REVIEWS


Escape Magazine (1983-1989):
A review by True Brit


True Brit (2004, Twomorrows Publishing) is a book edited by George Khoury celebrating the comic artists of the UK. In the introduction, ‘The History of British Comic Art’, David Roach details the origins of Escape Magazine.

[Escape] magazine emerged from the growing fanzine scene of the early 80s; by the start of that decade, London’s legendary Westminster Comic Mart (situated a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament) was attracting a horde of eager young talents hawking their self-published comics. Inspired by this creativity, Gravett first set up a table to sell these publications [called Fast Fiction] and then [creators Phil Elliott, Ian Wieczorek and Eddie Campbell] published a fanzine called Fast Fiction, which collected a lot of the best strips. Finally, [Gravett and Stanbury] launched the glossy Escape magazine, Britain’s most ambitious comic anthology. Combining the best young talent with articles, interviews and European strips in a mix that was part RAW, part Comics Journal, part coffee-table magazine. Among its discoveries were Eddie Campbell, Phil Elliot, Rian Hughes, Warren Pleece, Mark Robinson, Jamie Hewlett and Phillip Bond, while its reviewers included Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Dave Gibbons. European talents such as Serge Clerc, Lorenzo Mattotti and José Muñoz rubbed shoulders with North American creators Ben Katchor, Chester Brown and Ted McKeever.

In spite of its talented contributors, Escape was unable to tap into the mainstream market that it so richly deserved, and in many ways its sheer diversity and quality have yet to be surpassed. One of its last acts, in 1987, was to launch a proposed graphic novel line with Violent Cases by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean; it was the first that most of us had ever seen of this pair… My feeling is that, if the Gravett/Stanbury Escape had enjoyed a wider circulation, that title might have had all the elements needed to reach the older audience that publishers were slavering for; it was intelligent, irreverent and genuinely cutting-edge.