NEWS
DAVID HINE’S TREASURE FROM THE ARCHIVE
Posted: December 31, 2011Leading comics scribe and writer-artist of the excellent Strange Embrace, David Hine, has been posting ‘Odds & Sods’ from his ‘archive’ over on his daily updated blog. In his latest trove, Odds & Sods 2 he reminisces after unearthing a copy of the first issue of Escape.
Hine writes: “The wraparound cover by Phil Elliott made clear the intention to marry the energy of British creators with the sensibilities of the new European Bandes Dessinées. Contributors included Myra Hancock, Hunt Emerson, Eddie Campbell, Rian Hughes and…none other than Mr Shaky Kane. Will you look at that? Spread across the centre pages, four cut-out-and-keep postcards. It looks like another Classic Kane!” The colours for this free-gift centre-fold postcard set satirising Bazooka Joe bubblegum comics were hand-separated by co-founder/co-publishers/ace designer Peter Stanbury. What few people know is that due to a production glitch, the small triangle of the green train through young Gimbley’s left arm came out in yellow, as the blue overlay went missing, so every cover had to be tipped in by hand with a blue pen to make that yellow piece green. A handful of copies slipped through with that triangle still in yellow - collector’s item alert!
Hine also digs up the super-rare A6-size mini-comic typewriter-set prospectus that preceded it in late 1982, published to coincide with the ICA’s Graphic Rap exhibition in London and with a film noir cover by Peter Stanbury. Hine spotlights his Bulletproof Coffin collaborator Shaky Kane’s full-page William Burroughs-inspired contribution to this as well. Enjoy these blasts from the past as we wish you all a Very Happy New Year!
A MOMENT OF MOORE
Posted: October 1, 2011A Moment of Moore is the excellent web-site which publishes something related to Alan Moore every day. Today’s moment featured the three page article, Comics USA: An Impossibly Rich Celebrity’s Guide, Alan Moore wrote after he visted New York in 1984, which was published in Escape Magazine #6. It is written just after his successful breakthrough into the American Market with Swamp Thing. During his visit he meets Frank Miller, Howard Chaykin, Walt Simonson, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, Gary Groth and a number of other notable characters from comics industry in the 1980s. Click on the image below to enlarge.
SAVAGE PENCIL & CHRIS LONG REUNITE AS BATTLE OF THE EYES
Posted: July 10, 2011
Savage Pencil and Chris Long, two out of the original three-person gang Battle of the Eyes, responsible for the high-impact tabloid Nyak! Nyak! in 1985, are reunited and working on joint collaborative large paintings again. Below is a first-rate recent live video shot by Mario Cavalli, showing Sav X and Chris, regulars in Escape Magazine, daubing and scrawling a wild dog at their studio. The special alchemy between this double-act ‘in gear with Satan’ is clearly still firing away here.
UKCAC ‘87
Posted: February 28, 2011
Here’s a photo from the archives of Escape Magazine artists Phil Elliott and Myra Hancock on stage with Paul Gravett (on right) from the UK Comic Art Convention (UKCAC) in 1987. Don’t they all look so young! Photo by Angelos Angeli, courtesy of convention organiser Frank Plowright.
MATTOTTI AND McKEAN
Posted: February 18, 2011
The recent announcement of a Comica Conversation between Lorenzo Mattotti and Dave McKean, on Saturday 12 March at Goldsmith University in South London, will be of interest to readers of Escape Magazine in the 1980s.
Lorenzo Mattotti provided the illustration above, The Red Guitar, for the cover of Escape #11 in 1987, which also featured his four page strip Insomnia and an interview conducted by Paul Gravett. With the release of an English-language version of Fires the year before in 1986, Paul declared, “Mattotti is Italy’s grand architect of dreams… Mattotti’s rich imagery introduces sensations and depths of emotion new to comics - a breath of wind, the heat of fire, the freshness of woodland, feelings of tribalism, melancholy and peace. Fires proves it is possible.”
In 1987 Paul was directly responsible for partnering Neil Gaiman with Dave McKean on their first collaboration, Violent Cases, which was released through Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury’s joint venture Escape Publishing. Neil Gaiman later recounted:
I was twenty six when I first met Dave McKean. I was a working journalist who wanted to write comics. He was twenty three, in his last year at art college, and he wanted to draw comics. We met in the offices of a telephone sales company, several members of which, we had been told, were going to bankroll an exciting new anthology comic. It was the kind of comic that was so cool that it was only going to employ untried new talent, and we certainly were that. I liked Dave, who was quiet and bearded and quite obviously the most artistically talented person I had ever encountered.
That mysterious entity which Eddie Campbell calls ‘the man at the crossroads’, but everyone else knows as Paul Gravett, had been conned into running advertising in his magazine Escape for the Exciting New Comic. He came to take a look at it himself. He liked what Dave was drawing, liked what I was writing, asked if we’d like to work together. We did. We wanted to work together very much.
