Welcome to the Blank Slate blog’s latest feature, where you get to be the interviewer:  Ask Me Anything. Once a month, we’ll be inviting one Blank Slate creator or team member to the hot seat to take questions from readers. First up in the hot seat is the editor of the Eisner-nominated Nelson as well as the man behind SelfMadeHero’s Don Quixote, Rob Davis.

Dying to know the inspirations behind Nelson? Or how Rob feels about the book’s Eisner nomination? Think you can get Rob to break diplomacy by asking him which his favourite  contributions were? Let us know and we’ll grill him for you.

To ask Rob a question, please send your questions to mail@blankslatebooks.co.uk by April 27th. Or alternatively, leave a comment below!

The first in a new feature in which we invite Blank Slate creators to pave the way for the weekend by sharing a Spotify playlist with blog readers. Today, Box Brown, the man behind Chalk Marks title The Survivalist, Retrofit and winner of not one, but two Ignatz awards stops by to unleash his very own ten-song playlist.

Listen here: Box Brown: the Playlist

1. They Might Be Giants – Can’t Keep Johnny Down

This is just a song I’ve been listening to in the last few days. I love TMBG and love the message here.

2. James Kochalka Superstar – Keg Party: 

I discovered James’ music when I was about 24. At the time I had a beach house with my friends at the Jersey Shore (yup, that one).  We were doing a lot of drinking back then and my friends, who normally would’ve shied away from my weird interests, really dug the whole James Kochalka Superstar catalog.  My friend Ben counted the “chugs” in that one part. I think he counted 87.

3. They Might Be Giants – Science is Real:

This song is made for kids but for me it’s like a hymn.  A true spiritual experience! I love that they include “angels” in their list of fictional characters.

4. Aretha Franklin – The Weight:

My dad sang this song with the band at my wedding and I love this version of the song. Fun fact: that’s Greg Allman on the guitar from when he was a studio musician.

5. Johnny Cash – 25 Minutes to Go:

A lesser known, but more fun, Shell Silverstein written Johnny Cash song.

6. Lloyd Price – Stagger Lee:

Me and my wife love this song but it’s remarkably weird!  The song doesn’t match the lyrics at all, the rhymes are kind of sloppy and it’s really violent!

7. The Misfits – Where Eagles Dare:

When I was in highschool I went to a party and a friend played this song about 50 times.  I still like it though.  It has a good “fuck you” quality to it.

8. The Clash – Rudie Can’t Fail

This song is about how being a “rudie” or rude boy (punker-type) is a good lifestyle cause it’s really hard to fail at.  As if to say: I’ve failed at everything else in my life. I can’t fail at this.  But, there is an underlying feeling that I relate to.  It’s like when you’re working an office job and realize that you don’t fit in and it’s eating at your soul so you just go for what you love and you can’t possibly fail if you do that.  I don’t know something like that.

9. The Flaming Lips – Patrick and Spongebob Confront the Psychic Wall of Energy

It’s another song for kids, but I don’t care!  It’s so fun and sweet.  Remember Plankton: “to be thought of as a king, you don’t need a crown”

10. The Kinks – All of My Friends Were There

This song might as well be about accepting an Ignatz award.

Thanks to Box for this bit of Friday fun. Enjoyed the playlist? Like the idea of a story of a Survival nut-turned-last man alive? Head on over to the Blank Slate store to pick up The Survivalist today!

It’s been a big news day for our very own HARVEYJAMES so far. Head on over to the Inkstuds site to hear Robin McConnell chat with James about his Chalk Marks title A Long Day of Mr James-Teacher. The perfect primer on James’ work, the interview features talk about the comic, the trip to Korea that informed the book, his background in animation, the influence of Shintaro Kago, his dance skills and his current work. Also on the podcast, James well and truly blows the lid off his new full-length graphic novel project with Blank Slate: Zygote. Get excited about the upcoming book on the freshly-launched Zygote mini-site, here.

Also generating some noise following McConnell’s mention of it is James’ in-depth look at what he believes is the murderous subtext behind the entirety of Daniel Clowes’ career: It Is Only A Matter Of Time Before We Find Out Where Dan Clowes Hid The Bodies.

From HARVEYJAMES’ blog:

I think the most prevalent theme in his comics has been entirely overlooked, and it stares me in the face every time I see his stuff- that Dan Clowes wants to kill a lot of people, and has possibly already killed.  Let’s examine the evidence!

Clowes seems to position himself as the only right-thinking character on earth. Right from the early issues of Eightball, the rest of humanity are alternately described as maggots, ants, or vermin.

