COMIC COLLABORATIONS
From Louis Wain to Shaky Kane.
When I was an NME writer, I had a surprising amount of freedom to do stuff that wasn’t just reviewing records or interviewing band. Partly this was because there were a lot of pages to fill every week and partly it was because the NME was that sort of magazine. And one of the things I got to do was work with artists and cartoonists. I did a regular item called CREEPSHOW with the brilliant Chris Long. It was very like Private Eye’s Great Bores of Today except it was about hipsters, musicians, and fans, and Chris’ art made it brilliant. And I wrote a couple of things with Edwin Pouncey. Edwin is better known as Savage Pencil, a fine artist who’s drawn covers for Sonic Youth as well as being the inspiration for an Alan Moore robot called, um, “Edwin.” Sav and I worked on KARGARROK EATER OF SOULS, which was about a demon from hell that ate rock stars for being shit, as well as a strip called POP STAR BABIES (which featured Baby Kurt Cobain and, um, Boy Boy George).
I loved working with Edwin and years later we did it again but this time in Alan Moore’s graphic mag Dodgem Logic. Since childhood I had been obsessed with Louis Wain the cat artist and I wanted to write a strip about him – and Edwin seemed the obvious choice to do the art. LOUIS WAIN turned out brilliantly because of him.
And then there was THAT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE A ROBOT. This was a one shot for Eclipse Comics and it was the story of two cops who learn that one of them is a cyborg – only they don’t know which one of them. Part Terminator, part buddy comedy, it was drawn by the astonishing Shaky Kane. There’s only one issue but it exists and that’s great.
Since then I’ve written scripts for animated movie projects and maybe I’ll do more graphic stuff. I had an idea turned down by 2000AD but I turned it into a novel so there we go.
I feel there should be a punchline to all this, so perhaps I’ll think of one later. In the meantime, enjoy some art!