efforts of Self Made Hero and NoBrow – which now sees the market and distributors primed to be more knowledgeable about comics in general – which can only benefit us all. We shouldn’t forget Fanfare or Knockabout either – Fanfare garnered 5 Eisner awards last year which is unprecedented for a UK publisher and Knockabout, long a dormant ‘giant’ of UK comics, have woken from their slumbers and now have editions planned of Maarten Vande Wiele’s collected Paris and the brilliant Pinocchio by Winshluss. All this activity is a bit of a surprise given the economic picture but a raft of publishers covering all ends of the comics spectrum is what the UK scene has needed for a long time. I think some of us who have worked in the business a long time have always thought it would emerge before this but barring some excellent attempts like Slab-O-Concrete it never really happened.

Now, almost spontaneously, there are a load of new publishers all working at it at the same time. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a time when it seemed more possible a coherent scene could emerge which is interested in producing comics of quality in the UK, without hoping the moment they got their break they would be on a plane to the DC offices. The surprise is that the major book publishing houses haven’t been the catalyst for this – they have access to the cream of the US production – but someone like Cape, who should be dominating and growing the UK market aggressively, seem to have paddled their canoe up the cul-de-sac labelled ‘would-be literary progressive’. So those who care about the narrative and visual splendour of comics have decided to get on with it themselves.

The next step for me has to be the establishment of some of our published authors as International stars – to take away that West looking focus watching for the next works of Ware, Clowes, Burns, Barry et al and produce a cadre of British ‘stars’ and innovators who make us look at our own creators on an equal basis, and has the world looking at Britain. I think that’s beginning – there are some supremely talented illustrators/cartoonists delivering both craft and innovation Oli East, Stu Kolakovic, John McNaught, Rob Davis, Stephen Collins, Ian Culbard and many more and if you watch the coverage of sites like Drawn, The Comics Reporter and Journalista you will see that people are beginning to start looking towards our creators to see what they are going to produce next. What will finally tip the scales I think is if the UK creators start to see their books appear in America and in foreign languages. They will start to join a ‘pantheon’ of comics creators seen as the ‘best’ – they will be on lists which also include Clowes, Spiegelman et al. and by dint of that association raise both their own profiles and that of the scene – UK cartooning – which has spawned them. To this end I’m very glad that this year we sold rights to Darryl’s book to both Bloomsbury in the USA and Canada and to Coconino Press in Italy. Hopefully there will be much more of that to come.

Our ‘plan’ was always to have a list put together before we made a ‘big push’ to grow our company. We always had 10 books in print as our target and now we have 9 we are going to jump the gun a little. Here’s an idea of what is coming in 2011 – it’s arguable if they will all make it into print by years end but we start with the best intentions.

Feburary

My Skateboard Life – Ed Syder
Luchadoras – Peggy Adam (translated from the French by Judith and Martin of Avoid the Future)

April

Trains are Mint #3 – Oliver East – limited edition facsimilie – this will be produced directly from the only existing copy – limited to 500
Uncle Bob – Darryl Cunnigham
The Band – Mawil (translated from the German by Iz Rips)

June
Hector Umbra – Uli Oesterle (if you love Mike Mignola’s Hellboy – translated from the German by Iz Rips)
Megg – Nigel Auchterlounie (Nigel’s 2nd Spleenal book – just Nigel’s pitch had me laughing my head off)

August
Love is Blind – Line Hoven (translated from the German by Iz and hopefully Line herself)
Gungle – Warwick Johnson Cadwell
Stalin’s Spy in Tokyo – Isable Kreitz (a big, robust historical story – with Kreitz’s highly individual all-pencil art – this is one we hope can draw in people who aren’t normal comics readers – translated from the German by Iz)

October
Psychiatric Tales II – Darryl Cunnigham
Children in Need – Mawil (collected short stories – and the first colour Mawil work we’ve published)

Other books in the development stage but not yet scheduled

Untitled – Laurie Proud
Lichen – Stuart Kolakovic
Video Nasties – Chris Doherty
Art book – Peter Diamond
The Latecomer – Barbara Yelin

That’s quite a lot of books for us to get out – we’ll be thrilled to see the debut’s by Ed Syder and Warwick Johnson Cadwell two British cartoonists who will be around for a long time to come, we hope. Ed’s book has been in development for a while now – and I’ve had nearly finished artwork since the summer, it just needs a little tweaking to finish. Warwick’s book possibly has as much anticipation from the UK comics community as anything we’ve done until this date – big, bold, amazing art – Gungle will surely make people sit up and realise what a talent he is.