The earth is sick with humanity. There’s too many people. He equates them with lice.

The cure?

A machine gun!

For more, go check out the entire article on James’ blog today. Not before grabbing a copy of A Long Day of James-Teacher and sharing the good word of Zygote with all your Facebook & Twitter pals though. No sir.

In today’s concluding My Skateboard Week post, My Skateboard Life‘s Ed Syder cracks open his scrapbook to share some of the photos from his skate-obsessed youth in Cornwall. Adorably badass.

That’s me and a kid called Matthew hanging tough by the crappy ramp we all used to drag around our estate. We all drew various skateboard logos on it felt tip pen to make it look even cooler.

That’s me circa 1990.

Here’s me and my dad and younger brother Dan in our back garden in 1991 I think. I wore that H-Street Sal Barbier T-Shirt every day for about 2 years. Note the Airwalk shoes to complete the look.

This was taken on Christmas Day in 1990 or maybe 1991 outside our house. That’s me and my brother showing off our new boards that our Dad would’ve spent the whole of Christmas day morning setting up for us, no doubt whilst we both said things like “Hurry up Dad, what’s taking you so long?” and praying for the ground to dry up so we could go and skate. Dan is holding a SMA Natas Kaupus mini and I’ve got a H-Street Matt Hensley King Size which was enormous like a boat. Those things weighed a tonne and I’m amazed we ever got them off the ground.

But get them off the ground they did, as seen in My Skateboard Life, available from the webstore (and better comic retailers) right now. Head on over to the book’s official page here on the site for more glorious art from the book and more info. Thanks to Ed for lovingly hijacking the blogwaves for the week. You should absolutely check out Ed’s My Skateboard Life blog for more four-wheel glory.

This week, to celebrate the release of Ed Syder’s My Skateboard Life, Ed’s been busy writing a series of guest blogposts. With music playing a big part of the book, today, he shares the soundtrack with readers via Spotify. Listen to the playlist here: My Skateboard Life on Spotify. Take it away, Ed!

A Tribe Called Quest ‘Can I Kick It?’ / De La Soul ‘Me, Myself & I’ / Public Enemy ‘Fight The Power’

I had a C90 cassette which was called something like ‘Ed’s Rap Tape’ with all of this stuff on. These twins Paul and Steven in my class had a tiny ramp in their garage which we’d go and cram into for a while and they had all of this sort of stuff blasting out. I ran into Paul a few years later when we had all started to drink and hang out with girls. He said something like “What the hell are you doing here?” like I’d arrived from out of blue, suddenly into his circle of friends again. Funny the things you remember.

Prince ‘Starfish And Coffee’

I used to write the lyrics to Prince songs in biro on this girl Alison’s tights during Maths lessons, all innocent stuff, but looking back it’s another example of me using my talent for bubble writing to further my cause.

Madonna ‘True Blue’

I remember Dan (the guy that listens to Madonna in the book) standing up for pure pop long before the whole ‘guilty pleasures’ crap became a lifestyle choice. This other guy, Mike only had one LP which was something by the Pet Shop Boys, I thought nothing of it. Having your own money and being able to make consumer choices of any kind were a few years off at this point. I can remember sitting outside my house working out how long it would take me to save up my 50p a week pocket money to buy a new set of skateboard wheels. *wipes tear from eye*.

The Doors ‘People Are Strange’

I really liked The Lost Boys film, but who didn’t?

INXS ‘New Sensation’ / Red Hot Chili Peppers ‘Backwoods’

INXS had a Vision ‘Psycho Stick’ skateboard on their album cover and had skateboarding in one of their videos. We’d catch glimpses of this sort of thing on TV more and more often as our secret ‘lifestyle’ grew in popularity. I was originally going to do a comic all about a 1987 skate contest that the RHCP’s played at. I think it was called ‘The Vision Skate Escape’ and it was held in an arena with flashing lights etc. I had hopes that the comic was going to be just like Roy Of The Rovers but I soon lost interest.

Operation Ivy ‘Bad Town’ / Descendents ‘Silly Girl’ / Jackson 5 ‘I Want You Back’ / War ‘Low Rider’ / McRad ‘Weakness’ / fIREHOSE ‘Hear Me’ / Dinosaur Jr ‘The Wagon’

These are all great songs from old skateboard videos. Music from what seemed another universe, songs you’d hum to yourself as you flew down the street every saturday morning. I still trust Thrasher Magazine’s music section implicitly and it’s a great way to hear new stuff.