Somewhere in there we figured out that the reason the Exciting New Comic was only employing untried talent was that no-one else would work with the editor. And that he didn’t have the money to publish it. And that it was part of history… Still, we had our graphic novel to be getting on with for Paul Gravett. It was called Violent Cases.
Don’t miss this opportunity to witness a unique encounter between two of the world’s greatest contemporary visionaries on Saturday 12 March. Be sure to buy your tickets now.
AN ESCAPE REUNION
Posted: December 22, 2010
Photo taken by Bridget Hannigan. Courtesy of Rian Hughes.
The above reunion of Escape Magazine artists took place in the summer of 2009 outside the Escape Boutique in Brussels with (from left to right) Paul Gravett, Peter Stanbury, Woodrow Phoenix, Serge Clerc and Rian Hughes gathered for the Style Atome exhibition curated by Paul for The Atomium.
SARAH McINTYRE PORTRAITS
Posted: August 21, 2010
The talented Sarah McIntyre (Vern & Lettuce, Morris The Mankiest Monster) has just posted the above portraits of Escape Book publishers Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury on her blog. As she explains, “...My studio mate Ellen Lindner asked me to whip up two more portraits of a pair of very cool cats for the party scene on the front cover of Issue 5 of this fab zine [Whores Of Mensa].”
More of Paul’s dancing skills can be see in this YouTube video advertising the Comica Comiket event with the London Underground Comics team at the 2008 Comica Festival. Paul appears 2.50 minutes in. Unmissable!
ESCAPE MAGAZINE ON FACEBOOK
Posted: July 11, 2010
The hugely influential Escape Magazine, co-edited by Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury, published 19 issues between 1983 and 1989 - back when specs were big! The photo above was taken at London’s ICA in Summer 1987 during an Escape Workshop, which was part of the art-and-comics exhibition Comic Iconoclasm. Pictured above is a young Paul Gravett (r) with UK artist Ed Pinsent, whose own site features his visionary comics and loads of assorted Fast Fiction-era small press covers.
You can find out more about (and share your own thoughts on) the impact of Escape Magazine at its new Facebook page.
PAUL GRAVETT ON THE BEAT
Posted: January 10, 2010
Paul Gravett contributes to The Beat’s 2009 Year End Survey:
2010 Projects?
Curating exhibitions on the Moomins, Jack Kirby and Hypercomics. Preparing some major new books about comics. Planning the next evolution of the Comica Festival. And above all, relaunching Escape Books, the seminal publishing company I ran with Peter Stanbury between 1983 and 1989. It’s the perfect time to bring this back. We’ll be putting out graphic novels, new books of our own about comics, and reviving Escape as an anthology showcase for the internet age. Because we all need an Escape.
What was the biggest story in comics in 2009?
I guess either Disney buying Marvel or Crumb illustrating Genesis, but to me the biggest under-reported story was the banning by an Egyptian court of the country’s first adult graphic novel by Magdy El Shafee entitled Metro.
What will be the biggest story in comics in 2010?
The impact of the Apple e-reader.
What guilty pleasure (of any kind) are you looking forward to in 2010?
Indulging my lifelong love of Jack Kirby and luxuriating in original art for this exhibition, co-curated with Dan ‘Picture Box’ Nadel, for the Fumetto Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland.
When I think of comics in the 00s I think of:
The medium coming into its own more and more internationally, resulting in utterly unexpected, wonderful comics I’d never dreamt I’d see - I have to keep pinching myself.
DAZED & CONFUSED
Posted: November 18, 2009Paul Gravett spills the beans about his plans for Escape Books in an online interview at Dazed Digital:
Dazed Digital:
You are relaunching Escape Magazine again this year. What has inspired you to do this?
Paul Gravett:
The time seems right. There’s such a wealth of comics creativity here in the UK that needs showcasing nationally and internationally. Escape helped launch major names like Eddie Campbell, Dave McKean, Neil Gaiman and Jamie Hewlett in the 80s, and there is a similar abundance of talent now.
Dazed Digital:
What are your plans for Escape Books and the magazine?
Paul Gravett:
Peter Stanbury and I are reviving Escape as an independent publishing house early next year. We’re envisaging presenting both some of the former Escape artists from the original incarnation, and new artists who have emerged since or are emerging now. A number of projects are hatching including the first in a line of Comica reference books about comics and a range of graphic novels and graphic short story compendiums, and related events and exhibitions. Further ahead, the magazine itself will be relaunched. It’s a very different landscape for publishing now thanks to the internet and Escape will change and adapt to this exciting climate while remaining true to its original focus on comics of style and vision.
ESCAPE BOOKS: COUNT DOWN TO LAUNCH
Posted: October 3, 2009Welcome to the news blog of Escape Books, a UK-based publishing company focused on comics and graphic novels, founded in 2009 by Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury. The finishing touches are being put to our publishing plans, so keep checking this blog for all the latest Escape Books news.
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