We also will be making good on a long term promise to find a way to do a limited run of Oli East’s Trains are… Mint 4 – which is his travel diary of his walking and camping in Norway. As this book never had artwork produced for it – Oli worked straight on to the page of another book it is going to be a big job of photography to produce the art files. This will look a little different from previous TAM’s and will be a more expensive edition of only 500. Oli also has 2 or 3 other books in the works – and whilst we have no signed deals for those (in fact Oli and I have always just had a handshake deal) we hope that those will also be Blank Slate releases – perhaps one will even see print in 2011 although 2012 seems more likely.

Darryl Cunningham’s Uncle Bob is also very widely anticipated and it shows the playful side of Darryl in contrast to his real world work like Psychiatric Tales and his Science Myth stories. It’s going to be our 2nd all-ages book and we think it will be one that kids will love with its adventure and horror tales that aren’t as kiddie as they might be. Darryl’s also promised a 2nd volume of Psych Tales and we’ve every expectation that it will be as well received as the first.

Our other returning author is Nigel Auchterlounie – creator of Spleenal and currently all over the pages of the new Dandy. For now Nigel’s work seems still to be something of a secret (given not many of you have bought a copy – what’s wrong with you!) but this is going to be another laugh out loud funny book featuring comicdom’s most misanthropic husband and dad – Spleenal. Nigel’s pitch was great – we laughed just reading the usual Spleenal nonsense – SO looking forward to this. We know that if we keep publishing Nigel’s work at some point the whole world will recognise his comedy genius.

I’m also very pleased to see 3 more women cartoonists added to our list with Isabel Kreitz and Line Hoven from Germany and Peggy Adam from France. It means we will have 4 women cartoonists on our small roster a % I hope to maintain as we go forward as I think women may be the great untapped creative and readership part of comics. Individual female voices are likely to bring more female readers and if we want our market to grow among readers who aren’t primarily comics readers we are going to need them. Furthermore the German comics scene is thriving and it seems to me at least 50% of the creators are women, many coming from ART backgrounds – it’s making for some spectacular work. It’s time we had some UK female cartoonists on our list but until now we have had few submissions – if you think you are up to a book length comic please get in touch we want to publish your work if it is good enough.

As well as the books above we will be starting our Chalk Marks project and we have 2 solidly lined up and hope that the highly talented Will Morris will be joining us with his tale of fish and fishermen (BTW the title of Will’s work isn’t established yet I just made that up for our running schedule).

Chalk Marks – May

Pablo Apple Honey – Luke Astorigin
Everday Stories – Joe Decie
Time and Tide – Will Morris

We’ll need your support – we need to keep selling books to keep printing them – and I want to print SO many. I know you always have lots of choices when spending your comics shilling but do try to give our books a look, I think we will be producing quality material throughout the year.

We also are working away secretly on a couple of other projects which we hope will come out in 2010 – both are VERY exciting – more news when we have something solid to tell you.

Thanks to everyone who bought a BSB book in 2010 and we hope you will love where we are going next year.

We’re going to try something new – not like we’ve perfected what we were already doing but a rolling stone gathers no cash, and let’s face it we aren’t in this for the money.

I think we’ve produced some lovely new books this year and we have a slate scheduled for next year which I doubt we will fully get into print by years end. We have 13 or 14 books scheduled for next year and really only have slots for 10 or 11 of them to come out – unless I want to bust the bank (which that many may do anyhow). It means we are at the stage of just saying no to everyone, or saying yes or maybe but not before 2012 earliest. Given the amount of talent who are now submitting work to us that’s a situation I could easily become frustrated with and it means turning away artists who deserve a chance in print.

So we are going to try a different format in an attempt to keep the door open and stop me biting of more than I can chew. I’ve always been hugely enamoured by the Fantagraphics Ignatz series, beautifully designed and produced comics/mags. If you don’t know them they are roughly A4 in format and feature French flaps and a dustwrapper – they usually run 30 – 40 pages. We are going to try and produce almost exactly the same format – although we will have to think about the dustwrapper when the time comes.