Jimi Hendrix ‘Angel’ / Salt ‘N’ Pepa ‘Push It’

I asked my mum for a Hendrix cassette for Christmas. I just knew I’d like it, even though I’d never even heard anything by him before. He just looked really cool. My brother Dan got ‘A Salt With A Deadly Pepa’ the same year, so as we shared a room we played the hell out of that tape as well.

They Might Be Giants ‘Birdhouse In Your Soul’

You know that awkward first conversation with a girl when you attempt to find something in common? Well this song was that thing, and before things like ‘Grunge’ or ‘Goth’ had put us all in our separate groups, liking this song meant that you were ‘alternative’ or at least a little quirky and more importantly someone you NEEDED to have in your life.

Nirvana ‘Lithium’

Nicky Lewis (we always remember our school friends full names, don’t we?) played me ‘Nevermind’ at school and it was just like when I saw that Skull & Snake’ skateboard in a bike shop. There was something else, something ‘other’ that I just had to find out about.

What did you think? How does that match up to the soundtrack of your youth? Get in touch with us via Twitter or Facebook to share your own Spotify  playlists. My Skateboard Life is currently available from the Blank Slate webstore – grab one while it’s hot!

This week on the Blank Slate blog we’re pop shuviting straight into another theme week–this time in honour of the brand-new My Skateboard Life by Ed Syder.  To celebrate the book’s hot-off-the-press release we’ve let Ed take over the blog for a series of posts on the sport that defined his adolescence. Today’s subject: Ed’s top 5 skateboard graphics.

Powell Peralta, Mike McGill by V. Courtlandt Johnson (1984)

Image: LA Taco

Seeing this classic deck graphic in Clive Mitchell’s Cycles in Truro circa 1987 was pretty life-changing to say the least. Like the first time you hear Rock and Roll, it’s a moment when the world literally opens up to you and things previously hidden are suddenly brought sharply into focus. Or something. Just like every other little boy, I’d been devouring anything with monsters, vampires or skeletons on it from an early age. But this image brought all of these together and married it to an emerging subculture that I couldn’t resist. VCJ’s graphics for Powell are simply untouchable, no one draws a skull quite as perfect as he does. It’s really as simple as that.

Blind, Mark Gonzales – ‘Colored People’ by Mark Gonzales (1989)

Image: Skateboardgraphics.com

I had this graphic on a T-Shirt which I wore for at least 15 years until it fell apart in the washing machine. Carefree images like this made the slick skate graphics of the mid eighties suddenly seem out of date and stale. I’m not going to bore you with any talk about how amazing a human The Gonz is, everyone already knows it. I could’ve easily chosen any of his other boards, but this one has a special blood stained, threadbare place in my heart.

Mike Vallely – ‘Snake’ by Marc McKee (1991)

Image: Skateboardgraphics.com

Between 1991 and 1994, McKee was just KILLING it. If you’re an illustrator then you need to look this guy up. Just unbelievably good. I’ve chosen this one as I can remember drawing and painting this snake on a million school text books, in the margins of exam papers, you name it. I was the “flaming building guy” at school for a while, achieving a tiny taste of fame amongst my peers simply by copying this graphic and passing it off as my own work. It’s funny how little has changed in the last twenty years.

Santa Cruz, Jeff Grosso – ‘Demon’ by Jim Phillips (1987)

Image: Disposable

I mean this is really silly, I love everything that Jim Phillips has done. So amazingly talented. But I’ll choose this one for the sake of having a top 5. This kid that lived up the street from me had this board and I’d drool over it sat outside my house for ages, instead of actually skating. I’ve stared at his work for at least a million hours and his stuff just pops out of the page (or screen). I love the colours (dude) and that mixture of bright neons with super sharp blacks is pretty much all I care about.

Blind, Danny Way – ‘O.C. Bladerunners’ by Marc McKee (1990)

Image: Skateboardgraphics.com

I really loved this one and had a skate magazine with it in which I’d leave open on that page next to whatever schoolwork I was supposed to be doing. The characters are the skate team’s riders (including Jason ‘My Name Is Earl’ Lee), and I remember a big (probably self-created) mystery around who was who in the graphic, which was endlessly debated in skate shops back then.
Ed’s long-awaited memoir of misspent youth is currently thrashing its way into comic shops across the UK now and is also available (with international shipping) via our online store. Grab one today! For more on skate graphics Ed highly recommends picking up any book by Sean Cliver or heading over to  Marc McKee’s archive of skateboard graphics. Come back Wednesday for My Skateboard Life: The Original Soundtrack.

