Comics

I like comics. I really like comics a lot.

 

Monkey Loft Comics

Monkey Loft Comics is the name I use when selling or exhibiting comics.

My online comic shop is here.

The first Monkey Loft stall was at the Three Harbours Arts Festival Fair on 3rd ( Port Seton Community Centre ) and 4th ( Prestonpans Town Hall ) of June.

The next Monkey Loft stall is at Prestonpandemonium on 22nd July.

The first Monkey Loft exhibition was also part of the Three Harbours Arts Festival. We showed the work of small press comics superstars Malcy Duff and Neil 'Nulsh' Hood in our own home - the Monkey Loft.

 

Prestonpandemonium

Prestonpandemonium is Scotland's newest comic mart and takes place in the upstairs of the Prestoungrange Gothenburg, right here in Prestonpans. The first two dates are Saturday 22nd July and Saturday 21st October 2006. If you like comics you owe it to yourself to be there. Full details here.

 

My life in comics

I liked comics as a kid, British war comics, UK Marvels, Cracked magazine, Krazy, Cheeky and from April 1977 2000AD. By the time I left home to go and be a physics student in London I was still buying 2000AD, plus Viz and the occasional Marvel comic, but where it really went wrong was when I was working as a cleaner in the summer holiday and found the first Love and Rockets collection in someone's hotel room.

I went back and read it every day and knew that this was something I wanted more of. 1986 was a great time to be getting into comics - Watchmen, Swamp Thing, Dark Knight Returns, Mr X and Elektra Assassin. And if you dug a bit deeper Neat Stuff, Weirdo, Escape, Deadface and Raw. Within six months I was working part time at Forbidden Planet in Denmark Street and within a year I had dropped out of university to go full time.

It might be hard to believe now but 1984 to 1991 was a golden age of comics and lots of people working in all levels of the industry thought something big was about to happen. Comics were in the Sunday magazines and on the cover of The Face and not just for some movie tie-in.

In 1988 I left Forbidden Planet and went to work for big sister Titan Distributors. I got better discounts and started to learn about Unix and SQL. Comics hadn't quite peaked and some people were making lots of money writing comics.

Sometime in the 90s Titan was sold to Diamond Comic Distributors of Baltimore and suddenly what we did became more like just any other business. The product we sold seemed to become smaller and smaller, trading cards, pogs and card games; and comic shops started filling up with toys. I was made redundant at the end of 1999 and for six years or so I was happy enough just buying comics at marts and shops and on eBay, but now I want to get a bit more involved again, hence Monkey Loft Comics and Prestonpandemonium.

 

EC War Comics Index

EC Comics were a highpoint of 1950s publishing, the original Mad comic, the very best horror and science fiction comics ( Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science, Weird Fantasy etc. ) and the two war comics edited by Harvey Kurtzman, Two Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. The books combine brilliant storytelling and art with a desire to tell more realistic war stories, with many stories covering the then current Korean conflict. But what if you want to know which comic has a particular story ? You need this index ...

 

Comics Quiz

In 1999 I put on a comics quiz at the Princess Alice in Holborn for Hackney Health Action Zone. Have a go at the questions and then take a look at the answers.

 

Marvel Comics Index Coming Sometime

Imagine an index of every Marvel comic published in the 1960s. I'm working on one. Tackles the vexatious question of how many books were Marvel able to publish during their distribution deal with DC owned IND.

 

Hit List

The comics I really like the best are 1960s Marvel comics, EC comics, old crime, horror, romance, war and science fiction comics in general, Peter Bagge, Robert Crumb, Raw, Arcade, Love and Rockets, Fantagraphics, Drawn and Quarterly, Jack Kirby, Alan Moore, old newspaper strips, Hugo Pratt, Jean 'Moebius' Giraud, Bilal, James Kochalka, Batman, Swamp Thing, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the Spirit, early 2000AD, British comics of the 60s and 70s generally, Steve Bell, Doonesbury, Viz, Private Eye, Garth Ennis, Frank Miller, Grant Morrison, Paul Grist, Robert Wells, Malcy Duff, Nulsh, lots of the stuff at Smallzone and probably lots of other stuff as well.