The advantage of this format is it’s cheaper to produce in a run of 1000 (which will be our print runs on these so they will be, in some form, limited) than a book format whilst it maintains a classy presentation. We hope to have a retail price for these of no more than £5.99 – and they will be 24,36 or 48 pages in length. At that price there will be almost no profit for Blank Slate (in fact probably a small loss) but we would hope to reap a later reward with collected editions or a bigger book from some of the creators involved. As it is a wafer thin proposition financially for us we aren’t paying advances against comics that will feature in this programme – something I regret but inevitable to get this going. After that we have a split of 70/30 in the artists favour on revenues after we recover the print cost. In simple terms it means that if your book doesn’t sell well – you will likely see nothing but your 50 free copies and your work in print with a barcode. If the print run sells through you should walk away with around $750. So no-one is getting rich here – but it seems to me like a project that opens a door that might otherwise be closed.

We have already signed agreements with two UK creators and are hoping that the first releases will be around April 2011.

Joe Decie – a stalwart of the UK small press scene for a number of years – Joe has had his work appear in a number of printed collections including Side B and has been heavily featured on Top Shelf’s TS2.0 webcomic initiative. This will be his first solo collection. For now we have the working title of “Everyday Stories” on our schedule (back of my notebook actually) but that will change. I think Joe is one of those creators with a voice uniquely his own. His work incorporating straight comics and often the pay-off you would expect from a gag cartoon. Here’s a sample of Joe’s work nicked from his site

The second comic is called Pablo Apple Tree and it is by an artist I hadn’t been aware of previously called Luke Astorigin. Luke’s story will run across 2 volumes so there will be two issues both running around 48 pages. It’s one of the nicest submissions I’ve ever had and has a very interesting hybrid aesthetic which melds Manga stylings with a more western comics style. I think it shows a great sense of design and for a first comic is outstanding. I’ve been told by Luke that the material is actually strongly philosophical in nature although many of the sample pages so far feature action sequences.

It’s a little off the path we have pursued so far but this is, I think, work that needs to see print. Have a look at Luke’s work – including some great Doctor Who over on Luke’s Flickr account, there are 6 or 7 pages of PAT towards the end. Here’s a page for you to feast your eyes on from that photostream.

I’ve been told by a few people this is not a format that stores like – and it may have trouble getting into bookstores – I hope you will all give it a chance and give it your backing. It’s a project for the future and we can only get there with our reader’s support. We think it’s quite exciting – hope you do too.

Sometimes even Oli East has to put his hard-walking feet up. So here’s your chance to see him at home with no boots or waterproof jacket in site.

This interview with Oliver was conducted for the rail ticket booking site qunospotter which also doubles as a resource for articles about rail travel. Surely outside of comics sites there can be no more worthy place for Oli to be interviewed given his deep and genuine love of all things train. Go watch the video and worry about the fact he may change colour in future books through the infuriating choice to be made of booze or a bottle of blue ink. many thanks to Sophie for travelling up to interview the artist at his home.

So here’s the thing. I’ve wanted for a while to have the facility to do some French books but had no ability in house to do the translation/s. We could have put it out of course but I like to fiddle with translations a lot and I’ve had at least one bad previous experience where getting a translation done felt more like going back to school and being told what to do. So we had been sticking to what we knew we could do well, German books, or where there was a decent chance of getting some assistance with the cost of the translation (Flemish – thanks Els). Then enter this pair – this is Martin and Judith who are the people who bring you the excellent Avoid the Future blog.