Today, your loyal Blank Slate correspondant talks to Jamie Smart, the mad pencil-wielding professor behind SLG classic Bear, Scholastic’s Find Chaffy, Desperate Dan, upcoming Blank Slate book Kochi Wanaba and many more. Jamie is one of the 54-strong army of creators contributing towards Nelson, our charity book project for Shelter, coming this November.

Unmistakably a Jamie Smart original™, I remember Rob excitingly explaining just how quickly and perfectly you “got” the project when creating your chapter. How did your idea for 1971 come together?

I think perhaps it was easier for me because I started near the beginning of the story, so there was a lot of room to play around with the characters before they started hardening. That said, Rob and Woodrow did provide a helpful amount of background, and the pages running before me were excellent leaping points.

Actually I found it tricky at first, my instinct was to be quite rigid with the material for fear of spoiling it, but once I’d relaxed a little and started having fun with it, what I was doing began entering more fantastical places. Along with this sense of the ridiculous, I still wanted it to be rooted in reality, so I found balancing these two sides of a story on the head of a small child to be really enjoyable and authentic to how her worldview might be. Where the story goes from there I’ve not seen yet, but I’m intrigued to see how the tale will spiral on from everyone else’s contributions.

See more of Jamie (and 53 other brilliant UK comics artists) this November. Available for pre order from the Blank Slate webstore now!

Nel's mother Rita (right) watches on in Ellen Lindner's contribution set in January 1970

Today’s Nelson mini-interviewee is Ellen Lindner, author of Undertow, and editor of newly-announced The Strumpet. Her contribution takes place in 1970,  focusing on Nel’s mother Rita. One of the most affecting chapters in the book, we see Rita continue to internalise her anguish of losing a child via diary entries and her interactions with those around her.

Your chapter employs a novel narrative technique, with narration boxes appearing as scraps of Rita’s diary. What was your intention for this device?

I’m glad it seems novel!  I knew I wanted to tell the story of an emotional transformation that would have been on the interior, private – a diary seemed the best way forward.  With four pages to work with, it helped me to establish Rita’s frame of mind with the reader very quickly.  Plus, I love diaries! All those secrets…

More so than any other creator, you really made Rita the focus of your story. What inspired you about the character?

It wasn’t so much Rita herself as what happened in Woodrow’s story, where it’s revealed that one of Jim and Rita’s children has died.  I couldn’t just let that pass.  Nel would be too young, maybe, to feel the loss, and Jim had support from his mate Des. But what about Rita?  That question shaped the story I decided to tell.  Another factor was timing – I wrote it over the Christmas holidays last year in my in-laws’ home, surrounded by pictures of my husband and his brother as young children.  That made it impossible to ignore the question of what it would be like celebrating a birthday, or holiday, when you’ve lost a child.   Grim stuff, but it’s life – and I can always say that Woodrow made me do it!

Although she certainly communicates verbally in your chapter, yours is the last to feature a Nel too young to speak. Did you feel liberated or constrained by this?

It was more of a constraint – it made me look to other family members.  But that’s fine – the rest of the book tells Nel’s story, I was proud to have the chance to tell part of the story of where she came from.   I like to think that my chapter has a happy ending, even if the beginning is sad.

Nelson is currently available to pre-order in the Blank Slate webstore, in both softcover and limited-edition hardcover. Be sure to be amongst the first to get hold of it when it launches at the end of November! In the meantime, please follow the book’s official Facebook page for up-to-the-minute news on the book as well as features like this.

Second in our series of mini-interviews picking the brains of the 54-strong army of creators behind November’s Nelson – our 250 page graphic novel with all profits going to Shelter –  is Woodrow Phoenix. Co-editor and responsible for the overall visual design of the book, his chapter as creator takes place in 1969, expanding the cast and history that surround the 1-year old Nel Baker.

Your chapter introduces a lot to the world of Nelson, such as characters, relationships, and themes that later creators would take up and run with. What were your intentions for 1969?

I wanted to give a ‘slice of life’ sense of South London in 1969. My parents arrived in England in the mid-fifties and they had a real shock waiting for them. Their stories about how badly they were treated and the awful conditions they were forced to endure are terrible. So the beginning of Nelson was an ideal place to touch on some of that. My dad didn’t work on the buses but a lot of Caribbean immigrants did. I knew if I could take Rob’s opening and build on it to flesh out Jim and Rita’s family, add a few surprises, we’d have a texturally rich chapter filled with enough incident and subplot material to give those who came later a lot of potential story points and themes to expand on.

