Comic strip vispo: Holy smoke, Ev!

 

RTomens, 2026

The Eternaut by Héctor Germán Oesterheld and Francisco Solano López.

 

A new arrival. You can read about it here. I had to show the design because books this handsome don't come along very often. Well done Fantagraphics. 

Vispo: I Have Found Fear / Taylor Swift and visual poetry / London Interzone - 3-day William Burroughs event / Comic strip print

I Have Found Fear, RTomens, 2026

I was wondering if Taylor Swift liked visual poetry so I asked AI and here's what it said...

 

My private joke now exposed to the world! Have I no shame? I found the answer amusing; the way AI twisted the genre to fit Taylor Swift. Of course, yes, another medium can provide examples of 'visual poetry'. Tarkovsky in film, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks etc. To my surprise, the reference above to Swift's Tortured Poets Department lead me to the video for the single and her lyric captured below.

Who indeed. She's known some bohemians has Taylor. Well, the character in the song has. Perhaps her reference to and use of a typewriter in the video boosted the typewriter's popularity? Have sales rocketed worldwide now? Do Swifties plague their parents for a typewriter? Would they actually use it more than once? They do make nice home decorations, don't they? That is true. I don't blame anyone for succumbing to the lure of a lovely-looking machine just to put on top of their sideboard. Mine's a bit big, though, for a decorative object. And, let's be honest, too ugly. 

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I designed this poster for London Interzone. I'm not sure how many tickets are left for each day. 

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Is that what they call modern art? / Meeting actual people and being a snob / Print: Celestial Landfall

 

Yes, people like Thelma do exist! They did exist when this comic strip panel was created (1952) and still do - so what? It doesn't matter how other people see art...unless they directly hamper any progress you should wish to meke...as in someone important that you meet looks at your art and says 'I like pictures that look like something!' and shows you the door. Why did you want to impress them anyway? They own a gallery? They act as agents for artists? Etc...

When I was a lot younger it would bother me that some people didn't 'understand' art, as in even old-fashioned abstract art. Perhaps I still felt it was a battle to 'win' and worth arguing about. Pah! What a waste of time. People have different opinions and taste. That's all. So what if the Thelmas (and male equivalents) of this world only want pictures that look like something.

Here's a print I made a few days ago:

RTomens 2026

I've been called a snob many times for just knowing what I like and some of those things being 'obscure'. My accusers only saw part of the picture, though. I love Motown records. Snobbish? Hardly. I love old reggae tunes, John Wayne films, Laurel & Hardy and Pop Art. Do any of those signify snobbery?

These days you can find people online with similar taste to you in obscure music, Art, books etc. In a way, it takes the fun out of it, although I did used to pine for like-minded souls before the internet and once found they were seen as rare treasures. It might be that friend of a friend you were introduced to in a bar. That someone in a club. A chance encounter on the tube with someone reading The Ticket That Exploded. 

People who were actual flesh and bone rather than just names on a screen were akin to records, physical vinyl. They meant something other than virtual 'friends' never to be met and streaming music. You had to make an effort to get both. You could touch them, smell them, get a feeling from them via eye-to-eye contact...the record sleeve, the handshake or hug...

(Talking of records, in a charity shop the other day I overheard a young girl tell the shop assistant that she'd just spent fifteen pounds on vinyl, to which the woman (aged around 45) replied 'Do you have a vinyl player?'. A vinyl player?!!! It's a record-player! And the plural of vinyl is vinyl, not 'vinyls'! God that annoys me. Since when did records become 'vinyls'?)

I don't know if young people still go to bars and clubs and discuss music, art and books. It's easy to think that regarding culture this is a lost generation (well, their culture is different, it's largely online). But I often see lots of kids hanging around music venues in Camden so there are still are 'scenes'. I would hope their music annoys their parents but I fear that their parents are 'liberal' and tolerant in that respect. Parents take their kids to festivals nowadays, for god's sake. 

I like to think there are teenagers out there proudly being 'snobbish' about the culture they like; reading obscure books and listening to obscure music. With 'everything' now being available online though, I suspect that any underground scene worthy of the name would have to be either offline, or so miniscule as to avoid attention. It would certainly escape the notice of this old fart.

TTFN

Print art: What Is A Woman Really Worth? / Destroy All Monsters and Mimicking Authenticity / My Soft Need 23 artwork

 

RTomens 2026

Revisiting Destroy All Monsters' artworks and music inspired me to create some prints. I was keen to try and avoid blatant copies, of course, although LJ believes that to be impossible. She, bless her, is oblivious to software program capabilities in that respect. Of course you can click on the 'Grungy Xerox' button to give your images that look. But what look is it? The look of old Xerox technology. Or is it only that? I wonder...because it's not only a look, it's the product of a time, place, technology, attitude etc...a culture. 