After I posted some of my favourite French books for a piece Joe Gordon had done over on the Forbidden Planet blog Martin contacted me to say how much he and Judith also loved the work of Peggy Adam – especially Luchadoras (which at that point I hadn’t seen). We got talking and I said I’d love to do some French stuff but lacked a translator which is when Martin and Judith offered their services. Both are very big comics fans – which you can tell when you read their blog, which not only wanders down tributaries most blogs ignore but brings an overwhelming positiveness and optimism to the material they review and spotlight. In fact that philosophy is very much like my own – why bother spending your time criticising or ladling snide on stuff that isn’t very good when there is so much great stuff to shout about. Into the bargain Judith is French and well versed in translation and Martin is there to help with idiom and getting the English as right as possible. In my previous experience of translation sometimes it’s better to completely change a passages words to get the feeling that was meant in the original language (there was quite a lot of that in our Sleepyheads translation) rather than slavishly hold to the original on a word for word basis. So we talked about it some and we agreed to form a little partnership to do some French books and went and acquired the license for Luchadoras from Swiss publisher Atrabile. It’s a powerful book documenting one girls life in the Mexican town of Ciudad Juarez – where over 600 women have been murdered in the last 17 years. Here’s a page of the untranslated book below.

I’m very excited to have Martin and Judith as partners on this – they will be doing the heavy lifting and I’ll be drinking Margaritas and cracking the whip in the background. I think they will do an immensely good job and I know they are fired up for the project. I hope to make many more books with them in the future before they take the experience and go off and do it all better on their own – which surely with their talent and excellent comics taste will happen one day. For now though let’s just all welcome M&J on board as part of the Blank Slate family. Glad to have you along guys.

After what seems like the mother of all gestation periods, Nottingham’s Page 45 comics store now has a new website. It’s not only a place to shop for comics and Graphics but it’s a repository for a vast archive of reviews that the store has piled up over the years. I know there are reviews for many books all over the web but with Page 45 you can be sure you aren’t reading a thinly modified press release – these people care deeply about comics and they will give you their opinions in black and white terms – like is like, loathe is loathe. That’s refreshing. Stephen Holland might be known to many of you as he’s been around a long time – winning awards for the store he co-founded, running out his agitprop opinions of the comics market for Comics International for many years and writing the essential Page 45 newsletter – where he will turn you on to all sort of great things you might otherwise miss.

Go check out their site – you might find yourself spending a long time there. Sign up for that newsletter. We are very pleased to have had Darryl’s Psychiatric Tales picked as the first comic of the month for the new site and Stephen is already hurtling through selling copies showing he’s a man who puts his money where his mouth is.

Here’s his review

It’s by no means a common experience, but there are some books one starts bursting to write about a mere twenty pages in. PSYCHIATRIC TALES is one of those: a book of such instinctive, level-headed compassion, communication and education which nearly never saw completion on account of the creator’s own deteriorating mental health. A childhood riddled with self-loathing only grew worse in adulthood as Cunningham withdrew at the very time he most craved connection. It was his artistic talent that finally gave him a sense of belonging, whilst his desire to understand his own condition and his natural empathy for others, so clearly evidenced here, led him into work as a health care assistant before training as a student to qualify as a mental health nurse.

“And this is when I overreached myself. This is when I broke.”

After reading the book you will easily comprehend why. It’s no easy job for the sturdiest of individuals but for someone as vulnerable and sympathetic as Darryl, well, it was going to get to him eventually.

The book isn’t about Darryl, though: the preceding pages detail his experiences on the ward and what he learned about various debilitating mental conditions as a result. The very opposite of sensationalist, its measured contents will undoubtedly still prove affecting for there can be few of us who haven’t come into contact with mental illness: schizophrenia with its attendant paranoia and hallucinations; bipolar disorder with its peaks and troughs and compulsion to communicate everything at once; violent anti-social personality disorders; the dementia of Alzheimer’s – the disorientation and delusion and reversion to an earlier period in life; self-harming from anger, self-loathing and a desperation to assert any sort of control even if it involves physical pain as a distraction from the mental anguish; suicide.

Each condition is explained through personal observation and with an education that enables Cunningham to detail current treatments, rebalancing the brain’s chemicals whilst providing the most efficacious environment wherever possible. And without meaning to alarm you, Darryl correctly places an emphasis on one particular truth: it can happen to anyone at any time.

At school the brother of my best friend suddenly started pronouncing himself to be the Second Coming and appointed disciples. I’ve met several self-harmers and known them for years. I know at least one bi-polar, my grandmother slid away from us under Alzheimer’s, someone very close to me is suffering with acute depression and, I guess, most disturbingly of all, a young man I thought brilliant and charming abruptly became barely coherent, violent (he tried to kill his mother and girlfriend) and – because he’d already been misdiagnosed as having a mere behavioural disorder – it took his parents a whole year of research and fighting to get the man properly diagnosed with Cannabis Psychosis and therefore properly treated. I recognise everything I read here. It’s spot-on, including the patient’s delusion, post-recovery, that sustained medication is no longer necessary.