As you say,  certain elements of this chapter are drawn from your own life. Conceptually, did you hope that creators would do the same thing during their own chapters?

I expected people would find it natural to do so, given the nature of the project. Projecting ourselves into an earlier time, we could create new material fuelled by memories, reflecting on what shaped us, things we wish we’d done and some we maybe wish we hadn’t. A few creators had to depict a Nel much older than they were or write about a period before they were born, but Rob and I would give the context for them to work from if they needed it, and they did wonderful time-travelling stuff.

You’ve been the driving force behind the book’s visual design. What was your design rationale behind the simple but striking cover?

The division of the title Nelson into NEL and SON appears to be just a visual device but when you’ve read a few chapters in, you realise that the key to one of the main themes of the book was right in front of you. That’s my favourite kind of cover. Covers generally demand lots of arguments and many revisions. But the design for this cover came together very quickly, one of many indications that Rob and I were on the same wavelength. While we were setting out how we intended the project to look I sent him a few layout sketches for page design and a potential cover idea. He seized on my thumbnail cover rough, put the image of Nel’s face behind the type and sent it back. We both loved the result and wanted to stay true to the power of that composition as we refined the design. There were lots of tweaks, but the initial concept remained pure from those first two combined sketches, which is pretty miraculous.

London-based Woodrow has been creating comics, animation, design and illustration for editorial, advertising, and publishing since 1988. He is perhaps best known as the creator of  unconventional yet affecting graphic novel, Rumble Strip (Myriad, 2008) and author of Plastic Culture: How Japanese Toys Conquered The World (Kodansha, 2006), as well as his many collaborations with Ian Carney.

Nelson is currently available to pre-order in the Blank Slate webstore, in both softcover and limited-edition hardcover. Be sure to be amongst the first to get hold of it when it launches at the end of November! In the meantime, please follow the book’s official Facebook page for up-to-the-minute news on the book as well as more features such as this.

First in our series of mini-interviews picking the brains of the 54-strong army of creators behind November’s Nelson – our 250 page graphic novel with all profits going to Shelter –  is Rob Davis. Co-editor and driving force behind the project, he effectively kicks off proceedings with a chapter set in 1968, chronicling the birth of protagonist Nel Baker.

What was the inspiration behind Nelson?

As a project? The idea came from wanting to do something that reflected the variety and talent in UK comics and also do something unique with the anthology format that created a genuine cover-to-cover read. I was inspired by debates on Twitter and attending Thought Bubble festival 2010.

As a concept? Being in Slopsistic Pop 3 inspired me, being part of HUZZAH!! the exquisite corpse web comic also inspired me. But the core Nelson idea of using an anthology format to tell a complete story is something I’ve wanted to do for years, it comes from a love of the British anthology titles I grew up with and a novelistic ambition to make all the stories connect.

Narratively speaking, you had the most freedom on the book to do whatever you wanted with your chapter, but also the biggest responsibility. What was your intention for 1968?

I intentionally kept my 1968 chapter as open as possible. The subject matter – the birth of our central character was obviously going to be central, so I concentrated on creating the Dad and his world. I also left the ending ambiguous enough to allow Woodrow – who followed me – to be very playful with the nature of the main character. I gave him one option for an interesting twist, he took that and gave it a double twist. From that moment on the story was catapulted forwards. I may have had the initial idea and started things with Nelson, but it’s what happened when mine and Woodrow’s ideas collide that has shaped the vision of the book. Add to that the ideas of 53 of the best talents in UK comics and you have Nelson.

How much did you understand of the characters at this point? Did it surprise you where the later creators took them?

I only really wrote Jim, Nel’s Dad, and his character remained consistent throughout, even if the events of his life surprised me from time to time. Pete Doree who wrote for Sean Philips had big plans for Jim as did Dan McDaid. In terms of Jim’s life they shaped things more than I did, but as with all the characters in the book it’s what happens as they are passed from one creator to the next that define who they are. We all leave our fingerprints on them.

Rob hails from “deepest, darkest Dorset” and is best known for his work with iconic British comic characters Judge Dredd and Roy of the Rovers, as well as working on the comic portion of Dr Who Magazine. Most recently, he has a brilliant Don Quixote adaptation on the way from SelfMadeHero and is a regular contributor to Tom Humberstone’s Solipsistic Pop anthology.

Nelson is currently available to pre-order in the Blank Slate webstore, in both softcover and limited-edition hardcover. Be sure to be amongst the first to get hold of it when it launches at the end of November! In the meantime, please follow the book’s official Facebook page for up-to-the-minute news on the book as well as features like this.