In the same way that it would be very hard, I imagine, to recreate the sound of Jamaica circa 1972 (is their an Off-Center Pressing button for that slightly warped and woozy sound - oh and scratches) recreating a visual style that perfectly mimics an old one may, technically, be possible, but I doubt it's so good as to be indistinguishable from the real thing. No, I'm not going to research that.

There are plenty of typewriters fonts available online and I've used a few but to these eyes they still don't look exactly like anything produced on an actual typewriter.  The inherent variation in pressure applied to keys and the resulting different shades of type is absent. Don't tell me, there's a typewriter app that does vary the weight of lettering randomly. Huh! 

The Destroy All Monsters magazine, collected in one volume, is a treasure. Unfortunately, both books are pricey nowadays. Their aesthetic, visually and sonically, is spot on - raw, rock'n'roll. 

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I'm not sure when my eyes stopped communicating properly with my brain but it's a worry, naturally. Why do I ponder this? Well, I bought Soft Need 23 (2020) from Typewriter Jim last year, about 10 months ago - flicked through, shelved it, flicked through again more thoroughly, shelved it and had another look a couple of weeks ago, this time noticing the comic panel joke on page 48...hold on...that's mine! I made that years ago! I think...I'm almost sure, but it takes some recall to say, exactly, so I search my old blog, Include Me Out, and sure enough, there it is. I'm uncredited in SN 23 because by the time they sourced it my name had become detached, I suppose. I don't mind. It was funny, though, that I didn't discover it for months.

World War Three / Michael Moorcock / Learn To Draw

'There was nothing more old-fashioned than the speeches of the last members of the Old Guard, the student revolutionaries.' Tasty

Drawing by Mal Dean

Drawing by RTomens

Learn to draw here

Be seeing you

Vispo: Dancer At The End Of Time / Fred Astaire in Hard Core Horror / Horror films / British Murder Boys

 

Dancer At The End Of Time, RTomens 2026

The title is stolen from Michael Moorcock, as I'm sure you know. The dancer in my piece is Fred Astaire, minus his cane because that would have proved impossible to cut out. A few hours after making this piece I picked up a copy of Hard Core Horror (No.2) just for a flick through, and where should I land but on a page featuring Fred Astaire. 

You may be wondering what the hell Fred is doing in a comic strip with a title like that and I would explain but life really is too short so I suggest you buy the Hard Core series, then everything else published by Savoy. That should keep you occupied for most of the year.

Alain Resnais' Last Year in Marienbad is an exquisite film, isn't it? Dreamlike. Yes...but I think I'll be watching Predator next - ha-ha. Starship Troopers seems to have set me on the trashy monster movie path. But is it trashy? Perhaps. It's a no-brainer! Alien, on the other hand, is almost 'art'. It creates tension, a claustrophobic atmosphere on the brilliantly designed Nostromo....etc...you know all about it.

Fear of The Alien was palpable in the cinema, as I recall. The only scary monster that had a similar effect in my cinematic experience was Dennis Hopper's Frank in Blue Velvet.  I'm not one for Horror films, generally. It's not my favourite genre. That said, The Haunting (1963) and The Shining are two of my very favourite films. Truth is I'm a lightweight who scares easily and hates the site of onscreen buckets of blood. I have an overactive imagination, perhaps. As a kid, native Americans whooping around a campfire in an old Hollywood film would have me terrified in bed at night, thinking they might come creeping into my bedroom for my young scalp. I should take the British Murder Boys advice...

'I knew all about what it meant to marry an artist!'

Love Experiences magazine (date unknown)

Space Age Architecture - Archigram 4, 1964 /Sun Ra Rocket Number Nine

From the Pop(?) Artitectural collective Archigram's magazine which, in retrospect, looks very much like a combination of underground zine and Independent Group literature. Here's the Zoom contemplation of sci-fi comic book architecture. The Archigram archive is here. 

 

(Un)Square Dance / Comic Print / Dave Brubeck

Valentine magazine

As a kid I loved dancing and never stopped, through my teens, 20s, 30s, 40s and even 50s. I was such a slave to the rhythms of Reggae, Soul, Funk, R&B, Hip-Hop, Jazz, Jungle, Electronica and other sub-genres, no doubt. But hey, even I've had to hang up my dancing shoes. I probably did so around the same time that I hung up my DJ headphones. Nowadays you'd only ever see me dancing should you peer through the window of The Cave to catch me moving in the same stupid way Homer Simpson does, probably. 

Print made from Valentine magazine...

RTomens, 2020

Dave Brubeck's Unsquare Dance...