As to the artwork, it’s deceptively simple just like Satrapi’s in PERSEPOLIS for maximum empathy, black shadows casting faces into silhouette, a warning of potential bleak, black moods. It’s the perfect balance between word and picture, so as sequential art it reads like a dream. Or a nightmare.

“The effects of suicide ripple outward. Damaging family, friends and strangers alike. A suicide will leave an average of six people immediately affected by the death. A parent, a significant other, a sibling, or a child of the deceased person. The people are referred to as the survivors. These are the ones left to suffer. Never knowing why, always wondering if he could have done more.”

Amen.

Oliver East’s latest book ‘Berlin and That’ has been reviewed in Berlin’s influential Tagesspiegel (Daily Mirror) the town’s liberal paper. We can only presume that the reviewer found the book in Berlin shop Grober Unfug (which is in my opinion one of Europe’s best comics stores although I haven’t been there for 10 years) and has reviewed it from the point of view of seeing what outsiders make of you. Tagesspiegel was awarded World’s Best-Designed Newspaper in 2005 by the Society for News Design in New York and is an important news source for Berlin and much of the former West Germany. Our thanks to Lars Von Toerne for his kind words.

Here’s an english translation of the review

The Magic of City Heating Pipes

With “Berlin And That” the briton Oliver East has published a curious little book about his hikes from Berlin to the Polish border. Pretty weird, those Germans. They talk indecipherable gibberish littered with sch- and ch-sounds, openly drink alcohol in public and don’t say ‘hello’ when you meet them whilst hiking. Or at least that’s how East experienced it. East is a british indie comic artist who recently had his small but powerful book of drawn memories of a visit to germany published.

It’s called “Berlin And That” and is an artistic diary in which East uses drawing, text and collages to tell the reader about his week long trek through the eastern parts of Berlin out to the polish border. On these almost 200 pages (so far only available in the original english) he collects occasional, very entertaining observations of what, to a foreigner, must be quirky idiosyncracies of Berliners and Brandenburgers. From postboxes and birdcages made to look like miniature houses to the aggressive territorial behaviour of cyclists. He illustrates his observations with watercoloured drawings, part meditative miniature, part detailled study of everyday objects – that long established Berliners or Brandenburgers won’t even be consciously aware of anymore.

S-Bahn bridges, construction sites, walls and front yards put the foreign visitor , who speaks no german and only has a miniature map to orient himself, almost under a magic spell. East’s drawings, coloured in muted tones and in which humans are reduced to stickmen, have their own weird charm. You haven’t seen Berlin and its eastern surroundings like this before, also because the artist – with the exception of the tv tower – stays away from the well known subjects/motives that normally attract tourists. Instead he praises  the morbid beauty of bahnhof ostkreuz or the aesthetics of sausage stalls, district heating pipes and pieces of woodland, sometimes crammed onto pages of up to 24 panels. Like a butterfly collector the artist amasses impressions of Berlin, sorts and groups them with a foreigners eye. Throughout the book he’s supported by more than 50 guest artists, all contributing snippets, pictures and collages.

The whole thing is stuck together by East’s special, in places self ironic humour. He meticulously jots down every nuance of his mental state during his monotonous ramble through Brandenburg’s forests. Once he’s finished hiking another page of his often unreliable map, the artist’s little stickman alter ego does a dance of joy. We never really know what motivated the briton to do this hike, that stays a mystery. Have a look around Oliver East’s blog however, and you get the feeling that he is one of those guys for whom the journey itself is the goal!

Darryl’s book is generating quite a bit of buzz and some of it I didn’t even have a hand in. Reviews of the book today on FPI by Joe Gordon and by John Freeman at Down the Tubes. there are also 2 five star reviews on Amazon one by the lovely Sarah Mcintyre. Everyone seems to think it’s an important book – we do too. Go buy it somewhere, we’d like it, Darryl will like it and we think you will like it too.

Make sure to check out our latest titles, just click on the images below to purchase them online using Paypal.